Cubby house in the eucalyptus grove

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In the last post we saw how someone had brought a bed out into the desert near Meitar.
Here we see how somebody made a cubby house under a tree in a secluded eucalyptus grove in town.

From a distance your might not even notice it's in there.
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A new neighborhood going up in Meitar

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On the right side of the wadi the new houses are already lived in.
On the left, a whole new neighborhood is being built.

Here are some in-progress houses as seen from the direction of Meitar's new promenade and bike path (seen in the foreground).

Lots of big houses.
Meitar is a yishuv kehillati, a planned community, begun in 1984; and every so often they add a whole new neighborhood.
Our population is over 8,000. 

When the streets are finished, they will all be named after different birds.
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(Linking to Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)
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15 young families living together in the desert

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As I was saying (in the cat selfie post), on Friday my Shishi Zioni group went down south of Beer Sheva to visit and learn about three different ways of living together in the Negev desert:
 1. a kibbutz mitchadesh, 2. a religious yeshuv kehilati (community settlement/planned community), and 3. a mixed religious + secular yeshuv kehilati.

Our bus slowly went up the dirt road to Sheizaf.
Half in jest our guide said not to fear the guard dogs because they were tired from having barked all night.

Our busload of older Israelis numbered just about the same as the current population of Sheizaf which is 15  young couples with 20 little kids.

Each family lives in a caravan, the portable pre-fab houses that were set on the ground in 2012.
Or maybe they are big enough to be considered caravillot.
(The Hebrew word caravilla is a portmanteau of the words caravan and villa.)

  Itai, who was a driving force in creating this yeshuv kehilati/community settlement, spoke with pride about the young people who were attracted from all over the country to come and establish a new place in the sparsely-populated Negev desert.
BTW, recruitment was done via e-mail and Internet. 

Our guide for the morning was Ofir, head of hityashvut/settlement for the Ramat Negev Local Council.
In addition to his help, Sheizaf got backing from Ayalim Association, a 21st century organization whose slogan is "Bringing young adults to live and volunteer in the toughest places in Israel to serve as its newest Pioneers."
This means the Negev and the Galilee. *

See a short video explaining Ayalim's altruistic aims.

Sheizaf is not enclosed within a fence.
At their website you can enjoy a slideshow of the houses and people of the community.

One of the fathers brought up his little son, to the delight of all the grandparents of our group.

Sheizaf is a rare example of a social experiment  deliberately mixing observant and non-observant Jews.
There vision is to grow to 250-400 families and when the kids are ready for school to have a mixed religious + secular education for them.
(The practice in Israel today is for a child to attend either religious school or secular school.)
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Good luck to these brave and idealistic young people who chose a far-from-easy life!
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*UPDATE: I see Ayalim does good work in central Israel as well.  This article and little video about their new project in Lod just appeared today.  A shipping container village is going up to house the enthusiastic students!

Build your house wisely [if you can afford a house]

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On Friday  Meitar's gym was full of young couples.

As the stacks of booklets prove, it was a lecture and exhibit day on the subject Build Your House Wisely--in Meitar and Carmit, 2014.

Wouldn't it be fun to have a samples case like this full of little floor tiles?

My grandchildren would love to play with such samples.

This is probably as close as I'll ever get to the beautiful (and costly) imported material.
But at least I learned the name Klinker (see about clinkers in Wiki).
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Here is a short video becrying the skyrocketing prices of plots for homes in the now being built new neighborhood of Meitar, like three times more than in 2008.
Even if you don't speak Hebrew, you can see our Council Head (mayor) and my town of Meitar.
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(Linking to Our World Tuesday.)
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Pagoda-style roofs in Bedouin village

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I have been following live broadcasts of  Pope Francis' August 13-18 pastoral journey to South Korea.
At today's Mass he spoke to 50,000 young people from 23 countries gathered in the Castle of Haemi and preached (in English!!)  on the theme of the 6th Asian Youth Day--“Asian Youth! Wake up! The Glory of the Martyrs Is Upon You!”

Some of the Korean architecture reminded me of  a few houses I see from my bus between Meitar and Beer Sheva.
The pagoda-style roofs seem to be a popular theme in newer Arab houses.
The ones in my photo are on the outskirts of  Bedouin village Umm Batin,  also known as Abu Kaf. 

