Remembering Jerusalem: Imagination, Memory, and the City

Department of Art History, Lodz University

lalibela@o2.pl
Two depictions of Jerusalem in Colonial Painting of the Viceroyalty of Peru

Sacred city as a pilgrimage destination is present in the consciousness of the Christian world, even in such distant regions as South America. In Colonial Painting of the Viceroyalty of Peru, we may find traditional depictions of Jerusalem, usually accompanying religious scenes, such as entry to Jerusalem or Crucifixion, whose "action" takes place in the sacred city. What greatly influenced Colonial Painting was publications –among the most influential was the one by a Dutchman, Christian Adrichomius, Urbis Hierosolimae quemadmodum ea Christi tempore floruit suburbanorum eius brevis descriptio, published in Koln in 1584 as well as a treatise El devote peregrino y viaje de Tierra Santa by Antonio del Castillo, which first came out in Madrid in 1654. Both books were provided with illustrations serving as graphic sources of painting compositions.

From depictions of Jerusalem which are familiar to me, two anonymous paintings, done according to a graphic design, deserve particular attention. Both works come from the 18th century. The first one is in a small gallery of sacral art at the church of San Miguel in Cayma (Arequipa, Peru). Actually, it is a map of Jerusalem. In the painting, we can see inscriptions marking sacred places where Christ was present at His last moments, and thanks to this depiction we can follow in His footsteps in our contemplation. This image is a repetition of a symbolic plan of Jerusalem which appeared for the first time in the book by a Dutchman, Christian Adrichomius and was repeated by Antonio de Castillo. It is a perfect map, which can be associated with the tradition of visualising a city continuing from the early Middle Ages. It was inscribed in a rectangular plan along a North-South axis with dominating points in Civitas Inferior with a temple and Sancta Sanctorum in the centre. The other painting is a composition in the San Francisco monastery in Santiago de Chile, titled Franciscan Martyrs. The depiction is not so much a plan as a visualisation of a few crucial buildings, such as the Sacred Sepulchre or the Cenacle. In the foreground, in the bottom section of the painting, there are scenes of Franciscans’ agony. The painting is not only a source of information about appearance of buildings in the Holy Land, but also a painted account of events that took place in Jerusalem. Both paintings could serve liturgical and educational functions. I would like to examine possible functions of both objects in more detail, in reference to their form and iconography.

Marina Lambrakis

DPhil Candidate in Modern Greek

University of Oxford

marina.lambrakis@sjc.ox.ac.uk

In this paper I will examine the portrayal of Jerusalem in these two writers, focusing first on Seferis’ poem (together with his diary entries) and his experience of the Holy City at a time of turmoil. I will then turn to Tsirkas’ The Club (the first novel of the trilogy), where Jerusalem is depicted as a nexus of power, the extent of which is only revealed to the reader at the end of the novel. I will show how Tsirkas takes Seferis’ earlier description of Jerusalem as an “ungoverned city”, a “city of refugees”, and explores more fully the twin themes of power and governmentality implied therein, using Foucault’s concept of biopolitics. Moreover, Tsirkas’ writing is marked by the twenty-year gap between World War II and the novel’s publication. This long gestation, and the process of looking back, contributes to his anti-imperialist stance, and his reworking of experience as critique.

Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology

Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

dlandy@tcd.ie

The ‘City of David’ in East Jerusalem is a unique site. It is at the same time an illegal settlement, an Israeli national park, an archaeological dig, and a popular tourist destination. The original site of the city of Jerusalem, it is situated in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Silwan just outside the old city walls. As such its fate is of paramount importance to the future of Jerusalem and to Israel/Palestine as a whole. The Israeli government has supported the successful attempts by illegal settlers to use the presence of important archaeological remains to take over the area, evict and terrorise the local Palestinian population, and turn the place into a tourist site - ‘the City of David’.

