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Revision 8.7 “The Orson Hyde Memorial Garden and BYU’s Jerusalem Center”

Revision 8.7 “The Orson Hyde Memorial Garden and BYU’s Jerusalem Center”

Last updated on: December 13, 2020 at 11:58 pm by Dan Peterson

Revision 8.7 “The Orson Hyde Memorial Garden and BYU’s Jerusalem Center” 2020-12-13T23:58:18-07:00 Dan Peterson

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A view from the southwestern corner of the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden toward Jerusalem’s Old City (specifically, the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock).
Wikimedia Commons public domain

The idea of an Orson Hyde monument continued to be discussed as time went on, although some—notably Elder Howard W. Hunter of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles—worried that such a monument might compromise Church efforts and harm the Church’s image among the Arabs.[1] Finally, on 24 October 1979, the anniversary of Elder Hyde’s momentous prayer, an Orson Hyde Memorial Garden, more than five landscaped acres on the slope of the Mount of Olives, was dedicated by President Spencer W. Kimball. The Prophet was accompanied by his first counselor, N. Eldon Tanner, as well as by Elder Howard W. Hunter. President Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve came separately, as did Elders LeGrand Richards and Marvin J. Ashton, also of the Twelve. This was beyond doubt the densest concentration of apostles in Jerusalem since ancient times. Today, although it has been overshadowed by more recent developments involving the Church in Israel, the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden remains a symbol of Latter-day Saint interest in, and concern for, the remarkable past, present, and future of the land of Jerusalem. When political conditions permit, the garden serves as an occasional meeting place for the Saints, especially for sunrise services on Easter and for the annual commemoration of Elder Hyde’s prayer on 24 October.

Meanwhile, the Church continued to grow within Israel. Branches or groups began to appear in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and the Galilee. Most of the growth came from immigration, but there were also new members converted either within Israel or abroad. (Still, it must be stressed, there was no proselyting among the Jews.) One of these new members allowed the Jerusalem Branch to mark a major milestone: Suheil Abu Hadid, a Palestinian convert, became the first Arab from Jerusalem to be called on a mission in this dispensation when he accepted an assignment to serve in the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission. Later, an Israeli Arab named Ehab Abu Nuwara, who had investigated the Church in Israel but had been baptized while a student at BYU, was called to serve in the England London Mission.

Map of the “Old City” of Jerusalem, showing the site of the Orson Hyde Memorial Gardens on the slope of the Mount of Olives facing the Old City to the west.The detailed portion of the Old City shows the Temple Mount, including the Dome of the Rock. The map comes from the January 1978 issue of the “Ensign”; I was living in Jerusalem at the time.

The dedication of the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden represented the fulfillment of a long-standing dream for many members of the Church. But another dream remained. That was the construction of a visitors’ center in Israel, probably to be combined with facilities for the growing number of students who came year after year to participate in BYU’s study programs in Jerusalem. Although it was fully realized that proselyting, as such, was not a viable option under current Israeli conditions, many still thought that, as long as there were no actual missionaries going from door to door, and as long as the Latter-day Saints were not actually seeking people out, some more low-key method of making the gospel known within Israel might nonetheless be acceptable.

However, it soon became clear that any plan to teach the gospel to the Jews, however inoffensive it might seem to the aggressively missionary-minded Latter-day Saints, would have to be given up.

Israeli sensitivities were simply too acute. Many Israeli Jews were willing to say that the loss of any Jew to another religion was equivalent, in its threat to the survival of Judaism as a whole, to the loss of a Jew in Hitler’s Holocaust. (The clear implication of this popular formula was, of course, that those who sought to proselyte the Jews were like Nazis in at least one respect: Both aimed at the “destruction” of Judaism.) Thus, when in March 1981 plans were submitted to the Israeli government for the building of a BYU “Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies,” they included neither a formal visitors’ center nor, despite the fact that Latter-day Saint services were intended to be held there, a baptismal font.

The proposed building was approved by the government in early 1984. A small ground-breaking ceremony was held on 21 August of that year, and construction was soon underway. Also underway since late May, however, was a campaign to stop the building of the center. A Jewish anti-missionary organization known as Yad L’Achim protested the construction of the center as soon as it found out about it, citing the Latter-day Saints’ indisputable missionary zeal as a threat to Judaism. Several steps were taken by the Church to counter public fears. The special representative couples who were serving at the time in various areas of Israel were reassigned to other fields of labor. Newspaper advertisements offering LDS literature to anybody interested were cancelled. English and Hebrew-language pamphlets about the Church were destroyed. Sales of the Hebrew edition of the Book of Mormon were stopped, and no reprinting was authorized. It was, for the present, the end of any hope of teaching the gospel to Israeli Jews.

Such attempts at conciliation did not, however, pacify the most militant opponents of the center. Throughout its three years of construction, hysterical articles appeared in local newspapers and in the American Jewish press about the Latter-day Saint “threat” to Judaism and to the holy city of Jerusalem. (During one period lasting somewhat less than three weeks, 345 articles appeared in the Israeli press about the Latter-day Saints and their building.) The center, it was alleged, was merely a front for proselytizing missionaries. The students enrolled in its programs would not be real students, but undercover agents of the Church. Some of the allegations were actually flattering, in a twisted sort of way. For example, the Latter-day Saints were said to be dispatching “beautiful blonde women”— apparently BYU coeds—to Israel in order to lure Jewish boys away from their religious upbringing. They were also conspiring, with their Saudi Arabian allies, to create a vast and dangerous international financial empire. Other charges were harder to read in a positive light. It was argued by some that the Saints were “desecrating” Mount Scopus, the hill upon which the center was to stand. For a while, a number of agitators claimed that the site was actually an ancient Jewish cemetery; repeated denials of that claim by the Israeli archaeologist assigned to the site excavations were only gradually able to allay the concerns it had aroused.

Jerusalem’s legendary, long-time mayor Teddy Kollek was personally vilified for his support of the project and was even accused of accepting bribes from them as the price for his alleged betrayal of the Jewish people. Orthodox Jews demonstrated and prayed in front of the homes of David Galbraith and other Church and university leaders. Anonymous callers threatened prominent Latter-day Saints over the telephone and even tapped their phones, hoping perhaps to discover the sordid truth that lurked behind the Saints’ seemingly innocent faces. Thousands of Orthodox Jews demonstrated at the so-called Wailing Wall. Drives were organized to raise funds and to gather signatures on petitions designed to “fight the Mormons.” Anti-Mormon bumper stickers appeared on autos and trucks throughout Israel. Handwritten anti-Mormon slogans appeared on Israeli currency. Vandals damaged the place where the Jerusalem Branch held its sabbath meetings. Demonstrations near the center on Mount Scopus included the singing of such heart-warming lyrics, addressed to the Latter-day Saints, as “You better run for your life/Back to Utah overnight.” Sensing an opportunity, even Ed Decker, the notorious charlatan and professional apostate who had founded Ex-Mormons for Jesus and created the notorious pseudo-documentary film The God Makers, brought his traveling show to the city.

[1] On Elder Hunter’s view, see Baldridge, Grafting In, 26.

Posted from St. George, Utah

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