Artwork on display at ‘Under the Mountain’ will offer a different perspective on the familiar and conventional narrative of the Temple Mount, and strive to construct an alternative mythology.
By PEGGY CIDORJerusalem's Old City and the Temple Mount(photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
This year’s Jerusalem Season of Culture is taking a daring step and reaching out to one of the most famous religious sites in the region – perhaps in the entire world.“The Temple Mount is, first and foremost, a multilayered history of irrepressible activity, replete with life and blood,” asserts Omer Krieger, artistic director of the season’s “Under the Mountain” art festival.Every historical era has laid its footprint on the site, including those of the Jebusites, Jews, Romans, Muslims, Mamelukes, Crusaders, British, Jordanians – and now, of course, the Palestinians and Israelis. Yet it seems that in some ways, the site does not really belong to any one of the peoples yearning for it.Frequently in the news due to the ongoing Jewish-Muslim dispute there, the Temple Mount – or Haram al-Sharif to Muslim worshipers – has a multifaceted history. This is where the Binding of Isaac took place, and the New Testament says it was from there that Jesus was expelled. According to the Islamic faith, it is where the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. It is where the First and Second Temples stood and where King Abdullah I of Jordan was assassinated.“Under the Mountain,” now in its fourth year, will enable everyone to see “the sacredness, the history, the conflict, the mythology, the occupation, the beauty, the hatred, the splendor and the pain that is contained in this mountain, and seeks to piece them all together into new combinations and understandings of the site, of the present, of the possible and imaginary future,” explain the organizers.And they are well aware of the sensitive nature of this venture. Krieger, Season of Culture artistic director Itay Mautner, and executive director Noemi Fortis-Bloch are all excited, frightened, anxious and enthusiastic to see it take place and lay yet another fingerprint on the mount.The festival is also the culmination of a year-long attempt to understand the site and its deep symbolism to so many different stakeholders. As a result, the event will include a visit to the Temple Mount, led by poet, mystic and academic researcher Prof.Haviva Pedaya, who led a study group for this past year on the meaning of the site.“The artwork on display at ‘Under the Mountain’ will offer a different perspective on the familiar and conventional narrative of the Temple Mount, and strive to construct an alternative mythology: secular, humanistic and universal, without taking away from the holiness, the past and the diverse traditions associated with it,” details Krieger.The overarching message? It is time to apply different tools to this volatile place – such as art.
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