Why do they need such big villas next to their farm, you ask?
Bedouin families average six to ten children.
Israel bans polygamy,  but Bedouin men often marry two to three wives and can have families with as many as 25 children.

 The Negev desert makes up 60% of the Israel’s land mass, but it is a sparsely populated area that holds only 8% of the country’s population.
About  700,000 people live in the Negev.
This includes over 200,00 in  Beer Sheva.
It also includes an estimated 200,000 Bedouin citizens.
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UPDATE:  Broadcasts and videos of the Pope in Korea can be seen at http://www.vatican.va/video/index.html
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(Linking to Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)
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Lights On Jerusalem

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As luck would have it, after writing yesterday's post about the derelict decaying empty buildings, I saw a notice at Haaretz today about a different but similar problem.
One new solution is called Turn on all the lights in Jerusalem.
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At the project's website Mayor Nir Barkat addresses the absentee foreign landlords thus:

" . . . the number of Jerusalem homes owned by people in the Diaspora has created a troublesome phenomenon in the city resulting in a shortage of affordable apartments available for young people in the city. In addition, certain neighborhoods are beginning to feel like 'Ghost towns' with large proportions of their residents away most of the year round.

According to the data available to us, there are approximately 11,160 such apartments in Jerusalem, 8,000 of which stand empty for most of the year, while about 7,000 young people leave the city every year, mainly due to the shortage of residential solutions.

Dear friend, we must ensure that Jerusalem's lights will continue to shine even in the months when you are not in the city. If you own a residential property which is not in use throughout the year , we urge you to please rent it to top-tier students or other young people who are so vital to us in the city.

In order to make the process easier and to provide confidence in renting your property, we have selected several leading property management companies, all of which have been carefully vetted for their reliability and quality of service. You are invited to contact the selected companies next time you are in Jerusalem."
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Great, fine idea! Now if the Municipality would also solve the problem addressed in yesterday's post, so much the better.
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Use it or lose it

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A dirty door with broken glass for today's Monday Doorways.
And to my further chagrin, ISRAEL COINS & MEDALS CORPORATION is what the metal letters on the door say, both in English and Hebrew, in between the menorahs.

If you enlarge this photo, look for the sign next to that door.
It says DANGEROUS BUILDING, NO ENTRY.
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The smaller signs says No Parking, to no avail.

In addition to housing the Coins and Medals office/store, this must have been a hotel once, judging from the remnants of a sign.
This decaying building just off Keren Hayesod Street is one of several in central Jerusalem that have been standing empty for years, caught in legal battles between contractors, investors, and government bureaucracy.
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As I hope your news media have told you, the past month is seeing an unprecedented wave of grassroots "social justice" protests all across Israel (well explained here).
For one thing, young people are demanding affordable apartments to buy or rent, saying that the cost of housing has risen 50% in the last two and a half years.
And thus the current tent encampments of protestors in the big cities now.
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Some of the students went around finding and photographing buildings like the one shown above and then digging in municipal files to find out why the structures are caught in limbo.
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They presented their findings to the Jerusalem Municipality and also got time on the evening TV news.
These young people claimed that these buildings could be renovated and turned into hundreds of available apartments much faster than the years it takes to get permits and finish construction of new housing.

Not to mention that Jerusalem is almost out of space to build new places, at least if we want to stay inside the Green Line (the previous border) and not to encroach on the surrounding green lungs (e.g. the forested Jerusalem Hills).
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This post can surely be for That's My World.
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Coming together in protest

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First there was the Arab Spring; now we have the Israeli summer.
Ordinary individuals started Facebook protest groups, and this has rapidly mushroomed into tent cities and protesters marching in the streets in cities all over Israel, even now as we speak.
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Last month the three dairy monopolies raised the price of cottage cheese by many shekels.
One man fought back with a Facebook page and soon had the whole nation boycotting the product.
And we won! The price was lowered.
The Cottage Cheese Revolution was "a watershed in the economic life of Israel."
And the people got a taste for revolution.
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Then young Daphni Leef needed to move and discovered the exorbitant rents in Tel Aviv.
She started another Facebook movement.
Now citizens have moved into tents in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and other cities to emphasize the lack of and price of rental housing.
Students mostly, but also other sectors who can't afford to buy apartments, even if there were enough to buy.
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These two pictures are from this morning in Independence Park.
Apparently it is a subgroup of the bigger tent city. The sign says "Public housing for all."
Certain families, mainly single parent families, below the poverty line are entitled to public housing; but again, there is just not enough of it.
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Dairy farmers came up to Jerusalem to protest today too.
The government was threatening to import milk.
What a stupid idea.
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The doctors in public hospitals have been striking off and on for the past 128 days.
Yesterday they started a march to the capital, led by their union head who began a hunger strike.
They are camping overnight at Kfar Chabad and will arrive here tomorrow.
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What's great is that the students and everyone are staying mostly civilized when blocking traffic by sitting down in the street in the midst of the marches and when confronting police.
And all the different groups help one another and all of us support our doctors.
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The chant most chanted is "Ha-am doresh--tsedek hevrati!"
"The people demands social justice!"
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http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/netanyahu-i-have-been-aware-of-israel-s-housing-crisis-for-years-1.374989

