Father Majdi al Siryani, the head of the schools for the Latin Patriarchate of Israel, was filling us in on the particulars of the difficulties of living in the West Bank when he related a remarkable and sad, sad story. He held up a card that was about the size of a driver's license, and told us that very few Palestinians have access to it. It is a "Jerusalem" card, granting the holder permission to enter the holy city of Jerusalem.
"The thing to understand is this," he said. "Jerusalem is like our downtown here" for people from Bethlehem, Beit Jala and surrounding communities. "This is our city, too. But if you are Palestinian, once you turn 16, you no longer can just enter the city. You have to have one of these cards to get in." And it is rare indeed to get such a card. Father Majdi nods his head over to the two young staffers from the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation who have been showing us around Bethlehem and Beit Jala tody. He asks Ramzy: "Have you ever been to Jerusalem?" Ramzy shakes his no. Amazing. Same to Armani. Again, no. And as I mentioned before, the drive, without the obstacles of road blocks and 50-foot concrete barriers is no more than 15 or 20 minutes. Like the drive from Milford to Loveland. Or Park Ridge to downtown Chicago. Or Greenfield to Indianapolis. Nothing.
"So we started this program that would bring kids -- and these are kids under age 16 -- to Jerusalem for a day."
The following is an excerpt from "Living Stones, The Voice of the Holy Land Christians" Vol. 6, No. 1 about the program...
"...While most of their countrymen slept in late on a Monday morning holiday (in 2006), 750 of Palestine's youngest pilgrims woke with dawn to take part in HCEF's Second Annual 'Journey to Jerusalem.' For one fleeting afternoon, children from 52 of the Holy Land's parishes representing a wide spectrum of denominations and 13 different cities gathered together as one Christian body...
"...The children, ages 12-14, were chosen to participate in large part because at 16, when they are issued their official ID, access to the holy city and other Israeli-controlled territory becomes next to impossible. For many, the Journey to Jedrusalem was their first time visitng the holy sites. Sadly, it could very well be the last time for a good number of these children, too. The combination of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem, more permanent and restrictive checkpoints, and the Separation Wall's unchecked construction is — daily — putting Jerusalem beyond the reach of most Palestinians.
"This year, the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation extended a special invitation to five parishes from Nazareth, a Christian town within Israel's borders, to join the pilgrimage with their brothers and sisters in faith from the West Bank. While it is true that Arab Christians from Israel enjoy greater freedoms than their sister communities in Palestine, Father Suhail Khoury, a Nazarene parish priest, still lobbied political leaders for appropriate permissions. 'I was refused at first,' he said, 'but after many, many calls, we were able to get through.' ...As trying as the process was on Father Khoury, he pressed on because he recognized how important it was for his students to have this experience. 'Obviously, it's good to visit the holy places, but my students are also learning a lot about life in the West Bank, sharing and praying with other children...'
"Though late arriving, the group from Nazareth had much better luck than some other groups. Five adult leaders from Nablus were turned away at the city's checkpoint — a place from which cars from inside the city are not allowed to leave, nor is outside vehicular traffic allowed to enter. Additionally, the bus from Jenin was waylaid at the Bethany checkpoint south of Jerusalem and forced to travel halfway around the city to Hizma in the north. All told, those children spent more than six hours on a trip that would take little more than 90 minutes as the crow flies. Worst of all was the plight of the children from Ain Arik, whose plans were foiled when none of their adult leaders were issued permits to travel. Their absence kept HCEF from its previous goal of 900 pilgrims."
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Beit Jala, part 1
The entrance to the West Bank as at an opening on the Israeli security gate on what I'm told was one of the main roads between Jerusalem's Old City and Bethlehem. We were meeting with officials from the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation at the offices of the General Administration of Schools in the Latin Patriarchate in Beit Jala, a "neighborhood" within Bethlehem, which in turn is something of a suburb of Jerusalem, although that definition doesn't quit fit. The distance as the crow flies from our hotel, just outside the Old City, to the checkpoint between Israel and the Palestinian-controlled West Bank city of Bethlehem is only about 15 minutes when traffic is light.
