No room at the inn
By NICKY BLACKBURN
Jerusalem Post
Dec 24 2004
The first Christmas Christelle Erlich spent in Israel, she and her
Jewish husband invited 10 couples for dinner. Erlich, a Catholic from
Versailles, who had met her Israeli husband on an archeological dig
in Beit Shemesh in 1990, decorated a Christmas tree, and spent the
day cooking all the traditional Christmas foods. In keeping with her
customs, she laid her table with three tablecloths, for the Father,
the Son and the Holy Ghost, ready to celebrate the holiday with her
Jewish friends.
It was a stormy winter day and as the evening drew near, couple after
couple began to cancel. It was too rainy, they complained. They were
too tired, they had to get up early the next day. When, finally,
the last couple phoned to say they couldn’t come, Erlich switched
off the oven, leaving a half-cooked turkey inside, and sat down on
the sofa and wept.
“I’ve never felt so lonely and alone,” says 36-year-old Erlich,
who now lives in Kadima. “No one understood the importance of this
feast for me. To them it was just dinner. But for me it was a really
significant occasion. If it had been Passover dinner, they would
never have dropped out like that. It was terrible.”
For Christians living in Israel, Christmas can be one of the loneliest
times of the year. Elsewhere around the world, the streets are filled
with decorations, shops are overflowing with traditional Christmas
fare, there are carols on street corners and dodgy Christmas grottos
attended by cheery red-faced Santas and over-sized elves. Here,
however, it is just an ordinary day. There are no decorations, no
special events, no special programming on television, and not even
a day off.
“It’s hard to imagine that Jesus was born in Israel,” says Rita
Boulus, an Anglican Protestant who lives in Neveh Shalom, a small
village dedicated to peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews,
which is tucked away in the hills leading up to Jerusalem. “You would
think he was born in England. There is no atmosphere in Israel. You
just don’t feel the holiday.”
Boulus, an Israeli Arab, was born and brought up in Lod and remembers
the Christmases of her childhood as joyful affairs. The family would
decorate the house and dress in their best clothes. Both Muslim and
Christian neighbors would visit their home to drink traditional liquors
and eat chocolates and special yeast cakes. Boulus, a sweet-faced
woman with black hair pulled back from her face, remembers her father
coming home with his pockets stuffed full of chocolates, which he
would hand out to the children. Often there were trips to Bethlehem
or Ramallah for Christmas services.
Today, Boulus still decorates her home for Christmas, with stockings,
wreaths and a Christmas tree, and there are presents for her four
children, but the holiday has become a low-key affair. The family
celebrates with just immediate relatives or friends. They have a
large dinner on Christmas Eve, followed by another on Christmas Day.
Sometimes they go to church on Christmas morning. Now that visits to
intifada-scarred Bethlehem are off the agenda, some Israeli Christians
go to Amman instead.
“Now I don’t really feel that I have a Christmas,” says Boulus,
with a shrug.
Lena Vahakian, an Armenian Christian, also celebrates Christmas
festivities in a more subdued style than she did as a child. Born
and brought up in the Old City of Jerusalem, she spent many of her
Christmases in Bethlehem. As a member of an Armenian marching band,
Vahakian would be invited to take part in celebrations with Palestinian
marching bands on both December 25 and January 19, the date of the
Armenian Christmas.
“We all played for each other’s celebrations, everyone respected each
other,” says 25-year-old Vahakian. “There were choirs, orchestras,
drums, and Scottish bagpipes playing all day long. We would visit
friends and family, and someone would dress up as Santa Claus and
give out dozens of presents. It was very festive.”
The marching bands stopped when the intifada broke out. In the last
two years, there have been no civic celebrations in Bethlehem either.
“It’s all changed,” says Vahakian. “I don’t feel safe going to
Bethlehem, and even when the intifada stops, I don’t know if it will
ever be the same again.”
The Armenian community in Jerusalem has also diminished drastically
in size. Today there are only about 3,000 Armenians left in the Old
City, and many of Vahakian’s friends have emigrated. Vahakian visits
her mother for Christmas. Her two sisters are abroad, so it is often
just the two of them.
“It’s nothing special,” she admits. “We have the Christmas tree and
give gifts, but it’s not the same. I would love to be able to walk
out on the street and see decorations or lights, but when I step out
of my house now, I may not see another Christmas tree. Last year I
saw a tiny Christmas tree in a shop and it made me smile. I feel sad
that we do not have a proper Christmas here.”
THE TRUTH is that it is never easy to belong to a minority anywhere
in the world, particularly such a small one. Today, Christians make
up just 2.1 percent of the Israeli population, compared to 79.2%
Jews, and 14.9% Muslims, according to government statistics, and this
figure is declining, as increasing numbers of Christians emigrate.
Christians are also divided into various faiths, such as Greek and
Russian Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant and Anglican. Many Christians
here liken their experiences at Christmas to what the Jews experience
in the Diaspora during Jewish holidays.
Vahakian admits that though she would love to see Christmas trees on
the streets, she does not expect the Jewish state to provide them.
“The Jews are scared to lose their identity because of what they have
gone through in the past, and what they are still going through now
with anti-Semitism. I think they fear that if they allowed a Christmas
tree here or there, it would be the beginning of the end.”
Though most Christians are the first to admit that minorities
everywhere feel isolated, what many find difficult here is the feeling
that they are an unwanted minority. For some, this translates into
something as simple as being unable to get time off from work on
Christmas Day, for others it is more invidious.
