Maria Khoury: A Greek-American Voice from Taybeh
Writer, educator and village advocate, Maria Khoury has spent decades describing life in the West Bank's Christian village of Taybeh to readers around the world.
Maria Khoury came to the Palestinian village of Taybeh from the United States. She is Greek-American by background and married into the Khoury family, whose members founded the Taybeh Brewery in 1994. She has since become one of the best-known voices of the village.
Writer and educator
Khoury has written widely about life in Taybeh and about Palestinian Christians more broadly, including books about the Orthodox faith. She has also written essays and letters describing the daily realities of occupation for a small Christian community. Her writing blends faith, family life and politics: checkpoints and land confiscation appear alongside church feasts and harvests.
She has also been active in education and in the village's efforts to build its economy, including helping organise the Taybeh Oktoberfest. The festival brought thousands of visitors to the village for many years.
A bridge to the outside world
For many Western Christians, particularly Orthodox Christians in the United States and Greece, Khoury's writing has been a window onto a community they would otherwise know little about. Her work makes the case that the survival of Christian villages like Taybeh depends on economic opportunity, freedom of movement and international attention.