Gaza's Christian Community: Feat. Dr. Georg Röwekamp

In this episode, Avraham Burg speaks with Dr. Georg Röwekamp, theologian and historian of the Christian community in the Holy Land, about his personal journey and his new book on the History of the Christian community in Gaza. Röwekamp shares how he came to Jerusalem from Germany at a young age. Röwekamp delves into the oft-forgotten history of the Christian community in Gaza, a modern community with roots stretching back into early antiquity, and his own personal connection to that community. Throughout the conversation, he highlights the strength and courage of the small modern community in the face of danger. Röwekamp also discussed the work that he has been involved in as the manager of the pilgrimage house at Tabga on the Sea of Galilee.

Transcript

Daniel Schwake: I'm Daniel Schwake, the Director of Notre Dame's academic center in Jerusalem, and you're listening to Jerusalem Talks. In this episode of Avraham Burg Speaks with Dr. Georg Röwekamp, theologian and historian, about his personal journey to the Holy Land and his new book on the history of the Christian community in Gaza. Röwekamp delves into the oft-forgotten story of Christianity in Gaza, a community with roots stretching back into early antiquity, and his own personal connection to the people and places. Throughout the conversation, he highlights the strength and courage of the people in the face of danger, sharing what he believes they can symbolize in the world today.

Avrum Burg: Peace on you, Dr. Röwekamp.

Georg Röwekamp: Yes, welcome. And I'm happy to be with you tonight.

Avrum Burg: It's a pleasure because I follow your work all during the country, and we shall go. Country, I mean the land; Not the not the political entity. And I'd like to stop in some of your stops over here. But let's begin with a simple question, okay? What makes a good Northern Westphalian, a young German interested in theology, ending up in 2025 writing about Gaza? I mean, help me.

Georg Röwekamp: Well, I was grown up in a yeah, liberal Catholic family. And so the decision came that I should know more about this religion, Christianity, after my school education, after my time at the Army.

Avrum Burg: The German army.

Georg Röwekamp: The German Army, of course. And so I decided to study theology. And then I had the great chance to participate in the study program of Dormition Abbey. More than 40 years ago, 1981, 82. Yeah. I fell in love with the country, with the city as so many.

Avrum Burg: Georg, Georg, a minute for our audience to understand the Dormition Abbey. It sounds like a place, but not. It's a very, very beautiful central and removed abbey in the center of Jerusalem, between east and west, between local and European. Very German in the ritual and very aesthetic, in the presence, and yet serves the very local community. So it's a beautiful, beautiful junction. I understand why you fell in love.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, exactly. The Abbot of the 1970s, Laurentius Klein. He had the idea that this would be the perfect place for young theology students to come and to study, to understand that Christianity is connected to Judaism, to Islam even. So it was for me something completely new. It put my foot on new ground. Even my study, when I came there. And so I never forgot this experience because there, Judaism, Islam was part of the study program, not as in Germany, where you focus just on Christian topics or even Catholic topics.

Avrum Burg: Before we move, explain to me one term that I'm sorry for the gossip element of it. What is liberal Catholic in Germany?

Georg Röwekamp: There are different branches in Catholicism. Maybe today, even more than at that time. You have those who still love the church and the liturgy as it was before the Second Vatican Council, before the famous Nostra Aetate Constitution. And there are others more open to the modern world. Like in Judaism. You have the Orthodox, you have the secular, the liberal, the conservative. So, somehow, it was kind of reformed Catholicism. This is where I grew up. Yeah, but just growing up in a society or in a parish does not answer all the question. A young person has. So this is why I wanted to study deeper. In the beginning, I did not know what to do with this study. But I wanted to learn. This is why the program at Dormition Abbey was the perfect place to go.

Avrum Burg: So here we are. The years at the end of the 70s, right?

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah. End of the 70s. Beginning of the 80s. 81, 82. This was the year when I went to Jerusalem to study at Dormition.

Avrum Burg: So for us to understand, it's before the eruption. It's ten years after 67 war, but before the first Palestinian uprising. The situation is calm. Politics is very, I would say, backstage politics of coming and exploring the spirituality of the place, is done under no political pressure. Let's put it like this. You don't have to take positions.

Georg Röwekamp: Yes. Of course. Just before we left, after one year, the Lebanon War started.

Avrum Burg: In '82, Yeah.

Georg Röwekamp: In 82. But to be honest, and maybe even until today, it is the only disadvantage of this study program. It is also a kind of a bubble. So we live there. And of course we made a lot of experiences. But always we came back there together with our classmates, and we discussed many theological problems. But maybe we were not as open to what was going around us as we should have been.

