Showing the impossible is possible

A Jewish Israeli in Turkey

Relocation, for whatever reason, can be hard; we need to explain ourselves to people close to us and then face the challenges placed in front of us when we arrive. As Noa shows, a positive attitude is the key to making it work.

“When we told people in Israel we were going to live in Turkey, they were very surprised,” Noa commented, adding: “Israelis tend to go to the US when they live abroad. Before the Gaza conflict earlier this year, Israelis equated Turkey with tourism: it was a good place to go on holiday as it's cheap, close to Israel and a safe place to take your kids. Now they see Turkey, in political terms, as being pro-Palestinian, which explains why there has been a drastic drop in Israeli tourists this year. As we'd been here on holiday before, I knew that Turks are friendly, warm and unusually helpful,” Noa said. There's also a historical connection between her family and Turkey through the Ottomans: her father's family are Iraqi Jews. “Their fortunes were linked to the different rulers of the area, and under the Ottomans [from the 16th century until 1918], they did relatively well.”

Living abroad makes us reassess where we come from and our attitude toward life, as Noa pointed out: “We've been here a year, and I see that both Turkey and Israel are a mix of East and West; Turkey is more Westernized than Israel -- you see that through the shops, cars and restaurants here. The pace of life is very different here: in Israel, we're always in a hurry and very busy; in Antalya, I'm learning to be patient, do less and slow down.” Learning the language is a bigger issue than she'd imagined. “My friends here are mostly expats, and so I speak English a lot of the time. I'm trying to learn Turkish, but I rarely get to practice,” she added sadly.

Has being an Israeli Jew caused her any problems here? “I've never lived in a predominantly Muslim country before, but we lived in northern Israel, a predominantly Arab Muslim area,” she said. “There are approximately 7 million people in Israel; around 80 percent are Jews, and 20 percent are Arabs. But we lived in Misgav in Galilee where Arabs are the majority.”

“People in Antalya generally assume I'm another Israeli tourist and so ask how long I'm staying,” she continued, adding: “We travel at the weekends, and in the villages, sometimes people ask us political questions, such as whether we're Arab or Jewish. As for being an Israeli Jew, during the conflict in Gaza, some Turks advised me not to go to certain places when there were demonstrations against it (there were two). They also suggested it was probably not a good idea to speak Hebrew in public (I was careful on the bus). The only negative thing that happened then was when we were looking at different daycare centers: I got the impression we weren't welcome at one. That might not have been the case though; I could just have been paranoid. I haven't noticed a difference in the way I was treated in Antalya before events in Gaza this year or after; Antalya isn't a politicized city on the whole.”

Noa is no stranger to politics and controversy as her home in Misgav is where the Israeli government is encouraging Jews to settle in villages in the area around the Arab city of Sakhnin. One of the reasons she and her family chose to move to Misgav was because she wanted her children to attend the Arab-Jewish school there. She had no idea she would become co-principal of the school for five years though. “It was a very challenging and demanding job because I went there to deal with education and found myself dealing with politics,” she highlighted.

Schools are mostly segregated in Israel but there are Arabs and Jews working to make the dream of bilingual, multicultural education in Israel a reality. In 1997, the Hand in Hand Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel was founded, and there are now four schools: one in Galilee and others in Jerusalem, Wadi Ara and Beersheva. Although the schools are recognized by the Israeli Education Ministry, their success depends on parents from both sides wanting to make a change. Noa is no different. “I knew it wouldn't be easy to work at the school, but I wanted to make a difference, encourage change on a local level,” she said.

To open a school is a challenge in itself, but what about a bilingual, multicultural one? At all four schools, there are both Jewish and Arab teachers and two principals -- one Jewish, one Arab -- who share the decision-making process. So how have they dealt with the language issue? “In first and second grade, there are two teachers for each class: one Arab and one Jew. After that, there are two class teachers for topics, and individual teachers for each subject, so math could be in Arabic and art in Hebrew.”

The school follows the Israeli Education Ministry curriculum, of course, but the children get much more. “An interesting and problematic issue is religion classes. In normal state schools, Jews study the Old Testament, Muslims study the Quran and Christians study the Bible. The children at the Galilee school study all three in general and then study their own book in depth. They do a lot of comparison between the three and also visit synagogues, churches and mosques.”

