Story by Margaret High
I never expected to travel to the Middle East.
Despite being an ambitious traveler and an advocate for experiencing world cultures, the Middle East seemed too different, too dangerous, too difficult. At least on my own.
Like most of my international travel, Israel was decided on a whim. I ate dinner with a college friend after fall semester exams ended, and she suggested go to Israel on a trip sponsored by UNC’s School of Media and Journalism.
It was a study abroad experience for journalism majors to report on an archaeological dig near the Sea of Galilee. I majored in both journalism and history, and the idea of excavating ancient history fascinated me. It also gave me a chance to see a part of the world I had never experienced.
As I bundled up in my puffy jacket to brace the cold December evening, I had no idea all the things I would see in a few short months while enveloped in a much hotter, 100-degree plus climate.
I came to understand different religions better and how a different perspective on history can dramatically shape public discourse.
The first question I was often asked after telling a person I was traveling to Israel was: “Is it safe?”
My father dubs himself the “family safety officer,” so that was the first question he had as well. Luckily, we have extended family that has traveled to Israel multiple times. They assured my father that the country was safe.
Despite that reassurance and our president’s chummy relationship with Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, I was more anxious about my trip to the Middle East than when I left for three months in Europe by myself only a couple summers earlier.
I expected to wear floor-length skirts to respect the many conservative religions of Israel. I expected to need to look down and not make eye contact with men in order to protect myself as a woman. I expected to be yelled at every now and then for being an American.
For the most part, none of those expectations were met. I did have to dress more conservatively for the Western Wall in Old Jerusalem because Orthodox Jewish laws govern the area. I was escorted through an entry portal designated only for women, as genders are not allowed to view the Western Wall together.
Other than some different social norms, Israelis are like us. They take the same light rail train like the one in Charlotte. They have the same mom-and-pop shops in residential neighborhoods. They go to their local beach and throw the Frisbee.
I saw teenagers running around giddy with the limited freedom granted by their parents. Mothers holding their newborns to get them to stop crying. Grandparents hugging the necks of their family, saying goodbye after dinner.
Granted, differences still exist.
It’s not hard to imagine that Jerusalem in particular has more diversity than Whiteville or Columbus County, where I grew up. It’s the most important city for three major religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Every block offered a mix of rosaries, burkas and skullcaps. Yet every block felt generally harmonious, safe and normal. There were no shocked stares from one pious religious layperson to the other. These were their streets, their neighbors, their city.
Each morning I could hear the call to worship ring out from the numerous mosques in Jerusalem, the church bells ringing or see the ringlet-framed faces of Orthodox Jewish men walking to temple.
And for the most part, all three religions visited the same places in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock, one of the most famous mosques in the world, sits on top of the site where the Second Temple stood – which is why the Western Wall, the only remains of the Second Temple, is the most sacred place for Judaism. It’s also the site where they believe Abraham went to obey God’s command and sacrifice his only son, Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19).
There is tension between the three religions and within the country itself, most notably the Palestinian conflict. But it doesn’t feel totally foreign from some of the blue-in-the-face debates American politics are privy to.
It wasn’t the first time I had been exposed to those religions, but it was the first time that I, as a Christian, was the minority religion. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from being in the minority, not the majority. The same comforts I have back home in the South and in my hometown are not afforded when my beliefs aren’t reciprocated. Again, I never faced any animosity or bad intentions because of my beliefs, but I didn’t have the same widespread agreement with my position.
The same was true for my belief in the importance of journalism. After spending a week in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, I met up with the rest of the journalism class and headed north to Huqoq, a small kibbutz, or learning community.
Besides experiencing different cultures, I was in Israel to get a job done. The archaeological dig in Huqoq, led by Kenan Professor of Distinction Jodi Magness, is one of the most important research sites for ancient Hebrew studies.
Magness has always believed that synagogues in ancient Galilee proliferated in the fourth and fifth century, despite most scholars arguing that Judaism curtailed with the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire and later the Byzantine Empire, both of which enforced Christianity as the main religion.
She was tired of reading about her colleague’s digs and disagreeing with their findings so she set out to find her own synagogue and prove them wrong.
Huqoq ended up sending an academic middle finger to her colleagues and then some. Not only did they find a fifth century synagogue, but extremely elaborate mosaics, or tiled flooring that depicts usually biblical scenes, that have never been found in such a remarkable state of preservation.
Because of this groundbreaking discovery and continual uncovering of never-before-found scenes, the students, supervisors and site directors take their work very seriously. And they should. The archaeology students don’t even tell their parents what they’ve found when they talk on the phone.
So there are all these students and scholars spending at minimum six hours a day in the blazing heat doing manual labor that are bound together through their sworn secrecy.
Then comes in my group of journalists with cameras, recorders and notepads.
These tight-knit groups of archaeologists, terrified of their history-altering findings being exploited by a bunch of journalism students, naturally were slow to open up to us.
Yet we had a job to get done and so did they.
It’s difficult because we believe so strongly in telling other people’s story. We never see our work as malicious but as a public service. We find people interesting and we want to share those interesting things with others.
There we all were – halfway across the world in a foreign country trying to crack the hard shell the archaeologists quickly developed when we arrived.
It was just like learning how Israeli culture isn’t all that different from our own. We found similarities with the archaeologists. We told them what our intentions were. We reassured them we didn’t want to exploit their research.
Common ground is a powerful tool, that’s a no brainer. We found out that if we made our end goal clear and understood the archaeologist’s thought process then we could find a way to have both our objectives met.
The result is countless phenomenal features by my colleagues and Huqoq gaining the media attraction it deserves without spoiling the integrity of their research.
While walking the streets of Israel, I didn’t have to be as explicit with my intentions with a random encounter. However, it was understood that I was visiting their country to learn and see new things. I understood this was their home.
Going to the Middle East underscored the value of understanding others’ perspective. Assumptions can be the strongest deterrent in finding common ground. And common ground is what we’re all searching for.
