The Chautauqua Institution's Department of Religion observes Abrahamic week by focusing on the most iconic of sacred spaces -- considered by the three Abrahamic Faiths as the most holy of sacred places -- Jerusalem.
Invited from Jerusalem to participate in the conversation are members of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic faiths who can impart both their understandings of how this penultimate sacred space came to be so regarded, as well as their visions of how it might be shared in peace.
Bio
Dr. Ori Z. Soltes
Ori Z. Soltes is Goldman Professorial Lecturer in Theology and Fine Arts at Georgetown University, and the former Director and Curator of the B'nai B'rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, where he curated over 80 exhibitions. He has taught and lectured in 23 other universities and museums throughout the country, on subjects ranging from the Arab-Israeli conflict to "The Body in Ancient Art." Both before and since his years as a museum director, he has guest-curated exhibitions across the United States and overseas that have focused on diverse aspects of both Western art throughout the ages and art beyond the West from across the world.
Professor Soltes was educated in Classics and Philosophy at Haverford College, in Classics at Princeton University and The Johns Hopkins University, and in Interdisciplinary Studies at Union University. He is the author of over 180 articles, exhibition catalogues, essays and books on a wide range of topics, and the writer, director, and narrator of over thirty documentary videos. His most recent books include Our Sacred Signs: How Christian, Jewish and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source (Westview Press 2005), The Ashen Rainbow: Essays on the Arts and the Holocaust (Bartleby Press 2006), and Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Searching for Oneness (Rowman and Littlefield 2008). Two current book projects include Untangling the Web: Why the Middle East is a Mess and Always Has Been and Famous Jewish Trials: From Jesus to Jonathan Pollard (both forthcoming, Bartleby Press, spring-summer, 2010).
Dr. Soltes has varying degrees of working knowledge in some two dozen languages, and has lectured or taught throughout the United States, in various parts of the former Soviet Union, in Israel, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and Austria. He has led study tours from Scandinavia to Ethiopia, covering a wide range of archaeological, art historical, theological, and literary topics from the Ancient to the Modern eras.
City (pop., 2006 est.: 729,100), ancient city of the Middle East that since 1967 has been wholly under the rule of the State of Israel. Located in the heart of historic Palestine, it is nestled between the West Bank and Israel. The Old City is a typical walled Middle Eastern enclosure; the modern city is an urban agglomeration of high-rises and housing complexes. It is holy to Judaism as the site of the Temple of Jerusalem, to Christianity because of its association with Jesus, and to Islam because of its connection with the Mi'raj (the Prophet Muhammad's ascension to heaven). Jewish shrines include the Western Wall. Islamic holy places include the Dome of the Rock. In 1000 BCEDavid made it the capital of Israel. Razed by the Babylonians in the 6th century BCE, it thereafter enjoyed only brief periods of independence. The Romans devastated it in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE, banishing the Jewish population. From 638 it was ruled by various Muslim dynasties, except for short periods during the Crusades when it was controlled by Christians. Rule by the Ottoman Empire ended in 1917, and the city became the capital of the British mandate of Palestine. It was thereafter the subject of competing Zionist and Palestinian national aspirations. Israel claimed the city as its capital after the Arab-Israeli War in 1948 and took the entire city during the Six-Day War of 1967. Its status as Israel's capital has remained a point of contention: official recognition by the international community has largely been withheld pending final settlement of regional territorial rights.
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