Maala, now a teacher and guidance counselor, gave “her life to Yeshua (Jesus).” And, Evan says, a radical change occurred in their life together. In the story he sent me, Evan writes that “[s]uddenly I had an ‘angel’ for a wife.” The tensions that had so far infused their marriage vanished, or at least were resolved more calmly.
“As a result,” he writes, “rather than object to her faith I proceeded to encourage her, inviting a local Christian Pastor to teach a weekly Bible study in our home (which I didn’t attend), insisting she regularly attend services, to which I would often take her.”
But Evan didn’t immediately follow in his wife’s footsteps, and his enthusiasm for his wife’s transformation grew from the absence of conflict and her newfound service-oriented heart.
“To this day I am ashamed of my selfishness.”
Almost a year later, while Evan was studying at Massey Uni-versity, he impulsively popped into a movie theater in order to escape his intense studies for a few hours. The film was The Hiding Place, based on Corrie Ten Boom’s account of her family’s life-threatening sacrifice to save Jews from the Nazis in Holland. As he sat in the darkness, Evan felt something changing, like his hardened heart was being kneaded and leavened by the story he encountered. His academic explorations of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures slowly became more personal “as I quietly gave my life to Yeshua and knew His forgiveness.”
In the midst of familial concern, Evan’s commitment to Yeshua caused him to return to his Jewish roots. And for him, as for many others, this newfound belief that Yeshua was the Messiah of the Jews, and the Gentiles, coincided with an instantaneous desire for “the Land.” That faraway place of his grandparent’s stories emerged in his thoughts. Then, one morning in 1979, he woke Maala up and dictated words that were running through his mind: “Prepare, for I will take you to the Land and there I will teach you much.” Evan interpreted these biblical words as a direct message and he and Maala immediately packed their bags and set off for a kibbutz in Israel’s Sharon Valley, where they worked for the next fourteen months.
“This period was to be the ‘honeymoon’ of our walk with the Lord and the formation of our relationship with Israel.”
The plan was always to return to New Zealand, but Evan slowly began to feel differently, that perhaps Israel should be their home. Evan became convinced that “the ingathering of the Jewish people” to Israel was necessary. He and Maala returned to New Zealand in December of 1980 and began preparing for aliyah, their permanent immigration as Jews to the State of Israel. In 1983, they went back to Israel.
Evan and Maala came to Netyana; they had loved the Sharon Valley during their time on the kibbutz, and so decided to make the coastal city their home. The sea still called to Evan, even if it was a different one. For six months they studied Hebrew in their crammed apartment and attempted to integrate into their new culture. They found jobs and reconnected with a group of local Messianic Jews that they had known several years before. Evan was soon asked to serve as an elder and his desire to step more fully into ministry began to grow. After four years, he devoted himself full-time to the congregation of Beit Asaph, the House of the Convener. Begun in the 1970s by David and Lisa Loden (who is also on Musalaha’s Board), Beit Asaph originated as a consolidation of two house groups, and this grassroots foundation, along with its encompassing name, has led to a more inclusive vision. Beit Asaph is comprised of more than two-hundred members from various ethnic backgrounds, including immigrants from Russia, Ethiopia, and South America. The congregation is also marked by a deep commitment to helping the severely disabled in their community.
Evan shifted as the seat cushions began to slide again. Two German volunteers were carrying the dirty dishes and empty food platters back to the kitchen. I turned the conversation to Palestinians.
“In first coming to Israel,” Evan said, running both hands through his whitening beard, “I had little or no interaction with Palestinian Christians. And my interaction with Palestinian communities was with my military service in Gaza and areas of the West Bank, like Hebron, Qalqiliya, and Tulkarem. I was sent all over during the first intifada in the early 1980s.”
He spoke slowly and carefully, choosing each word.
“My perception of Palestinians was as a soldier seeing them as a hostile environment to my own. I didn’t have any personal enmity to Palestinians. It came as military-based, as a result of my training. I just saw them as an enemy to my own people. In a civilian setting I had no negative interactions. The word ‘Palestinian’ didn’t come up at that point. Reconciliation, as far as I knew, was not discussed as an important issue in the believing communities.”
Evan seemed unaware of a wider, deeper conflict between the two peoples until a large prayer conference, which included both Jewish and Palestinian Christians, in the mid-1980s.
“I don’t remember much about the content, but I do remember the conference turned into a total debacle when Gazan Palestinian Christians began to hand out fliers, what about I don’t recall, and that infuriated the Israelis and all was disbanded. My recollection is imperfect, but it seems to me now that the conflict with our larger communities was suppressed because people said we are one with Christ and that there is no conflict.”
Apparently that wasn’t entirely true.
Evan finished military training after his first four months in Israel in 1983, but reserve duty was required for the following fifteen years, and he was called up in 1987 when the first intifada broke out. In 1988, Evan was on combat duty in Gaza City. He was stationed at the entrance to the city and performed body searches on Palestinian men passing through the gates, most of whom were attempting to obtain permits to visit families in the West Bank.
“We had been trained not to look into the faces of the people we were searching,” Evan said, holding his hand over his eyes, “so as not to become acquainted or familiar with anyone.”
But one particular day, he did look up, and even though he had been taught that there weren’t any faces to look at, he found the face of a young man looking back into his. And they recognized each other.
“From that conference!” Evan declared.
An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian recognizing one another in Gaza City made for an awkward situation, but Evan quickly realized that they were faced with a much larger dilemma.
“If my superior had seen me I would have been severely reprimanded, and for him to greet an Israeli soldier would not look good in the eyes of his people either. The interaction between us was a true example of facing your enemy as a brother. This was the same year, and not long before, Musalaha was forming and Salim approached me to help form this important ministry.”
His large hands were folded in front of him and he looked at the tiled floor.
“This memory has stayed with me so vividly, that I believe, John, the Lord ordained it in order to soften my heart. But each successive tour of duty in the West Bank challenged me enormously, as did becoming aware of the pain of the second-class status of Palestinian citizens in Israel. Not so much my politics,” he added rather quickly, “but my theology was sharpened.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. Were his politics not changed because his presuppositions, whatever they were, were reinforced, or because his politics were not formed enough beforehand? He thought for a moment and affirmed the latter.
“I come from New Zealand, and politics there are just not that important. So at the time I was pretty much an open book. Most of my theology that developed as a result of my early training in New Zealand no longer seemed as relevant after two years of being here in the Land. I was, however, left with a deep relationship with Yeshua, a connection to the land, and wonderment in discovering my Jewish identity. As I said, my theology was sharpened in these tours, especially things such as 1 John 4, especially verse 20.”