Jerusalem – Sunday 6th November 2016 cont.

Photos at:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/ffnord/albums/72157676432838135

We were dropped at the attractively named Dung Gate and led to the security checkpoint where bags were checked and we were patted down before being allowed in to the area of the Western (Wailing) Wall and the Temple Mount. It afforded us a good view of the Mount of Olives, and you can see just how stark it looks being utterly covered in graves.

As we approached the wall Ineke explained the history of it and the increasing regression of equality that Israel’s conservative elements are pushing on the country. There is a barrier around three quarters of the way along the wall, with men on one side and women on the other.

We were told that a few decades ago everyone prayed together at the wall, then a small fence was erected and women were asked to be one side of it, then forced to. Then the fence was made higher and higher until the men and women could not see each other. The problem is that the Israeli government is a political balancing act, so to get anything through the ruling party needs the support of the conservative religious elements and so their agenda gets pushed out without challenge.

The wall itself is very imposing, massive stone blocks with tiny scraps of paper in every gap and a stream of people coming to pray.

A synagogue has been built off of the wall, on the men’s side naturally, and it is a bit of an unusual sight with the men sitting right up to the wall, some covering their heads to pray.

After some time at the wall we went to join the queue for heading up to the Temple Mount. Access for non-Muslims is restricted to only a couple of hours each day and there is another security check to go through before heading up.

The queue was already quite long when we got there and got much, much longer as we waited with wave after wave of American tourists in matching caps and lanyards being led in to the square. A sign above the entrance forbids Jews from going up to the mount as they do not know the exact location of the holy place of the Second Temple and as only high priests are allowed to enter it, a normal person walking over the spot would not be permissible. This sort of legalistic adherence to tradition and ritual seems rather odd to me, I’m sure God would be cool with someone walking unknowingly over a place that was demolished millennia ago.

Non-Muslims are not allowed in to the dome itself, or in to the mosque which stands over the original entrance to the mount but we were free to walk around the square, the flattened top of a hill originally.

With our hour up we were led off of the mount and down to the start of the Via Dolorosa, the path that, according to tradition, Jesus walked on his way to be crucified. This is actually a series of connected streets and still a main thoroughfare of the city with shops and stalls along pretty much every inch.

Along the way are the marked stations of the cross, many with chapels or carvings, one of which has been moved as the current owners of the building were fed up of all the tourists stopping outside. This about sums up the religious tourism aspect of Jerusalem, pretty much every other building is declared to be the birthplace of someone, or some historic site but with no provenance to prove it.

We stopped for lunch before carrying on up the path to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built atop the hill of Golgotha where Jesus was crucified. This must be one of the most farcical churches in the world, with a confusion of different sects each guarding their own parts of the building. There have been, and continue to be, fights between the denominations breaking out in to physical violence in what should be a place where people focus on their shared beliefs.

One group meets on the roof of the church as they were booted out by another group after not paying their share of the rent.

Going through a small door and narrow stairway brought us to the Ethiopian chapel, this looks somewhat dilapidated for a place with such a flow of tourists, and certainly in comparison to the main chapels further inside.

Coming down to the main entrance to the church and we were treated to a view that exemplifies the petty arguments of the various groups in the church. The fighting got so bad in the mid 19th century that the Sultan who controlled Jerusalem imposed a ruling called the Status Quo which defined how everything was and would be. The opening hours of the church were set, the keys could not be trusted to any single sect so they were given to a Muslim family would bring them to the door at a set time each day. A different family would then open the door and lock it at the end of the day. In the meantime any supplies for the priests and monks inside would have to be brought in by a bucket from a window above the entrance. To aid in this, a ladder was placed by the window, and as it is in the ruling there is still a ladder there to this day.

The inside of the church is a testament, if you will forgive the pun, to bling and overt displays of wealth. There is no part of it where one can sit in quiet contemplation, everything is gold clad and bejewelled.

The one part of it that struck a chord with me was seeing the actual rock of Golgotha, encased in glass and surrounded by ornamentation and distraction.

I was glad when we got out of the church, it is a place of dogmatic theatre and it just saddened me to think of how diverted from the real meaning of the location people have become.