Who Opens the Holy Sepulchre ?
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem is one of the most important churches in the Christian world, if not the most important of all. According to tradition, this is the place where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried, and from where he ascended to heaven. Due to its great significance, the church became a source of disputes and debates between the various sects and fractions in the Christian church, which have acquired or assumed various rights regarding it over the years. The many frictions led to the signing of a Status Quo agreement in the middle of the 19th century, which defined the division of rights between the various Christian factions regarding the church.
One of the most important assets one can have, without a doubt, is ownership of the keys to the church, and thus the ability to open and close it. Therefore, it may be surprising to discover that the keys to the heavy front door, which by the way has been preserved as-is from the Crusaders period to present day, as well as the responsibility for opening and locking the church, have been in the hands of two Muslim families for hundreds of years.
According to tradition, this practice began already in the early Arab period. The keys to the church were given to the Jodeh family, and the Nuseibeh family is responsible for opening and closing the doors. Both families get a symbolic payment from the Christian church in exchange for their services, and the Muslim guards still have a bench located to the left of the church entrance.
Every day at 5 o'clock in the morning there is an opening ceremony of the church. At the opening time, the monks living inside the church from the various Christian churches - the Greek-Orthodox, the Franciscan-Catholics and the Armenians, stand inside the church behind the locked door. The monks take a ladder out of a slot in the door and hand it to representatives of the Muslim families waiting outside. The representative of the Jodeh family gives the key to the representative of the Nuseibeh family, and he climbs the ladder and opens the doors of the church. After that, the representative of the Nuseibeh family is the one who pushes the doors open - thus opening the church for a new day of prayer and visits. In the evening, a similar ceremony takes place, where the heavy doors are locked for the night.
(Anecdote authored by: עמיר)
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