BYU Studies

Volume 59:4 (2020) - Organized topically, this book’s sixteen essays provide a wealth of information about Jewish and Latter-day Saint perspectives, scripture, experience, worship, culture, and politics. However, at least for me, the true treasure of these essays is not so much informational as it is relational.

In my experience, interfaith meetings frequently bear an uncanny resemblance to middle-school dances: occasions where two groups very much want to get to know each other but have absolutely no idea how to do so. Consequently, they hang back, occasionally venturing forth to make awkward, momentary contact, only to quickly retreat to the safety of their respective camps afterwards. With this book, Jewish and Latter-day Saint scholars from Loyola Marymount University; Brigham Young University; Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles; and the Academy for Jewish Religion California attempt to remedy this situation not only by offering their readers several “good practices and lessons learned about successful interfaith dialogues” (xiv) but also by demonstrating in essay form what such a dialogue looks like and what it can lead to.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - In 1985, my friend and I decided to backpack around the world. I said that if we were doing that, the first thing I wanted to do was get to the Holy Land. We were on a dime traveling, and we just had a Bible in one hand and a Let’s Go Europe in the other. That visit to the Holy Land started a fire within me, a love of that land. I was home about a year and a half when Elder James E. Faust spoke at our stake conference in Australia. He began by noting that “the Jerusalem Center is opening soon.” After conference, I asked Elder Faust, “Really, what do I need to do?” He told me to write to Robert Taylor. Two months later, I was at the Jerusalem Center as a student in the fall 1987 program. I later returned as a faculty member from August 2014 to August 2015.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - Almost fifty years ago, my wife, Patricia, and I had the distinct privilege to work for incoming Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington in combing through the archives of the Church History Library in Salt Lake City for source materials long since shelved, considered lost, or otherwise off-limits. Along the way, we also enjoyed working with a team of other dedicated scholars brought in to work under Arrington’s kind and learned tutorship. Among them was a talented archivist/historian named Dean Jessee, who was an assiduous student of the document, particularly the papers of the prophet Joseph Smith Jr. Owning a passion for the original manuscript and for letting primary sources speak for themselves, Jessee was less the interpreter and more the preserver. The publication of the multivolume Joseph Smith Papers a half century on owes much to the quiet, painstaking, and transformative work of this good man. They are a legacy to his vision, drive, and effort through years of ups and downs too many and sometimes too painful to discuss here. They are also a tribute to the leadership of Elder Steven E. Snow, recent Church Historian and Recorder from 2012 to 2019, who did so much to see these latest volumes published.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - Thank you for allowing me to be with you today. In some ways, what I say today could be a precursor to the sermon someone might give at my funeral. Funeral or not, I am going to have these words written on my tombstone: “He did not fight at Hawn’s Mill, he was never incarcerated at Liberty Jail, he never pulled a handcart, but he did work on the BYU Jerusalem Center.” I have all the scar tissue, shared with a lot of other people, to prove that point. I am delighted to have the chance on this thirtieth anniversary to reminisce a little about that experience.

A couple of tributes need to be paid right at the outset. Since they would not say it of themselves, honor and integrity demand that I say a word or two about some very devoted people who made the Jerusalem Center happen. Even as I single out a few, so much more should be said about so many more.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - When we first occupied the Center, construction of some of its facilities was not completed. For example, the dining area, which would come to be called the Oasis, was not finished in time for the summer term of 1987, and my students and I had to walk across the street to the Commodore Hotel for our meals. During the first week my student group was lodging at the Center, I was approached by a man who owned the house just across the street from our lower gate and desired to meet some of his strange new neighbors. He invited me to his son’s wedding, to be held in their small patio court that weekend. It was a delightful event for me and several of our students, as we began the process of getting to know the people of our new surroundings.

It was not all easy, however, and not always friendly. I also remember being approached by a belligerent man at a tourist site who recognized the students as the “Mormons” whose new Center he felt was a dangerous missionary presence in the Holy Land. He attempted to bait me and some of my students into a religious discussion, which we avoided. It would take quite some time for the fears that some people had about the Center to abate.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - Borrowing its title from Joseph Smith’s far-reaching Nauvoo theology, Make Yourselves Gods is somehow even more provocative than its title. The average Latter-day Saint reader will chafe under its vocabulary, struggle through its detailed contributions to the study of secularism, and be at odds with its use of queer critique. Furthermore, to the average reader’s disdain, this book will be chewed and discussed for a generation to come. It is not likely to be forgotten.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - The Pearl of Great Price is the least intentional of Latter-day Saint scriptures. When British mission president Franklin Richards pulled together a fifty-six-page assemblage of miscellaneous writings in 1851, he showed no signs of thinking that it prefigured an addition to the canon. He thought the items would be useful for instructing missionaries and members in gospel doctrine. The writings were widely distributed as a pamphlet but not considered scripture until canonization was proposed, almost casually, in 1880, in the same meeting where John Taylor was sustained as Church President. Unlike the Book of Mormon, which arrived as another Bible and was instantly treated as scripture, and the Book of Commandments, which was adopted as canonical immediately upon publication, the Pearl of Great Price crept in from the sidelines. Yet when it was proposed, it was adopted without opposition. Within twenty-nine years, it had become a treasured collection that the Saints loved and used.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - When I first arrived at the Jerusalem Center in 1994 and assumed responsibility for, among other areas, the Center’s security, I inherited from my predecessor a file with policies for how to deal with potential threats. Here are some of those policies:

Procedure to evacuate the building in case of a bomb threat
Procedure to deal with riots at the lower gate
Procedure to deal with ultra-Orthodox demonstrations at the upper gate

These were some of the challenges we had to deal with for years immediately after the opening of the Center. These rules indicated the uncertain status of the Church and Brigham Young University in Jerusalem for a long time after Mayor Teddy Kollek used his influence to obtain approval for a new home for BYU’s study abroad program.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - This poem by Daniel F. Teichert won first place in the 2019 Clinton F. Larson Poetry Contest, sponsored by BYU Studies.

Volume 59:4 (2020) - I’ve been asked to focus on the construction period of the Jerusalem Center rather than the student program that, at this point in time, is the heart and soul of the Center. My wife, Frieda, and I lived for twenty years in Israel, where we also raised our family of five children. We were blessed to witness some marvelous miracles while living there, but none more marvelous than those that were intimately linked to the Center. I had the great opportunity to be personally involved with the story of the Center that follows here.