Avrum Burg: So now let's take it. Fast forward, I mean, from the first bus stop to the last bus stop this year, 2025. You publish a book about Christians and Christianity in Gaza's region. So talk to me a little bit before we talk about the book and the context of it, or the content of it, the motivation to write it right now. I mean, that's a year in which Gaza is everything but Christian.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah. My main topic during my study was church history. Ancient church history. And this is why I, even during my study program for the first time, heard about the monks of the Gaza region in Byzantine times. So I had heard there was some Christianity in Gaza. But then, when I came back to the country working for the German Association of the Holy Land, an organization which wants to support the local Christians since 1855, as a representative of this organization, I thought we should know about the situation of the Christians in Gaza. And so I decided in April 2023, finally, to go there and to visit the two communities, the Orthodox one and especially the Catholic one. And during these three days, of course, I get known to the priests there, to some of the parish members. And so I felt even more affected than others might be after October 7th with what happened there.

Avrum Burg: We speak about a community of, let's say, Gaza Strip is something like 2 million Gazans, couple of hundreds of them, if at all, are Christian, the abbot at the Catholic one is, I think, somebody from Latin America.

Georg Röwekamp: Yes. At that time there were 1066 Christians remaining.

Avrum Burg: On both communities?

Georg Röwekamp: From both denominations, exactly around 900 Greek Orthodox and 136 Latin Catholic.

Avrum Burg: And as sadly as this question is, you have any idea how many are there now when we talk?

Georg Röwekamp: It's something between 6 and 800. Some of them died. Some of them left the Gaza Strip. And so only a very few still remain there. They all live in the two compounds of the parishes around the church. They all left their regular home because they want to be together. They want to feel protected in the compounds which consist from the church, the schools, the kindergarten, the elderly home, etc. so they have some space to live there.

Avrum Burg: Just one comment about actuality, because we do not want to talk about the politics that the newspapers do day in and day out. It's whomever wants to find can find it. This is chapter; this is an episode about something else. I can say that one of the most impressive spiritual leadership I witnessed in the all of this horrific time since October 7th was two expressions of Cardinal Pizzaballa, who's the Cardinal of the Latin Church here. The first is when the very early on he went there and said to the Hamas people, take me as a hostage and give back the people you kidnapped. And the second is that after the bombardment there, a couple of weeks ago, he simply went and was a father to his congregation, very powerful, very courageous. And I'm proud. I'm telling you, I'm proud I know the person. Very powerful.

Georg Röwekamp: No, you are completely right. We all feel blessed to have him as a leader, as a Patriarch of the Catholic Latin Church during these times. To be honest, in the very beginning, I thought, oh, it's a step back that they don't have a local to be the patriarch of the local Christians, but especially during these years, he is the perfect leader. Yeah, saying many good things and doing many good things. And I agree completely with you, especially these two things. Offering himself as a hostage in exchange and going there the day after the bombardment, together with the Greek Orthodox Patriarch, was a strong sign, and he stayed for three days, so he did not go in and leave. The very same day he stayed there. He went to other places where some Christian work is done in the neighborhood. And so it was really impressive. Yes.

Avrum Burg: So talk to me. Talk to us about your Gaza, the Gaza of the book, the Gaza of the Christians, the Gaza of history.

Georg Röwekamp: Well, when I was in the country and seeing what is going on there in and around Gaza, I thought, what can I do as a church historian, as a theologian? And I said, okay, maybe I can at least tell the story, the history of the Christians in Gaza, because nowadays everybody thinks Gaza, this is only Hamas, this is terrorism, this is war. But I knew from my studies that there is so much more. Tradition says that even the Holy Family, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, on their flight into Egypt, they passed Gaza because the only road from the Holy Land to Egypt is via Gaza.

Avrum Burg: We call it in the ancient language. Via Maris.

Georg Röwekamp: Via Maris. Exactly.

Avrum Burg: The road along the seashore.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. And this passes by Gaza. And so the Holy Family has to have come through Gaza.

Avrum Burg: On the Gaza port was a very important one. Gaza Maiumas.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. Even before Christian times. It was important. The incense from the Arabian Peninsula came with the Nabataeans via Arabia, and Gaza was the port from where it was brought to all over the Mediterranean. The same with the wine from the Negev region.

