THE PRACTICE OF COMMUNITY

A Letter to the TINAU Community, from our Community Manager, Charlie

A few weeks ago, we sat in a packed room in Tel Aviv for our end of year event, “A Year in Photos with Oren Ziv.” Looking at the images, we found ourselves in disbelief. It was hard to wrap our minds around the fact that so much suffering and so many traumatic events all happened in just the last twelve months.

Though while looking around the room, I also saw a different side to this difficult reality. I saw a room full of activists from across different generations who study Arabic with us; students who, after years of studying Hebrew, were now participating in a Hebrew lecture; and teachers, volunteers, and co-op members who showed up to make it all possible as they do event after event. I saw community not as an abstract idea, but as a group of people who choose, day after day, to show up and put in the effort to be together, to learn together, and to make a true and just change together.

Bell Hooks taught us that community is not a place you join, it is a practice you commit to. When we come to a Hebrew or Arabic lesson after a day that has already taken a lot from us, when we sit together and confront the injustices around us or imagine the future we are working toward in our second, third, or even fourth language, we are practicing what she called “the beloved community.” We are choosing to stay in relation, even when the world outside pushes us toward isolation and apathy.

At TINAU, we are not just a school. We are a space where we practice the commitment - to ourselves and to each other - that is required to learn a language, to keep one another human, and to resist the individualism and apathy that sustain fascism.

Toward the end of the event, someone asked Oren whether he is able to remain optimistic amid so much darkness. As we all contemplated this question, TINAU’s manager, Noa, suggested that his activism and the very act of continuing to document injustice, reflect a belief that things can change, a belief that is inherently optimistic.

So too are teaching and learning inherently optimistic. We put in the effort because we understand that learning requires commitment and that education is the foundation for progress and change. 

Showing up repeatedly, even when it is not easy, and especially when it is difficult, is how we create a reality in which we speak each other’s languages, in which political change is tangible, and in which community is both the fruit and the fuel of that change.

As we enter a new year and prepare to start our winter semester, we encourage you to show up with us: to put in the effort to learn Arabic and Hebrew, to continue taking part in our community events, and to help us sustain this collective practice of solidarity and humanism - the practice of community.