Having visited Israel twice, I really do find Jerusalem to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The photographs that accompanied the March feature article on Jerusalem really bring that to expression.
The greatest sadness of the land and the city is the almost total inability of the three faiths to live in peaceful cooperation. Although I appreciate Raheel Raza’s effort to build connection, I found her reflections rather naive. The reality of Jerusalem is that the holiest sites of the three faiths stand side by side, yet huge gulfs of intolerance and misunderstanding divide us one from the other. And ironically, nowhere is this more marked than in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Raza named Christianity’s holiest site. There are numerous Christian denominations represented within the church, all supposedly sharing in worshipful oversight of this holy place. And yet there is constant tension, hostility and even numerous examples of outright violence breaking out between the various church leaders over control of this building. These Christian bodies may share the same space, but they are incapable of sharing the same spirit. The same is true of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where three different denominations occupy the church, but have little respect or care for each other. The Christian sites within Jerusalem may be interesting historical oddities, but as far as being our holiest sites, I see no spirited example of that. Perhaps Raza’s approach is the right one— the hope of individual believers from the various faiths and denominations building bridges of understanding with each other, which our institutional bodies are incapable of?
