Beware of devilish Krampus tonight!

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You surely recognize good St. Nicholas.
But do you recognize his opposite, the evil devil Krampus?
Every child in Austria knows about this demon, but I first learned of him only a few weeks ago when my hosts in Vienna gave me these chocolate figures and told me to eat Krampus -- the one with horns, chains, and claws -- only on December 6.
Dec. 6 is St. Nicholas Day but the night before is Krampusnacht, which looks to me to be a scary night to be out on the streets of Austria and some of the surrounding countries.
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I can't begin to explain it well, having never experienced it, so I ask you to read some of these really interesting articles (with great photos!).
BTW, apparently this year there is a spurt of interest in all this in America too!

An explanation from the Archdiocese of Vienna, in German:  Der Krampus hat mit dem Hl. Nikolaus eigentlich nichts zu tun

In German:   Von altem Brauchtum bis Alpenerotik


From National Geographic:
 Krampus the Christmas Devil Is Coming to More Towns. So Where's He From?

Another from National Geographic:   How Krampus, the Christmas ‘Devil,’ Became Cool

Official trailer for the new American horror-comedy movie "Krampus"
("Legendary Pictures’ Krampus, a darkly festive tale of a yuletide ghoul, reveals an irreverently twisted side to the holiday.
When his dysfunctional family clashes over the holidays, young Max (Emjay Anthony) is disillusioned and turns his back on Christmas. Little does he know, this lack of festive spirit has unleashed the wrath of Krampus: a demonic force of ancient evil intent on punishing non-believers.
All hell breaks loose as beloved holiday icons take on a monstrous life of their own, laying siege to the fractured family’s home and forcing them to fight for each other if they hope to survive")

Merisi Vienna's blog post: Saint Nicholas and Krampus: Were you naughty or nice?

Bolzano Daily Photo, South Tyrol / Italy offers a short video (narrated in Ladin language!) of the actual festivities on Krampusnacht in the village of Urtijëi / St. Ulrich / Ortise.
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Good luck. Be good.  Watch out tonight!
And tomorrow, a happy St. Nicholas Day! 
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Norway in Jerusalem

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City Daily Photo bloggers are having a mid-month theme day in honor of Norway's Constitution Day.
There is not a huge Norwegian presence*  here in Jerusalem and I was fretting, where would I ever find something Norwegian to photograph in time for May 17?

Then a miracle happened yesterday.
Getting off the tram on Jaffa Street, I suddenly saw a little flag of Norway in an Israeli souvenir shop window!

Here it is, right next to the menorah.

I toured beautiful Norway way back in the 1970s and loved it.
The most exciting thing for me was standing on a living glacier  and rowing a little wooden boat on a real fiord.

For a funny list of "typical" Norwegian characteristics  visit the wonderful blog post written by friend "Spiderdama" in Grimstad, Norway.
She is now joining City Daily Photo.   Welcome, new member!
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*Some 18,000 tourists from Norway visited Israel last year, and 550 Norwegians are registered at their embassy as temporary or permanent residents of Israel.
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Bethlehem

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O little town of Bethlehem is much in world news every Christmas Eve.

source:  Library of Congress 

This photograph of the Church of the Nativity (first built in 339)  is from about 100 years  ago.
You can click to enlarge.
It is from the American Colony photo collection that was recently donated to the Library of Congress. 
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See also Christmas in the Holy Land 100 Years Ago with more historical photos of the church and Manger Square, at the wonderful blog Israel's History--A Picture A Day.
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Merry Christmas to all of you out there who celebrate the holiday!
Good tidings of Christmas from the place where it all began.
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UPDATE: Midnight Mass just now ended.  This year it was televised from the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth (not from Bethlehem, as I had wrongly assumed).
Did you watch it on TV?
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(Added to OurWorld Tuesday meme.)

Bus #3 to Mashhad

I needed the expert services of the sandlar, the shoe repairman, in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City today.
So I took the tram all across Jerusalem, from Mt. Herzl in the west to the Damascus Gate station in the east.

