A2 · Elementary
12 min
culturereligionhistoryconflict
La Ciudad Santa: Cuando la Guerra Cierra las Puertas de Dios
The Holy City: When War Closes the Doors of God
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Elementary level — perfect for beginners building confidence.
So here is something I did not expect to be talking about this week.
The holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City reopened.
Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall.
Closed since February 28th, when the war with Iran started.
And now, suddenly, they're open again.
Bueno, es una noticia muy importante.
Well, this is very important news.
Jerusalén es especial para mucha gente.
Jerusalem is special for many people.
Special is one word for it.
Look, I've been to Jerusalem twice.
Once in 2003 during the second intifada, and once in 2011.
And there is nowhere on earth quite like the Old City.
You walk through one street and you pass a synagogue, a mosque, a church, all within about two hundred meters of each other.
Mira, yo visito Jerusalén en 2009.
Look, I visited Jerusalem in 2009.
La ciudad es muy pequeña pero muy importante.
The city is very small but very important.
Right, and that's the thing most people don't grasp until they're actually standing there.
The Old City is less than a square kilometer.
Less than a square kilometer, and three of the world's major religions consider it among the holiest ground on earth.
That's not a recipe for calm.
Es que hay tres religiones en un lugar muy pequeño.
The thing is, there are three religions in a very small place.
Es difícil.
It's difficult.
Incredibly difficult.
And the closure itself, since February 28th, that's more than five weeks.
Five weeks where pilgrims couldn't reach the Western Wall, where Muslims couldn't pray at Al-Aqsa, where Christians couldn't stand at the site where they believe Jesus was buried and rose from the dead.
During a war.
Think about what that means emotionally.
A ver, para muchas personas, la religión es muy importante.
Well, for many people, religion is very important.
No poder rezar es muy triste.
Not being able to pray is very sad.
It is.
And I want to go deeper on each of these sites, because I think people hear the names and they know they're important, but the history behind them is extraordinary.
Let's start with Al-Aqsa.
Octavio, how would you describe what Al-Aqsa means to Muslims?
Bueno, Al-Aqsa es la tercera mezquita más importante del islam.
Well, Al-Aqsa is the third most important mosque in Islam.
Muchos musulmanes quieren visitar este lugar.
Many Muslims want to visit this place.
The third holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina.
And it sits on the Temple Mount, which Jews call the holiest site in Judaism.
Same physical space.
That is the core of the problem, and it has been for centuries.
Mira, los dos grupos dicen que el lugar es suyo.
Look, both groups say the place belongs to them.
Es un problema muy viejo.
It's a very old problem.
A very old problem.
The mosque was built in the seventh century, around 705 AD.
But the ground it stands on is where the First and Second Jewish Temples stood.
The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD, and what's left of its western retaining wall is the Western Wall, the Kotel.
So you have a living mosque built on the ruins of a destroyed temple.
You can't untangle that.
La verdad es que la historia de Jerusalén es muy complicada.
The truth is that the history of Jerusalem is very complicated.
Hay muchas capas.
There are many layers.
Many layers.
Literally and figuratively.
Archaeologists in Jerusalem are constantly finding things under other things.
A Byzantine church under a medieval market, a Roman road under a Jewish neighborhood.
The city is a geological layer cake of civilization.
Es que Jerusalén tiene tres mil años.
The thing is, Jerusalem is three thousand years old.
Es una ciudad muy, muy antigua.
It's a very, very ancient city.
Three thousand years, at least.
And now let's talk about the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, because I think this one surprises people the most when they learn its history.
What do you know about it, Octavio?
Bueno, los cristianos dicen que Jesús muere y vive de nuevo en ese lugar.
Well, Christians say that Jesus died and rose again in that place.
Es muy sagrado para ellos.
It is very sacred for them.
Exactly.
The church marks the site of the crucifixion and the resurrection, according to Christian tradition.
But here's what gets me: the church itself is shared, and I mean shared in the most complicated possible way, by six different Christian denominations.
Six.
The Greek Orthodox, the Roman Catholic, the Armenian Apostolic, the Coptic, the Ethiopian, and the Syriac Orthodox.
They each control different parts of the building.
Mira, seis grupos diferentes en una iglesia.
Look, six different groups in one church.
Eso es difícil también.
That's difficult too.
Profoundly difficult.
There's a famous story, and it's completely true, about a ladder.
There's a wooden ladder on a ledge above the entrance to the church.
It's been there since at least 1728.
Nobody has moved it because nobody can agree which denomination has the authority to move it.
It's called the Immovable Ladder.
A ladder that cannot be moved because of a bureaucratic dispute between Christians about who owns the wall it's leaning against.
No, no, espera.
No, wait.
¿Una escalera que nadie mueve por trescientos años?
A ladder that nobody moves for three hundred years?
Eso es increíble.
That's incredible.
Three hundred years, give or take.
And it's actually a pretty good metaphor for the whole situation in Jerusalem.
Things get frozen in place because the cost of moving them, the political and religious cost, is higher than the cost of just leaving them where they are.
La verdad es que en Jerusalén, cambiar una cosa es muy complicado.
The truth is that in Jerusalem, changing one thing is very complicated.
Todo es político.
Everything is political.
Everything is political.
