So our first day in Jerusalem was dedicated of course to the Holy City itself. We had organised a tour guide which would take us around the Holy City and teach us everything we need to know. Now I am usually used to DIY-ing in these situations and both Steffi and I had guide books but in this particular case we a) embarrassingly knew absolutely nothing about Jerusalem and its history and b) if there is one history that is complicated and I mean complicated, it’s that of Israel. Trust me, it’s better to leave this one to the professionals.
Our tour guide was called Phil, a Jew from Chicago who moved to Israel many many years ago as a young adult. We already met quite a few Jewish people in Israel who were born and raised abroad and moved to Israel as adults. It’s crazy because of all the Serbs I have met in my life who were born and grew up abroad (and it’s a lot), I probably know one or two who moved to Serbia. And let’s face it, although the Israeli economy is stronger than the Serbian one, it’s not exactly the stablest place to live. But apparently since 1948 Israel has absorbed more immigrants than any other country on earth relative to its population. In the 90s about 900,000 came from the Soviet Union and nowadays there are a lot coming from France fleeing what they feel is a very anti-Semitic atmosphere. It just goes to show how strong the sense of community is amongst the Jewish people. I felt it very much when travelling in Latin America, where even in the smallest of towns in the randomest of areas our fellow Israelis would search for the synagogue and get invited for dinner, Shabbat, etc. to the rabbis house. Even I joined them once for Hanukkah. I certainly never felt this kind of support network from the Christian community.
Back to our tour…Phil was going to introduce us to Jerusalem through the eyes of the three main religions; Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
First up was Christianity. For Christians Jerusalem is the location of one of the holiest sites on earth, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Christians believe this to be the site of Christ’s crucifixion, burial and resurrection. Many, many Christian pilgrims come from far and wide, from literally all over the world and from all different denominations of Christianity to see it and say their prayers/ pay their respects. Apparently if you are a very good Christian, you can put your ear up against the Rock where he was crucified and still hear the cries of Jesus. I didn’t give it a try, partially because I find it a little disturbing (I wouldn’t want to listen to anyone else being tortured either), and also because while I may consider myself a good Christian, when you’re in the holiest place on earth there’s a lot of competition.
The site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, along with the church itself has a long history including multiple phases of destruction and rebuilding, depending on who was in power at the time. The initial area where Christ was crucified was ‘hidden’ by the Romans who built a pagan temple over it, in order to make sure the Christians never found out about what happened or where it happened. That went well for them didn’t it?
300 years after the crucifixion however, Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, came to the building, knocked down the temple and excavated the tomb of Christ and a pile of crosses. Legend says she couldn’t identify which cross was the one Christ was crucified on so she ran out onto the street, found a sick man, brought him to touch all the crosses and when he put his hand on the original cross he was healed.
Helena built the most beautiful church in its place and that’s when the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was born. After that there was a bunch of both natural disasters (earthquakes, fires, etc.) and human ones (Persians, Ottomans, etc.) that destroyed the church. Eventually at some point the European Crusaders came to defend their Christianity by doing what they seemed to be doing a lot of at the time, killing everyone in their path. (By the way if that qualifies as a good Christian I think I’m safe.) Apparently it’s said they killed so many people that the blood on Temple Mount flowed up to the knees of the horses. And let me tell you, Temple Mount is a pretty big mothaf***er of a Mount.
1,000 years later we may not be chopping off people’s heads, but there is still not much peace and love- even amongst the Christians themselves. All the different denominations of Christianity (Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic, etc.) all really love Jesus and they all want ownership of the church. This means that they never agree on anything, it takes ages to put in place any reparations and the priests sometimes get into physical fights over little things like who is responsible for cleaning the steps today. We regularly have fights like that in the Milosavljevic household but because no one wants to clean anything. In the case of the priests they get upset if you cleaned the stairs when it was their day to clean them.
The biggest irony of all is that the keys of the church are left with the Nusseibeh family (the oldest Muslim family in Jerusalem), who unlock and lock the doors to the church every day so that the little children christian priests won’t fight.
The church itself is really beautiful; simple, and parts of it feel like you’re in a cave which makes it interesting to explore. I would like to say that I felt some kind of enlightenment, but to be honest the only thing I felt most of the time is somebody’s elbow in my stomach, armpit in my face, etc. It was pretty dog eat dog as visitors scrambled to touch each piece of holiness . I remembered we were told how the Romans would kill Christians because they thought they were all cannibals. Ironically, if you’d based your assessment on the crowds at the church that day, you might well have agreed.
