By the Rivers of Babylon

At the opening of the Bible Lands Museum Babylon tablets exhibit, I heard lengthy explanations from world renowned Assyriologists. And yet, last Froday's guided tour was interesting. It provided context for nonexperts. If this exhibit travels to your locale, see it.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Myumina

Although Myumina, which we went to last night, is loud and not tuneful, most of the audience was middle age and older and had a grand time. Hugely energetic, its best parts are the sll-cast percussion numbers. Dancing is wonderful. Singing is excellent, though not traditionally tuneful. Great evening.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

La Jolie Parfumeuse

Went to a performance of Offenbach's "Pretty Perfume Seller" at the Jerusalem Acadmey of Music and Dance. Good performance of an operetta with lovely, though forgettable, music and ridiculous plot. As we got off the bus at the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus and looked around to orient ourselves, a little woman in her mid-70s said, in Hebrew with a thick Russian accent, "You look like you're here for the operetta."

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Previous Residence for PMs

On Molko Square, where Ushishkin morphs into Radak, there is finally a plaque outside the building where pirme Ministers lived and worked until the current residence was ready. From the street, you can scarcely see the building behind its privacy wall, but still, I felt history.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

President's House

In front of the president's house (a two minute walk around and up from here) six or eight youngish black men in diplomatic suits, across the street a uniformed guy with a submachine gun, police cars a block away in either direction, cars passing on the street, number 13 buses in each direction, me walking past in my black, hooded raincoat.

Wonder what dignitary was visiting.

Half an hour later, the motorcatde sirens. What with the president and prime minister, this is a very sireny neighborhood.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Fresh Salad

At the cheapest restaurants you get freshly-made salads with chopped cucumber, chopped tomato, and other vegetables. Stop at a gas station along the highway. They make fresh salads. Street food comes with fresh salad. In the US I've seen signs advertising that a restaurant's salads are "made fresh daily." Daily? Here it is hourly or, in smaller places, after you order.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Coming and Going

Saturday nights, the Central Bus Station is crowded. Everyone is either coming home or going home. Bus fares are cheap, and the two-car family is still rare. Across the street are multiple bus stops and a light rail stop. Farther on are more bus stops on the street past Binyanei HaOoma. No one seems to push to get on the bus, but there is no line or queue.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Focacia

Ate lunch at focacia on Emek Refaim. Good, fresh food. Awfully large portions.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Ballet Boys

An Israeli choreographer told us how he got into dancing. Although he started late, age 16, he tested into the then tiny program that lets draftees continue dance training while in the army -- recognizing how much of their career they'd miss if they had to stop for three years.

Then we watched the Norwegian film Ballet Boys. See it. One tiny aside. Towards the end, one boy moves to London to study. we hear him speak Engoish several times. Beautiful English. How do they teach English so well? Aunother: is Ballet the only profession for which success requires ruining your body?

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Laugh Lines

Saw the Israeli movie Laugh Lines at the Jerusalem Theater. I maintain that most of it was the granddaughter's fantasy. She liked to fix up old things (planned to open an antique shop). When her very aged grandparents kill themselves (after first enjoying all the foods they were forbidden for their health) she fantasizes that she paid enough attention to know their plan and that she intervened. We could find no reviews that saw it this way, though reviewers did say much of it was unreaistic. And yet we thought it a good movie.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Old and New

Monday's Etnakhta was a classic mix of classcal and modern, played by the Alexander Trio. Hayden, then Beethoven to start, Schumann to finish. The before-intermission piece from 2006 by Oded Zehavi opened with the usual doom-is-coming atonality (or is that dissonance), but eventually moved into a lovely stretch that seemed to be the composer's assertion that he could write conventional beauty if he wanted to. After intermission Reuben Seroussi's "Ancia" from 2012 opened with violin squeaks and went on incomprehensibly (to me) from there. I could have used a lecture or maybe a year-long music course.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Community Garden

If I walk down the Ettinger steps -- about 50 of them in threes and fours between long landings, to Rav Berlin Street then up Brody, I reach the community garden in sbout five minutes. Amenities inclode a large, waterproof, glass-doored bookcase full of books in four or mor languages(take one, leave one, just like the Little Free Libraries), three groups of benches, a picnic table, and a compost heap. More people bring the makings for compost than work the garden.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Rosh Khodesh at Beit Avi Chai

Adar aleph, it seems, is the Tribe of Dan's month, so last night at Beit Avi Chai we were at a presentation that included a lecture on the tribe, a history of the Dan bus cooperative, and a singalong.

First an oudist and a kanounist played for us in the picture gallery leading to the small cafe. Such house-style concerts are a new feature before eveng events.

