This Friday is Jumaa’ al Hazeeneh (Arabic for Good Friday), and to Palestinian Christians this phrase is pregnant with connotative nuances that commemorate the Passion of Christ. Sorrowful, grief-stricken, distressing, troubling, excruciatingly painful, agonizing, harrowing, laborious are just a few of these variegated connotations.
And for Christian Palestinians, Jumaa’ al Hazeeneh is traditionally a day of prayer, fasting, solemnity and introspection. Entertainment, in all its forms, is shunned.
For centuries the Orthodox (Syrian, Greek, Russian) rites celebrated Good Friday anywhere from 10 days to a fortnight after their Western counterparts celebrated theirs. And almost always my family Easter celebrations were a late Rip Van Winkle Jumaa’ al Hazeeneh and Easter commemorations.
Raouf J. Halaby
Blame Pope Gregory XIII for replacing, in 1582, the Julian calendar (instituted in 46 BC by Julius Caesar) with the Gregorian calendar. While the Eastern Orthodox Christian rites (Antiochian, Coptic, Syriac, Greek, Russian, Armenian, Ukrainian) adhere to celebrating Christmas and Easter based on the Julian calendar, their Western Christian counterparts — depending on the lunar calendar — including all the hybrid Protestant offspring, adopted the Gregorian Calendar.
The dates for this year’s Good Friday and Easter commemorations deviate from previous years in that this year, because the vernal equinox aligns perfectly (night and day are same length), they are universally celebrated by all Christian denominations.
While reminiscing about my childhood days under Israeli occupation between 1948 and April 9, 1959, the day my family was forced to leave our ancestral Jerusalem home and Palestine, I was prompted to Google Mar Semaa’n (St. Simeon, my childhood and adolescent Jerusalem Orthodox church) and feast my eyes on the few interior and exterior online images.
The church served as a bastion of peace and serenity, a kind of embryonic cordon in which today I am reliving both the happy and frightful uncertainties of living under a brutally harsh Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing — now in high gear. The first image is of a recent celebration officiated by Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilos and attended by Archimandrite Joachim Helenoupolis. The photo is in the nave, directly in front of the Royal Entrance, and the large candelabras are the same candelabras my three brothers and I would light and extinguish at appointed times.
The second image is that of the church’s exterior, and, like most Orthodox churches, the exterior is rather drab looking while the interior is an abundantly rich continuous visual narrative akin to the Bayeux tapestry. The symbolism is overt and spirituality emanates from an interior (4.5 ft. high by 3.5 ft wide) silver baptismal font.
The last image is of the sanctuary, highlighting the high altar, the same altar on which my brothers and I would set and remove the larger-than-life-sized illustrated Holy Manuscript. In my adolescent years, this was a joint effort undertaken by my late twin brother and me.
Sometime in early 1946, my twin brother and I were baptized in the large baptismal font that graced the Nave of the Katamon Mar Semaa’n Roum Ortodox Kneesé (Arabic for St. Simeon Eastern Orthodox Church). Derived from Greek κατὰ τῷ μοναστηρίῳ (“by the monastery”) in the early 1900s, Katamon became one of the most popular suburbs of Jerusalem. Inhabited primarily by Christian and Muslim Palestinians, small pockets of Greeks, other Arab nationals, a tiny cluster of Jewish residents, foreign ligations, including the blasted Colonial British High Command officials, this truly was a cosmopolitan neighborhood. And Katamon’s inhabitants comprised a bourgeoning population of Jerusalem’s professional elites.
In 1859, the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy acquired the site on which Mar Semaa’n was built and, incorporating ruins that date back to ancient times, they built a new church in 1881, including a residence for the patriarch. Ancient cave inscriptions on the grounds are believed to mark the tomb of Simeon (cited in Luke’s Gospel as the person who, upon holding the infant Christ in his arms, recognized him as the promised Messiah), thus prompting the Greek Orthodox Church officials to ascribe a geographical and biblical nomenclature that is still in use today.
And thus it was that from the mid-1920s until March 1948 my entire family, including aunts, uncles and plenteous cousins, regularly attended services at St. Symeon of Katamonas. Weddings, funerals, holy feasts and baptismal ceremonies were held in the-by-now-too-small space to accommodate a multiplying primarily Palestinian congregation that had outgrown the 19th-century space.
An icon of St. Simeon the God-receiver.
Because of textual references to Simeon’s having held and recognized the infant Christ’s prophesied birth, baptismal services held a special significance for the congregants, especially the young parents and their children.
Orthodox baptisms, like all Orthodox feast celebrations, are performed with ritualistic and elaborate fanfare and pageantry. The liturgy, sung in Arabic, Greek and Syriac, is stunningly melodic and uplifting (there’s nothing like the thrice modulated Kyrie Eleison at different octaves); incense permeates the air; priestly vestments in the most colorful, richly embroidered damask, brocade and silk were worn by the clergy and altar boys; and a setting rich in dazzling iconography depicting myriad New Testament scenes in an array of mosaics, egg tempera and oil paintings graced every wall and column.
And candelabras, in every size and style, graced the otherwise dark interior. A forest of lighted candles added an aura of silence, reverence and tranquility.
