Galilee Dreamers - Letter to the Editor
Updated: 3 days ago
Des Kaplan
About 12 years ago, I was missing Israel desperately. I'd lived in Israel for 13 years and in 1996 had come to the United States to train further in developmental disabilities. I never intending to stay but, when my marriage to an Israeli did not survive, I ended up remaining in the United States with very conflicted co-parenting of Dean aged 8 and Shir 6. I felt guilty, viewed myself as a 'yored' (a derogatory term for an Israeli who leaves Israel for the diaspora). I longed to return to Israel but never considered leaving my children. I got remarried to a woman who loved schnauzers and horses. She discovered a settlement in Israel called Kishorit that had both. I knew the settlement well. It was walking distance from the kibbutz I'd been a member of for almost 3 years before going into the Israeli army. The kibbutz Kishor failed and it lay fallow for a number of years. Then two Israeli visionaries persuaded the Sochnut (Jewish Agency in Israel) to allow them to create a community for life for individuals with developmental disabilities and chronic mental illness. I decided to volunteer on Kishorit, and contacted Shuki, one of the two founders. He was welcoming and happy to have me volunteer on Kishorit. I booked a ticket directly from Newark to Ben Gurion Airport. On Kishorit, I met with the social workers and interviewed a potential resident and her family. However, I had another goal for this trip. Raised in South Africa during the ugly apartheid years, I saw how 'whites' not speaking any black languages had contributed to the tragedy of apartheid. For over a year during my 13 years in Israel, I had worked in the ICU at Nahariya Hospital in the north. While Jews and Arabs worked closely in the hospital, it became clear to me that Arabs and Jews and Arabs in the Galilee outside of the workplace had almost no social contact with one another. I wanted to take the opportunity while volunteering on Kishorit to learn some Arabic. Shuki introduced me to Mr. Mamoun Asadi, a retired teacher of Arabic, who lived in the nearby village of Deir al-Asad. Mamoun was a character; warm, lively, charismatic, and very curious. Although fluent in Hebrew, I was a poor student of Arabic. I enjoyed our outings more. The highlight was sailing on a small boat in the port of Acco looking back on the biblical city. On the way to Israel the flight was overbooked and when an extra ticket was offered for the next day's flight, I readily took it. I could visit Israel twice. On befriending Mamoun it occurred to me that he might enjoy visiting the US. He jumped at the opportunity and, soon after my return, I hosted him in Baltimore. On his arrival in Baltimore, it occurred to me that it would be an exciting opportunity to take him to my children’s Jewish day school to meet the middle schoolers at Krieger Schechter school. It was an electric event as he told them about Israel and his village in the Galilee. The students were enthralled. Here was a retired Arab teacher who loved all children and was not about to kill Jews or blow up anything. The middle schoolers took selfies, asked for his autograph and had many questions about Arab life in Israel. Immediately following this meeting, we asked to meet the headmaster Rabbi Dr. Paul Schneider. Dr. Schneider seemed intrigued when Mamoun urged him to have the 8th graders visit their peers in Mamoun's village. I wanted this to happen the next month during their upcoming trip to Israel but Dr. Schneider wisely explained the need to organize the visit properly for the following year. The Baltimore contingent arrived late to Deir al-Asad, but the Arab schoolchildren waited patiently outside in the sun, each holding up a rose and an olive branch. The meeting of American Jewish students and Israeli Arab students was exhilarating and continued till the sun went down. On their return to Baltimore, the American eighth graders declared the visit to the village the highlight of their Israeli trip. This was the beginning of the 12-year project. At first, we aligned ourselves with an existing Baltimore nonprofit called Sparks of Change named after a brilliant Krieger Schechter student who died tragically of cancer. His parents on hearing about our project immediately contributed $10,000 to subsidize a trip to Baltimore for children from Deir al-Asad. As the project grew Dr. Schneider and myself realized that it was vital to have a partner organization in Israel. I met Dr. Roberta Bell Kliger in a Baltimore bookstore. She was the director of the international program at Oranim College in Israel in the Galilee and she seemed eager to work with us. Later Roberta suggested a new name for our non-profit; 'Galilee Dreamers' ('Cholmei Hagalil' in Hebrew and 'Ahlam al-Jalil' in Arabic). We decided to create a project involving both Jewish and Arab high schoolers (the older students have a better grasp of English and their greater maturity would allow for a deeper experience). The project at this stage had two components - linking Jewish and Arab schools in the Galilee focusing on shared society and then culminating in an overseas trip after 3 years of activities. The project grew. We have sent contingents balanced with Jewish and Arab students and teachers leading the trips. We also added an international virtual anti-racism day. For the past 3 years, we have also run a summer camp for Jewish and Arab high schoolers at Oranim. On Roberta's retirement Dr. Rachel David, a dynamic empathic and humanistic academic, took over and has led all the overseas trips. There have been trips to the United States (5), Canada (2), South Africa (3), and even Germany. We wanted the project to be an equitable one and so we incorporated the dual narratives of Israel/Palestine’s history from both the Jewish and the Arab perspective. A trip to South Africa was planned for 2026 but following the tragedy of October 7, Israel and the world changed, and South Africa seemed less safe for an Israeli contingent of youngsters. Cape Town has a robust Muslim community that identifies strongly with the Palestinian cause and a smaller Jewish community that has learned to keep its head down. A different direction was suggested by a Capetonian ex-Habonim leader, Raymond Schkolne, His idea, superbly executed, was to send a group of senior teachers and principals from the Galilee to Cape Town in July of this year. For me this was a wonderful opportunity to participate. It allowed me also to visit my late parents' graves and spend time with my brother and sister who live in Cape Town. (The decision to travel to Cape Town was extremely difficult as I had a family vacation planned exactly at that time). I joined the group in Cape Town. It was a remarkable experience: Jewish and Arab educators and principals living together for a week; talking about shared society, informed by post-apartheid South Africa and its harrowing journey towards liberation and shared society. We visited segregated black and white schools, and a private non-segregated school. We met heroes of the apartheid struggle, including Alby Sachs, a white Jew who from the age of 17 had been a member of Mandela‘s ANC. He had gone into exile and survived an assassination attempt, losing an arm and an eye. We met Professor Jensen, a professor of education who would be the first person of color heading a major University in South Africa. We met in the home of Helen Lieberman who, over 50 years ago, founded Ikamva Lebantu ('the future of our nation) that established a wide array of programs throughout the lifespan in Cape Town's black townships. Relationships and friendships were formed and insight gained into the perspective of both Jews and Arabs in Israel at this time. Jews and Arabs on the trip were wrestling with the implications of October 7th and an Arab educator described what it was like to feel a second-class citizen in Israel. I returned from the trip inspired, although soon confronted with Trump's demolition of democratic institutions in America and a frighteningly right-leaning and nationalistic Israel in which a two-state solution is just a dream.