Avrum Burg: Again, I have to interrupt you in order to make your vast knowledge a bit more accessible. When you watch Gaza today on the TV, it's a locked away place. It's under siege strip, very narrow. At that time, Gaza was an open city. It was a kind of a hub for a very open space that actually was spread all over the Negev desert, going to the east, up to the mountains of Hebron, Judaean Mountain, and therefore Gaza was a port for a larger region. So Gaza, that we know it today is an artificial result of the 48 war, and today is even worse than that, it's a fully demolished. But at the time you described, it was a very open metropolitan.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. And this is why it also became how a subtitle of a book says A City of Many Battles, because many conquerors wanted to have Gaza because of this economic importance of the port, especially. The border city to Egypt from ancient times on. And so it was. Yeah, it was an important city also in the third, fourth century AD, and from that time we have the first witness about Christians in Gaza. It is during the great persecution under Emperor Diocletian that we learn from Eusebius, church historian, that there were martyrs from Gaza. They were found reading the Bible, the gospel.

Avrum Burg: What you were talking about the earliest Christian presence there.

Georg Röwekamp: Around 300 A.D.

Avrum Burg: And was it, sorry for the inquiry, was it new Jews? Which means was there a Jewish community? That part of it adopted the new church was the brand new people converted into the new religion.

Georg Röwekamp: We don't know that in some cases we have the names. But, you know, at that time, even Jews used also Roman or Greek names. So we don't know from the name what was their background? You know, we had Jews, of course, in the Gaza region, we have this famous synagogue with the King David mosaic from the fifth or sixth century. But there were many people from all over the world. And we think that also with merchants from Alexandria or from the West, Christianity came to Gaza, maybe not from Jerusalem, but with the the traders, with the merchants. It arrived there because we have the first witness from Maiumas, the port city of Gaza.

Avrum Burg: So it means we have Christianity there for something like 1700 centuries, which is a long time. And I will say, never seized. I mean, it's a one continuity. And in the introduction to your book, Cardinal Pizzaballa writes that the Christians in Gaza became the light of our church, or the beacon of our church and the entire world, something like that. I mean, the translation is mine. I mean, from your German to my Hebrew to our English. Okay. But he says something like that.

Georg Röwekamp: Yes.

Avrum Burg: What makes the Christians in Gaza such a beacon, such a ray of light, of faith and hope? Why did he write it?

Georg Röwekamp: It is from his Christmas speech, the homily he gave when he came to Gaza to celebrate Christmas with the parish people in Gaza last year, and I think he, together with many others who look to that direction, saw what they are doing, how they preserve, how they stay with their faith, even under very, very difficult conditions. Just living in one compound since nearly two years, very close together, so many challenges. Maybe some would have had the chance to leave, but they decided to stay because this is their homeland. This is where they belong to. To stay what you are under pressure makes you maybe shine brighter than in good times. So this is what you, I think, wanted to say with "you became the light of the world," which is a famous expression from the Gospels. Jesus says, "you are the light of the world," but sometimes you don't see that the Christians are the light of the world, to be honest. But in this case you could see, wow, there is an inner fire. There is an inner light shining bright, maybe even to teach us a lesson. And he wanted to encourage them, telling them maybe not. You don't notice it, but all the world notices it. The world can see that you became the light of our church to the whole world.

Avrum Burg: There is a challenge here. I mean, it's beyond the scope of our conversation. But now let's talk as two friends rather than as to remove the intellectual exploring a topic. Being a Christian, among other things, the will, the motivation, the commitment to oppose hatred and violence. I mean to offer an alternative to hatred and violence. Now you live in this reality. You're Gazan, you're an Arab, you're a Christian, but you're an Arab as well. You're Palestinian as well. Yeah. The fear that hatred and violence, which are all over the place, will trickle in, will challenge not just the individual human but the believer.

Georg Röwekamp: And I think this is also one of the things Cardinal Pizzaballa mentioned in his homily, that one of the persons there told him, we have no violence in our blood. And I also found this to be a very strong expression, because I can imagine that.

Avrum Burg: As Christians I find the same quotation.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, yeah.

Avrum Burg: As Christians, there is no an ounce of violence in our blood. We want to remain Christian. We want to remain the light in this place. It is forbidden for us to enable hatred to trickle into our hearts, even if when we see what happens, this very compelling devotion.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. And this was also for me, a very, very strong statement, because I can imagine that sometimes there might be the temptation also to hit back. I think I would feel this way. But I trust them, I believe them. This is also one of the reasons why I wanted to write this book, to share this this witness, to make clear to so many who think all the Gazans, all the people in the area, are full of violence, full of hatred. Now there are at least some people just being victims. Just don't want an answer. What is happening with new violence?

