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Jason Lowcher ’10 (Washington, N.J.) is majoring in international affairs. This past summer Lowcher spent three weeks in Israel learning about and experiencing aspects of Israeli government, culture, and religion. Along with touring a wide range of areas, Lowcher met with politicians and religious leaders in an attempt to establish and strengthen a long-lasting relationship between the Jewish people and the Christian church. The following is a first-hand account of his experiences in Israel.
This summer, I had the awesome privilege of spending three weeks in Israel with a Christian ministry. I went with an organization called Eagles’ Wings, a ministry whose goal is to build long-lasting relations between the Jewish people and the Christian church based on common biblical heritage. The program that I participated in was tailored specifically for college students. Titled the Israel Experience, this program brought together 18 students from secular and Christian campuses all across the United States and Germany, ultimately drawn together by our common faith in Jesus Christ and by our desire to see Jewish-Christian relations continue to grow.
As an educational trip, this program centered around providing college students with an “on-the-field” perspective of not only Israeli democracy and its role in the broader Middle East, but also an up-close account of the Arab-Israeli conflict through several viewpoints: from Orthodox to secular Jewish perspectives, from Arab-Christian to Arab-Muslim perspectives, and so forth.
We also met with several different Christian as well as Jewish-Christian organizations in Israel who have been instrumental in building long-lasting relations between the state of Israel, the Jewish and Arab peoples living in Israel, and Christians from all over the world, including those in the United States. Besides the myriad of organizations we visited, we also visited several kibbutzim and witnessed what it was like to live in this kind of communal setting.
We were also able to interact with many high members of the Israeli government, most notably, three members of the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset) along with the Senior Deputy Major of Jerusalem. We also met with several prominent members of the worldwide Orthodox Jewish community, most notably Chief Rabbi Yoni Metzger, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem and all of Israel.
Of particular interest to me, we met with the chief coordinator of Israel’s counterterrorism network as well as with some representatives from the Mossad. We talked about Israel’s stance in the Middle East and of the critical, dangerous possibility of Iran completing a nuclear weapons program and threatening not only the security of Israel and the whole the Middle East, but also the United States as well.
In addition, we traveled to various universities and hospitals throughout the land, getting unique perspectives on the value of education in Israel as well as tremendous insight into some of the world’s most innovative technologies implemented in hospitals for the purpose of treating victims of terrorism. I remember one time where our team visited the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center, a multipurpose medical center located on the outskirts of Tel Aviv.
As Israel’s largest hospital, Arab and Jewish patients receive some of the best medical care in the world from this institution, ranging from a well-respected maternity ward to a state-of-the-art terrorist victim trauma center to extremely efficient outpatient facilities. Undoubtedly, we were witnessing just a small part of what Israel was contributing to the betterment of the world, not only in improving counterterrorism programs, but also in the medicinal breakthroughs that make this Middle-Eastern state one of the world’s leading advancers of human health and services.
Besides a “behind-the-scenes” perspective of Israeli governmental affairs and an intimate look at the role of religion and cultural traditions in modern Jewish life, we also spoke with many members of the Christian communities and had the opportunity to explore Arab-Christian and Arab-Muslim relations in the context of West Bank politics. For example, when we toured the city of Bethlehem, the very first site we visited was the Church of the Nativity.
The building itself was immaculate. Along the vaulted ceilings and walls of the main sanctuary, frescoes and icons dating back to the time of Constantine the Great were in the process of being restored to their original glory. The smell of incense permeated the atmosphere of the church, adding an element of the supernatural to the historical. Bejeweled crosses and monumental ornaments of gold and silver, given as tribute from some of the earliest Christian-European monarchs, hung from the ceiling. Painted wooden facades canvassed in gold embroidery stood at the very back of the main sanctuary as visual narratives of the birth of Jesus.
We eavesdropped on a Syrian Orthodox liturgical service, hearing the melodious language of Syriac – an ancient Near-Eastern language that is very close to the original biblical language of Aramaic- chanted among the pious congregants. In the context of this monumental structure and these religious services, we met with officials of the Syrian, Greek, and Russian Orthodox communities as well as with the Catholic community in Bethlehem and heard their personal stories of the history of Christian-Muslim relations. We also met with Arab Christians living in Bethlehem and Nazareth and heard firsthand accounts of how their lives have been impacted by the Arab-Israeli conflict, most notably in how the Arab-Christian minority has been treated by the Arab-Muslim majority as a whole and vice versa.
On a more personal note, Israel had such a lasting impact upon my own faith in Jesus Christ. The biblical stories that I have read throughout my life that have shaped my beliefs have become even more real to me after this Israel trip. We saw the greenery and witnessed the tranquility of the Sea of Galilee, a place of breathtaking natural beauty in and of itself, and also the place where Jesus and his first disciples began their ministry. We viewed Golgotha, the place where Jesus died on the cross. We saw the Garden Tomb, where Jesus was buried and where he raised from the dead. We saw Jerusalem, prayed at the Western Wall, and walked on the Temple Mount, where for thousands of years Jews have continually worshiped God with awestruck reverence.
We stayed in a Bedouin tent community in the Negev Desert, the very same desert where the biblical heroes, Abraham and Sarah, sojourned and where Moses and the 12 tribes of ancient Israel would have traveled through from their 400-year slavery in Egypt. We traveled throughout Israel’s Mediterranean coast, seeing and staying not only in the Westernized city of Tel Aviv but also visiting the ruins of the Roman city of Caesarea. This is where in the Bible the Roman centurion, Cornelius, meets with Jesus’ disciple, Peter, and ends up becoming one of the first Gentile believers to follow Jesus as savior and lord. We visited Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, and toured Nazareth, the city where Jesus grew up.
One of the thousands of memories I have of the trip centers around my time in the Galilee region. I had been to Ireland four year ago with my family on vacation, and I was amazed by how green and fertile the land was, but that paled in comparison to what the Galilee region was like. Swimming in the Sea of Galilee at 10 at night was one of the greatest things I’ve ever experienced. Another great experience was swimming in the bath-water temperature of the Mediterranean Sea along the beach side of Tel Aviv and experiencing the natural, rugged beauty of a sunrise hike up the Judean desert fortress of Masada.
Indeed, there are so many stories I have concerning Israel. There are so many ways that this trip changed my life, and through everything, I returned to the United States with a deeper appreciation of Israel and of the shared values that the United States and Israel have as multiethnic democracies. It was so exciting to see Israeli democracy in action and to see tangible fruits of the deep relationship the United States has shared with Israel throughout each country’s respective histories.
I landed in Ben-Gurion Airport on July 20 in Tel Aviv, walking through the same terminal alongside newly arriving Jewish immigrants making Aliyah, Jewish birthright program students, tourists from all over the world, and Israeli citizens who were returning from business or from vacation. I departed from Ben-Gurion Airport on Aug. 10, with the realization that a part of me has been left in Israel with the expectation of one day returning to this at once exotic, and now somewhat familiar, country.