Intimate Grammar

At Beit Avi Chai we saw the movie of David Grossman's book "Intimate Grammar," followed by a short, not terribly informative, lecture. Now I'll look for the book to find out things like whether the family's refrigerator is as prominant as in the film.

The municipality's strike are over, although all the mayor got in return was a meeting with the Prime Minister. When garbage is usually collected several times a week, a pause in collection quickly causes piles of garbage bags and bits and pieces.

Copyright 2017 Jane S. fox

Tiles

• In neighborhoods built between 1860 and 1950, look at the courtyard paving (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/love-and-darkness.html http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ). Sometimes you'll see lovely colored tiles.
• One guide said that these were moved from inside buildings when owners remodeled.
• Someone's going to offer to buy them up for very expensive American houses.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Oud

• And if you can't come for Succot (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/all-together-now.html ) come in November for the annual Festival of the Oud (http://www.gojerusalem.com/SitePage.aspx?SiteID=175 and http://www.confederationhouse.org/english/festivals/oud/ ). For Midwestern Americans it is a different form of music. I think that if you are even a little bit open, the sound will captivate you.
• Oud, tabla (drum), and another stringed instrument like a small harp held flat on the musician's lap, plus a very thready Arab "recorder" (the kind you blow into). Two male singers. One female. Oh, she was so good! She came pnto the stage bulgy in her black lace top (over a gold lamee skirt) showed every bulge. No glamor. Just voice. Heavenly voice.
• It was mostly music and lyrics by one man, Jewish, born in Jerusalem in 1890, who wrote Arabic, Hebrew, and Ladino (http://www.orbilat.com/Languages/Spanish-Ladino/ old Spanish dialect spoken by descendents of Jews exiled from Spain) poems in Jerusalem, Tunisia and Egypt. He also wrote music, although his poems are also sung to mudic from Arabic movies of the 1930s. (See http://www.confederationhouse.org/english/festivals/oud/schedule/?date=12-11-2006 )
• A lot of the audience knew the songs and sometimes sang along to complicated rhythms and scales and melodic patterns very, very foreign to western ears.
• If the musicians came to Madison, even there listeners might be entranced, even with ears conditioned to different scales. ButI sat among people whose music it is.
• You may feel a little lost. The patterns you expect in music don't form. But the energy grows. By the end, after the third or fourth repitition, I could join (in a diffident undertone) the chorus of Ya Khabibi.
• Last night Michael went to a concert of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim music oud music. Also spectactularly good. I also managed to get a ticket for the concluding concert of Persian music.
• Why didn't we notice the Festival in time to buy tickets to every singel concert (except maybe the hard rock opera)? We did but thought,"Oud. One concert will be enough of that." Wrong!
• If you're coming to Israel in November, buy tickets ahead of time for the Oud Festival.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/performing-arts-in-jerusalem.html because three or four of the Festival artists also appeared with The Tizmoret http://cdbaby.com/cd/tizmoret )

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Book Stores

• Wherever you are in Jerusalem, you'll easily find a bookstore. Except for the chains and the ones in upscale malls, they all seem to carry used books.
• For Judaica and related subjects, try the shop on Keren Kayemet LeYisrael ("Kakal") across from the Gymnasia (hard G). Kuzari (http://www.khazaria.com/korobkin.html ) walk, the nearest Yehuda HaLevi gets to having a street named for him among the writers of the Golden Age (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/jerusalem-street-poetry.html ) , is just to the west.
• But probably you are looking for Engllish books, maybe something to read on an airplane. Like Sefer V'Sefel (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/yabetz.html ), the large Dani Books store on Even Yisrael (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/even-yisrael.html ), the pedestrian street between Yafo and Agrippas just west of King George, has a wide selection of used English-language books from philosophy and science through history and biography to mysteries and science fiction. In both stores, whoever is by the cash register knows the merchandise.
• In fact, you'll see a "new and used" sign in many book store windows. Outside book shops on King George from where it starts at the end of Keren HaYesod and until Hillel, are tables and boxes of used books, many in English. On Aza and other less central streets you'll also see the bargain books out by the sidewalk.
• For directions see http://www2.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp , now offering satellite views as well as abstract maps.
• Don't wait for the airport. Explore. Enjoy.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Green Grass

