Violence, instability and terrorism are scaring off plenty of spiritual travelers–Christian as well as Jewish–to the Holy Land. Israel’s Tourism Ministry says American visitors are down by more than 40 percent from 2000. Halfway across the world, tourist arrivals to Nepal–many of them Himalayan pilgrims–have dropped 46 percent in the past two years, largely because of the threat from Maoist rebels.
But religious travelers aren’t staying home. They’re simply booking pilgrimages to more obscure religious sites, from Italy and Greece to Ethiopia and Morocco. One religious travel company, the New York-based Far & Wide, raised the number of religious destinations–from two to 12–in the past decade, including Portugal and Ghana. Turkey has received so many inquiries about its religious history that it recently added a section on the subject to its official Web site. And one nonprofit Jewish organization specializing in Cuba says visa applications have doubled from a year ago. “Jewish Americans want to be part of the rebirth of this community,” says Miriam Saul, project manager of International Community Builders Cuba Project, which delivers aid.
Cuba is a natural destination for adventurous Jews. When Fidel Castro took power in 1959, there were about 15,000 Jews living on the island. Today, thanks to the communist revolution and officially mandated atheism, only about 1,600 remain. But increasing religious freedom has made Jewish sites–including Havana’s three synagogues and the Western Hemisphere’s oldest Holocaust memorials–more accessible. It has also opened the door for Jews from other countries to teach the basics to Cubans who have grown up without a rabbi. “We brought bar mitzvah tapes so they could hear what the chants sound like,” says Cohen of his trip last year.
Christians, too, are seeking an alternative to Israel, where they have long flocked to visit Bethlehem and Nazareth. “If you can’t go to the holy sites safely, then you go to places that were influenced by Christians,” says Heidi Watson of Give Thanks and Remember, a Christian travel company based in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Students from the Alliance Theological Seminary in Nyack, New York, last year went to Greece for the first time. On a recent two-week tour, they visited the historic cities on Saint Paul’s missionary journey, including Philippi and Thessalonika. “You can visualize the Bible when you see these places,” says Prof. Harold Shelly, who taught the seminary course “Footsteps of Paul.” “We climbed up the Mars Hill where Paul preached to the Athenians. You can really put yourself back in another age.”
Rome, always a key destination for Roman Catholics, has lately been overwhelmed by devotees. Nick Mancino of Far & Wide says three years ago 85 percent of his Christian customers booked to Israel; now travel to Italy is up 70 percent. Many go to see Pope John Paul II canonize saints, then stick around to tour the Vatican. The Rev. David and Billie Bowen of Atlanta organized a church trip of 30 to Italy last year. “There are moving religious experiences outside of the Holy Land,” says Billie. “We have just begun to explore.”
Mancino says different sects seek different kinds of spiritual holidays. Catholic groups are more interested in sites related to the Virgin Mary, he says, while Protestants tend to favor general biblical sites. In July his company will host an eight-day tour to the English countryside to celebrate the 300th birthday of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church. The trip will include stops at Wesley’s birthplace in Lincolnshire, where he wrote more than 4,500 hymns, and at his alma mater, Christ Church College, as well as a worship service in Wesley’s chapel.
In Africa, Ethiopia holds plenty of intrigue for students of Christianity–especially those who believe the lost Ark of the Covenant is hidden there. According to a 13th-century manuscript, the ark was surreptitiously moved from Jerusalem to Ethiopia in the 950s B.C. by followers of Menelik, the Ethiopian king believed to be the son of King Solomon and Queen Sheba. “Most people’s view of Ethiopia is governed by images of drought and famine,” says Janet Moore, founder of the California-based Distant Horizons. “It offers a wealth of religious and historical treasures that many people are simply not aware of.”
Shunning travel to Israel has led some Jews to discover ancestral communities they never knew existed. Far & Wide is preparing a new tour that will focus on the history of the Falasha, said to be one of the lost tribes of ancient Israel, in the Gondar region of Ethiopia. Stephen Epstein, of California’s Spirit of Asia Travel, is leading a trip next year to visit the Mizo people of eastern India. Some Biblical historians believe they are the Jewish descendants of the lost tribe of Menashe, thought to have left Yemen in the second century B.C. Today, some 5,000 Orthodox Jews live in Manipur, amid 30 synagogues. “Visiting places like India helps complete the puzzle,” says Epstein.
One new trend has been to combine a luxury cruise with a pilgrimage. In March, Travel Dynamics International hosted a 12-day cruise to Spain and Morocco, titled “Coexistence of Cultures and Faiths.” Passengers attended lectures on the interaction of the three monotheistic faiths, led by a rabbi, a minister and an imam. “People came with their own religious identities,” says Feisal Abdul Rauf, one of the guest speakers. “But everyone was genuinely interested in how the relationship among faiths is a give-and-take.” They also explored Moroccan sites that revealed how the three religions collaborated to create a sophisticated 16th-century society. That’s the kind of pilgrimage the world could use more of these days.
