For French-born brother in Israel, language is the key to the heart

Published: 2006-07-06

JERUSALEM (CNS) -- From his small balcony, Brother Yohanan Elihay can see an East Jerusalem Palestinian village and the multilevel apartment buildings of the Jewish neighborhood where he lives with another brother. It is an apt view for the 80-year-old, who has spent more than half a century in Israel working to bring Israelis and Palestinians together through language -- most recently with The Olive Tree Dictionary, an 8,000-word, 17,000-phrase Arabic-English dictionary published by Minerva. "Language is the key to the heart," said Brother Elihay, who spoke in Hebrew. He was born in France as Jean Leroy, but his chosen surname, Elihay, means "God lives" in Hebrew. His first contact with the Middle East was in 1946 when, in lieu of serving in the French army, he served for a year as a French teacher in Lebanon. He later entered a Dominican seminary in France, then joined a Catholic order whose calling is to live, pray and work in troubled areas and to build a personal relationship with the lands' inhabitants. He asked that his order's name not be used to protect members living in Arab countries who might be at risk if people knew the order had members living among Jews in Israel.

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