There has been an uneasiness between our guide and us as we've worked out the details to go into the West Bank. The trip, which is being sponsored by the government of Israel, seeks to show us all the important Christian holy sites, and there is no escaping the importance of Bethlehem. And yet, in spite of all the care we've been given thus far, we have been strangely jettisoned here on this leg. The Ministry for Tourism has on the itinerary a simple note that this part of the trip is optional; our guide tells us we will have to take cabs to Manger Square at the Church of the Nativity. So when I advised her that I had a way for us to get transportation for our entire entourage with the HCEF, I sensed more than just indifference. There was some real foot-dragging going on. My gut tells me that we would have been worked on about the difficulties of the crossing, hoping that we would shrug and say that it wasn't worth the trouble. I had been emailing and talking to George Ghouttas of HCEF's Israel office for the past couple days, and finally the day before the departure, our guide asked how we planned to proceed. I advised her that all was in place; we would be picked up a 9 a.m. at the checkpoint. Interestingly, when it came down to brass tacks and we were engaged in the process of the "exchange," Rivka discovered that we would not have been allowed into the West Bank by the Palestinian Authority unless we had a contact person. So, if left to our own devises otherwise -- that is, if we had expected to take taxis into the holy city -- we would have been denied access. Was that the plan all along?
The checkpoint was strangely nondescript in one sense: there was no discernible buffer zone or "no man's land" between the Jerusalem neighborhood and the opening in the wall. We simply made a slight jog in the road, and there looming ahead was the massive concrete barrier, snaking away from the checkpoint in an outwardly-moving "V" from the entrance, a parking lot that was situated between Israeli soldiers and members of the Palestinian Authority security force. This was where our "exchange" would take place. We arrived about five minutes early, and we had a chance to look around. A couple of us whipped out our cameras to take photos: there was a tunnel made of fencing that Palestinians wanting to gain access to Jerusalem to work had to pass through. We couldn't see the area where Israeli police would interview people crossing the border, but I spied a woman at the gate who'd already gone through the security check who now was being grilled by a soldier at the gate. A glance to our guide and driver provided no information, so I figured she was getting the once over one more time before heading to town. At first Rivka told us to stand right by our van; don't move, she'd said. But after calling our contact, Ramzy from HCEF, and finding that he would be a few minutes, we were able to explore a little more. I recalled my days back in the late 70s patrolling the old East-West German border checkpoint areas. It was -- and is -- all deadly serious stuff. The guard tower here on the road to Bethlehem was very similar to the East German watch towers of the Cold War days. Soldiers manning the tower looked at the activities below. You knew there was someone who could man a weapon at the ready, if they weren't already. I thought we would have to go through some screening process, but because we were members of the American media, we were spared that process altogether. We had only to wait for Rimzy to pick us up and whisk us away.
Finally, Ramzy and the administrative manager for the HCEF Beit Jala office, Alena, arrived with a van and driver, a huge Chevrolet diesel equipped to hold 10 people or so; just a big more than we needed, but certainly plenty to do the job. We worked out the details with Rivka: we would be out until about 12:30 or 1 p.m.; if we went later, we'd call her. And off we went.
George Ghouttas was out of the country, in Jordan, and he'd given the task of giving us the really, really quick tour of Bethlehem to Rimzy, a thin, 20-something fellow who was George's No. 2 man in Beit Jala. I had made contact with HCEF by way of Father Rob Waller, pastor of St. Andrew/St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Milford, Ohio, part of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Father Rob was intrinsically involved in working with the HCEF and had been the keystone player in the states in creating a program that linked children in the Latin Patriarchate in Israel with students in the states, and students from Milford and Beit Jala were in the midst of the pilot program.
We drove on winding, hilltop roads through Bethlehem, and soon Rimzy pointed out that we were in Beit Jala; I wouldn't have known the difference unless he would have mentioned it. Everything blended together, and we still were very close to Jerusalem. We pulled into a narrow driveway where there was a squat, one-story concrete block building. Behind that building there was a schoolyard, and we had arrived just in time to hear th children playing and running around. Turns out these were kindergartners in a program that had just recently been launched. We didn't see them, but we could hear them: to me it sounded like the voices of blissful joy, of little children who probably don't fully appreciate the situation into which they've been born.
We met Father Majdi al Siryani, a citizen of Jordan who had spent several years in Dearborn, Mich. He looked to be in his mid-to-late 40s, exuding a kind of forceful energy gained from working out. Father Majdi is a Christian Arab, one of the 30,000 or so Christians living in the Bethlehem region, where Christians make up perhaps 40 percent of the overall population. Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour make up three townships nearby where there was a concentration of Christians. Christians in the West Bank also live in Ramala and Nablus; and, of course, Nazareth is the largest Christian city in Israel. It all seems very strange that in the land where Jesus ministered, died and raised up from the dead that His followers are a tiny minority today. We're told overall that Christians make up less than 3 percent of the population here. So it is critical for the Church to insure that the diaspora of Christians doesn't worsen. The work of Father Majdi, the HCEF and every other Church-related initiative here remain critically important for that mission.