Avrum Burg: You describe the whole history of the place. You dedicate some place for Samson. I'm not. I'm not sure he was a Jew. I'm not sure he was an Israelite. Maybe he was a Greek Hercules or whatever it is. Christian, he was not. So why Samson? Yes. That's the one who slept the gates of Gaza over his shoulder and walked up to the top of the mountain. But why is this so essential in your writing? Or not essential, but what does it have to do in your book?

Georg Röwekamp: Well, the stories of Samson are also part of the Christian Bible. So this was the first time in my life, I think, when I heard about Gaza, when I read all these old stories during my childhood.

Avrum Burg: I thought it was Tom Jones' Delilah.

Georg Röwekamp: Of course, this is part of the whole story, but of course, also the story with the city gates. And so I thought we should write something about that, especially also because even early Christian theologians had problems with finding a person like Samson in the Bible, and they were even asking what the hell a person like that is doing in our Bible, because he's not a person you should imitate. Having different women from different tribes and doing so many bad things, even dying as a kind of a suicide bomber, taking as many as he could with him into death. Exactly, with the columns. Some early Christian theologians treated it in an interesting way. They thought, okay, we all have to take it symbolically. He who put the city gates of Gaza on his shoulders. He is a prototype for Jesus Christ, who later took the gates of hell on his shoulder, liberating all the souls in Sheol.

Avrum Burg: The inferno, I would say. I mean, if we talk theologically, I can see how Samson fits both into the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, none of the figures of the patriarchs and the heroes and and the kings, none of them was perfect. All of them were so imperfect. And the teaching is: humans are imperfect. And when you go to the New Testament and you look at the, how will I say, the constituency, the first constituencies of Jesus and his teaching, it doesn't go to the high up elite. He goes to their below people, to the poor people, to the tax Collector to the people who not a natural candidate for the new belief. And he said them I want to correct.  With them I want to work. Samson fits it like that. Such an imperfect guy could have been the first emissary.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, yeah. And this is interesting because later, when we speak about the first centuries of Christianity in Gaza, there was a famous bishop named Porphyrios who built the first brick church in Gaza. And he had a kind of colleague. He was a Samson kind of type, and he is called in his vita even a kind of new Samson, because he did the dirty work sometimes for this Porphyrios.

Avrum Burg: I thought he was a bodybuilder.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, something like that. And when he was in conflict with the pagans at that time and he was persecuted the bishop then sometimes this Barakas the new Samson, he tried to defend Porphyrius, and they speak about him as the new Samson because it was a living memory.

Avrum Burg: We have the ancient Samson, the biblical one. We have the early Christians. We have later on, I mean, sometimes it was a real hub. Gaza was a real hub of both spiritual clergy and scientists. The city had some times in which he did not have just a couple of hundreds of believers. It had some times in which it was a serious Christian center. Talk to us about that a little bit.

Georg Röwekamp: Well, it was the Byzantine time, the fifth, sixth, seventh century firsthand. We had a lot of monks living around Gaza, like in the Judean desert, but different from the monks in the Judean Desert, who mainly were skeptical against academics, against study. And so they monks in the Gaza region, they were all affected from the intellectual climate of the city of Gaza, because we had a lot of universities there. You went to study rhetorics to Gaza, from all over the Empire. People came there to study there.

Avrum Burg: But it was a kind of a little Alexandria. What was it?

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was well connected to Alexandria, but like Beirut, there you went to study jurisprudence. For rhetorics, you went to Gaza. To Athens you went to study philosophy. To Alexandria, natural sciences and philosophy. But Gaza was also one of the main hubs for study in the Byzantine times. We have a lot of people from that time. We have their works, comments on the Bible, philosophical books which still survive and give you an idea about the open atmosphere where Christians and pagans could teach together in one university. Also, not that clear everywhere in the empire, But Gaza was special.

Avrum Burg: A pluralistic city?

Georg Röwekamp: Yes, exactly.

Avrum Burg: When the decline of the Christian, the importance of it to the Christian community started, what happened?

Georg Röwekamp: Well, of course, everywhere in the regions, the seventh, the eighth century.

Avrum Burg: The rise of Islam.

Georg Röwekamp: It happened. But, you know, also in the area we had this terrible earthquake in 1749, which coincides with the move from the Islamic capital, from Damascus to Baghdad. In 1750, the Umayyads ended.

Avrum Burg: The Umayyads to the Abbasids.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. This was 1750.

