JERUSALEM — The Rev. Diana Doyle Clark climbed the mountain near Israel's Sea of Galilee where the New Testament says that Jesus delivered the "sermon on the mount," and there she read the words to a gathering of Jews and Christians.

That powerful experience last Saturday will be just one of many Clark will relay to members of St. John's Episcopal Church in Montclair, where she serves as rector, and the next national triennial meeting of representatives of all dioceses of the Episcopal Church.

Clark's pledge to advocate on Israel's behalf came as she attended the eight-day Institute for Civic Leaders in Israel, hosted by the Israel Advocacy Initiative of the national Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

The trip was intended to help Clark and other non-Jewish community leaders from across the United States gain perspective on the historic, religious, and political components that make up modern-day Israel. Each civic leader was accompanied by a representative of his or her local Jewish community.

Lori Price Abrams, who directs the Community Relations Committee of United Jewish Communities of MetroWest NJ, invited Clark to accompany her on the trip because of their longstanding relationship and her prospects for promoting Israel in her community.

"Israel is something so special and important to us, and we wanted her to be a part of it," Price Abrams said. "I know Diana to be a friend to the Jewish people with questions, concerns, and influence in our community. My rabbi [Steven Kushner of Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield] knows her well and said she would be a positive emissary. She has been here before in a Christian context and this trip provides an opportunity for her to experience Israel and its fullness in a different context, with all its complexities."

The group toured holy sites, visited important strategic and historic locations, attended prayer services, and met with Israeli dignitaries from across the political spectrum. Clark is preparing a presentation about the trip to show her congregation in Montclair.

"I will need time to process our experience, but I will tell people that the holy land seems even holier to me than I expected," Clark said. "I have a deep love for the Jewish faith and an affinity for Jews. It's part of my gut, and it's hard for me to explain, but I feel that as a Christian, Jerusalem seems to be the center of the world, and I can't understand my faith without understanding Judaism."

Clark first traveled to Israel for a month in 1998 on a pilgrimage tour led by her diocese. She attended a program at St. George's College outside the Old City that allowed her to experience how holy week, culminating in Easter, is celebrated by the Eastern and Western Christian churches.

Clark said she was grateful to be given the opportunity to see Israel from a different perspective.

"The highlight for me has been the variety of voices that we have heard," Clark said. "The organizers have done a wonderful job in creating opportunities for me to ask questions. It has been stimulating, thought-provoking, and very different from my pilgrimage."

Clark said she could feel the sanctity of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. She brought notes with prayers from her parishioners to place in the crevices of the wall.

"Putting my cheek on the stones is like putting it on the face of God," Clark said.

In Safed, the group attended the Beirav Synagogue, which is famous for its emotionally charged worship service featuring melodies popularized by the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. The synagogue members welcomed their visitors and sang and danced with them.

"The services were so alive and so filled with praise of God," Clark said. "In Safed, we were drenched in the sacred and the mystical. I felt the presence of God there, and I think others did too."

The group also had more somber encounters; they visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum and met with the family of IDF reserve soldier Udi Goldwasser, who was among the soldiers whose kidnapping ignited the Second Lebanon War in 2006.

Clark sat across from Goldwasser's mother, Miki.

"As a mother, I can imagine myself doing what she's doing," Clark said. "I found her passion to have her son released very powerful. The solidarity of the community is very impressive. It's wonderful that the people of the United States are behind them. There are too many people who have been in similar situations who have had no one behind them."

Clark said that prayers would be said for the soldiers in her church. She is also considering an environmental campaign in honor of Udi Goldwasser, who was trained as an environmental engineer.

Price Abrams said that visiting Yad Vashem with her gentile colleagues was the highlight of the trip. "It is particularly potent to come to Yad Vashem with non-Jewish friends on a mission that creates a sense of community," she said. "As emotional as the whole experience can be, being there with them made it even more moving to talk about the righteous gentiles" who are honored at Yad Vashem for rescuing Jews during the Holocaust.

Clark said she was especially moved by her opportunity to speak the words of the New Testament in the countryside where, it says, Jesus walked and preached. And she was glad to share the experience with the friends she made from across the United States.

"It's one thing to read those words in church in New Jersey, and it's quite another to read them in the place where Jesus spoke them," Clark said. "The trip has far exceeded my expectations. It has been even more deeply moving than I hoped it would be, and I'm coming back with a much deeper understanding of how nuanced the issues are here."