For seven weeks in the spring of 2023, Karin (Zetterholm) and I had the privilege of serving as scholars in residence at STI within the framework of the so-called Mörthen project. We left a rainy and cold Lund on February 9 and arrived in an almost equally cold and rainy Jerusalem. I have been to Jerusalem many times but never this early in the year so freezing in the holy city was a new and unusual experience. Fortunately, the apartment that STI rented for us had an excellent air heating system.
Unlike Svante Lundgren, the first scholar in residence in the Mörthen project, we did not stay at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, but in an apartment on Ben Yehuda Street in central Jerusalem. This had definite advantages – STI is only a 5-minute walk away – but also some disadvantages, as Ben Yehuda Street is the most popular pedestrian street in Jerusalem. The description of the apartment as “a quiet rooftop apartment” turned out to be not entirely accurate. One could say that the Ben Yehuda Street pretty much reflects the soul of Jerusalem. Here, ultra-orthodox Jews mingle with tourists from all over the world, Christian pilgrims, Arab-Israeli businessmen, street musicians, preachers, the occasional madman, and at night, singing crowds of generally happy and (very) loud people. The Sabbath, which I might otherwise have considered mostly an inconvenience, with buses and trams not running and most shops and restaurants closed, came as a definite relief.
We worked mainly in STI’s library and thus had the opportunity to participate in the daily activities of the institute. Our task in Jerusalem included writing a major research proposal and much of the time was spent reading articles and trying to identify a research task that could be carried out by three to four researchers over a three-year period. In addition, we started writing on a book on the Jewish roots of Christianity, Christian origins and development during the first four centuries – a book that will summarize our research from the last twenty years.
Our stay at STI partly coincided with the international course held there each year with participants from all over the world and we had the privilege to interact with the course participants through a joint lecture on some of the recent trends in research on Paul and Jesus. At the end of March, Karin was invited to Professor Maren Niehoff’s (one of Karin’s former teachers) research seminar at the Hebrew University to present her current research project. Karin thought it was a pleasant experience to return to the place where she studied for a couple of years during the 90’s, but now as an internationally recognized scholar. After a fruitful discussion, we were able to discuss at lunch possible forms of cooperation, such as joint research seminars facilitated by digital technology.
We were also fortunate to meet several colleagues. Bill Campbell and Kathy Ehrensperger were visiting Jerusalem and we met them at STI, showed them the beautiful building and had the opportunity to tell them about the history of STI and the reason it was founded. We met our honorary doctor from 2017, Professor Paula Fredriksen, on a couple of occasions for fruitful discussions. Together with CTR’s PhD student, Daniel Leviathan, we met with Professors Rina Talgam and Yakir Paz on one occasion and one of the experts on modern synagogue architecture, Professor Vladimir Levin, on another. There are rich opportunities for various forms of future collaboration.
Together with CTR’s Andreas Westergren, we made a much-appreciated study trip to Jordan (a country that seems to have no traffic rules at all) where we visited ancient churches, Roman ruins, some synagogues and a variety of magnificent mosaics in Gadara (where I met a pack of quite decent dogs), Jarash, Madaba and Umm ar-Rasas.
It was very interesting to explore and discuss the architecture of ancient churches together with a skilled church historian. It was not least exciting to be reminded in a very tangible way that “cancel culture” has very old roots. Note how effectively human images have been erased from the mosaic floor of a church in Umm ar-Rasas.
The weather in Israel can be a bit unreliable temperature-wise in the spring. We had many nice days with temperatures above 20 degrees and one such day I finally got the opportunity to visit Masada, together with STI’s Jonny Nilsson and this year’s volunteer Maria Måneskär.
But the weather changes, so on March 30, we returned to Sweden under the same weather circumstances as when we arrived, actually even worse, whipping rain and biting wind. All in all, we must conclude that the stay was successful – we have revived old contacts, made some new ones, learned some new things and seen some places we had not seen before, something that may enrich future teaching.
