Sherover Promenade

• Signs, on white cardboard the size of printer paper, appeared along the streets, pointing to the Tayellett (Promenade) in Talpiot and promising activities for the Succot holiday. Without a map, but with a vague recollection of the location and of a newspaper ad for the event (dates but no times) I set out on foot. Along the Hevron Road there were two or three small signs, and then a large brown arrow pointing in the direction of the Tayelet when I was about ready to give up.
• At a bus stop I saw a sign for the number 4. "The 4 doesn’t go here," I thought, even as I noticed that the sign for that line was in Arabic, while the list of destinations for the 7 and 8 were in Hebrew. Jerusalem has two bus lines, and this stop was one of the overlaps.
• I reached the Tayelet (http://www.blogger.com/(http://www.s-aronson.co.il/Gabriel-Sherover-Promenade.html ).
  I’d forgotten how beautiful the view is. I do not think memory is great enough for such beauty. Heartfelt thanks to the Sherover family. Breathtaking is not a strong enough description of the view.
• Go. See it. Take the number 8 bus southward, or hail a taxi and say, "AhTayellet Armohn AhNot-seev" or "Sherover Tayellet."
• There, before us, the [Old] City, surrounded by hills, with buildings, all-white at this distace, spread like robes around her.
• Today you could rent a pedal buggy (such as I’ve seen along the Chicago lakefront), and perhaps these are always available. You could also rent a Segway. (I don’t understand the appeal.) Kids on the grass were learning to drum, sitting on tablas (Miriam’s drums).
  Walking tours headed down into the Gehenna valley, others to nearby water sources. I bought a ticket for a tour on an open-sided "safari" vehicle.
• We drove along the old cease-fire line through Abu Tor, a village split between the Kingdom of Jordan and the State of Israel at the end of the War of Independence. Jews moved into the houses that the State of Israel controlled, Arabs stayed in the Jordanian-controlled homes, across the street from each other. The guide tells a sweet tale about a nun's false teeth dropped from a blacony across the border and returned to her through the cooperative efforts of the Jordanians and Israelis, but I have heard it told by another guide about Notre Dame, where it makes more sense (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/even-licensed-guides.html ).
• Then it was down into the Hinnom Valley, around "Mt. Zion" (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/jerusalem-cable-car.html ) to the Kidron Valley, and to the bottom of the Mount of Olives, where Jewish burials go back over two and a half millennia. It is a place of legends and stories about Absalom and Napoleon, Ovadia MiBartinura (who reported on the grinding poverty of Jerusalem Jews in the 14th century), and a family of cohanim (priests) whose name (mentioned twice in the Bible) is still barely visible on the mausoleum where generations of them were buried over 2000 years ago.
• On a Hebrew Jerusalem tour there are always people on who add their own experiences. "My grandmother lived in [the Arab village of] Silwan," said one woman, and we heard how Jews came from Yemen to Jerusalem and lived first in caves near the (then small) Arab village, staying among Arab neighbors until the War of Independence.
• On the 50 NIS note is the fourth paragraph of Agnon’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech (http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1966/agnon-speech.html ) about his relationship to Jerusalem. The guide read it to us. I don’t know who thought to put this on a banknote, but I thank that person, too.
• (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/haas-and-goldman-promenades.html describes the continuations of the Sherover in either direction.)

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox