Lutheran Schools in
the Holy Land: Challenges and Hope
Rod Schofield, Chair,
ELCA Division for Higher Education and Schools
The
Islamic faith is being taught to Lutheran students! Christianity
is being taught to Muslim children! In many instances, they are
together in the same religion class. Muslim and Lutheran students
together sing our Lutheran hymns as well as Arab ballads. Muslim
and Christian parents affirm the respectful dialogue and religious
education that is occurring within the Lutheran Schools in the
Holy Land.
Between January and March of
this year, I had the opportunity to lead an international team of
consultants in assessing the schools of the Evangelical Lutheran
Schools of Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL) and was blessed to
have the opportunity to observe the ecumenical education described
above that occurs in those schools. Palestinian Lutherans are
actively engaged in working for peace and dialogue among the three
monotheistic faiths living side by side in the Holy Land. In
particular, the ELCJHL schools are educating the youth to become
leaders in the future Palestinian state as well as around the
world.
Our Christian and Muslim sisters
and brothers in the Holy Land are people who, due to the conflict
in their land, would seem to have little reason to be hopeful
regarding their future; yet, they remain hopeful. What a joy it
was to see and hear examples of their hope and resilience and come
to know that faith and education are the foundation of that
spirit of hope. Those same foundational elements are
present in our Lutheran schools in this country. The difference
between the ELCJHL schools and the Lutheran schools in the USA is
the oppressive and pervasive political climate that exists in
Palestine where the five ELCJHL schools are located.
Teachers and students described
to me the humiliation of going through Israeli checkpoints and
having young Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) – often consisting of 18
to 20 year old soldiers - subject them to long, interminable waits
at checkpoints and senseless questioning while pointing rifles at
them. There are numerous documented cases of teachers and
administrators having to travel over three hours to their school
that, in fact, is located only 10 or 15 minutes from their home.
This is due to the separation wall that Israel continues to build
on Palestinian land, contrary to the Oslo accords of 1993, and the
establishment of Israeli settlements that also separate
Palestinians from their land and severely limits their mobility.
During the Intifada (the uprising of Palestinians to protest the
occupation of their land) and the curfews imposed on Palestinian
towns by the Israeli government, teachers and students described
being shot at as they attempted to reach their school. However,
valuing education as much as they do, they took the risk to assure
the continuation of education in their communities.
The principal of one Palestinian
middle school, with hands trembling and voice shaking, described
an incident that occurred on Easter weekend of 2004 in manger
square, next to the Church of the Nativity. While driving his
family through Bethlehem, his car was fired on by Israeli soldiers
with over 200 bullets, one of which killed his twelve-year-old
daughter and left him with serious injuries. After the shooting he
was told that the IDF “mistook his car for that of terrorists!”
What makes this tragic story especially significant is the fact
that, following their daughter’s death, the father and mother
joined a group of Jewish and Palestinian families whose children
have been killed in the ongoing conflict for the purpose of
providing support and forgiveness to one another. That is the kind
of hope that lives in the Holy Land.
Why do I share these stories
with you? So that you might appreciate the significance of the
following letter, written in March of this year by an 11th
grade student at one of the Lutheran schools in Palestine
who asked me to share it with Lutheran students in the United
States. I am including her letter exactly as she wrote it
and request that, where appropriate, Lutheran educators in the
United States share the content of this letter with their
students.
Dear Fellow Students,
“It is a great opportunity to
write you because there are almost no chances of expressing our
Palestinian self to the world because the governments and the
media are not brave enough to say we are under occupation. The
fact that this land has been taken away from us by political force
is neither mentioned in the media nor is it present in the
international political discourse. However, we as students at
Talitha Kumi (a Lutheran K-12 school on the border of Israel and
Palestine) – and every other child living in the occupied
territories – wake up every morning asking our self; “am I going
to die today?”
“I am sure that you haven’t heard
or thought about that and I am also sure that you heard we are
terrorists and murderers because of the way the western and the
Israeli media present our freedom fighters and our actions for
liberating our land. I am not defending killing civilians but our
society has various viewpoints on non-violent concepts and morals,
which I believe in. And I also believe that each human being has
rights. Among those are the right to life, liberty, and the
security of person, but also the right to a nationality. These
rights should be applied to our people as well as to the people of
Israel.”
