Oliver Hersey
Yes! I don’t wish that on anybody. I don’t wish war on anybody. Going through that it’s hard. We immediately watched 95% of our enrollment fall through the cracks. Understandably so. People don’t want to travel to a war zone. With that comes the releasing of many colleagues, because we had to downsize. We released about 50% of our faculty and staff. I’m the person that puts that hat on and had to make those calls.
Thankfully, everyone was very understanding and gracious; but it doesn’t make it easy. We tried to do it quickly and early to help people get on their way with proper severance. We’ve really had to recalibrate so many components of our institution in that season. It’s now been two years since this war started, and while things are turning around and looking better for JUC, we still have a long way to go in terms of recovering enrollment numbers.
And things won’t be recovered overnight. I think it takes time for people to feel confident to take a trip to Israel after all that’s happened. It’s not like COVID. I understand that it impacted many, many people but COVID wasn’t violent. Because it wasn’t violent, because it wasn’t war, people were ready to return to Israel with blink of an eye, and we immediately had an influx of students.
David Capes
As soon as Israel was open, people were there on the planes, heading your way.
Oliver Hersey
Yes. This is not the same, and because it’s still grinding on and it’s still in the news, it’s going to be a very tempered, slow build back. We keep talking as a team, saying let’s be patient. Let’s continue to maintain our relationships. Let’s think about new ways we can help people get to the biblical lands. We are taking students to Turkey, to Greece, to Egypt, and all of the other places where the biblical story unfolded.
David Capes
And do you take those trips yourself, or do you take those trips with others? Or others do it for you?
Oliver Hersey
No, we lead those trips. I teach a course on Egypt in the Bible when I have time and space in my schedule, and that course has a field study that’s optional. We encourage people to do it. It’s about a 10-day trip to Egypt. We do that in early December. It’s a perfect time to go because it’s not too hot. We have to follow Egyptian government laws, so I’ll go as an instructor. But per Egyptian laws, you have to have a tour guide who is from Egypt. We have a really awesome gentleman that we work with, a believer, who really gets our programs and our institution and the philosophy of our itinerary.
But we don’t have to do that in Israel, because we’re an institution in Israel. We actually don’t have to have a tour guide on our bus. That’s one of the unique things about going on a trip to the Holy Land with us, is that we don’t have an Israeli tour guide. On one of our programs your guide is a scholar from America who’s lived many years in Israel and has published on the subject and has a heart for Jesus. They also have a deep insight and knowledge of the land and be free to teach as he wishes on each site. Because we’re an institution in Israel we are not governed by the tourism laws.
David Capes
Earlier, you mentioned that you once were standing on the edge of the Dead Sea. You felt God nudging you, saying, you’re no longer going to be teaching algebra, you’re going to be teaching the Bible. What can you learn about the Bible in the land that you can’t learn about it from another place, another vantage point?
Oliver Hersey
I realize there are some people who can’t go to the land for whatever reason. Maybe it’s economics or physical limitations. I’ve always been a believer that you don’t have to go to the Holy Land to know the truth and the story that God has unfolded in Scripture. We know that’s true from eons of history. Having said that, if you can make the sacrifice both time wise and economic wise to take a trip like this, I would say you will have a very enriched view of God’s word that perhaps you can’t get any other way.
And when I say rich, you’re going to be seeing the hills, the caves, the pathways that these biblical writers and characters were dealing with. And you will take on a new appreciation for their life, for what they taught, what they said. I describe it this way. It’s like a black and white TV, that shifted to color. That shift was dynamic. We got to see those great shows now in color. The stories were still the same. We’re still watching the same sitcom, same story. Sill laughing, still crying, or whatever it is. But now there’s a new realism that is involved that can sometimes draw you deeper into the story, deeper into the text. And I think sometimes a pilgrimage trip like that can do exactly that, draw you deeper into
God’s story in a way that perhaps not going can’t do.
David Capes
There’s a place in the Judean Desert. I’m sure you probably know it. I can’t recall the name, but we were standing looking north. I looked down to my right, and I could see Jericho, and then I looked up to my left, and I could see Jerusalem. There’s that ancient road. It’s the same road that Jesus would have traveled, that the disciples and others would have traveled, going from Jericho up to Jerusalem.
