Again our group comes to a major transition in its journey. Sunday in the early am we part ways and begin our week of independent travel (aka. spring break). Most of us are flying off to Turkey to see the sights that we'll be missing on our official tour later this semester, and a handful are staying in Israel to hangout and volunteer a bit.
I will be going to Istanbul for a few days with 3 other people, then we'll take an overnight bus down to a little village on the Mediterranean Sea for some relaxation, hiking, and general adventure seeking. :)
Although we are parting for a time, our group will be connected by the continual processing of these last 2 weeks. At Jerusalem University College we took an intensive class called Biblical Historical Geography (or some combination of those words...). We spent a few days in the classroom learning about the various rock types, passes, trade routes, valleys, and cities that shaped the Biblical story. Then we went out all over the country looking at these different places.
We were everywhere...
Israel is incredibly small and diverse. One morning we were in Jerusalem, walking through snow to the bus, and by the afternoon we were playing in the surf of the Mediterranean Sea! For educational purposes of course ;) We walked the ancient city of Jerusalem for 2 days (which is not really part of the "Old City" at all) studying the City of David ruins, and the city during Jesus' day. We drove around the Central Benjamin Plateau studing how the Cinomanian rocks and valleys impacted Joshua's conquest strategy. We drove through the Shephelah region looking at how the Eocene limestone rock affected the way Saul and David expanded the Kingdom. We drove through the Biblical Negev looking at the Southern boarder and Abraham's journey. Up the Rift Valley looking at Masada, Qumran, and the Dead Sea scrolls. Then up to Galilee for a few days studying the land that Jesus walked in and the rich basalt rock farm ground.
The Bible takes on a different picture when you read the stories in the place where they happen. We often read the Bible as a Disney story, all rosy characters and fun adventures in a mystical land. I thought I had a good handle on the Bible and the culture and history that surrounded it. But I too, a Biblical Studies major, have been reading the Bible as a story removed from reality. These weeks that has shifted.
The real change happened when we were in the Decapolis district looking at the story where Jesus healed a demonic and the demons went into a herd of pigs. Without going into a debate about demons, we looked at the man who was possessed. He may have been married, certainly had a family, mother father and relatives in the nearby village. He would have been shamed by his inability to hold down a job and provide for his family. Can you imagine what the neighborhood kids said to his children? And the man himself, unaware of when the next fit of possession would take hold, living ashamed, in fear, alone. He became a real person to me, with a real story.
I also began to think of Jesus in a new way. The bible says that Jesus was a carpenter, but the region has little wood. The houses are made of stone. It turns out that the Greek translates better as "master builder" (Tetron I think). Jesus would have been a general contractor, handyman type of guy who could throw around 50-90lbs stones. He wasn't a skinny little guy like we sometimes see. Jesus would have been a pretty strong dude who had a job that let him get to know a LOT of people as he went around hanging doors, and doing little repairs. Back then the builders also did not level the ground before building, so Jesus would have had the eye to build a straight stone wall without mortar on uneven ground that didn't fall. He's not quite your Sunday school Jesus. It was actually customary for Rabbis of the day to have a second job to provide for themselves. Next time you read the gospels imagine Jesus taking a break every so often to help repair a house to help pay for his ministry.
We also learned that the Romans were building a new town (Sepphoris) just 4 miles from where Jesus was growing up in Nazareth during the time Jesus would have been an apprentice. He would have had a lot of opportunity to practice and perfect his skills while meeting people from all over the region. This week Jesus became more human to me.
Many in our group also struggled with their first real exposure to the violence in the Old Testament as it contrasted with the pacifist teaching most of us had been raised with and the assumption of an inerrant and infallible Bible. There are many ways to reconcile the images of God in the testaments, but for now I'll let you, the reader, ponder the question for yourself. Maybe when I get back we can talk about it and I'll share my take on it :) For many the processing is ongoing and will continue as we come back after our week of free travel and spend more time in this small land of Israel.
