What's behind the truth window?

.
You can easily see the lamps reflected for James' "Weekend Reflections."
.
But you might have to enlarge the picture to see what is behind the truth window.
It is straw!
.
We saw in this older post how the neighbors mixed straw, clay, sand, and water to make mud bricks.
The sustainability-minded family reinforced and repurposed an old shed with these new handmade mud bricks.
.

It's all a facade

.
The shadow-producing spikey things in the concrete of this new yeshiva are, I presume, what the cladding will be fastened to the wall with.
.
For sure they are good for Hey Harriet's Shadow Shot Sunday.
.
Since the 1920s, when the British (Mandate) made it mandatory, all new buildings in Jerusalem must be cladded with Jerusalem stone.
.

But as we can see with this 19th century house in the old Jerusalem neighborhood of Nachlaot, "It's all a facade."
What faces the street is handsome new Jerusalem stone, but in the shadows lurk the original thick and strong building stones.
.

"Where history meets luxury"

.
You have a good view of the sky when the roof is gone.

This incredibly long building on Jaffa Road is called Batei Saidoff, meaning Saidoff Houses.

Isaac Saidoff built the complex in the 1920s, after he moved to Jerusalem from Shanghai.

.

The great influx of Jews to Shanghai began in the second half of the 19th century and continued to grow in bursts through the end of World War II. The city was known as a bustling international trade and commerce hub, free from anti-Semitism and ripe with opportunity. At its height during the Holocaust this Jewish community, the largest in China, stood at nearly 50,000.

.
In 1919 the Saidoff family sought refuge from the pogroms in Bukhara (in southern Russia). They fled to Shanghai and settled there in search of a new life. A few years later the family immigrated to Israel.

(source)

.

As you saw in a recent post, the almost-century-old building is being reconstructed.
.

Hard to imagine at this stage, but the contractor advertises it as "Your residence in Jerusalem--where history meets luxury."

.

This video from Ashdar/Ashtrom Group will help us imagine what it will become.

This photo from a gray day in February shows the beginnings of the foundation for the 23-storey high-rise that will be part of the Saidoff Houses complex.

.

The high-rise itself will have ninety 3- to 6-room apartments.

Globes says sales so far include a 270-square meter 6-room apartment for NIS 8.5 million and a 190-square meter 4-room apartment for NIS 6.3 million. At today's rate, that is $2,333,243 and $1,728,850.

.

The view of Jerusalem, the Old City, and the Hills of Jerusalem doesn't come cheap!

.

I imagine most buyers will be residents of the USA or UK who come to Israel only for the Jewish holidays, a few weeks a year, such as at Jerusalem's David's Village complex, which is a ghost town most of the year.

.

Meanwhile, it is fun to follow the stages of deconstruction, reconstruction, and construction.

.

Saving old stones

.
Saving Jerusalem's nice old buildings so that new luxury residences can be built inside their shell is a lot of work.

This worker was cleaning an arch, stone by stone, of the hundred-year-old Saidoff Houses on busy Jaffa Street.
.
That whirling steel brush could be bad for the eyes.
I'm glad they gave him plastic safety glasses. But enlarge the photo and see where they are!
.
In the next few days I will have more on this big project that has been going on for years.
.
That's it for now for That's My World Tuesday. Shalom!
.

Action above and below-ground

.
A battle in the skies of Jerusalem?!
Who will win, the mast of Calatrava's Bridge of Strings or the giant cranes?
.
The cranes are working in a deep pit that we saw in a previous post.
.
The crane's shadow, for Shadow Shot Sunday, suddenly curves as it hits the side wall of the 80-meter-deep pit.
There is a big machine near the air hose. I think they are starting to bore a tunnel for the future high speed Tel Aviv-Jerusalem train.
This hole will someday be the train station, and it will double as a bomb shelter.
.
The bridge, or at least the top part of it, is for Louis la Vache's Sunday Bridges.

A bike lane, in Jerusalem?!

.
Jerusalem is going to have a dedicated bicycle lane??
Hard to believe!
The pictures of bikes along the new sidewalk is a good sign though.

As we saw in yesterday's post, Jaffa Street is getting ready to have its first-ever tram, in April inshallah.
The new sidewalk has been made, trees have been planted, and little shelters for future tram riders have been built.
In the photo above, the light rail tracks are to the left of the station.

