March 2015

In This Issue

Rawdat School Appeal

Last Supper Sculptures

New Jewelry Options

Lenten Reflections

Founded by the Rev. Elizabeth Knott, 1993

Pal Craftaid
is a proud member
of the Fair Trade Federation

Carol Hylkema

Welcome to the Pal Craftaid e-newsletter that comes to you during this Lenten season. It seems as if we were just celebrating Advent and Christmas and here we are in Lent.

Many Christians "give up" something during Lent as a sacrifice to themselves and as a reminder of the sacrifices Jesus made for each of us. For others, church meetings are skipped for the Lenten season and study opportunities added to the schedule. Since we are away from home, in Florida for January - March, we are not attending our home church but trying to pay attention to what is happening there. I am reading the study book, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, from afar and doing my own reflections on its meaning for me.

As I read a couple of Lenten devotionals each day and meditate on how my life is impacted by the thoughts, I am constantly drawn to think about how Palestinian Christians live out their Christianity in Gaza or the Occupied Palestinian Territories under Israeli restrictions on water, electricity, travel and so much more, including ongoing land grabs. How much more can they be forced to sacrifice? How do they continue to turn their eyes to Jesus and receive comfort in knowing of his sacrifices for them? Please read the brief Lenten reflections by Christian needlework artisans of the Melia Shop found a little later in this newsletter. It has made me think more than twice about my own life and riches.

Please also read Pal Craftaid's Advancement Coordinator Mary Witherspoon's story on the Rawdat El-Zuhur School in East Jerusalem, drawn from her memory of the board's visit there. This school is the focus of our annual fund-raising this year. We invite you to join in this campaign to support this very special school that serves both Christian and Muslim students.

May you each be blessed during this Lenten season and receive the joyful Good News of Jesus' resurrection when we celebrate Easter in a few weeks.

Your Sister in Christ,

~ Carol Hylkema, President
Pal Craftaid Board

A day at the Rawdat School
A Pal Craftaid 2015 appeal

by Mary Witherspoon

The girls in their white blouses and blue pleated skirts with black hair, mostly in neat thick braids and boys standing tall in their dark trousers and starched white shirts welcomed with warm smiles a group of middle-aged women from the United States who had come to visit Rawdat El Zuhur School.

They proudly demonstrated skill with the computers in the lab and led us through the lower school where younger students were hard at work with brightly colored blocks, colored markers, and story books in Arabic. We passed the "Virtue" tree, where each week a student chooses a virtue -- goodness, kindness, truthfulness, creativity, honesty, etc. -- which will be the focus of the school for that week.

From there we were invited into a large room with sound equipment and musical instruments on the stage at one end. These young people demonstrated typical Palestinian music and dance in a performance which they had perfected over many weeks. We were inspired.

But the memory which lingers and still brings tears to my eyes and a lump into my throat occurred in a classroom where the students joined hands with each other and with us to sing, in English, "We shall overcome," from the American Civil Rights Movement. As I looked into their confident faces, I prayed that it would be so and soon.

Martin Luther King said that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Rawdat is part of a great movement to direct that arc toward justice.

Educating both Christian and Muslim boys and girls together, honoring the heritage of all their students, teaching Christian values, emphasizing the universal value of the arts, Rawdat moves on in the face of all the obstacles that make life difficult for Palestinians.

I am making a tax-deductible donation to Pal Craftaid, designated for the Rawdat School, and I hope that you will be able to do so too.

Each year, the Pal Craftaid Board runs a campaign to support a humanitarian effort in Palestine. The Rawdat School is a longtime friend of Pal Craftaid.

To send donations to the school, mail your contributions to:

Virginia Priest

3520 N. 30th Street

Tacoma, WA 98407

Please designate each check for the Rawdat campaign.

Exquisite details illuminate
Last Supper

Olive wood artists draw on generations of designs

by Alexa Smith

Ibrahim Giacaman can talk sculpture.

Trained in Florence, Italy, and raised in a family of olive wood artisans, he works out of the family business on Manger Square in Bethlehem, where, hundreds of styles of nativities line the shop's shelves.

While nativities hand-carved in Bethlehem can be kept always as family heirlooms and treasured keepsakes, during Lent, buyers often look for another biblical scene - the Last Supper, an intricate sculpture that the Giacaman shop offers in many styles.

In 2015, Pal Craftaid is offering this version of the Last Supper to U.S. customers.

"Some are modern (without features). Some have detailed faces. They're very nice," he said in an interview by telephone, acknowledging that most olive wood depictions of the Last Supper are more labor-intensive than most nativities and typically cost more -- anywhere from $60 to $500.

"As you know, they're carved by hand. And, there are more individual figures -- 13 including Jesus and the 12 disciples -- so it is harder to make ... It is a lot of work, not like ornaments," Giacaman said, adding that not only the figures take time.

