Happy Jerusalem Day!

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Here's looking at you, Jerusalem!
Happy Jerusalem Day today!
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Photo of the Damascus Gate into the Old City, during the Light Festival in June 2014.
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Damascus Gate like you've never seen it

 
If you look at the Damascus Gate long enough, it starts to look back at you.

 
Here are some of the projections onto the magnificent gate during the Jerusalem Festival of Light.

 A few showed courses of stones tumbling down or fire on the walls, and that was difficult to watch.
May it never happen.

I wonder if this painting with light could be considered momentary murals.
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Either way, I send them now to Monday Murals meme.
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Lighting up the night

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For ABC Wednesday, W is for white women.

This year's Festival of Light in Jerusalem has 27 places of wonderful light.

These dancers in illuminated costumes danced to ballet music in the cool night air  just outside the Old City wall near the New Gate.
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"Flower [of light] from the Universe"

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For Weekend Reflections  here is Flower from the Universe by Titia Ex from The Netherlands.

I didn't go down to the lower part of Tsahal Square to play with this Festival of Light installation, but apparently it is interactive.
The festival brochure says the principle behind it is "physical space--space as palette, as living organism."

See more about it at http://en.lightinjerusalem.org.il/2013/node/122.
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Pardon, your roots are showing

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More from this week's Festival of Light in the Old City --

The row of palm trees had taken root.
This is along HaTsanhanim St., between Damascus Gate and the New Gate.
Click to enlarge the photo and you will find the silvery tram passing by, approaching Damascus Gate station.

 

Looking in the opposite direction you see the wall enclosing the  Old City.

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This installation is called Luminaissance, a "Student Effort" project by French students from the Ecole de Conde, Lyon.

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See more about the work here.

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Damascus Gate sprouts a tree of life

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Jerusalem's Festival of Light in the Old City can start only when it is dark, i.e. after 8 pm.
Last night at 7:54 the sky above Damascus Gate was turning pretty shades of blue and pink.

Very soon the air got cool and the sky got dark and they began the projection of "Tree of Life"  by Heinz Kasper of Germany.
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This virtual tree is for ABC Wednesday's V day.
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P.S.  - Even better was how they projected "I LOVE JERUSALEM"  onto the gate in the 2011  Festival of Light!  See my post for the photos.
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A fountain of light

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The week-long Light 2013 in Jerusalem is on.
It is our fifth international light festival in the Old City. 

We walked over near the New Gate to see what everyone was looking at inside this bright installation that was sitting on the grass.

It looked like a huge hole in the earth!
How do they DO that?!
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The official prospectus says this:

Fountain of Life / Mekor Chaim
Amir Zobel, Israel

"For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light."  (Psalm 36)

A well of light that gives the viewer a sensation of glimpsing the subterranean foundations of Jerusalem's Old City.
The well symbolizes the unshakeable relationship between the building of Jerusalem and the Jewish people's roots:  light and water, the sources of life, both serve as metaphors for the Torah in Jewish sources.
Light and water are found physically and metaphorically in Jerusalem's foundations, and they are what make the city the beating heart of the people who have converged on it for thousands of years. 

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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
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Jerusalem by night

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For SkyWatch Friday, the black dome of the heavens above Jerusalem!

The Old City was lit up last week with dozens of dazzling light displays for the 4th International Light Festival.

At the foot of the newly rebuilt Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter--a whirling "Meetings Composition" with its movements triggered by the location of the spectator.

At the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer--dynamic illumination to nice music.

Illuminated narrow street in the Armenian Quarter.

At Jaffa Gate--the Italian "Cupola."

But even with "just" her normal illumination, the Old City is beautiful, so beautiful.
Here, the Western Wall and above it, the Temple Mount with the Muslim Dome of the Rock and el Aksa mosque.

The Citadel or Tower of David.

Hundreds of thousands walked along the old city wall and entered by various gates.
Enlarge the photo to see the people.
In the sky above the Latin Patriarchate, a big Vatican flag.

The Old City and the new city.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
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The night life of Old City cats

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This curious or maybe bewildered kitten didn't know what to make of this installation.
Neither did I.

It is one part of "Residents of the City" and was created by Bernardo Shkolnick.
Umm, I wonder what city he refers to.

It was part of last week's Old City of Jerusalem Light Festival. (See more in previous posts.)
Their website explains

The installation shows a representation of the different parts of our own personality in 5 stereotypes. The diverse mixture of these psychological stereotypic elements in each one of us creates the infinite kinds of human beings that we meet everywhere walking in the city . Skolnick uses ordinary illuminated display-window mannequins to represent these universal stereotypes as “humans” of diverse ages involved in different activities.

Near the "artwork" on Muristan Street I found the evening gathering place of the Old City's countless cats!
They must have felt secure behind the fence that protects this monument.

You can click on the photo and read the interesting history.

