Families at Shevet Achim. Michelle Bradburn, second from the left (Mariana Cristancho-Ahn/Journey to Jerusalem)

JERUSALEM – Um Parwa, the mother of six-year old Kurdish girl known as Parwa, was inconsolable. The mother, dressed in a tunic-style purple dress kept trying to contain herself by rubbing the tears from her eyes with both hands.

Mother and daughter had arrived in Israel in February for what the mother hoped would be life-saving heart surgery for Parwa’s heart. A month later, a delay in the procedure, as well as the separation anxiety from the rest of her children in northern Iraq, was making Um Parwa distressed. Next to her, two volunteers, Donna Taylor-West, 60, and Michelle Bradburn, 19, tried to comfort her. They reminded her that her sacrifice was the only hope to save her daughter’s life.

The opportunity to come to Israel for the surgery – and the support offered while waiting for the operation– was made possible by an organization called Shevet Achim, an Israeli-based Christian organization that helps bring children from Iraq and the Gaza Strip to Israeli hospitals for surgery.

Shevet Achim’s team of eight volunteers and three staff members make the necessary arrangements to bring the children and a parent and host them during the time of the treatment which could take from a couple of months to a year. The accompanying parent is usually the mother and she is so identified with her child that she inevitably becomes known as “um” or “mother of” her daughter rather than by her own name.

The surgeries are performed by Israeli doctors at the Wolfon Medical Center in Holon and at the Schneider Children Medical Center in Petach Tikvah, which hold down the costs to $5,000 to $7,000, a fraction of what they would otherwise cost. The funds are obtained through fundraising campaigns by the hospitals, Shevet Achim and NGOs.

According to the director, Jonathan Miles, 100 children have received heart surgeries and treatments since the organization was founded in 1994.

Taylor-West said that she was moved by the interfaith effort of Christians and Jews working together to save a Muslim life. “It gives me the opportunity to show them the love of Christ through strangers they always heard were their enemies,” she said.

By the middle of March 2010 four Kurdish and two Arab families – mother and child – were staying at Shevet Achim. In the cozy first floor living and dining room the families gather to eat and spend time together. Bradburn speaks some Kurdish and is able to hold basic conversations with them. She also helps translate. A seven-year-old boy named Barzan joined her in singing as the music of a Christian Kurdish song played in the background.

Up in the bedroom children were running amid the two rows of black metal-framed single size beds set side by side. Um Parwa had calmed down and was playing with her daughter. “Since I’ve been here God has given me a heart for the Kurdish people,” Bradburn said. She said she has witnessed amazing transformations.

“When they come here often times their fingers are blue and their lips are blue for having no oxygen,” said Bradburn. “And then you see them after the surgery, if all goes well, they are pink for the fist time, and they start playing.”

Located on Prophet Street, about 10 minutes away by car from Jerusalem’s Old City, Shevet Achim is based in the same historic building that once housed the first children’s hospital in Jerusalem. A plaque outside the stone-walled entrance states that this was the site of the Marienstift Children Hospital, which operated from 1872 to 1899.

Miles, 48, a former journalist and teacher from New York, founded Shevet Achim and moved it into the old hospital building. He took the name from the Hebrew words of Psalm 133, “Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity.”

“I though this passage spoke better about what we are really working at the end,” he said.

Miles, a Christian, has been involved in helping people in the region since 1991. By 1994 he started bringing children from Gaza to have heart surgeries at Israeli hospitals. He lived in the Gaza Strip with his family for five years. Now he lives in Amman where he makes the connections with Iraqi and Kurdish families to bring their children to Israel.

Taylor-West, Bradburn, Miles and other volunteers maintain blogs with updates of the children’s progress on Sheven Achim’s website. According to the blog about Barzan, he recovered and went back home to Iraq on March 26th. Parwa had a successful catheterization on April 7th and went back on April 16th. “I was surprised by the tears from both my coworkers and the traveling moms when it came time to say goodbye,” wrote Taylor-West in the Parwa’s blog under a picture that shows her, Um Parwa and Parwa smiling.

Bradburn says that she is motivated by her Christian faith to do what she does and, while not overtly trying to convert them to Christianity, she hopes the families could eventually get to experience the same understanding of God that she has.

“My greatest joy being here is to see them change physically and get healthier,” said Bradburn, “but most of all, to see them grow in hope, peace and knowledge that God is sovereign, and that he loves them.”

