Page - 134 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

within these traditions shaped the actors’ images of Jerusalem and were therefore reiterated in the ritual of the ceremony. Both Judaism and Christianity contain discrete conceptualizations of Jerusa- lem, with the utopic “heavenly Jerusalem” a spiritual and symbolic center and the “earthly Jerusalem” an actual geographical-historical city. Through history and up to today, these two clearly distinguishable concepts have been interwoven in vari- ous ways, including politically.20 The entanglement of these two versions of Jerusa- lem is performed within the city itself, as we see in the example of the ritual of the opening ceremony. Through such actions Jerusalem is loaded with religious con- cepts and constructed as a holy city, as “heavenly Jerusalem”. Moreover, through- out history Jerusalem has been variously charged as sacred space by claims and rituals, and as a result many levels of sacralization have accumulated within cultural memory. The repeated connection of religious concepts to the city has entangled its earthly and heavenly histories. In a circular process, actors through the time have constructed and still construct Jerusalem by loading it with their concepts; these constructions shape conceptualizations of Jerusalem within religious traditions that are reused to reconstruct Jerusalem. The many layers of accumulated sacralization and legitimized concepts form a bulwark around the space. For our interpretation of the ceremony, we need also consider the Palestinian claim to Jerusalem although – indeed, precisely because – it does not appear in the ceremony. This claim is primarily fueled by the significance of Jerusalem in Muslim tradition. Called “al-Quds”(“the Holy”) by Muslims, Jerusalem is the third holiest city after Mecca and Medina and al-Aqsa mosque is considered the place from which the prophet Muhammad started his journey to heaven.21 The Palestinian claim is absent from the ceremony, which thus works not only by performing a certain version of Jerusalem, but also by excluding another. From this perspective, the struggle for Je- rusalem can be understood as a struggle between conflicting claims to sacred space. The modern debate over Jerusalem, with the city a central bone of contention in the Middle East conflict, is part of this struggle. Even though, as Jan Stetter and Stephan Busse suggest, the concrete premises of the current conflict over Jerusa- lem are modern, the legitimacy patterns that characterize the conflict come from much older religious narratives. The modern conflict, however modern it may be, has dimensions that reach back far into history.22 Today religious narratives about Jerusalem serve as powerful sources of legiti- mization, and references to the “heavenly Jerusalem” justify claims to the “earthly 20 Kristianssen 2015, 2. 21 Wasserstein 2007, 27–28. 22 Busse/Stetter 2018, 23. Jerusalem between Political Interests and Religious Promise | 133www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 127–151