Living the beauty of simplicity

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 Today and tomorrow we City Daily Photo bloggers are blogging about the theme "The beauty of simplicity." 
Karl suggested this theme, as it is his philosophy that a photo should be kept simple for maximum effect. His blog, Bolzano Daily Photo, has stunning pictures of South Tyrol.

This hermitage in the Jerusalem Hills was built in the 1400s.
It was added on to a house and chapel built by the Crusaders in the 12th century.

From June to October 2006 this hermitage (more like a monastic cell), was my beloved dwelling place.
I had just returned to Israel after eleven years of volunteer work abroad, with my backpack and duffle bag and two boxes of stuff and that was about all.

The water faucet was just outside the door (near Lara the cat, z"l).
Steep steps led to a little building with a shower and toilet. 

The simple wooden table was both desk and dinner table.
Afternoon sunshine streamed in.
In the evening families of jackals called back and forth across the Soreq Valley just below.
(Hear videos of their howls here.)

Olive trees, pines, and many other trees right outside in the woods.
Silence mostly.

Full of history and holy energy, each ancient stone in the walls and floor became my fast friend.
How very good it was to sleep and dream and to wake to a new dawn in my own land.
The hermitage was beautiful in its simplicity, and so was my life.
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As the old Shaker song affirms,

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

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What I miss most

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Our City Daily Photo group's Theme Day asks the question:
If you had to leave forever the city from which you usually post, what or who would you miss most?

From 2008 I blogged from the Jerusalem Hills, covering Jerusalem and the hills of Judea round about her.
Actually I did have to leave my hill, and likely forever, just a year and a half ago. 
What I miss most is this 12th century house built by the Crusaders.
 
Please, go ahead and click two separate times on the photos to see and appreciate each beautiful stone.

The hill country is where John the Baptist grew up.
The Crusaders built a chapel over the rock hewn tomb in which John may have buried his mother, Elisabeth.

Later, sometime in the 15th century a hermit added this small hermitage.
The small room has a common wall with, and a passageway into, the chapel.
The hermitage was my home for several months; it was a time and place like no other. 
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Did Crusader knights pray this psalm too?

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Up north, on the Jordan River, north of the Sea of Galilee, are the remains of a Crusader castle with an amazing, gruesome history.
The fortress at Vadum Iacov or Jacob's Ford, now known in Hebrew as Ateret, was attacked and razed and burned by Saladin and his army in August 1179.
Some 700 of the defeated Knights Templar were taken prisoner, but the other 800 Christian defenders were massacred.

Their bodies, together with their dead horses, were thrown into a deep well.
The Muslims then made the vaulted roof collapse over the corpses, and the well remained sealed for the next 800 years . . . until Israeli archaeologists re-discovered Vadum Jacob / Ateret fortress.

From 1999 to 2007 geoarchaeology was done at the scene.
Why also geologists?
It was a first-ever opportunity to excavate along the line of a major geological fault.
Sections of the castle's 50-meter-long walls were torn apart by a powerful earthquake in 1202 (and perhaps even more in the 1759 quake).
I was in awe seeing the crack (in the photo below)!

The Hebrew University's website about the research project has several short video clips that show the grizzly story of the battle, as well as what they found at the site.
If nothing else, please watch this one especially:
http://vadumiacob.huji.ac.il/movies/Destruction%20of%20the%20castle.wmv

Can we imagine the Crusaders, while under siege of the Muslims for four fateful days, praying Psalm 60?

That is our psalm for this Sunday's PsalmChallenge, led by Robert in Athens.

PSALM 60
For the choir director; according to Shushan Eduth. A Mikhtam of David, to teach; when he struggled with Aram-naharaim and with Aram-zobah, and Joab returned, and smote twelve thousand of Edom in the Valley of Salt.



¹ O God, You have rejected us. You have broken us;
You have been angry; O, restore us.

² You have made the land quake, You have split it open;
Heal its breaches, for it totters.
³ You have made Your people experience hardship;
You have given us wine to drink that makes us stagger.
⁴ You have given a banner to those who fear You,
That it may be displayed because of the truth.
Selah.

⁵ That Your beloved may be delivered,
Save with Your right hand, and answer us!

⁶ God has spoken in His holiness:
“I will exult, I will portion out Shechem and measure out the valley of Succoth.
⁷ “Gilead is Mine, and Manasseh is Mine;
Ephraim also is the helmet of My head;
Judah is My scepter.
⁸ “Moab is My washbowl;
Over Edom I shall throw My shoe;
Shout loud, O Philistia, because of Me!”

