Rare Overlap of Holy Days Shows Jerusalem’s Promise and Problems

JERUSALEM — On Friday morning, as clashes flared on the Aqsa Mosque within the Outdated Metropolis of Jerusalem, Muslims inside and outdoors the mosque had been fasting for the 14th day of Ramadan.

A number of hundred yards away, Jews had been burning leavened bread, a conventional ceremony that happens simply earlier than Passover, which formally began on Friday night.

A couple of minutes to the north, Christians had been starting a procession by way of the Outdated Metropolis, holding aloft picket crosses, retracing the route that they imagine Jesus Christ took earlier than his crucifixion.

For the primary time since 1991, Passover, Easter and Ramadan had been about to happen all of sudden — intensifying the spiritual synergies and tensions which have outlined Jerusalem for millenniums.

To some, the overlap embodied the marvel of Jerusalem and the illusion of coexistence amongst its peoples.

“Jerusalem proper now’s a symphony of individuals reaching out to God,” mentioned Barnea Selavan, a rabbi and instructor who had simply completed burning his household’s remaining leavened bread.

To others, the convergence highlighted the incompatibilities and the inequities of a metropolis the place many Palestinian residents think about themselves residing below occupation. Clashes broke out once more on Sunday after Israeli cops stopped Muslims from getting into the Aqsa Mosque compound for a number of hours to permit Jews to enter for prayer.

“Jerusalem is sort of a salad bowl,” mentioned Mustafa Abu Sway, a professor of Islamic thought who had simply left the mosque. “You could have intact tomatoes and intact cucumbers and intact lettuce leaves. You don’t have a salad.”

And to some Christians whose Easter Friday procession began sooner than regular to keep away from inconveniencing Muslims heading to the mosque, the convergence of holidays underscored the sense of being a minority inside a minority.

“We’re like a potato mashed between everybody,” mentioned Serene Bathish, a frontrunner of an Arab Christian scout membership, who helped set up the Easter procession. “We’re between two fires.”

Removed from seas and main rivers, and excessive up within the mountains, Jerusalem, for a lot of its historical past, held little strategic significance, militarily or commercially. Its energy and relevance most frequently lay within the religious maintain it had over hundreds of thousands of individuals, a lot of whom had by no means visited it and to whom it had usually meant drastically various things.

For Jews, Jerusalem is their historic capital, the seat of King David and the location of two historic Jewish temples the place they imagine God’s presence dwelled. For Muslims, it was from that very same web site that the Prophet Muhammad rose to heaven and on which they constructed the compound of the Aqsa Mosque, the third-most-sacred web site in Islam. For Christians, it’s the metropolis the place Jesus was crucified and ascended into heaven — the place Christianity was born.

The Outdated Metropolis was dominated by the Ottomans till 1917, the British till 1948, and Jordan till 1967, when Israel captured and later annexed it. A lot of the world nonetheless considers it occupied, and Palestinians hope will probably be inside the capital of a future Palestinian state.

“All people has a Jerusalem of their head,” mentioned Matthew Teller, the creator of “9 Quarters of Jerusalem: A New Biography of the Outdated Metropolis.”

“If you get there and also you do really see it for actual,” he mentioned, “it may possibly by no means match up.”

As a working example, on Thursday evening, the eve of the primary convergence of the three holidays since 1991 started with an intense site visitors jam.

On the slim street that circles the Outdated Metropolis, Christians like Ms. Bathish had been heading to a service beside the Backyard of Gethsemane, an olive grove stuffed with wizened timber the place custom holds that Jesus was arrested on the evening earlier than his crucifixion. And Muslims like Professor Abu Sway had been heading to the Aqsa Mosque, the place tens of 1000’s had simply damaged their Ramadan quick at a communal iftar, or meal.

Across the Outdated Metropolis partitions, constructed by the Ottomans who dominated Jerusalem within the 1500s, Muslim households picnicked right here and there on the grass verges. They broke their fasts to a soundtrack of automobile horns, distant chants from the mosque and, later, faint choral melodies wafting from the basilica at Gethsemane.

In entrance of everybody was gridlocked site visitors, surrounding this historic metropolis with a hoop of vehicles and buses, the paranormal encircled by the profane.

At Rabbi Selavan’s condo within the Outdated Metropolis’s Jewish Quarter, the scene was slightly quieter on Thursday evening.

