Identity Groups and Conflicts

On Thursday, January 24, Window to Mount Zion volunteers again helped local Christian clergy, followers and tourists celebrate the ceremony of Praying for Church Unity.

Praying for church unity in the Cenacle – Room of the Last Supper

In the past, people who’ve gathered outside actually disturbed the ceremony inside.

Protesting outside

Fortunately, since the Window to Mount Zion project began, the ceremony has been held without major incident. You can read about it here and here. You can watch a few moments of the ceremony here:

There were still protesters, but it didn’t bother the ceremony.

Unique processes on Mount Zion

This year, in addition to thanks from the monks themselves, the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations (JCRC) wrote a great post, thanking the project for the change it has instilled. It was written in response to the following signs that were displayed by two protesters:

Protesting at David’s Tomb

The English sign says, “According to law in Israel you are not allowed to perform any Christian rituals in King David’s tomb.”  In Hebrew it says, “Here is King David’s tomb, which is holy to us, not a Christian church.”

Here’s a translation of post:

Kind David’s tomb has not been a church since 1521, when the Muslims converted it into a mosque. But it was built as a church during the Crusader period on the foundations of the Byzantine Hagia Zion church.

Despite the English sign, there is no law in Israel forbidding a Christian ceremony at David’s Tomb, but since 1948 David’s Tomb has been run by the Religious Affairs Ministry (the National Authority for the Holy Places). It is usually used as a place of Jewish worship, and allows members of different religions to visit. Once a year, the State of Israel allows the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to visit David’s Tomb as part of the Shavuot procession on the second day of the festival.

So what caused the two people to stand with these signs last Thursday near the entrance to the Tomb of David?

The second floor!

On the second floor of the building, which was built as a Crusader church on Byzantine foundations, became a mosque in the 16th century and was expropriated by the State of Israel after 1948,  is the Room of the Last Supper and the Holy Spirit. It is a very important site for Christians of all denominations.
Since the site is managed by the State of Israel (the Ministry of Religious Affairs and today the Ministry of the Interior), the State of Israel has continued the status quo and enabled Christians to visit the site, a short and quiet prayer (as explained at the entrance) and several times a year they can hold short prayers on relevant days.

The State of Israel also allowed the Christians to hold a joint prayer for the unity of the churches that has existed for decades.

But in recent years, in the light of the Franciscans’ appeal to allow them to pray under certain circumstances in the Room of the Last Supper, a request that, by the way, had not yet been answered, rumors circulated about the requests of various churches regarding the Last Supper Room. Some of the rumors have also spread to the first floor and people can still be heard about how the Vatican sought to buy David’s Tomb or whether the pope made his 2014 visit conditional on receiving the keys to the tomb. But there was nothing to those rumors.

The Franciscans had already tried to return the site to their control under the British Mandate – since they had bought outright in 1333 – and failed. At the moment there is no change in the status quo regarding the prayers on the spot.

The tension generated by the project led to the creation of the Window to Mount Zion project (https://www.mountzion.org.il), which aims to create a dialogue among residents on the mount, promote an atmosphere of mutual respect between the citrus and the visitors, and deepen our knowledge and understanding of the complex.

Every year, volunteers from the window to Mount Zion arrive on these sensitive days, where Christians are permitted to hold a short prayer in the Room of the Last Supper, and help the policemen maintain a calm and dignified atmosphere. They talk to those who come to protest, explain to the surprised tourists why the site is closed for visits during the prayer, and talk to the local Christians who are happy to see that Israeli Jews care about them, the Jewish worshipers and Jerusalem.

And here’s the original Facebook post in Hebrew:

Thanks to the many volunteers who make this project possible!

We are proud of our accomplishments throughout the city, and especially proud of our accomplishments over the past few years here at our home on Mount Zion (You can read more here). An article was recently published in Der Welt, a nationally published German newspaper, about this. Here’s the original article in German, and here’s a translation:

The article in Der Welt

Today, We No Longer Fight about Parking

By Gil Yaron

Mount Zion in Jerusalem is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims – for centuries they have been neglected as neighbors. A group of activists could now resolve this dispute, and thus become a role model for all of Jerusalem.

As the dean of the ecumenical year of study of German churches on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, Professor Ulrich Winkler usually speaks mostly of charity. But when he looks at the sacred hill right outside the window of his workplace, it reminds him of the opposite of the Christian message: “If at some point the third world war broke out, it would be because of a dispute over parking here on Mount Zion,” says the former Salzburg resident.

He used to be forced to run out in pajamas in the middle of the night, when there had once again been bickering between Christians, Jews and Muslims outside the gates of the school .