This is Torsten Janson’s report from his research stay in Jerusalem in the fall 2023:
The utter irony. Chased by a deadline, I spend my first days by the iPad. The occasional break for tea and dried prunes down Salah ad-Din Street. A quick stop to see Anna Hjälm and the STI staff. But mostly: frantic writing at the Albright Institute. Submitted. Pfeew. Tomorrow: a day in field. Finally, it begins!
Did it ever.
Just after daybreak in the freshness of the summer-warm morning. October 7. I find my way to the obscure monument over Palestinian and Jordanian soldiers fallen in the war of 1967, just north of the City Walls. An hour of photographing among weeds and plastic bottles in this remote lieu de memoir that no one seems to remember. Attempting to decipher the faint inscriptions on shattered, depilated gravestones. Who is remembered here? Who remembers? Whom does memory serve?
The little noticed monument over Palestinian and Jordanian soldiers of the Six-Day-War 1967, 7 October 2023.
Off again along the road beneath Mount Olive. Towards Silwan, one of many sites of conflicted space and memory in the city. An ancient Palestinian neighbourhood threatened by the incursion of the massive City of David excavations. Houses shattering from underground drillings. Evictions and house demolitions. The violence, contest, and clashes of space, memory and culture in an occupied city.
At that moment: blaring sirens.
I stop and gaze and listen. Eastern Jerusalem stretches out before me beyond the busy road. Sheikh Jarrah, Wadi al-Joz. The silhouette of Hebrew University on top of the ridge. An extended wail rolling down the hill sides. This is not the police. Nor fire brigades or a burglar alarm. Trouble in the settlements? On a Saturday morning? Yet all is quiet beyond the stream of traffic, in uncanny contrast with the sound of emergency. I make a quick recording and resolves to move on.
Video recording of the first rocket alert in the city, on Derekh Yerikokh, Eastern City, 7 October 2023.
I continue by the Jewish cemetery with eyes on the stupefying vista over the Kidron Valley, the Ottoman walls, the Dome glistening in the morning sun. Qubbat al-Sakra. The Temple Mount. Moria. The pure exhilaration of being here.
The day is already heating up. With pleasure I enter the shade of the narrow alleys of Silwan, aimlessly wandering up and down paths and stairways among Hajj-decorated walls. And a second blare of sirens shatters the morning stillness. What is happening?
‘Sabah al-kheir!’ The men quietly chatting outside a tiny food shack turn around to scrutinise me sceptically. Someone murmurs a reluctant good morning. ‘Are you lost?’ I have only begun a stuttering answer when he interrupts. ‘It is trouble today.’ ‘Trouble?’ ‘Yes, trouble in Gaza.’ ‘What is going on?’ Shrugs. ‘There will be police. Maybe not to go into the village.’ ‘No maybe not. Have a good day.’
The uncanny feeling is slowly turning into something else, something with a taste of metal. I should not be here. Determined to walk calmly, my heart beats harder than the stairs warrant. Something is happening. Again: blaring sirens. And now a ripping, cracking bang. Distant yet physical. A sound like textile violently torn. Like thunder in a clear blue sky. Like something very, very wrong.
Palestinian Silwan, Eastern City, with buildings adorned with Pilgrimage insignia, 7 October 2023.
Down the valley and up the Old City by the Western Wall, always patrolled by police. But today things are different. Groups of 8 or 10 uniformed youth punctuate street in intervals. Like units mobilized. Fences block the road down towards the City of David. A uniformed girl with her hands on the AK wave me off: that way! The road up along the Wall. My steps are faster now.
Outside Zion Gate. Sirens. Renewed explosions. And only now I see it: white streaks criss-crossing the southern sky, ending in puffs. Moments later: a sickening bang.
