Featured image: FORTRESS Damascus Gate, one of the eight gates of Jerusalem’s Old City built in the 16th century
By Joel Cuello, Ph.D.
This April, the three Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all celebrated Ramadan, Passover, and Holy Week all in the same week—a convergence that happens about every three decades.
Jerusalem, the “City of Peace” up on the Judaean mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, has long served as the locus of convergence for the world’s three principal Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and—despite or because of such—has since been weaving a sweeping history at once epic and combustible through the centuries.
Yet, beyond all of the elevated pursuits, from religion to history, from archaeology to architecture, from culture to politics, etc., for which people from around the world have come and sought to explore this multifaceted city, one simple aspect of Jerusalem that is often overlooked is that it remains fundamentally a material and tangible home to its inhabitants. Jerusalem is a place where its people make a living and live daily to make and design their lives.
Given the thick crusts of religions, cultures, myths, and aspirations that the world has laid upon this storied city over the millennia, it takes some effort in visiting Jerusalem’s Old City to cut through such layers of weighty expectations and desires and actually observe the city simply as a place for dwelling.
I decided to give it a try toward the end of each of my latest work-related visits to the region before catching my flight back home to the US. Quickly realizing that this was best accomplished early in the morning, I would enter the Old City as soon as the sun had risen and amble in silence through its long, labyrinthine corridors.
What greeted me most was not only the obviously closed shops, but the stillness and tranquility of the place.
The hubbub and cacophony of the Old City’s peak hours seemed to have been irrevocably banished, replaced by abiding, most pleasant peace and quiet.
I observed early-morning stirrings here and there—a father walking his child to school, an Arab lady buying morning bread, a sleepy cat quietly sitting on a step, an open café with a few solitary patrons each sitting in private solitude, and a small group of solemn pilgrims from South America about to embark in tracing the steps of the via dolorosa, among others.
It was a time when I could seem to sense the city’s ancient walls and cobblestone streets wanting to whisper in my ears all that they had seen and heard from the long generations of kings and scholars and merchants and sinners and paupers and prophets who had lived or passed through this storied city. And, oh, if only they could!
Observing and experiencing the Old City simply as it is, before throngs of tourists would invade the place during regular hours, was instructive. It gained me some insights into what the Old City has come to represent to billions around the globe.
This April, the three Abrahamic faiths of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity all celebrate Ramadan, Passover, and Holy Week all in the same week—a convergence that happens about every three decades and with Jerusalem’s Old City, where all three religions coexist and lay claim to its most holy sites, as the global epicenter.
Billions of people find peace in religion mainly because of its promise of redemption and salvation. And the Old City serves as a space-time location where pilgrims can congregate both to substantiate and sublimate their innermost longings and aspirations.
But perhaps people also find solace in visiting Jerusalem, not only because it links the human and divine, but because it gives them the sense of being fully immersed in the long, uninterrupted flowing river of the human continuum.
