Fountains

• Like everyone respectful of dry air, I carry a water bottle. ( See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/water-on-jerusalem-day.html ) I’ve learned the location of drinking fountains where I can refill it: the playground at Kikar Magnes, the small plaza at the corner of Ussishkin (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/jerusalem-street-poetry.html ) and Narkis, the shaded park on HaGdud HaIvri, the landscaped expanse between the King David and the Lion Fountain.
• The Lion Fountain itself is dry. A guide said that a taxpayer sued the city, complaining that water in that fountan, across from the Bell Park and the Scottish Church, was being used improperly for laundry. He took it to the Supreme Court. And won.
• Children used to splash in its beauty. Now it is just undistinguished sculpture.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Mail-o-mat

• The slip in our mailbox said a package awaited me in the doar-mat outside the nearby post office. I'd wondered what that large, red kiosk was. It operates 24 hours a day.
• A press on a touch screen, a wave of the slip so the machine could read the barcode, a few seconds’ wait (not quite long enough to make me go ask for help), and the door slid open to reveal the package bringing me clip-on sunglasses.
• That was easy.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Fire Engines

• Like the fire engines in New York City, those in Jerusalem clear the way with loudspeakers as well as sirens. The loudspeaker demands, "Let us pass! Let us pass!"
• The voice disconcerts drivers unused to the system.

Copyright 2006 Jane S Fox

Beit HaKerem

• The neighborhood of Beit Hakerem was founded in the 1920's shortly after Rechavia (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ). It’s not as green as Rechavia, but the parks are larger. In his Book of Intimate Grammar, David Grossman (http://www.blogger.com/(http://www.ithl.org.il/author_info.asp?id=104 ) describes the neighborhood as it was when he was a child in the 1960s. Beit HaKerem of that era (when streetlights were on only until midnight) also appears in books by Amos Oz (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/oz.html ) and Meir Shalev (http://www.ithl.org.il/author_info.asp?id=233 ). One of Jerusalem''s earliets traffic lights was at Denmark Square.
• At that time Beit HaKerem ended high on the hillside. People were proud of their gardens. Old bedsteads, and other furniture too large for garbage cans (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/frogs.html ), went over the hedge, down into the wadi. Today streets farther down the slop parallel the valley's path. The Begin highway runs along the valley bottom. Right below Beit Hakerem is an extensive park that seems to be entirely without shade.
• The 17, 17 alef, 14, 18 and other buses run along Sderot Herzl and stop at Kikar Denia – a large plaza with an impressive modern sculpture of a Danish fishing boat (and dangerous, shallow hidden steps – watch out!). Plaques in five languages explain what the Danes did. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/denmark.html and http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/danish/ have details.
• If you have read any of the books set in Beit HaKerem, by David Grossman or others, a walk along the quiet streets will let you imagine the characters ahead of you on the sidewalk. Many of the buildings are the same as they were in the 1960s, and, except for all the cars (but little traffic away from Sderot Herzl), the atmosphere has not changed.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Utilities

• The grey two-thirds-cylinders, about the height of the average man, at the curb print out slips allowing you to park for a period of time where the curb is striped blue. The slip goes on the dashboard where it can be seen through the windshield. Parking is free in the evenings and from 1 pm Friday until 8 am Sunday.
• Each shorter, rectangular cabinet, most grey but some green or painted like nursery walls, is either an electric junction box, a telephone junction box, or a repository where mail waits for the letter carrier.
• Letter carriers wear regular clothes. Their profession is discernible only when they are putting mail in mailboxes or picking it up from the repository. They may ride from place to place on a post-office red motor scooter.
• Mailboxes for posing letters are painted red. They are the flat rectangular shape of British "illar boxes," and indeed, a few are sturdy relics of the British Mandate.
• At post offices you can change money, send a fax, send or redeem a Western Union money order, buy a phone card, and pay utility bills.
• The things outside of grocery stores, shaped rather like American mailboxes but painted orange or other colors, are charity receptacles. You can deposit nonperishable food and other things you buy at a grocery store. some also have a slot for cash contributions.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/frogs.html explains the green containers along the streets.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Taxis