And the closures we're talking about are political too.
Israel closed these sites on February 28th citing security concerns when the Iran war started.
But closing holy sites during a war is itself a statement.
It sends a message to the world about who controls access to these places.
Sí, Israel controla el acceso a los lugares sagrados.
Yes, Israel controls access to the holy places.
Eso es un poder muy grande.
That is a very large power.
Enormous power.
And this gets to the question of sovereignty over Jerusalem, which is one of the longest-running unresolved disputes in modern international relations.
Israel says all of Jerusalem is its eternal capital.
Palestinians say East Jerusalem should be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
Most of the world refuses to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the whole city.
The US officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017 under Trump's first term, which caused international uproar.
Bueno, muchos países no reconocen la capital.
Well, many countries do not recognize the capital.
Es una situación muy tensa.
It's a very tense situation.
Genuinely tense.
And the Old City itself has four quarters, which I think most people don't know.
The Jewish Quarter, the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter.
Each one is its own world.
I remember walking from the Muslim Quarter into the Jewish Quarter in 2003, and it felt like stepping across a border.
The food changed, the language changed, the clothes changed.
Same city block.
Mira, yo recuerdo eso también.
Look, I remember that too.
Cada barrio tiene su propia vida.
Each neighborhood has its own life.
Its own life, its own rhythms.
And pilgrimage, real pilgrimage, has been going to Jerusalem for thousands of years.
Christian pilgrims have walked the Via Dolorosa since at least the fourth century.
Muslim pilgrims have been coming since the Umayyad period.
Jewish pilgrims have been going to the Western Wall since, well, since there was a wall to go to.
This isn't tourism.
This is something much older and much deeper.
A ver, para un creyente, visitar Jerusalén es muy especial.
Well, for a believer, visiting Jerusalem is very special.
No es solo un viaje.
It's not just a trip.
Not just a trip at all.
And so when these sites close, even temporarily, even for legitimate security reasons, the impact is real.
There are people, elderly pilgrims, people who saved for decades for this journey, who came and found the doors shut.
During Easter week, during Passover, during Ramadan.
All of those overlapped this year with the war.
Es que este año, las tres fiestas son al mismo tiempo.
The thing is, this year the three holidays happen at the same time.
Eso no pasa muy frecuente.
That doesn't happen very often.
That's a genuinely rare overlap.
Easter, Passover, and Ramadan all landing in the same window.
That happens maybe once every thirty or forty years because the calendars, the Jewish lunar calendar, the Islamic lunar calendar, the Christian calendar, they run on different cycles.
And this year they converged, in the middle of a war.
The symbolic weight of that is hard to overstate.
Bueno, es un momento muy simbólico.
Well, it's a very symbolic moment.
Y los lugares están cerrados.
And the places are closed.
Eso es muy triste.
That's very sad.
Very sad.
And also, I think, a moment that clarifies something about what's at stake in this war.
It's not just pipelines and missile systems and oil prices.
It's also this.
The ability of ordinary people to access the places that give their lives meaning.
That's what gets interrupted when wars happen.
Mira, la guerra afecta todo.
Look, war affects everything.
No solo la economía.
Not just the economy.
También la cultura y la religión.
Also culture and religion.
Culture and religion especially.
And here's something I keep thinking about: the international community's response to the closure was remarkably muted.
There were a few statements from the Vatican, some from Jordan, which technically holds custodianship over the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem under a 1994 treaty.
But it didn't become a major flashpoint the way it might have in a different moment.
La verdad es que el mundo tiene muchos problemas ahora.
The truth is that the world has many problems now.
Jerusalén no es la única crisis.
Jerusalem is not the only crisis.
No, it's not.
And that's the grim arithmetic of a multipolar crisis.
There's only so much international attention to go around.
But the reopening matters.
It's a signal that, at least in this small way, some space is opening up.
A ver, cuando los lugares abren, la gente puede rezar.
Well, when the places open, people can pray.
Eso es positivo.
That is positive.
It is positive.
Cautiously positive.
Because the war isn't over, Lebanon is still being bombed, and the ceasefire with Iran is fragile.
The doors opened today.
Whether they stay open is another question entirely.
But for now, pilgrims can walk the Via Dolorosa again.
They can touch the Western Wall.
They can kneel at the stone of unction inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
And in a week like this one, I'll take any good news I can get.
Bueno, Jerusalén siempre sobrevive.
Well, Jerusalem always survives.
Es una ciudad muy fuerte.
It is a very strong city.
It has survived a great deal.
Babylonians, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans, British administrators, and now this.
The extraordinary thing is that the city keeps standing, keeps drawing people, keeps meaning something.
I'm not sure any other place on earth does that quite the same way.
Mira, Jerusalén es única en el mundo.
Look, Jerusalem is unique in the world.
No hay otra ciudad igual.
There is no other city like it.
There really isn't.
And on that note, I think that's a good place to pause.
The holy sites of Jerusalem are open again.
Whether you're religious or not, whether you've ever been there or never plan to go, that matters.
Because what happens in that one square kilometer has a way of echoing across the whole world.
As it always has.
As it probably always will.
La verdad es que Jerusalén importa para todos.
The truth is that Jerusalem matters for everyone.
Es parte de nuestra historia.
It is part of our history.