VALUES: Our culture, our beliefs, our responsibilities : Pilgrims’ Progress : The growing friendship between a rabbi and a devout Muslim becomes the focus of an interfaith journey to Israel.

Amid cracked and toppled headstones inscribed in Arabic, Haitham Bundakji dropped to the ground sobbing. He laid his hands on the moss-covered grave where, his parents had told him, his older brothers were buried five decades earlier.

Two companions helped him to his feet, brushed the grass from his face and held Bundakji by the arms as he staggered around the weed-choked cemetery, reciting verses from the Koran and kissing the graves.

Together, the rabbi and minister asked God--by whatever name--to comfort this devout Muslim from Fountain Valley, who says his brothers were killed by Jewish soldiers and his family run off their land in what once was called Palestine.

“Your brothers have been waiting here for you all these years,” Rabbi Bernard King of Congregation Shir Ha-ma’alot in Irvine told Bundakji.

“God uses our tears to heal us, sometimes,” added the Rev. Robert Shepard of First United Methodist Church in Anaheim.

They were an unlikely group--especially in a Muslim cemetery, especially in Israel. But there they were, leading some 50 California pilgrims of varying faiths on a journey to the Holy Land to better understand each other and their worlds.

Overcoming Distrust

The scene in the West Bank cemetery offered a glimpse of the bonds being forged, especially between a Muslim who taught his children to hate Jews and a rabbi who mistrusted Muslims.

“If one Arab and one Jew can be friends, there’s hope for all of us,” said Melinda Griffith of the Northern California town of Macdoel. Griffith, a Catholic, found herself deeply moved by the evolving relationship between King and Bundakji on the 12-day spiritual trek.

The trip, arranged earlier this year through the National Conference for Community and Justice, a New York-based interfaith group, is one of only a few such pilgrimages for people of various faiths, including Jews, Protestants, Muslims, Bahais, Catholics, Mormons and Christian Scientists, said Bill Shane, executive director of the conference.

Bundakji, King and Shepard recruited the travelers from among their congregations. Soon, word of the trip spread throughout the local religious community. At get-togethers, people chatted politely, if cautiously, and listened to presentations about Israel and Jordan.

As plans were being finalized, four Muslims withdrew, offended that trip brochures featured the insignia of the Israeli airline, El Al, and the Israeli flag--but not the Jordanian flag.

Though each was anxious about the other, King and Bundakji wanted to set a good example. That was a good thing, because their companions quickly focused on their every move and exchange.

That could not have happened even a year earlier.

Bundakji will tell you that he had simmered in hatred most of his life. Some five decades ago, two older brothers whom Bundakji never knew were allegedly slain by Zionist soldiers. They were 5 and 7.

Bundakji, a 51-year-old real estate investor, said he raised his own children to revile Jews, and he clung to his Islamic family at a mosque in Garden Grove, praying five times a day toward Mecca. A refrain he repeated often: “The only good Jew is a dead Jew.”

His hatred began to dissolve a few years ago on another trip to Israel after a long ride to the airport with an Israeli cab driver. Bundakji remembers looking at the man’s warm eyes in the rearview mirror, and the driver pointing to his wife, daughter and granddaughter in a tattered photo lashed to his dashboard with a ribbon. The man spoke of financial troubles, how he worked seven days a week to make money for his loved ones and how his abiding faith in God kept him going.

It was an epiphany: Jews were a lot like him.

When he returned to Fountain Valley, he accepted an invitation to an interfaith event. Eventually, he visited a Jewish synagogue. There, he saw people displaying a profound reverence for God--something with which he could identify.

He scoured the Koran and was surprised to learn that while hating Jews may be culturally encouraged in the Arab world, it was unacceptable to the prophet Muhammed. (According to Islamic belief, the Koran was revealed by Allah to Muhammed in the 7th century.)

Then came his introduction to Rabbi King, a baseball nut with a weakness for platitudes and bear hugs. The two men were vaguely familiar with each other through interfaith functions around Orange County. They exchanged small talk in politically correct sound bites and some restrained public embraces.

Truth be told, King admitted feeling suspicious of Bundakji. The 61-year-old head of a Reform congregation didn’t trust Bundakji and he worried that the articulate man would dominate the trip with his Arab and Muslim worldview at the expense of other perspectives--especially the Jewish one.

People watched closely on the first night of the trip as the beginnings of an affection between the two men took root in a hotel built into the pastel hillsides of Haifa, Israel, where King led the group in Shabbat services.

King passed out white satin yarmulkes--traditional Jewish head covering--to the men in the group, including a reluctant Bundakji.

“If you put the head covering on, that doesn’t make you Jewish,” King said. “The covering of the head is to show respect to God.”

