On the Holy Land

The first frame is flowering Bugenvillia. In Moscow, an arrow of the thermometer walks near zero, and here - paints, palm trees, and affectionate sea.

The second frame is Fish massage. You enter in the Tel Aviv area into the water in the ankle, and your heels begin to pinch small fish. They swim, grab kernel pieces of skin, and to the side. Unusual feeling. You know: useful, and still scary, because they attack in complete seriousness.

And in the monastery of Mary Magdalene, under Tver, fish also do peeling. You go down to a radon source, and they stick out your legs.

Still, a good place was bought at the end of the 19th century for the Russian spiritual mission Archimandrite Leonid (Sentsov). In Magdal (as the locals call the courtyard), and sources, and the temple, and fruit trees. Peacocks walk around the garden, the tails are dissolved - the mosaic of Byzantine temples, translated into nature. And the kineret, the Lake Tiberiades, that is, splashes very close - the paradise.

It seems that in such places Christian life is filled with special content. And indeed, I really want to go into romantic wandering, where fantasies accompany walking and beating the heart. But you just have to take a breath and turn to religious prose, the picture will be bored.

In the Greek Orthodox Church of the Twelve Apostles in Tveria, the Divine Liturgy to Church Slavonic is served twice a month - the priest specially comes from Tsfat. One clerk sings and reads, seven or eight grandmothers and several men listen and dissolve on Saturday rest. The main worship day in Israel, as you know, Saturday is Shabat, Sholom. No one works, even city buses stop walking. And Sunday is heavy, working, and in many Orthodox churches there are no services.

Who are they - the Orthodox Holy Land? First of all, the Greeks who occupied all any significant posts in the Jerusalem Patriarchate. Then the Arabs, having long sent their children to Christian schools. With the onset of Islam, they become, alas, less and less. And, finally, the third group is a retiree Jews, among whom there are many immigrants from the CIS countries. Little Christians come across among Aliyah. It is precisely that secret.

Israel, as you know, is a religious state, and if in the column “religion” you will indicate the “wrong” denomination, they may not be allowed to be permanent residence. One of my Orthodox acquaintance bypassed the obstacle, cheat: he wrote that he was non -religious, and arrived. And the wife and children did not want to hide their faith, and they refused to be in arrival for permanent residence.

But, despite the obstacles, the Christian Jews are becoming more and more every year. Some repatriates turn already in Israel. Of course, many are drawn to the religion of the fathers, to Judaism. But along this path, events that have been experienced on the way to Damascus Saul occur.

Orthodox Jews in aliyah are treated with undisguised skepticism. This is evident both in the press in the press, and on conversations among the recently arrived. Nevertheless, the Torah cements the spiritual life of even relative to non-religious Israelis. Therefore, if we talk about the future of Christianity in Israel, then it must inevitably accept Judeo-Christian features.

However, the movement towards the recreation of the Church of the Apostle Jacob, the very one that became the mother of all other churches, goes extremely slowly: there are too few centers of attraction. Almost nowhere do they serve in Hebrew. Yes, in the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Nikolai in Jerusalem sometimes sounds Jewish speech. Yes, Benedictine about. Bernard on Zion sometimes makes a mass in a common language in Israel. And all. At least everything is on the surface. Of course, there are potential members of future Judeo-Christian communities, and the leaders are ready to accept San, but they prefer not to glow yet. Moreover, traditional denominations are quite conservative and afraid of reproaches in proselytism. So the Christian Jews remains not for church structures, but to change the general climate in the country. In this sense, religious minorities were in the same connection with sexual minorities striving for a secular state.

A large role in the life of traditional denominations is played by pilgrims. In 2012 alone, Israel was visited by about 700 thousand Russians - this is a record indicator. And most of them visited sacred places. Of course, there is some difference between pilgrims and tourists, but it, if you keep in mind the immigrants from the CIS countries, is not so significant.

For Russian citizens today, after the cancellation of the visa regime, wide opportunities for travel are open. And they restrain them, apparently, only prices - Israel is a rather expensive country. The structures of the Moscow Patriarchate could help reduce spending on trips, but they are in no hurry to do it. The pilgrimage center of the Russian Orthodox Church, organizing tours, settles tourists in the Gornensky monastery in Ein-Camrem and takes a lot of money for living. You can stop in Jerusalem for free only in the Russian Spiritual Mission of the Russian Orthodox Church on Eleonian Mountain. The Ascension Monastery is a wonderful place, but it, alas, is not rubber.

The Moscow Patriarchate owns real estate in Israel in seven cities with a total area of ​​over 100 thousand square meters. meters. The Sergievsky Compound is especially distinguished - a beautiful place on the main street of Jaffa in Jerusalem. That's where to stop the pilgrims! But so far there are still Israeli government services, despite the agreement on the transfer of former Russian property to the primordial owners. The services are gradually evicted, restoration work began in the building, but they can’t see the end and edge.

The main streams of tourists are rushing along the two channels-Orthodox and Protestant Catholic. Sometimes they merge into one. The stream on Via Dolorosa is especially strong, the street in the old city of Jerusalem, which, according to which it is believed, ran to the path of Christ to the place of crucifix. It is worth looking at the beginning of this path to the place of excavations in the area of ​​the shepherd of the font to see how deep the cultural layer is. All the marks, the Via Dolorosa parking, appeared in a completely different era, in the fifteenth century. But what does it matter? Yes, most likely Praetoria was not here, but in another place, and Simon Kirineanin met Jesus not here, and Golgof is not in the place of the temple of the Holy Sepulcher, but in the area of ​​the eastern bus station, behind the Damassian gates. So, at least, scientists believe. But how important is this? All the same, the gospel events took place on this earth, somewhere here, nearby.

Israel breeds mythology, and at the same time wonderful stories in the Holy Land gain flesh, become part of reality.

Here you can meet with the most unexpected people. Actually, such meetings may be the main value of the pilgrimage trip. But you guess about this retroactively. Because in the foreground - stones, road, artifacts ...