Moving swiftly on to Judaism and potentially the most well-known part of Jerusalem; the Western Wall. The Western Wall is part of the wall around the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is a guarded area of utmost holiness which currently houses two of the most important Muslim buildings in the world. Many, many years prior to that, however, it was the location of one of the most holiest Jewish temples in the world. If you think at this point I’m getting carried away with my superlatives again, I’m really not, this just happens to be the city of “the holiest ever”s of all three religions.
The Jewish temple was destroyed and rebuilt and destroyed and rebuilt (kind of like the church), however when it was destroyed in 70CE the Jews were sent into exile and the exact location was forever lost. The Shechina (divine presence) is believed to have never deserted the walls however, and so many Jews come here now to pray and touch and kiss its walls. Initially Jews came to mourn and lament the destruction of the temple, hence where the name “Wailing wall” came from, although apparently this isn’t popular with the Jewish community.
The wall is split into two sections; the extra large, comfortable and spacious section for men and the tiny weeny crowded little section for females. Nothing to do with ratio of men and women in the Jewish community, it’s just coz of our inferiority. The Orthodox men are very against women worshipping here at all. But don’t worry, if you feel strongly about this inequality you can always join the ‘Women of the Wall’ movement, which protests against this gender segregation. Though as far as I’m aware, to date it appears to have been pretty much to no avail.
Now our next and final stop was Temple Mount, one of the holiest…ok you get the message. This one is doubley holy though because it’s the location of a slab of rock which is sacred to Jews and Muslims alike. Jews believe it’s the rock where Abraham prepared to sacrifice his son Isaac, and where their initial holy temple was built, and Muslims believe it’s the rock from which the prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven.
To get in past the western wall and onto Temple Mount you go through metal detectors (they’ve had incidents in the past so they want to make sure no one is carrying a Kalashnikov), and then you go past the scariest police of all; the Temple Mount fashion police. And it’s not even a joke, being yelled at aggressively by any Israeli in a uniform is not a pleasant experience. One girl tried to get past them and suffered the consequences as the officer started yelling so much it felt like she was about to get arrested for first degree murder and not that she was getting told off for wearing a T-shirt.
Luckily, I, being the decent respectable young Christian that I am, had a long dress on and covered shoulders so I passed the test. Sadly, the same can’t be said for Stefania the shlag, who blasphemously had half her shins on display. She was immediately taken aside and given a long ‘skirt’ to put over her own (already pretty long) skirt. The new ‘skirt’ looked like a sack someone had stolen from Shlomo the potato seller, so she waddled around the rest of the Mount looking like a bag of produce on her way to the local market.
When actually on Temple Mount the main attraction is the Dome of the Rock – the muslim shrine built on top of the rock where Mohammed descended to heaven from (yes someone got crazy creative in the naming process), and the Al Aqsa mosque (3rd holiest place of worship after Mecca and another one from Saudi Arabia I think). Now remember, the rock was also the holy rock of Abraham and Isaac, and the location of the initial Jewish temple so it must’ve been a bit of a tough pill to swallow when Caliph Abd al Malik decided to build an Islamic shrine and mosque on top of it, which nowadays only Muslims can visit.
The most important story for Muslims was when Mohammed ascended to heaven from the rock. God initially told him to go back down and tell his people they had to pray 500 times a day. He came down with these news but was told to go back up and barter with God (you know you’re in the Middle East when there’s bartering involved right?!) I don’t know how many times he went up and down (a lot) but he eventually got it down to 5 times a day. He was again told to go back up and negotiate but at this point enough was enough and he exclaimed “that’s it, this is taking the piss now” [disclaimer: there may have been some creative licence and paraphrasing involved], and from that day on Muslims pray 5 times a day.
The Dome of the Rock is an absolutely amazing shrine, and is visible from pretty much anywhere in Jerusalem. It was the last stop on our tour which completed our trilogy of religions. The most interesting thing was seeing how intertwined and interconnected each of these different holy locations are. It can’t be a coincidence that all these sacred events happened here on this specific spot with the whole wide world out there. I can’t help but imagine how much strife and bloodshed would’ve been spared if they had just spread themselves out a bit more.
We decided after spending the day inside the Holy City that we would end the day with a different viewpoint- looking over it from above. We got dolled up and had a super romantic dinner in the Mamila hotel rooftop restaurant (yes mamila as in nipple to those of us who speak Spanish but it’s not that kind of establishment). An amazing end to an amazing day.
