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However, today, Christians are working quietly on the ground in small communities pursuing peace God’s way, bringing reconciliation among peoples who have hated each other for centuries. Of course, these efforts seldom reach the headlines of the mainstream media. But God is working among His people in the Middle East, be they Jew, Christian, or Arab. Painful wounds are being healed, and we rejoice that Bridges for Peace has had many opportunities to witness this.
Building Relationships
Of course, that’s the very goal of Bridges for Peace: to build “relationships between Christians and Jews worldwide through education and practical deeds expressing God’s love and mercy.” While our national offices and representatives are reaching out to Jewish communities worldwide and watching long-lasting relationships with the Jewish people develop, here in Israel, we have the daunting challenge of reaching out hands of reconciliation to an entire nation.
How do we do that and how has it affected the people involved? While Rebecca Brimmer, our CEO, has many opportunities on governmental levels, most of what we do is person by person, family by family, community by community. It’s all about relationship, not words and fancy speeches. Those come later, after our hands have done the work, our arms have encircled them, and they’ve shared their stories with us. While we often share short stories of some of the work we do through our care-giving projects, the goal of this article is to show how visits of only a few days can make a difference in the lives of both Jews and Christians.
Over the years, Bridges for Peace has increasingly made efforts to get the two groups in closer contact, face to face. Now, tour groups don’t just come to see the Land, but they spend a few days of their trip with gloves and rake in hand getting dirty. This is true of our young adult Zealous tour groups as well. While we don’t have the staff or time to make such arrangements on a regular basis, these work projects on tour have changed lives on both sides. Our volunteers here in Israel have also had opportunities during the year to leave their desk jobs and participate in community work projects.
Beit Shemesh
In 2004, Bridges for Peace started the Adopt an Israeli Town Program, whereby individuals and groups could sponsor a town, allowing us to deliver food to 100 of the town’s neediest families. It quickly became a popular program, and now we sponsor 18 towns. The first town was Beit Shemesh, not far from Jerusalem. After establishing a relationship with the mayor, we have continued to work closely with Meir Malka—formerly the director of the Department of International Relations, now the head of the Beit Shemesh Foundation—and his assistant Harley Stark..
Meir was three when his family moved to Beit Shemesh in 1954 (only four years after it was founded), when the residents lived in tin huts and tents with no running water. Today, he enthusiastically seeks ways to raise funds around the world for its needs. Shortly after we adopted Beit Shemesh, one of the program’s sponsors wanted to come on tour to do a work project there, but we’d never arranged such an event. It was a lot of hard work for Meir, Harley, and us. Our Home Repair team, who had never worked outside of Jerusalem, was sent to oversee repair work on four houses.
When the work was done, Meir was astounded at the amount of money and materials spent on the project. “From that day, I fell in love with Bridges for Peace. They were angels.” He said the work they did was like turning “darkness into light.” Much of our work has been with the schools, where 95% of the children in some schools are from underprivileged families. One-third of some schools are Ethiopian children, whose families immigrated to Israel with nothing. These are the schools we like to help. The projects range from painting, building, planting, and cleaning to assisting teachers in the classroom, teaching English, and participating in school activities. Harley has coordinated most of those projects and interviewed many of the Jewish families who have witnessed our work in their community.
From the Jewish Side
Harley reports that Jewish residents are “surprised that Christians take time from their touring schedule to come to Beit Shemesh for a few days and VOLUNTEER (his emphasis) their time and energies to do something for children in Israel!” They ask, “Why do you come here?” and are fascinated with the answer: to bless Israel, to try and make some repair for 2,000 years of bad relationships. “I have also seen people here moved to tears when they hear this.”
He called the work at the schools FANTASTIC! “The work BFPers do in the schools are things on the ‘To Do’ list but which always get pushed lower and lower. The physical improvements…make the school look better, and I think children see the improvements and feel better about their schools.” When he takes the groups into town for shopping, the locals “are astounded to hear they are volunteers all the way from Australia or the United States or New Zealand who came to tiny Beit Shemesh to volunteer.”
“In a word,” says Harley of the volunteers, “they gave of themselves unselfishly.” Residents are surprised to hear that these volunteers receive no monetary reward. He knows that many relationships that started on a short-term visit continue, and some of these volunteers return for a private visit on their own later. Othniel Galili, headmaster of Adiyahu School, said, “We have had the opportunity to know good people around the world that have solidarity with us and many more values.”
Currently, Beit Shemesh is the only town where our Feed a Child Program is implemented. With the help of our donors, underprivileged children can feel like all other children, eat lunch with all the kids, and read from books instead of photocopied pages. When one of our donors, Natalie, made her first trip from the United States to Israel, she traveled to Beit Shemesh by train to visit with her two sponsored children. Harley met her and graciously made the arrangements for a very special visit, but this visit was mainly for the girls, not the parents. The girls each brought a friend. The six of them went on a little trip around town to some sites the girls had never seen before, and then Natalie took them out to eat. Having been an immigrant from Ukraine herself, Natalie knew the secret of how to create a bond with her girls in a short time.
Beit Shemesh, however, is not the only community where we have developed relationships. In Neve Yaacov, we sent some BFP staff volunteers for a few days to help put together a wildflower sanctuary. That may sound like a small thing and not very important in the myriad of needs in Israel; however, it’s not about the project itself, but the relationships we make in the process. Dr. Anna Godneva, head of the project, said, “Two or three days together, and they are friends forever. All the time, I’m thinking how to prolong it.”
At a nursing home, we repaired a broken pipe that had leaked inside an apartment for years but was too expensive for them to repair. To Lily Levy, who watched them work from the roof, it was no small matter. “This wonderful organization came and really they risked themselves to do it.” Another resident commented that they “did in three days what all of us together couldn’t do in months or a year.” Home by home, family by family, whether in a garden or a school yard, Jewish people are watching and getting a different impression of Christians.
From the Christian Side
Edith Buchanan was part of the first Australian tour group in 2006 who scheduled a couple of work days into their tour. She writes:
“When we discovered we would be gardening, this suited my husband, as he is a farmer and loves to be outdoors. He seemed to have gathered to himself, a sizeable group of students, both boys and girls. They all had so much fun together, trying to communicate and getting to know one another.
“We were delighted to be able to meet with the student council body who asked us what Bridges for Peace was all about. One girl asked, ’People said we Jews killed Jesus, but that has been proven wrong, so why does the whole world still hate us?’ One of our group gave a very good reply and pointed out that we had come to show them that not everyone in the whole world hates them. This and other questions, truly gave us an insight as to how young people in Israel feel.”
Glenda Frazer explained that while the language was the greatest challenge, it didn’t stop her new Jewish friend from opening up her heart about her fears of living in Israel. “She got quite personal; she appreciates us coming, and by doing that, she just opened up her heart.” Many others from similar tours have written enthusiastically about their experiences:
Romans 14:19 exhorts us to “pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another” (NASB). We have learned to do this in perhaps the most volatile part of the world, and we can testify—God’s Peace Plan works!
By Charleeda Sprinkle, Assistant Editor
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