Tell A Fairy Tale Day

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Tell A Fairy Tale Day is being celebrated today!

What better time than now to tell you about a unique experience I enjoyed while staying with the Franziskusgemeinschaft in Austria last November.
The community invited Eva Meierhofer, a professional storyteller, for an evening of fairy tales!

Eva came with a thick book of  "the world's most beautiful fairy tales."

Also a strange little book, "Tales of Idiots, Poor, Beggars, Jews, and Gypsies."

Since I didn't understand all that much of the German, I could concentrate on Eva's pointy shoes and special umbrella.

The Feenhaar, literally fairy hair, played with a bow, gave ethereal music.
I think it is also called a psalter.

You can hear a sample of its music and see beautiful photos of how the instruments are made in Switzerland here: http://www.klangkunstwerk.ch/Feenhaar-Fairy-Hair

All the members of the Franciscan farming community gave it a try.
It was really a magical evening in rural Austria.
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You can look for Eva Meierhofer on Facebook and see more of her special work.
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Our urban park, thanks to German friends

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 Back where I came from, the Jerusalem Hills, you never see olive trees in orderly rows.
They just grow scattered all over the terraced hills.
So when I saw these long rows in a wadi in my new home of Meitar in the Negev, I had to investigate.

Fortunately there were plaques.

So!  It is the Olive Tree Park of Meitar, funded in 2009 by the Friends of the Keren Kayemet/Jewish National Fund in Germany. 

They wrote WITH LOVE AND IN RECOGNITION OF ISRAEL'S PLANTING NEW COMMUNITIES IN THE NEGEV.

 German friends Ingrid and Hans-Dieter Roth of Wiesbaden gave Meitar another important gift--a fire watchtower.
I still have to find the tower but meanwhile here is an article about it and its dedication.

The blessing on the sign is from the Torah,  Numbers 6:24:
יְבָרֶכְךָ יְהוָה, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ
 "The Lord bless you and keep you"  (keep as in keep you safe, e.g. from forest fires!).

As a resident told the visiting Germans, "The Olive Tree Park creates a real bond between the people who live in Meitar and the people who feel connected to Israel in Germany."
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Happy birthday Augusta Victoria

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Someone very important has a birthday today!
She is Auguste Victoria, yes--the Empress--wife of Kaiser Wilhelm II.

I know because I liked the new Facebook page of  the Kaiser (from which the old photo is borrowed), in which he shares their journey to Jerusalem in 1898.

When  Jerusalemites  hear Augusta Victoria, we normally think of this Arab hospital atop the Mount of Olives.
Click on the photo and then once again to see the name on the entrance gate.

 The hospital has a front door you wouldn't believe!
Augusta Victoria  was built in 1907-10 as a hostel for Christian pilgrims and as a rest home for the German population in Eretz Israel.
Many of the materials were imported from Germany.
It was the first building in the country to have electricity, powered by a diesel generator.

 The adjoining Lutheran church has a Kaisersalle with a beautiful old fireplace.
See the crests and names of  the Kaiser and the Kaiserin?

The Kaiser's Hall is often a venue for conferences and lectures.

You are welcome to see my posts about the Augusta Victoria complex, including the huge bells in the belfry, here.

The reason "Kaiser Wilhelm" is journaling his trip on Facebook is because next week the Tower of David museum will be opening an exhibition about his visit in Jerusalem as covered by the journalists of 114 years ago.
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(This is a contribution to Our World Tuesday and Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)
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A moveable feast, oil on wood

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Sukkot ("the Feast of Tabernacles") begins Sunday evening.
Here is a sukkah very different from the one I showed you yesterday.
It is so unique, in fact, that it is a museum piece, on display inside the Israel Museum

Here is the story the museum gives:

In the 19th century, Naftali and Zili Deller commissioned a local painter to paint [in oil paint]  the walls of their sukkah.
Their son Abraham Deller and his wife Sofie erected the sukkah in the courtyard of their home in Germany every year until the Nazis came to power. In 1937 the sukkah was smuggled out of Germany and delivered to the Bezalel Museum in Jerusalem.

The central wall features a painting of Jerusalem with the Western Wall at its hub. This painting was copied from a lithograph by 19th-century Jerusalem artist Yehosef Schwartz.
 The other walls contain pictures of the village of Fischach and people from that period: on the right is Zili Deller waiting at the entrance to her home; on the back wall is the local baron, the patron of the village Jews, setting out to hunt.
 Painted within small frames in the background of the central and right-hand walls are depictions of Jewish holidays copied from prayer books printed in Sulzbach, Germany, in 1826.

Quite a history, eh?
You can click the photos to enlarge and study the details.
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Bibelausstellung

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A wandering biblical exhibition has wandered from Linz and other European cities all the way to Jerusalem.
"Die Wanderausstellung 'Expedition Bibel' des Katholischen Bibelwerks Linz" opened last month at Augusta Victoria on the Mount of Olives.
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If my translation is right, the banner says "Bible Exhibition -- Discover our Bible with all the senses."
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The cutest part of it was this game for children.

