The holiest and most contentious spot of ground on this globe is without a doubt the tract at the southeast corner of Jerusalem’s Old City, known to the Jews and Christians as The Temple Mount and to Muslims as Al Haram al-sharif (the noble sanctuary).
A recently published book project that tells the story of this place, put together by a team of Jewish, Christian and Muslim authors, calls it The Sacred Esplanade. Three of the key writers, representating each of the monotheistic religions, were in Madison last night for a presentation arranged by the Lubar Institute for the Study of Abrahamic Religions and the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights (LISAR).
The program had to be moved from the State Historical Society Auditorium to accommodate the visit to Madison of president Barack Obama, but an audience of over 100 people braved the downtown traffic to attend the lecture at the Fluno Center Auditorium.
Too Idealistic
“Many people wrote this off as too idealistic,” said Benjamin Kedar, a professor at Hebrew University and one of the co-editors of Where Heaven and Earth Meet: Jerusalem’s Sacred Esplanade. “The book represents up-to-date knowledge, representing the beliefs and expectations about the Esplanade.”
He said the book represents an effort by people of varying backgronds wo share a commitment to truth. But truth, when it comes to this sacred corner of the world, has many facets. “We abstained from an attempt to harmonize all of the information because there is much about this subject that is still uncertain,” he said.
Mustafa Abu Sway, of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, said that he got involved in the program because it lays down the relationship of Islam to Judaism and Christianity.
Guy Stroumsa, of the University of Oxford, emphasized, “Nothing similar to this book has been done before.” He said, “Jerusalem is a place of many identities, shared by two peoples and three religions. To live at peace we will have to learn to live with multiple identities.”
Whether this book will make a contribution to future peace in the contentious Middle East, only time will tell. In the question and answer period after the presentations, Kedar and Sway gave conflicting perspectives on the recent archaeological history of the Esplanade. “We ended with differences of opinion. Who is surprised?” said professor Charles Cohen, the director of LISAR.
Oslo Efforts
The panel was introduced by Kjell Magne Bondevik, Prime Minister of Norway from 1997-2000 and from 2001-2005. Bondevik is also a Lutheran pastor and the founder of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights.
Noting that Oslo Peace Accords, negotiated in the early 1990s, failed to address the religious dimension of the dispute between Arabs and Jews, Bondevik said, “conflict around holy sites is an impediment to progress,” adding, “the Israeli conflict is not a religious conflict but it has a religious dimension.”
He explained how the oslo Center is attempting to promote religious understanding by developing a code on holy sites to protect them. The code that has been developed is going to be tested in a very contentious area later this year, Bosnia-Herzegovina.