Over the last decade a major high speed highway called Route 6, part of it a toll road, has extended across Israel from North to South. It can carry you quickly from city to city, and also from modern to ancient. When you travel south and leave Route 6 near the modern city of Be’er Sheva, and head east, within minutes you come to an archaeological site – a UNESCO World Heritage Site – called Tel Sheva with evidence of habitation since 4,000 BCE, and signs of demolition that date from around 586BCE – the time of King Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the kingdom of Judah. This site is believed to be the ancient and biblical Be’er Sheva.
Confusingly there is another Tel Sheva close by, and it was this we visited along with the Moderator’s party, in December last year. Tel Sheva is a major Bedouin town with a population of about 25,000.
We parked our vehicle close to the Matnas (Community Centre) and as we waited for the others to arrive, we explored a small street market, where modern goods and children’s clothing – T shirts, trainers, etc – were on sale to local women. All of the women had head covering. A few were traditionally dressed and completely covered so you could see only their eyes. Our guide, Nava, a Rabbi from Rabbi’s for Human Rights, told us that this small market was very useful for the local women. They cannot travel to the markets in nearby Be’er Sheva on their own – the men will not allow it. ‘This aspect of the culture,’ said Nava, ‘is pre-Islamic.’ We learnt that some women cannot leave their homes unless accompanied. Some even cannot visit their own female relatives without their husbands. Many of these girls and women do not have basic literacy skills.
So this, our first experience of the town made us aware of both ancient and modern cultures alive and influencing at the same time.
The town itself dates back only to 1968, founded as part of a government project to settle Bedouin in permanent settlements. It developed its own Local Council in 1984. A socio-economic study of the area in 2000 showed that the average family monthly income was just under 50% of the national average for Israel. Unemployment is a big social issue.
The purpose of our visit was to meet with a group of female Bedouin students from Sapir College, Sderot, who are participating in a programme called ‘Sisters for Peace’. This project is run by the College and ‘Rabbi’s for Human Rights’, part of it funded by the Church of Scotland Guild.
We had last visited the Sapir College project a year ago, to meet the students – twenty young women, half of them Bedouin, half of them Jewish, who have been learning about each other’s cultures, and also working together on projects in their own communities. This was the first time we had visited one of the community projects.
Nava led us to an open space where we met three young female students who started to explain their project to us. Again we were aware of the contrasts of ancient and modern as we listened to these educated and articulate young women explaining (in English) how their group is working to improve their own community.
One of the young women, Sonia, told us about her dream for her community. She lived close to one of the primary schools in the town, which is situated behind large open area we were standing in. In season it has a stream running through it, but most of the time it is a large barren area. Sonia remembers when she was a young child that her family went on picnics. But they always had to go out of the town to find a suitable space. Her dream was that this open space could be transformed into a green area, which local people could use for recreation.
In our short time in and travelling into the town we had become very aware that people have great pride in their own homes and garden areas, but community space is not developed. There is not much care for areas which don’t belong to anyone. There was lots of rubbish lying around in front of us. To be fair, the previous two evenings had been very windy, so rubbish was circulating from everywhere. One of our party noted that most of the rubbish was plastic bottles and packaging – the detritus of a modern culture.
The three young women told us that the project they have been working on for the last year is to make Sonia’s dream a reality by transforming the open area we were standing in into a ‘environmental park’ – a communal green space. They told how they had approached the local Council with their ideas, and how it had taken them a few months to convince the Council to listen to them and to give support. Once the Council understood their vision, and could see how well planned and supported the project was, they gave it their wholehearted support. That includes financial support from the Council budget and also from the State of Israel, and an agreement that once the project was completed there would be resources to maintain it over the long term.
We were impressed with the depth of thought which had gone into this initiative. The group approached this as a community development project, not just an initiative to transform an empty space. The young women were clear that the project will only succeed if they can educate people about waste and recycling, and then develop a sense of ownership of the project.
Their strategy was to start working with the youngsters at the primary schools, and they had developed a programme of education about waste and recycling. The group took us to the nearby Primary School to meet the Head Teacher, who explained how 25 school children had volunteered for the programme which included learning about recycling and environmental issues, visiting other communities to see what happens there, and exploring responsibilities and possibilities within the community. Their intention is that these volunteers will then cascade that learning to other children in the schools and also into the community – particularly ‘educating’ the parents and older generations.
It was energising to sit with these young women and listen to their vision for their own community. And it was good to feel that, in a small way, we were a part of this positive development. The project at Sapir College gives them support and inspiration, and draws in all the experience and insight of the project leaders to help the students with problems solving. In fact, it gives them all they need to make ideas become actuality.
The three young women sitting with us represented the first generation of young women from their community who have gone on to higher education. As we walked back to our cars through the small market, we saw with new eyes how ancient and modern live side by side in this town. The traditional culture, symbolised by women in traditional covering, next to the modern culture, symbolised for us by these young women who are acting as role models in bringing something good into their community, and who are developing leadership skills to carry with them into all aspects of their lives.
It is great to read of the positive impact that the Guild Project contribution has on the lives of these young women. Having visited Sapir College in the first year of the project I am delighted that the course is proving fruitful for both communities.