A blessing on your house!

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City Daily Photo bloggers have to choose one of their own photos at the end of each year as their Photo of the Year.
You can see who chose what at the CDP website.

My picture has a message for the new year!

PAX HUIC DOMUI  --  Peace be to this house

It is the wish and the blessing of all who enter this wonderful Swiss house built in the 1700s or maybe even earlier in the tiny hamlet of Grandchamp in western Switzerland.
Now the house, named l'Amandier,  is part of a monastic community of nuns from the Reformed churches of Europe.
I lived there these past two months as a volunteer.
See my room and the whole building in an earlier post.

On December 31, on Facebook,  poet Jan Richardson shared her poem-blessing  that seems to be speaking about my beloved l'Amandier as well as about the new year.
Here is what she wrote:

"A blessing for you, from me, in this turning of the year. May this new year hold solace and hope; may it—through us—hold welcome and grace. Deep peace to you."

THE YEAR AS A HOUSE
A Blessing

Think of the year
as a house:
door flung wide
in welcome,
threshold swept
and waiting,
a graced spaciousness
opening and offering itself
to you.

Let it be blessed
in every room.
Let it be hallowed
in every corner.
Let every nook
be a refuge
and every object
set to holy use.

Let it be here
that safety will rest.
Let it be here
that health will make its home.
Let it be here
that peace will show its face.
Let it be here
that love will find its way.

Here
let the weary come
let the aching come
let the lost come
let the sorrowing come.

Here
let them find their rest
and let them find their soothing
and let them find their place
and let them find their delight.

And may it be
in this house of a year
that the seasons will spin in beauty,
and may it be
in these turning days
that time will spiral with joy.
And may it be
that its rooms will fill
with ordinary grace
and light spill from every window
to welcome the stranger home.

—Jan Richardson

A blurry train and parallel lines

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Luckily for me,  City Daily Photo bloggers have a Theme Day today on "Out of focus."
Our bus seemed to be having a race with the train and I had to click fast before the train disappeared behind the hill. 
If you enlarge this photo, you see the train is blurry. 
But still, I liked the picture.  So many parallel lines! 
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See more of that train in the previous post. 
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Shimon Peres on Mt. Herzl, then and now

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City Daily Photo bloggers group is posting today on the theme ABANDONED.

Today on Mount Herzl we buried Shimon Peres and I, and I daresay most of the people of Israel are feeling sad, almost abandoned.
The former President was 93 and, well, he was always here, here with us and for us.
As Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Wednesday morning, when Peres died, "This is the country's first day ever without Shimon Peres."
It feels like our father has died.
He is, indeed, the last of our State's founding fathers, the larger-than-life "giants" who brought our State into being in 1948.

Above is a photo I took of  President Peres in 2009 at Mt. Herzl.
(Please enlarge it and enjoy the wonderful faces.)
He spoke moving words at a new annual ceremony called The National Ceremony for Ethiopian Jews who perished on their way to Israel.
To read about the kesim (Ethiopian religious leaders) in the picture and their liturgical or ceremonial umbrellas, please see my posts here and here.

Shalom dear Shimon Peres.  Thank you for your example and inspiration.
We here below will carry on and try to make you proud of us.
Rest in peace.
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Our skyline in the middle of nowhere

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City Daily Photo bloggers are presenting "My city's skyline" for today's Theme Day.

"City" is kind of a big word for my town.
Meitar has only ca. 8,500 residents.
Construction began in 1984 on the yishuv kehillati, our planned community; and it continues to expand, one neighborhood at a time.
The photo above is taken from the center, looking toward the Northern Neighborhood.
Just north of the planted forest, just across the Green Line, are the Southern Hebron Hills in the West Bank.
 Geographically Meitar is on the transition area where the Negev Desert meets the Hebron Hills.

A shot of the east edge of town, taken from the "desert" that surrounds us.
I like to hike out here in the lonely hills.
All these photos (which you can enlarge greatly) are from the half-year dry season; in the winter when rain comes, it all looks a lot greener. 

Just after twilight the perimeter lights go on.
They share poles with the Sabbath eruv wire.
We don't have a fence.
This photo is looking west, toward the Mediterranean Sea and the Gaza Strip.
Less than 60 kilometers to Gaza, not so far as the crow  as the rocket flies.
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Why this Jerusalem square is named for a caliph

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City Daily Photo bloggers are posting today on the theme "Look down."
Here we are looking down on Omar ibn al-Khatab Square, just inside Jaffa Gate.
Enlarge the photo a few times and you can pick out a bagel pushcart, shopkeepers, tourists, police, Arabs, and Jews.
Under the white canopy a bar mitzvah boy is returning from his bar mitzvah ceremony at the Western Wall, preceded by musicians with drum, flute, and shofar.