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_housing_protests_in_Israel

http://www.jpost.com/NationalNews/Article.aspx?id=230518
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All this is to share with That's My World meme.
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Hey dude

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For D Day at ABC Wednesday, let's take the Hebrew word dood.

A dood shemesh is a solar water heater.

Some 90% of Israeli families have one on their roof.
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The first two photos are not representative because these tanks are sitting on the ground, next to their house. (Well, actually it is a converted chicken house, with a roof apparently not strong enough for a dood on top.) But it is a good chance to show you a dood up close.

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Typical domestic units consist of a 150 liter insulated storage tank and a 2 square meter flat panel. The black collector panel collects solar radiation, heats the water, and passes it to storage in a pumpless, gravity-driven loop.

Convection carries colder water from the bottom of the tank into the collector and hot water rises to the upper intake on the tank.

After a few hours of good Israeli sunshine, you just open your taps and out comes near-boiling water!

If the sun hides for a few days (which happens only in winter), set the timer or flip the switch to run the immersion heater built into the tank for half an hour before you want a shower.

The ubiquitous dood shemesh is found on apartment building roofs,

on buildings in Jerusalem's Old City,

on Vatican-property roofs in East Jerusalem,

and on Bedouin village houses in the desert.

In short, EVERYWHERE.

On slanting roofs, the dood is often put in a horizontal fashion.

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Good system to let the sun do the work, eh? Saving fuel, saving money.

Would it, or does it, work in your country?

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In 2005 Spain became the second country (after Israel) to require solar water heaters by law.

And in 2010 Hawaii will require all new houses to have one!

How do you say dood shemesh in Hawaiian?

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Simplicity

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The Tiberias dig is over but I don't want to leave the subject without showing you where I slept (or tried to) for several weeks.
For a big smile you should really click on the first photo.

It is the backside of my hotel/hostel, part of which had been torn off!
Fortunately construction of the new addition, the loud pouring of cement, started only on the evening I left.

The front is a little better, with some of the Old Tiberias basalt stone.
My dormitory room was on the top floor.

I grabbed the single bed on the side and let the backpacker girls have the four close-to-each-other beds. New roommates came and went; big turnover.

One day a big windstorm brought down the ceiling panel in our bathroom. Luckily the shower curtain rod caught it.

Yep, conditions were spartan.

The "grown-ups," the mostly older volunteers who came to the dig from abroad, stayed in the nicer hotel just up the street. But they were willing and able to pay for it. We had lunch and dinner at their hotel.

It was in the 90s F (low 40s C) most of the time, even in October-November. Most of the young folks in my room were anti-airconditioning. With the windows open, you could hear traffic on the busy streets below all night.

But when you have to rise at 4:00 a.m. you learn to sleep through almost anything.

The view to the south was the old cemetery with tombs of basalt.

A post on that is planned.

I spent lots of time hanging out the window, savoring the different moods of Tiberias, in haze, in sun, once even in rain.

The old Greek Orthodox monastery was nice to look at. I even managed to get inside the church once (a post will follow). The old monk does not open the gate very often.

The Sea of Galilee was right across the street. Here is a rare clear view of the Golan Heights on the eastern shore of the lake.

Tiberias attracts many Israeli and foreign tourists and pilgrims.

From my simple dorm room I could see the real hotels. So many, so big. Too big.

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I miss the old days when we dig volunteers used to sleep as a crew, all in big tents or in the former stable of an old monastery or in straw bungalos or in a big old kibbutz house.

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