by Herbert Eiteneier
http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=4463
[Written on a recent visit to Israel.]
Just a first. I don't know when I will have the time to write more extensively (in English at least), so I'll tell you about my most moving experience.
We were staying in En Gev, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee for the first four nights. On our second evening, about 25 of our group gathered under some palm trees in the evening for some worship and prayer. Two persons approached us. One was a Norwegian who told us he was there with a Christian group from Norway - Charismatics, like we seemed to be. He asked about what we were doing over the next few days, and sang and prayed with us.
A little later, a woman in her early fifties named Yael came by and started a conversation. We answered her questions on who we were, what we were doing there and what we were going to do next. She herself works with senior citizens in Tel Aviv and was staying with a group of them. She is the daughter of two Germans who escaped Nazi Germany before World War II. Upon hearing that six of our group were going to be baptized the next day in the River Jordan, she told us her group would surely like to come and watch. So we rescheduled the baptism for the morning (she and her group were going to leave for Tel Aviv afterwards).
When we came to the place where we performed the baptisms, the Norwegians were there. They insisted on singing two songs for us as start of the service. First was "Bless Germany, o Lord" in Norwegian.
During the baptisms, the Jewish group arrived. One of the old ladies didn't only watch, she started a lively conversation with one of us who is married to an Ecuadorian woman - a combination she was very interested in. Yael translated for them; then, our pastor addressed them and told about his (well, our) feelings and the honor we felt in their being there. For farewell, we sang Hevenu Shalom Alechem and Hatikva. A very moving morning.
On a subsequent Sunday, we visited with them in Tel Aviv. They had invited us to come to their community center, which is run by Yael. Again, it was a very warm atmosphere. Each of them introduced herself/himself and we realized that more than half of them were Holocaust survivors.
Can you imagine? People who had suffered severely from German persecution inviting, welcoming and even hugging young Germans - just because they came to Israel and tried to show their support for the Jewish state, even wanting to hear our religious interpretation of history and reasons to support Israel.
I can't say how much this moves me. All the historical places, all the nice and good people we met, the support we got from total strangers when they saw we were tourists is nothing compared to what this means to me.
And there were many instances where we just learned that Israelis take care of others and of each other. Be it their wanting to help find a restaurant after Shabbat in the Jewish quarter in Jerusalem, or the young American Jew on a Tel Aviv shuttle taxi telling me he would look out for the right place to get out when I came back from Beer Sheva. I can't appreciate such help too much.
But all that is overwhelmed by those old people embracing the descendants of their worst enemies. I still have problems controlling my tears just writing about this.
Just one more thing: We had a lot of discussion with our bus driver about the political situation with the Palestinians. That caused our pastor to pray on the bus on our way to the airport that Yasser Arafat would not return.
Seems that prayer is answered already.
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