Correction! -- The REAL conservator appears!

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Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate it today!
(I couldn't find a decorated indoor tree in the Negev to post, so this one up in our Meitar Forest will have to do. )

Being Jewish I don't do Christmas, but I DID get a present just now in the form of an unexpected comment.
Jerusalem Hills Daily Photo blog is honored and surprised to hear from Georgios, the actual restorer from Golgotha in the Holy Sepulchre!
He wrote

Dear Dina . My name is Georgios and i am the man in the foto. I am Greek and i was working in the conservation of the wall paintings in Greekorthodox chapel in Golgotha. We were 3 professional conservators from Greece and we restored and cleaned the wallpaintings ,the icons and the Jesus on the Cross. It was an unbeliavable and fansinating experience. Thank you for your fotos.

This is the man in my recent blog post title Overhead Work in the Holy Sepulchre.
If you missed it, please take a look now at the four photos of Georgios at work.

After trying to find information online about the conservation work, I confess that I  assumed him to be a different expert, and thus made a big mistake in that post.   :(
My apologies to all!  That will teach me to be more careful in reporting and to "assume" nothing.

Shalom dear Georgios,
Thank you so much for miraculously showing up here in the blog on (new calendar) Christmas Day!  Thanks for your graciousness in forgiving my case of mistaken identity.  And thank you for sharing with us how it felt to give your help to such a holy place as the Holy Sepulchre.
I wish I could have talked with you; I was so moved watching you work.  God bless you for your loving contribution to Golgotha.
May you have a blessed Christmas season.
With much respect,
Dina
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Solitary work atop Mt. Tabor

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Restoration was supposed to be yesterday's R word, until I found out it was Rodin's birthday.
Rodin won, but the restoration in the Romanian church on the top of Mount Tabor in the Lower Galilee certainly deserves a post too, so here it is.

 There is a man working up there on the scaffold.
You'll have to do the click trick to see him, and then another click on the photo that opens to see the man really well.

I think it was the top (canopy?) of the throne (cathedra) that he was meticulously  painting.
He seemed aware that the saints on the dome above him were watching him work.

The Eastern Orthodox monastery  was built in the mid-19th century with funds from Romania.
The Church of St. Elias was dedicated to the prophet Elijah and was the first religious structure built by Romanian Christians in the Holy Land.

The wall paintings (all around!) were added in 1912. 

The Orthodox place is totally different in feeling and appearance from its more famous neighbor on Mt. Tabor,  Barluzzi's Church of the Transfiguration.

 A Catholic friend took me there in August for the Franciscan Mass on the Feast of the Transfiguration.
I'll show you more pictures from the mountain sometime soon.
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Improving with the years

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This newly planted (or maybe newly severely pruned) tree caught my eye several years ago while I was doing my first roam of the Romema neighborhood.

The sandy yard belonged to a house that was being renovated.
Out with the old-fashioned doors!
(Little did I know that in 2011 there would be a Monday Doorways for this photo.)

The house was impressive, even then.
A metal roof, even!

Recently I passed it again; this time the place was surrounded by green.
The name of the landscapers is proudly posted on the fence.

Enter the gate if you dare.
Judging by the sign on the door, this huge house is a private one-family residence. Wow . . .
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Romema is near the western entrance to Jerusalem.
Founded in 1921, it was the first Jewish neighborhood built during the period of British rule and was planned as an exclusive residential neighborhood.

You know, now as I reread an excellent article by Aviva Bar-Am, I see that this house was built by the initiator of the Romema project.

She writes,
"Romema was intended as a splendid neighborhood of 24 houses, far from the noise of the town and situated between the Arab villages of Lifta and Sheikh Bader. Yet in the end, apparently for lack of money, just over a dozen beautiful buildings were constructed.
The initiator of the Romema project was attorney Yom-Tov Hamon, an expert in Ottoman law and land ownership issues, who was often asked to arbitrate disputes between Arab landowners in the region. When there was a disagreement about ownership of the land on this hill, Hamon decreed that the plot should be sold, thus making it available for a Jewish neighborhood."
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More about this fascinating area are under my label "Romema."
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This post joins tonight's Our World Tuesday.

Surveillance cameras in the shadows

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Shadows of security cameras

The 16th century Zion Gate, an entrance into the Old City for pedestrians and (small) cars, was a few years ago treated to an intensive 6-month restoration.

The 800,000 shekel  (then over a quarter million dollars) cleaning, fixing, and strengthening  was courtesy of the Israel Antiquities Authority with financial support from the Jerusalem Development Authority and the Jerusalem Municipality.

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The dedicatory plaque installed by the great builder Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman sultan who commissioned the walls of Jerusalem, was painstakingly restored.

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The hundreds of bullet and shell marks were preserved, a lesson for posterity of what can happen in war.

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Old Zion Gate photos: A  very touching photo from 1948 and a historic photo from 1865 can be viewed here.

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(The night shadows are for Shadow Shot Sunday meme.)

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