Join us this July for a “trip” of a lifetime!
Memorial Episcopal Church
Virtual Study Tour
July 22-August 2, 2020
Join with members of your community for a virtual study tour to Israel/Palestine. Through the wonders of Zoom, while remaining safe at home, you will travel to the Holy Land and consider the rich complexity of what the land means to you and to Israelis and Palestinians who live there now. Each meeting will focus on a different part of the land, including, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Galilee, the Negev, Lod, and Tel Aviv. For each stop, you will receive a relevant article or book chapter to read in advance, as well as a short video to watch. Each Zoom meeting will include a discussion of the reading and video, small group text study (havruta), and a meeting with a religious leader, social activist, or scholar for a short lecture and discussion.
Who will we meet?
· Dr. Marcie Lenk: The organizer of your virtual study tour, Marcie is a practicing Jew with a PhD in Early Christianity, who has dedicated her professional life to helping Jews, Christians and Muslims better understand one another.
· Pastor Carrie Ballenger: Pastor of the English-speaking congregation at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem’s Old City, Carrie also serves as special assistant to Bishop Ibrahim Azar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land
· Ezra Korman: CEO of Makor Educational Tours, Ezra brings decades of experience as an Israeli tour guide and educator to create educationally oriented travel programs.
· Representatives of Roots / Judur: A partnership of Muslim Palestinians and Jewish Israeli settlers to foster understanding and mutual respect of the other.
· Dr. Orit Avnery is a lecturer in Bible at Shalem College and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought. An expert on biblical law and narrative, she is the author of a volume on the Books of Ruth and Esther
· Rachel Korazim is a freelance Jewish education consultant in curriculum development for Israel and Holocaust education. She engages audiences worldwide through innovative presentations built around the stories, poems and songs of Israel’s best writers.
· And more!
What will we read?
· James Carroll, “Introduction: Two Jerusalems,” Jerusalem, Jerusalem: How the Ancient City Ignited our Modern World, 1-23.
· Karen Armstrong, “Israel,” Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths, 371-397.
· Mitri Raheb, “The Empire,” Faith in the Face of Empire, 55-66.
· Ari Shavit, “Lydda, 1948,” My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel, 99-132.
· Karla Suomala, “Jewish Concern for the Land of Israel,” in Covenantal Conversations: Christians in Dialogue with Jews & Judaism, ed. Darrell Jodock, 91-99.
· Barbara Mann, “Jews in Space,” A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv, and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space, 1-25.