I think they are supposed to stick the correct animal through the little doors, depending on what OT or NT passage is quoted.

They even had the tfillin that observant Jewish men put on their arm and head when praying.

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I was at the church for the Schneller Symposium that day. The lights were out in the Bible Exhibition and I think it was not officially open just then, but I just had to duck in quickly and snap a few furtive photos.

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Herrnhuter Stern, reflected

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Shadows of night at Church of the Ascension in the Augusta Victoria compound on Mount of Olives.
Strange what tricks stairs play on otherwise-normal shadows.
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And by day, a nice reflection of the fortress-like walls.
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The German Lutheran church is decorated with a Moravian star, a symbol of the Star of Bethlehem. And indeed, Bethlehem is very near.
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Wikipedia has the interesting story of how the Moravian star's geometry took shape.
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In German it is called the Herrnhuter Stern, named for the Moravian mother community in East Saxony, Germany, where the decorations were first commercially produced.
The Herrnhut Star Company in that city has been producing original Herrnhut Advent and Christmas stars for over 160 years.
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(The reflections and shadows are "Christmas gifts" for James at Weekend Reflections
and Hey Harriet at Shadow Shot Sunday.)
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Shabbat shalom to all.
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Stone eagles on Mt. of Olives

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We have been talking much about the Augusta Victoria complex on Mt. of Olives this week.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension has a 60 meter tall bell tower.
When the church was built in the early 20th century, the four heavy bells came by ship from Hamburg to Jaffa.
BibleWalks.com says that bringing them from the coast "required rebuilding the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem."
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Two stone eagles stand in the garden.

The Adler with folded wings is a German imperial sign representing unity and power.

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What Kaiser Wilhelm II built in 1907-10 as a pilgrim hostel adjoining the church is today a hospital serving the Arab population of the Jerusalem area. (Photos will come soon.)
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The sign shows some of the other nice things that call Augusta Victoria home.

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Pioneering Protestants in Jerusalem

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For today's That's My World let's look at a disappearing world.
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The Israeli army guard would not let me in the gate to photograph back in November 2008.
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Written in stone on the building are the Arabic and the German for "Syrian Orphanage."
The place is popularly known as the Schneller School or Schneller Compound.
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I could only get pictures through the perimeter fence and the barbed wire.
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Some of the buildings are roofless.
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Some are gone.

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The army, which had used the compound since 1948, moved out two years ago.

The plan is to build 600 apartments for the neighboring haredim (ultra-orthodox Jews).

The Jerusalem municipality talks of preserving some of the beautiful old European-style buildings and using them as public buildings or a museum.

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By chance, a wooden crate was recently found inside the old church.

In it was the original stone altar from 1860!

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Last night, at the symposium I showed in yesterday's post, the altar was brought to the Church of the Ascension on Mount of Olives to be installed and rededicated there, at Augusta Victoria.

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You can get an idea of the history and the great meaning of the Schneller School(s) for the German Protestants (and also see old photos of the orphanage and Johann Schneller and the kids) by looking at the PDF program of the international symposium, "Schneller--a living heritage in the Middle East."

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The history in brief:

Schneller was sent to Jerusalem as a missionary from a Swiss village in 1854.

From the Arabs of Lifta he bought plots of land and started building.

He and his wife and 4 apprentices became the first Europeans to live outside the protective Old City walls.

They rescued orphans following the 1860 Druze and Muslim massacre of 30,000 Maronite Christians in Lebanon.

The children (up to 180 orphans at its peak) found a new home and a fine school in Schneller's Syrian Orphanage.

Schneller's son and then his grandson carried on his work.

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In World War II all Germans and Austrians were deported from Palestine; many were sent to Australia.

The British Army took over the compound.

When the British Mandate ended in 1948, they handed the compound to the IDF.

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To read the whole fascinating story, please see this good Jerusalem Post article.

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Today the Schneller tradition of holistic education for peace and for future leaders continues at their two schools, in Lebanon and in Jordan.

And they still teach German.

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UPDATE Oct. 2020:  https://www.israel21c.org/landmark-building-to-house-new-museum-celebrating-jewish-heritage/

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Herzliche Gruesse

Having studied German all four years of high school and all four years of university, I am obviously fond of the language. But that was in the USA. Here in Israel, German can be problematic. Last week Angela Merkel came to congratulate Israel on our upcoming 60th birthday. Despite the objections and sensitivities of several members of our parliament, the Knesset House Committee decided to allow the Chancellor to address the Knesset in German.
I am happy we have come this far.
Dr. Merkel said good things and got a standing ovation. Oh and by the way, she surprised everyone by opening her speech with several sentences in Hebrew.
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