CCJ Young Adults Study Tour of Israel 15-26 March 1999
Taking a boat across the Sea of Galilee provided a time of stillness and reflection in the busy schedule of our tour. I had time to contemplate the beauty of our surroundings: green and fertile in contrast to the desert which stretched south on our road to Jerusalem. As we read the story of Jesus calming the storm, and lay at rest for a while in the stillness of the sea, this place felt like a haven in which I was distant from the pressures of my day-to-day life. Yet at the same time I was aware of the proximity of the Golan Heights, a physical reminder of present conflicts, which revealed the key position of the Galilee within the struggle.
This experience of contrast, of the simultaneous awareness of diverse, even conflicting perceptions, is characteristic of my experience of Israel. Visits which introduced us to the history of the area and its people revealed both suffering and celebration. In the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv, an exhibition celebrating the diversity and continuity of Jewish life circles around the memorial to Jewish martyrs, a reminder of the centuries of persecution, and especially of the Holocaust. Each day we glimpsed different layers of experience incorporated into Israel's sense of identity.
Listening to speakers on the current political situation, the historical image of the Israelite nation living as a minority in a foreign land was set alongside the image of the Palestinian minority within the state of Israel. However, what struck me most of all was the diversity of the population of Israel. Before I went to Israel I thought about the situation there in terms of a conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Although this divide was visible in the contrast of Jewish and Palestinian areas in the Galilee, and audible in the words of many who spoke to us from both sides, I learnt that the situation is far more complex. For a start, I discovered the existence of 'Israeli Palestinians': Palestinians who are (at least in theory) full Israeli citizens, in contrast to those who live in the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Those we spoke to did not wish to live in a Palestinian state, but rather to receive the same opportunities and respect for their culture as their fellow Jewish citizens. It also became apparent that the Jewish population of Israel is not at all homogeneous. Several of our speakers uncovered for me the significance of divisions between religious and secular Jews. I was reminded that Israel is a young state, wrestling with different ways of understanding itself as a Jewish state.
However, while I was continuously aware of this diversity as a source of tension and conflict, I found in it a tremendous sense of excitement. In Jerusalem, our encounters with a multicoloured array of races, sects and religions left my head spinning. Throughout the tour I was impressed by the hospitality which we received, ranging the joyful calm of a Sabbath meal shared in a family home in Jerusalem, to the busyness which greeted our arrival in the house of a Palestinian family in the Galilee.
The encounter with this cultural diversity inspired me to reflect again on issues of identity and relationship. At times I was challenged to recognise my own negative reactions to cultural difference; for example, my dislike of the need to bargain over prices in the markets of Jerusalem. It seemed to me important not to deny these feelings, but then to place them in a wider context, to question their roots as a way of clarifying what I valued. Meeting such diversity provided an opportunity to consider whether I was happy with my values, remembering both the positive and negative aspects of my own culture and the culture I was encountering.
I found that I was continually challenged in both my certainties and my uncertainties. Throughout the tour we were presented in different ways with the question of how to find ways to reaffirm one's own sense of identity without negating, diminishing or excluding others. This question resonates for me particularly with regard to the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. I found myself pulled between the desire to find a non-exclusive expression of faith and the desire to acknowledge the importance of a faith tradition and the immediacy and reality of experiences found within it. Conversations in the group often raised more questions than they answered, but I was grateful for the different perspectives among us. As one who has tended to contrast pluralist and exclusivist attitudes to faith, I became more aware that pluralism brings its own problems, especially if it attempts to absorb other perspectives rather than simply to accept and acknowledge their difference.
At the same time, I was aware that these questions were important not simply as ideas, but in terms of their relationship to action. I was grateful that among the multitude of contrasting experiences of Israel, we encountered positive examples of co-operation and a mutual search for understanding across religious and cultural divides. Listening to those who sought for an alternative to the violence of suspicion and hostility, I saw the importance, not of intellectual solutions, but of the willingness to reach out to or stand alongside others without exactly knowing how differences are to be reconciled, but nevertheless continuing forward in hope.
© C.M. Brewer 1999
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