Baptism Can Cause Sickness

Standing on the Jordanian bank of the Jordan River right where many believe Jesus was baptized, Mikhail Mikhayev, a Russian tourist, enters the brownish water wearing a long white robe. He takes a deep breath and plunges his entire head and body under the water. He stands up, crosses himself, and repeats the dunking and crossing twice more.

Mikhayev may have had a spiritual experience, but it wasn't a healthy one. Standing on the Israeli-controlled side of the site, Gidon Bromberg, of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME), talks about the dangers.

"If you drink the water, you're likely to get diarrhea or stomach problems, and if you have a cut, you will probably get a rash," he told AOL News. "Israel bans people from being baptized here, and the Jordanians advise against it, but it's still hard to stop people."

Bromberg says that many people save the robes they are baptized in here and choose to be buried in them.

Those relics may become all the more poignant, for the Jordan River, important to all three monotheistic religions, is drying up. In the 1930s, there were 1.3 billion cubic meters of water flowing down the Jordan River each year. Now, according to FoEME, just 20 million to 30 million cubic meters complete the trip to the Dead Sea, because Israel, Syria and Jordan divert 98 percent of the river water for their own uses. And what little does flow is highly polluted.

About 65 miles north of Kasr al-Yahud is Yardenit, the official Israeli site for baptism, where the Jordan River exits from the Sea of Galilee. Here the water is relatively clean. But just a few miles downriver at the Alumot Dam, raw sewage spills into the river, and the stench is overpowering. See Chick's FIRST JAWS.