Bundakji tentatively placed a yarmulke on his head and joined in the Hebrew prayers. It was a reverent moment that struck a chord with many in the group, including King and Bundakji: Here were two men whose cultures have been at war for decades but who were suddenly praying together.

As the days passed, there were many questions. People asked King why he rocks back and forth, or davens, when he recites prayers. (It is part of the prayer ritual.) Some wanted to know why Barbara King, the rabbi’s wife, wore a flowered yarmulke. (It’s not required, she just likes to.) Others asked Bundakji why Islam requires fasting (to purify body and soul) and why Mecca is so important to their faith. (It was Muhammed’s birthplace.)

The challenges had just begun, especially for King.

In Amman, Jordan, King sat in an Arab restaurant with Bundakji, Shepard and others from the group. They enjoyed a lavish spread of baba ghannouj or eggplant dip, hummus and tabbouleh served with warm pita bread.

Minutes later, as the group was leaving to tour Roman ruins, Bundakji turned to King with a pained expression. “I wasn’t going to tell you this, my friend,” said Bundakji, explaining that when he went to pay the bill, the cafe owner was furious to learn that Jews had been served in his establishment.

Barbara King overheard. Angrily, she insisted on going back to talk to the eatery owner, her husband in tow. “I figured he [the restaurant owner] would either stab him or embrace him,” she said. There, with Bundakji as translator, King and restaurant owner Ishmael Shuqqir exchanged words for several tense, impassioned moments. The Arab man was flanked by family members, all poised for a fight. He spoke bitterly about how his family’s land and his mother’s grave are now unreachable behind the Israeli border.

King listened intently, his countenance filling with compassion. Then, with tears coursing down his cheeks, he apologized for the man’s treatment at the hands of Jewish people.

“When I look in your eyes,” King told the man, “I see God.”

Slowly, Shuqqir’s glare softened. He reached out to embrace the American rabbi.

“That was probably the dream of my life,” King said afterward. “The greatest thing you can do in life is to turn an enemy into a friend.”

Such unforgettably intense moments of conflict taught King, Bundakji and others in the group that they could bridge seemingly impossible gulfs.

In one of the most moving moments of the odyssey, King had asked that the group take a side trip to visit the graves of 23 Israeli children who died when Palestinian terrorists opened fire on their schoolhouse in 1974.

Some members of the group, including Bundakji, didn’t want to go. At the time of the slaughter, he confessed, he was glad it had happened.

But here Bundakji was, 25 years later, this proud, devoted Muslim trudging up a hill with a rabbi, and entering the cemetery gates to perform a ritual of remembrance for the children of Ma’alot. Walking alongside the neat rows of stone graves, Bundakji looked at the children’s Hebrew names. The last three headstones had the same last name: Shoshonah Cohen, Yafa Cohen and Rinah Cohen. The last two had been twins. Bundakji had a twin sister. Suddenly, he buried his face in his hands and wept.

Bundakji asked to address the group, and with words of deep regret, he told them, “My heart is broken. Children shouldn’t be tools in the hands of terrorists anywhere in the world.”

He wanted to continue speaking but struggled. He motioned for King. The rabbi and the Muslim quietly embraced near hillside graves that were painted sky blue, symbolizing heaven, a place the devil cannot enter.

A Memorable Visit to Graves

Then came the remarkable visit to the West Bank graves of the brothers Bundakji had never met. It was unfathomable to Bundakji that he could be standing in the cemetery of Beit Shean for the first time in his life, accompanied by a Jewish man who, yes, was becoming a friend.

Bundakji collapsed in grief, kissing a moss-covered headstone, while King and Shepard wrapped their arms around him and prayed.

Speaking softly to each other, King and Bundakji made a pact to return together and clean up the bedraggled cemetery. They wondered if a Muslim and a Jew toiling together in a Mideast graveyard could somehow help begin to repair the brokenness in the universe.

In the months since the group’s return to the Southland and the rhythms of daily life, King and Bundakji joke that theirs has become a “Catholic” brand of love, meaning they’ll never be divorced.

There already have been two reunions, one at a restaurant in Newport Beach to exchange photographs, and another at Shepard’s church in Anaheim for a slide show of trip highlights.

Many of the travelers say they were most heartened by the relationship they saw develop between King and Bundakji.

“They can’t change all the hate,” said pilgrim Martha LaFond, a Mormon from Garden Grove. “But they’re still trying to make it better.”

One more get-together is planned at Bundakji’s house to eat a traditional Jordanian meal and to reminisce about their incredible journey. And, especially, that last night in Israel, when Rabbi King and the Rev. Shepard grasped hands, forming a bridge for the others who filed underneath, a dancing, laughing, chain of humanity.

“I’m convinced that this trip brought a smile to God’s face,” said King.

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Elaine Gale can be reached by e-mail at elaine.gale@latimes.com.