Avrum Burg: And Baghdad was considered the House of Wisdom.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. So everything moved eastwards and all Palestine, the Holy Land was only a border province, somehow of the Islamic empire. And all this together had also effect on Gaza, although it remained an important city, and Christian life even continued there even from the 10th 11th century. We have witness about a bishop called Sulaiman of Gaza.

Avrum Burg: Sulaiman, a bishop named Sulaiman.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. Sulaiman. Yes.

Avrum Burg: Solomon.

Georg Röwekamp: Solomon. Exactly.

Avrum Burg: Okay.

Georg Röwekamp: He at the same time is the first Arab poet, Christian Arab poet writing just in Arabic. He came from Gaza.

Avrum Burg: Rather than Latin, you mean?

Georg Röwekamp: No, rather than Greek.

Avrum Burg: Only Greek.

Georg Röwekamp: Greek or Aramaic. These were the languages of the Christians.

Avrum Burg: Aramaic was the language of Jesus of the time.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. But it continued later. The old Syriac derives from Aramaic. So these were the languages spoken in the area under Christians. And more and more they started to speak Arabic, like all the Muslims around them. And he started to do poetry in Arabic, Christian Arabic, poetry, wonderful poems. He published a so-called Diwan with more than 90 long poems about the church, about his personal life, which was very hard. He lost his wife, he lost his son. Only then he became a bishop. And it's kind of lamentation about his life, but still based on the Christian faith. It's very impressive to read that.

Avrum Burg: Take us to your workshop. Okay. You visit the place in '23. That's before the contemporary horrific situation. And you say the place is too small. I have to give it the glory of the past. I mean, I want people to understand that it is a very well-rooted situation. So where do you work? What are your regions, what kind of libraries you were sitting? Where did you find your your materials?

Georg Röwekamp: About the early history? You find all the writings of the Church Fathers, for example, in Jerusalem at the École Biblique, the German monastery, the Dormition Abbey, they have something but for the history in the 19th 20th century. I also went to the Latin Patriarchate because they have a lot of letters there from the priests of that time. Even in the Austrian hospice, because the first Catholic priest living and ministering in Gaza was an Austrian who before had been the vice director of the Austrian hospice. So there were different places where I could find something.

Avrum Burg: I didn't know that the Austrian hospice they have a library or an archive.

Georg Röwekamp: They have an archive with letters, especially from that time, from all the directors. And I had the chance to see the originals.

Avrum Burg: Let's tell our audience what is the Austrian Hospice? We speak about everybody knows when you go to the Via Dolorosa, the famous stations of the last torture road of Jesus, at the corner, you have a beautiful place, which is an Austrian hospice. Today is a kind of a hostel. The only place in Jerusalem in which you can have a real good apple strudel, was run at the time, I take it, by Schwester Bernadette or whomever was there. It's an institution of a kind Austrian German presence in the heart of the old city. Right? So.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, like so many Christian houses, they have a long and interesting history. It was founded also in the second half of the 19th century. Then, especially after 1948.

Avrum Burg: You ran many of the German, I mean, all the German institutions here, the schools and this. So, you know, the presence of the German-speaking variations of Catholic presence in the Holy Land. Right? So this way, you know it from. I want to take it a step further with your permission, what is the real fear as a Christian, not just as a human being, as a Christian from the current demolition of Gaza? What, God forbid, might be lost to human memory if what happens in Gaza today continues beside the humanity and the ethics of the people.

Georg Röwekamp: Well, for sure it is clear what happens to the Christians there in general is not worse than what happens to all the other people there. A man is a man, and a woman is a woman, and with no regard their or his faith. But of course, it might be that a chapter of history comes to an end there, and the last witnesses of this Christian presence might vanish after the war. Before the war, when I went there, I found a wonderful preserved archaeological sites. The first Christian monastery in the Holy Land was founded by Hilarion of Gaza in the beginning of the fourth century, and it became a wonderful monastery. It was excavated by archaeologists of the École Biblique in Jerusalem and Palestinian archaeologists, and it was very well preserved. I got a wonderful guided tour there, and there are other places in the camp of Jabalya. There was a Byzantine church with wonderful mosaics, and I understood that it's completely demolished since months now. The Great Mosque of Gaza is the former Crusader church and it was bombed totally. If there will be not a chance to rebuild it or to see what is still there, not only the Christian presence will come to an end. Yeah, we don't know what's going to happen with the people of Gaza within the next months, but also no trace of their memory will stay there. This is a real danger, and we feel this danger all over the country that it one day will become kind of Christian Disneyland with just some foreign clergymen to take care about the holy sites. But in Gaza it could become reality very soon.

