By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

SAKHNIN, Israel — In one room, high schoolers act out a fight from Romeo and Juliet. Next door, they create poems about a work of modern art. Down the hall, students prepare for a mock trial while another group brainstorms for an ad campaign to market a camera.

From June 10 to 26, Al-Bashaer Sakhnin School Summer English Workshop empowered 40 Arab-Israeli students to sharpen their language skills in a creative setting.

The camp format was conceived and implemented by Dayton’s Dr. Marti Moody Jacobs and Dr. Jamal Assadi, chair of the English department at the Sakhnin Teacher’s College.

Situated in Israel’s Lower Galilee, Sakhnin is a predominantly Arab Muslim city.

Jamal and Marti — a member of Temple Beth Or, retired physician, and bestselling novelist — started the project seven years ago in Jamal’s town of Deir al-Assad. This is the second year the camp has been in residence at Al-Bashaer Sakhnin School. Marti recruits Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers from America to lead the camp sessions; Jamal recruits families from nearby Arab-Israeli communities to host them.

“The idea is not to stuff the pupils with English but to give them a little bit of fun while they’re studying English,” Jamal says. “And the major advantage of this course is that the students are exposed to native (English) speakers.”

“Every time, like last year, I learn something new from the camp,” says 15-year-old Donya Daghash. “And this year I am learning something new and that’s why I keep signing.”

“The bureau of education system (here), as far as we can see, is basic math, sciences, languages,” Marti says. “So they don’t get a lot of self-expression. They don’t get art, they don’t get drama, so we’re trying to give them things they don’t get in their school.”

Marti has brought more than 40 volunteers to the camp since its inception. Among them this year are Beth and Alan Schaeffer, and Alan’s friend Howard Smith from Marion, Ohio. Alan is an attorney in Dayton, Beth is a retired attorney, and Howard runs his family’s business.

“We learn as much from the students as they do from us,” Beth says.

“It’s the cultural exchange,” Alan adds. “That idea makes it a powerful experience.”

“It’s a close-knit thing we don’t have in America,” Howard says of the large, connected families. “Here, they value family, from generation to generation, from grandparents to children. They honor each other.”

Rounding out this year’s volunteers were actor and retired teacher Perry Brokaw of Mt. Vernon, Ohio, and poet Grace Curtis from Waynesville.

Perry has presented acting workshops in Germany, Bolivia, Russia, and Turkey.

“My idea is to have fun and to have the students come out of themselves, to become someone they aren’t,” Perry says.

Grace met Marti at a literary event.

“She talked about this program,” Grace says. “I immediately went up to her afterward and said, ‘I’m in.’”

Jamal says most of the volunteers’ hosts are students who study English at the teacher’s college, which is next door to the school.

“The hosts are people who are interested in promoting coexistence,” he says. “Receiving people at your home can be a difficult experience and you have to have a lot of courage to do so.”

Jamal says it surprises Americans how much time Arab-Israeli extended families spend together. The large family circles can prove challenging for some American volunteers, Marti says.

“And if somebody needs to be alone, it’s hard,” she says. “Because there’s two weeks when you’re not alone.”

One of this year’s hosts is Zainab Naamneh, who just completed her third year at the teacher’s college and will soon begin her career as a teacher.

“I thought it would be a wonderful thing to practice my English, to re-expose myself to native speakers, so I asked my husband if we can have a room for them, and we prepared a place in our house,” Zainad says.

Dr. Malik Yousef, principal of the Al-Bashaer Sakhnin School, says he jumped on the opportunity to host the camp two years ago. He even pushed back final exams in the high school two weeks earlier this year so his students could participate.

“In order to have the English language you should live it,” Malik says. “So we don’t have the facility and the money to send all of them abroad, then we have those guys (the camp) here with us, they give them the chance to talk English and to live the language with the accent.”

For the past four years, the project has come full circle for Jamal and the most exceptional campers each spring when he brings them to stay with host families in the Dayton area.

“When we go to the states,” Jamal says, “I see the identity of our hosts: I see Muslims, I see Jews, I see Christians, and we meet at dinner parties, and I know they are there because we are there. And they cooperate because all of them want the project to succeed. I can see the commitment and the dedication that is practiced and extended in order to succeed, to show the good side of our humanity. We are human beings regardless of our background.”

On their visits, they have toured the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, the Dayton Peace Museum, Cincinnati’s National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and have participated in Passover Seders at Temple Beth Or and Marti’s home.

“The idea, in the end,” Jamal says, “is to promote the idea of peace and coexistence between peoples.”

During Marti’s stay with the Assadis in June, they hosted a party for past campers who’ve visited Dayton.

“Each of them stood up and said what they remember most from the trip and it was so moving and interesting because one of the girls said that her favorite thing was the Seder,” Marti says. “We did a Seder at our house and all the kids participated. We had a Muslim host who’s fairly conservative and she participated, and Jamal, too.”

Marti observes that Arab-Israelis “can be very ambivalent, but are, by and large, very grateful to be living here (in Israel). It’s a stable country, there’s education, there’s health care, there’s jobs, there’s transportation, there’s infrastructure. And generally there’s peace.”

Little more than two weeks later, Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s campaign to cripple the Hamas terror organization in the Gaza Strip, would begin.

Jamal’s son Mahmoud, who studies nursing in Amman, Jordan and is now home for the summer, says his first choice would be to live in Israel; his second choice is the United States.

“And you hear that over and over,” Marti says.

“We are not terrorists,” Jamal says. “We are not people who like to shoot or like to kill as the media likes to convey it.”

To read the complete August 2014 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.