"War, Peace and The Way of Mystery"

Today's tour began with a visit to the holy city of Safed, in the hills near the Golan Heights. Safed is one of Judaism's four holy cities; Jerusalem, Hebron and Tiberias are the others. Safed, nestled among a group of high hills, was established in the 2nd century BCE. It was, like many cities around here, variously occupied by the Romans, the Byzantines, the Muslims, the Crusaders and the Ottoman Turks. Safed is known as the city of miracles. It is a place where Kabbalah, the ancient mystical approach to Judaism made famous in recent years by celebrity converts (like Madonna), flourished. Of course, the rabbis here remind us Madonna may not have a grasp of the real Kabbalah (you think?).

Safed was the place where rabbi Joseph ben Ephraim Caro fled in 1535. In 1492, after the Spanish defeated the Muslims, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (yes, of Columbus' fame) expelled the Jews from Spain (they had ruled Southeastern Spain for 600 years). The Jews had been welcome and protected under Muslim rule. Once the Christians conquered the Muslims, they expelled the Jews; those Jews who did not leave were murdered. Other Christian nations in Europe soon followed suit. Rabbi Joseph Caro fled first to Bulgaria, and then to Safed.

Rabbi Caro was a Judaic legal scholar. His volumes of work expounding the fine points of Jewish law remain central to understanding how to be a good Jew today. His output was so great it is said he never slept.

Safed is a mountain town with narrow, winding streets. It was a miracle just to get the bus up and down that mountain!

From Safed we went to Kibbutz Gadot, at the foot of the Golan Heights. Though they farm fruit, dairy and olives, Gadot specializes in injection-mold plastics made from recycled material and tractor repair (they're the area's authorized John Deere service center). Kibbutz Gadot has been on the front lines of Israel's wars since before its founding. Gadot has many buildings that have been hit by mortar and tank fire. Therefore they have bunkers built into the ground linked by tunnels in case of attack. Being on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights, they have often been sitting ducks for Syrian aggression.

We next went up to the Golan Heights. Israel has controlled most of this plateau since the 1967 war. It is a defensible border upon which the Israelis have built many settlements, started many farms, and established listening posts that can keep an eye and ear on nearly all of Syria. There are also many military bases on Golan. Today they are in high alert right because of Syria's domestic troubles; what better way to distract Syrian rebels than to remind them of the one thing upon which they all agree; their hatred of Israel? Israeli authorities are prepared for an incursion. We saw perhaps 50 tanks and many columns of soldiers on maneuvers preparing for the worst.

Moshe, our tour guide, took us to an overlook and recounted the battle for Golan during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He showed us where the Syrians charged across he border, and how the Israeli forces surprised them by coming up on them from the rear. Moshe shared that he was swimming in the Sea of Galilee just 9 miles away, and he heard the mortars in the distance when the fighting started. He knew what he heard. Since all Israelis were then in the reserve until age 49 (until 39 today), Moshe quickly dried off, took his date home and reported for duty. He joked, "If I were a good Jew I would have been in synagogue and not swimming with my girlfriend in the Galilee. But then I wouldn't have this great story."

The Syrians and Egyptians thought Yom Kippur was a good day to attack. But Israel is a very religious country; Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Therefore, the roads were clear (kosher laws prohibit driving on the sabbath), and most people were either at home or in a synagogue nearby. This made it easy to mobilize the forces and get them to the battlefront. It was a huge miscalculation. By the next morning, the Syrians were pushed back into Syria, and by the end of the week, Israeli mortars were shelling circles around Damascus (so as to not kill civilians, they shot into the desert to send a message).

Moshe then told the poignant tale of three of his neighbors in the army, all siblings; one was killed, one lost his sight and a third was shot in her leg. Moshe was resolute that there was a need for Israel to remain vigilant, to have defensible borders, to continue to protect the rights of people to plant settlements and found new farms. Yet he also told us that if it ever came to casting a vote on whether to give Golan Heights back to help secure a true chance at peace, he said he would do it in a heartbeat - a very nuanced, thoughtful and sophisticated argument.