I always find it interesting to listen to secular Bible scholars what might be the origin of Biblical passages, in this case about what Dan's blessing might mean and what the story might be behind the sanctuary set up art what is now called Tel Dan.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Traditional Music

Shostakovich, Mendlessohn, and Beethoven pleased the audience of Monday's etnakhta concert. The full house, made up mostly of what Israelis all "the third age" and the British call "OAP" (which does not, as I thought when I first saw the term, mean "over-aged persons" but rather "old-age pensioners") thought Shostaakovich quite modern.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Alice

Gesher Theatre's Alice (http://www.gesher-theatre.co.il/en/PRODUCTIONS/SHOWS/ALICE) is a thought-provoking take on Lewis Carroll and on Alice Liddell ("inspired by the writings of Lewis Carroll; Play by Roee Chen; Directed by Yehezkel Lazarov"). A few months ago I read a biography of Charles Dodgson which included long sections about Alice Liddell, and this affected my reaction to the play in ways Chen and Lazarov probably did not expect. In their play Alice is told that Carroll wrote about his own creation, but judging from Lazarov's talk after the presentation, this play is about the real Alice as well. Yet the real Alice Liddell had three children while the Alice in this play laments with her husband that they have none. Alice Liddell lived an active life, uncrippled by any trauma she may have received from Dodgson photographing her nude. In the play, she is seriousy injured. The grief Alice Liddell must have felt at the loss of two of her three sons in WW I -- unconnected as this was with Carroll -- has no part in the life of Chen and Lazarov's Alice. But perhaps the play is about how we would see Carroll's creation if she had grown up. The play has the fictional Alice raped, pulled from a modern view of the nude photography, but from what, either in the books or in Alice Liddell's life, might we get the idea that Alice would take drugs?

I would have liked it differently if I had known less.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Jacky Levy et al. et al.

Noticing a last-minute poster, we went to Beit Avi Chai to see Jacky Levy and company (Kalabat Shabbat) doing their T"U b'Shvat program (two weeks after the holiday). "Why do Jews like T"U b'Shvat (new year's day for trees) so much? Because it has nothing to do with anyone trying to destroy us. The trees never had anything against us." Probably only in Israel would you get a humorous take on people's reaction to terrorism. ow that I think about it, that monologue was a variation on the "When I came to Israel," or "When I was your age."

We went early to try out Beit Avi Chai's newest version of its cafe. Not much, but fine for coffee or a soft drink or beer with a small cold sandwich or pastry. Israeli sandwiches are almost always good because the bread is excellent and the ingredients extremely fresh.

Along the art-display corridor where they've put the cafe, we noticed a guitar and violin on two chairs, next to their cases, and chairs set around. Someone was going to play. And they did, original works played and sung for 45 minutes before the event we'd paid for.

Beit Avi Chai also supports TV shows on channel 20 -- a sort of Modern Orthodox channel. I've seen several episodes from a travel series about Jewish communities around the world and three soap operas. Chabad undoubtedly did not get started in Katmandu the way the soap opera tells it, but the show is fun to watch.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Noga Schreibman-Cohen's Quilts

Went to the Jerusalem Theater last night to see a play about which more later.

The quilts haninging along the broad staircase to the Sherover Auditorium blew my mind. Noga Schreibman-Cohen, said the notes, worked as a teacher for 30 years, for 20 of those she was a grade-school principal. She's married and the mother of two. So how did she have time to piece together these works of art? How did she have space in her mind to conceive of them?

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox

Faberge Pomegranates

In a jewelry store window I just saw something new: pomegranates in the style of Faberge Easter eggs. Ceramic pomegrates

Copyright Jane Fox

Lev Semadar

They keep threatening to close the Lev Semadar movie theater (on Lloyd George St off Emek Refaim). If they do, they'll disappoint a lot of customers. Except for a few seats in the first few rows, the place was full for The King's Speech. As usual they had an intermission, barely long enough to get a drink or snack. The theater's informal restaurant was also full before the performance.

Copyright 2011 Jane S. Fox

Best Customer Service

The best customer service I've come across anywhere is at the Jerusalem Theater box office. The theater has at least five venues offering concerts, plays, stand-up, movies, dance performances, international films, lectures, and anything else you might find on a stage. Those box-office clerks not only know the programs, they also know all the discounts and deals you might be elligle for. You can attend three events for the price of two. Pay now, and choose later. Forget to pring your card when you come in to buy tickets for the third event? They'll find your record for you. You can also get tickets by phone or over the Internet.The box office is very patient, and I've heard them serve customers in three languages. I'd be happy to give any of them a recommendation for a job teaching customer service personnel how to work with customers.

It helps that the products they sell are excellent.

By default all your tickets go on your card. At the door, an usher reads the card and reminds you where your seat is. But what's to remind you that you have an event that day and when? You transferred it to your calendar, didn't you. Well, no. I haven't even tried to get the phone to read the card, though I'm told it can. Fortunately, if you ask, the box office prints you a paper ticket. I don't suppose anyone under 50 asks for that.

Copyright 2016 Jane Fox