All four schools face challenges. While they're all unique because of their particular location and local demographics, they're also affected by the same external issues, such as politics and funding. For example, why is there a kindergarten at the Jerusalem school and not one at the Galilee school? “In Jerusalem, it's normal to either drive children to kindergarten or send them there by school bus. In Galilee, there are kindergartens in all the villages, and so parents aren't used to the idea of putting small children on a bus to send them away from where they live.”

The political climate directly affects the schools, as pupil numbers at the Galilee school show. “When it opened in 1998, in the wake of optimism inspired by the Oslo accords, there were 32 children in 1st grade and by 2007 the school had 220 pupils. There are now, in 2009, only 170 pupils, which reflects how people in Israel now feel about the accords.”

Funding is also an issue. “State funding doesn't cover all the costs, such as the school bus or hiring the necessary number of Arab and Jewish teachers,” Noa explained. “We used to receive more money from Hand in Hand, but there are fewer donors these days. This means parents have to pay more to cover the additional costs of running the school. Education (including transport) at mainstream state schools in Israel is basically free, with parents paying about 1,460 shekels a year to cover extras like trips or photocopying. Parents of children at the Galilee school not only have to pay 350 shekels more towards covering the costs of the school but also for the school bus; depending on where they live, parents can end up paying as much as 3,650 shekels a year for transport, bringing the cost of sending one child to the school to 5,460 shekels. As this is more than triple the extra cost of a good mainstream state school in the area, some parents are now thinking twice about sending their children to the Galilee school.”

“Above all, the major challenge faced by the Galilee school is to ensure it survives,” Noa emphasized. So is there a future for the schools? “The general attitude towards them in Israel isn't very supportive at best and is, at worst, hostile because of what happened in 2000. On an individual level, there's a mixed reaction. Some Arabs and Jews are very enthusiastic about the schools, but others are worried about issues of culture, language and identity. The reality is the opposite, however. Parents don't need to be afraid that their children will lose anything by attending the schools as the experience reaffirms all three.

Personally, I can only be positive about whether there's a future for the schools: if there isn't, then we, in Galilee and in Israel, also have no future,” Noa said.

Mixed marriages: richer experience or double trouble?

Noa realizes that here in Turkey she's in the unique position of being a foreigner among foreigners, many of them women married to Turks. Spending time with them has piqued her curiosity, and she's now interested in the dynamics of mixed marriages. “As marriage isn't an easy undertaking in itself, I'm interested in why people are making life even more complicated,” she explained, adding: “Mind you, Arab-Jewish schools in Israel show that ‘mixed' can result in a richer experience. I'm interested in finding out whether there are common denominators behind making the decision to marry someone from a different culture. It's a very complex subject and touches on many areas, such as feminism and gender, language and identity. For example, the issue of identity raises questions such as to what extent it's possible to keep your own identity intact or whether preserving your identity is important when you marry a foreigner.”

Are there many mixed marriages in Israel? “It's very rare to find an Arab-Jewish couple,” she explained, “but my parents' marriage was what we call a ‘mixed' one. I'm sure my interest in mixed marriages is connected to that, but unconsciously. My mother's family are Ashkenazi Jews [European Jews] from Poland and my father's family are Mizrahi [Jews from Arabic countries] from Iraq. At the time it was very rare for the two to marry. My grandparents weren't very pleased at the beginning, but it worked out OK. There were differences between them of course; for example, my mother's family was secular whereas religion was important to my father's family.” Language was also a factor. “Both families spoke Hebrew, but my father's family spoke Arabic amongst themselves. My mother never learned Arabic, something she regrets now. Unfortunately my father didn't speak Arabic with me, and I had to learn it as an adult.”

She hasn't decided what she'll do with the information she collects. “Right now, it's important to talk to people while I can. If someone outside Antalya would like to share their experiences or insights with me, then we can do it by e-mail,” she explained.

For more information on the Arab-Jewish schools in Israel, visit: ww.handinhandk12.org

If you're interested in talking to Noa about mixed marriages, you can contact her at: noainturkey@gmail.com