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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Brave bird

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A brave bird for Camera-Critters Sunday.


It has been a bad week in the Mediterranean.
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A new song parody helps to understand; great satire. See the "Flotilla Choir" on YouTube.
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Both feet on the floor

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First-time visitors to St. James Cathedral had better read the rules before entering the church for vespers.

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 I have seen confused tourists get corrected by an attendant for breaking Rule 4c. . And once I tried to catch a picture of the priest hammering on the simandron when he suddenly turned around and said "No pictures." I instinctively put the camera in my pants pocket.

Click to read the Armenian Orthodox rules. Compare and contrast; how do the recently-posted Catholic monastery's rules differ? :) Just kidding.

 

 Reflected in the glass for James' Weekend Reflections is the monastery with old khachkars in the wall.

 

 I really like St. James and whenever I am in the Old City I try to be in the Armenian Quarter and the church at 3:00 pm to hear their vespers.

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Wired for Shabbat

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For SkyWatch Friday here is a nice combination of sky, moon, bird, and eruv.
It's close to the woods on the side of the hill, just across the street from my house.
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If you enlarge this photo, you can just about see the two wires emanating from the top of the pole. A red ribbon is tied to each wire.
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"What is an eruv?"
I was afraid you would ask.
All the rules which the rabbis have been making up for centuries, and are still making, is way beyond me (me being not formally religious).
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I'll have to rely on part of the Wikipedia explanation:
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"An eruv is an enclosure around a home or community. It enables the carrying of objects out of doors for Jews on the Jewish Sabbath that would otherwise be forbidden by Torah law (Halakha). Without an eruv, Torah-observant Jews would be unable to carry keys or tissues in their pockets or push baby carriages on the Sabbath, thus making it difficult for many to leave home.
. . . When an eruv is made to demarcate a contemporary Jewish neighborhood, a symbolic fence is typically constructed using poles and wires as well as any solid walls available. Thus, a modern eruv is commonly composed of a series of 'doorframes,' with the poles forming the doorposts (lechi, pl. lechai'in) and the wire forming the lintel (korah)."
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Got it?
So the term eruv in modern Jewish usage usually refers to the wire that creates a symbolic "walled courtyard."
In effect it expands the private domain out into the public domain, thus permitting very religious Jews to carry certain things on Shabbat.
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Every Jewish community in Israel, and many in other countries too, has its own eruv.
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Russian Orthodox prayer, the video!

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Holy Trinity Church was built in 1872 and served as a spiritual center for the many Russian pilgrims who came to Jerusalem in the 19th century.

All too often the door of the castle-like Holy Trinity Cathedral is locked.
Recently I was walking past it, in Jerusalem's Moscow Square, when I saw a nun come out. Without thinking twice, I grabbed the door and asked in sign language if I might enter and she nodded.
Wow, I was finally inside! And a service was in progress!
I was unfortunately not wearing the required head scarf and skirt, so I stood in the narthex, sort of hiding behind the door. The men's choir upstairs was so glorious that, after two hours, I could no longer resist my blogger's temptation and took out the camera for a furtive 19-second video.

When the Russian Orthodox priests in their splendid vestments came around incensing the several dozen worshipers, the head priest and I--our eyes locked in a second of intense mutual curiousity.
Soon a nun came and, smiling, excitedly asked me a long question in Russian. I shrugged and said, "English? Hebrew?" She knew only Russian, and that was the end of it. I still wonder what she asked. . . .

The story of the church in the Russian Compound, now in downtown Jerusalem, can be read at

http://www.rusdm.ru/en/cathedral.php?item=1 and

http://www.gojerusalem.com/article_435/The-Russian-Holy-Trinity-Church

and in Russian: http://www.rusdm.ru/ .

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This post is a gift to Irina at the wonderful Moscow Daily Photo. Today she showed us a replica of the Western Wall outside the Moscow Synagogue!

Their synagogue was built about the same time as our Holy Trinity Church!

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(Linking to inSPIREd Sunday church meme.)
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Trees teaching

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For ABC Wednesday--TIGHT TREES

I admire these trees who grow and thrive and continue to exist despite being between a rock and a hard place.

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