195 - Jerusalem: Old Myths and New Realities

Jerusalem: Old Myths and New Realities
By John J. Carey

“Last night I lay asleeping
there came a dream so fair:
I stood in old Jerusalem, beside
the Temple there.
I heard the children singing,
and ever as they sang,
Methought the voice of Angels
from heaven in answer rang.”

JERUSALEM, the City of David, still looks like a jeweled city on a hilltop as the bright Western sun illumines the tan limestone of its buildings. Its population of 450,000 consists of approximately 350,000 Jews, 80,000 Muslims, and 20,000 Christians. It is not large as major world cities go, but its history and location give it a special distinctiveness among all the cities of the world. It bears its history proudly, but with many scars, and it bustles with the construction and growth of a modern city. Located as it is at the edge of the West Bank and close to the Judean desert, the fields around it are rocky and barren. Tension is always present within the city because of its sacredness to Jews, Muslims, and Christians. In dramatic contrast to the modern city, Bedouins still lead their sheep through areas of the city, and Bedouin tents can be seen in the outlying fields. The past and the present, as well as many cultures, languages, and modes of dress, still mingle in this international city.

I spent most of the summer of 1990 in Jerusalem as a resident of the Tantur Ecumenical Institute of Theological Research. This beautiful facility, located on a hill in southern Jerusalem overlooking Bethlehem, was built by the Vatican after the Vatican Council II to further ecumenical and interfaith dialogue. It opened in 1972 and since that time has been the focal point for Christian ecumenical dialogue in Jerusalem. The summer program in which I participated was oriented to help participants see important Christian sites in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas, to further our knowledge of twentieth-century history and politics that have created the present situation in the Middle East, to deepen our sense of the Eastern churches (Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Maronites, and Melchites), which are a part of the

John J. Carey is Wallace M. Alston Professor of Bible and Religion, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia. He has also served as President of Warren Wilson College, Swannanoa, North Carolina, and as Professor of Religion at Florida State University, Tallahassee. The quotation above is from the old hymn “The Holy City.”

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Christian presence in this part of the world, and to clarify the present situation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in light of the Intifada.

I went to Jerusalem with excitement but apprehension, not knowing what to expect. As one who has taught the Bible to college and university students for over thirty years, I was excited about actually seeing the sites of biblical history and visiting the major centers of archaeological work. I didn't know what to expect about the places mentioned, for example, in the Passion Narrative. As a scholar, I know the historical and theological problems associated with that narrative, but I was at least curious about the location and proximity of the strategic places mentioned there. Actually, it was not the Christian places but the evidences of the many layers of Jerusalem's history that impressed me most, such as the Hebraic heritage going back to David and Solomon and the various evidences of the Hasmoneans, Romans, Muslims, Christian Crusaders, Turks, and British, all of whom have left their imprint on this place. Being exposed to this historic city enabled me to see through some old myths and to face some new realities about Jerusalem, and I want to discuss each of them in this article.

I

Mythic or romanticized images of Jerusalem and the “Holy Land” may have their roots in our childhood, Sunday School teachings, or in our idealized adult images of what life must have been like in the time of Jesus. Our images and fantasies, however, do not coincide with the present situation. What are some of our deeply-ingrained old myths?

(1) Jerusalem is a Christian city, pivotal for Christian faith and hope because of the ministry and death of Jesus.
Wrong. At least the first part of the sentence is wrong. One cannot be in Jerusalem long before realizing that this is an overwhelmingly Jewish city, and that the Christian presence here is minuscule. Jews will determine the future of Jerusalem and of its Christian population. The events Christians remember are but a small footnote, as far as Jews are concerned, of the long historical saga and significance of Jerusalem.

(2) It is possible for Christians to come to Jerusalem and “walk where Jesus walked.“
Not really. This dream, fostered by tour companies and by popular piety in both Catholic and Protestant traditions, is based on emotion, a naive belief in tradition, and a rather literal reading of, say, the Passion Narrative. One can, of course, still go to the Mount of Olives and the area of the Garden of Gethsemane. One can see the stones of some parts of Herod's Temple and some of the old gates of the Temple Wall. Beyond that, most historical claims are conjectural and shaped by commercialism, legend, and imagination.

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(3) Jerusalem, for all of its inter-faith history, is at least a symbol of Christian unity for all streams of the church.
Hardly. This may be the biggest disappointment of all for Christians of ecumenical persuasion. The diverse Christian groups who worship and control the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for example, are a fractious lot, and are constantly bickering about “turf.” Members of the Orthodox Church still view the presence of Roman Catholics with suspicion, and the growing number of Christian fundamentalist groups (fortified with a premillenialist theology) are making life difficult for the few mainline Protestant groups. Religious diversity reigns in Jerusalem, and the mystique of the “Holy City” is not strong enough to transcend historic rivalries and painful memories.

