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Learning to live with one another By Miriam Feinberg Vamosh Tags: Holy Sepulchre, churches  Saving the Holy Sepulchre How Rival Christians Came Together to Rescue their Holiest Shrine, by Raymond Cohen, Oxford University Press, 320 pages, $27.95 Behind the Armenian altar, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre's Chapel of St. Vartan, in Jerusalem, the faint carving of a boat with a broken mast is visible, and the Latin words domine ivimus, possibly a version of the opening words of the pilgrimage Psalm 122, meaning "Lord we shall go up." Advertisement Could those who incised these words in the stone, possibly among the first Christians to make pilgrimage to this spot, and who may have survived a shipwreck to do so, ever have imagined the structure that would go up over their heads, sheltering the site today believed by members of most of the world's churches to be where Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected? Raymond Cohen's book traces in meticulously annotated detail the bumpy road traveled by the Christian denominations with claims to space inside the church whose foundations go back to the fourth century, to assert those claims. It does so in light of decrees, documents and international power struggles based on the variously interpreted Status Quo agreement, with its roots in the 14th century. Chronicling complexities that make a Gordian knot look like a slip tie, Raymond Cohen, a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University, traces a process that began with insistence on preeminence and reached a point of making do with negotiated condominium, to reconstruct the crumbling complex, culminating in the dedication in 1997 of the new dome over the tomb. Cohen vividly describes the complex that has risen over the course of over 16 centuries, a building project he describes as an "unplanned collaboration between Byzantine and Frankish [Crusader] architects living in different centuries." Even the most recent example of ecumenical collaboration, the restoration of the rotunda dome, has the simplicity and understated symbolism it does, according to Cohen, less for reasons of artistic choice and more because it was the only decor on which all denominations could agree. Yet the dome, renewed inside and out, is a symbol of the success of the collaborative efforts the book describes. Many have stood in the plaza outside the church and heard bemused accounts of the wooden ladder on a windowsill above the right side of the Crusader-era double doors -- the one that was blocked after Saladin defeated the Crusaders and ejected them as rulers of Jerusalem in 1187. The ladder has not been moved for over a century and a half due to a disagreement over which denomination is entitled to do so. Those familiar with the history of the church are also aware of conflict over who may clean a step, one of 12 leading to the medieval outer entrance to Calvary, or who may change a light bulb in the Chapel of St. Nicodemus, behind the tomb, where a number of authentic Roman-era tombs are preserved. "Saving the Sepulchre" goes beyond these tales to describe fascinating but less well-known incidents and events, made particularly valuable because he presents them in light of the impact on the church of international historical events over the centuries. Cohen presents three keys to understanding the Holy Sepulchre's history: First, there are six denominations that have rights in the church. The Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic (Latin) and Armenian Orthodox churches have rights of both possession and usage, whereas the Copts, Ethiopians and Syrian Orthodox have rights only of usage. Second are the complexities of the variously interpreted Status Quo agreement, which governs relationships among the denominations, and between them and the sovereign (today, Israel). That agreement was further anchored with a 1757 letter from the Ottoman grand vizier, Rajib Pasha, to the French ambassador, stating "These places, my lord, belong to the sultan and he gives them to whomsoever he pleases. It may well be that they were always in the hands of the Franks [the Latins], but today his highness wants them to belong to the Greeks." Following the Crimean War, in 1856, Sultan Abdul Mejid declared that "... the Jerusalem shrines, whether owned in common by the Greek, Latin and Armenian communities, will remain forever in their present state." Third, Cohen shows how over the centuries ecclesiastical officials of the Greek or Russian Orthodox churches, or the Catholics, with their ties to European countries, found it impossible not to also represent the interests of their governments abroad, a situation that further complicated matters for British, Jordanian and Israeli sovereigns in their turns. One example of Israel's diplomatic stumbling, in Cohen's view, is illustrated by its handling of the ownership of the Deir el-Sultan monastery adjacent to the church, disputed between the Ethiopians and the Copts. These churches were for centuries in communion under the bishopric of Alexandria, but in 1959 when relations crumbled between Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and Haile Selassie, then the emperor of Ethiopia, they broke relations. After the Six-Day War, the Israeli government, intent on improving relations with Addis Ababa, resolved to implement an earlier Jordanian decision to turn the key over to the Ethiopians. Following Israel's 1979 peace treaty with Egypt, the Copts renewed their demands for the keys, but Israel refused to change its stance, Cohen explains, for fear of risking the right of El Al planes to fly through Ethiopian airspace, and of hampering Ethiopian Jewish immigration. The Coptic church then petitioned Israel's High Court, which approved their request for the keys, but also ruled that the government, not the court, should settle the dispute. It delayed implementation of its order to turn over the keys to the Copts for 21 days, during which the government set up a committee that decided to leave the key with the Ethiopians. And with them it remains today. Cohen refers to the incident as "Israel?s blunder," the effect of which was to reduce the Copts? confidence in Israel as a fair mediator and reinforce the reticence the churches felt in cooperating with Jewish authorities, fearing as they did that this might lead to reprisals against Christians in Arab countries in light of the Arab-Israeli conflict. The book reveals that the Status Quo agreement derives not from church law, but from Muslim sharia law and Ottoman property law, both of which assign to the sovereign custody of the Holy Sepulchre and the right to repair it. It determines that changes can be introduced if agreed on by all major communities and that the last one to have repaired a certain wall or cleaned a certain step could do so in the future. According to Ottoman law, as Cohen points out, neither the sultan nor the churches have actual title to the property, but rather administer it, as it were, in God's name. Disputes are handled not by the courts, but rather by a government official charged with this purpose who determines what common