ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

Just as I put Passover behind me, up comes Easter and once again this town is alive with religious fervor. Actually, I missed the “real” Easter, the one with the Pope and the Michelangelo Last Supper painting; that was last Sunday. I didn’t see any mention of it in the papers and with all the Passover hoopla, there never was a ground swelling of Easter Fever. But alas, I was saved by a quirk of religious calendaring, as it seems the Greek Orthodox Church, that's the one with the cool icons, celebrated Easter a week AFTER the Roman Catholic Church. Just an aside, but these two churches share custody of the crucifixion/resurrection site and have been fighting over such important things as the number of fingers one uses to cross themselves for thousands of years. I heard the priests of the two sects can't be in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the same time because they are prone to fighting.

In any case, I got up to the Old City early Saturday morning and there were several thousand people already waiting in line. It was a mad house with little old Greek ladies in black, (right out of Zorba the Greek) facing row upon row of Israeli soldiers desperately trying to hold them back.


Here a group of Israeli soldiers take a break on the steps of the church while mobs of pilgrims tried to break down the metal barriers.

I thought I would get stuck in the crowd waiting for hours and suddenly saw this gaggle of monks walking down street so I tagged along and they suddenly became my NBFs. (New Best Friends) We were all joking and chatting in Greek or was it Russian, whatever. In any case it got me past the initial barricade of soldiers.

I next found myself in a huge courtyard, filled with more alternately weeping and screaming Greek and Russian ladies when out of nowhere there appeared a Scottish Highlander band with bagpipes blaring. I was later told these were Jordanians, but why they had bagpipes I'll never know.

I followed the band further into the bowels of the Old City where we came to the plaza in front of the Church where Jesus was either crucified, buried and/or resurrected, it's unclear what exactly happened here. But at some point a major procession of potentates appeared and disappeared into the church with me continuing to follow. The little old ladies had dropped away and now everyone (except me) had VIP badges

The scene inside the Church was controlled bedlam, there were about 500 people squeezed into a room about the size of Jesus' tomb, if you can imagine that. The air was thick with incense (and myrrh, whatever that is) there were TV cameras, lots of kneeling, crossing of one's self and sporadic sounds of grief. Except for the hundreds of Israeli soldiers guarding this fort, I might have been the only Jew there (except of course for Jesus, his family and the disciples.)

The center of the Church is dominated by this tomb like structure which supposedly houses the earthly burial spot of Jesus. I'm not sure I have the complete story exactly straight because at some point the wife of Constantine was digging around this area and found wood splinters which she identified as pieces of the original cross. Many battles were fought over this and many lives lost, but if you want to know more, check out Wikipedia.

Finally, I extracted myself from the group of mourners/revelers and made my way outside where I discovered that I was on the inside of the barricades looking out at about a thousand people who wanted to get in. I had no idea how this happened and I think the soldier I was standing next to was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I politely asked if I could be let out, he hesitated sensing that I was an intruder, but after an awkward pause he opened the gate and I jumped through it.