The city recently opened a new Arab bus and mini-bus terminal right next to that same tram/light rail station.
The routes seem to be mostly to the Arab towns and villages in the West Bank.

I photographed this particular sign for two blog-friends from Mashhad, but a different one, a real city,  in another country.
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"The Honest Toddler" blog--take a look!

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My dear daughter contemplating the wonders of fetal growth at Jerusalem's Nature Museum.
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I was reminded of this picture by today's post, "The Womb," written by The Honest Toddler.
It is a very different kind of blog that I just recently discovered.
Take a look, have some laughs (but not only)!
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Dancing on his grave

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This little group of huts and tents marks the tomb of Shimon HaTsadik in the Sheikh Jarah neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Shimon (or Simeon the Just) was a Jewish High Priest somewhere around 300BCE.

On a quiet day the women's side of the prayer place looks like this.

Quoted on the velvet cover is Shimon's famous maxim from the Talmud:
"On three things the world stands [exists]--on Torah, worship, and acts of lovingkindness."

The gate was locked or I would have gone down to explore what probably is more tombs inside the cliff.
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OK, so that is the scene on a normal day.
But tonight is the holiday of Lag BaOmer and hundreds of very religious Jews should be at the tomb right now, dancing and singing and praying and lighting bonfires.
Oh yes, and they will also do the upsherin, giving 3-year-old boys their first haircut.

Hundreds of thousands will be doing the same thing all night at another tomb of another Shimon, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai on Mt. Meron.
But people who can't travel all the way to the north have the alternate site here in Jerusalem.
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Meanwhile, I am in my house in the hills with windows and shutters closed, trying to keep out the smell of smoke from all the bonfires in my village.
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Take a look at how Lag BaOmer was celebrated at the tomb of Shimon HaTsadik 90 years ago at the wonderful blog Israel's History--A Picture a Day.
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Hot sahlab / salep at the shuk

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Get your hot sachlab, only eight shekels!
Or-- just feast your eyes on the beautiful old-style hot-pot container for free.

Also in shuk Machane Yehuda market was this sleek modern container of sachlab.
But here they added the English sign "Hot salep."
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Salep is the original Turkish name of the hot sweet porridge or beverage that has been loved in the lands of the Ottoman Turkish Empire for centuries.
In what is now Israel, it became known by its Arabic name, sachlab.

The salep flour is made by grinding the dried tubers of a certain type of orchid; and indeed, sachlab or sachlav means orchid in both Arabic and Hebrew.
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For four servings you'll need

4 cups milk

4 teaspoons sugar

1 teaspoon salep powder

1 tablespoon rosewater

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Now click over to the beautiful Turquoise Diaries and see how inviting hot salep looks in the cups of my favorite Turkish blogger.
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It lives! The blog lives!

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Shalom again friends! The blog and I are back! We missed you!
I am in heaven again after a "week from hell."
No, not really; I didn't let my mood get that bad.

But it was disconcerting to see the screen (above) saying, "You are not the author of any blogs."
And elsewhere to see Blogger using ominous language like "This blog has been deleted."
And "Google has detected unusual activity on your account."

I imagined the worst -- hackers, connectivity issues, being locked out forever in blog exile. . .
I wrote to Google via their online support form and today, a week later, still no reply.
So I got down to work on it and with friends' patient help, regained my blog this afternoon!

Thanks, old friend Kay in Hawaii, who today published my e-mail to her about my blog problem.
Her "Musings" blog post is getting helpful comments.

Thanks to Israeli friend Robin of "Around the Island" blog for encouraging me and for accepting and forwarding my Verification Code from Google today. It was as easy as asking for this code to be sent in an SMS in order to get back in to my blog.
It is not easy, me not having a cell phone and having my home telephone out of order for weeks, plus having the Internet connection unreliable right now.

Thanks to blog-friends who got worried and e-mailed to ask.

Thanks to God who tested me and taught me lessons through this week's trial.
I never panicked but lived in hope; I did not slander Google/Blogger or Bezeq phone company or "curse them in my heart."
I kept the faith, knowing my labor of love of four years for the Holy City Jerusalem should not disappear.
I prayed for help.
God rewarded this attitude.

