- March 13, 2026
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Rev. Ken Blyth was just getting off a bus to start the first full day of his tour of Jerusalem when the air-raid sirens sounded.
Minutes later, the St. Armands Key Lutheran Church pastor was huddling with 22 other clergy under the historic Zion Gate for shelter.
“There we were in a historic gate in Jerusalem, and we could see the damage caused to that historic gate in previous wars,” Blyth said. “Now, we were in the opening days of a brand new war.”
Missiles were darting across the skies of several countries in the Middle East. And Israel, which was performing air strikes alongside the United States in Iran, was a target for retaliation.
It was the third trip Blyth had taken to the Holy Land, this time as a junior host with the Knights Templar Holy Land Pilgrimage group, which funds trips to the Holy Land for clergy in the United States. The group was supposed to fly out of Newark, New Jersey together, but a winter snowstorm in the Northeast caused a delay for most of the tour-goers. That turned out to be the least of the group’s worries.
“We didn’t have much luck, but we all got there. We were finally there together,” Blyth said. “We toured the Galilee together, and the war broke out the day after we got to Jerusalem.”
After sheltering in the Zion Gate, the group moved to the Upper Room where it’s thought that the Last Supper was held. While there, as Blyth describes it, the pilgrimage ended and the journey began.
“It was while we were in the Upper Room that our guide got the phone call from our tour group saying all tours are canceled, and tour groups should return to their hotel and shelter in place,” Blyth said. “That religious and scriptural and spiritual pilgrimage, that was at an end. We didn’t see any more religious sites in the Holy Land.”
The tour described by guides as “the Bible in 3D” changed to a mission: getting 23 pastors and ministers out of Israel and back home. Blyth and the other clergy used their phones to register with the U.S. State Department and sign up for Israel Defense Forces alerts. The tour company, Gate 1 Travel, began planning a way out for the group.
“Once we got back to the hotel, there were several alerts that went off and several times we had to go back down to the shelters,” Blyth said. “But I didn’t really feel afraid because we didn’t hear any bombs.”
After a brief but eventful time in Jerusalem, the tour guide told the group that a bus would be leaving in 40 minutes. The destination was Eilat, a resort town on the southern tip of Israel. They arrived at about 10 at night and ate dinner.
“Then, at about 11, the air raid sirens went off,” Blyth said. “It’s a popular resort town in Israel, and the Iranians know it’s a popular resort town in Israel.”
As drone attacks commenced nearby, Blyth, on the 10th floor of the hotel, sheltered in the stairwell.
“We could hear the Israeli aircraft going overhead looking for the drones,” Blyth said. “That’s when we realized, 'OK we’re not in a bomb shelter' where there’s no external stimuli and you can’t hear, see or feel, you’re just safe in the shelter. In the stairwell hearing the aircraft overhead, that felt different. The next morning, at about 4 or 5 in the morning, there was another air raid siren and there was more drones. We could hear the aircraft going overhead, and we could hear the explosions.”
That experience, Blyth said, changed his perspective.
“Intellectually, you know what an air raid siren sounds like. Intellectually, you know what a bomb shelter or an underground parking garage looks like. You know what it’s like when a couple hundred people walk downstairs together because they’re taking cover. That’s intellectual. That’s head stuff,” Blyth said. “Experientially, living through it. That’s heart stuff. That’s completely different.”
As a pastor, Blyth is no stranger to providing comfort to those in crisis. Sheltering in bomb shelters in the Middle East with his peers included a lot of consoling, a lot of talking and a lot of praying.
“We were kind of leaning on each other,” Blyth said. “If you’re going to be in a tough situation like that, (it helps) to be surrounded by colleagues. That’s what we were. We were colleagues who became friends who became family. That sort of relationship is forged every time you go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I’ve discovered. But there’s something unique about what’s forged when you’re in that kind of crucible.”
There was also a lot of correspondence with loved ones at home. Through text messages, phone calls and Facebook comments, Blyth said he felt support from not only his family, but also the congregation, his friends and colleagues at home.
“I felt it every single day,” he said. “There wasn’t a moment I didn’t know that, didn’t understand that or didn’t appreciate that.”
The last leg of the group’s unexpected journey was the road from Eilat to Cairo, Egypt. What should have been a four- or five-hour drive took 13 hours as the tour bus took the longer, and safer, way through the Sinai by traveling south, west, then north to Suez.
While waiting for a flight from Egypt to the U.S. to become available, the group was able to see the pyramids. Not the sightseeing they expected, and not the trip they anticipated.
When Blyth found himself at John F. Kennedy International Airport, his phone pinged, reminding him that the surreal experience he had just lived through was still the reality for those overseas.
“I still had the app, the Israeli app, on my phone and as I was walking through JFK, it went off. It thought I was still in Israel. But here I am at JFK, a typical sort of rainy, cold New York day, and I was just counting the hours of being back at SRQ. And people I was just with a day and a half earlier were going through that experience. And here I am. I have it easy.”