About halfway through! It's going by soo fast! (Too fast?)
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
The Complexities of Life
Current location: Jerusalem University, right next to the Old City. I'll be here for 2 weeks.
Current communication device: a computer!! After a month I finally have access to a computer for a while.
Current activity: procrastinating writing a paper for Nancy (don't worry, it's outlined. I just need to type it out one of these days..)
These past 10 days...
Lectures, field trips, a huge BBQ with our host family in Beit Sahour (4 different courses of meat!), a 5k in Bethlehem (I didn't wear a watch so I don't know my time. I think I got 4th... but it's hard to tell because it wasn't organized well and there were people cutting a lot) and a 3 night stay in an Israeli Settlement.
Let me start by saying that nothing in life is simple. No two stories are ever the same. Look at the Bible even. 4 different stories of Jesus, some where Jesus' ministry lasts 1 year, John says it lasted 3. Events happen in different orders, Jesus even dies on different days. In the Books of Samuel there are verses calling for a King and verses speaking against having a King right next to each other. But differences don't make the stories any less real... Thus the complexity.
I want you to hang on to what I am about to say, because through reflecting it might get lost: We spent 3 nights with Jewish families living in a settlement in the West Bank. They were VERY kind people and incredible hosts who welcomed us into their lives, gave us food, rest, and entertainment. They are very good people, but that doesn't mean that I agree with all of their opinions. Remember that as you read on.
One of the highlights and privileges of the weekend was having the opportunity to participate in a Shabbot service with our family. Shabbot is the Jewish day of rest. No electronics, no tv, no car, lights can not be turned on or off once it begins (we left the bathroom lights on all night), a complete day of rest. I needed it more than I realized! The Jewish day starts at sundown. We went to an evening service, and the next day there were 2 more prayer services. The afternoon was filled with blissful relaxation and engaging conversation.
The Jewish worship services are different from Protestant Christian ones in many ways. Personally I would compare them to Orthodox Christian services. There is a set liturgy of prayers every Shabbot that are sung. There is scripture reading and some synagogues have dancing, time for announcements, and special prayers sung by those in mourning. Beautiful singing. The atmosphere is casual, come and go, stopping in the middle of singing to talk with someone, young children running around, stand, sitting, not your familiar worship service.
One of the conversations over lunch involved trying to explain what a Mennonite was, and what pacifism entailed to our host family. They were blown away by the story of Dirk Willems who ran across the ice to save his drowning pursuer. They told me that they live by the Jewish law that if someone is coming to attack you, you should strike them first. You don't go around hurting people, but the idea is that your life is more valuable than others. Anabaptists would say that the other person's life is more valuable than your own.
While we were there we also heard many lecturers that gave us their side of the conflict. **Edit** The Jewish side:
-The settlement where we stayed is the same community where the 3 Israeli boys where kidnapped and killed last year. The memory of their death is still fresh.
-In the past there have been many bombings and killings, mostly in the Jerusalem area, but in places all over Israel. Recently there hasn't been as much violence, but the memory remains.
-Many Jews live with a certain level of fear. If they go into the wrong parts of the West Bank they will likely get stones thrown at them or be harassed by the local Arabs. For the settlers living outside the Green Line in the territory of the West Bank they are in close proximity to many Arab villages, and although relations with their neighbors are good, the people we talked to believed that the peace might not last and their neighbors might turn on them.
-The people we talked to felt like the land of Israel was theirs by right all the way to the Jordan River (which is true since they officially conquered it in the 6 day War in the 1970's) but more in the sense that this was the land given to them by God and even though the Romans expelled them around 135CE they still have claim to the land. Many people still have a fresh experience with the Holocaust having lost family of some sort and feel that the least the world could do to make up for it is to give the Jewish people a homeland of their own. What is the difference, they say, between the Germanic people or the French people having a land for their ethnicity and the Jews having their own land?
