Omar Amro, owner of Ali Baba Souvenir Shop and Omar Mosaics in Jerusalem, has a message for all visitors, especially for those at the BYU Jerusalem Center.
“You guys are always welcome, and if you need any kind of help from Jerusalem, just come. We love to see you. We love to deal with you.”
Omar’s father, Shaban Amro, opened the shop in 1988 specifically with students in mind. Soon after in 1989, then President Howard W. Hunter dedicated the BYU Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies as “A home base for study in the Holy Land.”
In the almost 40 years since the Amros’ shop was founded and the Center received its first batch of students, a picture board on the shop walls has been filled with pictures of students that Omar and his father consider family, not customers.
“If you ask me how many students I met through my life, working for my dad, I would just estimate,” Omar said. “It's going to be three semesters a year, 90 students every semester. You just do the math.”
Omar has been working for his dad for 15 years. In that time, near the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he decided to add mosaics to their wide collection of souvenirs.
His mosaics have become widely loved and sought out by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even before Omar opened his mosaic shop, the Amros’ business depended about 30% on church members.
Omar says it’s the word of mouth among church members that has supported their shops since Truman and Ann Madsen — well-known scholars in the church — made his father a promise.
“They gave him a promise that whenever someone visits them at BYU Jerusalem, they’ll be sending them his way. They kept their promise,” Omar said. “This is how my dad became more known with the BYU and LDS community.”
Students know that if anything were to happen, the Amros shop is a safe place to turn. Paige Hamilton, a student who studied at BYU Jerusalem in summer of 2025, says Omar always greeted students with juice and a smile.
“Everybody recommends being friends with him because he's genuinely caring,” Hamilton said. “He's just different because he takes that time and effort to care about us.”
Hamilton and her friends would visit Ali Baba Souvenir Shop every time they were in the Old City sector of Jerusalem visiting historical sites and biblical scenery. Their time in Jerusalem was full of new relationships with people like Omar, escapades to Greece, and testimony-building moments.
“Israel is a magical place. It's complicated, the politics are complicated, the feelings are complicated, but it is also magical getting to meet and connect with people in Israel,” Hamilton said. “It was really cool to build actual connections with people and to see people take so much care and attention towards things that matter to me.”
She was experiencing what some have called “Holy envy,” or the admiration of the way another practices their faith. Some scholars have associated this feeling with “Jerusalem syndrome,” a compelling feeling that some who visit the Holy City may leave with.
This syndrome might be experienced on a spectrum of intensities according to a review article published in the Journal of Clinical & Diagnostic Research. The study describes the most discrete of symptoms as “Religious excitement brought on by being close to Jerusalem’s sacred sites,” and the most extreme symptoms as developing psychosis and intense religious impulses.
Omar describes it in a simpler way.
“Jerusalem is not an only one time visit. If you come here once, you get hooked to it. You will come back.”
Halle Burton, a student who studied at BYU Jerusalem when the Gaza conflict started, had been trying to get to Jerusalem since she fell in love with the Old Testament after reading it through her teen years. Her experience in Jerusalem was one of personal discovery.
“You feel this whole rush of faith from all these people who are trying to reach the deity of this earth, of this life,” Burton said. “It just combines with you, and it's so powerful that you want to worship God in the same way.”
Jerusalem has been built and rebuilt time and time again. For many, the pilgrimage to a city so tied to Christ is about personal confirmation of the spiritual validity of the city.
For her personal confirmations, Burton clung to one truth that she learned during her mission.
“There's no such thing as un-dedicating something,” Burton said, referring to the previously sanctified land. “You have to confirm for yourself whether the event happened. Not that that's the place, but whether the event happened and how you're going to worship Christ in that one moment.”
Hamilton had a similar experience, finding solace and renewal in the protected time to grow spiritually that the BYU Jerusalem Center gave her.
“The most powerful things for me weren't being at the real place, but it was this whole dedicated summer of time where I got to think about Christ," Hamilton said.
Through conflicts of politics and violence, through closures due to war and pandemics, the BYU Jerusalem Center still provides these revelatory opportunities.
President Jeffery R. Holland shared that its potential is still unrealized and that the people there make it what it is.
“It’s not the glass or teak wood or stone I think about most when I think of the Jerusalem Center. It is the people then and now, there and here, who through their faith and good works made it happen," Holland said.
To students at the BYU Jerusalem Center, Omar and Shaban Amro have become a part of those people. Their love for Jerusalem is shared in a community mosaic of faith.