Beautiful Music

The relationship between a teacher and student-an Orthodox Jewish woman and a blind, autistic Palestinian girl. Devorah Schramm, an American born pianist and composer, relocated to Israel with her family in 1975. A devoutly religious woman, she and her husband Lenn moved to Gilo, on the outskirts of Jerusalem. She began teaching piano, privately at home and at the Jerusalem Conservatory of Music. One day in 1987, the Conservatory's director called her into her office. Sitting there were Helene and Edward Vollbehr, Dutch Christian missionaries from Beit Jallah, a suburb of Bethlehem, and a 9 year old blind and severely autistic Palestinian girl, Rasha Hamid. Rasha, according to her caretakers, showed a tremendous facility for the piano and it was beyond their capabilities to teach her. Devorah had become well known for taking on students with various learning disabilities but she had never encountered a musical savant like Rasha. And with tensions at an all time high between Israelis an