For the last year, the senior pastor of First Baptist Atlanta worked on a plan to take a group of about 240 people from 21 states to Israel for 10 days on a Holy Land tour to visit biblical sites.
Pastor Anthony George said the trip would’ve included some 160 of his own church members, departing Oct. 31. But news of the attacks on Israel by the militant group Hamas and the response by Israel led them to postpone the trip until late next year.
Many such trips to the Holy Land for religious tourism, family visits, education and service trips have been postponed as a result of the war. Historic sites have closed. U.S. commercial carriers flights have been suspended. According to the Washington Post, many hotels have shuttered or are now being used for relief efforts.
In metro Atlanta, members of the Jewish community know loss of life is the biggest tragedy. But part of them also mourns the distance the conflict has imposed between home and a territory they feel deeply connected to, where many relatives and loved ones live.
George said the postponement had disappointed the would-be pilgrims. “They want to see the places where Jesus walked and performed his miracles and where he died and rose from the dead,” he said. “It’s life changing when people take that trip.”
The ancient city of Jerusalem, for instance, is holy to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The most important historic sites in all three faiths are in the region. The Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, is one of the most visited religious sites in the world.
Cheryl Feingold Dorchinsky heads the Atlanta Israel Coalition, a nonprofit founded in 2018 to promote Israel and combat what she sees as misinformation about the country and the Zionist movement to establish a homeland for Jewish people. On Oct. 23, Dorchinsky was supposed to lead a mission of roughly 30 people to Israel. Dorchinsky said she was heartbroken when she had to make the call to postpone her group’s trip.
Not being able to visit Israel is “isolating,” Dorchinsky explained, even as she noted that it paled in comparison to people losing their lives. “It leaves us longing to be with our loved ones there. ... I’m an American. I will always be an American. But I do have that connection to Israel. And it’s so hard not knowing when we can go back.”
On the day they had planned to depart, members of Dorchinsky’s group will gather in Atlanta to “pray, reflect, and just be together.”
For local tour operators specializing in trips to the Holy Land, war-related travel disruptions may pose a significant threat to their business and livelihoods.
“We’re in a crisis,” said Samir Zumot, a Jerusalem native who founded the Quest Travel Group over 40 years ago. Based in Atlanta, the company has carved a niche organizing group trips to the Holy Land.
Since the war began, the nation has basically been closed to tourists, said Cheri Levitan, the Atlanta-based CEO of Kenes Tours, a destination management company that works with travelers primarily going to Israel.
“Other groups want to go to show they stand in solidarity with Israel,” she said.
The postponed trips to the Holy Land held varied promises for different groups who are now reconsidering their options.
Bishop Aaron B. Lackey Sr. pastor of Temple of Prayer Family Worship Cathedral in Fairburn planned to take 25 people to Israel in February. The plan was to visit important religious sites like the tomb where Jesus’s body was laid. Lackey also planned to baptize some of those going in the Jordan River.
“Obviously, we have to pray and think about what we want to do,” said Lackey, presiding bishop of the United Church of God in Christ, which has about 112 churches globally.
He said he would consider a pilgrimage to Greece, where it can still be considered a religious trip because they can trace the paths of the Apostles Paul and John.
About 40 people at Temple Beth Tikvah in Roswell still have plans to go to Israel and some will also go on to Jordan, at the end of December. Now, though, that trip may also be in jeopardy.
So far, they have not cancelled the trip and are following advisories from the state department and the tour operator.
“I am really going day-by-day,” said Shuval-Weiner. “I want more than anything for us to be able to be there. If we can [go], my assumption is that our trip is going to be very different ... more of a mission trip to be able to help on the ground.”
Bryant Wright is founder of Right From The Heart Ministries and president of Send Relief, a ministry that helps people in times of crisis and works with vunerable communities. His ministery has canceled a Bible study tour to Israel he had planned for young pastors and their wives.
Now, they will go next year.
Separately, Wright said Send Relief is setting up relief efforts in Israel, but travel there is still difficult.
”May we all pray for Israel in its war with Hamas and Palestinians caught in the crossfire.”
Brennan Breed, a professor of the Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, cancelled an immersion travel seminar to Israel and the West Bank in January that included 12 students and two faculty members.
Instead, the group will go to New York City and Washington, D.C. to learn more about the region and to visit with Palestinian and Jewish communities.
The students are disappointed that they won’t be able to visit an “area that has been so important to their faith,” Breed said. Still, while the destinations have changed, the students are “even more interested in learning about the context and history of recent events in the region.”
