Where Is the Land Holy?

Abstract

Where is the Holy Land sacred? Certainly not everywhere—nor is it holy to all who live there. Of course, to religious Jews, the entire land is holy, because it is the Promised Land pledged (with differing definitions of its borders!) to Abraham and his descendants. But we must recall that only about a third of all Jews consider themselves religious. Religious Christians also speak of the Holy Land, but these believers, too, are a minority today. And they do not claim that the Holy Land is their land. Nor do religious Muslims make this claim. For Christians and Muslims, specific sites make the Holy Land sacred. Their emotional ties are thus to various individual places within the land rather than to the land as a whole.