⁹ Who will bring me into the fortified city?
Who will lead me to Edom?
¹⁰ Have not You Yourself, O God, rejected us?
And will You not go forth with our armies, O God?
¹¹ O give us help against the adversary,
For deliverance by man is in vain.
¹² Through God we shall do valiantly,
And it is He who will tread down our adversaries.
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P.S. Wikipedia calls the fortification Chastellet and gives its take on the Battle of Jacob's Ford.
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French Hospital Saint Louis

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For our That's My World tour, let's go inside the French Hospital.
It is just outside the Old City, across the street from the New Gate.
You can't get in unless you are part of a rare special tour.

French Baron de Piellat, Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, and the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem built the new hospital in the 1880s, complete with "Oriental flourishes" around the wooden-shuttered windows.

Today it serves as a 50-bed hospice for chronic or terminally ill patients of all three religions.
Six Sisters of St. Joseph are in charge, helped by 25 volunteers (mostly from Germany and France) and a staff of 60.
Israel's Ministry of Health and Kupat Cholim pay for the care of the sick.
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Catholic Online has a nice article about the devoted staff.

King Louis IX led two Crusades to the Holy Land in 1249-1252 and was taken prisoner by Muslims in Egypt.
The books say he was canonized "for his piety and righteousness."
Saint Louis' statue stands high in the chapel of the hospital named after him.
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Baron de Piellat (who paid for half of the hospital), he himself painted the walls of the church with patterns incorporating the cross and the fleur de lis.

The Baron lived in the hospital for many years.
On the walls of the top floor he painted Hospitaler and Templar knights

and shields of the Crusader knights who conquered Jerusalem.
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During World War I, before the Ottomans lost Jerusalem in 1917, the Turks covered this hated "Crusader art" with black paint.
De Piellat was not one to give up. He returned after the war and restored his paintings.
He died in his own hospital, Hopital Francais St. Louis, in 1925.
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Come back tomorrow for more strange stories about the place. Shalom!
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UPDATE Feb. 2014: An excellent short video about the hospice just came out.
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UPDATE May 2014: Old frescoes were just discovered inside the hospital!
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Floodlights on the Citadel

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We looked at this bridge in an earlier post for Louis' Sunday Bridges.
But that was in the daytime.

Take a look at night!!
The Tower of David (the Citadel) is even more glorious at night.
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On the right is the 16th century gatehouse.
The dry moat was built earlier, probably in Crusader times (12th C.).
The moat originally reached the entrance and was partly spanned by a wooden drawbridge.
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The people you see on the present wooden bridge were lined up waiting to go in to the sound and light show inside the courtyard.
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Here is the continuation of the bridge up to the big heavy entrance gate.

The Citadel has something nice for Hey Harriet's Shadow Shots Sunday too.

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Floodlit from below, the rusticated stones throw sharp shadows.

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Rustication (leaving the center of the stone rough and projecting) has a military purpose.
It protects the joints of the masonry and when struck by projectiles, it is more likely than smooth masonry to dissipate their force by fracturing harmlessly.
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Imagine yourself a Crusader attacking the Citadel, looking up at these tall walls with those fearsome arrow slits and machicolations!

That wall is on the left in this photo, the bridge and entrance are on the right, and in between, behind the low wall is a lovely garden with a bubbling fountain and benches and little trees.

The garden is my favorite secluded place for a picnic in Jerusalem's Old City.

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Mystery in the Courtyard of the Arches

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Supreme Court Building architect Ada Karmi-Melamede calls her courtyards "roofless rooms."
In a post last week we talked about the symbolism of the water conduit in the Courtyard of the Arches.
But today look carefully at the far end of the courtyard shown above.
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From up close you can see it has the vaulted ceiling and the other characteristics of Medieval Crusader buildings in Israel!
A nod to the Crusaders! Yes, those same knights who crossed Europe, slaughtering Jews as they went, and who arrived in the Holy Land and killed all the Jews and Moslems they could find.

And facing it another universal tribute, an arch suggesting a Roman triumphal arch!

So our guide said.

OK, fine, again, no hard feelings.

But what is that mysterious thing in the arch, next to the pool of water?

I found no reference to it in the official brochure.

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Orly Peled, in Yad Ben-Zvi's Jerusalem, a walk through time, writes this:

"Pay special note to the arched structure toward which the water of the conduit flows. Is this a church, a synagogue, or maybe a mosque? The architects intentionally left it enveloped in mystery, thus alluding to the ideal of the legal process that shows no favor on the basis of race, creed, color, or gender."

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Sugar cane is back

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Something was new yesterday in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market!

Something I had never seen there or anywhere in the world.
Sugar cane!

The juice store man first cut it into manageable pieces with a cleaver and then fed it into a special machine with his right hand. The dry, squeezed part came out on the left side.

Out came the juice for the curious smiling customers.