In general, (and I know that generalities are a bad thing, but for the sake of explaining our experience...) the tone was something like "we know some nice Arabs, we live near some nice Arabs, but lots of Arabs want to hurt us, so we can't trust (any) Arabs." It reminded me of the College Humor Youtube video "Diet Racist" which talks about racism in the US. Look it up sometime. How many people in the US don't trust any Latinos or African Americans simply because of the color of their skin and the assumptions people have about their cultures? Many of our hosts had moved from the US, and you could tell that they did not have any concept of their own power of white privilege, or understand social power dynamics especially in light of the deep differences between "hot" and "cold" cultures. (Hot being cultures around the equator, but with similarities also found in northern rural communities or tribal societies, and cold being northern cultures or industrialized areas.) The settlers we met with were very nice people, but they had their own biases about their relations and interactions with Arab peoples, just like all us are blind to our own biases and assumptions.
We had one lecturer (who got into a screaming match with some people in our group) that said something to the effect of, "everything you heard in Palestine was all lies, all Arabs want to wipe us out, they should all move out and leave the land to us." Never mind that there are 2.7 million Arabs in the West Bank. This was by far an extreme position and no one else we talked to came anywhere near this level of distrust and fear. One flip side we heard Settlers who were defending and advocating for the Palestinians and their speaking against their poor treatment and conditions in the West Bank. Nothing is simple in this conflict.
Another interesting dynamic was that while we were in Palestine, all the Palestinians assumed that Americans were pro-Israel, and in the Settlement all of our lecturers assumed that all Americans were pro-Palestinian. Both sighted the same media sources as being biased against them (CNN, BBC, Fox). Moral of the story, nobody likes America, the media is disliked and tells lies about everybody.
**End of Edit**
There were other things that were said by people in the settlement, but that's what I'll share for now.
I started by talking about the complexities of life, and of Jesus. Coming into this program I knew it would be complicated, hence "Listening and Searching," but, as I was recently reminded by a Jerusalem University College student, as a Christian my job is not to pass judgement, my job is to listen to the stories on all sides and love everyone as Jesus loved. I don't need to pick a side to help people. My job is to be a light, to be Light, to be a friend, to help where help is needed, and to pray for friends, and those who consider me their enemy. That is the calling of Jesus. That is my calling.
Shalom
**Edit note: I feel like I did not present the Settlement side as fairly as I should have earlier. Hopefully I complexified the issue for you :)
Current communication device: a computer!! After a month I finally have access to a computer for a while.
Current activity: procrastinating writing a paper for Nancy (don't worry, it's outlined. I just need to type it out one of these days..)
These past 10 days...
Lectures, field trips, a huge BBQ with our host family in Beit Sahour (4 different courses of meat!), a 5k in Bethlehem (I didn't wear a watch so I don't know my time. I think I got 4th... but it's hard to tell because it wasn't organized well and there were people cutting a lot) and a 3 night stay in an Israeli Settlement.
Let me start by saying that nothing in life is simple. No two stories are ever the same. Look at the Bible even. 4 different stories of Jesus, some where Jesus' ministry lasts 1 year, John says it lasted 3. Events happen in different orders, Jesus even dies on different days. In the Books of Samuel there are verses calling for a King and verses speaking against having a King right next to each other. But differences don't make the stories any less real... Thus the complexity.
I want you to hang on to what I am about to say, because through reflecting it might get lost: We spent 3 nights with Jewish families living in a settlement in the West Bank. They were VERY kind people and incredible hosts who welcomed us into their lives, gave us food, rest, and entertainment. They are very good people, but that doesn't mean that I agree with all of their opinions. Remember that as you read on.
One of the highlights and privileges of the weekend was having the opportunity to participate in a Shabbot service with our family. Shabbot is the Jewish day of rest. No electronics, no tv, no car, lights can not be turned on or off once it begins (we left the bathroom lights on all night), a complete day of rest. I needed it more than I realized! The Jewish day starts at sundown. We went to an evening service, and the next day there were 2 more prayer services. The afternoon was filled with blissful relaxation and engaging conversation.