When Vahakian was young, her older sister, who now lives abroad,
told her that when she grew up she would never wear a cross outside
of her home. “Now I know what she means,” admits Vahakian. “I still
wear my cross sometimes, but people stare at me strangely.”
Vahakian was born in Jerusalem. So was her mother and her grandmother
before her. In fact, the family has been living in Jerusalem for five
generations. Despite this, she does not have Israeli citizenship,
nor does she have a passport. Instead, every time she or another
member of the family wants to leave Israel, they have to go to the
Ministry of the Interior to get special travel documents. These can
take months to arrange, and sometimes trips have been cancelled simply
because documents did not come in time.
“If you are Armenian and you live in Jerusalem, it’s virtually
impossible to get citizenship,” says Vahakian, who has now hired a
lawyer to fight for her right to a passport. “This is why so many
Armenians have left. Life is just too hard here.”
“Israelis are not at all open to Christians,” says Erlich. “They
don’t like to know there are Christians here. They don’t consider
them at the same level. For them, Judaism is the important thing.
Christianity is threatening.”
When Erlich first arrived in Israel, she decided to convert to
Judaism because she thought it would be the best way to become a
real Israeli. She approached a number of rabbis, but each time was
turned away because her partner, a kohen, would not be able to marry
a convert.
“The rabbis treated me very badly,” admits Erlich. “They told me to
go back home, that I don’t belong here, and that I shouldn’t steal
a nice Jewish boy away. I was very hurt.”
Unable to marry in Israel, Erlich and her partner got married in
Cyprus. A later attempt to convert her three children was also met
with resistance. Though Erlich is open about her religion, she admits
that she does not go out of her way to tell people she is Christian.
“I don’t need to advertise the fact that I am different. I’m afraid
they might treat me another way if they knew.”
She worries for her children.
“They feel Jewish, but they also feel different,” she admits.
“Children at my son’s school call him the French boy, it’s only a
matter of time before they call him the Christian boy. I’m waiting
for it. My children can serve in the military and pay taxes, but they
cannot be married here, nor buried in a Jewish cemetery.”
For Arab Christians, the difficulties are even more pronounced.
“We are a minority within a minority,” exclaims Daoud Boulus, Rita’s
54-year-old husband, as he sits drinking strong coffee on a sunlit
terrace outside his house.
“I don’t feel I can express myself as a Christian here. Arab
Christians are constantly under a magnifying glass and our loyalty
is questioned. The Jews think of us as Arabs and Palestinians, while
the Arabs regard Christianity as a Western religion, and wonder if
we are really their Arab brothers, or whether our faith and feelings
are somewhere else.”
“A minority is always suspected. As Arabs and Christians, we are
considered second or even third class,” says Rev. Samuel Fanous,
the Anglican priest in charge of the parishes of Ramle, Jaffa
and Lod. Fanous finds that the sentiment towards his congregation
varies from place to place, according to the strength and economic
prosperity of the community, and the support it receives from the local
authorities. In Ramle, for instance, there are some 4,000 Christians,
within a population of 70,000 Arabs and Jews. The Christian community
enjoys the support of the local Jewish mayor, and at Christmas,
the Ramle municipality even provides money for Christmas decorations
outside the city church.
In Lod, however, where there are just 800 Christians, the story is
very different. In past years, Fanous used to dress up as Santa Claus
and deliver presents to his parishioners there. He gave that up after
he suffered harassment from local Muslim children.
FOR ISRAEL’S large and strong Russian population, Christmas and New
Year celebrations are far more open affairs. Some 50,000 Russians are
registered as Christian, while 270,000 more are not Jewish according
to Halacha. After decades of communism, many Russians do not celebrate
either Christian or Jewish holidays. Instead, they have picked New
Year’s Eve on December 31 as their main festival, and they use all the
Christian symbols – including Christmas trees, presents and even Santa
Claus, who is reincarnated as the grandfather of ice – to celebrate.
Russian TV channels run broadcasts of the New Year’s festivities,
and restaurants and clubs hold special entertainments.
“It’s not at all difficult to celebrate this holiday,” says
Ukrainian-born Natasha Shchukina, 35, who runs an advertising agency
in Tel Aviv. “Now the local firms understand this holiday, they do
everything they can to increase sales during this period. It doesn’t
bother us that we are celebrating a holiday that most people here
do not, because there are so many of us. No one helps us, but no one
interferes with us either.”
For Christians from smaller minority groups, however, there is an
urgent need for more support. Erlich believes that a great deal more
could be done to foster understanding between the religions, and that
schools and kindergartens should not only teach the Jewish festivals,
but should teach the festivals of other religions too. With this in
mind, she approached her son’s school, and asked if she could give
a class on Christmas. Her son’s teacher was uncomfortable at first,
and referred her to the school’s head teacher. Erlich was finally
given the go-ahead, and on December 24 she will teach a class at her
son’s school about Christmas.
“There is enormous pressure to learn about the Jewish feasts, but
in every classroom across the country, you will probably find one or
two pupils who never once hear about their own holidays or feasts,”
she says. “It can be a very isolating experience.”
And what of Erlich’s Christmas this year?
“I still invite people to dinner every year, and every year some of
them don’t come, which hurts. But I don’t do it for them, I do it
for me. I will always celebrate Christmas. It’s part of me. Christmas
is about sharing and giving, and these are very important values. My
children look forward to Christmas. I read them stories about Jesus
and Mary, and I tell them it’s important for them to know this story,
because it happened here in Israel, and it is part of them.”
Some names have been changed.