"We are a tiny minority here," Father Majdi said. "But this is a terribly important Christian community." When you look at the region from the outside, "every nation recognizes and understands the importance of the Arab presence here," and the Christian Arab community has been in the region since the time of Jesus. "Arabs are not aliens," he said. "We've been here for thousands of years."
Father Majdi explained that from the beginning of the papacy of Pope Pius IX, there has been a ministry to Christian children in the Holy Land, and from that era, the Latin Patriarchate for Schools emerged. The idea, quite simply, is to insure wherever there is a parish in the patriarchate, there also is a school. "It's the place for a good education, but it's also how we catechize the kids."
He had logged some time as a parish priest in Los Angeles, and he noted that the parish-school package here was the same you'll find in the states. The exception is that these schools receive virtually all their funding from outside sources, much (perhaps the lion's share) from the United States. The differences lie in the importance the Church plays in the lives of these Arab Christians. "Essentially, the parish takes care of those things in life that the government doesn't," and with the limitations of the Palestinian Authority to do much, that means that often health care, education, housing for the elderly and the other functions that you might expect the state to provide are addressed by the Church.
"The extended family, the tribe, also takes care of the people," he said. So there is the family, the tribe and the Church all at work in this supporting role. And it leads to a mutually supporting atmosphere that he said is not visible to people on the outside. In fact, sometimes people believe there are conflicts galore. "Because Bethlehem is Christian and the surrounding communities are Muslim, there is a perception that there are conflicts between us. But that is not true. We all get along..."
There has been an uneasiness between our guide and us as we've worked out the details to go into the West Bank. The trip, which is being sponsored by the government of Israel, seeks to show us all the important Christian holy sites, and there is no escaping the importance of Bethlehem. And yet, in spite of all the care we've been given thus far, we have been strangely jettisoned here on this leg. The Ministry for Tourism has on the itinerary a simple note that this part of the trip is optional; our guide tells us we will have to take cabs to Manger Square at the Church of the Nativity. So when I advised her that I had a way for us to get transportation for our entire entourage with the HCEF, I sensed more than just indifference. There was some real foot-dragging going on. My gut tells me that we would have been worked on about the difficulties of the crossing, hoping that we would shrug and say that it wasn't worth the trouble. I had been emailing and talking to George Ghouttas of HCEF's Israel office for the past couple days, and finally the day before the departure, our guide asked how we planned to proceed. I advised her that all was in place; we would be picked up a 9 a.m. at the checkpoint. Interestingly, when it came down to brass tacks and we were engaged in the process of the "exchange," Rivka discovered that we would not have been allowed into the West Bank by the Palestinian Authority unless we had a contact person. So, if left to our own devises otherwise -- that is, if we had expected to take taxis into the holy city -- we would have been denied access. Was that the plan all along?
The checkpoint was strangely nondescript in one sense: there was no discernible buffer zone or "no man's land" between the Jerusalem neighborhood and the opening in the wall. We simply made a slight jog in the road, and there looming ahead was the massive concrete barrier, snaking away from the checkpoint in an outwardly-moving "V" from the entrance, a parking lot that was situated between Israeli soldiers and members of the Palestinian Authority security force. This was where our "exchange" would take place. We arrived about five minutes early, and we had a chance to look around. A couple of us whipped out our cameras to take photos: there was a tunnel made of fencing that Palestinians wanting to gain access to Jerusalem to work had to pass through. We couldn't see the area where Israeli police would interview people crossing the border, but I spied a woman at the gate who'd already gone through the security check who now was being grilled by a soldier at the gate. A glance to our guide and driver provided no information, so I figured she was getting the once over one more time before heading to town. At first Rivka told us to stand right by our van; don't move, she'd said. But after calling our contact, Ramzy from HCEF, and finding that he would be a few minutes, we were able to explore a little more. I recalled my days back in the late 70s patrolling the old East-West German border checkpoint areas. It was -- and is -- all deadly serious stuff. The guard tower here on the road to Bethlehem was very similar to the East German watch towers of the Cold War days. Soldiers manning the tower looked at the activities below. You knew there was someone who could man a weapon at the ready, if they weren't already. I thought we would have to go through some screening process, but because we were members of the American media, we were spared that process altogether. We had only to wait for Rimzy to pick us up and whisk us away.
Finally, Ramzy and the administrative manager for the HCEF Beit Jala office, Alena, arrived with a van and driver, a huge Chevrolet diesel equipped to hold 10 people or so; just a big more than we needed, but certainly plenty to do the job. We worked out the details with Rivka: we would be out until about 12:30 or 1 p.m.; if we went later, we'd call her. And off we went.