The Jewish worship services are different from Protestant Christian ones in many ways. Personally I would compare them to Orthodox Christian services. There is a set liturgy of prayers every Shabbot that are sung. There is scripture reading and some synagogues have dancing, time for announcements, and special prayers sung by those in mourning. Beautiful singing. The atmosphere is casual, come and go, stopping in the middle of singing to talk with someone, young children running around, stand, sitting, not your familiar worship service.
One of the conversations over lunch involved trying to explain what a Mennonite was, and what pacifism entailed to our host family. They were blown away by the story of Dirk Willems who ran across the ice to save his drowning pursuer. They told me that they live by the Jewish law that if someone is coming to attack you, you should strike them first. You don't go around hurting people, but the idea is that your life is more valuable than others. Anabaptists would say that the other person's life is more valuable than your own.
While we were there we also heard many lecturers that gave us their side of the conflict. **Edit** The Jewish side:
-The settlement where we stayed is the same community where the 3 Israeli boys where kidnapped and killed last year. The memory of their death is still fresh.
-In the past there have been many bombings and killings, mostly in the Jerusalem area, but in places all over Israel. Recently there hasn't been as much violence, but the memory remains.
-Many Jews live with a certain level of fear. If they go into the wrong parts of the West Bank they will likely get stones thrown at them or be harassed by the local Arabs. For the settlers living outside the Green Line in the territory of the West Bank they are in close proximity to many Arab villages, and although relations with their neighbors are good, the people we talked to believed that the peace might not last and their neighbors might turn on them.
-The people we talked to felt like the land of Israel was theirs by right all the way to the Jordan River (which is true since they officially conquered it in the 6 day War in the 1970's) but more in the sense that this was the land given to them by God and even though the Romans expelled them around 135CE they still have claim to the land. Many people still have a fresh experience with the Holocaust having lost family of some sort and feel that the least the world could do to make up for it is to give the Jewish people a homeland of their own. What is the difference, they say, between the Germanic people or the French people having a land for their ethnicity and the Jews having their own land?
In general, (and I know that generalities are a bad thing, but for the sake of explaining our experience...) the tone was something like "we know some nice Arabs, we live near some nice Arabs, but lots of Arabs want to hurt us, so we can't trust (any) Arabs." It reminded me of the College Humor Youtube video "Diet Racist" which talks about racism in the US. Look it up sometime. How many people in the US don't trust any Latinos or African Americans simply because of the color of their skin and the assumptions people have about their cultures? Many of our hosts had moved from the US, and you could tell that they did not have any concept of their own power of white privilege, or understand social power dynamics especially in light of the deep differences between "hot" and "cold" cultures. (Hot being cultures around the equator, but with similarities also found in northern rural communities or tribal societies, and cold being northern cultures or industrialized areas.) The settlers we met with were very nice people, but they had their own biases about their relations and interactions with Arab peoples, just like all us are blind to our own biases and assumptions.
We had one lecturer (who got into a screaming match with some people in our group) that said something to the effect of, "everything you heard in Palestine was all lies, all Arabs want to wipe us out, they should all move out and leave the land to us." Never mind that there are 2.7 million Arabs in the West Bank. This was by far an extreme position and no one else we talked to came anywhere near this level of distrust and fear. One flip side we heard Settlers who were defending and advocating for the Palestinians and their speaking against their poor treatment and conditions in the West Bank. Nothing is simple in this conflict.
Another interesting dynamic was that while we were in Palestine, all the Palestinians assumed that Americans were pro-Israel, and in the Settlement all of our lecturers assumed that all Americans were pro-Palestinian. Both sighted the same media sources as being biased against them (CNN, BBC, Fox). Moral of the story, nobody likes America, the media is disliked and tells lies about everybody.
**End of Edit**
There were other things that were said by people in the settlement, but that's what I'll share for now.
