School for Peace: dialogue, translate, meet

Weekend for Graduates of the University Dialogue Courses

Ten graduates of the university dialogue courses met at Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom at the end of September for two days of intensive dialogue. They were alumni of course offered during the past two years at Ruppin Academic College, Ben Gurion University and Tel Aviv University. The participants all came from the fields of health, mental health and treatment.

The group had a tour of the village; they saw a documentary film “Tantura” (about the Nakba and a so-called “abandoned” Palestinian village) and had a discussion with the filmmaker and Teddy Katz, hero of the film; and they had a session on “political imagining,” led by the SFP staff. Despite coming together for only two days, the group managed to touch on a large range of subjects, from national identity to coping with fear to professional issues that both Jews and Palestinians deal with in caring for others.

“I’m taking away insights that I’ll use day-to-day,” said one. “I’ll be sure to ask the Arabs I meet in different situations to tell me the stories of their families and to feel empathy for their pain.”

“I understand my grandmother’s dementia now. She wants to forget,” said another. “No one talks about it, but these things are passed down through generations.”

Simultaneous translation

As the courses offered by the SFP grow and develop, the staff has realized the need for better translation between Arabic and Hebrew, to better allow everyone to express themselves in their native language and to be understood. That is why they are offering a course in simultaneous translation, starting at the end of November. The course will be taught in eight four-hour sessions, through the end of January.

The course will be taught on an academic level, and is meant for those who already have a high spoken level of both languages. The teacher, Salah Sua’ad, has an MA in translation, and he has years of experience both in translating and in training translators.

Jaffa Horizon

SFP facilitators led the first meeting of a new group in Jaffa, Jaffa Horizon (Ufuq-Yaffa in Arabic) meant to deal with social issues affecting the city and to support and coordinate local activism. At the end of a lively session in which many issues and ideas were raised, group members agreed that more research and discussions were needed before setting out a plan of action, and further meetings were planned.