A month after the Catholics, Protestants and the rest of the gang made their way down the Via Dolorosa, the Greek Orthodox church & the Armenian church show up.
Celebrating the Easter much later, thanks to a slightly different calendar, these pilgrims seem more solemn & heavy hearted than their cousins.

Concentrating less on the Via Dolorosa itself, and more on the Sepulchre, these pilgrims arrive in their thousands in order to partake in the ceremony of the Holy Fire, on Holy Saturday- moments before Easter Sunday itself.
Though only a couple thousand will manage to make their way into the Church, many more arrive and are blocked by a dozen separate police barricades.
Sworn to keep the peace & safety of  Jerusalem’s dwellers, the police forces find themselves fighting thousands of pilgrims who, if allowed to reach the church, may find themselves caught in between dangerous fires & trampling crowds.
Making matters worse, this day also revives the mutual intolerance between the Orthodox & the Armenian believers - leading to brawls & arguments everywhere.

Both the overwhelming crowd and the religious ceremonies create an extremely tense and inspiring religious experience for all involved.

For me, as a young photography student, this experience was one of the best learning experiences yet.
Imagine 50 thousand people, all trying to get to one place which is no larger then 300 square meters.
Now add some 5 thousand Israeli policemen whose job it is to prevent those 50 thousand from reaching their goal.

If you have a press pass, you have no problem, because they will let you through without a moment’s hesitance.
But if, like me, you don’t have a press pass, you are going to have a hard time getting to your destination.
The police makes several “security perimeters” around the church of the Holy Sepulchre. The idea being that if anyone gets past the first road block, they will be stopped by the second. If anyone gets past the second one- the third will stop them, etc.

On that day I learned the hard way how to get past police roadblocks and police officers… quite a day.
I arrived together with my good friend Yuda Swed at 7 AM, thinking within 20 minutes we will be at the church and afterwards we will just have to wait…
We arrived at the church at 3 PM…
Quite an experience.