Bahai Gardens, Druze Village and Dialogue

Our first day was packed and stimulating. We are staying on a kibbutz near Nazareth, called Kibbutz Mizra, which was originally founded in 1923 during the time of the British Mandate in Palestine. It is old and not luxurious in terms of buildings or accommodations, although it is absolutely comfortable. It epitomizes a simple, communal lifestyle. We eat our breakfast in the common dining hall, which reminds those of our group who went to summer camp of those childhood experiences! The food is plentiful but basic. However, on the road we have eaten exceedingly well.

We went first to Nazareth to the Basilica of the Annunciation. It is a beautiful church with mosaics of the Virgin Mary and child sent from countries all over the world. They are a magnificent testament to Mary’s role as “goddess” or “bearer of the divine feminine” in Christian history. We went inside the church where the grotto is that is believed to have been Mary’s house when she lived in Nazareth. After touring the church we sat on the plaza and had a lively discussion of the role of Mary in Christianity and Islam. Dr. Shafiq read to us from the Qur’an which has an entire chapter dedicated to Mary. Susan, Gordon and I talked about her role in Christian history, highlighting the distinctions between how Protestant Christians and Roman Catholics have dealt with her over the centuries. We spent well over an hour in lively discussion, bringing in Judaism as we went through the New Testament scriptures that describe Mary and looked at their roots in the Hebrew Scriptures.

From there we drove to Haifa, a very European style city on the bay where the Bahai world center is located. We had lunch in a wonderful café in Haifa, enjoying the typical Middle Eastern feast of hummus, tabouli, salads of various kinds, and kebabs and pita, finished off with baklava of various kinds. We were stuffed when we left! Then we went to the Bahai world center where they have magnificent gardens that the Bahai’s maintain with a shrine dedicated to their founding prophet (his remains are entombed there) and where they maintain stunning gardens leading up to the shrine which is a place of pilgrimage for Bahais. Those gardens look out over the water and are truly a gift of holiness from the Bahai community.

From there we went to the top of Mount Carmel, where Elijah is believed to have slain the prophets of Baal. Dr. Shafiq enchanted us with stories from the Qur’an that are believed to be related to stories about Elijah. Then we went down the mountain to a little Druze village, where we had dinner at a Druze family owned restaurant. The Druze are a secret religion, related to Islam, but distinctly different. Most of them live in Israel, Syria and Lebanon. As Arabs in Israel, they fare better than other Arabs and can, in fact, serve in the Israeli army, which means that they have more opportunities in the Israeli system than other Arabs who are not permitted to join the army. Our dinner with the Druze family was superb and plentiful. We felt like we’d had Thanksgiving dinner by the time we rolled out of there.

The beauty of this trip so far is the really deep interfaith dialogue that is going on during the bus rides, over the meals, sitting out on the lawn at the kibbutz over a glass of wine. We have had some amazing conversations today about the theologies of “suffering” and how the three Abrahamic traditions handle it (with Shafiq and I brining in the Hindu and Buddhist beliefs when applicable!). Over dinner we found ourselves comparing and contrasting death and dying and funeral rituals and beliefs between/among the Abrahamic faiths. As we sat on the lawn at the kibbutz tonight we learned from George (who lived on a kibbutz for 10 years) about the kibbutzim in Israel and what they were founded to be and how they have changed over the 60 years of Israel’s existence. The original socialist, utopian ideals of the kibbutzim have had to be compromised as younger generations have not been as willing as the founding generations were to sacrifice their individual autonomy for the good of the collective. Many of the kibbutzim have privatized and become more like extended co-ops than the original kibbutz ideal.

There is an interesting undercurrent of caution about confronting the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. George is Jewish and an Israeli citizen, although quite willing to be critical of Israel. Susan is very loyal to the American Jewish perspective on the conflict and cautious about criticism of Israel. Gordon and I are probably the most “pro Palestinian” based on our previous experiences here (and Gordon’s wife is a Palestinian Christian living in exile in the US who won’t even set foot on Israeli soil) and Dr. Shafiq is very concerned about the plight of Palestinians and suggested tonight that we engage in dialogue about it, which we decided to take up tomorrow evening as it was late and everyone was exhausted. We are certainly seeing the good side of Israel on this trip so far. As we drove through Haifa today, and even on the ride back to the kibbutz, I couldn’t help but think about what I saw in the West Bank two years ago and how different this plush, green, cultivated, beautiful “blooming desert” is from the Palestinian territories. Every time I saw the irrigation systems and the sprinklers spraying water all over the Israeli fields all I could think of were the Palestinians in Ramallah who can’t flush a toilet but once a day because they don’t have water thanks to Israeli diversion of their water supplies to support the Israeli settlements. It is so easy for middle class Israelis and tourists simply not to see or to care about the real human rights violations happening just a stone’s throw away in the West Bank. And as we drove to our kibbutz here near Nazareth I remembered the destroyed Palestinian villages that I visited on my last trip here that are right in this area, buried under Israeli kibbutzim and farms. Then I remind myself that the house I so enjoy living in in Rochester sits on land that once belonged to Native Americans who did not willingly give it up to colonial settlers! As I experienced on my last trip here, confronting the Israeli/Palestinian conflict as a descendent of White European Christians is a contemporary journey into the very same attitudes and activities of my own ancestors who conquered the United States and sent missionaries from England to Africa and Asia and other far flung parts of the world. It is painful because of what it is doing to real people in the 21st century, but it is also a contemporary example of the excesses of colonialism and racial/ethnic tension that have marred so called “civilized” societies for centuries.

Tomorrow we go to the Sea of Galilee. It is Pentecost tomorrow also, and we are going to celebrate the Eucharist by the Sea of Galilee. I will be particularly thrilled to be celebrant at that Eucharist, with our Jewish and Muslim travelling companions as guests.