Emile Shoufani

Emile Shoufani was born in 1947 in Nazareth

Shoufani was born in Nazareth in 1947, the second of eight children of a Melkite father and an Orthodox mother. His family was deported a few months after Israel was established, and his grandfather and uncle were killed during the 1948 war. He was raised by his grandmother, who taught him forgiveness and the rejection of hatred.

He sang in the church choir in Eilaboun and entered the seminary at 13. At 17 he was sent to France, where he studied philosophy and theology at seminaries in Morsang-sur-Orge and Issy-les-Moulineaux. In France he first learned about the Holocaust and began working in Christian-Jewish dialogue.

He returned to Israel in 1971 and served as a priest in Galilee villages. In 1976 he became head of St. Joseph College in Nazareth, and in 1988 he launched a program of education for peace, democracy and coexistence. Under it, his students met students of a Jewish high school in Jerusalem.

After the events of October 2000, he saw Holocaust education as a path to Jewish-Arab reconciliation. In 2003 he led a joint delegation of Jews and Arabs to Poland and Auschwitz-Birkenau, joined by a group from France. He was an archimandrite of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church and died on 18 February 2024.