december 4, 2001

by Judy Noordermeer

July 23, 2001 -- Grace Feuerverger's voice brightens and her words quicken when she begins to tell you of her special connection to a small community in Israel called Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam. ?I?ve never felt a greater sense of peace in my soul than when I?m in that village,? says the professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her profound experiences there sparked the publication this spring of her first book, Oasis of Dreams, which recounts the many months over nine years she spent living and working in the community. Indeed, the book is both a scholarly and personal treatise for the teacher and researcher.

Set on a rocky hill about 30 kilometres west of Jerusalem, Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam (Hebrew and Arabic for oasis of dreams) is a unique village where Jews and Palestinians have been living, work-ing and going to school together peacefully for more than 20 years. Forty families live as neighbors and hundreds of children from both inside and outside the community sit side by side in classrooms and play together in the schoolyards. From the time of her first visit in 1991, Feuerverger says the village has symbolized hope for her ? her hope in the power of education to change people?s lives and her hope as the Montreal-born daughter of Polish Holocaust survivors that peace can be found in a troubled land. ?I have always had to find hope in my life,? she says. ?That wasn?t something that came easily to me growing up.?

Childhood was a time of despair for Feuerverger; her parents suffered nightmares from their wartime traumas. All the members of her extended family, with the exception of one aunt, had perished in the ghettos or the camps. ?I had the sense of being on the outside looking into homes where there was plenty ? not just food, but family,? she says. Other languages and cultures became a refuge because ?they represented life to me,? she says. ?My own culture seemed full of suffering, pain and death.?

Feuerverger excelled at French and Latin in high school and went on to study language and literature at McGill University. After working for a few years as an immersion teacher, she entered OISE/UT to do a master?s degree and a PhD in applied linguistics. She became a professor at the institute?s Centre for Teacher Development in 1991.

Strengthening multicultural education has been a key focus for Feuerverger during her decade as a professor. Her courses for in-service (practicing) teachers are aimed at helping them better understand the needs of students from different cultural and language backgrounds, like she once was. A popular course she teaches on how to blend multicultural children?s literature into the curriculum always has a waiting list. ?It?s a course that allows the teacher to say, Your culture counts and we?re going to include it,? she says.

As in teaching, Feuerverger?s roots have never been far from the surface in her research endeavours. Thinking about the state of Israel as a child, she says she ?envied the idea of being Jewish in a majority culture.? Yet as an adult, she recognized the challenges of peace and wanted to examine the sit uation from her perspective as an educator. She was awarded grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council during her first year at OISE/UT to undertake the first-ever study of the school system in Neve Shalom/Wahat Al-Salam.

Ironically it was a Jewish-born Catholic priest, Father Bruno Hussar, who founded the community as an experiment in Jewish-Palestinian co-operation in 1972. The first families took up residence in 1978, explains Feuerverger. She only heard about the village in a casual conversation at a party in Toronto. A few months later, when she was appointed to OISE/UT, the ?first thing? she did was to apply for a SSHRC grant to visit.

Feuerverger made numerous visits to the village during the 1990s. In the elementary school she saw Jewish and Palestinian children studying alongside each other with Palestinian and Jewish teachers in each class. Both perspectives were shared in literature, current events and, indeed, all topics, she says. Parents interacted readily with each other. She also witnessed intensive three-day School for Peace conflict resolution workshops that brought together Palestinian and Jewish youths from around the region to vent fears and frustrations about each other, to listen, and usually, to come to a deeper understanding. The workshops ?opened up a space between the two groups that was never there before,? says Feuerverger.

Her experience with the ?oasis of dreams? village has led to a profound optimism. ?I?m not putting these people up on pedestals,? she says. ?I think I?m being very realistic in terms of understanding that peace is not happening yet in the Middle East or in other parts of the world where there is conflict. But I feel that what is happening there makes it possible.

?Peace is still a dream in a sense, but in that village, it?s a reality,? she says. ?In spite of the terrible time,? she says referring to recent violence and tensions between Palestinians and Jews, the villagers are ?hanging in.?

With the passion of an experienced teacher, Feuerverger adds, ?this research has only strengthened my belief that education has such tremendous force, such tremendous possibility if we have faith in it and give it the resources it deserves.?

CONTACT:

U of T Public Affairs, ph: (416) 978-8638; email: news.events@utoronto.ca