Our yearly Night Run (in the sun)

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Our yearly Meitar Night Run got underway just after 7 pm. 

Some parents ran together with their sons and daughters. 
Long shadows in the setting sun.  

The runners rounded this roundabout and ran back to the center of town, up hills and down hills. 

On the uphill, into the strong still-hot glaring sun, some of the less-inexperienced participants had slowed to a walk. 
The other, marathon-type, serious joggers would run for hours into the night on longer routes.  
I was happy just to stand still and take pictures and admire other people's endurance. 
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday.)
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Pedestrians crossing Sultan Suleiman St.

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As you see (click once or twice), the zebra pedestrian crossing on busy Sultan Suleiman Street is a suggestion only.
Those Arab women down there know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
I took this picture from the top of Schmidt's College (now also including the Paulushaus guest house), at the corner of Nablus Road.

The stairs on the photo's  left lead down to the great Damascus Gate, one of several entrances into the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.
The east Jerusalem Arab bus terminal is nearby; the small blue and white bus is one of many that go to Bethlehem and back all the time.

City Daily Photo's Theme Day today is "Pedestrians crossing."
Go take a look at the surprising interpretations our fellow bloggers are coming up with!
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UPDATE, Tuesday:  At this very place some violence occurred today.
The Times of Israel reports:

"Dozens of East Jerusalemites protested the death of a Palestinian prisoner Tuesday, with riot police called in to disperse the demonstration with teargas.

Five people were arrested following the demonstration near Damascus Gate outside the Old City. Protesters reportedly hurled rocks at police, drawing teargas fire."

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My street

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My street is narrow, cracked,  and boring and has no sidewalk.
Like all the streets in our small  moshav on the hill.
No one of the poor new immigrants who started the village  had a car back then in 1949. 

Today it is a tight squeeze when cars  meet the infrequent bus;  often one of them has to pull over or even back up.

Once in a great while horseback riders come clip-clopping down the street, who knows from where. 

The best thing about my street is the view from it.
Look out across the valley and see Jerusalem on the horizon!
Look in every direction and see the forested Jerusalem Hills.
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To see how other City Daily Photo bloggers presented "My Street" for the December 1st theme day, visit the group's nice new portal.
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UPDATE: I added some links if you want to see more in and around the village.
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Segway in the sky

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Segway in the sky -- for SkyWatch Friday.

Segway tours start at the City of David.

I like to think that Naomi Street is named for my daughter.
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Entering into Yom Kippur

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In a few hours, just before sunset, Israel's streets will be empty of cars, except for any needed emergency vehicles.
Ben-Gurion Airport is already closed to all air traffic.
Judea and Samaria are under general closure and the Taba crossing into Sinai is closed.
Soon we will have our last meal and last drink of water until Saturday night, when the fast ends.
And soon I will shut down my computer for its yearly day of rest.

Jews will congregate, the religious and the one-time-per-year observant will be praying together in neighborhood synagogues all evening and all day tomorrow until sunset; the seculars will flock to the car-less roads on bicycles or skates or with strollers.

Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement, God's day of reckoning, our day of introspection and repenting, begins.
This year it falls on the Sabbath, so we get a double dose of holiness.

You can already feel the special hush falling over the land.
This is something you can feel only in Israel.

So I leave you now, until tomorrow night, wishing you all Shabbat shalom and a gmar chatima tova, "a good final sealing," i.e. May you be inscribed (in God's Book of Life) for all good.
May all the world have a peaceful, healthy, and fulfilling new year.
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Ezeh keta!

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Form [sic] 9:00 to 18:00 only public "transpotraion" is allowed on this congested section of Agrippas Street in central Jerusalem.
Well, at least the Hebrew original is OK, almost.
I wonder how the Arabic translation fared on this big sign.
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Let's send it to the Signs, Signs meme--and maybe back to the printer too.

This is what the street looks like.
Standing or creeping buses as far as the eye can see.
It doesn't look like the private cars noticed the sign prohibiting them.
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Until a few months ago, most of this traffic went along the wider Jaffa Street.
But then came the new tram and most of Jaffa St. was closed to vehicles.
Agrippas is a mess.
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The unique retaining/acoustic walls explained

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Photo by Gash Bridge & Building Engineering Ltd.

Readers were so interested in Begin Expressway's unique acoustic walls that appeared in yesterday's post (in my photo facing the opposite direction from this photo by the builders).
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So I kept digging and finally found some answers to your questions.
The Gash website has close-ups of the combined retaining/acoustic walls. Take a look.
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The engineers explain:

Begin Road connects Jerusalem's entrance coming from 443 highway and its south-west neighborhoods.
Gash engineers designed a three-span bridge and acoustic walls with unique architectural cross-sections.

