Our brother Yohanan Elihai passed away

Yohanan Elihai (whose name was Jean Leroy, until 1960) was born in France on April 18, 1926. He first crossed Palestine in 1946 while traveling by train from Egypt to Lebanon. At Easter 1947, he returned as a pilgrim with students from the Saint Joseph University in Beirut. After joining the Order of the "Little Brothers of Jesus", he came to visit the Holy Land in 1950 and 1953 (he then worked for two months in a kibbutz), and after finishing his theological studies in France, he came to Haifa in 1956 in order to stay, and went to Jaffa beginning there a life of prayer and work (he studied ceramics). In 1956, he was the first, in Israel, to celebrate a whole mass in Hebrew, but it was according to the Syrian rite. Over the years, he contributed a lot to the translation of the Latin liturgy into Hebrew and to the creation of a Catholic musical heritage in Hebrew.

One of his main life projects has been to encourage learning local conversational Arabic (Eastern Arabic in its Palestinian dialect). He pioneered in this area, enriching his knowledge of the language through holding hundreds of hours of conversations with local Arabs, and recording them, in Galilee (Tarshiha), Jerusalem and Ramallah. Later, he began publishing a series of books destined to teach the Arabic spoken language. He also composed several dictionaries (French - Arabic, Hebrew - Arabic, Arabic - English), which over time contained more and more words ​​and sentences. The latest dictionary was published in 2017.

In 2008, he received an honorary doctorate from the Haifa University, in recognition of his life's work. In 2018, he received a Prime Minister Golda Meir's award for his contribution to bringing people together through teaching of the spoken Arabic Palestinian language.

Brother Yohanan Elihai loved this land with all its inhabitants, Jews and Arabs. He prayed for them and served them in his own way, up to the last months of his life. In February 2020, he entered a home for the elderly and quickly adapted to the new situation. Towards the end of June, he had a heart attack, and passed away on Saturday, July 4, at dawn. May his memory be a blessing.