{"id":7009,"date":"2026-06-01T21:22:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T21:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/?p=7009"},"modified":"2026-06-05T20:22:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T20:22:43","slug":"book-review-crossing-boundaries-a-travelers-guide-to-world-peace-by-aziz-abu-sarah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/book-review-crossing-boundaries-a-travelers-guide-to-world-peace-by-aziz-abu-sarah\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Crossing Boundaries: A Traveler\u2019s Guide to World Peace by Aziz Abu Sarah"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[1] <em>Crossing Boundaries is<\/em> the perfect book for this summer\u2019s travel season.\u00a0 Published during the pandemic, when traveling was all but closed, this book encourages travel as a path to personal growth and community peace building in a world marked by escalating conflict and division. Today, although the pandemic is over and the world even more divided, this book helps readers think about both traveling and living as peacebuilders.<\/p>\n<p>[2] The foundation of Sarah\u2019s travel ethic is both his <em>joie de vivre<\/em> and his deep faith in dialogue as a means to deeper understanding and companionship. Sarah loves new experiences and his love is infectious. His ability to narrate a difficult passage as a new opportunity to grow is inspiring. In addition, he offers evidence and apologetics for this faith in dialogue through the stories he tells of his own revelations through conversation and his experiences witnessing unlikely partnerships cooperating for a common goal. He justifies his underlying belief that most people are kind and generous with story after story of the kind and charitable people he has met.<\/p>\n<p>[3] Sarah, himself, is a Palestinian, who grew up in Jerusalem and, as such, \u00a0was not allowed a passport. He grew up amidst dangerous conflict; when he was 10 his brother was tortured to death by Israeli soldiers.\u00a0 His love of travel and peacebuilding seems unlikely. Yet, he was transformed by his experience as a young adult learning Hebrew in Jerusalem with new Jewish immigrants to Israel.\u00a0 He recounts this as his first travel experience\u2014simply going to a new part of a city in which he lived, and talking to people he believed were his enemies.<\/p>\n<p>[4] Throughout his book, he exhorts those with the means to travel to do so even if it means just going across town. In fact, he implores readers to consider that it might be a more novel experience to go into a new neighborhood than to go across the world to a resort that caters to one\u2019s own culture.\u00a0 He asserts that it is not the geographical distance but the boundary crossed that makes travel rewarding.\u00a0 To repeat, it may be not only more economical but a greater cultural experience to spend a weekend in an area of one\u2019s own city that one previously avoided than taking a trip across the ocean.<\/p>\n<p>[5] Importantly, while Sarah encourages travel across cultural boundaries, he provides ethical guidelines for travelers.\u00a0 These guidelines, he suggests will help make the reader\u2019s travel an experience that is life-giving \u00a0and peacebuilding for the visitor and those they visit as well. Chief among these guidelines are taking time to meet people when traveling, being wary of stereotypes. Sarah hopes readers will allow themselves to be surprised by the people and the places. Sarah encourages attending religious services in these new places and in a faith that is different than one\u2019s own.<\/p>\n<p>[6] Sarah acknowledges that women often need to be a \u201cdifferent type of careful\u201d than men while traveling because of the effects of patriarchy in many cultures. The chapter for women\u2019s guidelines is written by Ellie Clearly who uses her own experiences to provide advice and insights.\u00a0 Chief among these insights is that while women do need to travel differently sometimes, there is often less danger than one might think.\u00a0 Again, Clearly suggests that one beware of assuming wrong stereotypes while trusting one\u2019s own instincts. She insists on the importance of finding trustworthy people in each new place to serve as guides.<\/p>\n<p>[7] The best advice in the book is Sarah\u2019s exuberant admonition that one must accept disaster as part of the experience.\u00a0 Whether this disaster is a travel delay or a trip to a prison in Egypt, Sarah\u2019s accounts highlight the humor and the growth he experienced when disaster struck. When disaster strikes, Sarah suggests travelers be patient with others and also with themselves. He urges travelers not to self-flagellate for mistakes, but to be happy to be corrected in order to learn and go forward. He writes that injustice is real, but that one should never hate a whole group of people because of one individual who hurts another.\u00a0 Sarah suggests that all things may work for a later good if we see them as learning experiences and accept that life is about experiences.<\/p>\n<p>[8] This is a guide that that makes the reader want to travel.\u00a0 It impresses upon the reader to go to new places.\u00a0 He spends significant time talking about travel to the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Yet, he also notes the importance of applying these same lessons in one\u2019s regular day to day life. I read this book while traveling in Northern Ireland to see family members there. A small section on the peace process in Northern Ireland was especially poignant for me.\u00a0 But as I read the book, I found it gave me lessons not only for traveling but for living.<\/p>\n<p>[8] Sarah hosts dual narrative travel experiences in the Holy Land.\u00a0 He is currently on a book tour with co-author Maoz Inon promoting their recent book, <em>The Future is Peace<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[1] Crossing Boundaries is the perfect book for this summer\u2019s travel season.\u00a0 Published during the pandemic, when traveling was all but closed, this book encourages travel as a path to personal growth and community peace building in a world marked by escalating conflict and division. Today, although the pandemic is over and the world even [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Book Review: Crossing Boundaries: A Traveler\u2019s Guide to World Peace by Aziz Abu Sarah - Journal of Lutheran Ethics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/book-review-crossing-boundaries-a-travelers-guide-to-world-peace-by-aziz-abu-sarah\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Book Review: Crossing Boundaries: A Traveler\u2019s Guide to World Peace by Aziz Abu Sarah - Journal of Lutheran Ethics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[1] Crossing Boundaries is the perfect book for this summer\u2019s travel season.\u00a0 Published during the pandemic, when traveling was all but closed, this book encourages travel as a path to personal growth and community peace building in a world marked by escalating conflict and division. 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