But the reason it seems this way is that most of the churches a visitor will encounter are not community churches, but rather memorial churches. What I mean by this is that these churches have been built and are maintained to commemorate an event in the life of Jesus, or a teaching, or a miracle performed by Jesus.

These monumental churches often do not have communities attached to them, but simply belong to a group within a larger denomination, and this group has the responsibility for that site to maintain it and to keep it open to visitors.

Most of these commemorative churches are big, and have a lively flow of visitors. A few of  them charge a small entrance fee. Most of them have been re-built within the last 150 years, but are generally built on top of earlier churches from the Byzantine or Crusader periods, often
incorporating architectural features of these earlier buildings.

Crowds in Gethsemane

Denominational, and without a congregation, but services may still take place. Many of these churches are under the autonomous responsibility of the Fransiscans, therefore Catholic. They are places of great importance to the Christian visitor, and Catholic pilgrim groups will often hold their daily mass in one of these churches.

The mass is conducted, while the other visitors throng around, taking photos and videos of the building as well as of the mass. For many non-catholic visitors this is the first time they may be seeing and hearing a mass being performed.

There are exceptions to this, such as The Catholic Church of the Annunciation and the Greek Orthodox Church of Mary’s Well in Nazareth. They both have communities attached to them. So they should not be visited on a Sunday morning.

There are a few other churches that will be closed off to other visitors, while mass in going on. But usually there is plenty of space on the ground around to get an impression of the place, and with some luck the mass will end, and the church can then also be visited. But there are no guarantees.

El-Aqsa Mosque

So what about synagogues and mosques? There are plenty of these around as well.

The mosques are quite obvious within the Arab towns and villages. They are easy to recognize with their tall minarets from where the muezzin will call the faithful to prayer. These mosques are obviously serving their community, and never open to visitors.

The most famous mosques, The Dome of the Rock and the El-Aqsa Mosque are completely off limit to all non-moslem visitors. Temple Mount, as it is known by Jews and Christians, and Haram El-Sharif,  The Holy Enclosure, by the Moslems, is open to visitors.

Synagogues are the most abundant house of worship in Israel, for obvious reasons. However, most visitors will not notice them. Even the larger ones are tucked away in the neighborhoods, they serve. In addition there are very few distinguishing features to mark them as a synagogue to the visitor. The congregation, and the general Israeli public, will have no problem identifying them.

The only truly holy place to Jews, The Western Wall, is treated as a synagogue by the rabbis running the place. This means that though there is no building, one has to behave as if one is in an orthodox synagogue.