For an old place, Jerusalem certainly is in the news a lot. The religious history of a tiny piece of real estate caused a global stir last month when UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — passed a resolution that ignores the Jewish connection to Judaism’s holiest site and recognized only Muslim claims there.
The place is called Temple Mount to the Jewish people. It is where the ancient Temple of Solomon stood before its destruction 2,600 years ago. At the same location, a Second Temple was built, only to be destroyed again by the Romans in the year 70. The Western Wall, the remnant of that ancient temple, is the holiest site in Judaism.
To Muslims, the place is called Haram al-Sharif and it is the site of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. The Quran tells of Muhammad’s Night Journey from Mecca to the “Farthest Mosque” and then on to heaven. A hadith, a commentary second in Islam only to the Quran, says this Farthest Mosque was in Jerusalem.
For Christians, the site is also deeply relevant because the location figures prominently in the narrative of Jesus.
While UNESCO may be taking sides in who owns the sacred space, a film being screened in Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»this weekend does not. One Rock Three Religions, produced and directed by Isaac Hertz, runs at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 6, at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas. It’s part of the Â鶹´«Ă˝Ół»Jewish Film Festival, which continues until Nov. 13.
Festival organizers could hardly have selected a more timely film. Not only is the ancient site in the news because of UNESCO’s resolution negating Jewish historical connections to the space but, in a piece of almost divine irony, a joint Jewish-Muslim archeological team just days ago discovered the first evidence from Solomon’s Temple at the location. (Evidence from that era had been found elsewhere in Jerusalem, but not previously on the Temple Mount itself.)
The fresh light being shed on this ancient history makes One Rock Three Religions ideal for the time. It is a colourful, sometimes graphic exploration of the competing claims and violent conflict over an ancient place.
Rabbi Michael Melchior, a former cabinet minister and a prominent religious figure in Israel, is one of many voices in the film. He opens the documentary by acknowledging the multiple solitudes that coexist in the magnificent city.
“We are all here together and we hardly have any interaction with each other,” he says. “We live 30 seconds from each other, we don’t know each other at all.
“We don’t come into each other’s homes, we don’t go to each other’s schools, we don’t pray in any way together, we don’t even know what each other are praying for or with — we don’t really know anything about each other.”
What groups do know of each other is often formed by stereotypes and distrust. Kanan Machiya, author of the book The Rock, alludes to the idea that, somehow, a mutually agreeable division of property will be found and peaceful coexistence will ensure. It won’t be so easy.
The rock — the mountain where Jews believe David made offerings to God and where Muslims believe Muhammad ascended to heaven — is both figurative and literal, says the author.
“The rock is a stand-in,” Machiya says. “The rock stands in for that which is impossible to divide about the city. If we are going to have a peace settlement, the sort of reigning idea is that we’re going to have to chop everything up and give everybody a piece. But how do you cut a rock? How do you divide it in half? The rock will always be there. It will be Jewish and it will be Muslim at the same time. It tells you something very important about Jerusalem it seems to me. Jerusalem belongs to more than one faith. No one person, no one faith can claim it.”
Coexisting, perhaps, will be more difficult than amicable divorce, as other scenes in the film, many very violent, suggest.
Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the UN, is one of many voices that acknowledge the need to get along.
“You have to show a certain respect for the narrative of the other side,” he says. “That is part of coexistence. That is part of peacemaking. If you deny that history, you deny that past, you’ll never reach peace.”
Yet every so often provocations on one side or another upends any progress. Maher Hathout, founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, implies that the Muslim holy site is under threat, an idea that has been prevalent since Israel took control of the area in the 1967 Six Day War.
“I don’t think that people should go and bomb things and kill themselves and kill people for our shrine,” he says. “But we need to protect it because it is part of us.” Hathout goes on to deny that there was ever a Jewish temple there.
Other people in the film emphasize commonalities.
“The narratives are different,” says one man. “What they’re preaching about, how to live a righteous life, is all the same.”
The film does not offer a resolution to the challenge. If a resolution were easy, it wouldn’t be much of a film.
Marianne Williamson, a U.S. writer on religion, says all the religions need to do some soul-searching.
“They need to be talking about other religions maybe a little bit less and looking into their own hearts and soul-searching into their own religions a little bit more,” she says, “atoning for their own errors and asking if they themselves are walking as God would have them walk on the earth.”
@Pat604Johnson
