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

Number 9 bus

Crossing from the Central Bus Station after a day-trip to Beersheva and the Negev, I was surprised to see the number 9 bus. On the front it proclaimed Giv'at Mordehai as its destination. Good. That would take it through Rehavia. To be sure, when the man getting on after me asked whether the bus was going to Rehavia, the driver answered that it would take ong to get there. But I was already settled.

A turn left on Saei Yisrael, and I figured I'd get a tour of Sikhron Moshe on our way to Kiakh St. Instead we made a series of loops: around Romema, then Kiryat Bels, Kiyat Ganz, Ezrat Torah. I'd been to Romema, in jeans on a wet and cold winter day a few years back to retrieve a hat a tourist friend forgot in n apartment in one of the huge, many entried, apartment blocks. The other neighborhoods are similar. Eventually we reached Kerem Avraham through which I'd walked on a tour of Amos Oz's childhood sights.

Women and girls got on the bus and off at their destinations. "Did they sit in the back?" i was asked later. No, and no one hassled me.

Men and women got on, and off a few stops later. All the men were dressed in black, the women in black or dark grey, their mothers' and grandmothers' colors relegated to family photographs for now.

Eventually we turned on Strauss, continued to HaNeviim, and were on Kiakh. One black clad man remained. He got off on Ushishkin. Women and girls and men and boys in jeans got on. They have their own fashions.

The Kharedim ride the bus more than others do -- though their neighborhoods are now also full of parked cars. So each bus stop in their neighborhoods has long lists of buses, and no doubt when the number 9's ridership went down, someone, or a computer said, "We'll get lots of riders north of Derekh Yafo."

Copyright 2014 Jane S. Fox

Poetry Set to Music

Wednesday night we had tickets at Bet AviChai (bac.co.il) only because we'd been given discount coupons after a Tuesday night lecture.

That lecture was a fascinating account of the real ship Exodus (as apposed to Leon Uris's novelized composite of several ships and romance, which later became a popular movie). Much more is known now that governments have released documents kept classified for decades.

After the lecture Michael dropped his cellphone from two flights up. The seven-year-old phone made by a company called Tellit worked just fine after I put it back together again.

Wednesday night was poetry. We were a bit apprehensive, but it turned out to be classic poets (Bialik, Altermann, and the like) plus some we'd never heard of, many set to music. The poem about the solar water heater and the antenna was new to us. The singers were so good that I think even listeners who understood no Hebrew would have enjoyed the performance.

We are now on the BetAviChai mailing list, so se won't be dependent on my noticing posters for their events or being handed a flyer at one event for another one. As with other Jerusalem venues, performances don't always seem to appear on the website when I'm looking.

Copyright 2013 Jane Schulzinger Fox

Maimonides' Kiosk

Some time during the last ten months the kiosk in the park strip along the center of Ben Maimon st opened as a coffee bar. Nice amenity.

Copyright 2012 Jane S. Fox

Outside the PM's

How empty the sidewalk looks when first seen after the Shalits removed their tent, mission accomplished. The turn of the wall and the widening of the pavement soon seems normal once more.

Copyright 2012 Jane S. Fox

From Flamenco to Balkan

On our walk home after a Flamenco performance dedicated to Cameron (http://www.andalucia.com/flamenco/musicians/camarondelaisla.htm ) we saw a crowd outside Sigimund's. Two were dancing, others swaying. From inside we heard Balkan music. As we crossed Ha'ari, we could see the violinist and percussionist through the glass sides of the tiny building (really an oversized kiosk). In a taxi we'd have missed that.

This Flamenco concert had less dancing (and fewer dancers) than the last and more singing (and musicians and singers). Except for a headless man a few short riffs by the musicians and singers, including the very pregnant one, all the dancing was by Sharon Sagi, the woman who starred in the previous concert.

The program including filmclips of Cameron (de La Isla) who rose "from the streets" in his words, to be the idol of flamenco lovers.

The music and dance were wonderful, but we would have liked program notes with lyrics. Tantalizing to catch only those few Spanish words I know like girl, tomorrow, and heart.

