Unusual Partners Study Divisive Jerusalem Site
At the heart of this contested city, the holy site known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, or Noble Sanctuary, has become, for many, the epicenter of the conflict between Israel, the Palestinians and the wider Muslim world.
The mere mention of the place stirs passions and memories of centuries of bloodshed. Its alternative names evoke the depth of religious devotion and the competing claims.
Many of those contradictions are encapsulated in a new book, “Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade,”...
The book was years in the making and required exceptional tact on the part of the co-editors, Oleg Grabar of Princeton University, and Benjamin Kedar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mr. Kedar came up with the neutral term “sacred esplanade” in the title. “It was the compromise,” he said. “It should be acceptable to all.”
...The lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples [???] has led many Palestinians to deny any real Jewish attachment or claim to the plateau.
Some radical Jewish groups are responding by defying a longstanding rabbinical council prohibition on entering the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. On a recent weekday morning, a small knot of Orthodox Israelis with skullcaps, the fringes of their ritual undergarments hanging from their waists, were exploring the compound, which is open to tourists for a few hours daily. Jews and Israelis are allowed to walk around, but not to pray.
The Jewish group’s leader, who identified himself only as Yosef, fearing a police ban on future visits, said that the rabbinical prohibition was “political,” and that he went to the mount every day because he considered it “our place.” Asked if he prayed there, he would say only that he did what he thought was right, “without getting in anybody’s way.”
The aim of “Where Heaven and Earth Meet” is to try to dispel insensitivity born of ignorance. “It is a call for mutual tolerance, acceptance and understanding,” Mr. Kedar said.
...But Mr. Abu Sway explains in his chapter that for Muslims, the whole compound is considered a mosque. Praying in the sun or under an olive tree in the courtyard has the same religious value as praying under the dome of the shrine, he said.
In an unusually accommodating personal reflection, Menachem Magidor, president of The Hebrew University, wrote that although he was a secular Jew, he felt a connection to a “transcendental, sublime presence” the first time he visited the mount after 1967. Yet, he wrote, “I did not feel bothered at all by the fact that another religion was dominating the site.”
Mr. Nusseibeh...speaks of mutual denial, including Israeli-led archaeological excavations near the mount that threaten Muslim relics, practices, he said, that “totally flout what is divine!”
But he goes on to ask, “Can we still not entertain the hope that the holy precinct — what it is and what it symbolizes — will nonetheless one day succeed to inspire people who believe in the one God themselves to become united in their faith?”
Then, to the chagrin of some of his Israeli colleagues, he signs off, “East Jerusalem, Palestine.”
As for that lack of archaeological evidence of the ancient temples, check my blog for loads of archaeological finds.
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