Um Parwa and her daughter (Mariana Cristancho-Ahn/Journey to Jerusalem)

Um Barzan and her son (Mariana Cristancho-Ahn/Journey to Jerusalem)

Protestors gather outside Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem to oppose the eviction of Palestinian families. (Mamta Badkar/Journey to Jerusalem)

JERUSALEM – On a nippy Friday afternoon early this spring, about 200 protesters gather, as they have every Friday since August 2009, to loudly voice their anger over the  Israeli government’s eviction of several Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

One demonstrator carries a sign that says “Stop the occupation” in green finger paint. Another sign reads: “Peace yes, Apartheid wall no.”

Nearby, a band of drummers and cymbalists lead a noisy song of protest over a gramophone while demonstrators pump their fists into the air, a physical echo of the music.

One protester has attended every protest since January and as a Jew, she is proud to participate in the protests every Friday. “This is a basic human injustice and it’s not just the Arabs that are against it, Israelis are against it too,” she said.

The group that gathers is predominantly secular and Jewish, although there are also a few Arabs and religious Jews, identified by their yarmulkes. The demonstrators include left-wing liberals and former ministers and members of the Knesset such as Avraham Burg, Yossi Sarid, Muhamad Bark’e and Uri Avneri.

Many local Arabs appreciate the support. “There are no problems with us and Jewish people,” said Nabil al-Kurd, 66, whose home in Sheikh Jarrah is the subject of dispute. “Jews come and protest outside. It’s the settlers. It’s not Jews against Muslims,” he said explaining where the conflict lies.

But the term “settler” has different connotations for Israelis and Arabs. For most Israelis, settlers are those who live in settlements in the occupied West Bank. But for Arabs, a settler is also an Israeli who lives in the parts of Jerusalem that were captured during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. The international community refuses to recognize Israel’s annexation of all of Jerusalem.

“There is no relationship between us and the settlers,” said al-Kurd.

For Arabs, settlers include those moving into the old Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as well as those living in such new Jerusalem communities as Ramat Shlomo.

The recent announcement by the Israeli government that it was preparing to build 1,600 new units in Ramat Shlomo has put a strain on Israel’s relations with its long term ally, the United States. Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met the announcement with emphatic disapproval, both questioning the wisdom of such a move while the United States was trying to get peace talks going between Israelis and Palestinians.

The tensions in Sheikh Jarrah are another flash point that could derail the peace talks. The drama began in August 2009 when the Israeli high court cleared the way for the evacuation of 28 Palestinian homes in the neighborhood. Further court decrees forced 53 people from their homes in August, creating ripples that have escalated to weekly demonstrations outside the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Al-Kurd, surrendered the keys to the front section of his house, to the court on November 3, 2009. The Israeli courts gave the homes to Israelis who had competing claims to the properties.

Nabil al-Kurd has had to surrender the keys to the front section of his house to the Israeli High Court. He stands looking towards demonstrators that have gathered outside Sheikh Jarrah every Friday since August 2009. (Mamta Badkar/Journey to Jerusalem)

The eviction orders for the families in Sheikh Jarrah stem from the Sephardic Community Committee and Knesset Yisrael Association’s efforts to have the land registered to them by the Israel Lands Administration. They have since sold their claims to Nahalat Shimon International, a settler organization that plans on building 200 units for future Jewish settlers and park land on the grounds of Sheikh Jarrah.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, together with the Jordanian Ministry of Development gave Palestinian refugees these homes in 1956 with the proviso that they give up their refugee status and aid. The property rights to the land were to be transferred to the families at the end of three years, according to the UNWRA. The residents are still waiting.

According to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, the Jordanian government resettled Arabs in Sheikh Jarrah after Jordan annexed East Jerusalem in 1950. Jewish groups have tried to acquire land in the area for settlers since the Six Day War of 1967 when Israel regained control of East Jerusalem.

Israel’s Central Bureau of statistics estimates that the settler population in 2008 excluding East Jerusalem grew at 4.7-percent compared to the general population which increased by 1.6-percent.

Those opposed to the evictions note that the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 strictly prohibits both parties from engaging in action that might undermine future negotiations on Jerusalem. Furthermore, they note, the United Nations Security Council Resolution 446 forbids Israel from altering the Arab territories, including Jerusalem, and resettling its civilian population into territories that have been occupied since 1967. One Sheikh Jarrah resident, Suzanne Abid, 55, blames the Israeli government for expressly breaking the Oslo and U.N. conditions.

