See all the amazing sites of Jerusalem in our photoset here
First off, let me get the camel out of the way. We were on top of the Mount of Olives, the scene of Jesus’ ascent to heaven. It was cold up there in the wind but the view over the old city of Jerusalem is magnificent. Sarah’s eyes were caught by the camel who, we had learned the previous day, is named Peter. Peter is notoriously cranky but available for rides. Sarah has a fascination with camels, their long eyelashes and floppy lips. In Aqaba she was kissed by a camel on the street. It was hairy but pleasant. As she was photographing Peter on top of Mount of Olives he peered over the shoulder of a clergyman reading the bible on a bench and started reading it himself. This came close to being the photographic highlight of Jerusalem if the raptures she went into over it are anything to go by. We kind of forgot to go into the Church of the Ascension after that, but what’s one more church in a city with a chronic oversupply?
It was a welcome break from the relentless wave of incredibly significant religious sites that we had been looking at. Jerusalem is remarkable for being the epicentre of three different religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The tensions are just beneath the surface, such as the riot shields that line the wooden walkway into the Temple Mount. Not only is space within the old city contested but individual churches are divided into sections depending which branch of the church owns it. It is religion at both its most sublime and its most ridiculous.
Jerusalem is one place I don’t mind doing a tour. It’s so layered with meaning that just wandering around on your own will not do the place justice. We had a great guide, a Jewish guy of Canadian/American descent who grew up in Israel but had an American edge to his accent. He was a little dynamo of information doing post-graduate studies in religion. He showed us the newly excavated section of walls on the outside of the old city showing seven or eight layers where different conquerors have rebuilt the city. Just next to where we were walking was The Valley of Death, which Sarah and I both mistakenly assumed was a fictitious place. Next stop, and this is bizarre for a tangible-history deprived Australian non-believer, was the room where Jesus and his homies gathered for the last supper. Now this is the point I really started to like our guide because rather than blindly leading us around all of these sites and asking for our blind faith he actively questioned the location and authenticity of much of what he showed us. It is possible that the site of the last supper is located here but it’s not the original room. The room located here now was built by the Crusaders to commemorate what they thought the site was but there’s no way to know for certain. In one of the many layers to be found in this city the Crusader-era church had been converted into a mosque when the Islamic empire swept through.
Although we were outside the current walls of the old city we learned that the boundaries of the city fluxed over time. Settlement at Jerusalem first started at a site in a valley which is now covered by a modern settlement. It was only discovered that this could be the original site of the city when a construction crew unearthed remains which British archaeologists claimed were the oldest artefacts found in Jerusalem, hence the site of the original city. The city began here near a spring that was vital for supporting the life. As water technology improved the city moved to the top of the nearby hill in a more secure position. Modern Jerusalem has spread out remarkably from the old city which is tiny in comparison. Since Israel was founded as a state Jerusalem has more than quadrupled in size with all the attendant problems with traffic.
Israel’s modern foundations are evident in the bullet holes marking the Zion gate in the Jewish quarter of the city where in 1948 Israeli troops stormed the old city. Entering through the gate we came across a modern Jewish bar mitzvah run by a new group who party through the old city to the wailing wall with traditional Jewish horns and lots of shouting. It like we had stumbled across Rio’s carnivale. We elbowed our way through to the line for Temple Mount which is only open to the public at certain times of the day when it is not being used for Islamic prayer. It turns out we were in Jerusalem at a good time of year. Despite appearances this was a quiet time of year just before the Christmas rush so we were jostling much less than usual. The wooden walkway up to temple mount is a story in itself. The old ramp fell down in 2005 and work commenced to replace it with a more solid structure. This being Jerusalem, when the workmen started digging the foundations they found remains of what turned out to be a Roman bath house. The religious politics got into full swing at that point. Neither the Jewish community or the Muslim community wanted a sinful Roman bath house to exist next to their holy of holies, the wailing wall and the al-Aqsa mosque. Instead of confronting the issue both sides decided to erect a temporary wooden walkway which survives to this day rather than expose archaeological evidence of Roman history. This is despite the fact that the Romans built temple mount in the first place. It’s an amazing engineering feat. They extended a hillside by building massive foundations and a platform about 37 acres in size to house one of their temples. This structure has been claimed by Muslims and now hosts the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock, a shrine holding the rock that started following Muhammed to heaven during his ascension before he stamped his foot on it to send it back to earth. His footprint is still in the rock but we non-Muslims are not allowed in to see it. In fact, if they suspect that you are not Muslim and trying to get in they will give you a little pop quiz to test your Islamic knowledge. Famously Cat Stevens was not allowed in here initially because they didn’t believe that he was Muslim and obviously hadn’t heard of his conversion.
