Christians and Jews in the Holy Land were set to begin marking their most important festivals of the year on Friday, with Good Friday and the Jewish holiday of Passover coinciding.
Jewish families were completing last-minute preparations for Passover, which begins at sundown and commemorates the Israelite’s exodus from slavery in Egypt, receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai and eventual journey into the Promised Land.
At a festive dinner called a Seder, unleavened bread is consumed during the seven-day holiday to re-live the hasty flight from Egypt, during which there was no time to allow the bread to rise.
Meanwhile, thousands of Roman Catholics and Protestants were packed into the narrow alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City in processions marking the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.
Orthodox Christians will celebrate Easter next Sunday after holding the Holy Fire ceremony in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre the previous day.
Many Christian pilgrims mark Good Friday by walking from the Franciscan Monastery of the Flagellation along the path where Jesus walked, now known as the “Via Dolorosa” or the “Way of Suffering.”
Sombre pilgrims, some carrying small crosses, others dragging or carrying full-sized ones, were largely silent on Friday as they walked in the procession known as the Stations of the Cross.
At each of 13 stops along the way that depict various incidents that occurred between the time Jesus was condemned to death until his burial, they would break into song, mostly in Arabic.
As the procession wound through the Old City’s main market, a group of Sri Lankan women wearing bright colours stopped for a quick break in a shop selling gold jewellery.
“This is a very special day when my Jesus died,” said Shamli Nonis, who works for an Israeli family as a care giver. “It is a very sad day for us.”
Hundreds of Israeli police and border police carefully watched over the processions under the blazing sun.
Police said they arrested three Jewish right-wing activists carrying a young goat near the Old City walls, which they apparently intended to sacrifice in the vicinity of the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount.
“They had a goat with them that they planned going with to the Old City,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP. “Probably they would have gone to the Temple Mount.”
He said the three, along with a group of minors, were being questioned by police on Friday afternoon but would probably be released later.
Israeli media named one of the group as Noam Federman, a well-known religious nationalist and West Bank settler, and said he intended to re-enact the Passover sacrifice as performed in biblical times.
He made a similar attempt last year.
