Photomontage

Sid's been taking photos ...

Lifta High School. Sid was the principal at the original location back in 1972.

Construction and rehabbing are going on everywhere. City code ensures the preservation and architectural integrity of historic buildings.

      Finished project will look something like this. Both buildings located in Machane Yehuda neighborhood.

Everyone loves Machane Yehuda.

                                          Landscaping and recycling. Two mints in one.

                                                        Produce delivery vehicle.

             My old boyfriend preserved for posterity on the Mamila Promenade

                                                               

                                                    Sid's new best friend

                                                     Plastic recycling receptacles

                                                   Paper recycling receptacle

                                                            Our neighborhood hardware store

            Nespresso must know how much I love their coffee makers since they named one for us.

                                                            Still life with pine branch              

                                          Even here people like to borrow grocery carts

                                                   Park bench with detail

                                                        Gas meters

                                                  New Year's at the Dead Sea
                                   View of the pool from our room ... to cold to use

                                              But a few brave souls got into the sea

                                        They still have a few working public phones

                                        Black pearl????? Anyone want a black pearl???

Happy 2014

Happy New Year to one and all. We hope 2014 will be a  happy, healthy, prosperous, rewarding,  fulfilling and above all peaceful year for everyone.

At 1200 feet below sea level the Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth. But that's not its only claim to fame. Its healing properties have been recognized and appreciated for centuries. Take away the glitzy hotels and today's Dead Sea experience isn't much different than that of someone in Roman times. We love the Dead Sea and as often as we've been there never tire of going. Since we had no other plans we decided to spend New Year's Eve there.

It's important to remember that NYE in Israel is still a non-event. When you say happy new year to someone here, the holiday that's being celebrated is Rosh Hashanna which occurs in September. Celebrating Sylvester, as it's called here, is popular in Tel Aviv but hasn't really caught on in Jerusalem. We figured something would be going on at the Dead Sea because it's such a mecca for international travelers. Not that we were looking for one of those mega-parties one finds in hotels where you can ring in the new year with 5000 of your new best friends, but maybe a bar with some live music where we could stay up later than 10PM. Besides, we needed a break from the cold and rain in Jerusalem.

One of the great things about a small country with so many micro-climates is that it doesn't take much to escape the cold. When we left Jerusalem it was clear and 50-ish, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Just as we have wind chill, Israel should have rain chill for a better sense of what it feels like. In spite of the fact that the weather had cleared up nicely, the rain of the previous night left the city gripped by a penetrating dampness that made it feel more like 35. Yet rain has a magical effect on the desert. The hills just outside Jerusalem are like undulating soft sculptures. For most of the year they are barren; it is, after all, a desert. When it rains the dormant vegetation hibernating beneath the surface comes to life and blankets the hills with a soft, downy cover, a veritable green peach fuzz. The goats and sheep have a field day, pun intended. And within 45 minutes we were sitting at a rest stop at the halfway point where it was in the 70's. An hour and one micro-climate later, it had clouded up and was about 10 degrees cooler. Contrary to popular belief, it's not always hot at the Dead Sea. No matter; the hotel had an indoor pool and we really didn't care about the ambient temperature.

As we checked in, the phrase that kept running through my head was "The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming". Everything and everyone was Russian - signs, notices, menus, daily activity schedules, a large percentage of the hotel staff, and the overwhelming majority of the guests. We were stunned. These weren't the Russians who came to Israel by the hundreds of thousands in the 80's when the floodgates opened. These were real Russians, who were here on vacation. It was a little hard to take in. I've been to Russia three times, twice back in the days when it was the USSR, so my impression is distorted by my experiences there. What I saw was privation, empty stores, and a population so tightly controlled that a domestic passport and travel permit were required if someone wanted to go more than 50 miles from their city of residence. Things have certainly changed since the fall of communism and the breakup of the USSR. People have money and freedom to travel and they love coming to the Dead Sea. In droves. I mentioned to someone at the hotel how surprised I was at the number of Russians. She asked if I was referring to guests or staff and I said both. She said many of the guests come annually, and guests and staff remember each other from one year to another. Who would have imagined, particularly against the background of diplomatic relations between Israel and the USSR/Russia. Something else that was totally unexpected was the number of Arabs and Druse who were there. All in all, English was the foreign language. Besides Russian, we heard nearly equal amounts of Arabic and Hebrew, with English being a distant fourth.

