Repost: In the little town of Bethlehem, they grieve
We go back in time with two literary giants even as the only dismal change in Gaza is the death toll
Welcome to This Week, Those Books, your rundown on books new and old that resonate with the week’s big news story.
🎉 Rejoice…our community of more than 10,000 subscribers is now in 118 countries. 🎉
Stuck for a last minute gift for a loved one? How about a subscription to This Week, Those Books, a news literacy effort that provides crucial context in just a few minutes? Click here:
If you can’t pay, just email thisweekthosebooks@substack.com and we’ll give you full access, including to the archives, no questions asked.
Programming note: We’re taking a break…to read 📚…and will be doing reposts like this one. Back with new content on Jan 15.
– Rashmee
The Big Story:
Christmas marks 15 months since Israel began to pound1 the Palestinian territory of Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas massacre. The only difference for Gaza between Christmas 2023 and 2024 is the death toll. Now more than 45,000, the toll is twice that last Christmas.
In 2023, in empathy, sympathy and grief, there was no Christmas in Bethlehem.
Bethlehem, which is synonymous with the birth of Jesus,2 is in the Israeli-occupied West Bank part of the Palestinian Territories.
In November 2023, Palestinian leaders3 of various Christian denominations in Bethlehem decided that the devastation, bloodshed and suffering in Gaza, less than 50 miles away, left no place for Christmas cheer in their town. So, no giant tree and sparkling lights in Manger Square, a focal point for Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem. And no Christmas parade.
Cancelling Christmas celebrations meant there were few visitors to the fourth century Church of the Nativity, famous for the grotto that’s said to mark the exact spot where Christians believe Jesus was born.
And in the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, a short distance away from the Church of the Nativity, there was a disturbing ‘rubble nativity’ 4scene in an unusual manger. The pastor had placed a baby Jesus in debris – broken paving stones and concrete – to symbolise, he said, Gaza’s suffering children “being pulled from under the rubble on a daily basis…Jesus is in solidarity with those who suffered”.
The Backstory:
Last Christmas, calls for Israel to stop its bombardment of Gaza grew louder as the toll of dead Palestinians approached 20,000.
As I found on a Christmas visit to Bethlehem a few years ago, the tourism and business opportunities at that time of year are crucial to a town with one of the highest rates of unemployment in the West Bank.
This Week, Those Books:
A travelogue that covers Bethlehem by one of America’s greatest writers.
An unusual offering on Bethlehem by the world’s most famous mystery writer.
This Week’s Books:
The Innocents Abroad (Chapter 55)
By Mark Twain
Publisher: American Publishing Company
Year: 1869
I recommend one chapter of this classic bestseller by Mark Twain because it’s so seasonally appropriate. In Chapter 55, Twain is in the Holy Land, and he drily describes his shock and awe at the commerce and profiteering from stones and masonry that are somehow supposed to be infused with “a stirring and important” religious history.
“We are surfeited with sights,” Twain writes. “The sights are too many…It is a very relief to steal a walk of a hundred yards without a guide along to talk unceasingly about every stone you step upon and drag you back ages and ages to the day when it achieved celebrity.” For all his scepticism, however, Twain acknowledges the pervading sense of belief at sites regarded as holy: “With all its clap-trap side-shows and unseemly impostures of every kind, it is still grand, revered, venerable…”
Choice quote:
“In the huge Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, built fifteen hundred years ago by the inveterate St. Helena, they took us below ground, and into a grotto cut in the living rock. This was the ‘manger’ where Christ was born. A silver star set in the floor bears a Latin inscription to that effect. It is polished with the kisses of many generations of worshiping pilgrims…. As in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, envy and uncharitableness were apparent here. The priests and the members of the Greek and Latin churches cannot come by the same corridor to kneel in the sacred birthplace of the Redeemer, but are compelled to approach and retire by different avenues, lest they quarrel and fight on this holiest ground on earth.”
Star over Bethlehem
By Agatha Christie Mallowan
Publisher: Collins
Year: 1965
The queen of crime used a different name – incorporating that of her second husband Max Mallowan – to distinguish this illustrated collection of short stories and poems from her spectacularly successful murder mysteries. She was right to do so. This book has an obviously religious theme – it has a couple of Christmas stories set in Bethlehem and one about seeing Christ in an Arab man in London. While well written, it is not quite what you’d expect from Agatha Christie and has unsurprisingly remained relatively unknown.
Israel-Hamas War: Timeline and key developments, ABC News, Nov 2023
Welcome to Palestine, an initiative of Palestinian civil society in the West Bank