Benny Hinn and the "Girls from Galilee"

We started the day in the ancient seaport of Jaffa. And I ended the day with my mind swirling around the events surrounding a chance encounter with a renowned television evangelist born in Jaffa.
We'd weaved our way through rain-covered highways past the port city, through Nazareth and ended our travels at a hotel in Tiberias, a beautiful city that is perched on the Galilee. After checking in, we were off to a restaurant on the shore that our driver, Eitan Yosef, says is the best dining establishment in Israel. Well, the best one on the Galilee, anyhow. It's called Decks, and it is something akin to the marina restaurants you'll find back home: a simple structure with canvas walls that can be opened up in the summer so guests can enjoy the breeze and the view of the lake that many of Christ's apostles plied for their livelihoods. But you come to Decks for the food. Broiled steak and duck prepared over a wood or coal fire; and their specialty called St. Peter's Fish -- a robust tilapia that is broiled and presented to guests whole to pick pieces by hand. It was while I was reaching for some of their seafood that I noticed at a table not too far from us a gray-haired man I'd seen before. Benny Hinn, an evangelical preacher and faith-healer who reaches millions across the globe through his appearances on the religious television channel, Trinity Broadcasting Network. If you're not familiar with TBN, it is the UHF signal you get on your other television at home that is not hooked up to cable (although it's available on most cable providers). I tune into TBN frequently, to the chagrin of my children who want to know why I watch "that stuff." Now, I can truly say that my diligence watching TBN has paid off. Benny was at the head of a long table where there were maybe 20 guys, "his people." There was one woman sitting next to him, a 50-something woman with blonde hair fading to white who I thought must be part of his entourage, perhaps a Tammy Fay Baker hanger-on that never gets on camera. I pointed Benny out to my fellow Catholic journalists, and they were not familiar with him. When I saw his group begin to get up to leave, I went over hoping to chat with him for a bit. I was met by a barrel-chested young man decked out in jungle gear with one of those FBI earplugs connected to a hidden transceiver. Security.
"Would it be possible for me to say hi to Benny?"
"No, we're on a tight schedule, and we have to get to Tel Aviv to board a plane in three hours; don't know how we're going to make it."
I looked around, and all I saw happening was Benny waving to staffers at the restaurant and talking to a person here or there. I really didn't see what threat I posed, so I stood my ground, waiting for him to pass by, which he did.
"Benny, hi, Dennis O'Connor from Cincinnati. I'm a Catholic journalist -- that's our group over there. Hey, I see you all the time on TBN."
Hinn looks over at our table, then back to me.
"Yeah, yea, that's great," he said, his mind already disengaged as he began to move away. "Isn't this a great restaurant? God bless."
And he was gone. Maybe 10 seconds had passed.
I walked back to our table and one of our group asked about the guy in the safari outfit.
"Was that guy security? What's he need security for?"
"Don't know," I said. "Maybe he's worried about his safety over here. Maybe he's worried about getting mobbed." We all looked around at the lack of a crowd and dismissed that notion. "Maybe he's a very important person and he just likes to have security." He also seemed right at home with the trappings of the high-rolling evangelical TV business, which included "his people," all parading out with him from the dockside restaurant.
Hinn and group moved away from our sight, and we continued to speculate about his need for security, when the lovely woman who'd been sitting with Hinn came over to our table and greeted us. "Did you see Benny Hinn," she asked. "He is such a wonderful guy. Do you know Benny?" I told her I'd seen him; everyone else demurred.
Turns out she was the matriarch of the family that owns Decks and other enterprises along the shores of the Galilee here in Tiberias. She also was a friend of Hinn, and had known him for 20 years. Vered Gross told us that Hinn had been born in Jaffa, left Israel as a youngster and made his way to the United States, where he was granted the gift of healing hands and an ability to reach out over the television airwaves.
Hinn and his group, like us, had been invited by the government of Israel to try to persuade people to come back to the Holy Land. Hinn had in recent years been known to bring busloads of people to Tiberias, where Vered told us he once invited 1,000 people to a healing celebration and samples of St. Peter's Fish fresh from their grille.
Evangelicals were very emotionally connected with Jesus Christ, Vered began to tell us. Catholics, though, seem to be a lot more reserved. "Why is that?" We were representing our church, and we responded that perhaps she misunderstood how Catholics represent themselves to others. I thought that, overall, we did yeoman's work in explaining the Catholic psyche.
She then told us that she just loved the evangelical pilgrims who made their way to Galilee and her restaurant. It appears that those pilgrims become very emotional when the Decks crew would make their special presentations. "We have a program of singing and dancing that brings tears to the eyes of those Christians," she said. She's been writing songs and music since she was a child, and for the past several years, she also offered a little Christian entertainment to her guests at Decks.
Would we like to see her program? Sure, we responded.
Three of her waitresses pulled white linen smocks over their heads, secured in place with golden sashes. She called her dance troupe "The Girls from Galilee."
Vered grabbed a microphone and began to belt out the tune she'd written "only two weeks ago," that went like this:

