EASTER IN JERUSALEM
It was one of those phone calls in the middle of the night that no one wants to get. In 1994, a ringing bedside telephone usually meant that there was something urgent for me to attend to at the hospital. Groping around in the dark for the ringing phone on my nightstand, I finally dragged the handset to my ear expecting to hear a nurse's voice. When I heard, “Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m ok.” Still not completely awake, I said, “Who is this?” She continued, “This is your daughter, Lindsey. I thought that you would be worried, so I called to tell you that I am ok.” When I asked what was happening she said, “Haven’t you seen the news?” I explained that it was 3:00 a.m. and that I had been fast asleep. I found the TV remote and turned to CNN as she continued nervously, “There was a massacre in Hebron, and Jerusalem is under lockdown. We can hear the gunfire and smell the tear gas. All but three of the study abroad students have made it back to the Jerusalem Center and we think we know where they are.” The TV flashed images of Israel and Palestine and the massacre site in Hebron where an American radical Jewish activist had sprayed a mosque with a machine gun and killed 157 Islamic worshipers. The images from Jerusalem showed riots and crowds of angry young men burning tires and American flags as they chanted “Death to America.”
My wife, Mary Kay, and I had been scheduled to go to Israel for the week of Passover through Easter. To say that I had been reluctant to go before all this happened is a gross understatement. I even told Mary Kay to go over to Bob’s Upholstery and order body bags to match our luggage so that we could come home in style. I saw the Hebron Massacre as an opportunity to escape going to Israel. So I said, in my fatherly voice, “Lindsey, when this all settles down, you get your rear end down to Tel Aviv and get on the first jet home.” Lindsey is much like me and prefers to do her own thinking. She responded, “What! And miss all this?” She stayed in Jerusalem where she was studying Middle Eastern Culture and their history and was learning Hebrew. She was immersed in the rich blend of culture that comes from studying abroad. For me, I prefer the feel of Idaho beneath my shoes and only went to Israel when Mary Kay said, “Roger, if you want to be with your family at Easter, you will be in Jerusalem.” Mary Kay tells her friends that getting me to leave Idaho is like lugging a bag of hammers around.
Two months later, off we went to Jerusalem, Mary Kay dragging a fat little grumpy urologist behind her. For three days I fought the experience, and, as the scriptures say, I “kicked against the pricks.” My silly rebellion ended in the Israel Museum of Antiquities when I saw a beautifully carved, one-inch marble palm frond fragment perched on a staff in a black glass case, dramatically illuminated with LED lighting. Our guide, Daniel Rona, explained that this was most likely the only remaining remnant of King Solomon's Temple. Pondering this comment, I suddenly had eyes to see and ears to hear. It was as if the scriptures unfolded before me. Doors instantly opened that had been closed by my stubborn selfishness. What I saw and felt in Israel, from that very point in time until today, has helped me understand finding peace in a world of conflict. I was so moved by the experience that six months later, I invited 25 friends, relatives, and office staff to return with me to Israel to experience what I had found. They are still talking about it today.
Going to Jerusalem was a profound, life-changing personal experience that I still cannot explain to anyone who has not been there. Marching with 10,000 Christians carrying palm leaves through the Arab section of Jerusalem to the Western Wall is unlike anything I have ever experienced. It gives me chills just to type that sentence 26 years later. That night we went to a Jewish Seder, a ceremonial dinner held on the first evening of Passover in commemoration of the Jews’ exodus from Egypt. Like all Seders, the rabbi left the door open and reserved an empty chair and a filled glass on the table, saved for Elijah’s return. I wanted to explain that we believe that Elijah returned 200 years ago in Kirtland, Ohio, but I knew from studying the scriptures that his recognition would be limited until the millennium begins. One week later we attended the Easter service in the auditorium at the BYU Jerusalem Center. This stunning building sits just down the road from Gethsemane and overlooks the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.
The BYU Professors, students and guests sang songs of the kingdom and bore testimony of the Savior’s atonement and resurrection. It was a brilliant, sunny Easter morning, and during the meeting we looked out at the very city where these magnificent events occurred 1994 years earlier. I have tried for the last 26 years to put these events into words. Sometimes, as I have tried to describe it all, I get blank stares as though I were describing a travelog. Those with ears to hear sometimes tear-up a little and can’t speak. Funny, how when something resonates, there is a silent, profound communication—something that I have come to understand and would have missed, had Mary Kay not dragged me, kicking and screaming, off to Israel.
Ever Vigilant,
Roger H. Tall, M.D.
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