Holy Land

JERUSALEM -- One solitary string of colored lights drapes the YMCA here, the only public sign of Christmas in the city that gave the world Christianity."

As the State Department finalizes the agenda for the Middle East summit in Annapolis, it should consider including some last-minute participants who have the clout to build authentic support for the peace process. We suggest that they include the region's most senior Israeli and Palestinian religious leaders in these and all future talks. These courageous leaders have joined together to form a Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land with the express purpose of removing religion from the conflict and putting it into the peace process.

Easter is my favorite holy day. It's the most meaningful day in the Christian calendar, and it coincides often with Passover, the important day when Jews celebrate their deliverance. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and it was one of my favorites when I was living in the Holy Land with my family. Not that I did much atoning. But Jerusalem and much of the rest of Israel would fall quiet on that day, as we lived there before the first Palestinian uprising began in December 1987.

DALLAS -- The strained argument between the U.S. government and nonprofit groups over how to deal with charities suspected of supporting terrorism is expected to play out in federal court here with the trial of the largest Muslim charity in America, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. Jury selection in the trial began yesterday, and was expected to take most of the week. The government, in the lengthy indictment and other court documents, accuses the foundation of being an integral part of Hamas, which much of the West condemns as a terrorist organization.

Renaissance Europe's fascination with the Middle East and the budding science of cartography is the subject of the Mitchell Gallery's "Ancient Maps and Views of the Holy Land from the Rothman Collection," an exhibition of 52 maps and 17 books made to guide Western travelers on pilgrimages.To examine these remarkable creations, compiled by former Annapolitans Leonard and Juliet Rothman, is to enter the mind of the Middle Ages and the vastly different spirit of the Renaissance that followed.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- With bagpipes, bells, lights and Scripture in seven languages, the town where Jesus was born began celebrating his third millennium yesterday in a show of Christian solidarity and Palestinian nationhood.It hasn't been easy reaching this point.In late October, Palestinian youths rioted for three days here to protest the killing of a postcard-seller by an Israeli soldier guarding Rachel's Tomb. The soldier said the man wielded a knife.This followed angry protests over Israel's reconstruction of a checkpoint that Palestinians fear will divide them from nearby Jerusalem.

NAZARETH, Israel -- Jerusalem is usually the place that dominates religious animosities in the Holy Land. But lately, Nazareth has been competing for attention in a dispute that's even aroused the Vatican.It started two years ago with the demolition of a Muslim school. Since then, the dispute between Muslims and Christians in the city where Jesus grew up has sparked outbreaks of violence and become a crisis that threatens Pope John Paul II's trip next year to the Holy Land to celebrate the year 2000.

The Grinch gets the rap for stealing Christmas, but what about Charles Dickens? A well-meaning heist, surely, but just the same. The manger and Bethlehem and anything to do with the region where the celebrated event actually occurred has long been overshadowed by A Christmas Carol's luscious steam of plum pudding, goose, candied fruit, chestnuts, mince pies, punch ... You could go on this way for some time before you got to, say, tabbouleh or chickpeas....

The gospel choir of Good Shepherd Baptist Church will leave loved ones and Christmas presents in Baltimore this year to praise God in the land of their savior. A week later, they will return bearing gifts that cannot be bought.To sing in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, says Hosea Chew, is on a spiritual par with the birth of his only child, and not unlike, he says, a child's anticipation of Christmas itself."I knew my daughter was coming, but the true feeling did not hit me until birth was given," says the 32-year-old Chew, assistant director of the 25-member choir.

The congregation of Ferndale United Methodist Church will be taken on an imaginary tour of the Holy Land during the 10:30 a.m. Sunday Services for the six weeks of Lent.Pastor Susan Duchesneau is presenting "Jerusalem at Passover -- A Lenten Tour in A.D. 30." She will narrate the tour, stopping at various locations on an imaginary trip where the congregation will overhear the conversations of Judas, the High Priest, a Levite, Caiphas, Pilate, Peter, John, four women and Jesus.The series started yesterday with a stop at a temple in Jerusalem.

The Holy Land was a little holier back then. The prospect of a permanent Middle East peace hung heavy in the air like incense. And so it came to pass in the spring of 2000 that 15 of us bicycled from Cairo to Jerusalem via the Jordan bonus loop: an 18-day, 1,000-mile ride organized by a small adventure-travel company specializing in offbeat destinations. Cycling a lonesome ribbon of road has a way of loosening a person's tongue as sure as half-price drinks or a grand jury subpoena. After pedaling 20 minutes alongside Tom Van Dyke, a genial, retired accountant from Michigan, I knew that he was battling prostate cancer, had been happily married to "the wife" for 41 years, and for decades dreamed of seeing God's country by bicycle, "following the path the Israelites took."

