A Benedictine Abbey In An Arab-israeli Town

[DameAgnes]

Beautiful

 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/07/11/benedictine-hospitality-in-israel/

[CountrySteve21]

Now the whole town will be Catholic soon....

[Antigonos]

Now the whole town will be Catholic soon....

 

Strongly doubt it. :-)  Abu Ghosh is an interesting place, about a 10 minute drive outside of Jerusalem.  The town is overwhelmingly Muslim, partly "local" Arab but with a very large Circassian population.  In Ottoman times, mercenaries from what is now Georgia, Chechnya, etc. in the Trans-Caucasus region were given, instead of money, land grants when they retired.  They settled in several parts of what is now Israel, marrying into local Muslim families. There are a lot of them in the Galilee, too. 

 

In 1948 the elders of Abu Ghosh voted to ask for Israeli citizenship, because, although Muslim, they did not feel any real sense of kinship with the Arabs.  They are very well integrated into Israel.  On weekends especially, many Jewish Israelis go to Abu Ghosh because there are a number of excellent restaurants there, and shops. [The builders who built the extension onto my house are from Abu Ghosh].  There is a liturgical music festival held annually in the church, btw.

 

It's really too bad the writer didn't go to Jerusalem -- for one thing, she would have been able to get treatment for her illness easily.  There are a number of other sites in the vicinity she would have enjoyed visiting, one being the Trappist monastery at Latrun, which produces fine wine.  The number of Latin Catholics in Israel is not large -- most Christian Israeli Arabs are Orthodox -- but the Crusaders did build a LOT, here and there, and there are a number of religious foundations outside the main centers of Christian pilgrimage.

Edited July 12, 2014 by Antigonos