schickrobert: Jerusalem December 24-January 1

It has been holiday time in Jerusalem. I do not spend much time in West Jerusalem, so Hanukkah did not really impinge on my daily activities, other than serving as an occasion to get sufganiyot (jelly donuts), a seasonal holiday specialty.

On Christmas Eve I went once again to Bethlehem to the 5:00 pm service at the Lutheran Christmas Church, the ninth time I have done so. This year was rather a dud. I got to the church 35 minutes before the service started, but the small church was already filled beyond capacity. So I ended up watching the live broadcast of the service on TV with an over-flow group of about a hundred in the basement refectory next door. I have never stayed for a later service at the Church of the Nativity.

There is not much else to do in Bethlehem other than mill around in Manger Square, which is not so pleasant if it is cold, windy or rainy, as it normally is. Some musical groups try to perform on a stage, but there is so much crowd noise that you can not really hear the performers well, making it pointless to try to listen. So I soon returned to Jerusalem. There was a larger crowd around than in recent years. At least Christmas Eve serves as a good occasion to go to Bethlehem, where I otherwise have no particular reason to go; the last time I was there was Christmas Eve 2003.

My going to Bethlehem meant that I missed the Albright Institute holiday dinner. Normally this is a big banquet similar to the Thanksgiving dinner held on Christmas Day. But this year due to the need for budget cutbacks, the dinner was scaled down, and it was held on Christmas Eve so that the two Christian cooks could have Christmas Day off ( Hisham, our Muslim head cook, has been away on sick-leave for several weeks). But I got back from Bethlehem in time for conversation after the dinner.

On Christmas I attended church with the English-speaking congregation at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Old City, and then I attended the church pot-luck at the parsonage on the Mount of Olives. Lutherans from Minnesota were over-represented there, but I also had an interesting conversation with an Israeli Jew from some kibbutz in Galilee who found himself at the potluck as well.

Next came Islamic New Year. Monday 29 December was the day for everyone worldwide, except for the United Arab Emirates and Palestine, which commemorated the occasion on Sunday 28 December. In the case of the Palestinians, that was in order to be different from the Jordanians. I did not do anything special for secular New Year’s Eve.

Israel’s military action in Gaza has angered people in Arab East Jerusalem. Shops were closed in protest for a couple of days, and there have been a lot more Israeli police and military in the streets, but there have been no significant incidents. I went to the Islamic Museum on the Haram al-Sharif as normal.

I continue to work away on the Arabic inscriptions in the Islamic Museum. A few days ago, I had the opportunity to get inside one of the secondary monuments on the Haram compound (the Qubbat al-Mi‘raj), where I had not been before.