“We have four generations here. From 1973, they’ve said we have this land but they give houses to the settlers coming from outside of Israel,” she said striking her thigh repeatedly. “From the north to the south Palestine is Arab land. Not for Jewish people from Sweden, America, Poland and Germany. This is not their home.”

The hostilities between the Arab and Israeli residents of Sheikh Jarrah wax and wane. “They climbed on the roof and beat up my mother and children,” said al-Kurd of the settlers in his East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. “She still can’t raise her arm properly,” he said mimicking his mother’s restricted movements, as his grandson ran over to tell him a settler had just spit on the boy’s grandmother.

According to the International Solidarity Movement, al-Kurd was arrested briefly on April 11, when settlers in the neighborhood tried to destroy the property. Both Al-Kurd and the settlers were eventually released without any charges.

The Jewish settlers in the conflicted area have also been privy to violent attacks by Arab residents and left-wing protesters. On April 5, a Jewish settler in Sheikh Jarrah was hurt after a Arab residents threw stones at haredi Jews near the tomb of Shimon Hatzadik. The attacks come a month after 250 protesters made up of both Arabs and Jews attempted to march to the settler homes, chanting anti-occupation slogans. Eight demonstraters were arrested in the clashes between police and the resisting mob of protesters.

Haren Veni and Paula Schwabel Jewish residents of Jerusalem come to Sheikh Jarrah to show their solidarity with the Palestinian families being evicted from their homes. (Mamta Badkar/Journey to Jerusalem)

Israelis in favor of the settlers moving into Sheikh Jarrah attest to their rights to return to Jewish homes which they say belonged to them before the 1948 war, when most Jewish residents fled the area. Those pushing for Jews to reclaim the land, argue that the very essense of zionism is the Jewish people’s assertion of land that has always belonged to them. The fear that other territories, neightborhoods, and even individual homes could face the same plight as Sheikh Jarrah is playing on the minds of protesters on both sides of the fence.

With the protests well under way, Haren Veni a Jewish resident of Jerusalem takes his place to the left of the singing protesters. Wearing a sweater stamped with “Free Sheikh Jarrah,” Veni, 48, leans against a parked car and crosses his arms nodding his head in the direction of the main checkpoint. “Injustice is carried out here. There is no way to justify taking innocent people out their home,” he said, voice raised over the drumming protesters. “We cannot accept this situation of one-sided hate.”

Read the full Covering Religion article on Mamilla here.

This slideshow shows pictures taken during a recent Al Quds University tour of Mamilla Cemetery.

An Accompanying slide show of Mamilla Cemetery can be found here.

Rawan Dajani outside her ancestor's mausoleum in Mamilla. (Omar Kasrawi/Journey to Jerusalem)

JERUSALEM — Standing outside a mausoleum in Jerusalem’s Mamilla cemetery, Rawan Dajani bows her head and cups her hands upwards. Silently she mouths the words of the Quran’s first chapter, “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.” The prayer is for her ancestor Sheikh Ahmed Dajani, who was buried in Mamilla, the oldest Muslim burial ground in Jerusalem, nearly half a millennia ago.

Approximately 200 meters away, a fenced off construction zone marks the future site of the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Center for Human Dignity–Museum of Tolerance. In 2002 the City of Jerusalem allotted the Center land that is considered part of the cemetery, according to a 1936 governmental survey map. The Center will focus on “issues of global anti-Semitism, extremism and human dignity,” according to the Museum’s website.

The Center broke ground in 2004, and construction has displaced hundreds of Muslim graves dating as far back as the 7th century. The human remains were discovered during an archeological dig, referred to as a “salvage excavation,” before building began. Salvage excavations are conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority to document and rescue antiquities prior to construction operations.

The controversy surrounding Mamilla cemetery is not unique in Israel. Protests have been held against many construction plans because of concerns that gravesites will be desecrated. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups have especially taken up this cause, like in the recent case of the Barzalai Medical Center in Ashkelon, where groups have protested the construction of an emergency ward on top of a Jewish cemetery.

Sometimes building plans are halted and diverted and sometimes they go ahead despite the protests, like in the case of Ashkelon. In a recent decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed plans to have the ward relocated, citing security and economic concerns.

What is unusual about Mamilla, however, is that because the controversy involves a Jewish organization and a Muslim gravesite in Jerusalem, it’s more an issue of foreign policy than domestic policy.