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In not-perfect Hebrew the sign extolls the therapeutic wonders worked by the "sweet love" drink of lemon juice mixed with cane sugar juice.

Click to enlarge the photo if you can read Hebrew.

Photo by Amir Freundlich

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When I worked at the excavations in Tiberias last October, we volunteers were given a guest lecture by Dr. Edna Stern titled "The sweet Sea of Galilee." Apparently El-Kabri in the Western Galilee and other sugar villages in the north were producing sugar in Medieval times.

The first book about sugar production in Akko, Tiberias, Kabul, etc. was written in the 10th century. Dr. Stern quoted a juicy part: something about that they "ate and danced naked."

Hmm, like, from a sugar high??

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Stern headed a salvage dig at Horbat Manot. The photo above is the sugar mill there.
The Israel Antiquities Authority page about the site and about its planned conservation says this:

"The Crusaders first encountered sugar cane and the growing of it upon arrival to the shores of Lebanon in the 11th century. Within a few years they have come to realize the value of the sugar manufactured from the cane, the profit gained from its production and from exporting it to Europe. Apparently, the Crusaders were the first to develop the process of producing sugar crystals in cones and in molasses amphoriskoi that facilitated the transport and the marketing of the sugar cane products in Europe."

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The cones mentioned are sugarloaves.

Wiki says "A sugarloaf was the traditional form in which refined sugar was produced and sold until the late 19th century when granulated and cube sugars were introduced."

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"The sugar mill consists of remains of an aqueduct that conveyed water from Nahal Kziv; crushing mill sluices, press base for extracting the liquefied sugar and a large barrel-vaulted hall (8 x 35 m) containing furnaces for cooking and refining the sugar cane juice, remains of another hall to the north of it and a subterranean vault to the south of it," the report says about Horbat Manot.

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Sounds the same as the processes shown in this 16th century engraving of sugar production in Europe.
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Today there are but scarce remains of sugar cane in Israel and Jordan.

Once the water sources were more plentiful and supported the plant.

I heard from an old-timer who grew up in the 1930s near the sources of the Yarkon River how Arabs would pass with sugar cane-laden donkeys and he would get a few pieces to chew on for a sweet treat.

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And all this started at the shuk as something sweet to share with you for That's My World Tuesday.
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Tancred's Tower (with bride and groom)

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Recently I learned that at the recently completed Kikar Tsahal (IDF Square) there are remains of something called TANCRED'S TOWER.

I wanted to photograph it yesterday, before the sun set completely.
But to my surprise I ended up doing a wedding shot instead!
If you don't believe me, click on the photos.

A bride and groom!

At one point the video photograph had the young man jump off the wall and shout with joy, wave his arms and click his heels.

I rather doubt that the young couple was aware of the history of the spot.

If you are up to it, here is the story as told in Jerusalem, a walk through time, Yad Ben-Zvi's Walking-Tour Guide, Vol. 1, p 162:

"The northwest corner of the city wall . . . was one of the points where the Crusaders concentrated their forces for the assault upon the city, in the first phases of the siege in the sweltering summer of 1099.

At the foot of the city wall we see the remains of a moat and above it are particularly large stones that protrude from the wall. These are the remains of the base of a fortified tower, the continuation of which is situated in the basement of the Christian College des Freres within the city walls. . . . The tower (which was built during or after the Crusader period) . . . is known as Tancred's Tower, after the Norman Crusader commander from Sicily, who bivouacked here with his forces during the siege.

In the north the Crusader forces breached the walls near Damascus Gate. Using battering rams and siege towers several stories high, they rained arrows upon the defenders on the wall."

Damascus Gate

William of Tyre, a contemporary Crusader historian, wrote of this "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of slain without horror . . . . Still more dreadful it was to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them."

After breaking through, the Crusaders rushed in to seize the Temple Mount where water from the cisterns quenched their thirst, following their weeks of shortage of water.

In the evening, after they already controlled the whole city, they proceeded to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to offer prayers of thanksgiving.

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For That's My World Tuesday this was a glimpse of my wedding-couple-world of just yesterday and of the bloody slaughter of 910 years ago. Same place but so very different.

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The keys to the city--take them already!

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December 9 is the anniversary of a major event in Jerusalem's modern history, but I doubt if anyone will think of it. The only reason I know is because of my explorations this week.
I found a tall office building and from a top (10th) floor window was lucky to get this view to the west. The huge building with the long blue windows is the new Central Bus Station.
But what was that little circular park in back of it??

I went down and discovered this little playground, but no name.
But across the street was a tiny sign on an old wall that said Kikar Allenby, meaning Allenby Square. Aha!