Avrum Burg: Sad. Among other things, Georg, you are German-born, but with a sense of humor. You are a serious historian, but I somehow see your smiles. Talk to me about Schalke 04.

Georg Röwekamp: Well.

Avrum Burg: You see? I got you there.

Georg Röwekamp: I see you studied my CV.

Avrum Burg: Oh, yeah, I did. And I read as much as I could.

Georg Röwekamp: Well, I live in an area here in Germany where football is kind of religion.

Avrum Burg: Football is what the Americans calling soccer and we call football. Yeah.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. And one of the famous clubs in my area is Schalke 04.

Avrum Burg: Was established in 1904.

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly.

Avrum Burg: Okay.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, it's a special club because in the beginning, all the players were working in one of the many coal mines here in the area, and football until then was a sport for upper-class people, and they were the ones to defeat first time these upper-class clubs, and in 1932 they became the first time German champion. Yeah, and of course, for all the region where so many coal miners, workers and steelworkers were living, it was kind of symbol for, we are someone, we can do something, we can even defeat the upper class.

Avrum Burg: This is what I like Werder Bremen. But that's a different conversation. Yeah. And you wrote about it. I mean, you wrote about a history of it.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, but not as a regular sports book. Just noting the results. But to understand, how could it come that a sports club, football club, where nowadays no one of the players knows about the history and nobody of them worked with coal? And so how can it be that this sports club still is a symbol of the whole region? Why do they identify with them? Why? For some people, it's really like a religion. They see their own fate mirrored in what is going on with this club. Like religious people connect their life with the life of Jesus. They connected their life with this club.

Avrum Burg: But I seen a lot of your writings. I mean, I didn't read them all. I mean, I don't want to pretend, okay. But in a lot of your work and a lot of your writing, you follow the individual. We call it in Hebrew, keshah yom, that his day is very hard. I mean, the working class, the the suffering people. And you follow them. Okay. So talk to me a little bit about Tabga. You spend a lot of time in Tabga, and that's some beautiful projects out there. Some of them for needy kids, for needy children and all of this. So you wrote about Tabga as well. And Tabga is the capital of Upper Galilee, of the Galilee miracle region, right?

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah.

Avrum Burg: So what's Tabga for you.

Georg Röwekamp: Tabga is one of the places of the Holy Land I love most from the very beginning. It's so completely different compared to Jerusalem, where I used to live before. And it also has a long history. It's the place where Christians commemorate the multiplying of loaves and fish, one of the miracles of Jesus.

Avrum Burg: And where Jesus walked on the water. And the other side is where the pigs ran into the water. I mean, the region of miracles.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, exactly. And it was in the 19th century that the German Association of the Holy Land had the chance to purchase a huge piece of land there, because they wanted to establish a colony of German farmers. That was the idea at that time, nobody knew about the holy site because since centuries, nobody knew exactly where the place was where the early Christians commemorated the multiplication. They had the idea to establish a German colony, and they did it the same way the first kibbutzim were founded, because the local Bedouins were not so much in favor of their new neighbors. And so within one night on the 6th February in 1889, they brought prefabricated walls and roofs from Tsafit with camels, and within one night they built up the first two huts. So Homa haMigdal the same system. So then it was clear they were there .

Avrum Burg: The wall in tower. Exactly the Zionist project of immediately settling the acquired land. Yeah.

Georg Röwekamp: And this is what they did in 1889.

Avrum Burg: Wow.

Georg Röwekamp: And the problem was, they did not find enough farmers. So what to do with this piece of land? There was already a main building to become the center of the colony. And the priest, the director there said, okay, let's open it as a guest house. And this is how the modern Tabga started.

Avrum Burg: Up until today.

Georg Röwekamp: Until today. So in the meantime, they found the old ruins. And they found, oh, we have even a holy place. But this was second. But he started to continue with the guest house. And in the 1920s, 1930s, many, many people came from all over the world, also from the country. We still have the guest books with many, many famous signatures from Balfour, Henrietta Szold, Sukenik, and so they all were guests in the guest house. Of course, in 1939, the war broke out between the British and the Germans. So the British took the house, and we got it back only late in the 1970s from the State of Israel. But still, we try to have an open house. And this was one of the advantages of the pandemic and of the last war, that we could open much more to local guests. We were always open. But you know better than me. When Israelis plan a vacation, they do it 2 or 3 weeks in advance. And we always had to tell them, sorry, we are fully booked with Germans, with Americans from abroad.