The Wiesenthal project is the latest among several that have encroached upon the Mamilla cemetery. It has provoked petitions from Palestinian descendants of the buried, as well as such groups as Rabbis for Human Rights and the Center for Jewish Pluralism. Dajani, whose family’s name is prominent in Palestine, is one of those petitioners.

“I feel like I have lots of energy to do something” about the construction, said Dajani, 26, who works at Al-Quds University. “But at the end I understand that this is very difficult. The Israelis will not let us do anything easily.”

Protest efforts include restoring headstones and circulating petitions designed to pressure the Israeli government and the Wiesenthal Center into halting construction. One such petition, sponsored by the Campaign to Preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery, has reached the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The council passed a resolution on March 24 that “expresses its grave concern at the excavation of ancient tombs” and “calls upon the government of Israel to immediately desist from such illegal activities.” The resolution passed 31 to 10 with six abstentions, and among the 10 naysayers were the U.S. and several European nations.

“This is a small victory, but it’s important to get this language on the books,” said Dima Khalidi, legal counsel for the families who signed the petition. “This shows that it’s a human rights violation not an isolated denial of Palestinian rights.”

However, Wiesenthal Center leaders believe that the UN Human Rights Council decision holds no legitimacy.

“The council is just a template for Israel bashing,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “You have pretty much the kangaroo court. Israel is the only nation on the planet that is exclusively singled out by that august body.”

The cemetery’s controversial history can be traced to the building of the Palace Hotel in 1929. The Mufti of Jerusalem, who commissioned the hotel, kept secret the discovery of graves during construction, according to Israeli historian Tom Segev in his book One Palestine, Complete. Petitioners argue, however, that the Palace hotel was never within the cemetery boundaries defined during Ottoman rule in the 1860s.

Despite its designation as an antiquities site in 1944 by the British Mandate, several projects have continued to encroach upon the cemetery grounds located in western Jerusalem. These include Independence Park built in the 1960s, a parking lot built in 1964, the building of access roads and the laying of electric cables.

The fact that there have been other things built in the area is part of the Weisenthal Center’s rationale for building the Museum of Tolerance. Supporters of the center argue that Muslims in both Palestinian territories and the Arab world have built roads, commercial centers and public buildings on their own cemeteries.

“It is preposterous to hold the Center for Human Dignity to a higher standard than the Muslims adhere to themselves,” reads the Wiesenthal website.

The Wiesenthal Center also cites several additional factors in support of its construction plan: a lack of protests against the previous construction, the failure to file proper objections at city council meetings and the 1964 declaration by a Muslim judge that the cemetery was no longer sanctified. Additionally, the Center argues that the museum is not even being built on the cemetery, but rather on the adjacent municipal car park. Last December, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the ruling that construction could continue.

In response, Palestinians say there have been protests since the 1960s. They also say that the Muslim judge’s ruling was invalid because evidence from recent excavations proves there were still bones under the parking lot, a conclusion supported by the Shariaa High Court of Appeals, which filed a letter outlining that defense to the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information sometime after February 2006.

Gideon Sulimani, chief archaeologist in charge of excavating the museum site, discovered more than 200 bodies during the dig in 2005. Sulimani was appointed by the Israel Antiquities Authority, a governmental body tasked with preserving the integrity of historical sites. Sulimani says they only excavated 10 percent of the area and estimates up to 1,000 bodies may remain buried. He recommended the site not be released for construction because of the discovery of those bodies. Regardless, he says in his affidavit, the Antiquities Authorities informed the Supreme Court “almost the entire area of excavation had been cleared for construction because it contains no further scientific data.”

“It’s part of the conflict about who owns the land,” Sulimani said. “It’s not archaeology. It’s not science. They want to move away the Muslim memory of the area to make it Jewish. So it’s totally politics.”

According to its website, the Israel Antiquities Authority could require a construction site to move, depending on an excavation’s findings, but that such a change is “quite rare.” In most cases “the IAA will permit work to continue, with the exception of the section destined for rebuilding, which will be completely excavated, documented and finds removed from the site prior to its destruction.”

The Antiquities Authority did not respond to repeated attempts for a comment specific to the Mamilla case.

Protest leaders say the cemetery is a clear example of the deep Palestinian roots in Jerusalem, and that construction on top of the cemetery is an attempt by the Israeli government to minimize the Palestinian identity. Jerusalemite families have been buried in the cemetery for the past 1,000 years, and archeological evidence supports the claim that the remains of soldiers and officials of the Muslim ruler Saladin are among the buried.

