10-YEAR REVIEW

Maktabat al-Fanoos — the Arabic PJ Library — has provided a decade’s worth of free ‘culturally appropriate’ books, but what fits the bill?

Though PJ Library — and its Israeli equivalent, Sifriyat Pijama — regularly includes religious content in books, the Arabic version intentionally keeps such topics out of its literature

When Andrea Arbel became the executive director of Keren Grinspoon Israel four years ago, her husband asked her why her organization was giving free books to Arab children.

“It annoyed me,” she told eJewishPhilanthropy. “I was like, ‘What do you mean? Of course they do.’”

Keren Grinspoon Israel is the Israeli arm of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation (HGF), whose mission, according to its website, is to help “people connect to Jewish values, faith, traditions, and culture and build vibrant Jewish communities.” Through its PJ Library program, HGF distributes free books to over 670,000 subscribers around the world who are raising Jewish children.

Maktabat al-Fanoos, Arabic for “Lantern Library,” is the Arab Israeli version of the program, providing books to children in Arabic-language public preschools and elementary schools through second grade.

So why does a foundation focused on building “vibrant Jewish communities” provide more than 1 million books yearly to nearly 200,000 non-Jewish Arab Israeli children? Arbel’s husband was pushing her to learn to verbalize why it did. Today, she proudly declares that “a healthy State of Israel” — something HGF cares about — means caring for all its citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish alike.

Maktabat al-Fanoos launched in 2014 as a partnership between HGF, the Israeli Ministry of Education and Price Philanthropies, providing eight “culturally appropriate” books per year to every recipient. But what is deemed “culturally appropriate” is open to debate, and unlike PJ Library books, which outwardly feature religion, Maktabat al-Fanoos’ books avoid it, even though religious identity is considered by many to be central to Arab Israeli identity. Though critics of Maktabat al-Fanoos laud the program for promoting literacy in a community that needs the assistance and supporting Arab Israeli authors, they say that the absence of religious and Palestinian content is problematic on multiple levels.

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, during the 2022-2023 year, 70% of the Arab Israeli population had low literacy, compared to 26% of Israeli Jews. Nearly a decade prior, the same year Maktabat al-Fanoos launched, the statistic of Israeli Arabs struggling was 46%, showing that things were actually getting worse.

One difficulty within Arab communities is that spoken and written Arabic are different, which is why Maktabat al-Fanoos offers families recorded versions of every book, along with guidance and activities for parents and teachers. Unlike PJ Library in the United States, books are not sent to recipient’s houses, but are instead taught in schools and sent home a week or two later.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Israel ranks low in reading and math compared to the 38 other OECD countries. As one way to curb economic decline, in 2023, the OECD pressured Israel to subsidize Arab schools, which generally receive less funding than Jewish ones.

Lessening these gaps is the reason the government is so invested in Maktabat al-Fanoos, Fida Shehada, former municipal council member in the mixed Arab-Jewish city of Lod, told eJP. “The state has an interest in reducing these disparities to improve its standing in the OECD,” she said.

Another reason the government had to create the program was because it already offered a version to children outside of Arab communities. In 2009, HGF and the Ministry of Education launched Sifriyat Pijama, Hebrew for “Pajama Library,” providing free books, many with Jewish themes, to Jewish Israeli children. “After five years, the feeling was that now we are poised to be able to expand the program into a completely different sector,” Arbel said. So in 2014, Maktabat al-Fanoos was launched.

The themes throughout the books are “international, humanistic values,” Arbel said, “and they go into the social, emotional world of the child.”

Every book is chosen by an all-Arab committee of representatives from KGI and the Ministry of Education, as well as external experts including psychologists and speech therapists. While books do overlap between the PJ Library programs, many are specifically aimed at the audience they serve.

While Maktabat al-Fanoos includes folk tales from around the world, many stories focus on Arab ones, and much of the canon is created by Arab Israeli writers and artists, often supported through author retreats put on specifically for Arab Israelis over the past three years by Maktabat al-Fanoos.

Strengthening Arab society strengthens the society of Israel, Asma Aghbarieh Zahalka, an activist and the director of Maktabat al-Fanoos, told eJP, echoing Arbel. According to the Israel Democracy Institute, in 2022, 39% of Arab families and 48% of Arab children lived in poverty. Being confident in one’s culture and language leads to confidence in other areas, she said, which will increase Arab social and economic mobility.

Because several authors come from the Arab Israeli community, characters in the books may wear hijabs or dress in garb that implies a certain religious background, but religion will never be overt, Aghbarieh Zahalka said. Books can be about giving gifts or a non-specific holiday, but will never mention Ramadan or Christmas specifically.

This is because the program does not focus on differences, she said, but rather on commonalities. “We are all Arabs here. We have the same culture, the same language, and we want to strengthen the things that are in common and not the things that separate.”

But Shehada says religion is an important aspect of the culture. “We are born into a religious identity,” she said. “Arab society is still conservative in many aspects, and the decision to exclude religion seems detached.”

Meanwhile, she pointed out, it is seen as OK to have religion throughout Sifriyat Pijama books because “Judaism is the national identity in Israel,” not Islam or Christianity or “the narratives and roots of the Palestinian people.”

Yet, the more the program connects readers to their identity, the more it would benefit the recipients, Shehada said, but “this is not just a problem with this program, but with the Ministry of Education, which does not teach anything about our identity or Arab history. It also fails to address the conflicts surrounding us and works to disconnect the Arab society from its surroundings.”

Still, Shehada is grateful for Maktabat al-Fanoos. She appreciates its investment in nurturing Arab artists and writers as well as the all-Arab committees choosing the books. When she was a city council member in Lod, she loved seeing children reading the books. Her nieces and nephews enjoy the books, too.

The past year, the HGF and Maktabat al-Fanoos have pivoted to meet the post-Oct. 7 realities. They sent books to evacuees in hotels. They provided additional story hours and recordings and activity kits, often with a focus on emotional wellness. Although books never outright discuss war, characters struggle with fear and loss. “There still won’t be a book about a person dying, but maybe there will be about a pet dying,” Arbel said.

The program is also teaming with the Branco Weiss Institute and the Ministry of Education to expand into Arab daycares, providing books to 1,300 children in over 10 municipalities. This comes seven years after Sifriyat Pijama expanded into daycares.

Arbel is proud to be “literally building home libraries,” she said. 

It’s so prominent that parents call Maktabat al-Fanoos “the Netflix of children literature,” Aghbarieh Zahalka said “because it provides books for all the kids in Israel without any discrimination between the geographic place or religion or socioeconomic status.”