The complex in back of this stone is called the Muristan (bimaristan meaning "hospital" in Persian).

After the Hospitaler knights left their headquarters on the Temple Mount, they took up residence in the Muristan.

The order was founded during the First Crusade and is also known as the Order of St. John.

These knights, entrusted with caring for the health of Crusaders and pilgrims, built a hospital here.

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We learn from the inscription, "the Grand Priory in the British Realm" followed their example in more recent times.
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(This cat post is for Camera-Critters.)

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Italy at the Jaffa Gate

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An estimated quarter of a million Israelis, Jerusalemites, Old City residents, and tourists flocked to the week-long Festival of Light, and this cupola just outside Jaffa Gate greeted them and elicited many oohs and ahhs!

Against the black night sky (for SkyWatch Friday) and next to the illuminated city wall, the dome truly was spectacular.

Enlarge the photos to see the hundreds of tiny lights.

Especially when you looked upward from the inside.

The Festival website says

Artist: Luminarie De Cagna, Italy

At the Jaffa gate, a dome will rise which resembles a building from the Italian Renaissance, because of its size and shape.

Reaching 25 meters high and spreading over 20 meters wide, the dome in Jerusalem is a true spectacle and an impressive entrance for visitors to the city.

Luminarie De Cagna is an Italian family concern that was founded in 1930. Back then the firm illuminated buildings and squares on festive occasions with oil and carbide lamps. Soon they switched to electric lights and since 2006 they have been using LEDs only for new projects. The LEDs are chained into great curtains of light or mounted on a wooden structure. In this way, whole streets and even squares are fully lit.

Even something for Weekend Reflections!
The tourist bus caught a reflection of the cupola just before it drove under the bridge on which the dome stood.
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There is more about the Light Festival in my previous post and more will be coming.
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The stuff of archaeologists' dreams

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The "4th International Festival of Light in the Old City of Jerusalem" is in full swing.

This animated line of dig "volunteers" swinging buckets of excavated dirt from one to another was my favorite part!
It looked so life-like I wanted to join them!

Enlarge the photo and you can find the one guy down on the ladder, heaving the heavy buckets up over his head.

Meanwhile projectors went on and off, highlighting different areas of the big dig going on at the Givati Parking Lot.
It's just outside the Old City wall, next to the City of David.

Adding to the atmosphere was the background music--the clicking of many small pickaxes on ancient stones.
From time to time pictures of the discovered treasures lit up the back wall.
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These scenes in the quiet Jerusalem night were heartwarming; I felt proud and lucky to be an archaeology worker in Jerusalem.

This best part of the Light Festival could very well be an illustration of what archaeologists dream about at night.
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Written on stone

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"I love Jerusalem."
Actually, this could be the title of my blog.
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It was part of a changing light show projected onto the Damascus Gate last June during the Light Festival.
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I hope you are able to join me in saying "WE love Jerusalem."
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Today we are celebrating Jerusalem Day.
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Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
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Larger than life Zion Gate

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So much to see! I went back for a second night of the 2nd annual Festival of Light in Jerusalem's Old City and still didn't see everything.

Please enlarge this one to enjoy the details.

Guards had to hold back the pedestrian traffic for a minute to let this golf cart squeeze through the angled, narrow Zion Gate.

But what light artists Malchi Shem Tov, Asaf Shem Tov, and Amit Fisher were projecting onto the gate transformed it into something much bigger.

They describe it like this:
"Jerusalem is the gate to the whole world. The ultimate terminal in which every passenger feels at home."

Here is the Zion Gate in normal times, with a car maneuvering out of the Old City and into Mt. Zion.

The gate just recently had a cleaning and a restoration. But the shell and bullet holes from the wars were left as a reminder.

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Victory for beauty and sanity

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Welcome to ABC Wednesday V Day.

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Not all is vexing and vitriolic here in the volatile Middle East.
In Jerusalem, in the heart of the Old City, we are all enjoying a free Festival of Light this week.
Visitors from all over, together with the residents, are strolling peacefully and in awe through the little lanes.

Very vivid was this line of laundry swinging in the summer night's breeze.

Venus was right above the new moon, looking down on the swaying green grasses created by the TILT Group from France.

Little kids especially were fascinated by the humorous light sculptures made of light nets and LED ropes.

VIVID imagination!

I was spellbound watching artist Ronen Aricha create this portrait.

The red mark is where his laser is sketching.

If you enlarge this one photo taken with flash you can see the stones and the top of the Old City city wall.

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The Festival website says
"With the aid of simple tools every person can become an artist and draw on the 'most special canvas in the world'--the Old City walls. The laser is the paintbrush and the light is the paint. The play between art, technology and history renews traditional graffiti art and offers a new and progressive interpretation to the field."

Here's how the portrait ended up (until it was erased).

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Who do YOU say he is?!

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