Thirty minutes later I am back by Albright on Salah al-Din. Here the atmosphere is different. People stand in groups in corners, outside the stores and cafés, eyes in the sky. There! Another one! Occasional cheers. I exchange words here and there. ‘It is Gaza. They are shooting back.’
The following week is a blur of memory fragments. Hours on end reading news, communicating with colleagues and friends, re-assuring the family. Yes, all is ok. I agree with my children to post a frog-emoji every morning to indicate I am safe. It somehow becomes a reassuring ritual of conjured control and routine. As rituals are prone to be.
But things are not ok. Gradually the extent of the horror of October 7 dawns upon us. Israeli media overflows with reports on the attack, with calls for retaliation and war. And with it comes the fear of what will be next, in Gaza, on the West Bank. How will Israel respond? How bad will it be? The answer is immediate as bombs begin to fall over Gaza.
The city comes to a stand-still, holding its breath. What now? Will the Palestinian neighbourhoods explode? Occasional rocket fire from Gaza prompts me to download a security alert app to my mobile. Albright Institute empties out. I spend largely sleepless nights in my make-shift shelter, away from windows. In the streets, the presence of military and police is suffocating. No rallies, no burning waste bins, no calls for intifada. Damascus Gate is sealed for Palestinians, blocking passage into the Old City for prayer and manifestations. A longstanding hotspot of gatherings and demonstrations becomes an assembly point for listless journalists.
Damascus Gate, half-an-hour before Friday prayer, 20 October 2023. In lieu of worshipers: press.
With gratitude I accept the invitation to move up to STI, where I remain for the following months. Here too visits and classes are cancelled. The charming Beit Tabor is empty – but not inactive. Under Anna’s coordination, STI becomes a sanctuary for local activism and deliberation between Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, Christian organisations. (Without my next-to-daily conversations with you, Anna, without your insight, care, unsentimental passion, humour and commitment, I doubt I would have stayed.)
Am I scared? Yes and no. I feel bizarrely secure in the centre of the city. And the security itself becomes sickening. Who can feel safe in a state of atrocity? I am torn between rage and relief. Between guilt and gratitude. Fear and fury incapsulates me, dissolving the line between the sanctuary of my room and the horror transpiring a mere 400 kilometres away. In the thick of it, yet worlds apart. Around us, violence is mounting. Gaza under daily heavy bombing. Settlers terrorise the West Bank with impunity. Palestinian school children and workers harassed in the city. The sound of fighter jets a constant, vile presence. Horrid scenes from the misfired Hamas rocket at Al Ahli hospital. The mendacious rhetoric of rooting out Hamas while sparing civilians, parroted by unknowing or uncaring governments worldwide. Only the first indications of an engulfing humanitarian abyss.
I never was much of a sleeper. But this is my first encounter with genuine insomnia. Only in hindsight do I understand the effects of extended sleep deprivation. The difference between sleep and dozing off, as the body and mind simply shuts down in irregular intervals. In lieu of repose, sleep invades my waking hours, dulling senses and emotions: a contour-less limbo of absent presence. The rooster crowing at 3 becomes a welcome herald of daylight, a release from futile efforts at nightly rest.
Left: ‘Safe’ and sleep-deprived in the STI garden, 12 October 2023. Right: Frog-emoji-safety-family-ritual. On 11 November I had dozed of and missed a posting.
Curiously, sleep deprivation affects distraction more than concentration: what becomes impossible is rest and respite. Any attempt at solace slips through my fingers, magnetically drawn to the next click on the next news flash, the next entry in the diary. Fiction, series, football games are defenceless against the foggy wandering of an insomniac mind. I find focus only in three activities: work, cooking and exercise. Ironically, I have seldom been more productive in writing, attentive to couscous and lentils, faster up and down the vicious slopes.
Perhaps the human mind is unable to stay in emergency. Agamben’s state of exception of the repressive state becomes a personal state of mind. Rage, fear, frustration and sorrow persist, but as accustomed everyday reality. Or perhaps I am just worn out? Whatever the reason, by the end of October my attention increasingly gravitates back to my project and fieldwork.
