The Inquiry journey to the Bedouin society in the Negev dealt with women and the question of what lies between tradition and progress. As in any good study journey, there is the study question, and then there is what the group members bring with them to the journey and what they encounter there and among themselves.
Throughout the journey, we met special women – activists, entrepreneurs, wise, humble, and extraordinarily powerful. They related their personal, professional, and social stories. There are moments when the gap between their lifestyle and living conditions and between their education, influence, and success is simply inconceivable. We visited Rahat, Lakiya, Umm al-Hiran, and Houra, and also danced a little Debka with Rahat’s young adult troupe.
“I was told that the tight structure of the journey and the conversations created a pressure cooker. Today I thought that maybe we created the opposite – a slow-cooking crockpot, a place in which to listen to the end, to give our thoughts and feelings a place within us before they go out to the group, and to be attentive to what happens in between the claims and slogans that shape our identities so fundamentally. I feel that in the ‘in between’ we also found a new – and if not new, then turbulent – and painful truth, of us all.
“We argued, listened, processed, got angry, understood, and embraced. This is part of the growth process of a group that is comprised of a remarkable, and different, human mosaic.”