Some of the Palestinians involved believe that the planned construction cannot be stopped but are hopeful that even as the new museum rises, their efforts will bring some acknowledgment to the Muslim burial ground that once stood on the site. According to Diyala Husseini Dajani, an active protestor with family ties to Mamilla, nearly $18,000 was raised to support a memorial wall that will display the names of everyone buried in the cemetery.  At the very least, she maintains that such a wall will restore the Palestinian presence to the area.

“It’s not that I’m concerned about the graves as much as I’m concerned about the fact that we don’t exist” to the Israelis, Husseini said. “We are maybe just souls–like those in the graveyard.”

The highlights of our March 16, 2010 Daily Dispatch included visits to the Church of Annunciation, the proposed site of Shihab a-Din mosque and the Lights of Peace Sufi Center, all in Nazareth. More highlights included our  travel to Safed, one of the four holy cities in Israel and the center of Jewish mysticism and our visit Meron to see the Tomb of Shimon Bar Yohai.

The Iraqi Invasion has created one of the world’s largest groups of refugees. Three million are displaced within the country and another two million have fled to neighboring countries like Jordan fearing religious and political persecution. Tammy Mutasa reports on one Iraqi refugee’s bittersweet tale for survival in Jordan.

Men line up to pray outside the Old City on Friday, March 19. (Sam Petulla/Journey to Jerusalem)

Produced by Sanaz Meshkinpour, reported by Sanaz Meshkinpour & Omar Kasrawi

As heard on Uptown Radio on March 26, 2010

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently announced plans to expand a Jewish settlement and reopen a famous synagogue. In response, violent clashes broke out throughout East Jerusalem. To control access to the old city, Israeli police barred Palestinian men from the ancient Al Aqsa mosque and were met with demonstrations. Sanaz Meshkinpour was in East Jerusalem, and she reports from Friday’s noon prayer.

Reporter Tammy Mutasa films protesters at the Damascus Gate as Israeli law enforcement looks on.

Our day began with a visit to Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust museum. Our guide, Ophir Yarden, told us that the museum was rebuilt after the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum opened in Washington, D.C. in 1993. “How would it look for anyone to have a bigger Holocaust museum than Israel?” Ophir asked. Before we entered the museum, Ophir gave us a brief overview of how the Holocaust has been viewed in Israeli culture from the earliest days of the state to today.

Our tour began inside a large shed called the Square of Remembrance, where a flame burned on a black marble floor inscribed with the names of concentration camps. Dodging several other tour groups as we entered the museum itself, we walked through, reading the printed information and looking at the artifacts, photos and text that accompanied the exhibits. The museum traced the fate of the Jews in different countries as the Nazis began expanding their control. Most went first to ghettos before being sent to concentration camps and gas chambers. It also featured smaller exhibits on the military history of World War II, tributes to non-Jewish heroes of the Holocaust like Oskar Schindler, and a huge wall with photos of the leaders of the Third Reich and their positions within the government.

The museum ended with the Hall of Names, where a deep concrete pit with water at the bottom was surrounded by photos and bookshelves with hundreds of black books, each containing the names of victims of the Holocaust. After departing the museum, Professor Goldman, Dean Huff and Mike Philipps, president of the Scripps Howard Foundation that is sponsoring the trip, continued on the planned itinerary to Mt. Herzl. The student members of the group, however, split off into several groups to pursue the breaking news of the day.

Half the group grabbed a taxi to the Old City, where about 100 Palestinian men were holding their noon prayers outside the Damascus Gate. The Israeli government currently prohibits men under 50 from entering the Old City to pray at Al-Aksa mosque on Fridays, so the men held their prayers just outside the city in a small plaza. The men were also praying en masse to protest the recent reopening of the Horva synagogue, which they felt was an encroachment on the sanctity of Al-Aksa.

Though it was primarily a religious, peaceful demonstration, the atmosphere was tense. Israeli law enforcement officials were stationed nearby, one group on horses and another in full riot gear. Some of the professional journalists had taken protective measures, including toting helmets marked “TV” in masking tape. Ready to practice what they’d been taught all year, the Covering Religion reporters didn’t hesitate to move in and begin photographing, filming and taking notes during the prayer service. The area was strangely quiet save the buzzing of a helicopter overhead and the occasional ringing of cell phones. “This is intense,” said Sam as the service was beginning to wind down. “I’m barely making sense of this.”