• Like a magician who summons a magic carpet with a handwave, or a billionaire whose chauffeur is always within call, the Jerusalem pedestrian has taxis.
• Two short beeps from a car going the same way you are means a cab driver would like you to stop exercising. When you sit at a bus stop, passing cabs honk or slow down to see if you’ve gotten impatient enough to take a taxi instead.
• You can also phone for a cab. That will add a seventy cent surcharge to your fare, but fares are low. Four to six dollars will take you anywhere in town you want to go.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Katamonim

• How long does it take to walk a third of a mile? Two and a half hours if you have a good guide.
• A good final exam for "guide school" would be to construct a 2.5 hour tour for the unlikelest third of a mile in Jerusalem – say in Kiryat haYovel or the slopes of the Katmonim. (Maps call this neighborhood "Gonen.") The Katamonim are neighborhoods built quickly for "Eydoht HaMizrahkh," Jews who came up to the State of Israel from Arab countries and Iran. Housed first in "asbestonim," prefabs in refugee camps, they were happy to move to tiny apartment buildings and even to huge, public-housing style, blocks of flats. Later, Georgian Jews ("Gruzinim") were settled in the neighborhood.
• The origins of each community, their customs, and how life has turned out for them in Israel have filled many a research article.
• Those in the tiny apartments have expanded into their small gardens. Look closely to see the older stone facing of the original building flanked by extensions that triple the size. Building on required the cooperation of all four families, each starting with about 400 square feet. The results range from jumbles to little palaces.
• Where walls are low enough you may spot the results of those garden stores (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/yabetz.html ), or, elsewhere, an Appalachian junk yard.
• The number 18 and the number 4 buses loop through Katamonim on the way to the Malkha mall and the train station. On the lower slopes, (just above the Teddy Stadium, named for Jerusalems long-time and very successful mayor Teddy Kollek) are the large blocks that seemed to offer flat owners no option to expand. But look there! If my memory is correct, they’ve added on to that building, at intervals, all along its side.
• There’s more than enough in the Katamonim to keep a guide talking and pointing for 2.5 hours.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Abundance

• In a Parisian farmers’ market each pile of pile of produce is so aesthetically arranged it demands some term other than pile. Even string beans are lined up in perfect emerald rows. Customers are forbidden to touch. With practiced precision the stall keeper removes the requested amount of peaches or strawberries, then rearranges the rest. Each table says, "I am an artwork."
• At the shouk, each table says "abundance." Customers pick up sweet carrots to put in a plastic sack (called a "nylon"), weigh the merits of individual cucumbers (small is tastier), choose the pears as if they could tell which will be most flavorful.
• Abundance has its own beauty, and color is not lacking. My visitor keeps her camera busy. Three steps and, "I must take another picture."
• I blog.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/trompe-loeil.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/shesek.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/lychees-figs-peaches.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/ptilia.html are also about shouk Mahaneh Yehuda.
• If a photograph turns out to be funny or cute, you could submit it to http://www.funnyphotocontest.com/

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Windmills

• Afodi Street runs one block from MiTudela straight to Alfasi Street (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/lanes.html ). A little way along, on my right, above a hidden garden, I saw a miniature windmill, on a tower somewhat taller than an NBA player. Its vanes turned. I could not tell if they were catching a breeze or making one.
• I turned right on Alfasi and followed it as it curved up and around to cross ben Maimon and become ibn Ezra Street. Shaded benches line the walkway in ben Maimon’s boulevard strip. Where the strip ends, I turned left on Arlosorof, then right on Ramban where Arlosorof becomes ibn Gavirol. (More on street names later.) Just before the (Prima) Kings Hotel, on the left, is another windmill, the size of a small house, its vanes ever stationary (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/rehavia-windmill.html ). The Greek Orthodox Curch built it and for many years ran it.
• The Windmill Hotel (a quiet, friendly place now known as the Prima Royale) on Mendele Street is three blocks from the nearest windmill, but its name is in the spirit of the neighborhood.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/montefiores-windmill.html is about the full-sized windmill most tourists associate with Jerusalem. Rumors that it never worked are false.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Frogs

