After lunch, Muki took us on a walking tour that brought us to the rooftops of the Old City of Jerusalem. Many rooftops, he explained, are public space, not unlike sidewalks where we live. Our perch was close to the intersection of the four quarters of the Old City: Muslim, Christian, Armenian and Jewish.
We learned about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and how none of the Christian sects that have shrines in the Sepulchre complex want the others to have the key. So a member of the same Muslim family has been opening and closing the main door for generatoins.
I recalled when I took a rooftop tour about 10 years ago that the Muslim Quarter was distinguishable by its many television antennas. This was not a religious expression, simply a reflection that the Muslim Quarter did not have cable. This time, the antennas were gone, replaced by--you guessed it--satellite dishes.
Sitting on the rooftops gave us a good sense of the relatively small size of the Old City, and that, like with everything else in the Middle East, there are no hard and fast rules. There are Jews living in the Muslim Quarter and Muslims living in the Christian Quarter. There is a mosque in the Christian Quarter, but all of the Reformation churches except Lutherans are excluded from the Old City altogether. Why the Lutherans? Because when the Turks ruled Israel, they had an alliance with the Germans, so a German denomination was allowed in when the rest were excluded.
Following our view from the rooftops, we returned to the hotel for a few hours to nap and pack before our farewell dinner and our trip to the airport.
No comments:
Post a Comment