Baptism and Mourning

Rather excitingly, we had a baptism on Sunday evening. Given the small numbers of the congregation here, it is not something which happens regularly – in fact, no-one can remember the last time a baby was baptised here! However, Adeck Mba, the father, is a professional footballer, playing for one of the teams here in Israel – and is a Presbyterian from Cameroon (The Basle Mission were active in that part of west Africa), his mother being an elder. So it was a privilege to baptise little Riya. Also a relief that there was a reasonable congregation of 18 there to witness it and offer support.

Having witnessed at the baptism the joy of new life a baby brings, a very good friend of mine from the hotel, Moshe (photo right), has just been through a very different experience, with the death of his father. Jewish burials take place usually within a day of the death happening different from Africa, where we often waited for days for family to arrive), after which the family hold shiva. This means that the family sit in the funeral house for 7 days. Mirrors are covered, and the family sit on the floor (or very low seating). They also rip their clothes as a sign of mourning. During shiva, a memorial candle is kept alight, and friends call for short visits. Men are not allowed to shave or have haircuts for 30 days, while women do not wear makeup.(At the hotel, the male staff are supposed to shave every day, but Moshe has been exempted for a month). After 7 days, a person can resume work, but in Moshe’s case, work at the hotel is combined with prayers three times a day (early morning at 5.30, late afternoon and evening) – and in Judaism, you need at least 10 people to pray, so it is not a case of rattling through some prayers in private, but of going to a synagogue for at least an hour.

Mourning for a parent actually lasts for a year, and during that time, the mourner is not supposed to go to parties or entertainment, nor is able to invite anyone for meals. Even music is avoided. Of course, many people do not necessarily keep all of this, but the religious would, and Moshe comes from quite a religious family.

Visit to Jenin

The very mention of the West Bank town of Jenin seems to set alarm bells ringing with many of the people here. The incursion of the Israeli army into Jenin was one of the flashpoints of the Intifada, and a number of lives were lost, especially on the Palestinian side. The town was ‘closed’ for some time, and even now I doubted how easy it would be to get in (when I mentioned I was going, one Palestinian friend said I was a brave man!). As it was, there was nothing simpler than getting through the checkpoint (though the vehicle and our luggage were thoroughly searched on the way back!), and Jenin itself was a friendly, bustling town.

I had gone there with Runa Mackay and Janet Powney from Edinburgh, and our main contact was Yousef at the Jenin Cultural Centre, which organizes drama, workshops for children, English lessons and computer classes among other things. [The photo is at the Cultural Centre at Jenin. From left, Yousef, Ahmed, Mohammed and me.] It was interesting to see the children’s paintings, which had been full of violent images of soldiers, tanks, blood, people being arrested. However, the more recent ones are of more peaceful scenes, including the sea – though this is something which can no longer be seen with ease on the West bank. It was also good to visit the Refugee Camp, which had borne the brunt of the fighting during the Incursion, and see the sculpture of a horse, made out of bits of cars (and even an ambulance) which had been blown up during the fighting. Again, taking something negative and turning it into a positive.

We stayed at Yousef’s home in the village of Burqin, and I was excited to find an old Orthodox church there, set in a peaceful garden full of roses. It is reputedly the site of the healing of the 10 lepers, and a church was built there in the 4th Century. The Christian population is small, but there seems to be a good relationship between the Moslems and Christians. Also near Burqin, is a centre for fair trade products (Canaan Fair Trade). There seem to be about 40 farms involved, seven of which are organic, as well as 6 women’s co-operatives. Farmers are given a good price for their goods, and the quality seems to be excellent (I bought some olive oil and some soap). A lot of the produce is sold to Europe and America, and I felt encouraged that the fragile Palestinian economy could be boosted by an organization seeking to benefit women and men in this rural community.

A good visit, and one which re-enforces in my mind both the goodness of people on all sides of this conflict, but also the dreadful injustices being borne by the Palestinians in the West Bank. But ultimately I left feeling more hopeful for the Palestinian people.

Bir’im

Bir’im was a bustling village near the Lebanese border, with a population of Maronite and Melkite Christians. In 1948 the villagers had to leave, hoping that they would return, but it never happened. Many moved to the nearby village of Jish; others went into exile. Their case was taken to court, and the ruling was that they be allowed to return – except ‘for security reasons’ this has never been implemented. Though, interestingly, the people of Jish still bring their dead to be buried at the cemetery in Bir’im. (On Good Friday it is the custom for Christians to visit the graves of their loved ones, and I hear that at 6 o’clock in the morning, several hundred people had made the journey from Jish to Bir’im to continue this custom).

The area is now a national park, as there is an ancient synagogue there, but you can still see the ruins of the houses, though the stone crosses on the lintels seem to have been taken away. The Maronite church is still there, however, and services, hitherto held only once a year, will apparently be held there every Saturday. While I was there, a group of American Christians were looking at the synagogue and had spent 45 minutes there. When we mentioned about the church being just 50 metres away, their guide said it was time for lunch and quickly moved them to their bus. Perhaps the sight of the ruined village would have led to some awkward questions. Out of sight is out of mind.

Though, for the Jews, this is the time to remember, and there have been two memorial days, one for the victims of the Shoah (holocaust) and the other for soldiers who died in wars. A siren sounds over the land, and everyone and everything stops and stands to attention. Looking out my window, I could see vehicles stopped in the middle of roundabouts, with the drivers standing still beside them. This must have been broadcast widely, as I received a text message from the North-western province of Zambia, asking why it happened.