Copyright 2011 Jane S. Fox

Cobbler

Sandal strap's torn? Handle on your tote's come loose from the stitching? The cobbler in the tiny hut on Keren Kayemet, outside the post office, will do the repair.

I brought him my carry-all tote. One leather strap had come out from the stitching. I asked if he could repair that and reinforce the other three points of attachement. He asked if I wanted to wait.

While I sat on the lastic chair outside, he gave me tea and biscuits. Very hot tea. More than I thought I could drink. But I did. And my tote can once more carry netbook, cheese, apples, carrots, cucumbers, figs. . .

Just about everyone who walked past said hello to him.

If you don't speak Hebrew, gesture will tell him what repair you want.

Copyright 2009 jane S. Fox

Prima Kings Hotel

The Prima Kings Hotel, where King George meets Ben Maimon (and Agron and changes its name to Keren HaYesod (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/watershed.html ) is good value for the money. If they have a room ready, they’ll let you check in at noon (three hours early). Check out time is noon, but the fee for late check out is quite reasonable -- great if you’re taking one of those midnight flights. The rooms are very nice and a reasonable size. There are luxury touches a clothesline across the bathtub and a hairdryer to get those slacks that last bit dr. You can use an iron on the 6th floor. The TV is a bit tricky because it has extraa features like radio reception. Lots of channels. The breakfast is wonderful, better, in my opinion than at the Inbal, a more expensive hotel (though the Kings is not exactly cheap). The lobby is very pleasant. The staff is very friendly and helpful. Tell reception if you want late check out. Also if you want them to order a shutte (sheroot) to the airport.

But, like most (maybe all) hotels they give a bad currency exchange rate. Well, that's a courtesy service, not their business. Convert your money at any of the no-comission store-fronts instead.

Copyright 2009 Jane S. Fox

Hats

The storefront that housed hat shop at the corner (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-down.html )of Mitudella and Aza is now an ice cream shop with outdoor seating. In addition to tables and chairs, they’ve put cushions on the low wall the Municipality build as part of the marker for David Siton Square.

On the one hand, can I sit thereon if I'm not eating their ice cream? On the other, pleasant to see people using the wall.

Lots of people around is one reason I feel safe walking alone in the area late at night.

Copyright 2009 Jane S. Fox

Tiffany Lampshade

I've heard it called "the mushroom," but it looks more like a tiffany lampshade above a huge kiosk.

The name of the little restaurant on the corner of Haari and Aza, opposite Binyamin Mitudela, appears, AFAIK, only on the kashrut certificate.

The soups are wonderful. Crepes not special. You can sit as long as you like.

Copyright 2009 Jane S. Fox

Looking Up

• On the roof of the building at the corner of Rdak and ben Maimon -- the one with the computer store and grocery on the ground floor -- trees and shrubs grow in what must be quite a garden. Farther down Radak are smaller plantings on balconies.
• Keep looking up and you see well-crafted ironwork and interesting sonework over windows.
• Here in Rehavia, and in other parts of the city where buildings date from the 1930s and slightly earlier, looking up also takes your eyes to added storeys, some in the style of the building below and others like new buildings built above old.
• Either way, the increase in population density intensified the neighborhood's flavors.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Chocolates

• Chocolates by Max Brenner (aka The Bald Man) are still superb, even though they are now sold at the mall.
• A small chocolate shop and cafe on Arosoroff, just off Aza, sells Max Brenner and other excellent speciality brands, Israeli and Belgian.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Charity

• A wooden charity box sits on the counter of the store around the corner(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/dairy-products.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ). all it says is "Tsdakah" (charity).
• "Where does the money go?" I asked Shlomi.
• He waited until the other customer left, lowered his voice and started, "There's a family ..."
• "OK," I said, dropping change in the box. "You don't have to tell me any more. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't something political."
• "Two things I don't allow in this store," he said. "Politics and religion."
• Unique.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Ethiopian Church