The carvers sculpt plates, cups, tablecloths and other items that lend historical accuracy to the artwork."There are just many steps to the work ... taking 12 to 15 hours."

While Giacaman has developed new designs for the pre-Easter scene, many Last Supper scenes that line his shelves were designed by his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather and even his great-great grandfather, all of whom devoted a lifetime to olive wood art that has been sold at the shop, Il Bambino.

The Last Supper has always been one of the favorite subjects for Christian art, visible even in the catacombs in Rome where the disciples are shown reclining at a semi-circular table where Jesus presides. Paul mentions the meal in First Corinthians 11.

And during the Italian Renaissance, countless painters put their own spin on the gathering; the most famous, of course, being the 15th Century mural by Da Vinci at a convent in Rome where anger, shock and sadness are visible on the faces of the disciples as Jesus announces his impending betrayal. Giacaman said that the shop's portrayals of the Last Supper often are given as gifts to pastors. Others are kept at home and displayed during the Easter season, a reminder of a faith tradition that reaches back centuries and is still visible today as communities gather at a table that is prepared for all eternity.

New jewelry line available now!

Enjoy browsing Pal Craftaid's first ever selection of jewelry!

Silver olive
leaf earrings.

Gifted artisans in Bethlehem and Jerusalem designed and created these pieces that will make memorable Easter surprises in a

Celtic cross pin.

basket or a wrapped gift

box.

Mother-of-Pearl peace dove earrings.

Using local materials such as Mother-of-Pearl -- a hard pearly iridescent internal layer of mollusk shells. Each piece reflects not only the artisan's talent, but the

Mother-of-Pearl cross earrings.

region itself.

Take a moment and browse as we embark on this new venture from the Holy Land.

More like Jesus

Artisans find grace in Lenten disciplines

by Alexa Smith

If you talk with Palestinian Christians in this Lenten season, you will hear that it is a time of renewal, through prayer, fasting and disciplined study. Some even use the language of "grace," a time when grace is manifest unlike any other as the faithful wrestle with our innermost selves and the harsh realities of the world around us.

Pal Craftaid asked some of its Christian artisan partners about how to observe Lent under occupation, heavy economic stress, daily worries about home and family. The answers were compelling: That Lent is a time to practice becoming more like Jesus, whose life was not so simple and who navigated a harsh world by loving it anyway, without becoming harsh himself.

"We love first because he first loved us," was the text that emerged, 1 John 4:19.

An Orthodox Christian, Hala turned to the 2015 Lenten message of Pope Francis who says that "a merciful heart does not mean a weak heart." She knows there are families who do not have enough to eat, yet, they go to church, they pray and they enter Lent as a spiritual feast, awaiting the end of pain and suffering that is promised in Christ's resurrection.

"There are those in the region who are losing loved ones and family members," she says, citing the dual troubles of violence and religious fanaticism. Those realities help her put her own struggles into perspective and deters her from indifference to what goes on in the world -- since God is not indifferent to what happens to each of us.

What she says is a reminder of the old -- but ever relevant prayer -- by Episcopal priest Phillips Brooks:

O God: Give me strength to live another day; Let me not turn coward before its difficulties or prove recreant to its duties; Let me not lose faith in other people; Keep me sweet and sound of heart, in spite of ingratitude, treachery or meanness; Preserve me from minding little stings or giving them; Help me to keep my heart clean, and to live so honestly and fearlessly that no outward failure can dishearten me or take away the joy of conscious integrity; Open wide the eyes of my soul that I may see good in all things: Grant me this day some new vision of thy truth; Inspire me with the spirit of joy and gladness; and make me the cup of strength to suffering souls; in the name of the strong Deliverer, our only Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

(From Forward Day by Day, Forward Movement)

For Shahinaz, an artisan worker from Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, Lent indeed means prayers, hard work on oneself and loving one's children into a tradition that is older than the hills around her. An Orthodox woman, Shahinaz follows the tradition of fasting, abstaining from meat and other dairy products for 40 days. She says that discipline helps to build up both body and soul to evade temptation, however it comes.

Nora widens that perspective more broadly, to all of us connected in faith to each other through Christ. "Lent is a favorable time for letting Christ serve us ... so that we, in turn, may become more like him. This happens whenever we hear the word of God and receive the sacraments. There we become what we receive: The Body of Christ.

"For in him, we cannot be indifferent to one another. 'If one part suffers, all other parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the parts share its joy. (1 Corinthians 12:26).'"

May this Lent be a spiritual feast for us all as we hunger to be more like Jesus.

Your Gifts to Pal Craftaid Are Appreciated

Your donations are used to support Pal Craftaid ministries. To donate online, click the link below.

You may also mail your gift to Pal Craftaid, 520 N. 30th Street, Tacoma, WA 98407. Pal Craftaid operates as a 501(c)(3) organization. Gifts are tax deductible.