George Ghouttas was out of the country, in Jordan, and he'd given the task of giving us the really, really quick tour of Bethlehem to Rimzy, a thin, 20-something fellow who was George's No. 2 man in Beit Jala. I had made contact with HCEF by way of Father Rob Waller, pastor of St. Andrew/St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Parish in Milford, Ohio, part of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. Father Rob was intrinsically involved in working with the HCEF and had been the keystone player in the states in creating a program that linked children in the Latin Patriarchate in Israel with students in the states, and students from Milford and Beit Jala were in the midst of the pilot program.
We drove on winding, hilltop roads through Bethlehem, and soon Rimzy pointed out that we were in Beit Jala; I wouldn't have known the difference unless he would have mentioned it. Everything blended together, and we still were very close to Jerusalem. We pulled into a narrow driveway where there was a squat, one-story concrete block building. Behind that building there was a schoolyard, and we had arrived just in time to hear th children playing and running around. Turns out these were kindergartners in a program that had just recently been launched. We didn't see them, but we could hear them: to me it sounded like the voices of blissful joy, of little children who probably don't fully appreciate the situation into which they've been born.
We met Father Majdi al Siryani, a citizen of Jordan who had spent several years in Dearborn, Mich. He looked to be in his mid-to-late 40s, exuding a kind of forceful energy gained from working out. Father Majdi is a Christian Arab, one of the 30,000 or so Christians living in the Bethlehem region, where Christians make up perhaps 40 percent of the overall population. Bethlehem, Beit Jala and Beit Sahour make up three townships nearby where there was a concentration of Christians. Christians in the West Bank also live in Ramala and Nablus; and, of course, Nazareth is the largest Christian city in Israel. It all seems very strange that in the land where Jesus ministered, died and raised up from the dead that His followers are a tiny minority today. We're told overall that Christians make up less than 3 percent of the population here. So it is critical for the Church to insure that the diaspora of Christians doesn't worsen. The work of Father Majdi, the HCEF and every other Church-related initiative here remain critically important for that mission.
"We are a tiny minority here," Father Majdi said. "But this is a terribly important Christian community." When you look at the region from the outside, "every nation recognizes and understands the importance of the Arab presence here," and the Christian Arab community has been in the region since the time of Jesus. "Arabs are not aliens," he said. "We've been here for thousands of years."
Father Majdi explained that from the beginning of the papacy of Pope Pius IX, there has been a ministry to Christian children in the Holy Land, and from that era, the Latin Patriarchate for Schools emerged. The idea, quite simply, is to insure wherever there is a parish in the patriarchate, there also is a school. "It's the place for a good education, but it's also how we catechize the kids."
He had logged some time as a parish priest in Los Angeles, and he noted that the parish-school package here was the same you'll find in the states. The exception is that these schools receive virtually all their funding from outside sources, much (perhaps the lion's share) from the United States. The differences lie in the importance the Church plays in the lives of these Arab Christians. "Essentially, the parish takes care of those things in life that the government doesn't," and with the limitations of the Palestinian Authority to do much, that means that often health care, education, housing for the elderly and the other functions that you might expect the state to provide are addressed by the Church.
"The extended family, the tribe, also takes care of the people," he said. So there is the family, the tribe and the Church all at work in this supporting role. And it leads to a mutually supporting atmosphere that he said is not visible to people on the outside. In fact, sometimes people believe there are conflicts galore. "Because Bethlehem is Christian and the surrounding communities are Muslim, there is a perception that there are conflicts between us. But that is not true. We all get along..."
Monday, March 5, 2007
Grenzpolezei
We zig zagged through the narrow streets of Beit Jala, a huge neighborhood that is part of Bethlehem, the holy city that is a suburb of Jerusalem. Part of the West Bank, Bethlehem is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, and therefore is territory that the government of Israel has partioned off with high concrete walls capped with circular strings of concertina wire. Our itinerary for the day allowed for an optional tour of Bethlehem, but because Israeli citizens are no longer allowed inside Palestinian controlled land, we were on our own. Thankfully, we were escorted by folks from the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation. They were offering us firsthand glimpses of life in the West Bank, as much as can be seen in half a day.
They wanted to show us an apartment that they said was one of the only buildings situated up close to the new wall -- the wall is about three years old, they told us. My mind's eye didn't prepare me for the sight, though. We emerged from one of the main streets onto a side road that led downhill to a neighborhood that had been pretty much eradicated when the wall was put into position. The wall itself is made of connecting slabs of concrete that look to be maybe five feet wide and Lord knows how high, maybe 50 feet or more. Interspersed at critical junctions along the wall the Israelis have constructed round watch towers like you will see on prison walls, an appropriate comparison, since the Palestinian Christians we talked to today say that life in Bethlehem and Beit Jala is like living in a prison. I was instantly reminded, though, of the watch towers that used to hover over the old East-German border. In my Army days, I used to patrol that border, escorted by the West German border police, known as the Grenzpolezei. As I got out of the van, I peered up to the watch tower that overlooked the apartment, wondering how many soldiers were watching us, if they were photographing us, if they were aiming at us.
