Let the light shine through

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Sunlight enters the arched windows, comes through the beautiful benches, and makes a shadow pattern

--all for Hey Harriet's "Shadow Shot Sunday" and for my bench-collecting blog-friends Vogon Poet (http://abunchofbenches.blogspot.com/) and RuneE (http://visualnorway.blogspot.com/).

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Denmark in Jerusalem

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The street cat is beginning her descent, about to take the final leap from wall to street.
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If her motion had not made me look up, I would never have discovered that this was the Consulate of Denmark on Jerusalem's Bnai Brith Street.
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Thanks, Kitty.
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For more nice wildlife and pets and farm animals, visit http://camera-critters.blogspot.com/.
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A "paned" look inside the walls

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For James' "Weekend Reflections"--part of the garden of the Sisters of Zion reflected in some waiting window panes.

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Inside Ein Kerem's big walled monastery, Notre Dame de Sion, are many lovingly-tended gardens and orchards.

A peaceful quiet place much prayed in.
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Summer sky

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About half an hour after sunset.

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Larger than life Zion Gate

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So much to see! I went back for a second night of the 2nd annual Festival of Light in Jerusalem's Old City and still didn't see everything.

Please enlarge this one to enjoy the details.

Guards had to hold back the pedestrian traffic for a minute to let this golf cart squeeze through the angled, narrow Zion Gate.

But what light artists Malchi Shem Tov, Asaf Shem Tov, and Amit Fisher were projecting onto the gate transformed it into something much bigger.

They describe it like this:
"Jerusalem is the gate to the whole world. The ultimate terminal in which every passenger feels at home."

Here is the Zion Gate in normal times, with a car maneuvering out of the Old City and into Mt. Zion.

The gate just recently had a cleaning and a restoration. But the shell and bullet holes from the wars were left as a reminder.

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Lebanese Restaurant in Ein Kerem

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When I do paid work in archaeology my fellow laborers speak Arabic all day.
So I learned that foochara is what we say when nice potsherds are uncovered and have to be collected.
But when the restaurant chef recommended a meal of meat and vegetables and foochara, I said "What?!"
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When it came out of the oven and onto the table, I finally understood that foochara can also mean an unbroken clay pot.
Aha!

The waiter's T-shirt says (in Hebrew) "Abu Shukri's Lebanese Restaurant."
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Ein Kerem has plenty of fancy restaurants but this rustic one has the best food, and that is where I took my two visiting American friends.

This was my first time to have masachan, another great Lebanese dish made in the oven.

Two chicken legs and vegetables on a special brown pita and spiced, I think, with sumac.

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Note the special issue Coke cans for the World Cup.

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Victory for beauty and sanity

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Welcome to ABC Wednesday V Day.

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Not all is vexing and vitriolic here in the volatile Middle East.
In Jerusalem, in the heart of the Old City, we are all enjoying a free Festival of Light this week.
Visitors from all over, together with the residents, are strolling peacefully and in awe through the little lanes.

Very vivid was this line of laundry swinging in the summer night's breeze.

Venus was right above the new moon, looking down on the swaying green grasses created by the TILT Group from France.

Little kids especially were fascinated by the humorous light sculptures made of light nets and LED ropes.

VIVID imagination!

I was spellbound watching artist Ronen Aricha create this portrait.

The red mark is where his laser is sketching.

If you enlarge this one photo taken with flash you can see the stones and the top of the Old City city wall.

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The Festival website says
"With the aid of simple tools every person can become an artist and draw on the 'most special canvas in the world'--the Old City walls. The laser is the paintbrush and the light is the paint. The play between art, technology and history renews traditional graffiti art and offers a new and progressive interpretation to the field."

Here's how the portrait ended up (until it was erased).

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Who do YOU say he is?!

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The Dormition comes alive

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The week-long 2nd annual Jerusalem Festival of Light is in full swing.

The white light bells swing back and forth as the real bells inside the tower ring out.
It was so beautiful! Wish I had taken a video for you.
Koby Rosenthal is the light artist who created it.

For more about the Benedictines and their Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion please click the label below.

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More about the Light Festival coming soon.

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A funny T-shirt

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June 13 is the feast day of St. Anthony, "Doctor of the Church, Wonder Worker, Professor of Miracles."
That explains why I saw this small T-shirt for sale a few days ago at the gift shop of the big Franciscan church in Ein Kerem.

Apparently in the early 1200s Antonio had a vision of the child Jesus.

Since the 17th century he is most often portrayed in art holding the infant, but not quite like on this funny T-shirt, I'm sure.

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Pax et bonum, peace and all good, to you and all at That's My World.

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Going over the freeway in Tel Aviv

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For Louis la Vache's "Sunday Bridges" let's hop over to Tel Aviv.
It's less than an hour by bus from Jerusalem.