Acoustic barrier semi-roofing shape

The height of the wall and its shape was determined by taking under consideration an acoustic defense line at the edge of the traffic lanes instead of at the margins of the road as usual. As a result the wall's height was lowered from 12-13 meters to 8.5 meters.
Its arch shape was developed in order to reflect the noise sound back to the road.
The structure consists of modules of projecting beams covered with arch-shaped membranes made of 8 cm concrete. The beams also support prefabricated plated serves as a retaining wall for the back landscape's filling.

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A bridge unseen

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I discovered a shortcut, by foot, down to the Hebrew University.
But then I was so excited to be standing on a bridge looking down at Begin Expressway for the first time that I forgot to photograph the bridge itself.
Sorry bloggers at Sunday Bridges, you'll just have to imagine it.
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The photo did, however, catch the early-morning shadows of the median trees for Shadow Shot Sunday.
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Named for the late Menachem Begin, the north-south urban freeway in western Jerusalem is all of 12.2 km or 7.6 miles long.
Many of its sections have these tall acoustic walls.
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IMPORTANT UPDATE! I finally found info on the acoustic walls that everyone is asking about!
Gash engineers designed a three-span bridge and acoustic walls with unique architectural cross-sections.
From the Gash bridge engineering website:

Acoustic barrier semi-roofing shape

The height of the wall and its shape was determined by taking under consideration an acoustic defense line at the edge of the traffic lanes instead of at the margins of the road as usual. As a result the wall's height was lowered from 12-13 meters to 8.5 meters.
Its arch shape was developed in order to reflect the noise sound back to the road.
The structure consists of modules of projecting beams covered with arch-shaped membranes made of 8 cm concrete. The beams also support prefabricated plated serves as a retaining wall for the back landscape's filling.

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The website has close-ups and blueprints in detail.
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Remember the widow, the orphan, . . .

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There were things I could hardly believe when I saw this car.
1. Its PA system was blaring a recorded message.
2. It was parked at a super-busy bus-stop-only curb near Jerusalem's Central Bus Station.
3. No one was inside.
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On closer inspection I found a cup hanging on the open window, waiting for our donations.
The signs enjoined to "Remember first the poor of your own city."
The organization is Yad Ezra Veshulamit, one of many that help the poor with food, clothing, and services.
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In a country of almost 7.5 million souls, 1.5 are under the poverty line.
Jerusalem has one of the highest rates of poverty.
Children go hungry. It's a crying shame.
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When I passed the car again a short time later, the driver was back.
A gray-bearded religious man, he sat quietly, reading Psalms.
I guess he figured that only an extremely hard-hearted policeman would give him a ticket or tell him to move on.
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Life in the Old City

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I was shocked to see this in a narrow lane in the Christian Quarter of the Old City.
(Actually all the streets of the Old City are narrow.)

Once I showed you some of Jerusalem's wall anchors by which steel rods INSIDE the old buildings pull the walls together so they will not collapse.

But this in the photo above is the opposite. The buildings are being pushed apart from the outside.
Rather disconcerting to walk below. Or to live in.
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We deliver

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Sultan Suleiman Street is a main, usually congested, thoroughfare in east Jerusalem just outside the Old City wall; and it is the main street of Arab businesses.

The wide sidewalk between the city wall and Sultan Suleiman at times becomes a loading zone.

Big trucks, which cannot enter the narrow lanes of the Old City, off-load merchandise here.

It is then carried through the closest gate into the Old City.

"Carrying" can mean on a porter's back or head or on a small dolly.

But the normal means of transportation is this cart.

Note the tire on a chain. On a downhill, the driver steps on it and slows down.

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I still remember my first year in Israel--donkeys were still in use inside the Old City.
No more.

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Chefets chashood

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We in Jerusalem are often delayed and prevented from going where we want to go by the discovery of a suspicious object.
See those bags strapped to the trash bin?

Very soon traffic was at a standstill, backed up for blocks.

Before doubling back and walking a different route, I stood there for a while, soaking up the atmosphere.

The Christian Ethiopian lady in white continued sitting and waiting for her bus. (Ethiopia Street and their church and monastery are right around the corner from HaNeviim Street.)

Soon came two ultra-Orthodox haredi men in black.

Then an Arab family.

We, representing the different populaton "sectors," all stood there, equally curious if something would explode, wondering when the police sappers and/or robot would arrive, and annoyed by the delay and detour.

But no one was afraid.

It is just a common fact of life in Israel, these suspicious objects.
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Walking the Decumanus Maximus

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For That's My World let me take you up to northern Israel, to the remains of a city that flourished from Hellenistic times until the earthquake of 749 CE.

At first it was a pagan city, like the other nine cities of the Decapolis.
In Byzantine times it turned into a center of Christianity.
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This hill looked to the ancients like a mare's head and neck, so when they built a city on top of it in the 2nd century BCE, they named it Hippos or in Aramaic, Susita.
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Our group of archaeology volunteers was given a guided field trip up there last Thursday.

