At the beginning of the week, me and a couple others from my program visited a town called Baqa Al-Gharbiya where we met an Arab woman named Halima. We arrived at her house where her husband gave us fresh pomegranate juice. We then headed to the old cultural center in Baqa which is now being renovated into a public library. Halima and her husband have been working on this library since the summer, 8 hours a day. Halima explained to us how the general idea of a library is new to the Arab world in this area. Libraries only existed in people's homes. The state of Israel provides the funding for public libraries which is completely dependent on the number of citizens in a given area. Funding is equally allocated between Arab-Israelis and Israelis in Israel.
The next day we headed to Jatt, another Arab city. We went to an Arab community center where we sat in on a Hebrew lesson. The teacher of the class was an Israeli who converted from Judaism to Islam. When asked her why she converted, her only response was "I've always loved Islam." She spoke Arabic with an Israeli accent. We then headed to an art center, where we met with Arabs participating in a painting class. We spoke with them one-on-one for about half hour, in Arabic. The girl I spoke to was 20 and already married for a year. She was still very excited about being married and showed me her wedding pictures. She was surprised when I told her that people in America don't usually marry until much later.
The day after we visited an Arab-Israeli/Jewish school. This phenomenon of having a mixed school with both Jews and Muslims is almost unheard of in Israel. Schools are mostly segregated, only about 3 or 4 mixed schools exist in the entire country. The school we visited is the only one to exist in an Arab village, opposed to a Jewish settlement. It was a very cool experience seeing both Jewish and Muslim children learning in the same classroom. I helped a little Arab boy with his math, (to the best I could with the language barrier!) and then hung out with a young Israeli girl. Me and the Israeli (Jewish) girl spoke to each other only in Arabic! We also sat in on one of their science classes where they were learning about plastic. There were two teachers; one who spoke in Arabic, and one who spoke in Hebrew. They switched off teaching the class to make sure all students understood the lesson. All classes are combined except for the language classes, where students study their non-native language. (i.e. The Jewish Israelis study Arabic).
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| Helping a 1st grader in math |
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| Combined classroom with Jewish and Muslim students |
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| 1st grade |
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| "Welcome" in both languages |
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| Hanging out with an Arab-Israeli and an Israeli student |
This week was full of eye-opening cultural experiences. Today we visited a nearby Kibbutz, which was much different than the one we are currently living on. (Kibbutz Barkai). I will explain the differences between a privatized and non-privatized Kibbutz in my next blog. For now, I have to get back to studying!
XO from the holy land :)
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