What I Learned Living in Jerusalem — Josh Nisley — Ep. 109

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with Josh. We're in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and you had spent some time living in Jerusalem. Describe that. Like, when were you there? How long were you there? Why were you living and working in that city? Yeah, so we lived there from 2015 to 2018, so three years, January to January.

We were there living in Jerusalem. We lived inside the Old City of Jerusalem, had the opportunity to live there, which is kind of a rare opportunity. Lived there for three years. In the Christian quarter, if you're familiar with the Old City, it's Christian quarter, small Armenian quarter, Jewish quarter, and then the Muslim quarter, which is the biggest of the four sections in the Old City.

We were there working in humanitarian aid. We worked throughout the region, but most of my work took me into the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza. But we were headquartered, working from Jerusalem primarily. And literally, where we lived in the Old City, of course, is right on the seam between East and West Jerusalem, which was the traditional dividing line after the 1967 Six-Day War. Jerusalem, the Old City, is kind of a place of its own within the larger Jerusalem. I mean, of course, Jerusalem itself is a big metropolitan area, but the Old City is almost a square kilometer with a population of between 30 and 40,000 people living in it. So very, very tightly packed in there and old cobblestone streets and history every time you turn around.

So yeah, that's where we lived. We had two of our three children there in Jerusalem. Really kind of an amazing and crazy and difficult place to live. Yeah. Well, okay, because that would be when you moved, I'm just speculating, but did you ever feel pressured to take some type of Christian Zionist stance or something to that effect? Yeah, kind of walk us through that transition of moving over and those pressures. Yeah, no, I don't know that I ever felt any kind of pressure there. Obviously, it's something that's always in the back of your mind because it's such a conflicted area, deep, deep history of the conflict going back many, many generations. But kind of where we were situated, we were in the Christian quarter in the Old City, like I said, which is Christian Arab population, which is the majority of the Christians in the Israel and Palestine area.

You can't live there without feeling the tensions. And there were waves of unrest and difficulty at times. Nothing too serious while we were there, but still, it's always kind of there. It's kind of part of the fabric, even if it's not always being acted upon. It's always kind of there. I know it's a big question within the conservative Anabaptist world.

There's pretty big differences of opinion, like what should be our response to the state of Israel. There are some who feel very strongly that as a country, we need to be supporting them. As a people, we need to be supporting Zionism. And then there are others who really take a pretty strong opposing stance to that. Living there, really, you come out of it with just the conviction that any kind of easy narrative, any kind of simplistic narrative just really doesn't cut it. And so I think what I would say, kind of some things that I would say to both sides of the issue, just based on my own experience. First of all, I think it's important that we appreciate the genuine connections that are there.

It's really hard to see 2,000-year-old synagogues and not appreciate ruins of those synagogues and not appreciate the deep kind of rootedness of the Jewish people in the land. Example, that gets at the deep history that's there. We would often, Saturday evening, pack a picnic lunch and go out in the grassy areas outside the Old City to eat. And soon after we were there, I forget how long it was, we were just kind of relaxing there in the grass. And all of a sudden, you come across these kind of caves in the wall, in the city wall.

Oh, what are these, right? So you kind of look around, then you find this plaque and like, "Oh yeah, these are tombs dating back to the First Temple period." That depth of history makes you really kind of plays with your perception of time, right? You think of American history, like '70, '76, "Oh, that's long ago." In terms of the history of the Holy Land, it's like nothing, right? So I think, first of all, to appreciate that connection. And also, the second thing I would say is to really take seriously the extent to which Christianity has been implicated in, has been complicit with anti-Semitism over the years. Really, really terrible kind of legacy there, frankly. And the scars are very, very deep in Jewish memory.

I'll never forget going to the Yad Vashem, which is the memorial museum for the Holocaust. Recommended you go there if you ever get the chance to visit. And in the section, in the room on anti-Semitism, which ultimately, of course, culminates with Hitler and the gas chamber, it begins with quotes from church fathers. Very, very negative view of the Jewish people that just keeps getting perpetuated as Christianity becomes a political force, right? And all that.

So many instances of that. And that's there, and that's something that we really need to take seriously when we think about questions of Zionism and the land and the Jewish people. To the people who would kind of take the opposite stance, who would be less inclined to think that therefore we need to support politically the state of Israel, who would take that position and be kind of anti the idea that the Palestinians have any kind of say in what goes on there. I would say this: don't adopt any kind of view that you couldn't justify or explain to your Palestinian brother or sister in Christ, right? Who are regularly discriminated against, profiled at checkpoints in the law.

I mean, the racism, you really don't have to be there long to really see how deeply seated the racism, the prejudice, the animosity, the tension that's there. They face that, right? And they're often the ones that, from my experience, of course, not all of them respond with Christ-like love and nonviolence, but for the most part, especially those that I've become close to in my time there, really seen powerful examples of enemy love.

I mean, they know who their enemy is. And they are called to love and to return good for evil. And even in Gaza, there's a very, very, very small Christian population there. So whenever Israel is shelling Gaza, for whatever reason, if you think it's justified or not, remember that there are Christian brothers and sisters there. And of course, we should care about any life, right? But be able to justify your theological ideas to your brothers and sisters. And frankly, there's also a stream of Judaism that's not accepted very well in mainstream Israeli Jewish culture, but who also accept Christ as Messiah, as Lord, and all that. The relationships there between Jewish Christians, if we can use that designation, and Palestinian Christians, it's a fraught relationship and something we, I think, need to pray about and think about.