I roam a city strangely the same, only more so. More units are policing the perimeter of the Eastern city. All gatherings are banned. A group of elderly praying men outside the meat market are roughly shooed away. In the streets people are quiet, hurrying along with downcast gaze. More Palestinian store fronts are shut closed. Some in strike, other in economic desperation in a city bereft of tourist and pilgrims. The busy alleys of the Old City have transmuted into ghostly corridors of anxious inertia. A few steps away from the public paths, however, chat and laughter prevail. A visit to a barber engages the entire salon of middle-aged and elderly men in intense discussion around my chair. Not about bombings and suffering. About football. Wherever did Ibrahimovic go? About missing the Palestinian national team. Oh, and remember the airport?! The port! A barbershop conversation like any other, anywhere. And still not.
The Old City Bazaar, Eastern city, in a shut-down state of emergency, 9 November 2023.
The Western city, in contrast, slowly wakes up to bustling street life. Here too the atmosphere is alert, yet strikingly warm. Omnipresent officers are chatting with pedestrians, joking with children, mounting a toddler on a Police horse, allowing selfies. The coffee shop across Beit Tabor is closed. A note on the door: ‘Out for the day. Going to serve our brothers in the IDF’. On Zion Square, crowds gather around musicians playing Israeli evergreens, singing along. Stickers embellish storefronts: Yachad ninatze’ach, together we shall win. Buildings, benches, bus stops are plastered with Bring Them Home-posters. Safra Square by City Hall is staging manifestation after manifestation of frustration, anger, fear and solace for the hostages. Layers upon layers of urban memory created and recreated day by day. And everywhere blue-and-white flags. Flags covering buildings, flags in windows, flags projected on City Walls, flags flying from cars.
Bring Them Home-posters, 19 November 2023.Nightly animated projections of Israeli flags and the official Lion-city-emblem illumining the Old City Walls, 13 November 2023.
In the same vein, my work remains identical, still oddly transformed. More than conducting research I feel increasingly conducted by a field unfolding in front of me. Museums, monuments, places of memory move along familiar paths, yet ignited with new momentum, deepened layers of significance and affect. Spaces saturated with an ambiguous ambience of stillness and rupture, of comfort and violence.
I stroll around the Holy Sepulchre in solitude, a space normally thronged by endless queues, allowing but a fleeting glance. Uninterrupted, I stand alone in stillness by the grave, with a candle lit for dad. The Museum of Islamic Arts is closed. Of little surprise, perhaps. I am no less astounded to find its wall covered by an enormous billboard, displaying faces of the hostages. If this city ever had room for subtlety, it vanished utterly on October 7.
The Museum of Underground Prisoners, commemorating the Jewish para-military groups resisting the British Governate, is also closed. Still the helpful staff grant me a private visit and guided tour. I stand frozen in the workshop arranged for the crafts of visiting school children, instructed to engrave plaster plates with the insignia of para-military organisations. A messy assemblage of memory and material pottering, of sketches, plaster dust and symbols of Haganah, Palmach, Betar, Irgun, Lehi. No one has touched this room since Friday evening, October 6. A time capsule in double-exposure of innocence and violence.
Left: Exterior of The Museum of Underground Prisoners.Right: Traces of the last school-class on the eve of October 7, engraving plaster plates with the insignia of para-military organisations, 21 November 2023.
Mercifully, the Tower of David Museum remains open: the newly re-organised official city museum, one of my key-cases of Israeli local memory. Since my third visit, the receptionists have begun to engage me in conversation. Visitors remain sparse, but on the night of November 13 the courtyard fills up for a sing-along. Enthusiastically but shyly, visitors join the two-hour-collar of feelgood ballads from the Israeli song book: Ofra Haza, Haim Mosche, Zohar Argov, Gali Atari, Naomi Shemer… All concluding with the traditional Acheinu kol beit Yisrael: Our brothers, the whole House of Israel.
