A summer among legends

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A summer among legends

Ramona in Israel

Traveling into one of the most dangerous regions discussed in modern news never phased junior Ramona Tausz.

When Tausz first heard of the opportunity to earn a summer journalism internship at the Times of Israel, one of the top English-language publications in the multilingual country, she jumped at the chance. With John Miller, director of the Dow Journalism Program, she assembled her application and made plans to spend the summer in a far-away country as the program’s first overseas journalism intern.

Tausz wrote and edited as an “Ops & Blogs” intern, living in Jerusalem with Abigail Wood ’14 and taking full advantage of her unique opportunity.

Israel’s small size allowed Tausz to visit many places in the area, such as Nazareth, the West Bank, Jericho, and the Sea of Galilee. Tausz said these locations’ connection to her Christian faith shaped her experience of the land.

“As a Christian, it was fascinating to visit the Holy Land and walk in the steps of Christ,” Tausz  said. “When you go and visit places like the Western Wall, you want to enter into a historic reverie and join in communion with the generations of people who have been in that place.”

Though Jerusalem and the landscape of Israel have been shaped by the centuries since the men described in Christian scripture walked in the city, Tausz learned that the rich tradition acknowledged by the inhabitants makes the accumulated legends and myths of the city alive and active in places like Zion, claimed and fought over by Jews and Christians, or the Temple Mount, in Muslim hands but sacred to the Jews.

“The thing you hear all the time in Jerusalem — it’s told constantly — is that it’s a city where ‘the legend is stronger than the fact,’” Tausz said. “It’s the larger reality we have to deal with. They cling to those myths and those legends because they realize that there’s more to truth than mere fact.”

Miller said Hillsdale College aims to provide a regular opportunity for a student from the college to intern in Israel under the mentorship of writer and editor Lela Gilbert, who helped Tausz acclimate and settle into Jerusalem this summer. The potentially recurring program was organized by Hillsdale College General Counsel Robert Norton, who acquired funding and contacted Gilbert about her role.

Tausz said the summer presented some practical difficulties. Since Hebrew is the native tongue, she said she found reporting with a language barrier difficult, though working with the opinions section made things easier, and provided the opportunity for a young journalist to engage with the area’s issues and events from the inside.

“I got to work with the huge outpouring of submissions following the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” Tausz said. “The outrage following that announcement was just incredible.”

Tausz remembers other cultural differences too, such as the harsh memories of the summer of 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, the accompanying missile attacks from the Gaza strip and the common fear of Christian proselytization.

“There’s a complex web of different fears, different dreams, different hopes that you sort out when you’re in a journalism position over there,” she said.