I started by talking about the complexities of life, and of Jesus. Coming into this program I knew it would be complicated, hence "Listening and Searching," but, as I was recently reminded by a Jerusalem University College student, as a Christian my job is not to pass judgement, my job is to listen to the stories on all sides and love everyone as Jesus loved. I don't need to pick a side to help people. My job is to be a light, to be Light, to be a friend, to help where help is needed, and to pray for friends, and those who consider me their enemy. That is the calling of Jesus. That is my calling.
Shalom
**Edit note: I feel like I did not present the Settlement side as fairly as I should have earlier. Hopefully I complexified the issue for you :)
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Life in the West Bank
First off, I realize that I said I was not going to update this blog very often, but I've got some extra time, and trying to recall everything at the end won't be as easy as telling bits as I go.
Second, I really recommend that you check out Lydia Tissue's blog mymeadventure.wordpress.com She does a great job of capturing the emotions of the experience. And she is updating her blog every week ;)
So if I remember correctly, last update had the group in Jordan traveling and taking it all in. We saw Roman ruins in Jerash, rode camels in Wadi Rum, saw the great carved tombs of Petra, and climbed Mt Hur to see Aaron's tomb. There was St. George church at Madaba and the mountain/memorial where Moses looked over the Promised Land and a few other little things in between.
Then we crossed the Israeli check point into Palestine. And our worlds were forever changed...
We are staying in a suburb of Bethlehem called Beit Sahour (spelled Bayt Sahur on Google maps I think) with host families, 2-3 people per family. Yes Bethlehem is in Palestine. At this leg our days have been organized by Alternative Travel Group (see pictures of our adventures on facebook at atgPalestine). ATG was started by some young people many years ago who were tired of people coming in Tour Buses from Israel, getting out, taking quick pictures of the Holy sights, scared to be surrounded by "Terrorists," jumping back in the bus and racing back across the boarder to Israel. ATG sets up trips in Palestine to help dispel the myth of dangerous Palestine. I am not kidding when I say that I feel just as safe in Palestine as I do in Harrisonburg, or my home town in Sterling Il, safer in some ways. There is a story of someone getting cheated in a money exchange and the community finding the person and throwing them in jail. I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's no worse than state side.
We spend our time here taking Arabic lessons, listening to lectures about Palestine (including history, literature, environmental issues, current issues, and Christians in Palestine), and taking field trips to different cites around the West Bank. Destinations are a mixture of places with current significance and Biblical action. For example Hebron which is a Palestinian town that is under partial military/violent settler occupation, but is also the cite of the tomb of the Patriarchs/Matriarchs (Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel) and Davids capital before he moved it to Jerusalem. Side note, in Palestine Hebron is known for it's beautiful handmade crafts (textiles, glassware, etc).
When most people think of Palestine they think of a Muslim area, but Beit Sahour, where we are staying, and the Bethlehem area in general, is a Christian community. The number of Christians here greatly outnumber the Muslims. In Palestine in general Christains are just under 2%. In the 1980's Christians were 15%, but when Israel started to crack down on Palestine the Christians started leaving. Many of them actually went to Chile and today there are a couple million Palestinians living there. That said, there are still towns and villages here that are entirely Christian. Ramallah, the "capital" of Palestine even has a law that the mayor must be Christian even though the majority in that town is Muslim. The Christians here date back to the time of Jesus, many towns becoming followers of Jesus when Jesus passed throught doing ministry. They are the original people in that regard, proudly Arab. In many ways they are more ethnically Jewish than the Jews in Israel because they were Jews when Jesus came to town, became followers, and never left. Even with this deep heritage to the land, Israel oppresses them and wants them to abandon Palestine just as much as all the other Arabs in Palestine.
Things become complicated because Israel was started by European Jews who were looking for a country of their own after the Holocaust. Today Arabs (think Palestinians) make up 20% of Israel's population, within the boarders of Israel. Except Israel has a law that they can't get certain types of education in Israel, such as training to be Doctors and Lawyers, so many Arabs in Israel go to Europe for education.
