Christianity Tiyul to Ein Kerem Neighborhood

by Joe Rosenberg,     10^th grade,     St. Louis

The narrow, two lane road into Ein Kerem doesn’t seem like it can fit a bus. Sitting on a behemoth of a vehicle made this small neighborhood in Jerusalem seem small and insignificant, but the ancient stones tell of city made up of events that eventually shaped human life around the globe.

 

the entrance to the Church of the Visitation honoring Mary's visit while pregnant with Jesus 

In the center of the city, there is a spring. This spring made the area now known as Ein Kerem a habitable location. With water, humans can drink and they can grow crops. We know that this area was settled over 3000 years ago, because pottery was found around the spring. However, Ein Kerem doesn’t become an important city until the 2nd Temple period. Ein Kerem is supposedly the spot where Miriam (Mary) stops to wash her feet as she visits her cousin while they are both pregnant. Miriam was pregnant with Yeshua (Jesus) and Elizabeth was pregnant with Yochanan (John), which explains why Ein Kerem is such an important city for Christians. The most important man to Christianity was in the womb of Miriam (Mary) in this city.

my classmate Briahn inside the Ein Kerem church St. John B'Harim

At the Church of Saint John B’Harim, we met Father Jose, a Brazilian priest with mediocre at best English. Father Jose gave both classes the ‘VIP Tour’ of the church grounds. We were shown the cave in which John the Baptist was supposedly born and hid in, but something else stood out to me. I could feel our class “mikveh-meter” blaring from miles away (that’s our teacher’s imaginary invention the beeps when one detects a mikveh in the vicinity). Believe it or not, there was a mikveh in the underground room. This one object exemplifies the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Before becoming a Christian building, it was a Jewish building. Before Baptisms, there were purifying baths in a mikveh. Judaism is the tree trunk and Christianity branched off.

the main chapel of the Church of the Visitation featuring heroines of the Bible

To further understand how Christianity branched off from Judaism, we can simply look around in a Church. In the Church of St. John B’Harim, there were paintings of humans all over the walls, which differs from Judaism greatly. The Jewish faith sees paintings or statues of humans as avoda zara, but when Shaul (A.K.A. Saint Paul) was trying to separate Christianity from Judaism, he told his followers they did not need to follow Halacha (Jewish law). Therefore, Christians were able to have images of humans in their places of worship. This was just one of the ways early Christians distanced themselves from Judaism.

the main chapel of the Church of the Visitation featuring heroines of the Bible

Why did Shaul want so badly to be separate from the Jewish faith? Was it to make Christianity more appealing to the Romans or was it because the Jewish people actually stopped following Halacha? Either way, Jews were vilified by early Christians, starting with Shaul (Paul), despite Yeshua (Jesus) preaching a form of progressive Judaism. The Jews were blamed for many things by Christians throughout history, starting with deicide. However, things turned around in modern times, especially in 1965, with Pope Paul VI declaring that the Jews were not to blame for the death of Yeshua. In many respects, since then, Christians and Jews have stopped blaming each other for their problems, and have allowed for civility between the two faiths.

the main chapel of the Church of the Visitation featuring heroines of the Bible

Judaism and Christianity have a complicated history with each other. The relationship between the faiths has always been rocky, from the beginnings of Christianity rooted in Jewish ideology to the constant blame put on the Jews throughout history. However, despite the ever present hatred between them, Jews and Christians have started to be more accepting of each other’s faiths. The tiyul to Ein Kerem showed me both the similarities and differences between the two faiths, but it especially showed me how far we’ve come since the initial split in ideology.

we got to descend into the crypt under the main chapel at the St. John B'Harim church