Dorit Shippin

Dorit Shippin was born in 1958 in Givataim, Israel to a secular Jewish family. Her parents emigrated from Germany and Poland to Palestine in the 1930s.

She came to live in Wahat al-Salam – Neve Shalom in 1984 at the age of 26, with her husband Howard and baby son, Yonatan. The new couple were seeking a place that would provide an egalitarian and pluralistic environment in which to live and raise a family. Such an environment proved challenging after her upbringing in a strictly ethnocentric and uninational society. Eventually the couple raised three children, all of whom were educated in the community’s binational school.

At the beginning, Dorit worked in the nursery and kindergarten. After a few years, she began to work in the WAS-NS Guest House. In 2001 she began to activate programmes for the Pluralistic Spiritual Centre. During the same years, she was active in voluntary public roles for the community, and represented WAS-NS in overseas delegations and speaking tours.

In recent years she expanded the activities of the Pluralistic Spiritual Centre and created a framework of encounter, spiritual and interfaith studies, with the motivation of promoting equality, justice and reconciliation. In 2006, the village opened the new Pluralistic Spiritual Centre building as a place of study and prayer, in commemoration of WAS-NS Founder Fr. Bruno Hussar.

Together with other members of the community, Dorit initiated a process of consultation for community organizational change, a review of the village’s ideology and vision and preparation for the village’s future expansion.

Today Dorit directs the Pluralistic Spiritual Centre and in March 2008 became the community’s first woman municipal chair.