This talk will explain the dynamics of the ongoing colonisation in ‘the City of David’, specifically the way in which tourism has been used to bolster the practices and the normalisation of Israeli colonisation. Drawing from interviews and participant observation in the ‘City of David’, I argue that there is congruence between settler and tourist narratives which forwards the erasure of Palestinians from their own neighbourhood, both discursively and in real life. The paper examines how the site is organised and presented, and where Palestinians fit within this; arguing that Palestinians are both erased from the site, and through the stories of conquering ancient Israelites, narrated as an enemy presence. In conclusion, I argue that the tourist desire for authenticity, comfort and connection with the destination country is precisely what makes tourism an effective vehicle to forward the Israeli state and settler project of a Jewish Jerusalem.

Dr Marina Prusac Lindhagen

Museum of Cultural History

University of Oslo, Norway

m.p.lindhagen@khm.uio.no

Since the Middle Ages, it has been argued that Constantine rebuilt Jerusalem as the heavenly city on earth, and Halbwachs’s approach is a classic example of the idea of Jerusalem as a Christian city founded by the Roman emperor Constantine. According to this historical tradition, Jerusalem was given a more defined religious function and identity than any other Roman city during the reign of Constantine.

Another possibility is that the typical ambiguous religious design of Constantine, known from other Roman cosmopoleis such as Rome and Constantinople, was intended also for his building programme in Jerusalem. The present paper addresses this possibility, as Constantine’s formation plans for the future of Jerusalem may have been based on a multi-religious and multi-cultural formative past, which was later, lost to posterity.

Experts on the Church Council of Nicaea in 325 have discussed the Christian significance of Jerusalem compared to that of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Caesarea, and it seems uncertain which was considered the most important city by the church in terms of administration. Jerusalem certainly had a certain position because of the events which took place there in the life of Jesus Christ, but its significance as the most important Christian city in the Roman Empire may have come later, in the period after Constantine’s reign.

Assuming that Constantine’s agendas were equally ambiguous as the emperor himself, what did he wish for Jerusalem and what was the result of his reconstruction? Were the Holy Sepulchre and Christianity of paramount importance when Constantine reconstructed Jerusalem, or was the symbolic character of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre juxtaposed with other sacred buildings in the city? Was Constantine’s reconstruction of Jerusalem successful in terms of urban formation and memory transformation, or were other powers at work which the emperor could not control?

Dr Loren Lybarger

Associate Professor of Religion

Ohio University, United States

ldlybarger@gmail.com

Research Fellow

merav.mack@gmail.com

(co-written and presented with Dr Benjamin Balint)

PhD Candidate

University of Hamburg, Germany

nadine-mai@gmx.de

Within my doctoral thesis I try to enlarge the discussion on Late Medieval monumental reproductions of Holy Sites of Jerusalem. Mainly examining the chapel of Jerusalem in Bruges, built c. 1471-1485 by the influential family Adornes, I am going to ask which kind of interrelations where established between architecture, art, materials, relics, liturgical or even social constellations. How were they used to transform the monument and its environment into Jerusalem able to connect oneself with the original biblical places and to participate in their redemptive power? Within the pilgrimage experience provided by the Holy Sites of Jerusalem natural materials played an important role. Focusing on pure superficial conditions: colour, size, smoothness or roughness and other sensually attainable markings like resting in ruins or a subterranean setting – these qualities became likewise inseparable from their legendary biblical meaning. Inasmuch being connected with the location, stones and spolia overcame their rigid material reality and even turned into anthropomorphic subjects. Staging matter as trace and medium of the Passion, medieval reproductions tried to develop this authenticity by focusing on material regards and visual analogies. Often, a sacred meaning was assigned to material features exposed here, whereby legitimacy results not from an authentic provenance, but instead, from mere material aspects. By doing so, past was associated with condition, legend was translated into surface, and matter became act. The Bruges example, endowed with a monumental sculpted Calvary and a later attached Holy Sepulchre replica, referred to the material features of the original sacred place and its perception in manifold ways (Ill. 1). In addition, the marble Holy Sepulchre attached at the Bruges chapel in 1521 must be considered a determining choice of material and can shed new light on the relations between matter and memory. Within many reproductions I observed in situ similar combinations of material aspects, its sensual impression and iconography could be found and I would be delighted to share and to discuss some of these within this exciting conference.