To take the looking-down photos I had climbed many tall stairs to reach the top of  Phasael Tower observatory.
Built in the 1st century BCE,  Phasael was one of three huge guard towers built by Herod the Great close to his palace in Jerusalem's Old City.
Its upper section, with the smaller stones, is a much later Mamluk reconstruction.

All of this is today part of the Citadel,  the Tower of David museum of Jerusalem's history.

In this informative article by guides Aviva and Shmuel Bar-Am, we learn why the plaza was named for a Caliph:

One of the Old City of Jerusalem’s liveliest streets is actually a small plaza called Omar iben Al-Khatab Square, named for the second Caliph of the Islamic world.. . .

Brilliant, sensitive, tolerant and an administrative whiz, Omar visited Jerusalem soon after Muslim Arabs conquered the Holy City in 638. Omar revered many of the Old Testament’s most significant personalities, and greatly honored Judaism’s holy sites – including the peak on which Solomon erected the magnificent First Temple.

Thus when he ascended to the Temple Mount and found it overflowing with trash, Omar was enraged. He immediately ordered the rubbish removed — and, say some, he helped clear it out with his own hands.

At one point Jerusalem Bishop Sophronius invited the Caliph to join him for prayers inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Omar is said to have refused, explaining that were he to accept, Muslims might immediately ravish this most important of Christian sites and replace it with a mosque dedicated to Islam. He then proceeded to pray outside the church — exactly where a mosque named for the Caliph is located today.

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Almost-evening light in the Austrian countryside

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A late afternoon in November in the Austrian countryside gave nice light for today's Theme Day on Highlight and Shadow.

See what other CDP bloggers did with this subject at the website, City Daily Photo.
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"Being present with a whiff of cardamom"

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Come into Jerusalem's Old City spice shop, a pleasure to the nose and eye.
What here is labeled "coffee spice" is cardamon.
 Ahh, so fragrant when added to Turkish coffee, and healthy for the heart too.

I enjoyed this article which says
"Frequent mentions of mindfulness — slapping the word on every object and practice — don’t make us more mindful. “People have this magical belief in words as if they’re incantations. The more people use it, the less you’re distinguishing yourself from anyone else,” says [linguist Geoffrey] Nunberg, who views mindfulness as “being present with a whiff of cardamom.”
[Italics are mine!]

See how other bloggers illustrate "Smell," our May Theme Day subject, over at City Daily Photo portal.
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Living the beauty of simplicity

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 Today and tomorrow we City Daily Photo bloggers are blogging about the theme "The beauty of simplicity." 
Karl suggested this theme, as it is his philosophy that a photo should be kept simple for maximum effect. His blog, Bolzano Daily Photo, has stunning pictures of South Tyrol.

This hermitage in the Jerusalem Hills was built in the 1400s.
It was added on to a house and chapel built by the Crusaders in the 12th century.

From June to October 2006 this hermitage (more like a monastic cell), was my beloved dwelling place.
I had just returned to Israel after eleven years of volunteer work abroad, with my backpack and duffle bag and two boxes of stuff and that was about all.

The water faucet was just outside the door (near Lara the cat, z"l).
Steep steps led to a little building with a shower and toilet. 

The simple wooden table was both desk and dinner table.
Afternoon sunshine streamed in.
In the evening families of jackals called back and forth across the Soreq Valley just below.
(Hear videos of their howls here.)

Olive trees, pines, and many other trees right outside in the woods.
Silence mostly.

Full of history and holy energy, each ancient stone in the walls and floor became my fast friend.
How very good it was to sleep and dream and to wake to a new dawn in my own land.
The hermitage was beautiful in its simplicity, and so was my life.
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As the old Shaker song affirms,

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

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Meitar = tent cords for lengthening

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The yellow part of this sculpture symbolizes the cord of a tent.
This cord or rope is known in Hebrew as a meitar.
Meitar is the name that was chosen for my town when it was first planned in 1984.  

The prophet Isaiah told us to

 Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations, spare not; lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes.
 הַרְחִיבִי מְקוֹם אָהֳלֵךְ, וִירִיעוֹת מִשְׁכְּנוֹתַיִךְ יַטּוּ--אַל-תַּחְשֹׂכִי; הַאֲרִיכִי, מֵיתָרַיִךְ, וִיתֵדֹתַיִךְ, חַזֵּקִי.
  --  (Isaiah 54:2)

You can even see the tent and cord expressed in our logo.
The vision of Meitar's founders was to build a mixed community, a mix of  all kinds of Jews (Ashkenazim, Sepharadim, religious, and non-religious) and even some Muslim Bedouins, with all working and living together in a constructive and warm community spirit.
Openness and acceptance--it is our way of "enlarging the place of our tent" and make it welcoming, with true desert hospitality.
It is an enlarging of our own heart, too.