• On the sidewalk outside each building, against the faceted-stone wall but, in many cases, too large for the niche built to accommodate earlier models, stands a green bin like a small "Dumpster." Israelis call them "frogs." They are for garbage, but not glass bottles, plastic bottles, or newspaper. The notice on the bin says which days of the week its trash is collected.
• Glass bottles (with a few exceptions) go back to the grocery for return of the deposit. On almost every block is a wire receptacle for plastic bottles.
• The green cylindrical bins are for newspapers. Most say "for newspapers only," but a few say, "paper." Perhaps these are for office paper.
• "So where are the mailboxes?" a visitor asks. Look for waist-high, rectangular, metal boxes painted bright red. Some date from the time of the British Mandate, before the State of Israel.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/two-horses.html , http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/gazelles.html , and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/cats.html have more about animals in Jerusalem.

Cats

• At night a cat yowls so loud I am afraid it has gotten into the apartment, two stories up. Kittens play under the wheels of the green garbage bins. An elder stands sentinel on a garden wall. Better cats than rats.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/two-horses.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/gazelles.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/fantastic-animals.html are also about animals in Jerusalem.
• See also http://www.famouscatsofjerusalem.com/

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Yabetz

• Yabetz is a pedestrian shopping alley running from Derekh Yafo to Ben Hillel. (Its continuation to Histadrut Street has nothing of interest but a public phone.) From Ben Hillel (almost at King GeorgeV – HaMelekh George) go down the steps past the optician. (What is a British king doing on Jerusalem street signs? More on that later.)
• On the right is a small shop with an abundance of dried fruit and nuts. All along both sides of the street are tiny stores packed with interesting clothing for men and women. (See http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/daughter-of-salwar-kameez.html ) Colorful shirts, skirts, tunics, and dresses – mainly cotton– are offbeat and come in cryptic sizes. Bat Ayin has a store here, as well as another in the Mahaneh Yehuda shouk (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html ).
• About halfway along, on the right, is a garden and patio store. For a city with few private homes, Jerusalem has a lot of garden stores. You see the result on balconies.
• Almost at Yafo St.,on the left are the stairs leading up to Sefer v’Sefel. The sign advertises a coffee shop. There is no coffee shop, but there is an extensive used book store. From science fiction to Judaica through paperback classics, Sefer v’Sefel has a large collection.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Lanes

• If you’re walking from Derekh Aza along Binyamin MiTudela (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_of_Tudela) Street (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/view.html) and want to get to Kikar Magnes (Magnes Square), you can climb the steep slope of Shirion Street, or you can continue to Saadia Gaon(http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/SaadiaGaon.html) and turn right.
• About halfway between, are steps that lead to a footpath that seems to end at a wrought-iron gate. It's not on maps.
• Climb the steps, continue along the path between shrubs that mask the buildings and the view, turn left sharply when the lane does, and you walk out suddenly intoMagnes square. Like Grammercy Park and London squares surrounded by Regency mansions, the center area is fenced, but this gate has no lock.The playground has a water fountain (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/fountains.html ). Opposite the park two sculptured doves decorate a memorial bench.
• At least two of the houses on this square are single-family dwellings, modestly masquerading as apartment buildings. The larger streets from Kikar Magnes are Rashba (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Adret.html) leading to Ramba and and Alfasi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Alfasi).
• Go along Alfasi, a shaded, very quiet street, home to university professors for more than half a century. Looking left, you will soon see a broad, paved lane with a handrail painted municipal lavender. This footpath leads to Ben Maimon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambam) .
• Turn right at the top of this path and walk a short distance while watching for steps to a park on the right. Down the steps is a welcoming and shady seating area. Continuing past that, you skirt a building-sized rock tomb from the time of the Macabees. To the right is a comfortable bench where you may see a student catching up on reading. Out the gate and you are back on Alfasi.
• Turning right on Alfasi (past a small arbor with inviting benches) takes you to Afodi which goes steeply down to Benyamin MiTudela, past a vaguely oriental private garden behind the wall on your left (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/windmills.html ) .
• Cross the street and turn to the right -- in your original direction on MiTudela. To the left a very narrow footpath (shown on maps) leads from MiTudella down to a branch of Aza, opposit a small park where the Neighborhood Watch is headquartered in an old bomb shelter (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-down.html ).
• Exploring pedestrian paths and staircases is one of the joys of walking around Jerusalem. Most, but not all, of these ways are on the Carta Street Map or on http://www.e-map.co.il/eng_index.asp (give it plenty of time to come up).
• Two long stairways lead from Rav Berlin to Harlap, and a third (not on my maps) from Aza to Harlap. Used to these shortcuts, I have trouble providing good directions to drivers.
• Maps show a footpath from Binyamin Mitudela to Alfasi, opposite Ben Labrat (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Labrat.html) Street. I have not yet found that path.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Two Horses

