Elias Chacour's "Blood Brothers"

In previous tours I've been privileged to hear Abuna (Father) Elias Chacour speak to my groups. Now that he has been appointed Archbishop of the Melkite Church, he doesn't have as much time to greet groups as he did in years past. If we don't have an audience with him, we will certainly meet others in the community of the Mar Elias Educational Institutions (MEII) who can speak about the joys and challenges of bringing quality education to the Palestinian community in Israel. If the term "Melkite" is puzzling to you, look for a future post in which I suggest ways you might familiarize yourself with the various Christian communities in the Holy Land. The MEII website provides this brief biography of Abuna Chacour:

"Elias Chacour was born November 29, 1939 in the village of Biram in Upper Galilee in Arab Palestine to a Palestinian Christian family, members of the Melkite Catholic Church, an Eastern Byzantine Church in communion with Rome.

At the age of eight years, he experienced the tragedy of his people. He was evicted, along with his whole village, by the Israeli authorities and became a deportee and a refugee in his own country, the Palestine of his birth. Because he remained in the country of his forefathers, he was granted citizenship of Israel when the state of Israel was created in 1948.

Father Elias Chacour came to Ibillin as a young priest in 1965. He quickly saw the lack of educational opportunities for Palestinian youth beyond the 8th grade. A vision of a school for all the children of Israel began to take shape in his mind. Today, this vision has become a reality in the village of Ibillin, Galilee.

In the early 1980s, on an empty hillside now known as the Mount of Light, a classroom building was begun. The newly formed high school moved from temporary quarters in the community center to the new building as soon as it was ready. The original High School has expended considerably, and the history and background speaks of the expansion on the Mount of Light.

Father Chacour has become an ambassador for non-violence and someone, who not only preaches, but lives the Sermon on the Mount. He travels very often between the Middle East and other countries around the world. In addition, hundreds of groups of visitors, fact-finding missions, and pilgrims have visited and continue to visit with him in Ibillin. He has received many International peace awards and been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize on three occasions. On March 10th, 1994 , Father Elias Chacour received the prestigious World Methodist Peace Award that has been presented in the past to such pilgrims for peace as former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the late Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat. On Feb 19th, 2001, Abuna was announced to be the recipient of the Niwano Peace Prize.

Abuna (Arabic for Father, the affectionate and respectful term given to their priests) is the author of two “best selling” books, Blood Brothers and We Belong to the Land."

I am recommending that all tour participants read Blood Brothers. Whet your appetite by reading the first 95 pages (CLICK HERE for the pdf file), and then order the book from your local bookstore or online. Amazon.ca or Amazon.com

Climbing Mt. Sinai

I've received a number of emails from people asking about the hike up Mt. Sinai (Jebel Musa in Arabic). I'll answer their questions about the hike (and more) in this post. I'd like to tell you why I think it's important to to visit Mt. Sinai and St. Catherine's Monastery.

(1) To get out of our minds once and for all the idea that the ancient Israelite sojourn in the wilderness must have been something like walking across the Sahara.

(2) To visit St. Catherine's Monastery after our descent from the mountain. The monastery has a rich collection of very, very old icons. It is famous also for its library "with the second finest collection of manuscripts in the world (after the Vatican), including 3,500 manuscripts and 2,000 scrolls. Most of these are in Greek and were copied by the monks of this monastery. In 1844, the German scholar Friedrich von Tischendorf discovered Codex Sinaiticus here, one of the earliest copies of the Bible (4th century A.D.)." (BiblePlaces.com). Tischendorf "took" or stole most of the manuscript on three occasions (1844, 1853, 1859). The photo to the left is courtesy of BiblePlaces.com (the others are my own). Click on the link to see more pictures and to read about Jebel Musa. There are also six good websites noted there. Visit them to learn more.

(3) To hear a lecture by Father Justin (originally from Texas), the librarian at the monastery. If he is at the monastery, it is very likely he will be able to give us a short talk. I've met him three times. Twice he spoke to my group inside the monastery library (a rare treat for a tour group). And once we met in the upscale mall next to the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. We were both attending the Society of Biblical Literature convention there a few years ago. Father Justin knows a great deal about the library, and about the Codex Sinaiticus in particular. The Codex (Latin for "book") now resides in four places: most of it is in the British Museum, and parts are in the Leipzig University Library, the National Library of Russia (St Petersburg), and St. Catherine's Monastery. There is now a wonderful project underway to digitize the entire manuscript. CLICK HERE to go to the Codex Sinaiticus Project website. There is much to see and to learn at this website.

(4) To climb Jebel Musa. The monastery sits at an elevation of 5150 feet (1570 meters). The mountain of Jebel Musa rises to 7498 feet in elevation (2286 m). So the climb is 2348 vertical feet. A steady walk takes between 2 and 3 hours (depending on one's vigor at 2:00 a.m.). Yes, we sleep for a few hours only to be rudely awakened for the night-time hike. If you prefer not to hike the whole way up, you can hire a camel to take you to the last tea house, from where you climb up the 750 stone steps to arrive before sunrise at the top of the mountain. Using walking sticks (collapsible) can be a great advantage for anyone looking for a little extra help and safety.