This is what makes me feel that Meitar, a little town in the Negev desert,  is the place where I belong.

And this is today's challenge for March 1 Theme Day in our City Daily Photo community; see where other bloggers around the world feel at home at City Daily Photo.

Play with Google Maps, especially Earth map, to see how Meitar is kind of in the middle of nowhere.  :-)
Shalom!
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Departure hall "café"

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Merisi of Vienna chose this month's City Daily Photo Theme Day theme.
Vienna, coffeehouse capital of the civilized world! --  Merisi must have a thousand choices.
She is asking us CDP bloggers to share a favorite coffee place in our neighborhood.

Actually I am not a café type of person so I have few photos of such places, especially not Israeli places.
This strange one that I show you, well, I never sat there. 
But I LOVE walking by it.
Why? Because it is in the Departures terminal of Ben-Gurion International Airport, and that means I am on the way to a gate to a plane, to fly away somewhere!

The tables in the big circle are surrounded by over-priced coffee and cake stands; I think you just buy what you want and go sit down. 
In the center a fountain does its water show under the high dome, adding its noise to the general clamor.
All around the circle are duty-free shops and fast-food places. 
For some reason an "artwork" that always reminds me of a totem pole is part of the "decor."

People, a lot of them, sit and eat, drink and talk, and happily watch the screen on the wall show their flight's departure time getting closer and closer.  
(We have to be at the airport at least three hours before, because of all the security checks.)

If you want to see a real coffeehouse in the grand style, see my post on Café Museum, to which an Austrian friend took me in my first-ever hour in Vienna last November.
And check out the wide diversity of coffee places that City Daily Photo bloggers will be posting starting now.
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More about our nice airport in these earlier posts.
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Fly me away

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For today's City Daily Photo Theme Day I chose as my favorite blog photo of 2015 this shot of mountain- and highrise-flanked Hong Kong airport.
It is a happy reminder of much flying.
From August to November I was lucky to be either running through, or sitting and waiting in, the airports of Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Sydney, Bangkok, Athens, Vienna, and Berlin.

It was wonderful spending a month in Australia and a month in Austria, first with my dear little grandchildren near Sydney and then with a nice farming community in rural Austria.
And the whipped cream dessert at the end was a visit (my first!) to friendly lovely Vienna!
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A happy and blessed new year to you all!
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UPDATE:  And even for this there is Jewish humor:
Q: Is one permitted to ride in an airplane on the Sabbath?
A: Yes, as long as your seat belt remains fastened. In this case, it is considered that you are not riding, you are wearing the plane.
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Lipizzaners in the shop windows

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Want to buy a Lipizzaner stallion?
(Or how 'bout a pewter soldier?  Enlarge the photo to choose one.)

 
The Viennese are very proud of their performing Lipizzaner horses, and if you gaze into the shop windows in stores all around the Spanish Riding School you find SRS souvenirs.
Christmas tree ornaments, pencils in the shape of a horse head, diaries, key chains, cap and gloves . . .

Spanische Hofreitschule calendars and even WINE.
A mug saying "I'm the best horse in the stall."

And books in German and English.
There were tons more horse things in the official gift shop in the palace.
But I took pictures only of the shop windows in the neighborhood, remembering that December 1 would be Theme Day on that subject over at City Daily Photo bloggers group.
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The best and only souvenir I came home with is my 13-Euro ticket for a guided tour of the stables, tack room, and arena -- and the memory of being so close to these magnificent horses.
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Ephemeral snow poles appear

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I was working in the field yesterday (here at the Franziskusgemeinschaft farm in Austria) when I heard a tap-tap-tap down the road apiece.
Soon this truck drove up and workers from the nearby town hammered a snow pole into the ground.
Something new for me, an Israeli from the desert!

These Schneestangen show drivers how deep the snow is and where the sides of the road are, and they even have reflectors for night driving.
These ephemeral snow poles are here today and gone at the beginning of spring.

EPHEMERAL is the subject for City Daily Photo bloggers' Theme Day for November 1.
Visit the CDP portal and see what others have come up with for this challenging theme.

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Sheltering diggers from Israel's sun

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City Daily Photo bloggers share a Theme Day today about SHELTER.
As the only Israeli in the group I felt obliged to post about my bomb shelter, and how "protected rooms/mamadim"  are now required by law,  but it was too depressing.
So I am showing you the happy topic of archaeology instead!
The shade cloth that is put up daily over the squares we are digging in provides merciful shelter from the merciless sun. 
Just like an air raid shelter, it's hard to live without it (literally!).