Avrum Burg: Two, three weeks, no Georg, two three weeks in advance. These are the German born Israelis. Israelis do it 24 hours before.

Georg Röwekamp: You say that.

Avrum Burg: Okay, okay.

Georg Röwekamp: This is the problem. Now the guest house is open till today. For for local guests. But the second thing what you already mentioned is that close to the holy place, a church was built in Byzantine style on the ruins of the old church. A wonderful church, one of the most beautiful in the country. That's not what I say. What so many visitors say. And the monks living there.

Avrum Burg: Monks and nuns separately?

Georg Röwekamp: Exactly. Yes. Nuns and monks live there. But in the 1970s, 80s, already the monks from the Dormition Abbey, who also served there in Tabga. They thought, what means this story of multiplying loaves and fish today? And they said, it's a story of sharing because this is how it started. Jesus took the bread, the two fish. He said the blessing. And then he started to share. And this is what we should do today. We should not share only bread, but our space. And so they opened the space for people in need, especially for handicapped people. And it was during the First Intifada, especially, that they brought handicapped and injured people from the Palestinian side and from the Israeli Jewish side together to that place.

Avrum Burg: To play along the water and under the shadow.

Georg Röwekamp: Because Tabga, name derives from heptapyrgion, a Greek word, the seven springs. And we have wonderful springs in the area. And one of the springs created a pool. And this pool is still accessible for people, even with wheelchairs for handicapped people. And so it's for those groups still coming today, it's a kind of paradise. And still we have groups coming from Bethlehem, coming from Kfar Tikva near Haifa. They celebrate Sukkot together. There. They built a sukkah. It's a kind of Paradise for all of them.

Avrum Burg: I skip now, I'm sorry to skip. I skip now, your Caesarea, and I skip now all the other places that you wrote, and you described. And you argue and you do argue, okay? I mean, you make statements. I want to take you to one place, okay? To one book of yours, which I say, I enjoyed it a lot. Okay. It's a kind of the Holy Land, a travel companion to the holy site of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Okay? It's a kind of Trip Advisor. Okay. And you wrote it's, you welcome, not a tourist, a visitor to come to see, to learn an in a way you want each and every one of the people who follow the path that you pave to take something with them back home. It's not just to come and, okay, I've been there. So what is it you want your readers, or you want your students, or you want the people who listen to us to take from this tortured holy land?

Georg Röwekamp: The background of this book was that in the 1990s, I started to work as a tour leader and a tour guide for German tourists and pilgrims, and I always tried to explain them what they see, but not only ending up with that, but also to ask, why should we know this place? What can we learn from here? What can we take as a message from here? Because more and more people have seen so many places all over the world, sometimes they even don't remember all they've seen. But I say, okay, These are some special places. They have a message and I want to try to guide you. And you follow me as far as you want. We start with the facts. This is for everybody. And then we start to learn what maybe people thought when they built the place. And then we do a last step to understand what can it mean for us. Let's speak again about Tabga. We have this place where they commemorate the the miracle. I also don't know what exactly happened there 2000 years ago, but we have a famous mosaic there. The mosaic with a basket and loaves of bread in it and two fish. But other than in the gospel, there are not five loaves, but four loaves in the basket. And the monks there say this is not by coincidence, or because the artist was a bad artist. No the fifth loaf is always what is lying on the altar every day when we celebrate our Holy Mass. That means even the story about the multiplication was not only talking about the past, but it is to be transferred to nowadays. As I told you, it's a story of sharing, and the story says if you start to share, you will find out there is more than enough for everybody. There's more than you thought, and this has already a message. It has to do with refugees. It has to do with world nutrition. If you start to share, you will find out there is more than enough, more than you thought. And then the spiritual message. This is the last step. Christians believe the story of the multiplication goes on every day. When Christians gather around this altar and start to share a piece of bread, then the same spirit can come again and it will feed an inner starving, an inner hunger, as it is said 2000 years ago. But this is what I wanted to show them. You don't come here only to see remains of the past. You come here because these remains have a message for today. If you want to take it or not, it's up to you. But I at least try to guide you this way. And you follow me as far as you want.

Avrum Burg: So symbolically, when I go to to the mass on Sunday and I taste the flesh of the the Savior, and I drink the blood, I mean the sacrament, I ask myself, 2000 years from today when people will look back, who will be the Agnus Dei of today?

