What do you get when two rabbis and one pastor-professor take a group of Christian FBI Chaplains to Israel? It sounds like the setup to a joke, but it’s actually something much more — something profoundly powerful for a group of religious influentials serving in a rather challenging moment.
What you get, based on the participants’ personal witness, not to mention my own experience as one of the rabbis, is: better leadership, smarter scholarship, wider perspective, and deepened connection—to their own faith, to their work as law-enforcement Chaplains, and to Jews, Judaism, and Israel, both ancient and contemporary. These are among the life-changing takeaways for the group of FBI Chaplains who recently returned from a nine-day trip to Israel as part of our Stand and See Fellowship.
Here are some of the things they had to say in their initial evaluation of their experiences:
- My participation in this journey has made me a better shepherd and leader of my people, and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity.
- The Bible went from “pages” to “places and people.” My understanding of context sharpened. My faith has definitely grown deeper.
- No doubt walking this land with Jewish brothers made it real from a perspective that I could never have imagined through Christian eyes.
- Clal has educated me, has given me an opportunity to see first-hand, and has introduced me to the realities of God at work on a global scale.
- This trip revealed how little I know about the history of the Holy Land and I hope to correct this deficiency.
- I was able to see things from different points of view. In some ways it strengthened my core beliefs, and in other ways it caused me to consider things I did not know before. That is a unique gift.
- I suddenly felt connected to the places of the past and now their witness to our work in the present. Time seemed to join together, linking the faith and struggles of the past to our present realities. It helped me develop a deeper compassion for our human condition and sensitivity to God’s calling upon us as people of faith to heal through our past and current struggles, preserving Hope for our future.
- Working in police chaplaincy, I see so much pain, and victims who experience injustice. I have followed the Israeli news since October 7 and have always felt close to Israel. What changed was actually a restoration of hope, not in thinking that everything will be fine, but seeing that our human story has always involved struggle—with the land, with others, with God—and yet we hold hope. Having heard all the news, and then our discussions on the current struggles, then looking out the bus window to see first in an Ultra-Orthodox community, then in a Palestinian community, the same mothers—stressed, rushing their joy-filled children down the street for school, I sensed that what we were doing on the trip was a start for us in seeing life and struggle through the other’s perspective (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc.). Or rather, seeing it through all perspectives at once, as God can.
Personally, I returned feeling deep gratitude to our participants, to the leadership team, and to the many people with whom we spent time in Israel. I returned feeling grateful for the opportunity to touch the lives of those who touch so many other lives, often at moments of intense crisis. And I returned with an increased urgency (if that is possible, given what I already felt) to make sure that these experiences are increasingly available to all of those who lead and serve at such moments. For America, for Israel, and for the future of faith leadership, this is what we need.