Jewish-Arab Paired Classes meeting regularly from first Grade on Up

Background and Significance of Program

The first Arab kindergarten in Israel was established in 2004 in the town of Shafaram in the Galilee.

Shefaram, located midway between Haifa and Nazareth, is a town of 30, 000 inhabitants of mixed Arab population – Muslims (about 50%), Christians (about 35%) and Druze (about 15%). The group of Arab educators and Jewish educators supporting the establishment of this school believed that Waldorf education, with its emphasis on universal human values and healing orientation for children, could become a unifying force in a society torn by a century of bloodshed and mistrust. Shefaram has had its own share of turbulent history with accounts of rioting during the Intifada. It was in the town of Shefaram that an AWOL Israeli soldier shot and killed four Arab passengers on a bus during the disengagement from Gaza.

During the past five years El Zeitoun’s one kindergarten grew to three kindergartens. It recently began a new phase in its growth by starting a first and second grade. This is the beginning of our Paths to Peace program. This parallel school system in Israel’s highly segregated society creates a system where Jewish grade school children from nearby Harduf Waldorf School can meet regularly with their Arab counterparts from Shefaram. These meetings allow for play encounters, cultural exchanges, and opportunities to practice conflict resolution skills through the use of Council.

Currently El Zeitun is in dire need of funds to continue the school year. Jewish Waldorf Schools are thriving in every major city in Israel and receive Israeli government funding. El Zeitun has applied for government funding and is still waiting for approval. Currently they depend upon donations to get them through this school year and their needs are urgent.

El Zeitun fulfills a dream for many Arab families in Israel who have wanted their children to receive the educational advantages and humanistic social values of Waldorf education given to so many Jewish children in Israeli Waldorf schools. El Zeitun is the beginning of the Arab equivalent of the Waldorf educational movement that many parents in Israel’s Jewish communities have embraced as a healing education for their children.

There are hopes that El Zeitun will be the first of many Waldorf schools that will nurture the minds and souls of Arab children in Israel while making an educational bridge that will link the two communities across divides of cynicism and despair. Because of its proximity to Harduf Waldorf School, the largest Waldorf school in Israel, there are hopes that eventually a Waldorf high school will develop that will educate both Jewish and Arab students together.

Ein Bustan – the First Bilingual Bicultural Jewish Arab Waldorf Kindergarten

In the mixed Jewish Arab kindergarten of Ein Bustan, in Hilf, near Kiryat Tivon in Israel, the children gather in a circle to welcome the Sabbath together, a candle is lit, and they sing:

With God’s help we shall live in peace,
Your light is small, but in my heart the light is great,
With God’s help we shall live in peace.

The Ein Bustan kindergarten is the first Jewish/ArabWaldorf Kindergarten in Israel. The kindergarten, which is based on the principles of the Waldorf educational method, accepts both Arab and Jewish cultures equally. The children come from Kiryat Tivon, (a Jewish town) and the surrounding Bedouin (Arab) villages Hilf and Bosmat Tab’un.

The founders of Ein Bustan share a vision of a society in which Jews and Arabs live together peacefully in equality and understanding. In order to create this reality, there must be education that fosters true friendship, trust and shared culture and language. An educational system that separates children by their religion and nationality fails to take into consideration the widening gap between the two communities, which will take years to bridge and generations to mend.

Children deserve to grow up in an environment enriched with the religious and ethnic folklore and traditions surrounding them. Cross-pollinating humanistic and Waldorf approaches to education with a multicultural genre is a critical way to prepare children for the complex world in which they live.