• Two large horses trot up Derekh Aza. Their straight-backed riders wear plain, dark t-shirts. When they get closer, "Police" is visible in small letters running around their baseball caps. Perhaps they are training the horses to be calm in traffic. Five hours earlier, I saw a horse trailer with police markings going in the other direction.
• In the evening of (university) Students’ Day, bungee jumping, loud music, and other entertainments enlivened the grassy area of Independence Park. Over by Agron Street, where a grove of trees blocked the lamplight, police horses waited, tethered, calm, silent. Near them lounged their riders, hoping not to be needed.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

View

• Binyamin MiTudela Street curves around from Derekh Aza . Then Saadia Gaon sweeps down from Kikar Magnes and takes over. Saadia goes on to Ramban (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Nachmanides.html ) and becomes Diskin at an intersection that is difficult for vehicular traffic but not for pedestrians.
• One side of Saadia is open to the Valley of the Cross (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ). Benches along the way offer a comfortable view. Two or three are always in the shade. The benches at "Ruth's Corner" are a good place to stop and take the long view. Across the street, a park, whose paths are popular with runners, covers the hillside the entire way down.
• In the valley, on the other side of Hazaz, the Monastery of the Cross flies the Greek flag. Beyond that, across the hilltop march white block after white block of the Israel Museum. To the right is the Knesset (parliament) building. Its design has always reminded me of an ancient Greek temple, but I don’t know whether the architect had that in mind. Walking and bike paths go through the valley and on the Gan (Park) Sahkehr.
• Binyamin (Benjamin) of Tudela was a 12th century CE Spanish Jew who traveled through Europe, Africa, and Asia and wrote about what he saw, about a hundred years before Marco Polo’s journeys.
• Saadia Gaon lived in Babylonia (Iraq) from 882-942 CE. By that time, a large Jewish community had already been in Iraq for over 1200 years – from the time the ancient Babylonians first brought Jews captive to Babylon. When the Persians allowed the exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem (and to those of their kin who had managed to remain), many stayed in Babylon as part of a community that became the center of Jewish learning. Saadia was one of the scholars of that community.
• Today's scholars of the ancient world often use CE and BCE (Common Era) instead of AD and BC. This usage started long before Political Correctness.
• If you continue along Diskin (which changes its name again on maps but not on street signs), turn right to walk up the steps at the end, turn left at the first public path to go past "Noah's House" and the park benches and down the steps, cross the street, turn first right, take the first left, keep walking and go up the hill to Bezalel, cross the street (with the light, carefully) , go up the Shiloh steps, and continue along Shilo -- you reach Agripas, across which is the Mahaneh Yehudah market (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html). On the way you'll have gotten a feel for Nahalaot.
• The climb from the Valley of the Cross to the museum is not difficult, if the temperature is under 27 C (80 F). From the bus stop on the built-up side of Saadia Gaon, the 9, 17 and 17 alef (the alef looks like H; http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/gazelles.html ) go to the museum.
• Bus drivers make change.
• The 17s continue to the Malkah mall, while the 9 goes to the Hebrew University's science campus and not far from the Supreme Court building, which is worth touring. The Bible Lands Museum is across the street from the Israel Museum. The hands-on children's science and technology museum is a little beyond.
• The nearby Rose Garden (Gahn HaV'reedeem; http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/rose-gardens.html) is a venue for many political demonstrations, particularly those to influence the budget.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

