Successful Coexistence
BY SYDELL S. SLOAN, M.A.
I spent the Christmas-New Year’s week in Israel with 179 other members of B’Nai Jeshurun Synagogue of Manhattan (or BJ as it is called). The 180-member trip was in honor of BJ’s 180th anniversary. I had been to Israel twice before and while I enjoyed revisiting Masada, Yad Vashem, and the Western Wall, what made this trip special were some exceptional experiences such as picking tomatoes for the poor and sitting at joint tables of Israeli and American families at a huge Shabbat dinner.
The new experience that made the greatest impact on me was the visit to Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam, a village comprised of Jews and Palestinian Arabs of Israeli citizenship which was located equidistant from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
NSWAS was founded in the early 1970s on land originally leased from the Latrun Monastery. By 2005, some 50 families had come to live in the village with an equal number of Jews and Arabs. The members of the community are demonstrating the possibility of coexistence between Jews and Palestinians by developing a community based on mutual acceptance, respect and cooperation. Of greatest interest and amazement to me was NSWAS’s bilingual/binational program which is one of the ways that the village gives practical expression to its vision. I quote from parts of the village’s descriptive material.
“The idea of creating an educational framework that would express Neve Shalom-Wahat al-Salam’s ideals of coexistence and equality was born together with the community’s first children. The idea took shape in the form of a binational-bilingual nursery, quickly followed by a kindergarten and a primary school which were eventually opened to children from outside the village. Today the school system extends from nursery to junior high school levels and enrolls about 300 children, 90% of which come from surrounding Arab and Jewish communities.
NSWAS’s educational system was the first and remains the most extensive Jewish-Palestinian bilingual children’s educational program in the country. Its unique educational approach begins in the nursery and kindergarten. The Jewish and Palestinian teachers each speak exclusively in their own languages to all of the children and all children become fluid in both Hebrew and Arabic. The children begin to develop an awareness of their identity, culture, and traditions and that of their classmates. There is an atmosphere of openness and tolerance that encourages the children to understand, and accept and appreciate each other.”
In the year 2000, Israel’s Board of Education incorporated the primary school into the national school system. This step furthered the village’s goal of gaining legitimacy for this form of education and for establishing the school as a model for emulation, particularly in cities or regions where there is a binational population. The community of NSWAS believe “that providing children with an educational environment which promotes understanding between the two peoples is an essential step on the road to a stable peace.”
It was very appropriate for a synagogue that prides itself not only on its spiritual and religious commitments, but also on community outreach, to arrange this visit.
— Sydell Sloan, a family therapist, marriage counselor and divorce mediator has a private practice in Bayside and Manhattan.
