Perched atop the Mount of Olives overlooking the Holy City itself, Brigham Young University’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies dominates the eastern skyline of perhaps the world’s most sacred cities. The center boasts beautiful arches that adorn its buildings constructed from Jerusalem limestone. An olive and wine press are nestled in gardens of flowers, olive trees, and vineyards, while an abundance of windows within gives way to terraces featuring breathtaking views overlooking the steep Kidron Valley, the Old City, and beyond to modern West Jerusalem. A fountain pouring water echoes across the marble floors, empowering mind and spirit, the center itself an inspiring beacon of cross-cultural understanding and tolerant peace.
As we climbed the slopes of the Judean hills, my first glimpse of Jerusalem overtook my senses. My heart pounded with curious excitement, feeling as if I had traveled not only thousands of miles across the ocean, but also thousands of years back in time. Jerusalem and its essence, from mosque prayer calls ricocheting from the rooftops to the melodic chimes of cathedrals, overwhelmed me as I, along with 81 peers, began a journey that would transform and redefine our understanding of history, culture, and testimony with powerful permanence. Three of us were from BYU Hawaii; myself a senior international business major; Mark Chiba, also a senior international business major; and Abi McNeill, a junior and also an international business major. We embarked on the program eager to learn another unique global perspective in addition to those students at BYUH have already come to crave and value.
As part of the Jerusalem Center’s two-month summer program, we managed to traverse 100+ degree weather, dripping with sweat, the smell of desert engulfing us, through more than 35 Israeli national parks from the Red Sea to the Golan Heights in Israel; Egypt’s Sinai Desert, Great Pyramids, and Luxor; and Amman, Jerash, and Petra in Jordan – all while balancing a thriving social life trekking the streets of Jerusalem and completing coursework in the Old and New Testaments, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and modern Judaism and Islam studies.
The terraced gardens at the BYU Jerusalem Center afford tremendous views of the Old City of Jerusalem and its people, as seen in the photo above. “I love the people who live in the Holy Land,” explains McNeill, a feeling nurtured and developed over the past two months, and one that is likely to stick with us permanently. The Jerusalem Center organizes extended trips to Egypt, Jordan, and the Galilee in addition to the program stationed in Jerusalem itself, allowing students to transcend borders to explore not only new sites, but new peoples. The JC, as the Jerusalem Center is fondly known as by those who live there and the Mormon University by the Israeli population, rests above the Kidron Valley in a Palestinian neighborhood. Just beyond the valley's western ridge, a step into the Old City is a step 2,000 years back in time as the aroma of spices accompanies the cries of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim merchants shouting in Arabic and Hebrew, selling their clothing, fruits, falafel, pottery, and olive wood on narrow, crowded streets. Just past Jaffa Gate, however, marks the border of West Jerusalem, where the Old World and Arabic conversations seem to fade into Hebrew and a modern, clean, and affluent Jewish city that could easily be mistaken for a Greek, Italian, or Spanish Mediterranean city in southern Europe. Its villas and cafés dot Ben Yehuda, Jerusalem’s own glamorous Champs-Elysée, where the deep rhythm of bass spills out from the clubs while next door a chorus rehearses hymns accompanied by harp and flute.
In Egypt, we crossed the boiling and seemingly uninhabitable Sinai, bleak and barren, where Moses and the children of Israel crossed as they wandered the wilderness for 40 years. We were dwarfed by the majesty of the Great Pyramids further perplexed at the nature of their construction. “You just can’t believe how massive those things are and how hot it is until you’re standing in the middle of them,” remarks Chiba. Deeper into the country, we sailed along the Nile at sunset on traditional falukas, the breeze splashing mist from the river. Down the river, camels then took us on a journey through the streets of Luxor, reminding us of the realities and hardships of modern Africa and the importance of supporting humanitarian and development projects. In Jordan we visited the greenish waters of Christ’s baptismal site, surrounded by thick forests. We hiked through the sweltering wonders of Petra, whose magnificent facades are carved out of sheer rock, and whose origin remains fairly unknown even to this day. In Amman we experienced the progress of a modernizing city bringing new opportunity to an emerging middle-class and for women in a traditional Arab kingdom, while the ancient Roman ruins of Jerash intrigued us to imagine the prowess of the Roman Empire at its height to life.
In the Galilee, we straddled the mountainous borders of Syria and Lebanon in the Golan Heights, a fierce wind ripping along the ridges and carrying with them the smells of fennel, pine, and wildflowers. On the shores of the warm Galilee, we resided in a holiday kibbutz, keeping kosher at one of many of Israel’s more than 2,000 kibuttzim, or communal-style societies where members work together to contribute all that they can and then receive an equal portion for their cooperation. We had the opportunity to experience and stay at these unique societies twice. First, en route to Egypt at Yotvata in southern Israel, we danced and sang traditional Jewish folk songs together with the people who lived in the sweltering desert near the Red Sea. “It was incredible to be able to mesh with these people and rub elbows with them, and really see how they live,” Chiba remembers.
Jaffa, pictured above, the world's oldest port city, now sits in the heart of Tel Aviv. North of the bustling modern metropolis of Tel Aviv, or "The Big Orange," lies Galilee. To study the New Testament in the Galilee highlights the culmination of testimony, history, and personally, a lot of gratitude. We attended a church meeting on Shabbat in a building that overlooked the Sea of Galilee. The Branch President explained that, “If Christ were attending a church meeting in His home branch this week, He would be right here with us.” The following day we sang “Master the Tempest is Raging” while sailing across the very sea where Christ walked. We then read the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount, hearing the words dance across the hot morning breeze, actually on the mount where Christ outlined the very law of His gospel.
Our final week in Jerusalem marked an opportunity to retrace the steps of the Savior in His last week on Earth, beginning at the site of the Last Supper at Dormition Abbey, and then in the somber serenity of Gethsemene’s walls, and up Mount Zion and along the Via Dolorosa of the Old City, and ultimately to Golgatha, where He paid the price for all mankind. For me personally, to walk the streets where He walked, and to reflect in Gethsemene was an edifying and humbling experience, indescribable in words yet permanently resonating within my soul.
When the time came to bid farewell to the Holy Land, each of us were armed with a new perspective and understanding of the world, the gospel, and ourselves. The friendships we fostered were intimate and strengthening, while our testimonies have been redefined in a whole new way. McNeill reflects a sentiment shared by all of us who were with her: “Visiting Jerusalem has taught me to open my heart more and to be more willing to love and to trust and to accept because Christ literally saved us al and suffered for us all because he wants noting more than for us – all of us, be it Christian, Muslim, or Jew – to return to Him.”