If it seems like I'm bashing on Israel kind of hard it's because I am... we see it from Israels side every day so for a brief moment I am telling it from the other side. Sometime I might write a little blurb about the flawed theology of a modern Jewish state, but for the moment I'll leave you with this question. Is injustice a part of God's plan? An Arab priest I talked to said, "it's my bible too, my land."
And so we get to the complexity of the situation. In the words of our history professor, in order to understand the conflict you must go back to the Ottomans, the British Mandate, and the wars of 1967 and 1973. I'll spare the history lecture for now, but know that it is much more complex than it seems from the west. Also, don't believe what you see on the news, especially what politicians say, because it is basically all one sided and incomplete. Our last few lectures have stressed how much foreign governments have hurt the local movements.
One of the ways that this impacted me emotionally was seeing the wall, built with American tax money... Not only is it an exact repeat of Germany post WWII and apartheid South Africa, but it is a physical symbol of Israel's propoganda against Palestine. A physical reminder of the deep conflict dividing brothers, fellow humans caught in cultural and ideological conflict.
I cried. We are staying only 10 miles away from Jerusalem. You can see Jerusalem from where we live. But there is a wall between here and there. The last time my host dad was in Jerusalem was in 1993. For the few Palestinians that work in Jerusalem they must get to the check point by 4 to get to work by 8. Technically a few Christians and Muslims are given passes a few days a year during religious festivals, or when Israel wants some Palestinian shoppers to give them money, but they only allow for visiting during daylight and they must be back over by nightfall. Most people don't use the passes because logisticly it's a head ache.
We met one lady, upper 20's, who had been BORN in the US and went to an Ivy League school in the east, (Palestine has the highest per capita rate of college graduates in the region, but also an unemployment rate of around 30%) but since she is of Palestinian ethnicity she is not allowed to go into Israel. Currently she is working with her family's business in Taybeh, the town where Jesus went after raising Lazareth (at that time named Ephraim, John 11:54).
More injustices: Israel contains 80% of the west bank, meaning Palestine is not allowed to expand any cities or build any infrastructure on its own land.
The water is all controlled by Israel and is sent to the Settlements. Palestinian homes get water about twice a week, so they have big storage tanks on the roofs to provide for the other days.
Israel controls the prices in Palestine, some products can be made cheaper in Palestine, but Israel doesn't want people to go there to buy products so they force Palestine to sell things at a higher price.
Israel built roads to settlements (built illegally in Palestine) that Palestinians are not allowed to go on. Israel uses these roads to further separate and divide Palestine. In one instance we saw a road that went about a mile out of the way to cut through a farmer's olive grove. Now no one can get to that part of the field to harvest the olives and Israel will only buy the field if they can buy ALL of it.
Signs on the fences between Israel and Palestine ate written in 3 languages. In Hebrew and English they say "destroying this fence is dangerous for you" In Arabic "touching this fence is dangerous for you." There's a bit of a difference between "destroying" and "touching."
That's just a few.
You can't get a feel for it until you've been here.
In the face of it all we've heard the same thing repeated over and over again. "We done hate Jews, we just hate the Israeli government." "We don't hate the West, just the Western governments and their empire."
On a different note, places we've been in Palestine:
Bethlehem church of the Nativity
Kiddron Valley/Gehanna
Taybeh
Jiffna
Ramallah
Hebron (big problems with this one. Christian Peacemaker Teams are stationed here.)
Tomb of the Patriarchs
Bethlehem University
Wadi Qelt (the road to Jericho)
Jericho
That's what's been going on here. (On a positive note, it's been in the 60s and 70s ;) )
Upcoming: tours of refuge camps, tent of nations, 5k in Bethlehem on Friday(!!!) Pools of Solomon, Herodian cite, Nablus, and Jacobs Well. On Feb 11th we move to Jerusalem.
Peace and Grace
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