I think we're deeply—the tensions are very nuanced. And then also, if you're going to make a claim about God's chosen people and all that, that claim, even in scripture, never exempted the people of Israel, the children of Israel in the Hebrew scriptures, from upholding justice and equity and righteousness, right? And if anything, it was always a call to greater righteousness. The way I see it sometimes played out is that, well, kind of whatever Israel does, we need to support it if we want God's blessing, right? And there's this big stream within, especially Christian evangelicalism and the Christian right in America that we often, I think, as a people kind of go along with. And there's some definite thing dangerous there.

That's kind of what I have to say on that. It's a big messy topic. Big ball of yarn. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And however you approach it, it's a very flammable issue. So I kind of try to speak from experience. I think in everything is you can be quick to hear and slow to speak. Don't assume that God can't do something or that you fit God's way of working in the world within your own ideological framework. So we're doing this based on your personal experience of living there. So can you give us a story of a formative experience, something that deeply impacted you in your time there? So it's not so much a story—or it's a story—but one of the times that I was in Gaza, I forget it was first or second or what time it was, I remember just being deeply, deeply moved or deeply, deeply aware of kind of my social status in the global scheme of things.

I am working there because I can. It's interesting to me, but I have a—I'm being supported in doing it. I'm being employed to work there. But anytime I want to, I can leave. I can come back home. There's a family business that I could potentially get involved in. I can pursue graduate education. I have a passport where I can go kind of wherever I want to in the world. I don't typically think of myself as having elevated social status in the American context, but in Gaza, where it is landlocked, it is sea-locked, 25 miles long at the widest 5 miles wide. And just realizing that there are young people my age, but also I'm getting up there.

But there are young people growing up who have no hope of ever seeing any of the world outside of that 25 by 5 at the most, virtually unlivable. I mean, every year there's talk about how Gaza is on the brink of collapse. It's just no longer sustainable. Most of the water is dirty.

Only several hours of electricity a day. And there's no political solution. Economically just devastated. And I don't know, that just really kind of—I don't know that it shook me. It just gave me perspective and helped me see, just by virtue of being born with a US passport, what kind of opportunities that opens up for you in the larger scheme of things in kind of a global perspective. It's hard to get that perspective.

It seems like that part of the world is often in the news for the wrong reasons. The latest conflict, the latest whatever attack, so forth. When we see those things, what are ways that we can respond? What's a proper perspective we can have regardless of everybody's differing opinions, whatever? I'm sure there's plenty of different opinions watching this. But what's some ways we can bring some clarity and maybe some Jesus attitude, I guess, when we see these things in the news? Because it is kind of disturbing regardless. Yeah, it's a good question. And I really don't feel like I have a whole lot of really insightful perspective to bring. One of the things, if anything, kind of the emotion that I felt living in Jerusalem, especially during times of turmoil, was just a kind of helplessness.

Here I am coming from the States. I'm getting introduced to these political conflicts. This situation has been just embedded for so long. And coming away with just a feeling of helplessness. You look at the disparity of reporting. And this is nothing new in American news, polarization. But you look at how it's reported in Palestinian media versus how it's reported in Israeli media. It's a different story, right? What actually happened? And so even it calls into question your ability to even understand, right? What is actually going on here? So I don't know.

It's not clarifying the question at all, but I mean, just that kind of helplessness. But I think, again, being quick to hear, slow to speak, it's easy to come into these things, especially if you have preformed ideas. Well, this is what happened. Hamas is doing this. And so Israel has the right to do this. And then you miss the complexity that's there. You miss the human element that's there. Always, always, if you're talking about Jesus' perspective, recognize the tragedy of conflict, of war, of death, regardless of what you think is justified and what's not.

So yeah, I would say that's the biggest thing. But also, people think about the land there, especially Jerusalem. Jerusalem is particularly hard. Sometimes we just needed to escape to the coastal cities, like Tel Aviv and Haifa. And Jerusalem is very intense because it's so deeply embedded in religion. You have Islam. You have Christianity. You have Judaism, obviously, the three major players there. But also recognize that it's not always Molotov cocktails and tear gas.

There are other realities. And I would just recommend if you ever visit—I know tourism is a big thing in Israel—if you ever visit, spend some time on the other side of the wall, wherever your political sympathies lie. Spend some time on the other side of the wall. In most cases, for our people, it's see the land of the Bible and all that. But spend some time in Bethlehem. If you can, spend some time in a refugee camp, like a Palestinian refugee camp. And spend some time with your brothers and sisters, your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ there because they occupy a difficult space. And I just want to use this platform, I guess, to speak for them, to raise awareness, I guess, of their perspective on it.

It kind of makes me want to go back again because it's been a few years since I was over there. And it was very eye-opening. You just see, "Whoa, this is really complicated and very rough. This is just really hard for everybody." No easy answers. And once you start untangling what is justice here, I mean, frankly, I have my ideas about educate yourself on history and all that. But yeah, at the end of the day, it's really difficult. And especially coming in from the outside, I think it's important to come with a level of humility and willingness to listen. Thanks so much for taking the time to share. And yeah, sometime, I don't know, it was kind of random, actually.

A little bit of a story. But when you were injured, somebody didn't even know you were there. And I ran into you on the street. And I'm like, "Whoa, what are you doing here?" I had no idea. It was bizarre. So anyway, it's been fun to talk about that and hear more about your time there. Sure.