A fresh look at sacred places in the Holy Land

"Between Heaven and Earth" is a new photography book documenting churches and monasteries in the Holy Land.

By JOHN BLACK
big church 521 (photo credit: Elan Penn)
big church 521
(photo credit: Elan Penn)
When a couple celebrates their wedding anniversary, they often mark the occasion by journeying to a special place. Often, the couple may return to the very site of the proposal. Perhaps it was a romantic restaurant that prepared their favorite dishes. Or maybe it was a stroll along a wooded path before the question was popped. For others, it may have been an out-of-the-way mountain overlook offering an amazing view. In each case, the couple would consider it a sort of sacred space.
It is sacred because of the significance of what transpired there, when two hearts met, love was professed and lives bonded. It is sacred space because it is set apart in their hearts and memories. And journeying there to commemorate another year of love is therefore a pilgrimage.
This idea of sacred space – of marking it, making pilgrimage to it and venerating it for the events that once transpired there – is common among religions and recurs throughout the Bible. The first sacred space, of course, was the Garden of Eden, where man and woman first encountered the living God. However, this first couple was evicted because of disobedience. Fortunately for humankind, their eviction did not signal the end of encountering God in sacred space. From then on, such encounters occurred in locations and at times of God’s own choosing. And marking this sacred space took the form of altars, shrines, tabernacles and temples.
Shechem (Nablus today) is also a sacred space, where God appeared to Abraham at “the oak tree of Moreh” after his long journey from Ur of the Chaldeans, as is recounted in Genesis 12:6-7. This is where the Lord promised to give the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants, leading him to build an altar to the Lord there. This altar distinguished the space as sacred, as holy ground.
And the sons of Israel would return there many times, including Jacob after returning from 20 years of exile with his uncle Laban, and Joshua who assembled the tribes of Israel there over 500 years later for a ceremony to renew their covenant with God. Each instance of pilgrimage and return marked yet another fresh encounter with God.
In his posthumously published book Between Heaven and Earth: Churches and Monasteries of the Holy Land (Penn Publishing, 2012, Photography by Elan Penn, 176 pages), Daniel Rossing – for decades a leading Jewish figure in interfaith circles in Israel – explores almost 100 holy places in the Land of Israel that mark the sacred spaces where humanity encountered God, many of which are Christian sites linked to events in the life of Jesus.
Rossing (1946-2010) was the founder and first director of the Jerusalem Center for Jewish-Christian Relations, whose mission is to promote “peace through programs designed to overcome ignorance and prejudice and to foster understanding and empathy between Jews and Christians in the Holy Land.”
For over 40 years Rossing’s life was devoted to interfaith relations in Israel. He served for 14 years as director of the Department for Christian Communities in Israel’s Religious Affairs Ministry. He also taught at various colleges and institutes in Jerusalem and published extensively on Christian minorities in the Middle East, on interfaith relations in the Holy Land and on Jerusalem.
At a recent reception in Jerusalem on the second anniversary of his death, Jewish and Christian leaders gathered to honor his memory and celebrate the release of the book he finished compiling just before his death.
The book is filled with crisp photos and explanatory text concerning the sacred spaces to be found in the Holy Land.
For example, the Church of the First Miracle, located in the Arab village of Kafr Kana in the Galilee, marks the site where Jesus turned water into wine. The church is Franciscan and serves not only to commemorate the first miracle at the wedding feast recorded in John 2, but also is the home church for the local Latin Catholics. Today, many local and foreign couples come to this ancient sacred space to celebrate their own wedding or renew their vows in the historic church.
We could give many more examples, but it is better to get them straight from Rossing’s book, which stands out for its colorful and respectful presentation of Christian sites by a Jewish author.