Holy Land

In November 1995, the violinist Itzhak Perlman performed at the Lincoln Center in New York City. He had polio as a child and walks with crutches. The audience waited patiently as he made his way slowly across the stage to his chair, sat down, put his crutches on the floor, removed the braces from his legs, settled himself in his characteristic pose, one foot tucked back, the other pushed forward, bent down to pick up his violin, gripped it with his chin, and nodded to the conductor to indicate he was ready. It was a familiar ritual for Perlman fans: the crippled genius making light of his disability before his sublime music transcended everything. But this time was different. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap – it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do. It was obvious – he had to put down his violin, replace his braces, pick up the crutches, heave himself to his feet, make his laborious way offstage and either get another violin or restring his crippled instrument. He did neither. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then signaled the conductor to begin again. The audience was spell-bound. Everyone knows it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. He played with such passion and such power and such purity. You could see him modulating, changing, and recomposing the piece in his head. At one point it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get sounds from them they had never made before. When he finished there was an awed silence, and then the audience rose, as one. We were all on our feet, cheering, doing everything that we could to show him how much we appreciated what he’d done. He smiled, wiped the sweat from his brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music he can still make with what he has left.” So is the life of the disabled.
Such had happened many years previously to the famed Italian violinist, Niccolò Paganini, before an equally appreciative audience and orchestra. Only in his case, three strings broke, leaving only one and he continued to play the magnificent orchestral piece. At the end, the astounded audience rose and clapped until their hands were numb.
I felt very much this way the first time I was in the Holy Land and this was prior to the '67 war. My driver said, We are going to drive in at the Damascus gate.” And I said, “Stop the car. I want to walk in. A much greater one than I walked in here and I would not ruin my first visit into Jerusalem by riding into the city in a car.” Only the Christian, only the Bible scholar, can really rejoice in the sight, smells and sounds of the eternal city. The city where Christ dragged His wooden cross along the streets and said, “If they will do this to me, what will they do to you?” (Luke 23:31)
At the time I was there, Jordan was in control of part of the city and it was necessary for me to go through a Jordanian checkpoint to visit the Dome of the Rock, that great gold-covered mask which stands out so beautiful as you stand on the Mount of Olives.
The small bridge landmass between the great landmass of the world, Egypt to the west, Iraq and Syria to the east, Turkey and Europe to the north, is only eight thousand square miles in size, roughly the size of the state of New Jersey. Just as a magnificent violinist could produce such wonderful sounds with what he had available, God chose this marvelous piece of land because it was through here that all the trade routes of the then civilized world progressed. I am certain, in my own mind, that God intended for His Word to extend throughout the world from this center of the universe.
Just a short distance away from Canaan, Palestine, and Israel, is the great Giza Plateau in Egypt where the Great Pyramid, four million, five hundred thousand tons of sandstone was constructed, probably at least 12,000 years ago. Supposedly, the Great Pyramid at Giza is built at the very center of the earth's landmass. To this day, much conjecture, but no one had been able to explain how these great blocks of sandstone, most weighing sixty tons, were joined together with such mathematical accuracy that even a human hair will not go between the stones, the interior large enough to hold both Notre Dame and St. Paul's Cathedral. The base of the Great Pyramid is the same size of the base of Solomon's Temple, thirteen acres. Each side of the four sides of the Pyramid is four acres in size. The apex of the Pyramid was never capped, and the opening allows the north star to shine directly into the Pyramid, now as always. I have been on the plateau several times. My guide told me that the Egyptian Government had given me special permission to go inside the Pyramid, even though for a long time now, people have not been allowed to go inside the Pyramid. The paradox, after this old blind man making the climb, going up the chicken ladder, into the great chasm for the first time in my life, I was afflicted with claustrophobia. I felt I would die if I could not get out and so I made a hasty exit even though it took a long time. I don't feel too bad, however, because I understand the same thing happened to Napoleon when he went into this great pyramid in 1792.
The area of the Holy Land is not that extensive. One can eat breakfast in Beirut, lunch in Damascus, and dinner in Jerusalem if you could travel by car without the many checkpoints and aggravations in traveling in this part of the world, in recent times of war and hostility. Hebron, an even older city than Jerusalem, burial place of both Abraham and Sarah, land area given to Caleb, one of the spies, was difficult to visit because of the Arab hostility. I had a United Nations escort to the city through the perilous areas of the west bank, but even in visiting in Nazareth and Bethlehem, (Bethlehem is five miles from Jerusalem) and Jericho (about 30 miles from Jerusalem) the animosity towards visitors is always evident.
In the Hilton hotel, in Jerusalem, Totie Fields -you will remember her as the American comedian who was not afraid to laugh about her weight- even then already in a wheel chair and died shortly after (This was her first trip to the Holy Land, which she had wanted to visit before her death in 1978.) said, “Dr. Morris, what's wrong with these people? Why can't they get along?” I said, “It is all a matter of religion. The road to hell is paved with religion.” Totie, like so many Americans (Frank Sinatra was in the hotel at the same time), have a wonderful connection with the Holy Land.
The center of the world's three great religions -Jewish, Christian and Catholic- since 1948, when it became a nation, Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is crowded with people speaking every type language any time you go there.
God directed Abraham, the first Jew, to leave his home in the Chaldees six hundred miles from Canaan and from that day to this, God has kept every prophecy, every promise made to the Jewish nation and Christian discipleship joint heirs with our Jewish Redeemer. Abraham's father, Terah, was a worshiper of idols. He died on Abraham's God-directed trip to Canaan, just outside Damascus. I thought about this several times as I walked the street called Straight in Damascus to which our blessed Lord had directed Paul.
There are many fascinating historical and Biblical areas to study in the Holy Land and in the countries surrounding the Holy Land. For instance, the Sea of Galilee, a body of water 39 miles in length and 17 miles broad, empties into the Dead Sea and this water has no exit. This shows us the difference in a body of water giving and a body of water just taking and releasing nothing.
In 1975, I spent Christmas Eve in the town of Bethlehem. On a personal note....arriving late, the motel in which we were booked to stay was completely filled and my driver and I were put in outside housing (like Christ went into the stable) which was very cold. And as I looked across the plains, I could well imagine that first Christmas night when the shepherds were tending their sheep. It told me again that we celebrate Christmas at the wrong time of the year, because the sheep would not be grazing in such cold weather. I had told the innkeeper that the facility was alright since I just needed enough blankets to stay warm. But I thought of those shepherds, the lowest class people in the country, not even allowed to go into the temple, not allowed to even give testimony. There is no sky as bright as the sky over Bethlehem and what a magnificent brightness it must have been on that first Christmas night when the millions of angels celebrated the birth of our Savior.
Having been reared on a farm, it did not bother me to go into the cave animal stable where the Christ child was born, but it did bother me that it was necessary to practically crawl through a hole to enter the Church of the Nativity because the large doors have all been permanently closed since the Arabs, so despising our Savior, had ridden their horses inside the church and forever damaged the interior of the Church of the Nativity, built over the cave, location of the birthplace.
Knowing my condition, the manager of the hotel in Tiberius put me in a room with a balcony right over the Sea of Galilee. On this stormy night the rough waters led me to think of our Lord walking on them. But just as important, standing on the Mount of the Beatitudes, the blessed thought (and so many people have cheated themselves) “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8) Just imagine, that a human being can actually think and visit the land where the Creator of the universe walked and talked. (John 1:1)