As the service began to disperse, the Covering Religion reporters jumped right in and began interviewing participants – some, like Sommer and Omar, who speak Arabic, were successful, but a man flicked a cigarette at Mamta while she attempted to take photographs. Life in the square seemed to quickly return to normal as two shish kebab vendors quickly set up shop in the now-empty square.

Just a few minutes later, the noon prayers ended at Al-Aksa mosque. Women (who were permitted to attend the service) began chanting a traditional Palestinian call for freedom as they exited the Damascus Gate, where they were held back by Israeli law enforcement. Following their journalistic instincts to run toward conflict than away from it, the Covering Religion group again ran toward the struggle.

After the Damascus Gate demonstration, the group split up to spend another few hours of unscheduled time before the Sabbath began. Most of those who had been at the Damascus gate protest went around to other gates of the Old City to see what they had missed earlier and then took a taxi to the outskirts of the city to the Shafat refugee camp where they had heard there would be more protests, but decided not to go in when the taxi driver warned that one member of the group might be denied entry because of his citizenship.

The group then headed to Sheikh Jarah, an East Jerusalem neighborhood where there was a peaceful demonstration of another type entirely. Israeli protesters joined Palestinians to demonstrate against a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision allowing Jewish settlers to take over homes where Palestinian families currently live, arguing that the homes had originally belonged to Jewish families several decades ago. Sanaz, who attended both protests, said that the Damascus gate event was an act of prayer en masse to protest a perceived injustice, but the other was more secular. “This was a very different event altogether,” she said.

The whole group reconvened later as the sun began to set and Sabbath began. Taking a bus just before travel by vehicle was prohibited by Sabbath laws, the group joined the Aleppo synagogue, a Sephardic Jewish synagogue, for the Friday Shabbat service, where we met our host and guide for the evening, Drori Yehoshua. Men and women separated for the service, with the women climbing stairs and filing into a tiny cramped space, shushed and ushered in by an elderly woman with a deeply wrinkled face. The synagogue had beautiful wood paneling with inlaid pearls and elaborate paintings of ancient scenes on the walls. During the service, worshippers recited the entire Song of Songs, which in the Ashkenazi tradition is only recited once a year.

Following the service, we walked to a different synagogue for Shabbat dinner. Yehoshua sang a Sabbath song in the Western Ashkenazi tradition and then another in the Eastern Sephardic one. Much of the Aleppo synagogue’s traditions were influenced by the faith’s existence in Arab and Muslim countries for many years. “It immediately reminded me of Islamic prayer,” said Sanaz of the Sephardic-melody blessing.

We ate a variety of Kurdish-Turkish dishes cooked by Rimon Ajami, who recently started her own catering business. The food – lots of cold salads, a traditional soup, and chicken and fish entrees – seemed to never stop appearing from the synagogue’s tiny kitchen. After some delicious desserts, the group gathered for a short talk with Yehoshua, who told us that many Eastern Jews are less likely to divide themselves among specific branches of Judaism, like Orthodox or Reform, than Western Jews, and that they are less likely to rely on rabbis for guidance.

After the talk, we ventured back out again in the cold to walk to the home of Oded Levinson, a Hasidic man who welcomed us for songs, desserts, schnapps and questions following Shabbat dinner. Levinson, his family and guests sang several Sabbath songs while the Covering Religion group sat on long benches and listened. Sunil asked him about the large circular fur hat he wore. After he explained that it originated in 19th century Poland, Levinson asked Sunil about his baseball hat. Sunil explained that it was from the San Diego Padres but added that he was not a Padres fan. “I just liked the hat,” he said. Levinson also gave us a long discourse on his views on Israeli politics.

Finally around 11:15 p.m., our exhausted but well-fed group packed up and walked back to the hotel, happy to have a good night’s rest as our trip winds down.

The dome of the rock on the temple mount, Jerusalem (Omar Kasrawi/Journey to Jerusalem)

JERUSALEM — Seven ancient stone gates are used to enter the Old City of Jerusalem. On Thursday, our first full day in the holy city, we used the Dung Gate, not because of its name (it was where the trash was once hauled out) but because it is the closest one to reach the sacred sites we were there to see.

Once inside the gate, we saw two lines of people waiting to get into the Haram el-Sharif (Temple Mount); one for Muslims and one for non-Muslims.

