Paidea Classics is working to help support St. Catherine's Monastery, the surrounding Bedouin community, and those organizations who likewise are committed to offering such support. |
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We have been blessed to travel to St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai now a few times. It truly is a life-transforming experience and well worth every hardship and anxiety involved in such an incredible journey. St. Catherine's Monastery is a jewel in the desert, relatively unscathed by the sands of modernity. The heritage it and its surroundings contain is beyond human comprehension. It is the hope of Paidea Classics to be influenced by this heritage, and to somehow transmit it, a sacred inheritance that we all share, in whatever capacity is possible through our work and with God's help to the next generation. And while doing this, we also hope to do whatever we can to help the fathers (and mothers) of Sinai, and the surrounding community of Bedouin, both dependent on them and on whom they depend.
It is our hope to form a non-profit organization for St. Katherine Project later in 2019. Meanwhile, this page will include a listing of a number of ongoing projects we are involved with and will provide links to other organizations also supporting St. Catherine's Monastery and other monasteries of the Sinai region. It is our hope to draw attention to ways that you can offer your own participation and support, to help both preserve and transmit this sacred inheritance that God has blessed us all with, but is in dire need of care because of remoteness and ongoing instability in the region. It is a work in progress...please stay tuned. |
View from St. Catherine's guest quarters overlooking the monastery.
January 2019 St. Catherine Work Group/Pilgrimage
There is a very special opportunity for five pious Orthodox men who are willing to do physical labor to help St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, Egypt. They will have the privilege of staying within the St. Justinian's fortress walls of this historic monastery and dine with the monks in their ancient refectory. This will not be like most tours to St. Catherine's. There will be physical labor, but there will be opportunities to climb Mount Sinai, explore the high country full of ancient hermitages, visit St. Paisios' cell, visit St. John Climacus' cave, and see some of the incredible treasures of St. Catherine's as well as attend their breathtakingly beautiful old calendar Nativity vigil service and other daily services. This trip is planned the first two weeks of January, 2019. For any additional pilgrims, including women, there are accommodations within very easy walking distance from the monastery. Southern Sinai is statistically safer than Europe in spite of the news you hear. The violence is in the north which is cut off from the south. This is the most incredible place I have ever visited. Ancient Christian artifacts are strewn on the holy ground. Between the story of Exodus and the life of our holy desert fathers, few places on this earth rank with the holiness of this incredible and gorgeous location. This will be an opportunity of a lifetime. We hope to organize such working pilgrimages regularly, God willing. It is also our hope to be able to offer some scholarships for those with limited financial resources for the trip.
Bedouin Project: 2019
In 2018, by the mercy of God, Paidea Classics began to build on the foundation originally laid by Fr. Moses, an Orthodox hermit associated with St. Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, by providing work for local Bedouin women through the purchase and resale of their hand-embroidered, beaded, and woolen handicrafts. The recent unrest in Egypt and subsequent marked decline in tourism has dramatically increased poverty among the Bedouin surrounding St. Catherine's Monastery.
The Jebeliya Tribe is a historically peaceful tribe that has maintained a symbiotic relationship with the monastery for 1400 years. St. Justinian the Great originally brought 200 Roman soldiers, along with their families, to serve as protectors for the newly built fortress monastery. These families then intermarried with local tribesmen and formed the Jebeliya Tribe of today. Despite having since been forcefully converted to Islam, they still remain faithful protectors of the monastery from less friendly neighboring tribes. Helping them through the purchase of their products increases the security of the monastery in this very unsettled region of the world.
Our first project in 2018, embroidered/beaded linen basket covers, proved to be a complete success. Their workmanship turned out beautiful and we couldn't be more pleased. Our plans for 2019 is more ambitious, including more linen basket covers, St. Nicholas Day stockings, headscarves, and more. Besides custom work, we carry some of their other home manufactured embroidered items as well.
The Jebeliya Tribe is a historically peaceful tribe that has maintained a symbiotic relationship with the monastery for 1400 years. St. Justinian the Great originally brought 200 Roman soldiers, along with their families, to serve as protectors for the newly built fortress monastery. These families then intermarried with local tribesmen and formed the Jebeliya Tribe of today. Despite having since been forcefully converted to Islam, they still remain faithful protectors of the monastery from less friendly neighboring tribes. Helping them through the purchase of their products increases the security of the monastery in this very unsettled region of the world.
Our first project in 2018, embroidered/beaded linen basket covers, proved to be a complete success. Their workmanship turned out beautiful and we couldn't be more pleased. Our plans for 2019 is more ambitious, including more linen basket covers, St. Nicholas Day stockings, headscarves, and more. Besides custom work, we carry some of their other home manufactured embroidered items as well.
Publish Titles Where Half of the Profits go to St. Catherine's Monastery and Half Go to Help Provide Scholarships for the St. Katherine Work Group
It has been our desire to dedicate a portion of profits from the planned publications of In the Footsteps of Egeria and the On the Path of Repentance series to St. Catherine's Monastery. But for IRS reasons, it would be preferrable to do this under the umbrella of a non-profit organization. So it is our hope to publish these planned titles and other titles as well, under St. Katherine's Project when it acquires non-profit status. The portion of profits (50/50) that does not go directly to the monastery, will be used as a part of a scholarship program to help those who want to participate in the St. Katherine Work Group, but have limited funds, to be able to make the trip.
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Local Spiritual Retreat and Fundraiser in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Area Coming Soon
Information will be forthcoming when ready...
Non-profit Organizations Helping to Preserve Monasticism in Sinai:
Friends of Mount Sinai Monastery
Friends of Mount Sinai Monastery (FMSM) is an IRS approved 501(c)(3) charity dedicated to supporting the work of St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, Egypt. St. Catherine's is the world’s oldest continuously-functioning monastery, whose inspiring tradition has become an acclaimed symbol of global peace. Due to the humanitarian crises of the wider region, and the depressed Greek economy, funds are needed at St. Catherine's Monastery for medical care, operating expenses, maintenance of the massive Monastery structures and spiritual treasures, and in short, for keeping the holy tradition of the ancient Greek Orthodox Monastery alive and accessible to visitors.
Friends of the Monastery of the Holy Prophet Moses
We are the non-profit foundation set up to support the Monastery of the Holy Prophet Moses, located in Feiran Egypt.
Friends of Mount Sinai Monastery
Friends of Mount Sinai Monastery (FMSM) is an IRS approved 501(c)(3) charity dedicated to supporting the work of St Catherine's Monastery in Sinai, Egypt. St. Catherine's is the world’s oldest continuously-functioning monastery, whose inspiring tradition has become an acclaimed symbol of global peace. Due to the humanitarian crises of the wider region, and the depressed Greek economy, funds are needed at St. Catherine's Monastery for medical care, operating expenses, maintenance of the massive Monastery structures and spiritual treasures, and in short, for keeping the holy tradition of the ancient Greek Orthodox Monastery alive and accessible to visitors.
Friends of the Monastery of the Holy Prophet Moses
We are the non-profit foundation set up to support the Monastery of the Holy Prophet Moses, located in Feiran Egypt.