Hugo Schwyzer

It’s just before nine in the morning, and I’m back in the office on campus. Our flight from London left two hours late, and the baggage carousel was very slow at LAX yesterday afternoon — the upshot was that I just made it to PCC in time for my 6:00PM class wearing the same clothes I’d worn on the plane, unshowered, jet-lagged, and decidedly malodorous. I managed to teach for nearly three hours regardless, but I kept a greater-than-usual distance from my students.

I smell better this morning. Today is a “faculty FLEX” (inservice education) day. We’re given doughnuts, orange juice, and pep talks from the administration. Some glad-hander with the initials Ed.D after his or her name will address a plenary session of the faculty, offering us the latest pedagogical insights. Most of us, rude hypocrites that we are, will conduct ourselves all the while like the very students we dislike: we’ll doze, whisper, and play with our various electronic gadgets. Most of us will make disparaging remarks about those who pursue education degrees, or call themselves “educators” instead of “teachers” or “professors.”

I’d much rather be teaching today.

In any event, my wife and I had a fascinating time in Israel. As I’ve mentioned a few times before, we’ve both been affiliated with the Kabbalah Centre for many years. This year, the Centre chose to mark the High Holy Days in Israel, and we decided that represented the right time for us to make our first visit to that remarkable, challenging part of the world.

(A long parenthetical aside: I do not see the study of Kabbalah as intrinsically incompatible with a strong and serious Christian faith. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t some areas of potential conflict, the issue of the Messiahship of Jesus Christ chief among them. But the fact that not all those in the Kabbalah Centre share my spiritual convictions doesn’t mean that I cannot find great wisdom and inspiration within Kabbalah. Particularly for me, the study of Kabbalah has served as a way of creating a bridge between Christianity and Judaism. That doesn’t mean I consider myself Jewish, of course, though if we’re going to talk about ethnic heritage, I am “7/16ths” Jewish — my great-great grandmother and her daughter perished in the Shoah.

I am not much of a theologian. Plenty of other Christians from the renaissance on have written about Kabbalah, and many famous Christian scholars have argued for the fundamental compatibility of this “Jewish” mystical tradition and a strong belief in Jesus Christ as the unique Son of God and the true Messiah. I will say that Kabbalah informs and enhances my spiritual practice as a Christian without causing me to abandon the essential tenets of my evangelical faith.)

So, we were in Israel for two weeks. While we observed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur quietly with the Kabbalah Centre in Tel Aviv, we spent much of the rest of our time traveling about. Not surprisingly, I loved the north of Israel best — the hills above the sea of Galilee near the famed mystical city of Safed. I hadn’t realized how many forests there are in the north, and we were able to do a little (regrettably little) hiking in the woods. We swam in the Mediterranean, the Galilee, and the Dead Sea.

And of course, we visited Jerusalem several times. Our first visit was on a tour with the Kabbalah Centre, where we visited the sites most important in Kabbalistic tradition. (Not surprisingly, this involved going into the tunnels in order to get as close as is today possible to the Holy of Holies. It also meant a heavily guarded visit to the tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem.) Later, my wife and I visited the usual Christian sites with our own guide.

We crossed into the West Bank a couple of times. The first time, we were taken to Hebron, to the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and several others are said to lie. It was an eerie visit: we arrived in the late afternoon, just as the sun was starting to set. IDF soldiers were everywhere. The only other visitors to the Tomb were large groups of Orthodox Jews from various sects. (I got good at spotting the subtle differences in how these groups dress — there’s a lot you can tell, apparently, from trouser length and the angle of a hat!) It’s hard to explain, but I felt something very powerful standing in front of what is said to be the tomb of Abraham — the most intense feeling I’ve ever had anywhere that wasn’t an explicitly Christian site. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, it was the sense that my soul had always wanted and needed to be at exactly that spot.

As we emerged from the Tomb to return to the car, there was a sudden explosion of mortar and small arms fire from a nearby hill. I was alarmed, but the soldiers wandering around the complex just glanced up, and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) tourists acted as if this was perfectly normal. A moment later, the call to prayer began to resound from several local mosques. The gunfire, the muezzins’ cry, and the sunset over the Tomb of the Patriarchs made for an extraordinary sensory experience.

We also, of course, went to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. On that day, we had two guides: an Israeli and a Palestinian. The Israeli guide drove us to the Bethlehem checkpoint, where we had to walk across the heavily armed border to meet our Palestinian escort. (The same tour company, of course, employed both — but current law prohibits Israeli citizens from leading guided tours into the West Bank.) Manger Square was blessedly uncrowded, and the Church of the Nativity itself was not overly busy; we were able to spend a couple of moments by ourselves at the famous spot claimed as the birthplace of Christ. As we left, a group of Chinese Catholics came in, led by nuns singing a lovely hymn in Mandarin. It was very moving.

Splitting up a day with both Palestinian and Israel private guides gave me the chance to talk to each about politics. Both were older men, grandfathers; the Israeli had fought in the 1967 war, while the Palestinian had lived for several years in Lodi, California. (I had the famous Creedence Clearwater Revival song about Lodi in my head the rest of the day.) Their views were, I’m afraid, diametrically opposed and predictable: our Israeli guide explained that the newly-constructed Wall was necessary. Though he didn’t use the exact phrase, he was very clear that the Palestinians were architects of their own adversity. His counterpart in Bethlehem, of course, explained that Israeli rapacity for land was the sole source of the ongoing conflict.

The Palestinian guide was very clear, however, that Westerners shouldn’t boycott Israel. He explained that the sole regular source of money for his family was what was brought in by tourists — usually Christians — coming across from Israel. He took us around Bethlehem in a car driven by a friend of his. “Here, we try and spread around as much as we can of what you bring to us, so I have my friend drive us.” I have no doubt he was angling for a larger tip, but his point was well-taken. The walk back and forth across the border was as jarring as walking from the USA into Mexico, and both my wife and I remarked on how similar the experience seemed: the sudden shift from relative prosperity to clear poverty was painfully familiar.

When our time in the Palestinian Authority was over, our guide tried to walk us back into Israel. A very youthful Israeli soldier, a woman who looked younger than some of the girls in my youth group, stopped him. She waved my wife and me through without a second glance, but when the guide asked to be allowed to take us thirty steps across, she yelled at him with a viciousness that I found unsettling in someone so young. He and I shook hands right at the Wall, and I walked back into my comfortable guarded life.

I’ll no doubt post more about the trip again, but I’ll finish this post with a few quick notes:

First of all, Israel is a blessedly easy place to be a vegan. All you have to do is live on hummus and Israeli salad, or go to kosher (fleishig) restaurants and order anything that doesn’t have meat in it, in the total confidence that there will be no hidden dairy.

Second, Israelis litter like no one else. In Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in Tiberias, even on top of Masada. Admittedly, worries about terrorism limit the number of trash cans that can be safely put about — but goodness, I would never have imagined I’d see more litter on the streets of Tel Aviv than I do on our regular trips down to Bogota!

Third, the Israelis themselves were fascinating: blunt, gruff, candid, ruthlessly informal. Before we went to Israel, my wife and I had a quiet little anniversary weekend in London; the cultural transition was, to put it mildly, abrupt. As I mentioned yesterday, I like being in countries where people are quietly willing to stand in queues.

I’ll get some pictures up into my Flickr account by the end of the week, and I’ll ease back into a regular posting schedule soon enough.