Page - 139 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 06/01

Rhetorical Level The speeches given during the ceremony contain religious references of various types. First, there are obvious allusions to Jewish and Christian traditions: for example, al- most all the speakers ask for God’s blessing or make use of quotations from the Bible. The speeches also contain, on a deeper level, narratives and motifs that refer to Jewish and/or Christian traditions. The religious references in these argumentation patterns at the base of the text are of greatest interest to me. The references to religion within the text can be divided across three (interconnected) lines of argument: first, the construc- tion of Jerusalem as space; secondly, the staging of Israel and the United States indi- vidually and of their alliance; thirdly, the presentation of the relocation of the embassy. In the speeches, Jerusalem is conceptualized as “religious space” and as a modern city, as “profane space”. The religious concept is dominant, with Jerusalem shaped in almost all speeches as religious space, irrespective of whether the speaker is a reli- gious leader or politician. In first place, the terminology makes this case: Jerusalem is often called a “holy city” or “city of God” or described as the “eternal capital of the Jewish people” (or with variants of that phrase). Behind these terms lie conceptualiza- tions of space drawn from or entangled with religious traditions. Thus, Jerusalem is su- perelevated; no longer a purely earthly city, it has the higher status of a heavenly city. Fig. 2: Unveiling the seal, U. S. Opens New Embassy in Jerusalem After Trump’s Decision to Recognize Capital (TIME 2018, 00:29:01). 138 | Hannah Griese www.jrfm.eu 2020, 6/1, 127–151