In short, the iconographic visual, auditory and olfactory senses, tantalized by a plethora of New Testament-themed tableaux vivant, were executed in the Byzantine style, a style in which human forms were elongated and heads (almost always at the same level) grouped in a grape-cluster depiction. El Greco, the great Spanish painter, produced a plethora of masterpieces using this typically Byzantine style. A few years back, former student/colleague/artist Donnie Copeland commented that my early Orthodox Church experiences were “in a current Byzantine mode.”
After having been thrice dipped in the baptismal font, the (oft screaming) baptized infants were deposited into the godmothers’ toweled arms. I am told that after my twin brother and I were baptized, my father threw silver coins on the marble floors within easy reach of the many youngsters attending the baptismal service.
Orthodox churches have a unique architectural design based on a cruciform floor plan with a central dome. Think of Venice’s St. Mark’s Basilica. The choir and the cantors frequently occupy front areas on the far sides of the nave, and the sanctuary, the most sacred area of the church, is reserved for the clergy and altar boys.
The Holy Altar (Holy Table) is centered in the sanctuary; it is the most important element of an Orthodox Church. It is the ornate marble structure on which the priest blesses the Eucharist before it is attended to the faithful in a communal goblet richly engraved and chased with gold filigree that is accentuated by an array of precious stones. On this Holy Altar, the Holy Text, in the form of a large, antiquated illuminated manuscript, is also the reposing location for the precious manuscript when it is not in use. As well, the paten (precious metal plate on which the Eucharist rests) and the sacramental wine goblet sit on either side of the Holy Text.
Separating the sanctuary (hence the clergy as they conduct the rituals) from the nave is the Iconostasion, a wall with three entrances. The Iconostasion includes a panel of icons that grace these three entrances. Flanking the central entrance, better known as the Royal Door, the lateral entrances (Deacon Doors) are reserved for the attending priests and altar boys. An embroidered curtain or ornately painted door usually conceal the altar when services are not being celebrated. On the righthand side of the Iconostasion, one will always see the icons (mostly large egg tempera or oil paintings) of Christ and St. John the Baptist, often depicted at the moment of Christ’s baptism. On the lefthand side are always the icons of the Theotokos (Mother of our Lord) and the patron saint or event to which the church is dedicated.
What would have otherwise remained a peaceful and harmonious Jerusalem and Palestine began (in the early 1930s) to change as mostly illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine was launched. The violence perpetrated by newly arrived Jewish underground terrorist organizations (the Palmach and the Irgun, the equivalent of today’s Messianic settlers) met muted responses by a mostly unarmed fellaheen (farmers) and Palestinian citizenry. As they have done in all their colonies, the Brits were an arrogant and racist lot. Their moral abdication and their messianic 1917 Balfour Declaration doomed Palestinians to a life of deprivation and statelessness.
Three years ago, I sent the following missive to a dear childhood friend and former schoolmate: “Wishing you and C. a Happy Easter. Even though going to church was an arduous task back then, Eid al Kabeer (the Greaft Fast of Easter) always brings back wonderful memories of our childhood days in Jerusalem. Having to walk through Jewish neighborhoods, having rocks thrown at us and having to hear the epithets — often led and orchestrated under parental supervision — “Goyim Goyim lekh lebaita” (Gentile, Gentile go home) and “Aravi Melouhlah” (parasitic Arab) were never pleasant.
However, once inside St. Simeon’s Church in the Katamon Jerusalem neighborhood, and upon donning my intricately embroidered brocade altar boy tunic, peaceful serenity took over. The interior placidity was and will forever be remembered as a vast universe of embryonic security, a space of tranquility like no other. And to avoid similar hateful taunting, we always chose a different route for the return trip home.
These are what one calls bittersweet experiences, memories that linger even to this day.
In the last 30 years, Christian Palestinians have been denied access to their places of worship. Online reports such as “Easter in Jerusalem lacks Palestinians,” and “Palestinian Christians Barred from Jerusalem’s Old City at Easter” are the norm.
With Mike Huckabee’s erasure of Palestinian existence, expunging me and some 14.3 million Palestinians worldwide into nonexistence because we are “an invented people (who) never existed,” and Donald Trump’s abetting Benjamin Netanyahu to throw Palestinians out of Gaza so as to build a Trump Riviera of golf courses, high rise hotels and casinos, Palestinians’ future is bleak.
Instead of Christ’s message of peace and loving one’s neighbor, today’s orgy of hate, xenophobia, killing, maiming, starving and ethnic cleansing of whole populations across the globe is the new normal. The Machiavellian machinations of the vile characters orchestrating these policies must be stopped.
How I wish I could abscond myself to Mar Semaa’n, even for a few precious moments, to hear the cantor lead the choir in an out-of-this-world harmonized cantillation of the age-old choral responsive liturgical chants uttered in praise of the triumph of resurrection over death. Chanted in the richness of Arabic, Greek and Syriac liturgical modulations, the Kyrie Eleison reverberated throughout the church.
And what I would give to fill my lungs with the aromatic smells of incense. Better yet, what I would give to have my wife, children and grandchildren join me in traversing the distance on a flying magic carpet to briefly relive my childhood days in the setting that anchored me in faith, tradition and resilience.
And what’s that saying? You can never go home again.
Raouf J. Halaby is a professor emeritus of English and art. He is a writer, photographer, sculptor, an avid gardener and a peace activist.