Hannukah

• Hannuka (or Channuka, or H.annuka, or other spellings for the Festival of Lights) is said to be an occasion when people who don't look like they bought their clothes there can go into haredi neighborhoods like Meah She'arim in Jerusalem without being harrassed. This is true wherever Jews follow the commandment to publicize the miracle. (No one follows all the commandments and those who violate this one, and the commandment to provide hospitality, do not welcome outsiders at any time.)
• You can see the lights in many other Jerusalem neighborhoods. Try Nahalaot.
• All along the street, oil lamps flicker in glass enclosures. Some buildings have a glass-doored niche built into the wall along the sidewalk. Elsewhere families put the lights on a kitchen chair or small table beside their gate.
• If you are in Jerusalem during Hanuka (minimalist spelling), go out between 5:30 and 6 and stroll around any neighborhood where people put their hanukiot (eight branches plus one candlelabra) outside. Elsewhere you will see the lights in windows and on balconies.
  Ha'Shla St. in the Sha'arei Khesed neighborhood is a good place to start. See eMap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp) for directions. Keep turning corners to see more and more of the lights, tiny but lovely.
• In windows, candles burn in greeting-card "menorahs." (A misnomer. Th menora was the seven branched candelabra in the Temple. But, since the holiday commenmorates the relighting of lights in the Temple, why not call its candlelabra a menora?)
• In the shouk, wait till a batch of soufganiot comes out of the oven. Buy some hot. The traditional red jelly ones are still best. The bakery on Yafo, between Mahaneh Yehuda Street (the widest in the shouk) and Eitz H.ayim (Chaim) (the narrower alley with Bashar's cheese store in the middle) has some of the best. The soofganiot at the more modern bakeries get lower ratings in newspaper polls.
  

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Hannukah

• Hannuka (or Channuka, or H.annuka, or other spellings for the Festival of Lights) is said to be an occasion when people who don't look like they bought their clothes there can go into haredi neighborhoods like Meah She'arim in Jerusalem without being harrassed. This is true wherever Jews follow the commandment to publicize the miracle. (No one follows all the commandments and those who violate this one, and the commandment to provide hospitality, do not welcome outsiders at any time.)
• You can see the lights in many other places. Try Nahalaot.
• All along the street, oil lamps flicker in glass enclosures. Some buildings have a glass-doored niche built into the wall along the sidewalk. Elsewhere families put the lights on a kitchen chair or small table beside their gate.
• If you are in Jerusalem during Hanuka (minimalist spelling), go out between 5:30 and 6 and stroll around any neighborhood where people put their hanukiot (eight branches plus one candlelabra) outside. Elsewhere you will see the lights in windows and on balconies.
• Ha'Shla St. in the Sha'arei Khesed neighborhood is a good place to start. See eMap (http://www3.emap.co.il/eng_index.asp) for directions. Keep turning corners to see more and more of the lights, tiny but lovely.
• In windows, candles burn in greeting-card "menorahs." (A misnomer. Th menora was the seven branched candelabra in the Temple. But, since the holiday commenmorates the relighting of lights in the Temple, why not call its candlelabra a menora?)
• In the shouk, wait till a batch of soufganiot comes out of the oven. Buy some hot. The traditional red jelly ones are still best. The bakery on Yafo, between Mahaneh Yehuda Street (the widest in the shouk) and Eitz H.ayim (Chaim) (the narrower alley with Bashar's cheese store in the middle) has some of the best. The soofganiot at the more modern bakeries get lower ratings in newspaper polls.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Gated Communities

• Jewish neighborhoods built in Jerusalem during the last 50 years of Ottoman rule were gated communities. Typically two long, single-story, apartment buildings flanked a courtyard. At one end was a strong gate; at the other a wall or an equally strong gate. In those days, bandits roamed the land.
• Under the stones of the courtyard was the communal rainwater cistern. By the end of the summer it was dry. Then drinking water was bought from peddlars. During the 1947-1948 siege of Jerusalem, an elderly resident (gabbai of the Parsi synagog on Shilo Street) told me, people were glad to have the cistern water, though, he said,t hey had to shop down trees for firewood to boil it.
• In the courtyard there was also the communal baking oven.
• Jacky Levy has said that in Jerusalem the word shkhuna (neighborhood) properly applies only to this configuration, that brought its inhabitants together for essentials.
• Walking north on Diskin from Ruppin, just after KKL (which, in spite of what the Carta map shows, does go through to Diskin), turn right at the alley. You will soon be in a very pretty example of such communities.
• Look up (http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/looking-up.html . A second floor has been added to most buildings. Look around. Many owners have modernized their properties.
• As you walk through the Nakhalaot, on both sides of Betsalel, you shoulad be able to trace several other neighborhoods from the same era.

Copyright 2007 Jane S. Fox

Hekdesh

• Scattered among the dwellings built outside the walls towards the end of Ottoman rule are buildings marked "hekdesh" to a particular Jewish community.
• This property must be used for the good of that community forever (though I expect developers have lawyers working on how to break such covenants).
• If you read Hebrew, you can decipher signs marking such buildings throughout the Nakhalaot.
• In between Agripas and Bezalel, you can walk through a long courtyard with one such building along the Agripas side. Its tiny apartments, little improved since they were built over a hundred years ago, are leased to young couples for tiny rents.

COpyright 2006 Jane S. Fox

Pump

• Watch the map for street names. Soon after the 4 turns left on Emek Refaim, where the last bit of HaMagid (closed to vehivles and considered beneath the mapmakers’ notice) opposite Wedgewood, you can see (on the left) a pump above a rainwater cistern – now of historical interest only. If you miss it in this direction, you can see it on the right on your way back.
• See also http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/08/cistern.html Walking through the various neighborhoods of Nakhalaot, I see many "well heads" (leading not to ground-water wells but to rain-water cisterns) but no pumps. Scrap metal is valuable.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox