Episode Details

Jerusalem is the only city on Earth whose primary export is holiness—yet it’s also one of the most physically divided places in the world. In this episode, we explore a listener’s question: among the devout Christians, Muslims, and Jews who make pilgrimage to Jerusalem’s sacred sites, does a shared religiosity connect them more deeply than their theological differences divide them? We trace the city’s history of managed separation—from the Ottoman millet system to the Status Quo at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre—and ask whether Jerusalem’s model of coexistence through paralysis can ever evolve into genuine interfaith understanding.