Temple Mount is crawling with armed guards (including Jewsish guards protecting Islamic sites from Jewish fundamentalists) and if something was going to kick off in Jerusalem you get the feeling that it would start here. The mosque is spectacularly ornate but outshone by the Dome of the Rock, the aforementioned shrine that is covered with a golden roof donated quite recently by the previous King of Jordan. The Dome of the Rock is the more secure than the mosque as it sits on the original hill. The mosque is on the Roman structure and as a result is more susceptible to earthquakes. It has been rebuilt several times.
The Temple Mount is also where the religious pissing contest between Christianity and Islam is centred. As a later religion Islam stamped its mark on Jerusalem when they captured it. The Dome of the Rock matches nearly exactly the dome of Christianity’s holiest church, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Dome of the Rock is also called the place where Muhammed ascended to heaven despite a site for this event not being explicitly mentioned in the Koran. Coincidentally the site where Jesus is said to have ascended to heaven is on the next hill along. So the holiness of Jerusalem becomes its attraction and point of contention between all the religions here. To be a serious religion you need to stake you claim in the holiest city.
We descended into the Arab quarter, still home to 22,000 residents crammed into the tiny old city, for lunch at a place with the best hummus in town. It didn’t fail to disappoint with the best falafel we had on the trip as well. Just outside the door of the restaurant is the Via Dolorosa and one of the stations of the cross, the best guess for the location of Jesus’s walk with the cross to the location of his crucifixion. The way is now lined with hundreds of shops, ironic given Jesus’s stance against the merchants. I’m not sure Jesus would like the modern Jerusalem much more than the ancient city he railed against. At the top of the road is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here religious weirdness reaches its peak. The church is Christian but inside is divide up amongst the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian branches of the church. So on one side you have Greek Orthodox worshippers gathering under the incredibly ornate mosaic ceiling for their turn to touch the original rock of the hill on which Christ was crucified. The rock has been placed behind a protective clear plastic barrier to stop people chipping bits of it off. Worshippers have to kneel down under an altar to get their chance to touch the rock. On the other side is a Catholic section where they conduct their own form of worship. Near the entrance of the church is the Stone of Anointing where Jesus is said to have been cleaned after crucifixion. People of the Greek Orthodox persuasion like to rub with cloth as anything that touches it automatically becomes holy. In another large section of the church is the sepulchre of Christ, which is really just something built in commemoration of Jesus’s final resting place. People head inside to touch something else in there and to light their candle from the eternal flame which every year God lights once again in a perpetual miracle. Each year crowds gather in the church to see the miracle and light their candles, although in reality only one priest actually gets to see God light the flame which is instantly suspicious.
One talking point of the Church are the new toilets. The toilets had been planned to go in for the millennium celebrations in 2000 but were delayed by a decade because none of the parties involved, the Catholics, Greek Orthodox or Armenians, could agree who should give up space in the church to put the toilets in. There was also the sticking point of the ‘status quo’ an agreement whereby no-one can make any alterations to the church. This was done to put an end to the constant bickering and sabotage each branch of the church was engaged in to gain more of a foothold in the church which often descended to violence. Agreement was finally reached by allocating different stalls in the toilet to different branches of the church. Now they have separate religiously specific cleaning staff allocated to the Catholics, Greek Orthodox or Armenian branches of the church to clean the different stalls. The status quo agreement makes it hard to do any maintenance on the place. There is even a wooden ladder perched on a ledge outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre which has not been moved since 1853 when the status quo agreement came into force.
This all highlights the sorry state organised religion is in. Religious philosophies centred around selflessness and kindness to your fellow human beings are entirely lost in the dazzling edifices and tourist industry that have surrounded the churches’ holy sites. All this has been happening for centuries but, no offence believers, I personally find the entire construction one of human-kinds more bizarre manifestations of spirituality. The holiest place on earth is marked by in-fighting and politics, not selflessness and kindness to your fellow humans.
We were nearing the end of our tour and feeling the effects of rushing around for three weeks. Sarah had signed us up for a Shabbat dinner at the hostel and mistakenly assumed that her parents would love to join us at the hostel in cooking and cleaning up. The prospect didn’t appeal to me so much either despite the good intentions behind it. After working in a commercial kitchen for a number of years the romance of food preparation for a large crowd is not really there. I was also stuffed full from a large lunch (which we paid top dollar for) and really just wanted to lie down and write some blog posts. So Sarah went into the fray alone and was praised as being one of those special guests that come along every so often (ie. Do most of the work for the other slackers). Sarah was on the point of being pissed off when after a couple of hours of preparation it looked like no-one had saved her a seat. In the end she had a good conversation with a Spanish guy thinking about converting to Judaism, an athiest Jew and his Catholic Mexican girlfriend. It’s a broad diaspora.
See all the amazing sites of Jerusalem in our photoset here
Recent Comments