On Sunday June the 6th at 6 o?clock in the evening a group of 80 young men and women wearing black gowns will enter the special auditorium at the Plaza Hotel in upper Nazareth while 750 guests will applaud and cheer. This will mark the 50-th graduation party that the Nazareth Baptist School will be celebrating since 1955. This party will be the peak of several activities held to mark the school?s golden celebration. Another highlight has been meetings for all graduates of the NBS throughout the years. Several hundreds of the 2400 graduates attended reunion gatherings in the school auditorium and got the opportunity to meet classmates and teachers to share good memories of their times in the school.

NBS was founded by Southern Baptists from the USA. First in the Thirties and after the WWII again in 1950 and quickly was identified as one of the best schools in the Arab community in Israel. It has outstanding graduates in all fields including clergymen, politicians, judges, lawyers, medical doctors, Hi-Tech entrepreneurs and engineers, high rank officials, University and School teachers and a lot more, leaving a special mark in different areas of the life of the Arab Minority in Israel and in the country in general.

On this special occasion, several American Baptists who served as general directors of the school will attend the graduation celebration. This includes Dr. Dale Thorn who was general director of the NBS in the seventies and beginning of eighties, Dr. Gene Eller who was general director all through the eighties. In addition, Dr. Bill Baker (Son of Dr. Dweight Baker) and Ms.Rebecca Rowden (Daughter of Late Paul Rowden) made all the way from the USA to attend the celebration. Dr. Dweight Baker and Mr. Paul Rawden served at the school in the fifties and the sixties.

The NBS has 28 classes and more than a thousand students from kindergarten to the 12-th grade. It is the only Evangelical school in Israel where Bible is taught and students attend Chapel. Students can specialize in one or more of the following eight subjects: Physics, Chemistry, Electronics, Environment, Communication, Biology, Computers and History. Few weeks ago, two students from NBS gave the school a sweet present when they became the only Arab students in Israel who got an appreciation for high results in the Mathematics Olympics held by the Wiezman institute in Rehovot. Nazareth Mayor Mr. Ramez Jaraisy, who used to be a teacher in NBS in the past, sent a letter to the NBS principal Dr. Oussama Moalim to congratulate him on the neat achievement of Atif Ramadan and Mahmoud Daher.

NBS is run by a board and lead by the general director Mr. Fuad Haddad who has been with the school since its very beginning. In September 2004, Mr. Botrus Mansour will begin his role as new general director of the school.



To learn more about the Nazareth Baptist School, check their web site at www.nbs.org.il