Oliver Hersey
Exactly right. I don’t know about you, but when I read that story before going to Israel, I had a view of a road based on my limited understanding of roads here in America. I’m from America. That’s my mental picture. But when you’re standing on that pathway and you think about the story of the Good Samaritan that happens on the Jericho Road. You read about the robbery and the beating and the fact that these men now traveling to Jerusalem for their ritual duties, their cultic duties at the temple, how they bypass that broken down man.
They’re not on the other side of the road. It’s not like I’m in Chicago where I can be on the other side of the road maybe 40 yards apart. You’re literally walking by this guy. He could reach out and touch you. Or you could reach out and touch him, which is perhaps the potency of that story. When you’re standing there on that path and you realize this road is narrow, this is a gorge. This is a road that is out in the wilderness. It’s a road that’s plagued with bandits. Now this story makes a lot of sense. And obviously there’s a lot of theological things going on in that story, but it’s those moments of clarity.
David Capes
Until you see that, you don’t really quite get it. And the other thing that people will often walk away with is, the land of Israel is not broad. It’s not a big land. It’s a small land.
Oliver Hersey
It’s a very small land. It contains the diversity of California. If you’ve been to California, you know there’s a lot of diversity in that state. But if it’s Isreal, it’s smashed into the size of a state like New Jersey. Literally, from campus, we can travel 35 minutes and be in a completely different climate zone that’s now 1,400 feet below sea level. You can be in the lowest spot on planet earth that’s exposed. It’s remarkable. You can be up in the middle of the hills in Jerusalem again, and it may snow. That doesn’t happen often, but once every few years it’ll have a snowfall.
David Capes
So, [one day] the war will be over.
Oliver Hersey
As we say in Arabic, Inshallah.
David Capes
God willing, God willing. God willing, the war will be over. What happens next at Jerusalem University College? What does the President lead it to do?
Oliver Hersey
Our number one task is to continue to keep the ship afloat. To be very honest, think about losing 95% of students, that’s a significant blow economically. So, we’re really trying to be lean and trim across the board. We are so grateful for the many people who’ve been generous to us to help offset some of the losses.
David Capes
You used the word miracle earlier? Is almost miraculous.
Oliver Hersey
It is by any metric. We shouldn’t exist anymore, but through providential moments and people, we have been able to stay afloat. Right now, the core issue is, let’s stay afloat until the war is over, when we can return back to some normalcy. I think JUC has been able to take this time and internally, get a lot of things ironed out, build a lot of new things. We’ve made the ship a lot stronger inside. I think we’re going to be set up to really cruise into a nice horizon.
My vision is that we grow not just our numbers from the West, but that we also grow our numbers of students that are from the majority world. Whether that’s through online education, whether that’s through scholarships that help students from India travel to Jerusalem to come and study in the Holy Land. I’m getting emails literally every month from people in India and people in Africa saying, we want to come to Jerusalem. The problem is funding.
You know, my chief goal now as president is to really seek to build relationships with people who can help young, blossoming scholars, and pastors in these indigenous countries, these countries out in the majority world, to come and take part in this enriched education. That way they, in turn, can go back to their congregations and teach the Bible in its context, in a way that changes lives, in a way that really brings truth into the hearts of humans.
David Capes
There are some great things happening in Africa and in Asia and other parts of the world, where there’s not a lot of theological education.
Oliver Hersey
There isn’t and that’s something that is deep on my heart. It weighs on me, and I want to help whatever we can do our small part in partnering with either existing seminaries or just working with churches to help educate in a way that’s cost-effective. I realize it’s expensive to get people to Israel, so trying to do that in the most economically viable way is one of my goals.
David Capes
Very good. Well, we’re going to say to our audience, “Stay tuned.” We’ll hear a lot more over time.
Oliver Hersey
I appreciate it.
David Capes
Dr. Oliver Hersey, thank you.
Oliver Hersey
My pleasure.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
