April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
JAFFA, ISRAEL
Troy students connect with Holy Land peers
Troy students connect with Holy Land peers
Such schools and communities associated with them currently operate in six locations in the Holy Land. Their goal is to educate Jewish and Arab children together to promote a shared society in Israel -- a crucial goal right now, as 100 Palestinians and 22 Israelis lost their lives to violence in the Holy Land in the months leading up to Christmas.
The students at St. Michael's became aware of the Jaffa Hand in Hand school after reading an October 2015 article in USA Today with the headline, "Arab-Jewish preschool an island of sanity amid violence, parents say."
The article stated that the kindergarten-through-first-grade school "aims to respond to growing Jewish-Arab segregation and violence with mutual respect and open dialogue."
Bilingual education
The school opened three years ago with three dozen children attending. It now has an enrollment of 170 Jewish and Arab students, with two teachers for each class: one who speaks Arabic and one who speaks Hebrew. Children are taught in both languages, and the school also celebrates holidays from Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions.
The students' peers at St. Michael's were impressed with this. During Advent, St. Michael's middle-school faith formation classes learned about the Jewish faith, focusing on holiday traditions and the importance of diversity.
Barbara Berger, pastoral associate and director of faith formation and youth ministry at St. Michael's, has been teaching her students about different faiths for seven or eight years. "We need to teach our young people to be open and willing," she stated.
The students learned about Hanukkah, the Sabbath and Jewish writings. By learning about a different faith, Ms. Berger noted, they strengthened their own by discussing why Catholics participate in certain traditions.
Faithful friends
Delaney Long, an eighth-grader at Algonquin Middle School in Averill Park, told The Evangelist: "I learned that, even though we are Catholics, we can still relate to everybody else's religions."
In reference to the story of Hanukkah, wherein a temple lamp that only contained enough oil for one day miraculously burned for eight, Delaney noted that Jewish people "had faith it would burn longer. We have faith that things happen, too."
Some of her favorite parts of learning about the Jewish faith were playing dreidel games and lighting a menorah. Ms. Berger also made latkes -- potato pancakes fried in oil -- for the students to taste.
Delaney also said that learning about different faiths has helped her connect more with Jewish friends and respect others more. She remarked that, having learned how many people have faith in God, she now understands her Catholic faith more.
During these lessons, Ms. Berger read the USA Today article on the Hand in Hand school and shared it with the St. Michael's students. The resulting decision to hold a bake sale means the students will be able to donate a tree to the Jaffa school for the Jewish feast of Tu B'Shevat, which celebrates the "new year for trees," calculating the age of trees for the purposes of tithing by the Jewish people.
St. Michael's faith formation students will donate a tree for the Jaffa Hand in Hand school that will produce fruit, representing the first crop of the new year.
In a message for Christmas, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal also hoped peaceful efforts would bear fruit. Quoted in a Catholic News Service story, he pleaded for Palestinian and Israeli leaders to end war and violence: "Each of the two peoples of the Holy Land, Israelis and Palestinians, have the right to dignity, to an independent state and sustainable security."[[In-content Ad]]
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