‘Do you do this often’ I ask in the reception. ‘Oh no. This is special. Only on Memorial Day…’
Song Night at Tower of David Museum, singing along in ‘Yakhad’(Together, 1995) by Gali Atari, who was part of Milk and Honey, the 1979 winners of Eurovision with ‘Hallelujah’. Video recording, 13 November 2023.
By Hanukkah, my time in the city draws to a close. I am tense: torn between relief and a menacing feeling of betrayal. Already dreading the ‘How was it?’ of friends and colleagues. Not only am I uneasy with the unavoidable question as such, its social nicety. I literally do not know. I have not even begun to ponder it. All know is that I am exploding with impressions. That I sit on a mountain of material. That I do not sleep. That it is a question I ultimately need to ask myself. I ask Anna how she does it. ‘I don’t’, she says. ‘And I talk with people who also don’t.’
The Tower of David Museum by a Hanukkah-decorated Jaffa Gate, soon before leaving, 13 December 2023. The love for the city has turned blue.
A journey to Al-Quds, Yerushalaim, Jerusalem never begins on the day of travel, nor ends with one’s return. Personal memories are pre-scribed by and inscribed with events unfolding around us, in Palestine, Israel, the Middle East, the world. The recollections of my autumn in the city are sifted through a spring of catastrophe, as the atrocities in Gaza has mounted to new extremes. Events in our immediate surroundings interconnect here and there, then and now. Exception presses upon us.
The Eurovision spectacle in Malmö becomes world politics, turning streets into a rallying point for humanitarian engagement, as well as an exceptional display of urban securitization under hovering police drones, helicopters and snipers. The student encampment of ‘Palestinagård’ transforms the Lund University campus into a space of resistance, until violently rooted out to make way for the hallowed doctoral conferment procession, with its cannon salutes…
It takes until March before I begin to look for words, attempting to articulate experience in memory and reflection. I find unexpected relief in teaching, when Andreas Westergren asks me to give a talk for the MA students of CTR. By framing the matter methodologically, by deliberately taking distance, formulating a series of problems rather than answers, I find a way in. I call my talk ‘Sleepless in al- Quds: four field paradoxes pre/post 7.10’. It becomes a template for eventually writing this text, guided by four acknowledgements:
nothing will ever be the same; everything is just the same (only more so)
in the thick of it; in a world apart
in an everyday state in a state of exception
the impossibilities of representation versus our commitment to representation.
‘Are you sleeping better now’, a student asks. I smile at this unexpected question. ‘Honestly? So-so’. ‘Will you go back?’ That one is easier. ‘As soon as I get the chance.’
Svante Lundgren, Associate Professor in Jewish Studies, writes about his research stay in Jerusalem:
Someone must be the first, and I was lucky to be the first person to enjoy a stay of about three months at the Swedish Theological Institute (STI) in Jerusalem within the so-called Mörthen program. Anna, the director of STI, called me den första mörten (the first roach). I arrived on October 2, and left on December 29. I have been in Israel/Palestine several times before, but never this long. And it was an incredible eight years since my latest visit. So, I was happy to be back.
For those who do not know, STI operates since 1951 in a wonderful building at the Street of the Prophets in Western Jerusalem. It is commonly regarded as one of the most beautiful houses in the city. It was a pleasure to sit in the garden for a fika break, looking at the beautiful 19th century house in classical Jerusalem stone, seeking shelter from the sun under the olive and fruit trees. The sun was, indeed, shining. When I arrived it was 30 degrees, and although it soon dropped to 25 it was nice and warm almost every day until mid-December.
STI has a staff consisting of three Swedes (director, manager, chaplain), a Swedish volunteer, and five locals (one Israeli and four Palestinians, of whom two are Christians and two Muslims). There was a good atmosphere between these. Later when my wife joined me in Jerusalem, she also felt very welcomed in this community at STI.