Here you see the temporary shelter being raised over the excavation at Tel Yarmouth.
By the way, the rope the Bedouin worker is pulling is called a meitar in Hebrew, and from there comes the name of my town in the desert, Meitar.  It is the rope which allows you to "enlarge the space of your tent" as advised in Isaiah 54:2.

The top photo of me swinging the pickax at the 2009 Tiberias dig was taken by volunteer Gretchen Cotter.
She made a nice little video about working eight hours a day in the hot sun, and there you can see just how simple it is to put up the sun shade (IF you know what you're doing).
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Check out the other city bloggers' shelters at City Daily Photo.
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A bike waiting for a bus ride

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Just in time for today's City Daily Photo community's Theme Day on bicycles I happened on this strange scene at Beer Sheva's Central Bus Station.

I've never seen a bike inside the terminal.
The only way to get a bike onto a bus in Israel is to hope that the not-large luggage compartment in the bottom of the bus is not full of backpacks and baby strollers.

The other strange thing was that the apparent bike owner was wearing a fedora, like a Chabad hat, together with an Air Force uniform -- a no-no for the IDF.
It's fine for Orthodox soldiers to be black hatters when they are home on leave, but no soldier may mix private headwear with the public uniform.

Enlarge the photo a few times to see the nice mix of girl and boy soldiers, Bedouins, tourists, and locals. 
That's it from Beer Sheva, folks, now go see what bikes the many City Daily Photo bloggers have found in their cities around the world!
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Upside down Down Under

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UPSIDE DOWN is today's subject for City Daily Photo Theme Day.
My laundry was drying on the fence in the hot Australian sun back in 2005 when I lived an almost hermit life for a month in rural New South Wales as a volunteer for the Good Samaritan Donkey Sanctuary.
To read more about the good life there and to see some of the over 100 sweet donkeys, please go to my earlier posts,  "Preaching to the donkeys"  and  "Bless the donkeys."
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Going out in style

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This elegant carved and painted wood carriage was made in Szarvas, Hungary, in the 19th century.
Would you believe, it was used for funerals!
I'd call that going out in style.

The sign next to it at the Israel Museum says this about the Chevra Kadisha (Jewish burial society) carriage:

Accompanying the dead on their final journey towards burial is part of the tradition of honoring the deceased and is already mentioned in Rabbinic literature as one of the essential deeds "for which one is rewarded in one's lifetime and also earns a reward in the world to come."
Funeral processions were held with due ceremony and the deceased was carried in a special vehicle, such as this majestic carriage from Hungary.

City Daily Photo bloggers are meeting at our portal for the June 1st Theme Day.
Visit and see how they are interpreting today's theme, "Stylish."
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Revolution and the Monster

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How many Revolutions Per Minute can the kids get the merry-go-round to turn?

City Daily Photo bloggers are posting for our monthly Theme Day about the multiple meanings of REVOLUTION.   Give them a visit here.

My photo is from 2009 when daughter Naomi and grandsons Dean and Eyal come for a visit to Jerusalem.
In back of them is The Monster, in profile view.
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Let's give a hand to donkeys

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If I had a face as pretty as this donkey's,  I would post it.
But all you're going to get is my hand. 

This donkey near the Jordan River was nibbling my hand in a friendly way.
Ya just gotta love donkeys; they're the best!

Today is our City Daily Photo bloggers' theme day on "My camera-shy self portrait."
Here are the guidelines from the website:
"Everyone is shooting selfies.  But, some of us don’t like to be on that side of the camera.  So, if we ask for your self portrait but you are camera shy, what would you show us?  Your shadow?  Your silhouette?  Your back or feet or hands?  Your heavily photoshopped self?  A collection of the things that are important to you?"

Follow the link to see what other city bloggers decided to post.
And happy April Fool's Day.  :)
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Aging peacefully

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 City Daily Photo bloggers, for March 1 Theme Day, are posting their interpretations of the theme "aging" (or "ageing," depending on where you live).

What came to mind, having just visited the soon-to-open Elma Arts Complex Luxury Hotel,  are these top wines-- mostly Israeli--aging peacefully in modern wine refrigerators or wine chillers at the hotel's various restaurants and bars.
Of course, the wine in these bottles is kept at optimal serving temperature too. 
 

Here is something funny from Wikipedia's Aging of Wine:

 During the course of aging, a wine may slip into a "dumb phase" where its aromas and flavors are very muted. In Bordeaux this phase is called the age ingrat or "difficult age" and is likened to a teenager going through adolescence. The cause or length of time that this "dumb phase" will last is not yet fully understood and seems to vary from bottle to bottle.

The Sharon plain near the Mediterranean coast and just south of Haifa, surrounding the towns of Zichron Ya'akov and Binyamina,  is Israel's largest grape growing area; and this is where Elma is located.
You can read all about Israeli wine at Wiki.
Lechaim!
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(Linking also to Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)