Michael Zank

It is shortly before 6am in Kochi, a port city in Kerala, on the famed coast of Malabar. Vasco da Gama was here, who left behind a Portuguese mission that was later joined by the Dutch East India Company. Kochi has the oldest functioning synagogue anywhere in the British Commonwealth. Though most of Jews of India made aliyah when the modern state of Israel was founded at the same time India was released into independence, the memory of the Jews of Kochi is part of the mixture of heritages that is the pride of the inhabitants of this small, clean, and friendly city. If you travel to India for the first time, start here.

That’s what we, Miriam and I, did three days ago when we arrived here on the first leg of our three-month Indian voyage. Conversations with more seasoned travels confirmed our own first impression that we were in a welcoming place of manageable size and density. Arriving here just as I finished the first full draft of my Jerusalem book, I am also struck by the omnipresence of a plurality of religions. Right now, as I sit on the roof of our homestay, still in the dark, I hear the sounds of the muezzins calling from nearby minarets, the morning raga from the nearby Shiva temple, accompanied by haunting flute play, and the chanting of a Catholic mass. A moment ago a church bell called for prayer. These human voices compete with the cawing of the ubiquitous crows and the crowing of roosters. With the exception of the bird-song, this aural experience reminds me of no other city more than Jerusalem where the voices of different prayers often intersect and overlap one another in precisely the same way. To some, this spontaneous, though regularly timed tapestry of sounds represents a cacophony. Right now, to me, it gives voice (still in the dark) to what you see when you walk the streets of this city: humans of different origin and persuasion but of great similarity in their outlook on life, their acceptance of common history and karma, their extraordinary friendly disposition, their readiness to smile when they meet the eyes of strangers. It is sad to think just how different, how ready for conflict, how fiercely unsettled, how exclusionary and violently sectarian is Jerusalem in comparison to Kochi.

(To see images from our time in India, see my FB page or find me and Miriam Shenitzer on Instagram.)

I just returned from London, where I participated in a seminar convened by Lord Stone of Blackheath on a two-year old grassroots peace initiative for Israel and Palestine called Two States, One Homeland (TSOH). You can find a longer report on this meeting HERE. In addition to the two founders of this initiative, Tel Aviv-based Israeli journalist Meron Rappoport and Bethlehem-based Palestinian activist Awni al-Mashni who joined via Skype, there were about forty people in the Archbishop's room at Millbank House, which houses offices and meeting spaces serving the UK House of Lords. Participants included potential funders, facilitators, foundation directors, and specialists in a variety of aspects that the convener thought would be useful and ought to be drawn on in helping the initiative to move forward more robustly. I joined this session because I had met Meron, Awni and Avner Haramati, a social entrepreneur who facilitated the London meeting, before. (I wrote about this meeting HERE.)

At the London meeting, we were asked to work on particular themes that were deemed most pressing to chart a way forward for this initiative. I joined the table that discussed the question of religion, where we quickly zeroed in on the most difficult and seemingly intractable issue of Jerusalem and the holy places claimed by Jews and Muslims, especially the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. I thought that TSOH might really make a difference with respect to what others recommend leaving to last by putting it front and center. I am not sure I persuaded anyone of the wisdom of rushing in where angels fear to tread.  In any case, you can find my thoughts on this matter HERE.

I am looking forward to my talk on Jerusalem for the Brandeis University Schusterman Center for Israel Studies next Friday, October 24, at 12pm.

The topic of my presentation is "Jerusalem in the Religious Studies Classroom: Theoretical Considerations and Topical Issues" and it will be based on an essay recently published in a Syracuse University Press volume on Jerusalem: Conflict and Cooperation in a Contested City, edited by Madelaine Adelman and Miriam Fendius Elman.

Sue Seligson, reporting for a BUToday's series, wrote a nice little feature on my Jerusalem class, which I recently taught as a summer term class. You can find her article here.