II

If many of our religious intuitions are exposed as myths, what are the new realities that shape this historic city and troubled land? Somewhat in the spirit of liberation theologians, who remind us of the critical role of politics in every culture, I would suggest that the new realities of Israel-Palestine are all intertwined with the politics of Israel and the urgent issue of the Palestinians. Any visitor to Israel, who does more than tour Christian shrines, quickly sees that the urgent issues are cultural and political. Some facets of this are obvious, others are more subtle:

(1) Israeli military presence. Everywhere one goes in Jerusalem, but especially around museums, political centers like the Knesset, the Muslim quarter of the old city, bus and transport centers, and refugee camps, one sees Israeli soldiers armed with automatic weapons. Armored personnel carriers patrol the streets. Jewish settlers (civilians) who have moved into West Bank housing developments carry automatic weapons as do young teenage boys as they casually stroll through the old city. Soldiers patrol the holy area of the Western Wall (the “Wailing Wall”) of the old city; other Jewish civilians bring their weapons with them as they come into the area. All tourists pass through military checkpoints to approach the Wall. In Bethlehem, widely recognized to be an Arab town and a strong area of the Intifada, military jeeps escort Jewish buses, and soldiers are stationed on rooftops about every 500 yards.

There have been, of course, enough episodes of terrorism in recent years to justify police patrols and security measures, but seldom have most Americans been in a culture that is so dominated by military presence. It does something to a culture to have civilians moving about with modern weapons. Young Jewish boys seem to enjoy these symbols of defiance and power. This is a depressing reality, and visitors are cautioned not to photograph either the soldiers or the civilians. We don't read much about this in American newspapers.

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(2) The Plight of the Palestinians. Only after being here for an extended time, and visiting the Kalandia refugee camp, did I realize how little I had understood about the plight of the Palestinians in Israel. This is, of course, a long and complex story, with elements of tragedy and terrorism on both sides. War does terrible things to otherwise humane persons, and old human thirsts for revenge have extended many tragedies. I knew that there were refugee camps in Israel for Palestinians who have no other place to live, but I came with no idea of how harshly the Israelis control these camps. There are about twenty-five such camps in the West Bank, with several in Jerusalem and three in Bethlehem. The camps have from 4,000 to 15,000 inhabitants. Although technically supervised by the U.N. through its Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the final authority governing the camps is Israeli military law. This law is not subject to civil review, hence things taking place in the camps cannot be appealed to a higher or impartial civil court system.

Since the beginning of the Intifida, Israeli crackdowns on the refugee camps have been increasingly severe. Most of the camps now have all entrances blocked but one. Curfews are called regularly; that does not mean “lights out by 10:00 p.m.” It means that no one can be out of their house without the risk of being shot on sight, and it means that no one can enter or leave the camp. Workers who must leave the camps for their jobs are regularly harassed and delayed as they return home to their families. Stories abound of military patrols that have knocked down doors, smashed windows, and beaten women and children for no apparent reason. Israelis bar reporters and photographers from the camps.

The Kalandia camp reminded me of shanty towns or migrant worker camps. Narrow, dusty, and rocky alleyways separate primitive concrete block structures. Sewage flows along open ditches. Garbage and debris abound. There are no trees or recreation areas for a population of nearly 15,000. Health facilities are inadequate (what there are, are supplied by UNRWA), and there are no dental facilities in the camp at all. To enter the camp by narrow alleyways is like entering a maze. If I had not been led in and out by camp inhabitants, I would be there still.

I thought camp conditions would be more humane and the Israeli occupation more benign. All of the families I visited had sons in jail, and one 15-year-old boy pulled his shirt up to show me scars from three bullet wounds. The plight of the shebab who go to jail is another sad story, especially for those assigned to the desert camps.

As all students of Middle Eastern history know, the rivalries and hatreds in this part of the world go back a long, long time. Many studies have documented the bitter stereotypes Arabs and Jews continue to have of each other. Not all Palestinians live in camps, but anyone can quickly recognize Arab neighborhoods because of their poverty. Frankly, I had expected more from the Israelis. If this state really wants financial and military support from the United States, one would

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think it would attempt to be a democratic, inclusive, and humane government. I recognize that America's own policies and history do not make us pure on this point. We have our own sins to atone for with our treatment of Native Americans, African-Americans, the Japanese Americans in the early days of World War II, and most recently, the Haitians in south Florida. But nonetheless, for what Israel claims to be and the rhetoric it uses to justify Western support, their treatment of the Palestinians is a serious violation of human rights and dignity. Our State Department knows this, but why we do not do anything about it is an unanswered question.