(5) To enter imaginatively, as pilgrims do, into the biblical text. After being on the top of the mountain with quite a few other people, it's a delight to be able to walk down alone, pondering the stories of Moses being hidden in a crevice after being refused the sight of God's glory (Exodus 33:12-23), and of the prophet Elijah who unexpectedly discerns God's presence in the "sound of sheer silence" (v 12, NRSV). The mountain is oddly famous in these stories for preserving a measure of divine mystery. Even though thousands climb out of touristic curiosity, I find myself each time amazed at the strangeness of this place that continues both to preserve a great heritage of faith, and to prevent a facile identification of the human with the divine.

Exploring the "Ancient Stones"

Visits to the Holy Land usually include countless "holy places." But what does it mean to call a place "holy"? I like to think of it as a place that, at one time or another, reflects life at the intersection of the divine and the human. Given that definition, are not all places holy?

On this tour we'll visit the requisite sites. And by considering the entire land as storied landscape, we'll find ourselves living imaginatively into the biblical story. Some say the biblical text "comes alive" while walking into ancient archaeological sites.

For texts to come alive, however, the sites and the landscape must also be brought to life. And there's hardly a better way to facilitate that than to read Jerome Murphy-O'Connor's book The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide (5th edition; Oxford, 2008). Of course, most tour groups are accompanied by an authorized guide. Yet with Murphy-O'Connor as our tutor we'll more easily recognize what we're looking at and we'll know how to ask intelligent questions.

Murphy-O'Connor has a section on every site we visit. Read him before visiting the site (bedtime reading the night before!). Refresh your memory of the biblical texts associated with that site. Take photographs at the site as you are inspired to do so. Then, when you get home, you'll be able to make that memorable slide show for friends and family, impressing them with all the pertinent information (thanks to Murphy-O'Connor). How else will you remember that the first Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem was dedicated on May 31, 339?

Palestinian Walks, with Raja Shehadeh

On this tour we will do our best to "walk the land." On at least four days we will get out of the bus and walk the hills and the wadis of Israel and Palestine. We walk into Wadi Qilt. It used to be possible for us to walk from St. George's Monastery to Jericho. I've done that a number of times with my groups. The last time I found myself in that famous wadi, at the end of which lies King Herod's summer palace and the bountiful, beautiful, and ancient city of Jericho, it was closed for "security reasons." Although I lament that we may not be able to take that walk this spring, we will hike Jebel Musa in the Sinai (so-called Mt. Sinai), scramble up to the waterfalls of Ein Gedi (where David hid from King Saul, 1 Samuel 23-24), and wander around Tel Dan and along the gorgeous headwaters of the Jordan River at Banyas (ancient Caesarea Phillipi).

The importance of walking the land was impressed on me recently when I read Raja Shehadeh's moving account (Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. Scribner, 2007). Raja Shehadeh is a passionate hill walker. He enjoys nothing more than heading out into the countryside that surrounds his home. But in recent years, his hikes have become less than bucolic and sometimes downright dangerous. That is because his home is Ramallah, on the Palestinian West Bank, and the landscape he traverses is now the site of a tense standoff between his fellow Palestinians and settlers newly arrived from Israel. In this original and evocative book, we accompany Shehadeh on six walks taken between 1978 and 2006.

Amid the many and varied tragedies of the Middle East, the loss of a simple pleasure such as the ability to roam the countryside at will may seem a minor matter. But in Palestinian Walks, Raja Shehadeh's elegy for his lost footpaths becomes a heartbreaking metaphor for the deprivations of an entire people estranged from their land.

You can read excerpts of his book. For parts of chapter 5, CLICK HERE, and for parts of chapter 6, CLICK HERE. Even better, CLICK HERE to watch an illustrated reading by Shehadeh himself.

The Land: Evangelicals and Israel

Many Christian tour groups to Israel and Palestine never seriously engage with the fact that there is a dispute about the land and its governance. They visit the holy sites, shop a while, and get out. Many group participants are led to believe that the way things are now is how they ought to be. They assume that the political arrangements, including the occupation of the West Bank, is decreed by Scripture. The fact is, the entire Middle East as we know it know is a modern construction. As a good friend put it to me recently, "Modern nation-states throughout the Middle East were born in a political context in which 'countries' as we know them were just emerging, stifled somewhat by the colonialism of the Europeans after World War 1, and the Ottomans before that. Europe initiated the idea of 'countries' at the treaty of Westfalia in the 1600's as a response to interminable warfare. It took to the middle of the 20th century for that model to cover the whole world." Christian understandings of the land of Israel, and its relationship to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have actually been rather diverse. Of course one can read entire books on the subject (and I will post a bibliography some day soon). A good place to start is the article by Gerald McDermott, "The Land: Evangelicals and Israel." The title of the article is slightly misleading, in that McDermott surveys more than "evangelical" approaches. CLICK HERE to read the article.