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Authors: Bruce Feiler
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ladder. He awakens and erects a pillar to mark the place, calling it Bethel, house of God. Years later, on his way home from Harran with his wife and children, Jacob again stays in the place. Fern began to read this passage, from Genesis 35.
“And God said to Jacob: ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and remain there; and build an altar there to God.’ ” Jacob responds, instructing his family, “Rid yourself of the alien god in your midst, purify yourselves, and change your clothes. Come, let us go up to Bethel, and I will build an altar there to the God who answered me when I was in distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.” Jacob hides the idols under the same terebinth tree in Shechem that his grandfather used. Then he travels to Bethel, where God again invokes the name he earlier gave Jacob: Israel, meaning Striven with God. “And God said to him, ‘You whose name is Jacob, you shall be called Jacob no more, but Israel shall be your name.’ Thus He named him Israel.”
As she was reading, Fern began to choke up. She closed the book. “Maybe it was my destiny that I ended up in Bethel,” she said. “There are such special people here.” She got up and walked to the one shelf that wasn’t covered in books, where she retrieved a large framed photoof a mother and her son. She handed it to me. “They were killed about two years ago now. They were gunned down on the way back to Bethel from a family gathering. When we first came to Bethel they were the first family that had us over. I didn’t speak Hebrew. She didn’t speak English. But there was such warmth there, and welcome. Just very special people. We went to their funeral. We went to the funeral of a kindergarten teacher. We went to the funeral of a young man in his early twenties. My children go every six months to someone else’s funeral. When I lived in America the only funerals I went to were for old people.”
“So why do you keep her picture?”
“Because I don’t want to forget them. It’s part of our life here. We have a cemetery. It’s filling up!”
“And that doesn’t make you want to stay less?”
“It makes me want to stay more. It strengthens my pride for this place. Not only was Abraham here, and Jacob. But now I’ve been here, and my children, too. Not only did they make sacrifices. We made sacrifices, too. And we did it for the same reason. We believe in God.”
Avner and I were quiet for much of the way home. Once again an impromptu meeting had produced a connection to the Bible so profound—and so personal—that I felt it in my gut. I was struck by how physical Fern’s experience was: First she felt a longing for her biblical roots, then she came to Israel, then she felt as if she had become a part of the story herself. It’s as if the act of going through those steps had taken her closer to God. Was there something inevitable about that process?
For the time being, I was focused on more tangible issues, specifically trying to figure out what Canaan was like when Abraham got there. The Bible is strikingly unhelpful in this regard. Abraham’s initial encounters seem almost hurried over in the text. The account of Abraham’s travels from Shechem, to Bethel, to the Negev is covered in only four verses. The absence of any details raised a question, which I asked Avner the following day: Is there a connection between what we wereseeing and what Abraham would have seen? “Let’s take a drive,” he said.
We turned south from Jerusalem toward Beer-sheba along the same route Abraham would have taken, the Patriarchs’ Road. The original path would have been three or four feet wide, Avner noted, a stone-riddled trail winding around the mountains to avoid steep climbs. The Romans later widened it and paved it. Today it’s a four-lane highway, with regulation shoulders, guardrails, light poles, the longest tunnel in Israel, as well as the longest bridge. At a scant two hundred yards, the bridge doesn’t even cross
“And God said to Jacob: ‘Arise, go up to Bethel and remain there; and build an altar there to God.’ ” Jacob responds, instructing his family, “Rid yourself of the alien god in your midst, purify yourselves, and change your clothes. Come, let us go up to Bethel, and I will build an altar there to the God who answered me when I was in distress and who has been with me wherever I have gone.” Jacob hides the idols under the same terebinth tree in Shechem that his grandfather used. Then he travels to Bethel, where God again invokes the name he earlier gave Jacob: Israel, meaning Striven with God. “And God said to him, ‘You whose name is Jacob, you shall be called Jacob no more, but Israel shall be your name.’ Thus He named him Israel.”
As she was reading, Fern began to choke up. She closed the book. “Maybe it was my destiny that I ended up in Bethel,” she said. “There are such special people here.” She got up and walked to the one shelf that wasn’t covered in books, where she retrieved a large framed photoof a mother and her son. She handed it to me. “They were killed about two years ago now. They were gunned down on the way back to Bethel from a family gathering. When we first came to Bethel they were the first family that had us over. I didn’t speak Hebrew. She didn’t speak English. But there was such warmth there, and welcome. Just very special people. We went to their funeral. We went to the funeral of a kindergarten teacher. We went to the funeral of a young man in his early twenties. My children go every six months to someone else’s funeral. When I lived in America the only funerals I went to were for old people.”
“So why do you keep her picture?”
“Because I don’t want to forget them. It’s part of our life here. We have a cemetery. It’s filling up!”
“And that doesn’t make you want to stay less?”
“It makes me want to stay more. It strengthens my pride for this place. Not only was Abraham here, and Jacob. But now I’ve been here, and my children, too. Not only did they make sacrifices. We made sacrifices, too. And we did it for the same reason. We believe in God.”
Avner and I were quiet for much of the way home. Once again an impromptu meeting had produced a connection to the Bible so profound—and so personal—that I felt it in my gut. I was struck by how physical Fern’s experience was: First she felt a longing for her biblical roots, then she came to Israel, then she felt as if she had become a part of the story herself. It’s as if the act of going through those steps had taken her closer to God. Was there something inevitable about that process?
For the time being, I was focused on more tangible issues, specifically trying to figure out what Canaan was like when Abraham got there. The Bible is strikingly unhelpful in this regard. Abraham’s initial encounters seem almost hurried over in the text. The account of Abraham’s travels from Shechem, to Bethel, to the Negev is covered in only four verses. The absence of any details raised a question, which I asked Avner the following day: Is there a connection between what we wereseeing and what Abraham would have seen? “Let’s take a drive,” he said.
We turned south from Jerusalem toward Beer-sheba along the same route Abraham would have taken, the Patriarchs’ Road. The original path would have been three or four feet wide, Avner noted, a stone-riddled trail winding around the mountains to avoid steep climbs. The Romans later widened it and paved it. Today it’s a four-lane highway, with regulation shoulders, guardrails, light poles, the longest tunnel in Israel, as well as the longest bridge. At a scant two hundred yards, the bridge doesn’t even cross
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