And an old monument! Its inscription reads:

"NEAR THIS SPOT THE HOLY CITY WAS SURRENDERED TO THE 60th LONDON DIVISION 9th DECEMBER 1917.   ERECTED BY THEIR COMRADES TO THOSE OFFICERS, N.C.O.'s AND MEN WHO FELL IN FIGHTING FOR JERUSALEM."

If you click to enlarge this photo and contemplate the figures etched in stone, you may see hooded Crusader knights with shield and sword!! Like these British soldiers they, too, conquered Jerusalem (in 1099).
But wait . . . I always heard that General Allenby accepted the Turks' surrender at the Citadel, just inside the Jaffa Gate, in the Old City. So, back home, I asked the Google god to help in my quest for answers.

Here, written by Aviva Bar-Am in her Jerusalem Post article "Authentic Romema," is (one version of) the amazing story:

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"In the wee hours of December 9, 1917, two British army cooks from the 60th London Division left their Jerusalem base in search of fresh eggs and vegetables for their commander. Less than six weeks had passed since Commonwealth troops had breached the Turkish lines in Israel for the first time and conquered Beersheba; earlier that very morning the British had captured Jerusalem from the Turks, as well.
As the cooks walked through a deserted field on an exposed hill, they were accosted by a number of residents anxious to surrender the city. Among them were four policemen, several youths, the Jerusalem mayor Hussein Selim el-Husseini and a photographer from the American Colony.
Upon sighting British soldiers, the Jerusalemites lifted their arms. They held a white sheet that had been hastily torn off one of the beds at the American Colony’s hospital. Attached to a broom handle, the sheet was the Jerusalemites’ makeshift flag of truce. The mayor then handed the cook and his aide a tender of capitulation, explaining that the Turks had fled the city.

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When the soldiers returned to base, they told their commander what had happened. He was so upset that the ’ceremony’ had taken place without him, that he ordered the mayor to return to the hill, and conducted a second surrender. However, that officer’s commander was furious that he hadn’t been present at either surrender, so he held a third ceremony on the same spot.

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But General Sir Edmund Allenby, commander in chief of the British-Anzac Egyptian Expeditionary Force, was unimpressed by the three surrenders. On December 11, 1917, he entered the Old City of Jerusalem and conducted yet another capitulation ceremony. Unfortunately, the mayor was unable to attend — he is said to have contracted pneumonia after standing on the exposed hill for the three previous ceremonies and to have died soon afterward.

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Ignoring the location and circumstances of the fourth and final surrender, soldiers of the 60th London Division decided to erect a three-meter-high monument near the original site in 1920."

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For more photos and stories from around the world visit the friendly blogger-tour guides at our new That's My World Tuesday. Free tours! No tipping, except maybe to leave a comment. :)
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UPDATE Sept. 2014:  A photograph of the surrender to the two British soldiers is now here!
UPDATE July 2019: More about the famous surrender photo --see here. 
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Crusader circles

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Two circles in the floor, from Crusader times, 12th century.

One complete with an Advent wreath.

One with marks from water-drawing ropes of the centuries.
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Horses at the Old City wall

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A horse standing alone in a trailer next to the Citadel of Jerusalem?!

Na . . . not a real live horse. But a bit of a mystery.
I was with a fast-paced guided tour group and could not go over to investigate.
Four hours later it was gone.

Maybe he came to visit his brother, the statue just outside the Tower of David Museum of Jerusalem History.

Here Richard the Lionhearted faces Saladin!
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More about Crusaders in the Holy Land in yesterday's post.

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To see bloggers' live animal photos you can visit Camera-Critters meme.

Knights then and now

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II bestowed honorary knighthood on our president yesterday, appointing him Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George. Since Shimon Peres is not a subject of the Commonwealth, he (thankfully!) did not have to kneel upon receiving the honor and he may not use the title "Sir."

He is the first Israeli to be knighted. Mazal tov, congratulations Mr. President!

Photo: Amos Ben-Gershom, GPO ([Israeli] Govt. Press Office) in today's Ynet

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All this business of titles and honors is quite foreign to modern Israelis.

And knights?! The last time we had knights in the Holy Land is when Europe's Crusaders came riding in, killing and plundering.
They massacred the Jews as well the Muslims of Jerusalem.
Their kingdom here was short-lived, from 1099 to 1187.

(Click to enlarge for easy reading.)

The exhibits are in the wonderful Tower of David Museum of the History of Jerusalem.

From their website:
The orders of knights combined two Christian ideals: chivalry and chastity. Four such orders were based in Crusader Jerusalem: the Templars, the Hospitallers, the Teutonic Knights and the Knights of St. Lazarus.
The orders, each in its own way, took responsibility for the safety and well-being of pilgrims, and the treatment of the wounded and the lepers. Some of the orders provided an important military force to defend the kingdom as a whole.