One Block from Agripas

• Agrippas Street (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/trompe-loeil.html ) runs up from King George V (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/george-v.html ) and then (with a name change) down towards Shderot Ben Tsvi. To the northeast is Shouk Mahaneh Yehuda (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/shesek.html ).
• A turn into one of the alleys on the other side of the street takes you into a quiet neighborhood from a hundred years in the past. Here you can see the fantastic doors of the synagog established in one of the old buildings by the Sefardi community from the Old City. At one house, purple flowers pour over the wall like a silent waterfall; at another, red blossoms. The dark shade of a small, square park beckons. Here a family has renovated with Jerusalem stone that the air has not yet aged. There someone closed a balcony, illegally, with beaten tin.
• The stone buildings ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/stone-houses.html) block off the city’s noise.
• See http://www.e-map.co.il/eng_index.asp for maps. Give each screen time to come up completely!
• Throughout the neighborhood, note the slightly raised paving that marks rectangular areas over now-dry rain-water cisterns. On most, a cement-sealed well-hear marks the old access point. Collecting rainwater for irrigation seems like such a good idea until you think of mosquitoes. (See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html )

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Gazelles

• The number 17 bus crosses the Valley of the Cross winds up almost to the Knesset Building, crosses between the Israel Museum and the Bible Lands Museum and goes down into the next valley, past the Itzhaak Rabin Hostel. Then it turns into Givat Mordekhai, a middle-class neighborhood of uniform apartment blocks and little greenery.
• Up it goes and down again, out to Hertzog. The woman in the front seat on the right is talking with the driver about mutual acquaintances, or maybe relatives – a wedding, who’s going to a mechanics course – when the driver says, "About here. Start watching."
• The passenger looks out the window, and I do, too. "There!" the driver says. "And there! A nursing mother." In the wild field opposite Paht, a herd of gazelles.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Performing Arts in Jerusalem

• Sparse publicity for schedules of concerts, plays, and lectures adds spice to those we find (see also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html ). Israel Festival events at the Jerusalem Theater weren’t on the Theater’s Website, but their box office did sell tickets to the energizing concert of Naor Carmi and The Tizmoret (see http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=21032 ).
• We arrived an hour early for the 21:45 concert to find large booths set up in the plaza outside the theater entrance. One sold bright, fantastic-flower lamps. Others displayed hand-made jewelry, art from Zimbabwe, Indian clothes . In the center of the space an open-sided pavilion provided a venue for a flaminco dancer, acrobat, shadow dancers, and a stilt walker ,who also ambled out among the spectators. The crowd was as sparse as the publicity.
• All this was free.
• Inside the Rebecca Crown Auditorium a fusion of klezmer, Gypsy, Balkan, and Arab music roused us out of comfortably roomy seats.
• Afterwards we came out to find another band playing loud dance music for appreciative dancers. The fair was still going outside. Customers for the Jerusalem Theater’s cinemas and from the auditoriums that had other events that night, filled the lobby and spilled outside.
• The day's heat had radiated out through the clear sky. We walked home at midnight. Outside each full cafe on Derekh Aza (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/two-horses.html ), a security guard sat waiting to look into bags and ask, "Yesh Neshek?"