And that was not the only type of dispute that was part of everyday life here: “Garbage was thrown into the garden, our doorknobs were smeared with feces,” says Winkler. Other times car tires were punctured, priests and students harassed. But now much of these tensions have become a thing of the past, thanks to the energetic efforts of a small group of Israelis who have set themselves the task of mediating between the people in the Holy City. It has been surprisingly successful.

“When we moved here in 2006, we ourselves were very scared of this mountain,” says Dr. Hagai Agmon-Snir, director and founder of the Jerusalem Intercultural Center on Mount Zion. “All the neighbors here were neglected for centuries. Anyone who interfered threatened to become the target of hostility. ”

Hardly a hill of Jerusalem – with the exception of the Temple Mount – is more controversial than Mount Zion. As early as the 4th century, the Mount housed a Byzantine church or synagogue, which after the conquest of the Holy Land in the 7th century was transformed into a mosque by Muslims. The Crusaders again made it a church and declared the feudal room on the first floor to be the place where Jesus is said to have taken his last supper – the Cenacle.

At the same time, they located the tomb of the legendary biblical King David on the ground floor, transforming it into a sanctuary of the three monotheistic religions.

The Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent expelled the monks in 1524 from the building, which from then on served as a mosque. It was administered by the mighty Dajani family, long-established Jerusalem Arabs who can trace their family tree back to the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad.

When the State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948 , the mosque became a synagogue. The supposed grave of King David became the holiest place in the Jewish state, which was cut off from the Temple Mount and Wailing Wall until 1967.

Today, four different churches and monasteries, a huge Yeshiva, a Holocaust museum and a Muslim cemetery are struggling to help shape the narrative of this mountain.

The tensions reached a climax a few years ago: graves were abused, graffiti attacks became an almost weekly incident. This ultimately spurred Agmon-Snir and his crew to take action. They organized a gathering of all inhabitants of Mount Zion: “There had never been anything like that before,” says Snir.

Islamists and settlers together

In fact, it was in the garden of the Jerusalem Intercultural Center where all the parties came together. It was actually an advantage that Greek Orthodox monks, German priests, Armenians, Arabs and Torah students do not speak a common language: “If everything has to be translated endlessly, that reduces the communication to the necessary minimum. So there was barely any dispute and it was very efficient, “smiles Snir.

Why could he succeed where others failed so far? “We only deal with everyday problems that all stakeholders are interested in solving,” says Agmon-Snir. As a non-governmental organization funded by the Jerusalem Foundation and donations, Snir represents a credible apolitical agenda: “We can work with all city dwellers,” says the former neurobiologist.

The radical Islamic Hamas and militant Israeli nationalists have different, mutually exclusive visions about the future of Jerusalem. “But when it comes to clearing the garbage, fighting noise, or repairing roads, we sometimes bring Islamists and settlers together, and they cooperate,” says Snir.

The dialogue operated by the Center is now beginning to see clear benefits: “There has been no incident on Mount Zion for a long time,” confirms Brother Matthias of the Dormition Abbey. For the last three years, the Yeshiva students helped clean  and repair Muslim and Christian cemeteries. All the organizations and neighbors on the mountain jointly condemned violent attacks when they occurred.

Once, special ceremonies used to cause real problems. On Easter, a special staircase is opened for the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, so that he can descend from the Cenacle to David’s Tomb. At the same time, Orthodox Jews used to protest loudly, calling it an attempt to desecrate their sanctuary or even take it away. In the past two years, however, it remained calm, and there were no incidents: “If you know each other personally, the provocation sometimes loses its legitimacy,” explains Snir.

It does not mean that everything is rosy: “Many still spit on the floor when they see a procession with a cross on the way to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher,” says Matthias.

Someone filed a complaint against his monastery after a rumor circulated that the monks secretly dug tunnels to David’s Tomb. The police, the city council, the antiquities authority and the park authority were then all forced to search the abbey to investigate the complaint. “But we have nothing to hide,” says Brother Matthias.

And yet Winkler says, “The Jerusalem Intercultural Center has proved to be the most beneficial organization here.” Thanks to the dialogue, he and the director of the Yeshiva finally greet each other in the street, instead of ignoring each other with suspicion. And recently, no more parking spaces are quarreled over in front of his office at night. In fact, the Center, together with all Mount Zion neighbors, has made it possible for a barrier to be installed that provides access only to residents – a simple, jointly conceived practical solution to a decade-old problem.

The successful de-escalation on the mountain has led Agmon-Snir to help groups in other parts of Jerusalem reduce tensions. Ironically, the embattled Mount Zion is a model for the whole Jerusalem conflict.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued strategic partnership over the years.