The apartment building was a shock to see. Surrounded on three sides by the wall, it appeared to be an abberation in the planning on the wall's route, the concrete divider here bowing out like an inverted omega symbol with the building set in its middle. The HCEF folks had called one of the apartment dwellers in advance, and so we already were expected. We weren't going to sit for coffee, which is the Arab way (these were all Arab Christians we were visiting. In fact, Bethlehem's population is about 40 percent Christian). Instead, we were going to say hello, look around and then depart. There was some concern that if we stayed too long we would cause suspicion and might alert an army patrol which might then come to the apartment. We didn't want to cause these people any difficulties. So we went up four flights of steps to one of two apartments, where we were greeted by a grandmother and her three grandsons. It was a beautiful apartment inside, but when you peered out the windows or stepped out onto their terrace, the view was not of this world. Everywhere we looked, the wall loomed even higher than the building, the concertina wire a menacing metal kudzu that grows wild in these parts. I spied a security camera, so I moved to another part of the building to get a view. After only a few moments, we shook hands and walked back down the steps.
"Would you like to walk around the building?" our HCEF host asked. Of course. We explored the DMZ that was actually quite narrow, graffiti festooning the walls with messages that seemed benign and out of place, such as "Jesus Loves You," among others. This was an uneasy moment, so we didn't linger, but as I walked towards the van to leave, I looked back up at the watch tower that was placed to monitor this sector of the wall. Back in the day, when I patrolled the German border, we would occasionally wave to our friends across the border, figuring that sooner or later we'd make their East German mug shot file. I was tempted, but I decided not to wave. Either I'm older and wiser, or I was concerned that, this time, I might actually be in danger.
They wanted to show us an apartment that they said was one of the only buildings situated up close to the new wall -- the wall is about three years old, they told us. My mind's eye didn't prepare me for the sight, though. We emerged from one of the main streets onto a side road that led downhill to a neighborhood that had been pretty much eradicated when the wall was put into position. The wall itself is made of connecting slabs of concrete that look to be maybe five feet wide and Lord knows how high, maybe 50 feet or more. Interspersed at critical junctions along the wall the Israelis have constructed round watch towers like you will see on prison walls, an appropriate comparison, since the Palestinian Christians we talked to today say that life in Bethlehem and Beit Jala is like living in a prison. I was instantly reminded, though, of the watch towers that used to hover over the old East-German border. In my Army days, I used to patrol that border, escorted by the West German border police, known as the Grenzpolezei. As I got out of the van, I peered up to the watch tower that overlooked the apartment, wondering how many soldiers were watching us, if they were photographing us, if they were aiming at us.
The apartment building was a shock to see. Surrounded on three sides by the wall, it appeared to be an abberation in the planning on the wall's route, the concrete divider here bowing out like an inverted omega symbol with the building set in its middle. The HCEF folks had called one of the apartment dwellers in advance, and so we already were expected. We weren't going to sit for coffee, which is the Arab way (these were all Arab Christians we were visiting. In fact, Bethlehem's population is about 40 percent Christian). Instead, we were going to say hello, look around and then depart. There was some concern that if we stayed too long we would cause suspicion and might alert an army patrol which might then come to the apartment. We didn't want to cause these people any difficulties. So we went up four flights of steps to one of two apartments, where we were greeted by a grandmother and her three grandsons. It was a beautiful apartment inside, but when you peered out the windows or stepped out onto their terrace, the view was not of this world. Everywhere we looked, the wall loomed even higher than the building, the concertina wire a menacing metal kudzu that grows wild in these parts. I spied a security camera, so I moved to another part of the building to get a view. After only a few moments, we shook hands and walked back down the steps.
"Would you like to walk around the building?" our HCEF host asked. Of course. We explored the DMZ that was actually quite narrow, graffiti festooning the walls with messages that seemed benign and out of place, such as "Jesus Loves You," among others. This was an uneasy moment, so we didn't linger, but as I walked towards the van to leave, I looked back up at the watch tower that was placed to monitor this sector of the wall. Back in the day, when I patrolled the German border, we would occasionally wave to our friends across the border, figuring that sooner or later we'd make their East German mug shot file. I was tempted, but I decided not to wave. Either I'm older and wiser, or I was concerned that, this time, I might actually be in danger.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
The Fresh Prince of Nazareth
Tareq Shihada lives, eats and breathes Nazareth, that city perched atop a set of hills that overlooks the Galilee valley and is visible from all directions for miles around. The city where Jesus Christ grew up, lived with his parents, Mary and Joseph.
