Strangers Within a Square Kilometer
One of the examples of the isolation of people within the Old City is the case of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Irineos. The Patriarch of Jerusalem lived isolated in an apartment within the Old City from 2005 until his death in 2023, never leaving his apartment and surviving on the goodwill of former parishioners (TOI Staff). This event happened within the city, yet had no greater impact on the events of the Old City as a whole. This is emblematic of how the different groups within can Jerusalem exist almost completely separate from each other.
When watching the National Geographic special on Jerusalem, one gets the impression of an ancient city, filled with multiple beautiful heritages. One line that truly stands out is when Nadia Tadros says "the old city is very small and the four quarters do not communicate a lot, although we have in the same area we don't know a lot about each other." This is a somewhat shocking idea, that so many people shoved into such a small place can have so little to do with each other. Within my neighborhood which, is larger than the Old City, I know people throughout, which makes the idea of these groups having so little
In January of 2023 I visited Jerusalem and experienced some of the differences within the city. While walking around it is not clear where the boundaries of the different quarters are and it is easy to just assume that the Old City is simply one community within an ancient site. However with a general knowledge of the area, and then the testimony from the girls within the video, it is clear that the Old City is divided by neighborhood, culture, and people. While a perfect would would have the people of the Old City united in celebrating their joint cultural heritage, today it simply represents the trying relationships of strangers within the most important square kilometer in the world.
Ex-Greek Orthodox patriarch, who said church imprisoned him in Jerusalem, dies
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Nice post about divisions within the four quarters of the old city. You do a nice job of bringing in an outside article to go along with your impression of the movie and your own experience in Jerusalem.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: even though you know many people in your neighborhood, are there also groups of people that you might not be familiar with as well?
A couple of suggestions for future posts: 1) you might want to make the image larger so it looks better on the page (it's rather small on a computer screen); 2) you should have a heading for the bibliography, and when you have the information youy should include all of the bibliographic info.