As the only Muslims in the group, Sanaz, Sommer, and I broke away from the class to see the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, two of the holiest sites in Islam. Sanaz was forced to surrender her laptop and audio recorder to the police. Visitors are frequently asked to recite the Fatiha, the first sura (verse) of the Koran to prove that they are indeed Muslims as no other faiths have been let in the Mosque since the second Intifada (Palestinian uprising) in 2000.

While Sommer was comfortable reciting it, Sanaz and I needed a quick refresher and went over it during the climb up to the Haram el-Sharif. Our preparation paid off; we were all allowed inside the holy sites.

Both Sommer and Sanaz prayed on the red and white squared carpeting on the main level of the Dome of the Rock as well as in the little cave beneath the rock itself, which is directly under the bright golden dome of the mosque. “It was amazing,” said Sanaz. “You feel like the place matters. It’s not your local mosque,” she added.

For Sommer the experience was just as rewarding. “This whole trip has been about observing other people’s religions. Today I got to live mine,” she said. “I felt something the whole time I was there.”

Sommer expressed frustration that our classmates could not get to the Temple Mount. It closes everyday at 10 a.m. and by the time they made it to the front of the line to enter the plaza it was too late.

From there the class moved on to the Western Wall (known in Hebrew as the Kotel), the last remains of the Second Temple. Hundred of Jews were there, many of them rocking back and forth during prayer. We also encountered three bar mitzvahs taking place just a dozen feet back from the wall. Tammy, a Christian, partook in the ritual of praying at the Kotel and placing her prayer, written on small piece of paper, in a crack of the Wall.

“I asked for God to protect and take care of my family forever,” said Tammy. She added that she asked for courage and wisdom and to find a rare and deep love like no other.

For another of our group, the visit to the Wall represented a culmination of better fortunes in her life. “The last time I was here, two and a half years ago, I was in a bad place,” said Maia. “Now everything is upside down for me. I came and said what my mom taught me: ‘Bless the children of Israel and my family,’” she added before running back to the Wall to add a prayer for her grandparents.

From there we rounded out our triumvirate of holy sites with a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The church is built on the site, Golgotha, where it is believed Jesus was crucified and the cave where he was laid to rest and resurrected. At the entrance to the church some visitors returned the four foot tall wooden crosses they rented to carry with them as they walked the Via Dolorosa (“The Way of the Cross”), the now cobblestone path that Jesus was forced to walk on the way to his crucifixion.

Inside the church hundreds of people lined up to enter Jesus’ tomb and touch the rock where the cross he was nailed is believed to have stood. Believers also knelt and kissed the stone where his body was prepared before his burial in the cave.

“This was the best part of my day,” said Carolyn. “My grandparents always wanted to come and couldn’t. So I was here for them today. They were in my thoughts the whole time.”

However Carolyn expressed frustration at the tug of war between the numerous Christian denominations that share custody of the church. The need for control can manifest itself even over which group gets to clean certain stones in the church. “It’s a shame that it is fragmented,” said Carolyn. “Especially when you think about how important it is to so many Christians,” she added.

However, for Mariana, a Protestant, the Church is not where Jesus was crucified. “We believe that happened at the Garden Tomb and I’m going to go there before we leave,” she said determinedly.

From here the group broke off for an afternoon of reporting. During that time, students researched stories ranging from the expansion of settlements to the Mamilla cemetery controversy to interviewing such figures as the Rev. Dr. William Shomali, The Chancellor of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Toward the evening we reconvened at T’Mol Shilshom Bookshop Café in downtown Jerusalem where we spent time at a reception for J School alumni who live and work in Israel. The graduates ranged from one whom last year celebrated the 50th anniversary of his graduation to a couple that graduated as recently as two years back. Of the ten who attended, most were working journalists, although one worked for the Israeli foreign minister and another was a student in a yeshiva.

The café, with its wrought iron fixtures and leather bound books that share shelf space with bottles of wine, would fit right in Manhattan’s East Village. Once the reception was over, the class ate dinner in the company of eight young adults who participated in two interreligious dialogue programs between Palestinian and Jewish students. Yonatan Gorenberg and Samah Qunbar, an Israeli and Palestinian participant respectively, spent the evening discussing the frustrations of both sides and what needs to be done to try and change things.

Yonatan spoke of how he brought tenth grade Israeli students to the West Bank village of Abu Dees to show them how the dividing wall built by the Israelis splits the town in two. Samah expressed her frustration about living in society where she doesn’t get treated equally because she doesn’t carry an Israeli passport.

“The dinner was the most informative session we had so far,” said Carolyn. “I found the students’ candor about the tenseness of the situation between Palestinians and Israelis refreshing,” she added.