I am grateful for all of you!
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Shalom Klaus

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Oi, I can’t believe Klaus is gone from this world.

Any blogger who has ever contributed to SkyWatch Friday or That's MyWorld knows that Klaus Peter was a moving force behind those memes and an encourager of fellow bloggers.

His memory will be a blessing and his legacy of Florida bird and nature photographs (see http://virtua-gallery.com/) will live forever.
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SkyWatch takes on a new meaning.
Now on Fridays I will look upward and imagine Klaus in a different world filled with heavenly birds.
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For Norway

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We in Israel are feeling very close to the people of Norway, who have lost so many and so much.
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Norwegian blog-friends Runee of Visual Norway and Spiderdama are much in my heart.
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Spiderdama in the Jerusalem Hills!

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Blog-friend visitors, all the way from Norway!
Spiderdama and Spiderdan flew to Israel with the whole family!
And they were brave enough to drive in Passover holiday traffic to come visit me.
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Levi tested the bench in the grotto where John the Baptist might have lived.

Petter drank the living waters flowing from a spring inside the mountain.
St. John might have baptized with this water.
In Arabic it is called Ain el Habis, the spring of the hermit.
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Here by the monastery fish pond you can see them all--
Tania, Dan, Malin, Petter, and Levi.
The kids are so bright and pleasant, and their English is great.
It was a pleasure to meet the family for the first, and hopefully not the last, time.
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Tania and Dan like to climb cliffs and walls.
At my request they even started "bouldering" up the rusticated stones of a 900-year-old Crusader house! You HAVE TO see that photo!
It and many more great pictures of Israel, Norway, Russia, and now even the Jerusalem Hills, are over at Tania's blog, Spiderdama.
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Shalom and thanks to my new friends!
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Silk screen on porcelain Pictures in Stone

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Would you believe? This little (now white) house is where former President of Israel Yitzhak Navon grew up.

The plaque on his house in the old Jerusalem neighborhood of Nachlaot says so.

Here, you can enlarge it and see him, the smallest boy in the 1925 photo.

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Talk about roots!

Former President Navon is descended from Spanish Jews who settled in eastern Europe after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and later moved to Jerusalem in 1670!

His mother's side, the Ben-Atar family, came from Spain to Portugal to Morocco; and finally to Jerusalem in 1884.
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Gilboa street (with the Navon house showing on the left) shows the tell-tale convex paving, meaning a cistern is below.

The little square at the end has the opening to the cistern, now sealed off.

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Navon loved his neighborhood so much that he wrote a play about growing up there.

Bustan Sfaradi (Sephardi Orchard) became a famous musical.
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Sir Moses (Moshe) Montefiore gave money to build the Ohel Moshe section of the Nachlaot quarter, and it is named after him.

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And guess where Montefiore was born!

In Italy, in Livorno!

This I learned from Italian blogger VP. You will enjoy his post http://livornodailyphoto.blogspot.com/2010/05/moses-montefiore.html

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As photo-bloggers, you will be pleased to know that dozens of such signs now adorn the neighborhood.

"Picture in Stone" is a project of Lev Ha-ir Community Center, which gathered family photos and historical testimony from those who lived or live there.
Photos of the original settlers, who left the security of the Old City in the late 19th century for the insecurity of New Jerusalem, are attached to the walls of homes, at the entrances to courtyards, and near the historical locations of schools, hospitals, orphanages, cafés, and more.

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By the 1970s the houses and the society were disintegrating. Lev Ha-ir began a process of restoration and gentrification.

And I believe the Picture in Stone contributed much to the pride of the place.

Nachlaot is now a charming and sought-after place to live, especially for artists, musicians, and--as one funny article claims--especially for "God 'n granola-inspired young American Jews, who lend parts of the neighborhood a feel of a Torah-inflected commune."

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The special technique of silk screen on porcelain is durable but expensive.

