NES AMMIM VILLAGE: A POST-HOLOCAUST CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN ISRAEL

I wrote Turning and Wandering: The Journey from Death to Life at Nes Ammim in 1999, while living and working in Nes Ammim, Israel. I served as the Study Program Coordinator (1998-1999) and Director of the Study Department (1999) for the residents of the moshav/kibbutz. The article was written for the Holocaust Conference Remembering for the Future that took place in Oxford, England, in July 2000, and which I subsequently attended. The following is an introduction to the article that begins on the next page.

Nes Ammim is an international, Christian village in Israel, begun in 1963 as a response to the Holocaust and the founding of the State of Israel. Located in Western Galilee, Israel, Nes Ammim's inhabitants, mostly from Holland and Germany, are volunteers who remain in the kibbutz-like community from one to five years. The intentional impermanence of population is part of Nes Ammim's desire to foster ambassadors of a new way of thinking about the relationship between Christians and Jews--to be, like the meaning of its Hebrew name taken from Isaiah 11:10, "a sign to the nations."

Nes Ammim is an ideologically based community whose founders were convinced that the influence of Christian anti-Judaism paved the way for the Holocaust. Nes Ammim strives to maintain that awareness in its work, its worship, and its study.

Nes Ammim endeavors to serve Israel with investment, economic initiative, and technical know-how. Through interaction with its Israeli neighbors, Jews and Arab Muslims and Christians, Nes Ammim seeks to learn about their cultures, traditions, and religions.

Through its worship Nes Ammim attempts to eliminate traditional symbols that signify triumphalism and superiority. Its inhabitants seek their Jewish roots and do not shrink from hard questioning of much traditional Christology.

Through its seminars and study programs, Nes Ammim looks back into Christian history to discover Christianity's theological and ethical contributions to the Holocaust. This looking back takes Nes Ammim on a journey of often painful, examination of the past and present. Nes Ammim sees such turning and examining as the true meaning of repentance, a repentance it deems the necessary prelude to a new, as yet uncertain Christian identity after the Holocaust.

Nes Ammim affirms that the covenant between God and Israel is a living covenant which was not revoked in the person of Jesus Christ. Proselytizing of Jews, therefore, must be replaced by dialogue and respectful interaction. Through all that it is and does, Nes Ammim seeks to abandon triumphal certainties and embrace the vulnerability of honest seeking on its journey from death to life.

Next Page

This material is reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan and is taken from REMEMBERING FOR THE FUTURE: THE HOLOCAUST IN AN AGE OF GENOCIDE, edited by Roth, Maxwell & Levy, published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2001. Copies of the book may be purchased direct from the publisher at www.palgrave.com

You may not download, copy, print, or make available via any method, including use of the world wide web, the files, or any material contained within the files, for distribution to third parties - even for non-commercial purposes, or use these files for any commercial purpose.