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We were careful to stay on the path on the one narrow ridge that leads up to Susita National Park. Up until the 1967 Six Day War, when Israel won the Golan Heights, this was where Syrian territory began.

Till today the old Syrian minefield is there.
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It was thrilling to walk on the 2,000 year old road. I had to fight back tears. I was humming "The Appian Way" movement from Respighi's "The Pines of Rome."

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These basalt pavers form the original Decumanus Maximus, the main east-west street.

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Here the view is to the west. You can see a bit of the Sea of Galilee down below.

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And the view to the east, to the Golan plateau.

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Enlarge the photo to better appreciate the carvings in the local basalt stone.

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An ancient game etched in stone.
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An inscription inside a tabula ansata.

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Oh! and don't you just love this?!

Masons' marks, the "signatures" of the men who cut the stones!

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The Romans used their engineering skills to bring water UP to the city from springs lower down.

The water flowed through an aquaduct in the hills and then into these interlocking sections of pipe on the side of the Decumanus.
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Note the size of the first opening . . .
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and then the smaller second opening.

Going from large into small channel increases the pressure of the running water and makes it go higher up.

I should have checked with my engineer daughter first, but apparently this is now called Bernoulli's principle. I think the Roman's didn't have a name for it; they just DID it!

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Come back during the week to see the churches of Susita. Shalom!

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UPDATE Dec. 4, 2015:  See a great new  BAR article on the Susita dig, with aerial photos!
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A bridge to the Holyland

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A bridge for Louis la Vache's new Sunday Bridge Series.

In August (2008) the sun would rise over the bridge just after 6:30, as I got off the bus and started walking up the steep hill to my archaeology work.

The roads were still empty at that hour.

At 2:30 p.m., when I finished work, the traffic looked like this.

I had to walk all the way up to the dig on top of the mountain.

The bridge was built recently to give the residents of the Holyland Park apartments quicker access to the roads below as they zip out of their underground parking lot.

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Last Sunday I posted about the scandal that had broken about the bribes and fraud involved in getting permission to build so densely and so high into the poor Jerusalem skyline.

Meanwhile, a few days ago previous mayor of Jerusalem Lupolianski was arrested for suspected bribe-taking in the case, and former Prime Minister Olmert is going to be questioned about his suspected part, too.

Oi . . .

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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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Moving right along . . .

Jerusalem traffic gets heavy in late afternoon.
This is near Jaffa Gate.
And if you remember you should be going in the other direction, well, just drive over the solid white line and make a U turn. :-(

The blue and white striped sheruts take Arab residents of Bethlehem back home.

Sometimes traffic is so heavy cars are even stacked two high.
;-)

Partying on Shushan Street

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SUMMER in Jerusalem means street parties--or so I learned quite by accident on Friday a bit before noon.
The loud and strange voices of a sound test coming from amplifiers drew me into this street which I had never-ever passed through before.

It turned out to be Shushan Street. You know, as in Shushan, Persia/Iran, famous in the Scroll of Esther read on Purim (remember that post?).

What's going on?!

The banners proclaimed: "The Front Stage, Jerusalem Street Parties."

OK, fine, free summer fun from the Jerusalem Municipality. Yalla!
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Artists were painting on the metal doors and pipes along the street.

Only later, back home, I read about the happening in the Jerusalem Post:

"The festival . . . is organized by the city's municipality and Tuvia and Hakatze - two bars located on the street - in addition to Taltalistim [a group of party organizers headed by Yaacov Baharav]. 'Rehov Shushan is a beautiful, long and narrow street with cool buildings along its sides. It is on the edge of the city's recreational district, yet it is a bit run down lately. We want to bring the color back to it,' says Baharav.

This is the second year the festival takes place. Last year saw approximately 2,000 revelers come out. This year, the organizers are anticipating at least as many, if not more.
The art show consists of 50 artists using the walls, windows and water pipes of the buildings along the street as their canvases. The party includes . . . a fashion market, food stands and a non-stop street party featuring the electro-rock band Terry Poison as the main event."
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Paintings even on the pavement.

Beautiful playing but the hat was not getting filled up.
It was still early and the festival was just getting organized.

Nice dreadlocks, eh?

This boy had no trouble playing the seamstress.

The "Urban Edges" street party party was to include an air juggler act hanging from a crane off the back of a truck.

I didn't wait around for that. Bus service back to my village stops in mid-afternoon on Fridays. So I headed back to the quiet Hills of Jerusalem for the Sabbath Eve and left the entertainment, which was due to go on until 6:30 (just before the beginning of Shabbat), to the city dwellers.

Robin of Around the Island, a blog based in Israel, invites you all to a new meme about what summer looks like to you. Every Sunday.
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