Nineteen bridges (actually called interchanges) cross the 29 kilometers of Ayalon Highway.
Neteivey Ayalon is major north-south intracity freeway in Gush Dan, the Tel Aviv metropolitan region where millions of people live.
Every weekday some 750,000 vehicles use it.
It can get really congested at rush hour.

Israel Railways trains go down the center of the freeway, as does the Ayalon River.

The river was put into a deep concrete channel to stop flooding.

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More info at Ayalon Highways website and Wikepedia.

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Golden jackal

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Toward evening I walked across the street to a favorite place of silence and solitude (the place where I found the discarded artwork).

A jackal was standing there!
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When he finally noticed me, he turned tail and ran.

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I love these encounters with wild animals, especially when it is time for Camera-Critters Sunday.

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Pews and benches

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More scenes of the 1860s church we first saw in yesterday's post.
Notre Dame de Sion monastery in Ein Kerem is a holy oasis of quiet and green in an already-quiet village.

Unusual modern stations of the cross, simple and artistic.

Reminders of Jewish roots.

The Sisters of Zion teach these things.

Some pews have nice fold-down kneelers.

And just outside in the garden, a bench circle.

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Three in one

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I think it is called Plexiglas.
But whatever it is made of, the transparent lectern was great for James' "Weekend Reflections."

Today we visited the convent of the Sisters of Zion in Ein Kerem.
There was the stained glass window of Prophet Elie (Elijah) reflected, next to the book of Psalms!
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And looking straight down through the lectern, you can see the vaulted ceiling of the church.

One of the regular high windows came through most clearly and bright.

Don't you like the clean lines of the church, built back in the 1860s?

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This photo shows the lectern and the things that were reflected in it today.
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What the lady is reflecting about we will never know.

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Old City scenes

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Three fun pics gleaned from a short walk across the Muslim Quarter and the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City.

In a grocery shop, the 6th century Dome of the Rock atop a mountain of spices.
Enlarge to see the sesame and za'atar up close!

11:50 a.m. Arab girls in their school uniforms, busy with snacks.

An old colander is secondary use.

Imagine carrying such big keys in your pocket in the old days!

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Split down the middle

Enlarge the photo to see the two halves!
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Seen on the other side of the village, on the gate to a private driveway.
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Urban ugliness

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Undaunted by the dumpster's name, meaning Mr. Mouse, I went exploring in a back alley bordering on Jerusalem's industrial area, near old Romema.

Utterly unsettling was the graffito prompted by the wooden beam.

Ugh, what was this place??

Who had lived inside?

Unexpected was this piece of unusual urban ugliness!

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Unwittingly though, it turned out to be useful for ABC Wednesday's U Day.

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In a deep hole

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Well well, that's a big hole in the ground!
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Someday it will be Jerusalem's main train station, if the high speed train railway from Tel Aviv is ever completed.

The Central Bus Station is across the street, on the right (unseen in the photo).
Behind the big cranes is the big pylon of the Bridge of Strings/Chord Bride/Calatrava Bridge that we have been seeing on the two previous posts.
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These photos were taken through a plastic window which the builders were nice enough to leave in the barrier around the construction site.
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That's My World--we could make a tour just of cranes working in Jerusalem.
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The roar of traffic and lions

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We don't collect only bridges, but also benches--and lions too.

Enlarge to see the Lion of Judah, the municipal emblem of Jerusalem.

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Here is the view from the Calatrava bridge featured in the previous post.

The transparent side is a bit dirty, but believe me . . .

. . . down below are benches and a newly-planted little garden with olive trees.

Under the bridge, in the merciful shade, are more such benches, each with two metal lions rampant.

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Our Calatrava bridge

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For Louis la Vache's Sunday Bridges here is Jerusalem's most spectacular, most ambitious, most expensive--but still unfinished--bridge!

Wikepedia calls it a cantilever spar cable-stayed bridge (single-sided angled cantilever) .
It will be the first such curved bridge in the world to carry a light rail mass transit system.

Meanwhile only pedestrians can use it to cross the busy intersection near the western entrance to Jerusalem.

Welcome to the Chords Bridge!

I much prefer to translate its Hebrew name, Gesher HaMetarim, as the Bridge of Strings.

Click on this photo to see the criss-cross of the "strings."

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Together the 66 cables resemble the harp played by King David the Psalmist.

That was Santiago Calatrava's idea in designing this bridge for the Holy City.

You can click on my label "Calatrava" to see stages of construction since early 2007.

See especially http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008/06/strumming-bridge-harp.html for the huge crane, Israel's largest mobile crane, which lifted the sections of bridge which were built in Padua, Italy.

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And http://jerusalemhillsdailyphoto.blogspot.com/2008/06/gala-for-calatrava.html is full of fireworks and dramatic color illumination of the mast from the inauguration gala.

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Hopefully next year will see the tram/light rail up and running.

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