We declined to attend the 400 shekel (about $115) per person NYE "Gala" at the hotel. So we walked to another hotel and had a much more reasonable ($48 per person) buffet dinner. We stuffed ourselves, walked back to our hotel, and not finding anything going on in the bar went to sleep at 10PM. At midnight we were awakened by what sounded like artillery. Thinking it had to be fireworks I went to the window to see the show. But there was no show, and in this country if it sounds like artillery it very well might be. But no, it was fireworks; we were on the wrong side of the hotel to see them. So back to sleep, which ironically made December 31 just another Tuesday night.

And that's how we rang in 2014.

A walk in the snow 12/15/2013

We didn't bring the right shoes but we did bring duct tape. This is what we had to do to keep our feet dry.

And it worked!

Photos below taken on Ben Yehuda Street. As you can see, very few people out and about.

Photo below taken on the train tracks on Jaffa Road. It became a pedestrian mall because public transportation was halted due to the snow.

Snowman, Snowdog, Snow damage and empty shelves

More snow fell overnight, and the accumulation was as much as 20" in some places. Jerusalem is cut off, and people are making comparisons to 1948 and 1967. A bit exaggerated, but there are parallels. The 2 highways connecting this city to the rest of the world are closed, and while no one will starve and rationing won't have to be imposed, there's been no delivery of fresh food.

We took a walk this morning, starting with the supermarket. We only needed a couple of things, but the lines were so long we gave up - what we needed wasn't that important. We were able to buy fresh challah and dessert at the bakery next door. No one had newspapers. I asked the owner of a kiosk if he expected to get any and he said probably not. We walked down the middle of the streets, which were more or less clear. There was minimal traffic and we had to get out of the way from time to time. Again, we don't have proper shoes. My Crocs penny-style loafers are fine for shallow puddles, but not for the kind of snow and slush we walked through. Sid's water-repellant boots got soaked. We made our way to the Inbal Hotel, thinking that if anyone would have newspapers it would be a hotel. No luck, not at the Inbal and not at the Dan Panorama, where even the gift shop was closed. There is no public transportation so people can't get to work. There has been considerable tree damage; the trees here aren't made to withstand the weight of heavy snow and there are lots of downed branches. The only real concern (and so far it hasn't impacted us) is the branches that have fallen on power lines. There have been some power outages, altho considering the magnitude of the storm there haven't been massive failures. I did talk to a couple of friends who lost power for short periods of time. But everyone is in a festive mood, and those of us who braved the weather to go out had the pleasure of experiencing the best part of something which is being called the storm of the century - kids building snowmen (one accompanied by a snow dog) and having snowball flights.

                                                Snow covered orange tree (above)

                                                     Snow covered cactus (above)
                                                   
                                               

                                                  Empty shelves where bread used to be (above)

Snow day!

We had fabulous, unseasonable weather for the first 6 weeks we were here. We knew it couldn't last.

The weather turned one week ago, December 5. Naturally the change came on the day we went on a charity hike at the Dead Sea. We got picked up at 630AM, in pouring rain that lasted until well past the half-way point between Jerusalem and Ein Gedi. In fact there was some question about the feasibility of the walk due to the danger of flash floods. It turned out to be a beautiful day - mostly sunny, breezy and about 70 degrees, perfect hiking weather.

There were 2 tracks - medium and challenging. We opted for medium, which is very much a relative term. It made me curious to see what they call challenging. The trail was located in the hills overlooking the Dead Sea at Ein Bokek, where the hotels are. We walked up a modest incline to a table mountain with a gorgeous view. SFSG. Then we had to get down. The path was narrow and very steep, and was made of loose gravel which is quite slippery, particularly at a 40 degree angle. That wouldn't have been so bad if we had good hiking shoes, but since we hadn't planned to do any mountain climbing while here we didn't. I was in a pair of Keen sandals; Sid had walking boots but not the kind that were made for the terrain we were in. Someone gave me a walking stick which turned out to be a lifesaver. We made our way down the first descent very slowly, then walked on more or less flat terrain, then climbed a fairly steep incline (up is definitely easier than down), and finally stopped for lunch. The final descent is what separated the men from the boys, so to speak. We took one look and said "not for us". Fortunately the people who planned the hike anticipated this and sent a jeep for anyone who didn't want to complete the final, death-defying descent. We were the only ones who wimped out, which was really embarrassing since in our group we had an 80 year old, a 75 year old, and pretty much everyone else was 60's and 70's. The 80 year old had her 2 grandsons with her.