(3) The Jewish Identity Struggle. Most Americans are familiar with the tight political struggle that exists in Israel between the Labor and Likud parties and the resultant disproportionate influence that the small extremist religious parties have. What is less well known are the efforts of Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative Judaism to gain some influence in modern Israeli society. Jerusalem is the center of this activity; all groups struggle not only against the political power of the Orthodox, but also against the prevailing secularity of contemporary Israeli society. The beaches, I was told, are always packed on the High Holy Days. There are also deep divisions between the Ashkenazic (Western European) Jews and the Sephardic (Eastern European, Spanish, and Arabic) Jews. Although the famous “Law of Return,” passed in 1950, declared that every Jew in the world has a right to immigrate to Israel and claim automatic citizenship, there has clearly been some prejudice against Ethiopian Jews. While I was in Jerusalem, the Israelis and Ethiopians agreed to stop the emigration of Ethiopian Jews, ostensibly to allow for more time to check the “legitimacy” of those who wish to come.

The aliya (commitment to immigrate) of Russian Jews has caused financial, theological, and sociological problems. On the whole, these Jews are educated and secularized. They threaten the job security of professional elites. Most do not meet the standard criteria for being judged Jewish, proof of being born of a Jewish mother. They create serious problems for housing. At one time, it was announced that they would be arriving at the rate of 10,000 per week; that caused so much clamor that the Shamir government decided to “classify” such information.

Israel is clearly divided into hawks and doves. The best estimates I could get put about twenty percent in the dove category, thirty percent in the hawk category, and about fifty percent in a malleable middle, swayablea by a ruling government. One paradox is that the more conventionally religious Jews may be, the greater likelihood of their bellicosity. (One might say the more fanatical such persons are in their persuasion that this land is theirs by the promises of God.) The strength of the peace movement lies with secularized Jews, and even with some former intelligence and defense officials who argue that

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some negotiated settlement with the Arabs is in Israel's long-term best interest.

In spite of a pervasive feeling about the land, and a unity that has been forged by five wars (1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982), one quickly senses that there are still wide-ranging views about the role of this country, what Jewishness means, the relation of Israel to the Jews of the diaspora, and what role religion should play in the state. Forty-two years have not solved the Jewish identity problem. That is one of the realities of Israeli life, and one feels it in the modern life of Jerusalem.

III

My experience in Jerusalem, and throughout Israel generally, de-romanticized my sense of the biblical world. The commercialism and mythology surrounding most of the places of Jerusalem and Bethlehem diminished, rather than enhanced, the mystique of biblical places. The rivalries of Christian groups were embarrassing. I did have some latent interest in ancient history renewed, as well as some interests in archaeology. I felt that the archaeological finds, by the way, were more important for ancient Hebraic, Roman, and Crusader history than for any real insight into Christian origins or Christian faith.

Perhaps my most important theological insights came through coping with the Jewishness of Jerusalem and of the whole modern ethos of Israel. Since most of my contacts with Jews in America have been with Reform Jews, I can relate easily and naturally to them as friends, colleagues, and fellow citizens. The Israeli Jew, however, seems to be of another genre. The memory of past wars and the ever-present apprehension about the future give even intellectual leaders here an intensity that I have not previously felt. The desire not to be assimilated and to preserve some “otherness” is, of course, a major item on the agenda of Orthodox Jews. If Christians are to have anything to say in dialogue with Jews, we have to take the arguments about the land much more seriously. I have great difficulty with all of the Jewish arguments I heard for their claim to the land but realize that this is not just another theological argument. Thousands of people have died on behalf of their claim to the land.

Most Christians need to know more about Judaism. Even most ministers who studied something about the Hebrew Scriptures as background for the New Testament assume that Judaism faded out in 70 C.E. and faded back in again somewhere around the 1930s in Europe. The long Christian history of anti-Semitism is something we don't want to hear about (or want to forget), and we all bear shame for the Holocaust. Perhaps we need to take the teaching of Judaism more seriously in Protestant and Catholic seminaries. If so, we might also expect Jews of all persuasion to do more teaching about Christianity. Although I do not share his theological starting point or his conclusions, Paul Van Buren's recent work, A Christian Theology of the People

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Israel (1983), is suggestive as to how to take this problem seriously. The recent book by Rosemary and Herman Ruether, The Wrath of Jonah (1989), offers solid historical data on the Middle East and insightful critiques of Zionist ideology.

In the name of one who lived in this land centuries ago as a marginalized Jew, I believe that it finally falls to the Christian community to care about, and to speak for, the dispossessed Arabs in the modern land of Israel-Palestine. The Palestinian Arabs are humiliated by the Jews, strangely spurned by their Arab brothers in other states, and held in stereotypic low regard in Western countries because of various acts of terrorism. Their leadership-essentially the PLO-has been unable to present their case to the West or to the U.N. with any credibility. I was touched to discover the scope of Christian mission work (mostly Roman Catholic) with these people in various areas of Israel, including the Gaza Strip. In every way we can, we should be advocates for those voiceless and powerless people.

Ah, Jerusalem! May the time come when you can once again be a symbol of peace and unity and when our best dreams of “The Holy City” become realities.