No one of the children went out on the steps of the door. They have discovered that they were just kids. Oh, bless these just kids. We had a great year in the ninth grade , b ut in the tenth grade , problems started.
The Jews were supposed to go two days a month for pre — military training. And the first lesson they said they received , as they said to me , was that they will have the privilege of becoming soldier s when they finish high school. The children would come the next morning , living with children , all Palestinians, and they would look, where are the terrorists? And then 11th grade became even more difficult. They were supposed to go for proper military training, GADNA — and in the 12th grade it became impossible, so we stopped having Jewish children.
We kept our Jewish teachers. And we tried to substitute that by creating a relation ship with Jewish schools to exchange students and to receive them and to send our student s there, and we have a few other Jewish schools who are in connection with us.
We are dreaming to have this mutual relation with Jews and Palestinians. Because if you place one Jew here, one Muslim there, one Christian here , one Druze there, they will learn a few things, they will discover a few things together. They will stumble against the same problems together. Then you can have them sit down together and drive the common future you want for all of you.
They will do a miracle. Unfortunately, no … e ducation is still segregated in Israel. I know that at the end we will have it. We will not live in a neighborhood ignoring each other.
We will live together in a neighborhood. So, that is the school. The first summer camp was supposed to be with a minimum number of children, children. I am convinced that we are condemned to this between the Jews and the Palestinians — e ither we shall die together , G od forbid , or we shall live together. And I want to survive.
And that requires a lot of work and a lot of education. But it is not impossible. It has been always possible in the past. The Jews have suffered , we were known as the Palestinian Jews. Tell me what you do? Mary — I can tell you a few things. We started about 20 years ago , from the standpoint of looking at the development a nd the inner empowerment of women. V ery quickly we found ourselves working in Kenya , w here we met organizations, NGOs, men and women that were working for the benefit of the ir communities, working for the young girls and so on.
And the theme of forgiveness began to become a very important issue for me at the time. So it became a very profound study and research for me. And I think for about 2 years I was having every argument in myself about forgiveness. I would have this internal argument in my head over and over and over again, and I had to work it through until I got to a place in myself where I realized that this was bigger than me, this was more important than my wounds, my hurts, my likes, my dislikes.
That this was something the world needed, that humanity needed. And that you have to basically be the bigger person, again and again and again and again. So, from that moment , we started to develop this training program me and we ended up producing something called the Seven Pillars of Forgiveness. O ne of the things in the forgiveness work that we do is we try to help people challenge the stereotypes.
Father Elias — What does all that have to do with women? Father Elias — Normally, is it okay if I speak as a Christian? Our main responsibility, all the days of our life , is to forgive. I am amazed by what has been achieved here. Father Elias — I came with a car. I lived literally six months in the car. I am very amazed.
I congratulate you for what you do. Here I did not plan anything. And we started in , with a building f or which we were unable to get the building permit, …. Now everything is ok. We started and this is very significant for you, with 4 teachers.
Now in the elementary school here , we have 86 teachers. Three men and all the rest are ladies. In the high school, with 80 teachers, we have 7 men and all the rest are ladies. That shows you an evolution and development. Edna — Do you still have Jewish teachers?
Father Elias — Oh yes, oh yes. We love them affectionately you know. They are very dear to us. Mary — W hat is the situation now? Father Elias — Oh God. Well we spen t two year s fighting with the higher education al committee in Israel. I n one year we exchange d 64 letters. All the letters we received were letters of criticism — things are lacking, criticizing — and we answer ed that innocently, although we saw the contradiction , we answered innocently.
A fter that we got back an invitation. But we needed the approbation of the Israeli government and the last session of the government of Olmert was on the situation of the Mar Elias Education institution and University.
And they ended by approving it. T here was a simple quote at the end. So we did not go further. So here we have an elementary school, kindergarten elementa ry school, high school, and our teachers are all young. They still make children. And they were very confused how to deal with their children. And in the evening they should go very , very fast to Nazareth, to Acre to Haifa , to take their children back where they are.
So we decide d to open a nursery for them …. And in the past year we thought we need to extend to the wider community. We opened a learning cent er for extra curriculum activities.
People from the wider community. And they come from Tamra , from Shefaram , from Iblin , from Kabul, from everywhere and they take courses in different topics. So w e are try ing almost to invent what we can do.
Father Elias — Ye s. Father Elias — Absolutely. Mary — So… What is your vision now? We still do not manage to get together. To keep them protecting their dignity and understanding their dignity can never be protected without accepting to protect the dignity of the other.
This is a big job , and i n the past few years , we have a kind of mounting wave of violence in the Arab society. Almost every year — in the past month we had three or four persons were killed. And we are very worried about that. We need also to speak to our children about it. Lucky enough the whole year pas sed last year without any act of violence among the children. They know where they are. Question 1.
When does the book begin? At the end of World War 1. During the great depression. During the Vietnam war. At the end of World War 2. The ten commandments. The beatitudes. The story of Jonah. Why did Elias's family move from Biram to Gish? Because they wanted a vacation. Because they wanted to go to America.
They were forced out by soldiers. Because rent was too expensive. Who is Elias's Champion? The grocery store going out of business. The arrival of Jewish soldiers. Bad education. A fight between neighbors. Where does Elias live, at the start of the book? Near an orchard in the Galilee region. In a dorm.
0コメント