Go Galilee, Go Galilee
Go Galilee so Jesus said
Go Galilee and search for me
Go Galilee He said to me.

I had to go to Go to Galilee
I had to follow Him
I had to go to Galilee
To show my love to Him...

As she sang, the girls moved their arms and swayed slowly to the music, folding their hands together or raising them to the heavens to show their reverence and prayer-like intentions. It was something akin to liturgical dance that had just a hint of a routine you might find in the Poconos during the summer. Still, in a very simple sort of way, it was reverent and sweet.

...So help me, God,
Show me the way
My way to Galilee
Please guide my way to Galilee
I'm almost by the sea.

I have to go to heal my soul
to hear His precious words.
I have to go to hear my soul
to hear His precious words.

So here I am in Galilee
I stand on holy ground.
And by the shore of the sea-of-life
I met sweet Jesus Christ.

We applauded, cheered and stood up. I think we wanted to show that even Catholics can be moved by stirring words and song, in this case a song written by a Jewish matriarch who has a genuine love for Christ and the people who follow Him.
But I didn't see anyone crying. Perhaps, I explained to Vered later that night after we'd talked for three or four hours, it was because journalists by nature are cynical types. Nobody had brought a camera, and nobody had a notepad, so I arranged to go back to the hotel after we were done to take a couple snaps of the Girls from Galilee and to interview Vered. It would turn out to be quite an interesting meeting.
So, I'd gone back to the hotel for my camera and walked back to Decks, a 10-minute stroll along the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Although it was dark, I could easily make out the small marina that the Gross family owned; two large passenger boats were moored just north of the marina's restaurant. Masts of small sailboats were parked up on the shore out of the water, and larger boats were bobbing up and down on the lake in the slips.
When I walked over the small wooden bridge that connected Decks' with the expansive parking lot -- you could easily fit dozens of tour buses into the lot -- I saw that almost all the customers were gone, and there was Vered sitting with a young couple, her demeanor had changed from entertainer to friendly proprietor. She motioned for me to come over, and she introduced me to the young adults. They were from just outside Tel Aviv and were visiting Vered and her family; they planned to marry in the summer.
My original purpose in returning to Decks had been to take a photo of the Girls from Galilee. After a few pleasantries with Vered and the couple, I asked if I might go ahead and set up a place for a photo of the girls: I'd learned that the three young dancers were all raised in villages around the lake. "Shachaf," whose name means "Seagull" in Hebrew, grew up and lived in Kibutz Kinneret; "Gla" is from Kibutz Ginosar; and "Daniel" is from the village of Magdala, the Galilee village that was home to Jesus' disciple, Mary. Before I could break out my camera equipment, though, Vered informed me that the three girls had all gone home, but she could stage a photo for me, although they wouldn't be the original Girls from Galilee, since these were two girls from Russia who had immigrated with their parents to Israel years ago.
While I waited for the girls to finish waiting on customers, Vered and I talked about business at Decks.
About 10 years ago, her son, Ido, created the concept of a marina-style restaurant that could take advantage of their position along the Sea of Galilee, land that Vered's father, Eitan, had purchased decades ago along the lake shore, and he made the transition from farmer to fisherman. He bought boats, got into the restaurant business and eventually was involved in the creation of a small fleet of excursion watercraft that would bring pilgrims visiting the Holy Land out on the Sea of Galilee to experience where Jesus and His disciples once had been. Ido, seeing the potential for catering directly to Christian pilgrims, developed the concept of having a "bonfire" on the shore just outside the Decks restaurant, and pilgrims would watch as their St. Peter's fish -- the large talapia mentioned before -- were prepared on the fire, surrounded by placards all around celebrating the Galilee with statements from the New Testament.