practice has been. The Status Quo agreement can thus, at least ostensibly, remove the holy places from the realm international conflict. In practice, though, as Cohen details, local and international politics have both had significance for the Holy Sepulchre. An important aspect of the book is the significance of local and international events for the Holy Sepulchre of events. For example, after Italy entered World War II, in June 1940, Archbishop Gustavo Testa, the apostolic delegate to Palestine and Egypt was in a position where he could implement the big plans for a total reconstruction of the shrine, as Palestine was now in range of Italian bombers flying out of Rhodes, and was subject to land invasion via Egypt. Testa?s plan, for a modernist building and its surroundings, a drawing of which Cohen includes, would have been so large as to require the clearing of about half the present Christian quarter and would have virtually replaced the present shrine, and overshadowed the Dome of the Rock. An American friar Cohen quotes commented on the plan: "It should have been done by King Constantine the Great, but he is dead." Even many Catholics objected to the plan, whose implementation was to be assigned to Antonio Barluzzi, the architect of other famous early 20th-century churches, such as the Basilica of the Agony on the Mount of Olives. If Italy had won the war, might it have been able to assert Catholic preeminence in the church over rival claims by Greeks and Armenians, making the blueprint for a new church a reality? The most significant modern chapter in rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from the ravages of time, destruction, and piecemeal reconstruction over the centuries, opens with the aftermath of a 1949 fire, which was apparently ignited accidentally by a Jordanian public works welder who was at work repairing damage by a mortar shell that fell during the 1948 battle for Jerusalem. It remained encased within the lead dome, but burned away the pine and felt insulation within it. It also reignited concerns among the church leaders that an offer by Jordan?s King Abdullah's to repair the dome would put their property rights at risk. The response of the church leaders was to erect most of the scaffolding and supports that remained in place -- and blocked out the light in the rotunda -- until 1997. The 1951 assassination of King Abdullah and the succession of his son, the psychologically unstable Tallal, put an end to what Cohen calls "unwelcome prospect of royal philanthropy." But disagreements continued, getting in the way of even essential engineering repairs. Only the announcement by Pope Paul VI, in 1966, of his impending visit to the Holy Land, brought Jerusalem to center stage once again. Reconstruction and reconciliation became necessarily more closely linked than ever before. A remnant of this period improved relations between the Latins and the Greeks is highlighted by a modernist carving installed on a capital in the Latin section, depicting a "kiss of peace" between Pope Paul VI and Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagorus when they met on the Mount of Olives that year. Restoration, extending beyond the crumbling rotunda to the strengthening of the medieval foundations, overseen by a technical bureau jointly funded by the three main churches, established in 1957, continued through the 1960s, albeit marred by the old and new clashes over who owned what, with the Armenians, asserting their interests against the Latins and the Greeks. There was even disagreement over the very design of the "kiss of peace" capital. With most of the fourth-century structure having been destroyed by the Fatimid caliphs Hakim in 1009, the conflagration of 1808, reinforcement in 1834, replacement with the present dome in 1869, and then the fire of 1949, the experts had their work cut out for them. Cohen describes the resumption of restoration, which was interrupted for two years following the Six-Day War, leading to completion of the new exterior dome in 1980. The question of the interior decor now became a central issue. It was finally agreed that golden rays would do for everyone, but no neutral artist could be found to execute it other than a Japanese Buddhist, whose services it was apparently decided to forgo. Eventually, with a second historic visit of a pope to Jerusalem around the corner in 2000 and in light of a row with Unesco over any reconstruction, the solution came: a donation by the American Catholic philanthropist George Doty to the Pontifical Mission, to which the Greeks and the Armenians finally agreed. The artist: Californian ad-man Corky Normart, baptized into the Armenian Orthodox church but a practicing Episcopalian, an amateur artist and hard-headed businessman who could keep the parties from walking away from negotiations. The dome was dedicated on January 2, 1997, with the leaders of all three churches sharing the pulpit -- the first ceremony in recorded history in which all three major churches participated together. In his conclusions, Cohen notes that only diplomacy could make any headway in saving the church. He notes that no imposed solution by a sovereign would work, although deadlines and warnings issued by governments and other bodies were an impetus to cooperation. "For some readers," he says, "the thought that the Church of the Resurrection was 'bargained over' may be distasteful. But if agreement and compliance are the necessary ends, then negotiation is the necessary means." He also cites a businesslike relationship among experts responsible for managing the status quo agreements, acting as "the diplomatic corps of their communities." He does not consider how a possible further shifting of political responsibilities for parts of Jerusalem would affect the church. Presumably, the same principles for successful maintenance of the church would apply no matter who is the sovereign. Like its title, the book also ends on a harmonious note. However one can only wonder what lies ahead beyond reconstruction. It would appear that much, virtually the impossible, has been accomplished, while leaving all the basic zealousness for possession in place, at least according to an April 21 report in Haaretz of a scuffle on Orthodox Palm Sunday celebrations at the church: "Witnesses say an angry Armenian priest physically dragged a Greek priest out of the church's tomb area because he felt the clergyman had overstayed his allotted time." Perhaps this is its lesson: achievements not because of, but in spite of, all-too-human tendencies to squabble even over the sacred. Miriam Feinberg Vamosh is the author of several books and articles on faith, history and heritage in Israel, and, with Eva Marie Everson, of "Reflections on Israel: A Personal Journey through God's Holy Land" (forthcoming, Thomas Nelson, 2008). She is also a tour educator specializing in Christian heritage and a member of the Haaretz editorial staff. Bookmark to del.icio.us   History in the making N.Y. governor pays historic visit to Orthodox synagogue for Sabbath services. Under the rubble Five Palestinians suffocate to death after Egypt blows up tunnel.

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