“Palestinians have been dreaming
to be free for thousands of years. We want to make our dream come
true. For example, we want to go to a park and play, we want to go
to cinemas, we want to have our own industry, we want to go and
pray in Jerusalem, we want our parents to have work, we want to
walk in the streets without being afraid of being shot. But right
now we cannot even travel to the next city within the Palestinian
Territories. We are prisoners in our own land. Last, but not
least, I have a question to ask and I hope that I can get an
answer. If we have the same God and we breathe the same air and we
have the same sun, why don’t we have the same rights?”
This student, like many students
in the ELCJHL schools, speaks three languages and is articulate
and passionate in describing her reality. The reality she
describes is similar to what I experienced during my two months in
the Holy Land with the exception that the shooting has, at the
time of this writing, stopped and there have been some positive
steps taken to attempt to restart the peace process. However, most
Lutherans in the United States are not aware that students in the
Lutheran Schools in Palestine come from families where there is
close to 60% unemployment, where the average daily wage is the
equivalent of $2, and where the emigration of Palestinian
Christians to escape the effects of the occupation may soon lead
to the complete absence of Christians in the Holy Land.
In April of this year, the ELCA
Church Council relayed an urgent request from the ELCJHL to
Lutherans in the U.S., asking that they be made aware of the
“immediate threat” to the future of the ELCJHL (and its schools)
as well as to the hope for peace in the Middle East resulting from
the construction of the Israeli separation wall on Palestinian
territories. ELCA Synods have been asked to take appropriate
action at their assemblies this year in advocacy that calls for an
end to construction and removal of existing sections of the
separation wall.
These are the “facts on the
ground”, a phrase used by the pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church
in Bethlehem, Mitri Raheb, in describing the impact of the Israeli
occupation on students and families in the Holy Land and at the
school, Dar al Kalima, that is supported in part by his church.
(Dar al Kalima and other ELCJHL schools also receive support from
Lutheran congregations, both LCMS and ELCA, throughout the United
States.)
In addition to sharing the above
letter, what can we as Lutheran educators do to support the
students and staff of Lutheran schools in Palestine? First, I
encourage our schools to provide developmentally appropriate
education to all our students regarding the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and the conditions under which students and teachers in
the Holy Land live and learn. Use of the ELCJHL webpage:
www.holyland-lutherans.org would be a good place to start. Also,
it would seem appropriate for secondary teachers to encourage
their students to become politically active by contacting their
congressional representatives regarding their concern for the
effect of the separation wall on their peers in the Holy Land. For
example, at one large Lutheran school, completion of the wall will
mean that many of the students will no longer be able to access
and attend the school, in effect ending their Lutheran education.
We can encourage our students to
respond to one of the poignant cries I heard from Palestinian
youth: “Please don’t forget that we’re here.” One way to
accomplish this is to encourage our students to engage in pen pal
programs with students in the ELCJHL schools. The ELCA Division of
Higher Education and Schools can assist through their pen pal
program. Please contact Donna Braband, Interim Director for
Schools, at donna.braband@elca.org for further information
regarding that program.
Another opportunity to provide
support for our Lutheran Schools in the Holy Land is through
exchange programs for teachers and students for a semester or
more. The opportunity to live, learn, and teach in the Holy Land
can be one of the most satisfying experiences of one’s life. With
the continuation of movement toward peace, the presence of
Lutheran educators can serve as a significant support to the
educators in that country.
For further information regarding
this opportunity, contact Dr. Charlie Haddad, Director of Schools
for the ELCJHL at
sdo_elcj@netvision.net.il who will assist you in contacting
principals in one of the five ELCJHL schools.
My hope is that the information
in this article, as well as the urgency of the situation, will
prompt our Lutheran educators to engage their students and parent
communities in discussion and action so that in the birthplace of
Christianity, Christians can continue to cling to hope, knowing
that they are not alone. We can, and must, use education as a
means to promote peace in the Holy Land.
Dr. Rod Schofield, Chair of the
Division for Higher Education and Schools and Senior Consultant
with Effectiveness Associates, can be reached at
rodshars@earthlink.net
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