Assistant Professor, History Department, Western Illinois University, United States

robbymazza@gmail.com

With the outbreak of the war in 1914, Jerusalem, as part of the Ottoman Empire, was rapidly mobilized with the radical alteration of the urban space and its consumption by local residents. Available accounts describe the city suffering the hardship of the war and show the increasing tension amongst the various communities living in the city. Challenging traditional historiography it will be argued that Jerusalem was still a space marked by cultural hybridity and cosmopolitanism where fixed boundaries between communities were yet to come. This paper will present Jerusalem during the period of World War One through the perspective of four different residents who perceived the war according to their own identity and interests. The memoirs of Bertha Spafford, leader of the American Colony, will present one the rare female voices available of the period highlighting networks of welfare created throughout the city. The diary of the Spanish consul will show a lively city despite the difficulties created by the war; the daily memories recorded by the diplomat are a mixed of Oriental views informed by his classic European education and analyses informed by his firsthand experience of the city. The memoirs of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, mediated by the events of 1948, show a city often neglected: parties and gatherings took place also during the war showing how the cosmopolitan nature of the city brought people together regardless of their religious or national background. The last diary by an Ottoman Soldier, Ihsan Turjman, shows a Jerusalem devastated by the war and the plight of the poor inhabitants. The memory of Jerusalem that emerge from these narratives suggest a very complex picture of a modern city dealing with a dramatic event; however not yet divided and exclusively appropriated by one group over the other.

Assistant Professor, Arabic and Middle East Studies

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures

Middle Tennessee State University

Kari.Neely@mtsu.edu
Arabs in the Graphic Space of Jerusalem
In this paper I look at the spatial depiction of Jerusalem in graphic novels written as travelogues. Journalist Joe Sacco’s Palestine, Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less, and Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City are examined. Specifically, the paper addresses the deployment of Arabs within the cityscape as first imagined by the authors and then as experienced. Many travellers imagine themselves as “rightfully” constituted within the space of (historic/Biblical) Jerusalem despite their nationalities and ethnicities. Yet, at the same time, these pre--‐trip imaginations rarely account for the ethnic diversity of the city where various cultures collide and compete for (co)existence. As travelogues, the writers attempt to reconcile their expectations with their observations. The imagined Jerusalem is relegated to text cast against panels filled with the visual grit of reality (distorted as they are by the artists’ particular idiosyncratic renderings).

Through this juxtaposition of reflective text to visual reality, the reader experiences both the “mythic” Jerusalem (textually) and the “real” Jerusalem (visually). Where pre--‐trip imaginations of Jerusalem may have erased Arabs, stereotyped them, or pushed them to the peripheries of the “holy land,” the graphic novel format allows/challenges these authors to insert Arabs within their panels creating a new cityscape and hopefully new ways of imagining a more inclusive Jerusalem.

Lecturer in Middle East History

Department of History, University of Sussex

J.Norris@sussex.ac.uk

Jacob Norris's proposed paper offers an analysis on the marketing of the city of Jerusalem as a commodity, beginning in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the paper considers the so-called 'holy land products' marketed by Arab travelers from Ottoman Palestine and the ways in which this commodification shaped the image of Jerusalem at the turn of the twentieth century. Importantly, the paper aims to show how the commodification of Jerusalem allowed for Christian audiences to interact with and buy products but also how this 'holy land' produce was modified for Muslim and Jewish populations outside of the region. The paper brings the hinterland of Jerusalem into the discussion as well: the importance of Bethlehem for Jerusalem (and vice-versa) is explored in the context of the changing statuses of both centres and the political, social and religious (re)imaginings of each in the mahjar, by the turn of the century.

Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Theology

University of Oslo, Norway

e.a.oftestad@teologi.uio.no

The First Crusade can be understood as a Christian claim to be the legitimate heir to the earthly Jerusalem. And with the conquest of the Holy City in 1099, Jerusalem to the Christians went from being a memory and an eschatological expectation, to being an earthly holy city in Christian possession. The city was transformed to appear in accordance with a Christian remembrance, like when the Muslim Dome of the Rock was established as the Christian Templum Domini. Maurice Halbwachs has described how the crusaders acted as the legitimate possessors of a forgotten tradition: ‘The Crusaders behaved as if this land and these stones recognized them, as if they had only to stoop down in order suddenly to hear voices that had remained silent merely because they could not resonate in deliberately deaf ears or because God had not wanted to open them before a fixed date’. The sources reveal that the conquest of Jerusalem engendered different strategies to legitimate the Church as heir of the Holy City. My hypothesis is that the new historical situation and the intense attempts to interpret it in the aftermath, gave rise to a particular concept of translation of the temple to the papal cathedral of the Lateran in Rome. The idea of translation to Rome was based not primarily on spiritual fulfilment, but rather on material continuity. The claimed translation guaranteed the transfer also of the memories that could legitimate new religious structures and identities at both another time and another place. The main argument was the presence of the Ark of the Covenant and the sacred temple objects within the main altar of the Lateran cathedral. My aim is to present this argumentation as a specific historical interpretation of the Christian Church as the legitimate heir both to the temple of Jerusalem and God’s covenant with the Jews.

Associate Professor of Religion, Conflict, and Peace Studies

University of Notre Dame, United States

Atalia.Omer.3@nd.edu

This proposed paper is based on extensive in-depth interviews with approximately 60 American Jews of diverse backgrounds who are active participants in various Palestine solidarity circles of engagement. The teleological place of Jerusalem in the Zionist narrative of Jewish history needs little articulation. However, how non-Israeli Jewish Palestine solidarity activists reinterpret Jerusalem vis-à-vis their Jewish identity is hardly engaged in a scholarly fashion. This process involves remembering of the various silences created by the practices and ideological constructions of the Israeli state as highlighted by Hannah Arendt and Edward Said and later by Judith Butler, among others. The focus is on American Jews in their effort to confront a particular deployment of Jewish memories as they play onto the construction of a national narrative and thus provincialise a geopolitical Jerusalem as constituting the core of their religious, ethnic, and cultural identity. Hence, the study sheds light not only on the revalorization of the meaning of Jewish diaspora but also on how the theological, philosophical, social, and cultural processes informing reorienting Jewish identity from Jerusalem to New York City intersect with postnationalism, cosmopolitanism, and celebration of American multiculturalism. The article will analyze how the multicultural landscape of the U.S. informs processes of reframing the meanings of Jewish identity and the types of connections Jewish Americans interpret as existing between them and the Israeli nation-state and how the city of Jerusalem as geopolitics and metaphor of peace relates to the conceptualization of this relation. The article is also the first to examine what religious resources Jewish rabbinic and lay voices retrieve and reconceive in their efforts to innovate the meanings of Jewish identity from a place of solidarity, empathy, and cognitive dissonance related to the plight of the Palestinians, on the one hand, and their sense of “at-homeness” in the U.S., on the other. The question animating this undertaking is how the supposed dis-placement (or being out-of-place) of the Jewish diasporas is subverted by articulating the U.S. as their place or “home” and with it championing a particular mythology romanticizing American multiculturalism rather than ethnocentrism as a fitting destination for postethnic Judaism. To what degree this postethnic subversion of the meanings of Jerusalem as a metonym of the land of Zion intersects with Christian replacement theology, on the one hand, and the ethos of American nationalism, on the other? This line of questioning will frame the analysis.