Dear Friends,
A package of old letters surfaced this past fall in New Bedford Meeting House as our meeting was preparing for a yard sale. The letters were wrapped up in brown paper, and the words “Ramallah Schools,” handwritten on the front, caught my eye.
As a Quaker child, I had learned a little about the Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker school located in what is now the West Bank. New England Friends were very involved in the school’s early years. Eli and Sybil Jones, two Quakers from China, Maine, raised money to start a Quaker school in Palestine and funded the launch of a day school for girls in Ramallah in 1869.
Inside the packet were dozens of letters related to the schools in Ramallah from 1894 through 1902, a time when the project was under the care of New England Friends and a school for boys was being planned and started. There were letters from Friends working in Ramallah, and even more from Friends within the U.S., as members of the committee with responsibility for the school coordinated about practical details.
I learned that, for a number of years during this period, the recording and corresponding secretary of the Yearly Meeting committee that had care of the school was Susan T. (née Taber) Thompson, a member of New Bedford Meeting; she and her husband William at one point worked in Ramallah. This packet is pretty clearly correspondence from Susan’s service stateside as corresponding secretary.
That was long ago, in a very different era. My sense is that many New England Friends today don’t have that much connection to the Ramallah Friends School, which is now under the care of Friends United Meeting. Some New England Friends—especially if they are new to Friends—may not be aware of the historical connection.
I believe that instances of significant coincidences—what the psychologist Carl Jung called synchronicity—are often a hint from God to pay attention to something. It has felt to me like a significant coincidence that these old letters from Palestine surfaced in fall 2023, a season when both Israelis and Palestinians were plunged into crisis following the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel.
While the situation in the West Bank is not as dire as that in Gaza, it is not good. Headlines from the past few months attest to the difficult environment: “Israel is Strangling the West Bank’s Economy” (The Economist, December 7, 2023); “Settler Violence Against Palestinians in the West Bank is Rising” (The New York Times, October 30, 2023, updated November 9, 2023), “The West Bank Economy Has Been Hammered By War” (NPR, January 24, 2024) and “Israeli Settlers Are Guarding the West Bank. Palestinians Say It’s Worsening Violence” (NPR, February 19, 2024).
I haven’t yet had time to read most of the Ramallah-School-related letters we found. But a few things I have seen have stuck with me. One 1899 letter, which we have transcribed, has interesting observations about Palestinian agricultural practices at the time and how similar they were to what’s described in the Bible. I have also been struck by how much energy and work New England Friends were putting into the school about 125 years ago.
The letters have motivated me to learn a little more about the school today. I have been moved and impressed by some of the messages coming from the Ramallah Friends school staff, students, and alumni. (If other Friends are interested, I have appended some links.)
In a 1901 letter, Wilfrid and Della D. Rowntree, two Friends working in Ramallah, described how they were looking forward to welcoming two new workers who were coming. The Rowntrees mentioned what they described as an Arabic saying: “Even if the house should be too small, there is room for you in our hearts.”
I can’t find that exact saying—it is possible the Rowntrees slightly misunderstood it, perhaps as it was translated to them, or perhaps it was something specific to that place and time—but I found a reference to a similar Arabic proverb: “The small house can have 1,000 friends.”
I keep thinking about the Rowntrees’ version of the saying, though. A good number of New England Friends had “room in their hearts” for the school in Ramallah and its students 120-plus years ago. Do a good number of us still have room in our hearts to care about the well-being of the school and its students today? If so, how might we express it?
If you have thoughts on this topic, maybe we can talk on Saturday, April 6, when New England Yearly Meeting is having a Living Faith gathering near New Bedford, in North Dartmouth, MA; a variety of interesting workshops are planned, including one on Israel and Palestine. Also, New Bedford Meeting decided at its February business meeting to invite attendees of this Living Faith gathering to join us for a light supper afterwards at our meeting house at 83 Spring St. in downtown New Bedford. I hope to see you at Living Faith!
Blessings to you,
Martha Mangelsdorf
Links related to Ramallah Friends School today:
Message from Rania Maayeh, Head of School at Ramallah Friends School, in the fall of 2023
Letter from Ramallah Friends School students to the U.S. Congress
The Ramallah Friends School 2023 holiday Song to the World
NBC interview with two of the three Ramallah Friends School alumni who were shot in Burlington, VT
NPR interview with Swarthmore College Professor Sa’ed Atshan, a Ramallah Friends School alumnus