The author gives a speech at STI at the celebration when the former director, Maria Leppäkari, was thanked and the new director, Anna Hjälm, welcomed. Photo: Maria Wålsten
I did not live in the STI building, but in another institute, the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research. It is in the Eastern part of Jerusalem, so every day when moving between my two institutes I crossed the invisible border between Eastern (Arabic) and Western (Jewish) Jerusalem. I liked staying at Albright. I learnt to know some of the scholars there and was occasionally invited to join them in their events. For example, I took part in my first Thanksgiving celebration ever (Albright is an American institute).
On a normal day I would walk to STI – it took about 15 minutes – and then work there in the library until early (or sometimes late) afternoon. Some days I spent at one or another library at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus. I also visited different persons whom I interviewed for my research project about identity constructions among Jews from Kurdistan. The interesting thing about these is that they – like many others – are so divided over their identity. Originally, they have been labelled “Kurdish Jews”, but this is now contested by many. Some even prefer to be seen as “Assyrian Jews”. As I have done research on both Jews and Assyrians, this was of utmost interest to me.
Being a visiting fellow at STI does not simply mean doing your own research, but also contributing to the work of the institute. I gave two lectures to visiting groups, and some short interviews to a group of secondary school students who visited Jerusalem and made short videos about different topics related to the city. I also represented STI at some events, e.g., one at the Swedish Embassy in Herzliya.
I was also able to make some contacts with the Armenian community in Jerusalem. One evening I gave a lecture at the library of the Armenian Patriarchate (it was an event co-organized by the Patriarchate and the Danish Church) and I also had the privilege to visit the Armenian school and talk to the students of the 11th and 12th grade.
Jerusalem is not far away and during my stay I met a lot of friends who visited the city. During the first weeks three colleagues from CTR (Torsten, Karin and Magnus) stayed at STI and later the director of the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, Karin Aggestam, dropped in at the institute for a chat. I also met two former colleagues from Åbo Akademi University who happened to be in Jerusalem (not at the same time).
STI is owned by the Church of Sweden and was during my stay visited by several representatives of the church. It has good contacts with the local churches, especially the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land. If you are interested in Middle Eastern Christianity – I am – and/or want to socialise with Bishops and other church leaders, this is a good place to be. Christmas Eve and Christmas day, my wife and I spent in Bethlehem. On Manger Square, I was interviewed by Maltese television and asked why I celebrated Christmas there. “Why not?”, I answered, “this is after all where it happened.”
Those who celebrate Christmas in Jerusalem do it with glitter. The Christmas tree in St. George’s Cathedral. Photo: Svante Lundgren
One thing people always ask about is security. 2022 was the bloodiest year in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for more than a decade. There was unrest and violence in some suburbs of Jerusalem, but nothing came close to me. At no time did I feel unsecure, but the political situation is indeed very difficult, more so now than for a long time.
All is not work and during my free time it was good to leave Jerusalem. I visited Bethlehem several times, and Jericho and the Dead See. Our weekend trip to the Galilee was one of the most memorable events during my stay. We visited the mainly Druze village of Peqi’in and learnt a lot about this fascinating religious minority.
In sum: it was a fruitful stay both when it comes to my research and otherwise. I hope that the cooperation between CTR and STI will continue and prosper. And for my own part – I hope to be back in Jerusalem soon.
Owing to a generous grant from Oscar och Signe Krooks stiftelse, the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies (CTR) at Lund University sends a scholar to the Swedish Theological Institute (STI) in Jerusalem each semester (https://www.svenskakyrkan.se/STI). This collaboration project between the CTR and the STI is called Mörthen in Swedish (Mellanösterns religiösa traditioner i historia och nutid), or the Trout (The Religious Traditions of the Middle East in History and the Present). On this blog, scholars will present experiences from their research stay.
The Swedish Theological Institute in Jerusalem (Photo: STI)
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