The hike for was an organization called Melabev, and don't worry I'm going to ask everyone for a donation.
Melabev (www.melabev.org and www.walk4alz.com) provides support for Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers and families. As all too many of us know, Alzheimer's is a growing phenomenon that takes a devastating toll. The reason we got involved is because I opened the Jerusalem Post one day and saw an advertisement for the walk, which was dedicated this year in memory of Rachel Wasserman, who was a friend of Sid's. She suffered for many years with the disease, and passed away a few months ago. Since we had a personal connection we had to support the organization. Yes we were stiff and achy for a couple of days, but it was well worth it. The people we were with were very dedicated to the cause and very appreciative of the fact that we joined the walk.

In the week since, the temperatures dropped a lot (enough that I packed up my summer clothes and pulled the winter clothes out of my suitcase). It didn't rain much until yesterday, when it came down in buckets. We went to the Israel Museum yesterday to see the fabulous Herod exhibit, so we were indoors. But getting to and from the Museum by public transportation we were drenched.

For the past several days all everyone talked about is the forecast. It started to snow in the northernmost part of the country, which isn't unusual. Snow in Jerusalem is still something of an event. And snow it did. We woke up this morning to a heavy, wet snowfall, which stuck to trees and there was some accumulation. All schools were closed and classes cancelled, followed by some major highway closings. We, like everyone else in the city, had to immediately go to the grocery store. What a madhouse. When I lived here in the early 70's people would buy all the bread and milk they could carry. Now they buy everything. The siege mentality takes over, even tho in this climate everyone knows the snow can't last more than a couple of days. But it's a party atmosphere, and we will get more snow and colder temps over the next 48 hours. Everything has come to a halt because everyone is staying home.

Hanukkah 2013

The role of the hair salon in the movie Steel Magnolias is so important that it's almost a character in the film. I've never been part of a salon culture, altho I've had a taste of it from time to time. I happened to be in a salon last Wednesday, getting my hair cut for the upcoming bar mitzvah party. Last Wednesday also happened to be the first night of Hanukkah. So when the sun set someone set up a hanukkiah and all of us gathered (in whatever stage of hair treatment we happened to be) as one of the stylists said the blessings, lit the candle, and we all sang Maoz Tsur. It was something that could only occur in Israel. There we were, about a dozen people, held together by this moment. And throughout the week I noticed how many stores had hannukiot in their windows, and realized that what went on in the hair salon was repeated in many shops and businesses throughout the city and probably the country.

On Saturday night Sid and I took a random walk in search of the uniquely Jerusalem phenomenon, hanukkiot placed outside of homes in glass containers to protect the flames from the wind and rain. We wandered through Yemin Moshe, one of the most charming neighborhoods in Jerusalem, thinking this would be a good place to look. We didn't find many, but the walk did bring us close to Mamilla Mall, which I knew was hosting nightly Hanukkah events. We got there just in time to see the very large oil-burning outdoor hanukkia being lit. The honor of lighting that evening was given to the Lone Soldiers. This is obviously very close to our hearts because that's what our oldest granddaughter is - someone who comes to Israel on their own to serve in the military. There is a support organization so these young people are never alone; they have host families, networks and activities so they can feel at home and part of a community even if they have no family here. The mall was jam-packed with people of all stripes - from the city's most religious sects to Christian tourists from Africa, Europe and the Philippines. We watched in amazement from a good vantage point, as the photos below show. There was a band that played nonstop for over an hour, young girls circulated through the crowd with trays of sufganiot, and spontaneous dancing broke out. It was the dancing that was the most amazing - of course it was men only, but the mix of men was amazing - hassidim wearing their streimels arm-in-arm with soldiers with uncovered heads. These are two groups that simply don't mix, and that's putting it mildly. It was utterly astounding.

The words that kept running thru my head were lehiot am hofshi b'artzenu - to be a free people in our own land. These words are from Israel's national anthem, the title of which is The Hope. Watching the crowd on the Mamilla Mall that night, the words resonated in a way they never had before. Indeed, for the first time in two millenia we are a free people in our own land. This is how we celebrate.