Shihada, who is the director of the Nazareth Cultural and Tourism Association, likes to tell people when they ask him where he is from that "I am a Nazarene." Not THE Nazarene, of course. But you get the idea that he loves this place. And for good reason.
Approaching Israel's largest Arab city from the west, white buildings capping the hillside give the city an almost magical glow as you see it from a great distance. We could see the new portions of the city for nearly half an hour before we began the climb up hill to where we would meet Shihada for lunch, Muscular, jocular and continually in motion, the Israeli Arab took turns fielding our questions and answering his cell phone, individualized ring tones making me wish I had his cell phone list.
Shihada is unabashedly pro-Nazareth, and he says he often finds himself in a position in which he has to swim against the current when in comes to dealing with government officials in Jerusalem. He's notched a few years in politics as well, serving on the equivalent to the Nazareth city council. And today, he says his primary concern is making Nazareth a critical stop for pilgrims coming to the Holy Land, not only because we believe this is where Jesus lived most of his life, but because the business generated from venerated guests will help insure that the Arab Christians and Muslims living in the southern Galilee city will not just survive but thrive.
"I try to tell groups that Nazareth is a great place to base a visit to the Holy Land," he said. "We are very close to the Sea of Galilee" and surrounding sacred sights. "And Nazareth is a destination in itself that we believe people should take advantage of for a couple of days." Now, he explains, pilgrims will stop for perhaps a half day to visit the Church of the Annunciation, a huge church built at the end of the 1960s that was dedicated by Pope Paul VI (It is said to be the largest church in Israel). Celebrating the spot where it is said the angel Gabriel that God the Father had chosen Mary to be the mother of His son, the current church is built over an Byzantine church, the remains of which are enclosed by the modern church. At the center of the new structure is the grotto where it is said Mary received the news. In total there are at least 30 churches, monasteries and convents in Nazareth, and the Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Israel, Bishop Giancinto-Boulos Marcuzzo, makes his home here as well.
At a meeting Shihada had set up for us with Bishop Marcuzzo, the prelate told us that rather than allowing the Holy Land to become an archeological repository of Christian artifacts, the Holy Land must remain a distinct part of the Christian world, and therefore it is imperative to insure that Christians, Arabs and Jews all can strive to live in some sort of harmony.
And Shihada sees the best way of doing that is to insure that residents of the holy city, Christian, Arab and Jew alike, are allowed to make enough of a living that they can indeed stay and live in the land where they, like Jesus did, are able to enjoy their homes.
But an example of the difficulties that have been encountered illustrates the frustrations Shihada sometimes has to overcome. For years, he said, he has been telling the Israel Ministry of Tourism that Nazareth has enough interests for pilgrims, and it is situated in such a critical way in the lower Galilee, that it should be marketed more strongly as the complete destination. That means people coming to Nazareth, unloading from tour buses into one of the major hotels there, visiting the holy sites and staying overnight, then exploring the region again the next day. "I can't tell you how many times I've given them that message," he said. Then, a couple years ago, the government hired the U.S. firm Ernst & Young to conduct a study for the ministry -- costing more than a million bucks -- and the American company reported back with the same conclusion Shihada had. "It would have saved them lots of money if they'd listened to me," he said, shrugging.
Still, Shihada says he looks forward to the day when the conflicts have ended in the Middle East, when borders are open for all, and people can move about as they did hundreds and thousands of years ago. Then, he said, Nazareth will benefit from its place on the map.
"If you look, we are only two hours away from Damascus; two hours away from Jerusalem; two hours away from Beirut. That puts us right in the middle. Someday, that is going to be a good place to be."
Shihada, who is the director of the Nazareth Cultural and Tourism Association, likes to tell people when they ask him where he is from that "I am a Nazarene." Not THE Nazarene, of course. But you get the idea that he loves this place. And for good reason.
Approaching Israel's largest Arab city from the west, white buildings capping the hillside give the city an almost magical glow as you see it from a great distance. We could see the new portions of the city for nearly half an hour before we began the climb up hill to where we would meet Shihada for lunch, Muscular, jocular and continually in motion, the Israeli Arab took turns fielding our questions and answering his cell phone, individualized ring tones making me wish I had his cell phone list.
