Letter from Palestine, 31. Different Easter days.
1st April 2005
Dear friends!
Masieh kam! (Christ is risen!) This is the greeting here from Easter Sunday and during this week. In English they only say “Happy Easter”, we do it that easy also in Norway, and the greeting is gone when the holidays are over and school and work start again.
Last letter ended Good Friday, with some words about what I planned to do the next days. Saturday night we had a nice Easter vigil. We started outside the church, with a small fire which the Paschal candle was lit from, and from which all got a flame to their small candles. We entered a dark church and experienced how these small lights gave a certain atmosphere before it was time for turning on the electric lights. I can understand those who have the Easter vigil as their favourite liturgy.
It was one confirmation this Easter night in addition to reaffirmation of baptismal vows. Mordechai Vanunu was baptised a couple of months before he was kidnapped and imprisoned in 1986. This year was the first time he could celebrate Easter in freedom, and at last he had the chance to get confirmed. It was a solemn and moving observance, where the confirmand was blessed by the bishop, who is his great defender. It was a reminder about a commitment which has survived, and a challenge to commit oneself to what one believes in.
I joined the confirmand and a group of his Norwegian admirers out for dinner after the service. Then I did not have the time for more vigils. But I was not too late in bed, so I could wake up to attend a morning service at the Garden Tomb. The Garden Tomb is the protestant alternative to the Holy Sepulchre, a garden with a tomb which might be the tomb of Jesus, and a hill which might be Golgotha. The garden is quite big, but it was filled up by pilgrims and resident foreigners who came together to celebrate this Easter morning. The service was vivid and low church, and I was reminded that there are other ways of worshipping than the high church I have got used to here. I also attended two services in St. George’s Easter Sunday, and had nice meals and fun playing with the grandchildren of the bishop, really a good and funny Easter celebration.
Easter Monday I had signed up for a walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus-Nicopolis which is about half way to Tel Aviv. I first thought about going to Emmaus-Qubeibeh, which is on the West Bank, and which I trust more could be the Emmaus which the two disciples were walking to after the resurrection. Emmaus-Qubeibeh is 60 stadiums (a little more than 10 km) from Jerusalem, and that is what most scriptures say. Some say though that the town was 160 stadiums (almost 30 km) from Jerusalem, and so is Emmaus-Nicopolis. I would only have taken a taxi to Qubeibeh, so I rather preferred this walk to Nicopolis, to be more of a pilgrim, and really take the day off, also from my solidarity of “not-be-in-Israel-because-the-Palestinians-with-West-Bank-ID-can-not”-attitude. (They can not be in Jerusalem either...)
It was also mainly friends of Israel I walked with this day. Some were more nuanced, but the fact that most of them lived in West Jerusalem or other places in Israel, made me now meet foreigners with another view than those I meet in my restricted movement in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank. The walk ended at a community in Emmaus-Nicopolis, “Community of Beatitudes”, a quite new order, focused on the relation between Jews and Christians. A student from the United States, who is here to learn about Judaism and to live in the community, told about his positive experiences. I also experienced a great hospitality when I together with some Germans stayed a little longer after the mass and the cookies. We were invited for dinner and were then driven back to Jerusalem.
Tuesday I continued my different-week in the evening by taking a trip to West Jerusalem. I went together with three friends from the church. One of them said that we perhaps should find a place in East Jerusalem, so that I also could join them. She might know me better than I do myself. But I said it was OK, I wanted to continue the different-week, and allow me to see a bit of the West. The subject in some of the last e-mails I wrote with my father was also about this, that I should try to see a bit more of the normal Israel, and not only know about soldiers and settlers. So in a way it is to honour him, this different I do to celebrate Easter this year. I had more the feeling of being in a European town than in Jerusalem. It became a very nice evening, and I think that it was independent of where we were. Funny people are funny to be with independent of place. I had got it confirmed some days earlier when we, the same as going to West Jerusalem, were cleaning a floor in a chapel in the church, and people could here loud laughter between the effective periods of cleaning.
Different-Easter-greetings from Hanne.
