c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ The extraordinary reaction of first-time visitors to Israel is always exciting to witness.

The Jewish state’s unique combination of history, archeology, politics, geography, and religion evokes deep emotions and responses, and this is especially true when the first-timers are presidents and deans of 11 prominent U.S. Christian seminaries.

In early January, Dr. Robert M. Franklin, president of Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Seminary, and I led an intensive nine-day study mission to Israel organized by the Project Interchange Institute of the American Jewish Committee.

Even in that brief time we met with many Israeli and Palestinian leaders including Knesset members, the mayors of Tel Aviv and Bethlehem, a Palestinian Authority minister, and key Israeli policy makers. In an attempt to make every hour in Israel count, the group heard from a wide spectrum of political, academic, and religious viewpoints.

The itinerary featured ancient and modern Jerusalem, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, the Galilee, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim holy places, Tel Aviv, an Israeli kibbutz, the West Bank, the Dead Sea, the first century Jewish fortress of Massada, and an Arab village whose residents are citizens of Israel (Arabs constitute nearly 20% of Israel’s population).

We visited the militarily strategic Golan Heights and Bar Ilan University in Tel Aviv where Israelis seek to blend the teachings of traditional religion with modern science and technology.

First-time visits to Israel always produce severe emotional and spiritual”overload”that takes time to process. There is so much to see and learn in a short time span.

Our visit took place against the backdrop of a closely contested election campaign that will determine who will be Israel’s prime minister for the next four years. And every visitor to Israel is keenly aware of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process currently underway, albeit haltingly.

But despite the trip’s feverish pace and the diverse people we encountered,some things emerged with great clarity for the Christian seminary leaders.

They all agreed that Israel’s quest for peace with its Arab neighbors is highly complex and cannot be accurately described in one-sided simplistic terms.

One seminary president told me the trip showed how important it is to”get beyond the headlines and TV sound bites and see Israel as it really is.”Some of the participants’ previously held convictions about the Israel-Arab conflict were sharply challenged and new ones were formed.

Even though the map of Israel was indelibly etched into the Christian leaders’ consciousness during their childhood days in Sunday School, they were, however, stunned when they personally encountered the country’s”utter beauty”and its small geographical size. Few knew that Bethlehem, now under Palestinian administration, is less than 10 miles from Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city.

Several speakers warned the visiting Americans that”Islamic extremism”and weapons of mass destruction in the hands of nearby Iran and Iraq pose enormous threats to the world’s stability and peace.

Soren Kierkegaard, the 19th Danish Christian theologian, said that”life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backward.”This is particularly true for modern Israel, which cannot be understood without an awareness of its ancient biblical roots and Jewish history.

Kierkegaard’s words are also an accurate description of the major role memory plays today as Israelis and Palestinian leaders relate to one another in the peace process.

The Christian visitors discovered that the past is present every moment in the Middle East where people frequently pour out their personal suffering and pain.

Each seminary official had a unique vivid memory of the trip. For one it was the intense”religious moment”he experienced at the Jerusalem synagogue housing Marc Chagall’s 12 magnificent windows depicting Israel’s ancient tribes. For another it was the”passionate”attachment to the land articulated by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Franklin correctly summed up the group’s overall”optimistic impression that centralists and pragmatists”on both sides”talked about working things out.” The ITC president said he ardently hoped”the emerging center holds”if there is to be peace in the region. Everyone knows the peace process is difficult, but one seminary president perfectly captured my own personal belief that whatever the future may bring, at long last, the”land of Israel is today in the hands of the people of Israel.”

DEA END RUDIN