Canadian educator’s book celebrates experiment in peaceful coexistence

(from The Toronto Star, by courtesy of Libby Stephens, Toronto Star Religion Editor)
Israel’s tiny oasis of peace

"For a Jew, memory is sacrosanct. It connects us back to Abraham and, of course, to God. But what do we do with the memory of the Holocaust, which destroyed the innocent relation between survivors and God? It is a death of the self and is transferred onto the children of survivors like you." — Father Bruno Hussar

December, 1991 It was a cold, wet December afternoon back in 1991, writes Grace Feuerverger, the day she sat weeping in the presence of Father Bruno Hussar. Hussar, then 80, was the founder of the village of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, which Feuerverger had come to study. She would eventually write about it a decade later in a recently published book called Oasis Of Dreams: Teaching and Learning Peace In A Jewish-Palestinian Village In Israel (Routledge).

Feuerverger had gone to interview Hussar about the history of the village. Instead, she found herself sharing her own story in a way that would be profoundly healing.

Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (NSWAS), half way between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, is a remarkable experiment in peaceful co- existence that has survived since it was founded on land originally leased (and later donated) to the villagers by the nearby Latrun Monastery in 1972. The name, in Hebrew and Arabic, means "Oasis of Peace." Like everything else in this village of Jews and Palestinians it embodies the bilingual, bi-cultural, and bi-national values that are essential to the villagers’ approach to peaceful co-existence.

At a time when even the possibility of peace between Israelis and Palestinians seems terribly remote the very idea of this village is, for Feuerverger, almost miraculous. Feuerverger is an associate professor with the Centre for Teacher Development at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, part of the University of Toronto. She first heard about the village in 1991, after a year-long stay in Israel. Amazed that she hadn’t discovered it during her sojourn, she immediately made plans to return and find out more.

A key project for the villagers of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam is a comprehensive educational program for the children of the 40-plus families that live in the village as well as children from neighbouring villages. It is a place where Jews and Arabs, Christians and Muslims live, work, study, play and worship — together and in peace.

In 1979, villagers established the School for Peace. Like other conflict resolution programs in Northern Ireland, and in the United States for children from war zones around the world, it brings together Jewish and Arab teenagers for three-day workshops to address the Israeli — Palestinian conflict.

Feuerverger’s interest in the both village and its educational programs was deeply personal as well as professional. She is the child of Holocaust survivors. Both her parents lost almost their entire families to labour and concentration camps in Poland and Eastern Europe. It was recalling the impact of that event on her parents and her own childhood that reduced her to tears when she first met Father Bruno Hussar.

Born in Europe shortly after the war, but raised in Montreal, Feuerverger’s childhood was haunted by the devastation of the Holocaust. She grew up, she says, "in a fog of despair" always afraid that Hitler was around a corner, waiting. Yet, a loving, vivacious child, she longed for a sense of joy in life, an affirmation of hope.

As a young girl she found it in the Romance languages — first French and later Italian. Her warm, dark eyes brighten as she describes the effect. Speaking Italian, she says, "was like coming out into the sunshine."

Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam became another kind of beacon leading out of that childhood despair. She remembers a Christmas party she attended during that first December visit. Children from the elementary school, whose parents lived in nearby Jewish and Arab villages as well as in Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam, were presenting a Christmas pageant, in keeping with the school’s tradition of respecting all religious holidays. "I’ll never forget," Feuerverger recalls, still emotional, "I had tears in my eyes. And I had this little camera and I remember just snapping pictures, I could hardly see but I was just snapping pictures. And one of the pictures that is most dear to me is a Palestinian woman in her hijab with a little child on her lap, sitting next to a Jewish woman with her child on her lap. And they’re watching their older children in the Christmas play. And it was so natural."

Feuerverger says she was deeply affected because she herself was "a product of parents who had suffered because of hatred between religions, hatred for the Jewish religion. To see this happening, I said, ’My God is this really happening on earth?’ I really felt at that moment that I was in a sacred place." ’I really felt at that moment that I was in a sacred place’

What makes it sacred for Feuerverger is that it enables both residents and students — children who grew up in the village as well as those who attend workshops in the School for Peace — to learn how to confront their religious, cultural and political differences without resorting violence.

But neither are the differences papered over. In this safe, "sacred" place, Christians, Jews and Muslims are encouraged and supported in the development of their individual cultural and religious identities. However, all the teaching and learning is shared. A Jewish teacher and an Arab teacher lead all classes. All religious festivals are equally honoured. Both national languages are given equal attention. So, too, are both versions of the nation’s history.

For example, everyone in the village knows, that Israel’s War of Independence was the Naqba or catastrophe for the Palestinians. They talk about it, they argue about it, they challenge and even accuse each other, sometimes in harsh and painful ways. But do so in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

The same goes for participants in the School for Peace. Here’s just a sample of the comments Feuerverger recorded from her observations at one session of the School for Peace. "When someone feels that his or her pain is not being recognized — especially our feelings about the Holocaust — it is difficult for that person to listen and give empathy to someone else in pain." — A Jewish participant

"You always bring up the Holocaust. We (the Arabs) are not responsible for that. You may feel very vulnerable in the Middle East but that doesn’t give you the right to oppress and humiliate us, the Palestinians." — A Palestinian participant

"When I close eyes and imagine Palestinians (from the West Bank,) I see masses of angry people wanting to take out their revenge on me. And suicide bombers killing my family on a bus or in a shopping square. These and my nightmares." — A Jewish participant

"We were totally blind to the other’s needs. . . . For example, we the Palestinians have over and over again brought up the issue of discrimination and vulnerability as a minority in Israel, which is of course so true, but for the first time I listened as the Jewish students expressed their fears as a minority in the Middle East. I never really appreciated how afraid they were and that they had a right to that fear. — A Palestinian participant

These are not easy conversations to have, especially right now, when violence threatens to drown out the voices calling for peace.

Neither, as John Paul Lederach points out, will these dialogues resolve the underlying conflicts, which cause these tensions. Lederach is a Professor of Sociology and Conflict Studies at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He’s also a leading expert on conflict resolution programs like the School for Peace at Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam.

He says, "Face-to-face immediate community initiatives don’t always answer the larger scale structural problems or what some people might refer to as root causes or justice issues."

For example, in the Middle East conflict resolution programs, like the School for Peace, will not solve disputes over access to land, water or democratic government.

"But," he adds, "it’s not necessarily oriented at attempting to do that. It’s, much more about increasing the capacity of the community to deal with the immediate, basic conflict in its own backyard."

This tiny village is producing a community of children who are very much what their distinct communities would want them to be — Christian, Jew or Muslim — but who are able to be so with complete confidence in an environment of absolute respect for diversity and difference. It’s a remarkable achievement that may yet inspire others when they too are finally done with making war.

For Grace Feuerverger it’s a gift that nourishes her. "It makes meaning out of what seems so horribly meaningless," she says, "I, who have grown up in the shadow of probably one of the worst — if not the worst catastrophes in terms of killings — I, for one, need to find some meaning, some purpose to my life, to life. I have to hang on to the life force. That village offers me hope. In spite of the negativity that we’re all facing in so many parts of the world, a place like Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam gives us that sense that all is not lost.

"And I think in our hearts we need that so desperately."

By Sheyfali Saujani