STEWARDSHIP CORNER | BILL MUSTARD
Recently, I had the wonderful privilege of traveling to Israel with Jonathan Bernis and a group of Jewish Voice friends and partners on A Rabbi Looks at Israel tour. It was my first visit back to the Land since just aſter the Yom Kippur war in 1974. I was amazed at how much changed in 36 years in such a timeless Land.
ISRAEL ROCKS tion that’s alive. It’s people are so vibrant.”
Oh, to be sure, the shrines and holy places haven’t changed much, but it is the Land and People around them that are so radi- cally different. When I last visited, English was the dominant language as the People had just begun to reacquaint themselves with the ancient Hebrew tongue, and most of the immigrants were from Europe or the U.S. Nearly 1 million immigrants have moved to Israel from the former So- viet Union since the floodgates of aliyah opened in the late 1980s. Many of them are non-Jews, according to Jewish Law. So not only has Israel become more secular in nature, especially in the port cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv, but the language and culture are changing as well. Today you are just as likely to hear Russian or Amharic (the language of Ethiopia), and Hebrew has become the language of choice.
One of my trip mates, Michael Yancey, also noticed the difference. He had been to Israel twice before. “Tis year 2010 has been a marked explosion in this nation; it’s gone from a nation that has been very small to a real powerful nation. It’s a na-
What I perceived to be a parched land on my first visit has become a veritable oasis in the desert. From Jerusalem north to the border of Lebanon and Syria, you will find every type of fruit, vegetable, grain, and nut being grown in a patchwork of fertile fields. And today there are more than 200 million trees in Israel—forests of pine, tamarisk, carob, and eucalyp- tus—in a land the size of the state of New Jersey! Even in the desert climes of the Jordan River Valley, greenhouses hug nearly every square foot of horizontal land, growing flowers and vegetables. I was stunned at the change.
Another striking difference was the sense of safety I felt in the Land. Because my first trip was so close on the heels of the Yom Kippur war, soldiers were every- where, rifles at the ready, and checkpoints on every major road. Today you can travel the width and breadth of Israel freely, something that surprised me. We actually saw very few soldiers. Tere are guards at the entrances to stores and restaurants who check backpacks and purses, but they only add to the feeling of security.
From an American “Christian” viewpoint,
the other major thing that surprised me was how seriously Orthodox and secular Jews alike take Shabbat—especially in Jerusalem. My first Shabbat surprise was geting on the elevator at our hotel on Saturday morning. On Shabbat, even the elevators seem to take a day off, stopping at every floor automatically. Pushing the buton is work, and work is very much minimized on Shabbat.
But the most wonderful takeaway for me this time was the joy of seeing Israel through the eyes of a Messianic Jew. Tis tour wasn’t about piles of old rocks, but rather about nourishing the relationship with the One who made them. Brandon Lopez, an Oklahoma youth minister, came to this understanding aſter listen- ing to Rabbi Bernis speak on the Sea of Galilee. Brandon recalls, “Jonathan spoke to me in a really powerful and a mighty way. He said, ‘People pick up these rocks as if they had some type of power or an anointing.’ And he said, ‘When people do that, they miss the point of Christianity and of Israel. It’s not the religion and the stuff here, but it’s the relationship with Jesus Christ.’”
I had such a rich experience in Israel with Jewish Voice, and I promise next time I won’t wait 36 years to return.
Check out
www.jewishvoice.org/ israeltour for videos from our 2010 tour.
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JewishVoiceToday.org | March/April 2011
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