JERUSALEM -- Diana Zimmerman and Karen Lewis are Christians who say they answered a call from God to travel from their homes in the United States to live and work in the Holy Land. But their callings have placed them on opposing sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Zimmerman, 35, a Mennonite and former nursing coordinator from Baltimore, works in a remote Palestinian village in the West Bank, where she escorts Palestinian children to school and accompanies shepherds and farmers to their fields, trying to protect them from harassment by Jewish settlers.

Easter is my favorite holy day. It's the most meaningful day in the Christian calendar, and it coincides often with Passover, the important day when Jews celebrate their deliverance. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and it was one of my favorites when I was living in the Holy Land with my family. Not that I did much atoning. But Jerusalem and much of the rest of Israel would fall quiet on that day, as we lived there before the first Palestinian uprising began in December 1987.

Tomorrow begins National Women's History Month in America, a time to honor American women who have made a difference. This is about three astonishing women I encountered in the Holy Land. None of them will be listed in the American honors. The first was Ruth Cale, a Jewish woman who had emigrated to Palestine in the 1930s, escaping the impending Nazi occupation of her native Austria. Ms. Cale, who died in 1982, had been a reporter for The Palestine Post during the days of the British Mandate in Palestine.

Timothy K. Beal's Roadside Religion details his family's RV tour of outsized religious attractions in America. Among the sites they visited: God's Ark of Safety (Frostburg, Md.): Pastor Richard Greene, haunted by dreams in which he saw Noah's Ark "floating on a glassy sea with no other signs of life," saw himself alongside Noah "as plain as the hands before my eyes." He began building the Ark in 1976; today, the structure is about one-third complete. Its foundation, poured from 3,000 tons of concrete, is one and a half football fields long.

JERUSALEM - Many of the faithful believe that this ancient city is halfway to heaven, and the mourners gathered last night despite the weather that was cold and wet and miserable. Bundled in winter coats, about 1,000 people threaded their way through the damp stone alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City, paying homage to Pope John Paul II by retracing the fabled path Jesus took to his Crucifixion. Clutching candles, praying, sometimes singing hymns and sometimes walking in silence, the crowd of pilgrims and local Christians made its way down the darkened streets of the Way of Sorrows, the Via Dolorosa, in the Old City shared by Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Honor someone by having a tree planted in the Garden of Olives in the Holy Land. A certificate will be sent for each planting.The Jewish National Fund is the sole agency responsible for planting trees in the Holy Land.Since its founding in 1901, the JNF has planted 200 million trees, created over 125 parks and recreation areas, developed nature sites, and discovered new techniques in agriculture and water technology tore claim and forest the land.This knowledge is shared throughout the world.

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that the Treasury Department acted properly in freezing the assets of an Islamic charity in Texas suspected of funding the militant Palestinian terror group Hamas. In a unanimous decision that upheld a lower federal court ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the government's move to shut down the charity was based on "ample evidence." Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a suburban Dallas organization that billed itself as the largest U.S.-based Muslim charity, had complained that the government violated its rights, providing false evidence and flimsy justification based largely on anonymous informants.

BETHLEHEM, West Bank - They had jostled along the narrow streets that disappear into the dark warrens of the Dheisheh refugee camp, pressing forward to see Pope John Paul II and desperate for words of encouragement. That was in March 2000. The pope, who died yesterday, promised a new school, and the United Nations promptly built one. In Manger Square, Pope John Paul kissed a bowl of Palestinian soil and said, "Your torment is before the eyes of the world. And it has gone on too long." Pope John Paul, then 79, was already frail and suffering from Parkinson's disease when he embarked on what he described as a "jubilee pilgrimage" to Jordan, Syria, Israel and the West Bank.

Channing Memorial offering meditation and conversation Channing Memorial Church, Unitarian Universalist, and the Rev. Susan LaMar, will offer Contemplative Conversations from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. July 14 and 28 in the church office, 3230 Bethany Lane, Suite 4, Ellicott City. Participants will meditate for 20 minutes, share conversation for an hour and meditate for a final 10 minutes. Registration is not required. Everyone is welcome. Information: 410-203-0474. Peace in the Holy Land is to be topic July 8 Marylanders for a Free Palestine and a Secure Israel will sponsor a talk by Jerry and Sis Levin, "Building Bridges Instead of Walls: Working for Peace in the Holy Land," at 7:30 p.m. July 8 at Christ Memorial Presbyterian Church, 6410 Amherst Ave., Columbia.