My Jerusalem Neighborhood

• From the living room window I look out over roofs. Across the street, the building has a "typical" red-tile Israeli roof, as do scattered buildings down the hill and up the next one. These are rolling, mounds of sugar, hills. The sky is always there, stretching into the distance. Other roofs are flat, and on these I see the solar water heater panels and water tanks (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/solar-water-heater.html ). The tile roofs, being pitched, hide these panels and tanks, which sit on the south side, picking up a little energy even in January, then coming into their own when spring moves in. From the dining-area window I see the boring wall of the building across the garden from us. Beyond it are tall trees. From the bedroom the view extends (at an angle between buildings) across the park in the Valley of the Cross.
• Like many places in "the Holyland," that one's name comes from an early Christian guess. One story has it that the Emperor Constantine's mother (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_of_Constantinople), who became a Christian long before he did (he waited until he was on his deathbed, confessed his sins, was baptised, and figured he'd go clean to heaven) would sleep in different places and say she'd drempt that the place where she slept was such and such a place mentioned in the Bible or the New Testament.
• Academics have lived in this neighborhood for over 60 years. In his memoir, Amos Oz (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041108fa_fact) mentions that his father's ambition was to get a professorial position at the Hebrew University (where he was a librarian) and live in Rehavia.
• Like every building that follows the building code, ours is faced with traditionally-cut "Jerusalem stone." This is limestone, rough cut-- faceted. Around the corner is a very well-preserved rock-cut tomb from the time of the Maccabees. It looks like a large, but simple mausoleum.
• We are about 1.5 miles from the Old City (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/lights-out.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/on-the-walls.html ), on one side, and the Knesset building on the other.
• It is very hilly. Streets twist and turn as if Lewis Carrol had become a city planner. Only by looking at a map can I tell the shortest route.
• In this neighborhood there are almost no private homes ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/lanes.html ). Most apartment buildings are no more than four stories high -- though there are a few "towers" with elevators.
• Low walls along the sidewalk separate it from tiny gardens. The municipality has scattered benches along the streets and in the small parks. Green dumpster-like garbage containers ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/frogs.html ) appear along the way. You never see small American-style garbage cans.
• Every block or so is a small store. I'd say these are "convenience stores" except that they've been around since long before PDQ. Each is no bigger your living room and dining room and all sell dairy products, basic canned goods, flour, salt, sugar, basic paper products, and usually a few fruits and vegetables. Also newspapers. There are three or four florists within five blocks and two or three small restaurants, plus three or four more cafes, which also serve pastries. Two blocks away are two banks, a hardware store, and a video rental place, with a dry cleaners just down the road, two hair salons, a tailor and the display case for a dressmaker whose shop is down a little walk.
• There is a supermarket about three quarters of a mile up Aza St (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/two-horses.html )and down Agron (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/not-jaywalking.html ) . Another is about a half mile to the north of us ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/view.html ). The open air market ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/shesek.html ) is about a mile and a half away. I want to buy so much there, but getting it home, even by bus, is awkward and the bags are heavy by the time I start walking up the steps.
• We are on the third floor (which Israelis, like Europeans, call the second) in addition to almost a full flight of stairs up to the building entrance. It's a block to a bus stop with two buses (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/gazelles.html ), and another two bocks to a main road with more bus lines. Behind us and down a hill is an elementary school. Instead of a school bell, they have electronic chimes that play really vapid tunes (for example, London Bridge is Falling Down).
• The neighborhood is almost entirely Jewish. People speak Hebrew. In other parts of Jerusalem nowadays you hear a lot of English, Russian, Arabic, French, and Spanish, plus Amharic. Oh yes, there are Filipinos (actually more Filipinas) who get hired to caretake old people. Among themselves they speak their home languages. To Israelis they speak Hebrew or English.
• Until recently Jerusalem was not built for cars. One way you can tell that this two-block street was built in the last thirty years is that it has parking areas, although not enough. A few blocks away, places are marked off for parking on the sidewalks, which are very wide. About twenty years ago people started parking on the sidewalk and some committee must have decided it was better to mark spaces that would leave room for pedestrians.
  Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox