The exuberant scholar declares unequivocally: “I love living in Israel.” (Michael Stack | Special to The Tribune) Eric Huntsman, academic director of BYU Jerusalem Center, at the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden in Jerusalem, April 8, 2022.Įric Huntsman, the center’s academic director, arrived in April to open the center after it was closed for two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and now has completed his first semester with students. Plus, the center employs more than 50 locals, which is not a lot, Kearl says, “but it’s not trivial either.” An ‘island of peace’
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It also provides important services to the community - concerts, lectures, humanitarian projects and is open free of charge for workshops and conferences.
Now that has been flipped with BYU being the main player but allowing it to be used for services and members. The center was supposed to be a “First Presidency building” that also housed students, Kearl says. Indeed, the center has no baptismal font. Only members can attend services, and no Israeli citizen or resident can be baptized. Thus, from then to now, all Latter-day teachers, students and members know that they cannot share their faith or do and say anything that would lead someone to be interested in the church.
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So, Brethren, whatever we’re going to do, let’s make sure we understand the full implication of that before we put ink to that paper.” There won’t be any quibbling, there won’t be any behind-the-scenes fudging or under-the-table activity. “I’m willing to sign with everybody else, but just remember that I would rather walk away from any number of Jerusalem Center projects than ever compromise our integrity as a church.…If we say we’re not going to, then we don’t. The discussion went around and around, he writes, until one leader (whom Holland does not name) stood and declared: The Orson Hyde Memorial Garden near the BYU Jerusalem Center on Saturday, April 9, 2022 “There were places where we did not but we had never signed anything in that regard.” Swearing off missionary work “The church had never signed such an undertaking,” he writes. Israeli officials eventually offered the church a long-term lease - if its leaders would agree not to permit proselytizing.Ī long and lively meeting of Latter-day Saint general authorities took place July 31, 1985, to discuss the matter, Holland, now an apostle, writes in a BYU Studies article. Kollek hoped to make Jerusalem an international secular city, Kearl says, but his vision was rejected, and he lost his seat. Teddy Kollek, then Jerusalem’s longtime mayor, solidly backed the church’s project. If the government tried to take the center (by then partially built), Israel would lose access to U.S.
Congress got involved and made its own threats, the BYU administrator says. It came to a head with threats from the Knesset (Israel’s parliament) to expropriate the building and “pay the Mormons off.” Soon, ultra-Orthodox Jews on Mount Scopus launched serious opposition that was “pretty nasty and pretty long,” Kearl says. The church hoped to buy the property on which the center now sits, but, in 1983, it discovered that the Israel Land Authority was the owner.Īfter a long discussion, that body was persuaded to lease the land to the church, so, in 1984, both parties agreed to begin construction, Kearl says, without a long-term lease. Kimball, in 1979, was that the building would establish a presence for the Utah-based faith in the Holy Land as well as house BYU students who were on a study abroad semester there. The original idea for the center, espoused first by the church’s then-president, Spencer W. A Latter-day Saint tour group on the terrace of the BYU Jerusalem Center on Saturday, April 9, 2022
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