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Montefiore's Windmill

• Who paid for Montefiore’s windmill? (See http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/israel/jerusalem/jer055.htm
  for several pictures.)
• In 1836 Lady Judith Montifiore kept a journal of her journey with her husband, Sir Moses Montefiore, from England to the Land of Israel. It’s full of surprising descriptions of travel through Europe, communities along the way, and Jewish communities 180 years ago in what is now the State of Israel. A savvy publisher could sell a good many copies, but for now you can find it only in a rew rare book collections.
• From the journal, it is clear that her husband gave large amounts of money to Jewish communities often for projects to provide employment. The story goes that he had the windmill built outside the walls of Jerusalem both to provide employment and to lower the price of flour. It seems, though, that he did it with money contributed by Judah Touro from New Orleans.
• Did the windmill provide employment? Did it ever grind grain? For a long time it was thought that the Windmill never worked, but in fact it does seem to have been operational for several years until a new steam mill, in the German Colony less than half a mile away, undercut its prices.
• For a wonderful song about Moses Montefiore see http://www.bus.ualberta.ca/yreshef/jnf/jerusalem/jersong/montifiore/montisong.htm where you'[ll find a rhymed English version of the lyrics and a link that lets you hear Yehoram Gaon singing the Hebrew version.
• From the overpass near the Cable Car Museum you get a good view of the windmill. See http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/jerusalem-cable-car.html
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/windmills_19.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Shesek

• Are shesek medlars or loquats? Opinion differs. The smooth-skinned oblong fruits, the yellow of a blush-free apricot and about half the size, each have about three, smooth, flat, brown, dime-sized seeds. Their flesh is like a cherry’s and not quite as sweet.
• In April, when the first appeared in the shouk, they cost so much the prices mostly were quoted for half a kilo (a little more than a pound). As they came into full season, they filled fruit stands and the price declined to five shekels a kilo (about 40 cents a pound). Now, their season almost over, they are rare again, but the price stays low because other soft fruit catches our fancy.
• Sweet cherries lie in mounds, expensive for the shouk at the low price Sentry sets in Wisconsin in June to pull customers into the store. Fresh green figs were eighteen shekels a kilo the day before Shavuot, when customers were shoulder to shoulder and the stall keepers were too busy to call out their prices. Sweet, blushing apricots are six or seven shekels a kilo – the best ones are sold only in thin plastic baskets that hold more than a kilo. Peaches (both white and yellow), are in abundance, as are nectarines (both white and yellow), plums (Santa Rosa and Formosa), melons (green, yellow and water), mulberries – our love for shesek is gone until next year.
• About the Mahaneh Yehuda shouk in Jerusalem, see also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/lychees-figs-peaches.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Jerusalem Street Poetry

• Poems appeared inside bus shelters and on light poles up and down the streets of Rehavia. The city posted them, not for foreign tourists (except those few who can read Hebrew well enough to appreciate a poem) but for the people of Jerusalem, the people of the neighborhood. Hebrew poetry throughout the ages has been allusive, and modern Hebrew poetry alludes to three thousands years of written words.
• Yesterday a guide from the Ben Tsvi Institute led a group from poem to poem, reading each aloud, recalling the echoes, and evoking connections with Jerusalem and Rehavia. Poems danced images of bright Indan fabrics, stones, and staircases where the light lasts only for a minute.
• Each time I walk with a guide, I learn a little more about the city. Why is Ussishkin St in the middle of poets and other thinkers from Spain’s Jewish Golden Age? And why is Yehuda Halevi not honored in Rechavia by a street among his contemporaries? The story goes that Ussishkin, then head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, pulled enough strings to have the street where he lived should be named after himself. As he lived on Yehuda Halevi Street, that poet no longer has a street to his name. They say that Ussishkin used to dust off the street signs.
• In Madison, US presidents are near Vilas Park while Universitypresidents stretch to the west. In Jerusalem writers from the Golden Age are in Rehavia.
• Israelis rarely give credit to the British for anything they did during the Mandate, but Britain does get credit for the best city planning of modern Jerusalem. They decreed no development in the valleys. They also declared that buildings in Rehavia (almost all of them apartment buildings) should have gardens around them. Because of that, Rehavia streets are lined with green, at no taxpayer expense.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox