Zeddy Lawrence

Zeddy Lawrence, former TV comedy scriptwriter and radio presenter, is now Editor of the Jewish News. He takes a lighter look at life, through his kosher-tinted spectacles.

Challenge Of Keeping The Faith In The Holy Land

Thursday 15th 2008f May 2008

Taking full advantage of the heatwave (wasn’t it snowing just six weeks ago!), I find myself in shorts and t-shirt planting lupins in the front garden.

My next door neighbour pops out to say hello and we end up chatting as neighbours do. After nattering about a wedding she attended the previous weekend, the conversation turns to her father. So far pretty standard stuff.

I too went to a wedding last weekend. As for her father, the reason he pops up is that he’s just flown off to Israel. Again, nothing particularly uncommon about that. I live in Mill Hill, after all – and people who live in this part of the capital have relatives flying off to Israel all the time.

Except – and this is where it veers a little away from the north west London you’re familiar with – my Mill Hill neighbour and her father aren’t exactly the kind of people who’d be Rabbi Schochet’s congregants. No, they’re not: a) Reform; b) Anti-American; c) Easily Offended. In fact, they’re Nigerian. And when they go to Israel, it’s what’s known as a pilgrimage.

As a result, the Israel they see is very different to the Israel you or I see. But as someone who recently had a glimpse, albeit a very brief glimpse, into pilgrimage Israel, I can tell you it’s fascinating and well worth experiencing next time you’re on your Holy Land hols.

The occasion for my ‘Christian Israel epiphany’ came earlier this year, while on a press trip to Tel Aviv. One of the outings that the organisers had arranged was a day in Jerusalem. It’ll be the usual stuff I thought – the Wall, Yad Vashem, Ben Yehuda Street and, if there’s time, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Knesset.

Needless to say, I’d seen it all before countless times and could have opted out, but Jerusalem’s Jerusalem and if you have the chance to visit the Kotel, as a ‘good Jewish boy’ of the non-Michael Sophocles kind, it’s something I like to do.

We did go to the Wall, but – and this is where I saw a whole different side of the Holy Land - that was the only ‘Jewish’ bit of Jerusalem on the programme. Instead of the usual sites that I myself had taken tour groups to as a youth leader way back in the 1980s and 90s, the Fleet Street posse on this trip were treated to the Garden of Gethsemane, the Via Dolorosa and the various Stations of the Cross, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

In case you’re not familiar with any of the above, according to Christianity they’re, respectively, the place Judas betrayed Jesus, the path along which Jesus carried the cross and the location where he was crucified, entombed and rose. Packed with visitors and worshippers, just as the Kotel is, there was something very familiar about the reverence, devotion and fervour that I witnessed as these passionate pilgrims prayed at the shrines to their messiah.

It is indeed their holy land, just as it is our holy land. And visiting these locations gave me an insight into, and knowledge of their faith that I wouldn’t otherwise have had. One day, for the same reasons, I hope I’ll also have the opportunity to visit sites in the city that are similarly significant to Islam.

Last week, when compiling the 60 reasons to visit Israel feature in our Israel 60 issue, we rightly thought that some eyebrows might be raised when we - the ‘Jewish’ News - included the Dome of the Rock, the Garden of Gethsemane and other such sites. But, for our part, we had no hesitation. A Jewish state, yes, but we must always remember that it’s a land at the heart of so many creeds.

The weight of governing such a country, so important to such diverse cultures, is a heavy one to bear. But as celebrations continue for Israel’s 60th anniversary, we pay tribute to those who, over the decades, have maintained the spiritual integrity of the state for all its various faiths. And we pray that in the decades to come they will continue to do so.