Georg Röwekamp: There are many victims all over the world. They feel consolated by knowing that they are not the only ones, that they are not the first ones, that they are not alone on their Via Crucis on their way of the cross. Of course, this is not. You can preach to somebody, you have to see it like that. But let's come back to the people of Gaza, the parish there, the Christians which were addressed by Patriarch Pizzaballa. They are the ones, they stay with Jesus, as he said, as they say themselves. This gives us the strength to survive all this, because I cannot imagine how it is to live under this pressure, under with this fear, every night and day.

Avrum Burg: So they are the Agnus Dei of today, in the sense that they actually carry the name of God in their very presence, even by being permanently victimized. Is that so, theologically speaking?

Georg Röwekamp: Yes, one can say so, yes.

Avrum Burg: Is that one of the motivation for you to say Gaza is not just about terror, it's about a deeper Christian profound message?

Georg Röwekamp: Well, maybe this is the last step the reader may take. Again, what I can do is telling a story offering this concept of seeing things. This is why I end up with the homily of Patriarch Pizzaballa. And if the reader wants to accept this point of view, it's up to him. I'm not a missioner.

Avrum Burg: You are a liberal Catholic. You're not a missioner.

Georg Röwekamp: Yeah, yeah. But at least I present what people think, how they see things. And then you, as a reader, you might be the one to take your conclusions.

Avrum Burg: I, as a reader, who's not Christian and not living in the observing world, okay, when I read what you wrote, I go back not only to the book slash books that you generously enough, send me a PDF copy of it, and it took me a while to open. Thank you. I also look at some of your conversations and interviews And in one of them you said something that was very interesting for me. You spoke about the different experience of being a Christian in Bethlehem and a Christian in the Galilee. In Bethlehem, you have to adopt the anti-occupation position. In the North, at Tabga, like you have to adopt the pluralism of the three religions together. It challenged me. I mean, where am I? Who am I Who reads, georg? And what do I take out of the reading? Okay, am I this, am I that? And it leaves me actually with one last question between us. I hope it's just the beginning of a conversation between us, not just an episode. The Gaza war will be over one way or another. I hope one way, I mean with the way of eventually putting an end to atrocities and mutual crimes and all of this maliciousness hatred, etc. Is there a way in which the Christian way can offer both the Jewish zealots and the Hamas fanatics a different reading of the human in front of God approach, in order for the the Gaza Christian community to be a cornerstone of reconciliation?

Georg Röwekamp: First, I come back to what you said first. Yes, for me it was quite challenging. It was new to me to see that even the Christians in the Holy Land have different positions, different views of the situation. The Christians in the Galilee, they live close to the Lebanese border. And even my Christian colleagues, they said, we are happy if the Hezbollah threat will finish and we support the army in doing what they are doing. And on the other hand, I had Christian colleagues from Bethlehem, and they know Israeli soldiers only as part of an occupation army. But the second point is the Christian community of Gaza is very, very, very small. It's 0.05%. And most of the Gaza people, they don't even know a Christian. And this is also why the propaganda of Hamas against every infidel had some success. The people told me that often when they meet some people in Gaza, they have never heard about Christians or even only in a very bad way. So if they really could be on the spot, the nucleus of something new. To be honest, I doubt it. But I was very impressed by seeing also in other places that the Christian idea of reconciliation. It's not only a Christian idea, but it's a Christian idea of reconciliation is still vivid, still living in small groups. I was so impressed when I first met members of the parents circle know about this association, where family members of terror victims from both sides came together.

Avrum Burg: Bereaved Israelis and Palestinians working together towards the end of atrocities.

Georg Röwekamp: They lost a son, they lost a daughter, they lost the father, but still, or even then, they wanted to meet the other side, to understand the other side, to start a new way together. So even if not the Christian community itself, but groups who are filled with this kind of spirit, they could make a difference in the time after the war. Of course, they are also very, very small groups. But the Christians, they have this parable of the seeds, the small seeds of the mustard, who becomes a big tree. And sometimes I think these communities, these associations could be these seeds of something new.

Avrum Burg: Georg, after an hour of a conversation that we jumped into so many oceans and pools, I've no clue what is a liberal Catholic, but I know an optimist one when I meet him and I'm so grateful. Thank you very much for everything you do.

Georg Röwekamp: Thank you very much for inviting me. It was a great pleasure and honor to speak to you. And from my side, it could be only the first one in a row.

Avrum Burg: That's a deal.

Gabriel Mitchell: Jerusalem Talks is brought to you by the University of Notre Dame's academic center in Jerusalem, and was made possible by the efforts of Avraham Burg, Daniel Shwake, Gabriel Mitchell, David Turjman, Ben Wallach, and Nathan Steinmeyer. Learn more about us at Jerusalem.nd.edu