Dear friends!
Masieh kam! (Christ is risen!) This is the greeting here from Easter Sunday and during this week. In English they only say “Happy Easter”, we do it that easy also in Norway, and the greeting is gone when the holidays are over and school and work start again.
Last letter ended Good Friday, with some words about what I planned to do the next days. Saturday night we had a nice Easter vigil. We started outside the church, with a small fire which the Paschal candle was lit from, and from which all got a flame to their small candles. We entered a dark church and experienced how these small lights gave a certain atmosphere before it was time for turning on the electric lights. I can understand those who have the Easter vigil as their favourite liturgy.
It was one confirmation this Easter night in addition to reaffirmation of baptismal vows. Mordechai Vanunu was baptised a couple of months before he was kidnapped and imprisoned in 1986. This year was the first time he could celebrate Easter in freedom, and at last he had the chance to get confirmed. It was a solemn and moving observance, where the confirmand was blessed by the bishop, who is his great defender. It was a reminder about a commitment which has survived, and a challenge to commit oneself to what one believes in.
I joined the confirmand and a group of his Norwegian admirers out for dinner after the service. Then I did not have the time for more vigils. But I was not too late in bed, so I could wake up to attend a morning service at the Garden Tomb. The Garden Tomb is the protestant alternative to the Holy Sepulchre, a garden with a tomb which might be the tomb of Jesus, and a hill which might be Golgotha. The garden is quite big, but it was filled up by pilgrims and resident foreigners who came together to celebrate this Easter morning. The service was vivid and low church, and I was reminded that there are other ways of worshipping than the high church I have got used to here. I also attended two services in St. George’s Easter Sunday, and had nice meals and fun playing with the grandchildren of the bishop, really a good and funny Easter celebration.
Easter Monday I had signed up for a walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus-Nicopolis which is about half way to Tel Aviv. I first thought about going to Emmaus-Qubeibeh, which is on the West Bank, and which I trust more could be the Emmaus which the two disciples were walking to after the resurrection. Emmaus-Qubeibeh is 60 stadiums (a little more than 10 km) from Jerusalem, and that is what most scriptures say. Some say though that the town was 160 stadiums (almost 30 km) from Jerusalem, and so is Emmaus-Nicopolis. I would only have taken a taxi to Qubeibeh, so I rather preferred this walk to Nicopolis, to be more of a pilgrim, and really take the day off, also from my solidarity of “not-be-in-Israel-because-the-Palestinians-with-West-Bank-ID-can-not”-attitude. (They can not be in Jerusalem either...)
It was also mainly friends of Israel I walked with this day. Some were more nuanced, but the fact that most of them lived in West Jerusalem or other places in Israel, made me now meet foreigners with another view than those I meet in my restricted movement in East Jerusalem and on the West Bank. The walk ended at a community in Emmaus-Nicopolis, “Community of Beatitudes”, a quite new order, focused on the relation between Jews and Christians. A student from the United States, who is here to learn about Judaism and to live in the community, told about his positive experiences. I also experienced a great hospitality when I together with some Germans stayed a little longer after the mass and the cookies. We were invited for dinner and were then driven back to Jerusalem.
Tuesday I continued my different-week in the evening by taking a trip to West Jerusalem. I went together with three friends from the church. One of them said that we perhaps should find a place in East Jerusalem, so that I also could join them. She might know me better than I do myself. But I said it was OK, I wanted to continue the different-week, and allow me to see a bit of the West. The subject in some of the last e-mails I wrote with my father was also about this, that I should try to see a bit more of the normal Israel, and not only know about soldiers and settlers. So in a way it is to honour him, this different I do to celebrate Easter this year. I had more the feeling of being in a European town than in Jerusalem. It became a very nice evening, and I think that it was independent of where we were. Funny people are funny to be with independent of place. I had got it confirmed some days earlier when we, the same as going to West Jerusalem, were cleaning a floor in a chapel in the church, and people could here loud laughter between the effective periods of cleaning.
Different-Easter-greetings from Hanne.
posted by Hanne at 5:19 AM
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