One City, Three Covenants

There is no city on earth quite like Jerusalem. In roughly one square kilometer of ancient stone — the Old City — three of the world's great monotheistic religions stake their deepest sacred claims. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all revere Jerusalem not as a symbol but as the literal geography of divine encounter. Understanding why each faith holds this city at the center of its spiritual imagination is one of the most illuminating journeys a person can undertake.

Jerusalem in Jewish Tradition

For Judaism, Jerusalem — Yerushalayim — is the city where heaven and earth touch. It was here that Abraham bound Isaac on Mount Moriah (Genesis 22). Here that King David established his capital and brought the Ark of the Covenant. Here that Solomon built the First Temple, and here that the Second Temple stood for centuries as the heart of Jewish worship until its destruction by Rome in 70 CE.

The Temple Mount — Har HaBayit — remains the holiest site in Judaism. Because the Temple's precise location is uncertain and Jewish law prohibits entering certain areas, many Orthodox Jews do not walk on the Mount itself. Instead, the Western Wall — the last standing support structure of the Temple complex — serves as the closest accessible point of prayer, a place of longing for the Temple's restoration woven into three daily prayers.

The phrase "Next year in Jerusalem" (L'shanah haba'ah b'Yerushalayim), recited at the close of the Passover Seder, encapsulates two thousand years of Jewish yearning for this city — a yearning that, for most of that time, was purely spiritual rather than physical.

Jerusalem in Christian Tradition

For Christians, Jerusalem is where salvation history reached its climax. It is the city where Jesus rode into on a donkey to the crowd's acclaim, where he overturned the money-changers' tables in the Temple courts, where he shared the Last Supper with his disciples, prayed in Gethsemane, was tried before Pilate, and was crucified, buried, and — according to Christian faith — raised from the dead.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, shared among multiple Christian denominations including Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Armenian, Ethiopian, Coptic, and Syriac communities, marks the traditional sites of both the crucifixion (Golgotha) and the tomb. The Via Dolorosa — the Way of Sorrows — winds through the Old City's Muslim and Christian quarters, tracing the traditional path Jesus walked carrying the cross.

For Christians, Jerusalem is not merely where something happened — it is where everything happened. This is why Jerusalem has drawn pilgrims since the earliest centuries of the church, why the Crusades were launched in its name, and why it continues to draw millions of Christian pilgrims each year.

Jerusalem in Islamic Tradition

Islam's connection to Jerusalem is equally profound, rooted in the remarkable event known as the Isra and Mi'raj — the Night Journey. According to Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad was miraculously transported from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from the rock on the Temple Mount, ascended through the heavens to the presence of God. Jerusalem — known in Arabic as Al-Quds ("The Holy") — was, in fact, Islam's first qibla, the direction of prayer, before it was changed to Mecca.

The Dome of the Rock, built in 691 CE, is one of the oldest and most beautiful structures in the Islamic world. Its golden dome shelters the sacred rock from which the Prophet ascended. Beside it stands the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam, which hosts Friday prayers for thousands of Muslim worshippers. The entire elevated plaza — Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) — is the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina.

Points of Convergence

Despite the city's contested nature, there are remarkable points of shared reverence:

  • All three faiths trace their spiritual lineage to Abraham and honor him as a patriarch of faith
  • All three traditions include prayer, fasting, pilgrimage, and the giving of charity as spiritual disciplines
  • All three faiths read overlapping scripture — the Hebrew Bible is shared (in different forms) by all three
  • All three traditions include figures who prayed in Jerusalem: David, Jesus, and Muhammad all have sacred associations with the same hilltop

Living Together in the Holy City

The Old City of Jerusalem is divided into four quarters — Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Armenian — a structure that reflects centuries of negotiated coexistence. Daily life here is a complex choreography of overlapping religious calendars, different Sabbaths (Friday for Muslims, Saturday for Jews, Sunday for Christians), shared streets, and competing claims.

Interfaith dialogue in Jerusalem is not primarily a conference-room exercise — it happens in the daily reality of neighbors, shopkeepers, clergy, and pilgrims navigating the same ancient stones. At its best, this shared city is humanity's most vivid argument for the possibility of coexistence. At its most difficult, it is a mirror held up to the unresolved tensions of history.

Why Jerusalem Still Matters

Jerusalem defies reduction. It cannot be explained purely politically, purely religiously, or purely historically — it demands all three frameworks simultaneously. For believers of all three faiths, to stand in Jerusalem is to stand in a place where the human and the divine have intersected in history, and where that intersection still hums with living meaning. That, perhaps, is why — despite everything — so many people from so many backgrounds still come, still pray, and still leave changed.