"The whole business was based on the Christian clientele," Vered told me in a very quiet voice. "We would have busloads of pilgrims coming in to enjoy the atmosphere, the food. The fish was prepared on the fire, baked the way Jesus would have prepared His fish.
Benny Hinn once arrived with about 1,000 pilgrims some years ago, all crammed into the parking lot, for a sort of "tent meeting" and healing ceremony at Decks. "People came from all over. Even Jews," Vered said. "We had people with wheelchairs and with crutches and canes, all wanting Benny to touch them with the healing touch of Christ." She said this with a serene smile, recalling the event. It must have been a beautiful event for the pilgrims.
"We based the business on the story of Jesus in Galilee," she said. And they were beginning to see great results from it: more and more bus tours were stopping by Decks to experience the bonfire and enjoy St. Peter's fish. And when Pope John Paul II came to the Holy Land in 2000 for the jubilee year, Vered said that there was a palpable expectation that the flood gates would open and the business would really blossom.
"Then the Intifada destroyed it all," she said. This was the conflict between the Palestinians and Jews in Israel that would wreak havoc in the Holy Land for many years to come. The Intifada effectively shut down the flow of visitors to Israel; Christians once considering a lifetime visit postponed the trip or scrapped altogether for fear of getting caught in the crossfire. I recall pictures of Israelis bombed and Palestinians shot or wounded. That image put a strain on the country that I had never imagined before.
"We had to rethink what we were doing with our business," Vered said. "The buses filled with Christian pilgrims quit coming. We had to do something besides the Christian-based theme, and so we began to try to attract a Jewish clientele. We had to do it to survive."
From 2001 through 2005, everyone involved in the hospitality industry in the country had to tough it out. But in a climate in which the flow of visitors had slowed to a depressing trickle, Vered told me that restaurants would close and hotels would shut down entire floors to stay afloat. But somehow the Gross family enterprises hung in there, and beginning in 2006 -- well in the wake of the Intifada and three years into the Iraq war -- business was picking up. "The beginning of last year, 2006, we were having a real comeback," she said. "We were having some hope that we were at least on the right track somehow."
And then in the summer of 2006, Israel and Lebanon engaged in a war, and once again, the flow of visitors stopped.
"There was nothing," Vered said. It was like the Intifada all over again, but in a way it was worse because of the psychological effects on people who worked in the hospitality business. In the short time I've been in Israel, I've seen and heard the near desperation in peoples' voices, a real plaintive cry has been "now what?"
"I don't think we're ever going to get this back," to the way it was in the late 90s, Vered said, her voice now just a whisper as she looks off in the distance towards the lake. "I want to have hope, but it is difficult."
Before I left, I asked her why Benny had so many people with him. Why he needed security guards.
"Oh, there have been threats on his life," she said. "There are people here who are angry at him for leaving and for becoming a Christian." She said because he is so visible, he is worried about being the target of groups such as Al Queda, too.
"I hope he comes back. He says he will be back, but I just don't know."