I heard from a tour guide who was showing her family's Picture in Stone that the families paid for them.

Even better! Good for them! Thank you!

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At the bar

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This Day . . . in Jewish History is a fascinating blog.
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Today I learned that on this day in the year 419 was born Valentinian III, the Roman Emperor who issued a decree prohibiting Jews from practicing law and holding public office.
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As you can see from the nice building of the Israel Bar Jerusalem Law Center (and the two lawyers at the door), we have come a long way.
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The picture that couldn't die

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(Inspired by artist Pasadena Adjacent's fascinating weekly blog post called "Trash Tuesday: where getting it cheap is part of the esthetic.")
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There's a lonely place over on the western edge of our mountain where I often walk to watch the sun set behind the far ridges.
The resident jackals always seem startled to see a human.
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Well, one evening last January I was startled--to see this propped up against a rock.
Someone must have driven up, thinking to dump the slightly damaged pictures over the cliff, and then couldn't go through with it.
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I had pity on the two Jews, the old man and the boy, and rescued them.

Sure enough, this was the fate of the other, the boat picture, two months later.
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"Mine" turned out to be a numbered and signed sketch by well-known Israeli artist Yossi Stern, who died in 1992. Not that that matters. I simply became fond of the two souls he portrayed.
I thought Pasadena Adjacent would approve.
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Vive la France!

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Today Jerusalem Hills Daily Photo is flying the French Tricolor in honor of Eric Tenin.
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City Daily Photobloggers are celebrating the 5th anniversary of Eric's blog, "ParisDailyPhoto, the blog that started the City Daily Photo community."
Click here to view thumbnails for all participants in this special Blog Day. We are all trying to post a picture imitating the Tenin technique/perspective.
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Consulat Général de France à Jérusalem stands proudly at 5 Paul Emile Botta Street.

The writing of the iron fence announces territory of the République française.
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The Consulate's website has photos of the interior and the more ornate side of the grand old building, built in 1930.
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(Other posts of French interest are about Paris Square in Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion Square in Paris.)
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Mazal-tov to Eric Tenin and many thanks for inspiring 1,178 of us to begin blogs about our hometowns. Together we are making foreign countries less foreign and more friendly.
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The long answer to a comment

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This pillar is next to, but not part of, the Supreme Court Building.
The Hebrew on its top says Nizkor, meaning We will remember.

Historian/artist/blogger Abraham Lincoln asked me about the trials of Nazis in Israel.
Some information I found is so interesting I'd like to share it with you all.
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Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was captured in Argentina by Mossad agents in 1960 and was brought to Jerusalem for trial.
The only public place big enough for such a trial back then was Binyanay HaUma, the convention center.
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He was found guilty of "crimes against the Jewish people" and "causing the killing of millions of Jews." Eichmann was executed by hanging.
The death penalty is reserved only for such special cases as his.
In fact Eichmann is the only one ever put to death by an Israeli court.
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The second crimes against humanity trial was when John (Ivan) Demjanjuk was extradited from Ohio to Israel in 1986.
The court found him guilty in 1988 and sentenced him to death by hanging.
He was placed in solitary confinement during the appeals process that followed.
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But in 1993, five Supreme Court justices (sitting as the High Court of Justice) overturned the guilty verdict because new evidence had become available after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.
This is the trial from which Abe Lincoln remembers seeing parts of our new Supreme Court Building on American TV.
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The Israeli Supreme Court's 405-page ruling read:
"The main issue of the indictment sheet filed against the appellant was his identification as Ivan the Terrible, an operator of the gas chambers in the extermination camp at Treblinka . . . By virtue of this gnawing [new evidence indicating mistaken identity] . . . we restrained ourselves from convicting the appellant of the horrors of Treblinka. Ivan Demjanjuk has been acquitted by us, because of doubt, of the terrible charges attributed to Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka. This was the proper course for judges who cannot examine the heart and mind, but have only what their eyes see and read."
They also added: "The facts proved the appellant's participation in the extermination process. The matter is closed — but not complete, the complete truth is not the prerogative of the human judge."
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I find this remarkable, what the judges said!
And they refer to the Hebrew Bible references, e.g. Jeremiah 11:20, that have God examining our "heart and kidneys," usually translated as "the heart and mind."
The combination heart and kidneys is a Hebraism for the inmost part of the person .
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Meanwhile, Demjanjuk returned to America, was stripped of his citizenship, and in May 2009 was extradited to Germany. His trial is now going on in Munich.

