First thing on Tuesday morning, we headed to the Mount of the Beatitudes. While the grounds were among the smallest we visited, the impact the Church of the Beatitudes on the students was among the largest. Student Natalie Schiferl writes:
I don’t have a handy quote to use as an epigram, but I’m sure that someone has previously, and pithily, expressed the idea that we travel as much to learn about ourselves as to learn about others. It’s the original form of comparative analysis, a chance to experience other ways of living and doing and thereby to reflect upon our own. The immediate effect is (often) the experience of novelty – at root the same thrill that accompanies exposure to a new idea, taste, or sound. “Here is something I haven’t seen before!” The lingering effect is that of evaluation, an effort to understand. We humans like to categorize, and so the urge is to place this new experience within our existing mental boxes. But the fit is not always perfect. When that happens we have to adjust the boxes, and thus our sense of the world. (Of course, there is a danger here, too. We might be so tempted to place things in our existing boxes that we overlook differences.)
Why the holding forth on travel? I will tell you. I had the opportunity to accompany Professor Andrea Schneider and the thirty-three students in her International Dispute Resolution class on their trip to Israel over Spring Break. It was an amazing trip. We encountered theory in the classroom, and the reality of conflict, borders, and displacement outside of it. The people who showed us these things, both the theoretical and the concrete, are themselves deeply immersed in the effort to achieve peace and mitigate the consequences of conflict. Even what might appear to have been the more conventionally touristy parts of the trip – typically involving some historically and/or religiously significant site –served to underscore just how layered and tangled the region’s issues are.
On Monday morning, we were off for a quick stop at the open air market at Machane Yehuda and then a tour of the Supreme Court. And then we had the distinct treat of our own personal tour of Lifta, a destroyed Palestinian village since 1948 right on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Leading our tour was Daphna Golan, professor of law at Hebrew University and director of the Minerva Human Rights Program. Daphna was also a co-founder of B’Tselem, one of the first human rights organizations in Israel promoting Palestinian human rights. In short, she is a human rights activist extraordinaire. She is also a big believer of experiential learning and decided that rather than giving us a lecture in a classroom, she would take us on a field trip. It was amazing!
Student Adam Marshall recounts his experience:
“Our trip to Lifta was arguably the best spontaneous adventure I have ever taken. While on the outskirts of Jerusalem, we were met by Daphna Golan, who is a professor at Hebrew University. Instead of sitting in another lecture and hearing from another professor, she decided that we needed to experience this part of Israel up close. What started off as a seemingly normal walk and talk quickly turned into a breath-taking experience of a historic and neglected Palestinian village.