This is wisdom that we see too seldom in the USA. Moshe, who as a Historian and Geography teacher, knows more about his country (and ours) than most Americans. He has lost friends and family fighting for Israel, yet he is willing to give up the land he risked his life for to achieve peace. He has walked nearly every inch of this land. He knows it in ways no American knows the lands our young men and women have been asked to die for in the past decade. And yet he is willing to give that land back. That is courage and reverence. "Blessed are the peacemakers," he says, quoting Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount, "for theirs is the kingdom of God."

I can hear the 'realists,' the hawks and those back home who believe one can never give in to the Arabs. But this is not America's decision to make. It belongs to men like Moshe, who was born 3 months before Israel received statehood in 1948, in Tel Aviv. This decision belongs to all Israelis. The Syrian border is very peaceful and has been so since 1974. Moshe and most Israelis - like most Palestinians - want peace; they deserve peace; and they are willing to sacrifice dominance for peace. Is America so flexible? Moshe pointed out that Israel has never fought a war that did not involve its direct borders, and it has never asked soldiers of any other country to die for their wars. He asked us to consider what it means that we had 160,000 American troops in Iraq; "Iraq has nothing to do with the US," he said. "We would never do that."

This requires us to bend our thinking in the USA. The Jews and Muslims have NOT been at war for thousands of years continuously. That is an ignorant American myth. The Israeli Palestinian conflict will end; it will change, and a way forward will arise. Any peace deal reached may last, or it may not, but one thing is for sure - if it does last it will be great for the USA as well as for this region. The engine driving Arab radicalism is the absence of an Arab-Israeli peace deal. Maybe when that comes the USA can finally scale back its bloated defense budget and invest in the betterment of our nation - health care, education, a green economy, rebuilding our infrastructure. Does the USA really need to spend $620 billion on defense annually, more than the rest of the world combined? This conflict is bankrupting us financially, strategically and morally,

~ Phew ~ Well, after all that political talk, I think I need to change gears. Thank goodness this day ended at the Yarden winery, Israel's finest. After a taste of a fine Riesling and a luscious Merlot, we sat back and listened to a classical guitarist weave his magic, and I was brought right back around to the beauty and magic inherent in this great land, to miracle and magic, reminded that often things happen beyond our control, yet still, in order for miracles to happen, they need our attention and care.

This afternoon, Anya, her dad and I took a long walk to the massive sunflower field at the Kibbutz Lavi. As we looked out at this most fertile land, it seemed clear that miracles can happen, but we must make them happen. Miracles depend on our engagement, trust and love.

Driving around the Sea of Galilee we became suddenly enveloped in miracle stories. Everything is so close! In just 7 minutes cruising the Northwestern shore of Galilee, our bus passed Capernaum (where Jesus began his ministry), Magdala (home of Mary Magdalene), Tabgha (where Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and the fishes), Mt Arbel (site of the Sermon on the Mount), and entered Tiberias (where Jesus appeared to the disciples after his death). No matter what we think about these stories, we are asked to be open to the fact that amazing things can happen in seemingly humble places, that miracles await our attention, intention and action.

In Jesus' time Galilee was a region of simple folk, fishermen - craftsmen, small towns and the new city of Tiberias. People made fun of those from the Galilee. The very form of Jesus' name that we use today comes from the Galilean accent. Yeshua (Jesus) is the shortened form of Yeoshua (Joshua); their accent omitted the 'o.' The Galileans were the butt of jokes, not unlike how West Virginia is sometimes today, yet the Galilean accent is the source of our pronunciation of Jesus' name.

Miracles abound, love abides, and a better tomorrow is always within our grasp. To walk this beautiful land, to taste its fruit and drink its wine, to see its stunning views, to bathe in its cool waters, to listen to its people who must live with the consequences of the decisions made in places of power like Washington, DC (or Tehran) can change one's heart and soul. It certainly has changed mine. Let us step back and give this land and these people a chance to manifest the miracle of peace and not force them to be pawns of our strategic interests. So may it be.

Shalom,

Rev Scott