I don't like to recommend anything written about Israel by the BBC, but they do have a brief slideshow explaining the various trials of Demjanjuk.
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Abraham Lincoln in Jerusalem

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Today, Feb. 15, Americans are celebrating (what is erroneously called) Presidents' Day.
And I actually found a Jerusalem photo for the day!

This street corner in Jerusalem is prime real estate. The prestigious King David Hotel is on the left, and the dome and tower you see are the venerable old YMCA.

It is where Abraham Lincoln meets King David!

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It made me wonder why President Lincoln got a street in Jewish Jerusalem.

The nice book The Streets of Jerusalem: who, what, why may hold the answer.
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Author Ronald Eisenberg writes this:

"When the House of Representatives enacted a law mandating that every chaplain for the army and for military hospitals be 'a regularly ordained minister of some Christian denomination,' Lincoln strongly supported legislation to allow rabbis to serve in these capacities. "

and

"In response to an edict by General Ulysses S. Grant expelling all Jews from the area of his command, allegedly because they were engaging in illegal trade, Lincoln declared the order unjust and forced its immediate cancellation."

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So on this, America's special day, I say "Thanks, Abe!"

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And happy That's My World day to all, especially to the blogger that everyone knows, Abraham Lincoln, who is a real live relative of President Lincoln.

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To Reader Wil. A Psalm of snow

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Blogger friend Reader Wil in The Netherlands wondered "if there are any psalms dedicated to the snowy mountains of Jerusalem."
Wil knows her Bible very well. And I'm sure she has a Bible concordance to look up snow references. I suspect she knew the answer herself.
But, former teacher that she is, she succeeded in stimulating my curiousity. I researched, I read, I wrote.
Thanks, Teacher Wil.
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Psalms 147:12 ff
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Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!

For . . . he sends forth his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
he scatters hoarfrost like ashes.
He casts forth his ice like crumbs;
who can stand before his cold?

He sends forth his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow.
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יב שבחי ירושלים, את-יהוה; הללי אלוהייך ציון.יג כי-חיזק, בריחי שערייך; בירך בנייך בקרבך.יד השם-גבולך שלום; חלב חיטים, ישביעך.טו השולח אמרתו ארץ; עד-מהרה, ירוץ דברו.טז הנותן שלג כצמר; כפור, כאפר יפזר.יז משליך קרחו כפיתים; לפני קרתו, מי יעמוד.יח ישלח דברו וימסם; ישב רוחו, ייזלו-מים.

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Sundial resting in shade

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Sundials for ABC Wednesday S-day, in the garden of the Scots Hotel, St. Andrew's, Galilee, owned and managed by the Church of Scotland.

Enlarge the photo to learn that Tiberias is 3, 390 kilometers from Edinburgh.

The clever sundial tells both local time and time in Edinburgh.

The Hebrew writing says "In sunshine I work, but in shade I rest."

We talked about the newly refurbished hotel in an earlier post.

The Scots built it as a hospital in 1824 and it served as such until 1959. Then it was converted into a youth hostel. In 2005 the site was reopened as an elegant boutique hotel.

A strange ship near the shore of the Sea of Galilee, with the sundial in the background.

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Salutations to artist Pietro Brosio. At his blog you will find lots more sundials as well as his paintings and fine photos of Italy.

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Soaking up the rays

Best when enlarged

Absorbing the warmth of the sun through a stained glass window.
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Robin, a fellow Israeli blogger, visited a church in Abu Ghosh and found more of the same.
What IS it about these little critters and church windows??
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Greetings to Camera-Critters Sunday friends.