• In the Moon Forest the grass under the trees is green from the early rains(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/rain.html ).
• In parks and gardens, drip irrigation (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html ), is turned off until late spring.
• The unbuilt valleys ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/gazelles.html ), the distant hillsides (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/view.html ), turn from brown and grey to green.
• Grey comes to the winter skies to bring the green.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Yom Kippur

• Yom Kippur in Jerusalem is a bit eeirie. Noise of the industrial age stops.
• Outside I heard only the noises of people and nature, a dog's bark, birds, the breeze through leaves, people.
• Every hour or so a police car drovealong King George -- often on the left side of the street. Once an ambulance, with its siren warning the people who were walking in the street and the kids riding bikes there. A kid with a bike has few safe places to ride in Jerusalem the rest of the year. A man in an electric wheelchair rode along the street. For him, too, it was a day of safety.
• Sunday night, Michael and I went to HUC. Services were in a huge, round "events" hall on the sixth floor. Its windows look out on the City walls, a moving sight as night was falling. The Classical Reform professors M studied under in the 1960s must be rolling over in their graves. Every man wore a kipa. Many put on a talit. Classical Reformers might accept the all-Hebrew service (from Gates of Repentence and Xeroxed supplements) on the grounds that Hebrew (although not quite the Hebrew ofthe prayer book) is the local language (although 75 percent of the congregation was English-speaking), but what would they say about traditional prayers and parts of prayers that got added back in? The cantor and choir were wonderful, and did not intimidate the rest of us.
• On the way home we flowed into the streams of peoplethronging out of synagogues. Many wore white. Also on the street were young secular couples in jeans. I doubt they had been to Kol Nidrei. They were out enjoying the fact that it was Yom Kippru. Anyway with everthing closed, what else was there to do? Israel radio stations and TV went off the air, but people could have played CDs or or played piano. I heard none of that. If they did it, they kept the windows closed. I understand that Jerusalem is unusual in this quiet. It was strange and rather nice.
• Monday M went back to HUC and I went to Yeshurun-- the large curved synagogue on King George a little beyond the JNF, Jewish Agency, and UJA bldgs. There they ran a traditional Orthodox service -- also with lots of Americans. Some women came in white slacks, others properly skirted with their hair covered. No one tried to enforce anything on anyone. The cantor and choir were very good, but the congregation usually kept quiet.
• I had bought a set of prayerbooks published by the newspaper Ha'aretz and the Jewish Agency. The prayers were completely the traditional ones (according to the official "Land of Israel" format), but the books also include lots and lots of readings. Most interesting to me were the bits of reminiscences and quotes from people's diaries. These were by no means all religious. Several were from a book about Yom Kippur on Kibbutz BeitHaShita. One was about the High Holidays for a group ofsoldiers in the Jewish Brigade of the British army in WW II in Lybia. Vey moving. And one was about a youngIsraeli woman interviewed on the radio. "Are you goingto fast?" "Of course." "And will you go to services?""Oh no. I'm going to ride my bike on the empty streets." The rabbi who wrote this was upset, until, he reports, he thought, "She is doing two things special for Yom Kippur -- things that she only does on that day. Who is to say that her observance of theholiday is less acceptable than mine?"
• Monday evening after the shofars blew, people walked home a little more carefully. Cars started to move along the streets. It took a few hours for the hum of traffic to get up to its usual decibel level.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/all-together-now.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/unexpected-february-entertainment.html describe other holiday experiences in Jerusalem.

Copyright 2006, Jane S. Fox

Driving Distracts

• Driving distract from seeing.
• The next few entries describe an hour-long walk from the top of Derekh Aza down, down to the Malkha Mall. Along the way (except for the last 10 minutes) are bus stops, restaurants, bakeries, cafes, small shops selling soft drinks, and some of the best felafel in Jerusalem. Still, I wouldn't try it during the heat of the hottest days.
• After that, descriptions of a bus ride back up, and across, and up some more. Watch people in one direction and buildings in the other. Two dollars and fifty cents (for the round trip) gets you a survey of ethnic groups and 150 years of architecture, with a millenium and more off in the middle distance.
• For walking or bus riding, the complete Carta street map is very helpful. It gives almost every street name and keeps you oriented (if you paid attention in the third grade to the use of maps) as the bus loops and zigzags or you lose track, on a cloudy day, of which way is east.
• http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/walking.html starts you on one walking tour. http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/number-4-bus.html starts you on one bus tour. For both, follow the internal links.

Coyright 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