He and his spouse, Shoshana, symbolically hid items of their final remaining leavened bread — purchased from a uncommon Arab-run kosher bakery within the Outdated Metropolis — round their house, behind chairs and a rubbish can and below tables. Then they set about looking for the items that the opposite had hidden.

In line with Jewish instructing, Jews should not eat leavened bread through the week of Passover, which celebrates the traditional Israelites’ escape from slavery in Egypt. The Outdated Testomony says that they escaped so shortly, they didn’t have time for his or her bread to rise.

To Rabbi Selavan, it was extraordinary to be celebrating the vacation within the metropolis that the Israelites’ descendants finally made their capital. In his sitting room, he retains a small oil lamp that he discovered throughout an excavation below his house, and that he believes was utilized in Jerusalem through the time of King Solomon, about 3,000 years in the past. It’s crammed with charcoal that he believes is from the charred stays of the traditional metropolis, after it was razed by the Romans across the 12 months 70.

“I’m in a rebuilt — partially, at the very least — Jerusalem,” Rabbi Selavan mentioned. “I’m doing it the place it was performed.”

A half-mile away, a whole lot of Christians at Gethsemane, together with Ms. Bathish, started a procession from the basilica. They chanted and carried candles by way of the site visitors jam, the quotidian once more mingling with the ethereal.

“Keep on the sidewalk!” an organizer shouted in Arabic. “Not within the street!”

The procession handed a tract of church land that the Israeli authorities had lately deliberate to repurpose as a nationwide park earlier than backing down amid Christian claims of discrimination. Then it skirted the Jewish cemetery on the backside of the Mount of Olives, earlier than winding by way of a valley crammed with eccentric historic monuments — the pyramid-shaped Tomb of Zechariah, the conical-roofed Tomb of Absalom — after which up towards the Outdated Metropolis partitions.

To Ms. Bathish, it’s a privilege to have fun Easter the place it began, and to stay a number of yards from the place Christians imagine Christ died.

“However really, we don’t get to get pleasure from it that a lot,” she mentioned. There are an estimated 5,000 Christians left within the Outdated Metropolis, alongside roughly 30,000 Muslims and 5,000 Jews — they usually really feel squeezed between each.

Having staved off authorities efforts to repurpose church land close to Gethsemane, church leaders are locked in an possession dispute with a Jewish settler group over buildings on the opposite aspect of the Outdated Metropolis.

Preventing these authorized challenges and residing in a tightly policed space, all whereas struggling for cultural recognition, is “very tiring, time-consuming, tough, chaotic, insecure,” Ms. Bathish mentioned. “We’re not having fun with the entire feeling of uniqueness.”

A number of hundred yards away, on the promontory the place Jews and Christians maintain that Abraham tried to sacrifice his son Isaac, Professor Abu Sway, the Islamic theologian, was in his factor. Together with his spouse, daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren, he listened to a studying of the Quran.

To Jews, he was at Temple Mount, the location of a Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans. However to Muslims, that is the Aqsa Mosque compound, a 36-acre esplanade that features the golden Dome of the Rock, a shrine marking the Prophet Muhammad’s ascent.

An imam had simply learn a part of the Quran concerning the Prophet Musa, often called Moshe to Jews and Moses to Christians, and would shortly start a chapter on Muhammad’s journey to Jerusalem.

Soaking within the second, “plainly I’m in love,” Professor Abu Sway mentioned. “If you enter the Aqsa Mosque,” he mentioned, “you are feeling that you’re blessed, that it’s one thing particular that not many individuals have entry to.”

However to the professor, that realization was bittersweet.

To Rabbi Selavan, the convergence of the vacations embodied the shared lifetime of town and proved the Israeli state’s efforts to protect the liberty of worship. “The pondering particular person realizes the liberty that they’ve below the Israeli authorities to serve God of their approach,” the rabbi mentioned.

However to Professor Abu Sway, the convergence was a reminder that many Palestinians residing within the occupied West Financial institution and Gaza will not be allowed to enter Jerusalem to worship. And the violence on Friday on the mosque, between Israeli police and Palestinian stone-throwers, highlighted not coexistence, however coercion.

“There will be no coexistence,” Professor Abu Sway mentioned, “when you’ve gotten occupation.”

Myra Noveck contributed reporting.