Shihada is unabashedly pro-Nazareth, and he says he often finds himself in a position in which he has to swim against the current when in comes to dealing with government officials in Jerusalem. He's notched a few years in politics as well, serving on the equivalent to the Nazareth city council. And today, he says his primary concern is making Nazareth a critical stop for pilgrims coming to the Holy Land, not only because we believe this is where Jesus lived most of his life, but because the business generated from venerated guests will help insure that the Arab Christians and Muslims living in the southern Galilee city will not just survive but thrive.
"I try to tell groups that Nazareth is a great place to base a visit to the Holy Land," he said. "We are very close to the Sea of Galilee" and surrounding sacred sights. "And Nazareth is a destination in itself that we believe people should take advantage of for a couple of days." Now, he explains, pilgrims will stop for perhaps a half day to visit the Church of the Annunciation, a huge church built at the end of the 1960s that was dedicated by Pope Paul VI (It is said to be the largest church in Israel). Celebrating the spot where it is said the angel Gabriel that God the Father had chosen Mary to be the mother of His son, the current church is built over an Byzantine church, the remains of which are enclosed by the modern church. At the center of the new structure is the grotto where it is said Mary received the news. In total there are at least 30 churches, monasteries and convents in Nazareth, and the Latin Patriarchal Vicar for Israel, Bishop Giancinto-Boulos Marcuzzo, makes his home here as well.
At a meeting Shihada had set up for us with Bishop Marcuzzo, the prelate told us that rather than allowing the Holy Land to become an archeological repository of Christian artifacts, the Holy Land must remain a distinct part of the Christian world, and therefore it is imperative to insure that Christians, Arabs and Jews all can strive to live in some sort of harmony.
And Shihada sees the best way of doing that is to insure that residents of the holy city, Christian, Arab and Jew alike, are allowed to make enough of a living that they can indeed stay and live in the land where they, like Jesus did, are able to enjoy their homes.
But an example of the difficulties that have been encountered illustrates the frustrations Shihada sometimes has to overcome. For years, he said, he has been telling the Israel Ministry of Tourism that Nazareth has enough interests for pilgrims, and it is situated in such a critical way in the lower Galilee, that it should be marketed more strongly as the complete destination. That means people coming to Nazareth, unloading from tour buses into one of the major hotels there, visiting the holy sites and staying overnight, then exploring the region again the next day. "I can't tell you how many times I've given them that message," he said. Then, a couple years ago, the government hired the U.S. firm Ernst & Young to conduct a study for the ministry -- costing more than a million bucks -- and the American company reported back with the same conclusion Shihada had. "It would have saved them lots of money if they'd listened to me," he said, shrugging.
Still, Shihada says he looks forward to the day when the conflicts have ended in the Middle East, when borders are open for all, and people can move about as they did hundreds and thousands of years ago. Then, he said, Nazareth will benefit from its place on the map.
"If you look, we are only two hours away from Damascus; two hours away from Jerusalem; two hours away from Beirut. That puts us right in the middle. Someday, that is going to be a good place to be."
Romanian pilgrims on the" Jesus Boat"
Several years ago, a couple of guys living around the Sea of Galilee made the find of a lifetime: they discovered nearly intact a Sea of Galilee fishing boat that ultimately was dated to the first century A.D., the kind of craft that St. Peter, a resident of the lakeside village of Capernum, would have used to make a living. These two guys were Galilean versions of the people you see on beaches with metal detectors: When the waters of the lake recided, they'd put on their Wellies and wade through the mud and see what artifacts they might find. The thinking is that the boat probably was sunk during the Jewish rebellian against the Romans around 70 A.D., and that it sunk deeply into the lakebed's sediments, which somehow preserved the craft. It was lifted from the waters by the Israel Antiquities Authority, and finally after years of preservation work, it was placed in a museum at one end of the lake in a specially designed holding facility that also serves as a museum where it can be viewed.
One of the offshoots of the discovery was the entreprenurial creation of excursion boats, manufactured in Egypt, that are several times larger than the original boat, but modeled after it. The name "Jesus Boat" was trademarked by one of these Galilee businessmen, and today, you can take a boat ride from the Galilee port of Tiberias to the museum -- a 30-minute ride that also allows you to see the sights Christ and His apostles would have seen.
