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One Year / The Christian Arab Teacher Inspired To Teach in a Jewish School

This year, as she turned 55, Rima Khouri decided to open a new chapter in her life: moving from the Christian school in the Arab village of Fassuta, where she taught for 22 years, to a Jewish middle school on Kibbutz Evron

רימא חורי (צילום: יונתן בלום)
Rima Khouri at her Beit Rima gallery in the Christian Arab village of Fassuta. (Photo: Yonatan Blum)
By Yael Elnatan

On the morning of October 6, Rima Khoury, a 55-year-old teacher and gallery owner, was preparing to open her Rima House gallery in the Christian Arab village of Fassuta. When she saw the news on the television and realized she would have to cancel the planned visits, she thought that things would hopefully go back to normal soon.

“And since then, we’ve been in that ‘soon,’” Khoury said. “Life continues. The storm continues and shakes us every second. For me, October 7 is a day that started and hasn’t ended.”

The first week after the war, Khoury could barely do more than move from her bed to her couch. “It took a lot of strength just to get through another hour,” she said. “We northerners worried about the worst and feared that Gaza would come here.”

Khoury’s professional life as a teacher, a job she’s held for 22 years, also ground to a halt. “Before October 7, we were at the beginning of the school year with great expectations,” she said. “I taught a third-grade class. The classroom was decorated, the children were excited, a new atmosphere, and then everything changed. It stopped.”

The state decided not to evacuate the northern village, and classes were suspended. After about two weeks, school resumed with remote learning. Later, the school moved to holding classes in bomb shelters.

“When we started teaching in shelters, things erupted in me,” Khoury said. “I developed a respiratory issue that forced me to stay home from school. Probably from the combination of the shelter and pressure, and all sorts of things that aren’t seen with the eyes but are felt in the body. It hit me hard. After two and a half months, when I returned from sick leave, the children’s reception of me was touching. Then I understood how sad it was that I couldn’t be with them, and how important it was that I returned.”

Khoury. (Photo: Yonatan Bloom)
Khoury. (Photo: Yonatan Bloom)

On her 55th birthday, Khoury reflected on her professional life and decided to make a change. After years of teaching at the Arab Christian school, she would begin work in the Jewish sector.

“Especially in this period, we need to find the connections, the good places, and the people who still want to meet,” she said. “It was so important to me that I said, if I’m not in the Jewish sector, then I won’t teach. I wanted to experience something new, to bring my essence to new realms. You can’t refresh yourself without change. I felt it was time for a change.”

Khoury was hired at a Jewish middle school on Kibbutz Evron in northern Israel. This year, she is a teacher and mentor for a class of eighth graders.

“My action of going to teach in a Jewish school speaks for itself,” Khoury said. “There are always opportunities; you don’t need to wait for war and not be afraid. There are more Arab teachers teaching in Jewish schools and vice versa.”

"We, as educators, have a human and personal duty to ensure that the next generation doesn’t distance itself or withdraw, to look into each other’s eyes and know that only together can we succeed because we are one united society,” she continued. “We, as teachers, need to act as the glue that connects.

Teaching in Kibbutz Evron has extended Khoury’s commute to nearly an hour each way with traffic and rocket sirens. During one siren on the way to work, Khoury stopped in Ma’alot until things calmed down.

“There’s a limit to the risks one can take,” she said. “When you know there’s danger, you don’t provoke fate. But fate can strike us at any moment. So instead of waking at 6, I wake at 5, but this situation leads me to a journey of happiness. In such a sad and dark time, getting to school brings hope.”

As an educator and a mother, she is troubled by the impact of the war on children. “I don’t know how what’s happening will manifest,” she said. “I don’t know how I will meet the young children in Fassuta or in Kfar Vradim or anywhere else. I don’t know how much we’ll need to discuss or treat them to ensure they are resilient and strong. But most importantly, I don’t know how they will view this world and what example they will have in terms of what needs to be done, what it means to be a responsible adult, what it means for people to look at reality and say: ‘What more can I do for a better tomorrow?' And this doesn’t belong to a race, a religion, or a city."

Khoury is shaken by the many rocket sirens in Fassuta, and equally shaken by her neighbors’ adjustment to the reality. “I refuse to accept that,” she said. “To get used to something is to accept. And we’re not getting used to it. My husband works from home in Fassuta. He’s less scared than I am. But there’s no competition in that. If I’m scared, I allow myself to share and express that."

It depresses Khoury that the war is still ongoing during a new school year, but she also sees the new year as a source of hope. “September 1 was a high,” she said. “A new school and many encounters. But the day after came, and the difficulty began to seep in. We need to insist on optimism and not give up.”

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