Blog down for 2 weeks

Please note: This Blog will not be updated for the next 2 weeks. Normal service will be resumed on 20 April.

Weaving women, Passover and Easter

Kafr Manda is a sizeable Arab village in Western Galilee and is home to a basketry project, in which 9 Arab women, the oldest 53 and the youngest 22, weave baskets. In doing so, they keep alive an ancient craft. The project is run by Sindyanna, a fair trade organisation, which works mostly with the Arab community, but which seeks to promote co-existence between the different groups in Israeli society. In fact, the next basketry course will have 10 participants, 5 Arab and 5 Jewish women, which I find exciting. Even as it is, the workforce is mixed. The project seeks to empower the women, providing them with employment and thereby with money, but also giving them a space away from their home environment where they can chat and share problems. The baskets themselves are works of art, all individual. Needless to say, I bought two for the church in Tiberias! The women also make lunch for groups, so anyone planning a trip to the Holy land should consider stopping off there!

Passover
The Monday night of Holy Week – but also this year the beginning of Passover (or Pesach, in Hebrew). I had been invited, along with two friends from Scotland, to the Seder meal at Kinneret kibbutz just south of Tiberias. It was a wonderful experience, with over 300 people of all ages gathered in the kibbutz dining hall. This was the 96th time the Seder had been celebrated at Kinneret, and different families had their own bits of the ‘liturgy’ to read, as the story of the Exodus and the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt was recited. All this was interspersed with singing led by a band of musicians. The walls were also decorated by paintings by one of the artists from the kibbutz, using the ‘Exodus’ theme.

I found it an incredibly moving experience and was struck by a sense of continuity with the past, both immediately (some of the readings were read by children of the first settlers on the kibbutz), but also realising that this meal had been celebrated for all these centuries. I was also struck by the strong sense of community and oneness on the kibbutz. As a Christian, I could identify strongly with the Passover, whose message of liberation from oppression has meant so much to churches throughout the world.

Easter
The scouts are an interdenominational group in the Arab town of Reine, and their band beat the drums and led the procession with banners at the Palm Sunday procession, where we moved from the Anglican church (our partners) to the Melkite (Greek Catholic) church to the Latin (Roman Catholic) church, waving our palms and olive branches. A meaningful occasion!

On Thursday, we will hold our feet-washing and communion service, while on Good Friday we will have a series of meditations, as we move around the hotel garden and down to the church, remembering all the events of the day. A dawn service and communion on top of the Migdal in the hotel garden on Easter morning will be the culmination of our activities.

I hope and pray that Easter will be a blessed and meaningful time for all of you, wherever you may be.

Yanoun

We drove up from the Jordan Valley through the rain and fog to find the small road leading us to the town of Aqraba and on to the village of Yanoun in the West Bank. Yanoun is surrounded by Jewish settlements and became a flashpoint in 2003 when settlers drove the inhabitants from their homes.

This reminder of the expulsion of Arab populations in 1948 caused Jewish Peace activists to protect the village from being taken over by the settlers, and since that time there has been an international presence in the village, though a few of the houses are still sadly left empty. As it is, shepherds cannot take their sheep up the hillsides to graze, in case of confrontations with the settlers, nor can children play or explore.

I had gone with a friend to visit Jan Sutch Pickard, who is there for 3 months with EAPPI (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel). Their role is really just to be a presence in the village. Our visit coincided with that of a theatre group, Clowns without Borders, whose programme is called Laughter without Borders. They were spending just over a week in Palestine, before spending a few days in Israel playing to mixed audiences.

In Yanoun numbers were intimate, but it was so good to see the children laugh – there must be precious little of that. It was a happy day and the village seemed almost idyllic – until you noticed the looming presence of the settlements on the surrounding hills.

Meeting the Bedouins

I had an early start to join Clarence and Joan Musgrave & the visiting Guild group as they visited projects supported by the NGO, Rabbis for Human Rights, among the Bedouin of the Negev, the large desert region in the south of the country (turned green with the rain). In the morning we visited a Bedouin village, where we heard of the work of the Pre-Military Academy, which takes young people who have just completed school for a 10 month stint before they start their army service. Their presence seems to have made some difference in the village, in that some facilities had been provided and some women have been learning Hebrew, so they can communicate (though how many of the young people learned any Arabic is another matter), and the women could now read, for example, health pamphlets (which should have been provided in Arabic anyway, as an official language, but which rarely are). The young people from the Academy came from privileged backgrounds in the Centre of the country -unfortunately there didn’t seem to be any Arabs on the programme, but then not many Arabs do military service - and their interaction with the Bedouin had obviously had an impact on them, and I could see that they had had a positive mind-shift, appreciating more about minorities in Israel.

The men in the group were taken round the local primary school. The headteacher bemoaned the lack of resources, but it seemed a lot better to me than many schools in Zambia, so it is all relative. The Head himself was a local Bedouin, but most of the teachers seemed to come from the Arab communities in the Galilee, as few of the Bedouins seem to go in for teaching. Again young people from the ‘Academy’ teach some courses, and thus present a different view of Jewish Israelis to the Bedouin pupils, who are more likely to associate Israelis negatively with the police or army. I was certainly impressed by the young man who took us round and felt that, despite some initial reservations, that the programme was a positive one.

What the Bedouin are associated with is their hospitality, and the morning finished with a lunch of rice, potato and chicken from a communal dish.