We launched from Tiberias on one of the boats -- that day there appeared to be half a dozen or so such craft on the water. As soon as each boat was launched, we could hear the singing of hymns from pilgrims as they rejoiced being on the holy sea. We happened to be on the boat with another group, members of the Philadelphia Romanian Assembly of God from Portland, Oregon. Virtually everyone on board was visiting the Holy Land for the first time except for their pastor, Nicki Pop, a 70-something dynamo of a man with a full shock of white hair and hands the size of ham hocks. He led his group in prayer and song, and before anyone from our group could grab a seat, members of the Portland church buttonholed each of us to learn if we had accepted Christ as our personal savior, and where were we from in the states. When I explained to Nicki that I was a Catholic from Cincinnati, he let go the questions of faith, instead telling me his life story. As a 19-year-old, he had been arrested in Romania by the Communist government, and "only by the work of Jesus Christ" was he saved from certain death. He was jailed for a couple years, and somehow found his way to the United States and Portland. As immigration patterns often go, word got out that Romanians were settling in Oregon, and soon there was an entire community there. We chatted for much of the boat ride, sang a couple songs that we could, like "Amazing Grace," although they were singing in Romanian. Everyone from our group was pleasantly engaged throughout the ride, and finally we docked at the museum pier.
The rest of the day, we ran into our Romanian friends as we explored the Galilee region.
One of the offshoots of the discovery was the entreprenurial creation of excursion boats, manufactured in Egypt, that are several times larger than the original boat, but modeled after it. The name "Jesus Boat" was trademarked by one of these Galilee businessmen, and today, you can take a boat ride from the Galilee port of Tiberias to the museum -- a 30-minute ride that also allows you to see the sights Christ and His apostles would have seen.
We launched from Tiberias on one of the boats -- that day there appeared to be half a dozen or so such craft on the water. As soon as each boat was launched, we could hear the singing of hymns from pilgrims as they rejoiced being on the holy sea. We happened to be on the boat with another group, members of the Philadelphia Romanian Assembly of God from Portland, Oregon. Virtually everyone on board was visiting the Holy Land for the first time except for their pastor, Nicki Pop, a 70-something dynamo of a man with a full shock of white hair and hands the size of ham hocks. He led his group in prayer and song, and before anyone from our group could grab a seat, members of the Portland church buttonholed each of us to learn if we had accepted Christ as our personal savior, and where were we from in the states. When I explained to Nicki that I was a Catholic from Cincinnati, he let go the questions of faith, instead telling me his life story. As a 19-year-old, he had been arrested in Romania by the Communist government, and "only by the work of Jesus Christ" was he saved from certain death. He was jailed for a couple years, and somehow found his way to the United States and Portland. As immigration patterns often go, word got out that Romanians were settling in Oregon, and soon there was an entire community there. We chatted for much of the boat ride, sang a couple songs that we could, like "Amazing Grace," although they were singing in Romanian. Everyone from our group was pleasantly engaged throughout the ride, and finally we docked at the museum pier.
The rest of the day, we ran into our Romanian friends as we explored the Galilee region.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
The Rocky Road to Bethlehem
We've learned that although our itinerary includes an "optional visit to Bethlehem," due to constraints placed on travel for citizens of Israel, our guide is not allowed to take us into the holy city, which lies inside territory that is controlled by the Palestinian Authority. They will take us to the checkpoint, but we will have to make our own way to and through the city once we've cleared the barrier. There is no animosity to or from our guide about this; she is simply obeying her country's law.
So, I've contacted the Holy Land Christian Ecumentical Foundation, and they will assist us when we enter the West Bank -- a hundred-thousand thanks to Father Rob Waller at St. Andrew Parish in Milford, Ohio, for helping me link up with HCEF before departure. We will arrive Monday morning at the checkpoint, and our friends from HCEF will take us into Bethlehem for a visit to the people at Beit Jala, which has a twinning relationship with St. Andrew/St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parishes in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. If time permits, a journalist from Atlanta will meet with a sister parish partner for that archdiocese in Bethlehem. Once again, I am amazed at the grass-roots power of these partnerships.
I will post comments on the visit Monday evening, Jerusalem time (should be on the web by late afternoon Eastern Time in the U.S.). A story and photos from the visit, if all goes as planned, will appear in a late March edition of The Catholic Telegraph.
So, I've contacted the Holy Land Christian Ecumentical Foundation, and they will assist us when we enter the West Bank -- a hundred-thousand thanks to Father Rob Waller at St. Andrew Parish in Milford, Ohio, for helping me link up with HCEF before departure. We will arrive Monday morning at the checkpoint, and our friends from HCEF will take us into Bethlehem for a visit to the people at Beit Jala, which has a twinning relationship with St. Andrew/St. Elizabeth Ann Seton parishes in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. If time permits, a journalist from Atlanta will meet with a sister parish partner for that archdiocese in Bethlehem. Once again, I am amazed at the grass-roots power of these partnerships.
I will post comments on the visit Monday evening, Jerusalem time (should be on the web by late afternoon Eastern Time in the U.S.). A story and photos from the visit, if all goes as planned, will appear in a late March edition of The Catholic Telegraph.
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."
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."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)