Bread-making workshop

Every morning, certain women in the village of Um al Khair wake before sunrise, don a special uniform to protect their clothes and hair from smoke, and bring the dough they prepared the night before to bake for each family using the tool saj. This fresh and warm shraq bread (from the Arabic verb “to begin making the bread”) feeds children as they head off to school, and women and men as they begin their day and prepare to go to work.”

You are welcome to join in learning about the practice of making shraq bread by joining our bread making workshop. Stay overnight to prepare the dough the night before with the other bakers, then awake shortly before dawn to bake the bread and eat it fresh with the morning’s first cup of tea as you watch the sunrise over the South Hebron Hills.

In Um al Khair, the community knows that along with other forms of resistance to colonial oppression, practicing and upholding cultural traditions such as breadmaking are an important part of their oft-denied right to culture and identity. The shraq bread is baked before dawn, for example, because the community’s traditional belief is that if God is to bless your food, you must be awake for al-Fajr, the time before sunrise–as well as because most of the village goes to school or work during the day and must be ready to leave early in the morning.