Orientation and Church of the Holy Sepulcher

Day 1 has been interesting and, fortunately, not too taxing.  They were allowing those of us still dealing with jet lag to ease in slowly!  Our group is very small – five people.  All clergy.  Four priests and one deacon.  The staff at St. George’s are terrific.  The small size of our group means that we really have a chance to talk to some of the pilgrims who are staying at the Guesthouse of the Cathedral (which is where we worship and take our meals) and to the staff of the college, over meals and drinks.  I’m enjoying spending time with a few Brits – one who is here as the chaplain to the college courses and his wife, and another who is an English priest on sabbatical and the secretary to the Archbishop who  hails from Dagenham and Upminster and even knows where Broadway Parade in Elm Park is!  Spending a lot of time comparing notes on the decline of the church on both sides of the Atlantic, and, of course, the Brits and our Australian dean of the college are all asking a lot of questions about our Presidential election race, needless to say.  This course is designed to be a pilgrimage and so we are gathering for Eucharist and daily offices as well as lectures and trips out to various places.

The dean of the Cathedral who is Palestinian (actually he is Israeli Arab and his wife is from the West Bank, hence Palestinian) talked to us at length today about the Diocese of Jerusalem, which includes the Anglican churches in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.  There are 27 parishes in this spread out diocese and 33 diocesan institutions, which include guesthouses for pilgrims, hospitals and health clinics, rehabilitation centers and schools.  During our 10-day course we are going to visit at least one of each of those institutions as well as a number of parishes.  The emphasis of the Anglican communities in this area is on witnessing to their faith through action to help those in need, particularly those who need education, health care, rehab and the like.  They do not serve only Christians, in fact, most of the folks those institutions serve are Muslim.   We had a real experience of the ebb and flow of religious life in East Jerusalem today as the Muslim community converged on the Old City in the middle of the day and Muslim shops all closed as they gathered for the Friday congregational prayers, and then as they were all beginning to leave the Old City, the Jewish community was starting to arrive for the beginning of Shabbat.   The Christians in Israel/Palestine make up only 2% of the population here because many Christians have left in the past several decades as life under Israeli occupation has been increasingly taxing and those who have the resources to go often choose to do so.  Those who stay are trying to be a reconciling force in the midst of the conflict here, but that is not always easy.   The Dean of the College described Israel as an “apartheid state,” which I noted is a descriptor that gets the American Jewish community very incensed.  He described the almost complete separation in Israel between Arabs and Jews to the extent that there are 4 different kinds of government sponsored schools but they are all separate – Jewish schools, Muslim schools, Arab schools, Christian schools and the students do not mix with people not like them.  Then there are also issues like the suspension of the family resettlement processes in Israel such that Israeli Arabs who marry Palestinians from the West Bank or Jordan can’t bring their spouses to Israel, making it almost a requirement that they leave Israel, which is what the Israelis want to see happen. The dean of the Cathedral is married to a West Bank Palestinian and she cannot get Israeli citizenship. Due to the nature of his job the Israelis have granted her a permit to be in Israel, but that permit has to be renewed frequently and at any time the Israelis could decide not to renew it. And, because she is from the West Bank she is not allowed to drive in Israel, which makes their lives even more complicated.  So the situation as I saw it in 2008 and 2010 has not improved at all for Palestinians, indeed seems to have gotten worse. 

I asked the Dean about the Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement and how the Anglicans here feel about that and he explained how difficult an issue BDS is for those who live here.  As I suspected, he and the bishop are not in favor of the Episcopal Church in the US publicly supporting BDS because they fear that their ability to move between Israel and the Occupied Territories might be hampered by the Israeli government if their larger church were perceived to be supporters of BDS, which the Israeli government roundly condemns.    The Israeli Arab Christians have to work hard to do the ministries they feel compelled to do here both in Israel proper and in the Occupied Territories and they have to walk a very fine line in their relationships with the Israeli authorities.  They prefer the tactic that our previous Presiding Bishop advocated which was to invest in Palestinian businesses and enterprises to help and empower them rather than to boycott Israeli entities.

We spent the afternoon hearing na excellent lecture about the archeological and political history of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which is complex and fascinating to say the least.  After that lecture we walked down to the Old City and visited that holy site, which was absolutely teeming with Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox visitors.   The church is undergoing extensive renovation at the moment so there is scaffolding everywhere and lots of dust in the air.  We could have used facemasks in some parts of the church!  When we went back into the very small chapel that is used by the Syrian Orthodox church on Sunday mornings, we were able to crawl back into an area that is a first century burial tomb.  One has to be pretty agile to squeeze into the tomb area!  Quite fascinating.    We walked back through the souk and then to the college and had a brief rest before Evening Prayer, which is then followed by cocktail hour and dinner. 

Pics today are a couple of St. George’s College and then a few shots from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  Tomorrow we go to the West Bank, to Ramallah.