In February 1992, thirty-five intrepid clergy and lay leaders joined the ICJS on a Study Tour of Israel. While there are many opportunities to take tours of the "Holy Land," few aim to bring together religiously committed people from different faith traditions who will grapple with their origins in a land of conflicting visions. The trip combined sight-seeing with the intensive study of Christian-Jewish relations. This inquiry prompted participants to consider what their traditions say and teach about the other. In a land where memories are recorded in ancient stone, the theological questions that are central to the work of the ICJS became inescapable.

The group toured places of religious significance in and around Jerusalem, the Galilee, and the Dead Sea region. After a crash course in Jewish history at the Jerusalem History Museum and a tour of Bethlehem, Avraham Infeld and Daniel Rossing of the Melitz Institute explored the impact of religious pluralism on Israeli society. Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Museum and Memorial) set the stage for a challenging discussion of religious thought after the Holocaust, led by Drs. Emil Facken-heim and Rosann Catalano.

The Galilean sites provided the backdrop for theological discussions of first-century struggles. Taylor Branch then reflected on strategies of resistance in the Civil Rights Move-ment and their relevance for today. When the group ascended the heights of Masada, Steve Greenberg led the group in a situational dramatization of the first-century conflicts after the Temple's destruction.

Finally, though fifteen inches of snow prevented the group from meeting with Mayor Teddy Kollek, the participants trudged through sporadic snowfall to hear Rabbi David Hartman and Noam Zion on the meaning of Israel for Jewish-Christian Dialogue.

After emotional partings the participants returned home, transformed and touched in ways no one could have imagined. Peter Culman told the ICJS board, "It changed my life." The Rev. Robert Patterson (Church of the Redeemer) wrote, "It was a whole new experience to be with a mix of Jews and Christians. A curious thing happens. The barriers recede, the differences are openly faced, one's faith is made more real, and happily there is a new openness to the authenticity of the other's faith."

In a sermon, the Rev. Roger Gench (Brown Memorial Presby-terian Church) reflected, "I certainly hadn't counted on having an encounter with God in the religion of another . . . In fact, we must constantly be open to God in the experience of others -- for it may just be that as we share in the religious life of others, we will come to a deeper understanding and experience of the one transcendent God revealed in our own tradition. I can only say that for my own part, the sheer joy of the Hasidic dance [at the Western Wall on the Sabbath] will forever transform my own understanding of the Christian faith as a religion of joy."

Rabbi Floyd Herman shared with his congregation: "I was forced to focus on my own theology, if you will, about my relationship, as a Diaspora Jew, not only to the people of Israel, but also to the land of Israel . . . Being in Israel with Christians, having them ask the questions that Jews have seldom if ever asked me, challenged me to look at our own history, our own notions of peoplehood and land and chosenness . . . Too often we get trapped in our own circle."

Dr. Ron Valenti (Department of Catholic Education Ministries) wrote, "The interaction that took place enriched my own faith, and led me to appreciate even more deeply the richness of Judaism . . . I experienced a deeper sense of accountability in being responsible to the sensitivities that affect us all."

Pilgrims to the Holy Land often substitute their fantasies for the realities of modern Israel. They expect to find the places where Jesus

Pilgrims to the Holy Land often substitute their fantasies for the realities of modern Israel.

walked or where the Temple stood untouched by the ravages of time, as if Jeru-salem had been frozen since the first century, drawing the traveler right back into the era that gave birth to Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. Yet it is precisely amidst the cacaphony of age-old con-flicts that one discovers both what has deeply wounded the other and what is cause for re-joicing. In Israel the mind cannot rest in neat abstractions, but is drawn into personal encoun-ters with messy ambiguities. The discovery that Israel affords no simple solutions renewed the group's resolve to confront religious and ethnic conflicts in our own country.