From there it was off for our daily ritual of ending the night in search of an Internet café with some wi-fi.

Protesters lined the gates of the Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts at the Feb. 21 performance of the Israel Ballet. (Sommer Saadi/Journey to Jerusalem)

Protestors carried signs that read, “No tutu is big enough to cover war crimes” and “Don’t dance around Apartheid. End it.” Others chanted, “Pas de deux or arabesque/The occupation is grotesque.”

The protest was one in a series coordinated by an organization called Adalah-NY: The Coalition for Justice in the Middle East, a Palestinian rights advocacy group that denounces what they call Israel’s “apartheid and colonial policies.” Their strategy is to boycott Israeli cultural and academic events. The ballet performance, which is funded by the Israeli government, is what the advocacy group considers a tactic to draw attention away from state policies and toward cultural affairs.

“People want to separate art as if it has nothing to do with politics,” said Una Osato, a New York City teacher who dressed up for the protest as an Israeli ballerina. “We want to show that in this case it does.”

Osato and two other mock ballerinas spent most of the two-hour protest calling out slogans like “We’re stretching to cover apartheid” and extending their arms into the air, or dancing to the Rude Mechanical Orchestra that was dressed in red, green and black—colors of the Palestinian flag.

The mostly elderly crowd of ballet ticket holders—many dressed in floor length fur coats and dapper blazers—barely acknowledged the demonstrators. They followed the path of nearly 20 police officers straight toward the theater.

One woman waiting for her date by the entrance between the protestors muttered under her breath, “All these people are crazy. Why protest the dancing? It’s not a question about dancing.”

But bringing the greater conflict between Israel and Palestine into all aspects of the Israeli culture–even dancing–was the point of the protest. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel that launched in April 2004 aims to “comprehensively and consistently boycott all Israeli academic and cultural institutions” until a range of Palestinian rights are restored.

On March 9 the group is co-sponsoring a protest at the New York Gala dinner of the Friends of the Israeli Defense Forces at the Waldorf. Last week, the group held a demonstration outside the Madison Avenue store Leviev owned by Lev Leviev, a diamond mogul who has financed settlement activity in the West Bank.

On this U.S. tour, the Israel Ballet company faced demonstrators yelling slogans and handing out mock programs at three consecutive performances. First on Friday in Burlington, Vt., protestors stood in front of the stage at the beginning of the performance hall with two banners that read: “No Tutu is Big Enough to Cover Up War Crimes” and “Sponsored by Apartheid Israel.” Protests continued on Saturday in Worchester, Mass., and finally in Brooklyn on Sunday.

“The main message is that while Israel is denying Palestinian rights, we will not let business go on as usual,” said Bryan Pickett, who was one of the protestors that stormed the stage in Vermont.

Although the protestors, which included a mix of religions and ethnicities, attempted to focus their messages on the political conflict, familiar religious tensions emerged.

There was no Jewish counter protest, but several theatergoers expressed their own opinions as they passed the demonstration. One woman walked toward the gates of the campus and called to some Jewish protestors, “You should be ashamed of yourself as a Jew.” And the reply, “This is a proud moment as a Jew.”

Another patron asked a protestor, “Genocide doesn’t embarrass you? You don’t remember they put us in an oven?” To which the protestor said, “That’s a different thing. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

The entire afternoon was interspersed with familiar banter. Jonathan Terebelo, a representative for the Bnai Raphael Chesed Organization, which operates a food pantry in Brooklyn, stood outside the performance hall to hand out information on how to make donations. He says he didn’t know about the Pro-Palestinian protest when making plans to pass out pamphlets.  Regardless of his initial intensions, however, watching the protestors inspired him to offer his own opinions to passerby.

“This is disturbing,” he said while pacing between the protestors. “Jews do not enforce apartheid. We are not killers. They are. They want to make it a Muslim world.”

Quickly protestor Richard Greve, who was passing out fliers listing the Palestinian grievances, interjected. “This is not a question of religion,” he said. “It’s a question of human rights. I would be here if any group was depriving rights of another group.”

And still, with a conflict deeply rooted in a region of religious significance, separating the political and the religious is an ongoing task that often distracts from the greater message.

“We just want people to be more aware,” said Emma Grigore, a protestor who traveled two hours from Philadelphia. “Even if that means just getting people to ask ‘why are you protesting?’ My hope is that people will at least educate themselves on what is going on in the area.”