As Israel and Lebanon Meet: A vision and prayer over a train tunnel

Train Tunnel

Standing at the sealed passage between Israel and Lebanon

If I could open up the tunnel between Israel and Lebanon at Rosh HaNikra, I would hack away at it with my nails, my teeth, with everything I have.

I have stood and looked at that sealed tunnel at Rosh HaNikra many times in my life. Remembering that, even if for a short time, a train ran from the beautiful coastal city of Haifa up the stunning Mediterranean coastline to Beirut.

Beirut. I have heard it is, or was, the Paris of the Middle East. Art, music, culture, beauty, life, possibility—thriving.

Haifa I know well. Her coastline and hills. The steep incline of her grandeur. Mixed. Haifa is a mixed city, a multitude of neighborhoods and neighbors. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Bahá’í. The port that received our survivors. Where those who escaped the gas chambers first met the holy land, home land. They kissed her soil. Fell to their knees. Embraced freedom and possibility.

Today I want to fall to my knees and kiss the soil on “my” side of the blocked tunnel at Rosh HaNikra.

Because this tunnel once opened onto a world that felt connected.

It was built during the time of the British, part of a railway that did not stop at Beirut. The line ran north through Lebanon into Syria, to Damascus, and further still—to Homs, to Aleppo. From there, the great rail networks of the region stretched outward, linking to Turkey, and once even onward toward Europe. Southward, the line connected through Haifa into Egypt.

A person could travel, in those days, by train along the spine of the Middle East. Coastline to coastline. City to city. Language to language.

And then the wars came. Borders hardened. The tracks fell silent. The tunnel at the white cliffs of Rosh HaNikra was sealed-concrete where there had once been passage.

A doorway turned into a wall.

Open up the stopped places, God. Remove barriers to love and connection. Let life flow again along the coastline of Your vast blue sea.

As the leaders of Israel and Lebanon gather today, I pray for a vision.

A vision of getting on a train in Haifa with a backpack for a weekend trip to Lebanon.

A ride of just 70 or 80 miles-

a journey of an hour and a half, perhaps two-

along the curve of the Mediterranean coast.

To sit by the window as Haifa’s port recedes,

as the Bahá’í gardens fall back into the hills,

as the train curves north along the Mediterranean.

On one side, an Arab family going to visit relatives. On the other side, excited Israeli young adults taking leave from army duty to spend a weekend in the nightlife of Beirut.

And beyond even that-

A train that does not stop at Beirut.

A train that continues to Damascus.

To Aleppo.

To Istanbul.

To places we have only learned to imagine as distant, unreachable, or forbidden.

This tunnel.

Let it open.

Let the trains run through it once again.

Restore movement. Restore meeting. Restore the possibility that we are not as separate as we have learned to believe.

Because once, not so long ago, you could cross this land by rail.

And perhaps-

not forever lost-

we might again.

“Clear in the desert a road for the Eternal, level in the wilderness a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted and every mountain and hill made low…”

And the sealed places-

even tunnels carved through stone-

shall be opened again.

The blocked passages,

the places where we have stopped one another,

where fear has hardened into concrete-

may they be made into pathways.

May we yet learn

to travel toward one another again.