• Today we went on one of those walking tours thatcovers 3 blocks in 2.5 hours -- and that's with the guide saying, "I don't have time on such a short tour to tell you all about" this building or that family.
• Rehov Etyopia runs north from Rehov HaNevi'im (the Street of the Prophets), about which more later. Several buldings along the street belong to the Ethiopean Church, which has a long connectiion with Jerusalem. When the Italians conquered Ethiopia in 1936 (in order to show that they could have an empire), Emperor Haile Selassie lived in Rehavia for a year. He is entered in the rolls of residents with his occupation given as "King of Ethiopia." In Hebrew, "king" is a more honored word than "emperor."
• We ended up at the round Ethiopean church, in a walled compoud a little way up the street. Probably every chruch you've seen has a rectangular structure. In this one, the altar is inthe middle of the circle. It has its own smaller dome inside the building's large one. Like the Greek Orthodox, the Ethiopeans hide the altar table behind a partition, so the mystery of the mass is not visible to the congregation.
• The Ethiopeans remove their shoes before entering the bldg. We all went in barefoot or in stocking feet.
• Lapped eastern rogs cover the floor. A bench runs around the outer wall.Otherwise there is no seating. Perhaps congregants sit on the floor, or perhaps, like the Russian Orthodox, they stand throughout the service.
• Around the compoud are houses for the community.
• Outside the wall, across the street, is the house where Eliezer Ben Yehuda lived for many years with his family.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Sunset

• Hotels may charge more for a room with a view of the Old City.
• In complete contrast to history and architecture are the beauties of a Jerusalem sunset.
• From almost anywhere you can glimpse hills between buildings, and in many places the view west is unobstructed.
• Except in spring and summer, Israel is on daylight losing time, far to the east of its time zone. The sun rises and sets early. During the day, the sun is hot. At four, the rays can no longer warm after their long trip through the atmosphere.
• The dry air holds no heat, but soon the edge of the sky begins to glow. From our livingroom I see the horizon far, hill-mounded, rose-banded.
• The landlords want to sell the apartment. I think no apartment selling for a mllion dollars and more in Jerusalem's strange real-estate market has a better view or location (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ). The grow lingers, fades. In the darkening sky stars blink, one, two three, a sky full.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Dairy Products

• At the large grocery stores (Sentry and Copps) in Wisconsin ("TheDairy State") the dairy shelves stock the usual varieties of milk (various flavors and levels of fat), cream, yogurt, and cheese. Very few of the products are from Wisconsin.
• At the tiny grocery near here(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/05/my-jerusalem-neighborhood.html ), the refrigerator case offers all the "white" (as opposed to yellow cheese) and blue products I get in a large WI grocery. These are all produced in Israel and very fresh. In addition they sell local, fresh
• leben (the texture of yogurt, but a different culture and flavor)
• eshel (Kefir is sort of like eshel, but is that Wisconsin?)
• labaneh (sold at Trader Joe’s, not from Wisconsin) cows, goats, sheep and buffalo milk varieties; with olive oil and zatar or without; also sold as small (melon-ball sized) balls
• “white cheese”(http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cheesecake.html ) in 3, 5, and 9 percent (like the Vermont Cheese and Butter Company’s Fromage Blanc and their Quark)
• really fresh cottage cheese in 1.5, 3, 5, and 9 percent (I can get one kind of fresh local cottage cheese at distant speicalty stores)
• solid Bulgarian cheese - cow’s, goats, sheep, and buffalo milk varieties in 0, 5, and 9 percent
• spreadable Bulgararian, 0, 5, and 9 percent fat, plain or with zatar and olive oil
• buffalo-milk yogurt (also goats and sheep, but I have seen that in WI)
• “salt cheese” in various forms (looks like farmer’s cheese but taste is milder).
• Jerusalem supermarkets offer a greater selection.
• Although the selection of local yellow cheese is limited, cheese stores like Bashar's in the shouk (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/abundance.html ) sell hundreds of varieties of imported yellow cheeses -- more than I have ever seen in Wisconsin specialty stores.
• I've written the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture to give them ideas for products new to them. No answer.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

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