Here's how that part of Jaffa Street looked in December 2008 when the rails were still above ground.
.
This is the way I often walk from the Central Bus Station to the Mahaneh Yehuda market.
It is faster to walk than to sit in a bus that is trapped by the congestion of having only one or two lanes open for traffic.
.
Living in Jerusalem takes a lot of patience.
.
You know, I'm thinking now . . . they probably are making a bike path in order to keep bike riders off the tram lane.
.

Dressing the poles

.
The tram/light rail is making progress toward its predicted April completion date.
All up and down Jaffa Street I saw cosmetic touches being made, before my very eyes!

The poles that will supply the overhead electricity for the trams got beautified!
First the two workmen wrapped a skirt around the base.
.
Then, with drill in hand, they wrapped her--I mean IT--with the top part of the crenelated skirt that slid down and got tucked into the base
.

Ta-da!

Complete with beautiful decoration--the lion of Judah, symbol of the Jerusalem Municipality.

.

Jackhammers on Jaffa Road

.

Enlarge the photo to see the bit a bit better

Just when I thought we had a nice new sidewalk along Jaffa Street (which has been torn up for years while the new tram rails are being built)--now I see it being drilled into and broken up.

Oi . . . again?
.
But pity the poor workers who have to bend over a loud hot jackhammer in this abnormally high heat Jerusalem is presently suffering from.
Thanks guys.
.

Making a home for archaeology

.
On June 30, quite by accident, I made an exciting archaeology discovery that made me very happy.

While walking over to the Israel Museum, I noticed this helium balloon floating with a camera suspended from it.

The cables tethering the balloon led to this construction site.

I hurried over to investigate and was overjoyed to discover that here will be built the NATIONAL CAMPUS FOR THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ISRAEL!

The bulldozer in the photo was just beginning to scratch the surface.

So far, this group of huts and containers is all there is, as far as I know.

.

In the background you see the green oval of the Hebrew University stadium.

( This and the following two photos are courtesy of the image gallery at

The Friends of the Israel Antiquities Authority, Inc.)
.

But here is what it WILL look like maybe even next year already!

This is so cool!

The roof here in the scale model is meant to look like the black canopy netting under which we diggers excavate in the hot season.

But this one has a hole in the middle which will collect rain water and funnel in down into a pool, like a waterfall!
.

God bless architect Moshe Safdie and his great ideas!

Read his Design Concept for the campus here. You'll love it.

.

Also inspiring are the The Vision and the Mission Statement for the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of Israel.

Here is part of The Vision:

"By creating the National Campus, nearly one million objects in the Archaeological National Collections [including 15,000 fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls], the National Archaeological Library and Archives, the National Archaeological Conservation and Restoration Laboratories, the housing facilities, the archaeological education centers and the headquarters of the Israel Antiquities Authority will be brought to a safe and permanent home, in Jerusalem's Museum Hill. . . . "
.

At present, all these treasures and resources and people are scattered all over Israel and mostly can't be seen. It is time they got a place all their own.

.

The treasures collectively represent the cultural heritage of the Land of Israel, and in a way the archaeological work conducted in our country is also universal in that it preserves the heritage of all mankind.

.

.

This good news is my contribution to That's My World Tuesday.

.

In a deep hole

.
Well well, that's a big hole in the ground!
.
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.
.
These photos were taken through a plastic window which the builders were nice enough to leave in the barrier around the construction site.
.
That's My World--we could make a tour just of cranes working in Jerusalem.
.

More "improvements"

.
Like it's not enough that the Jerusalem Municipality has been tearing up our streets for years to build tracks for the light rail. Now they are tearing up Omar Ibn Khatib Square too!

This is what I found at noon today just inside the Jaffa Gate.
Jaffa Gate is, or was, a main entrance into the Old City for vehicles and people.

When I left the Old City at 4:00, the paving stones were already wrapped and strapped on pallets and being loaded onto a truck.

There goes the truck out of Jaffa Gate.

They plan to improve the square's infrastructure, add street furniture, etc., working 24 hours a day for the next 18 months. The Municipality's flyer on the project is here if you want details.

.

Hmm, maybe I should apply for work at the preliminary archaeological dig that will surely start soon . . . .

.

Stopgap

.
Jaffa Road, a main artery in central Jerusalem, has been torn up for a long time, leaving little room for pedestrians and for buses and cars.

Laying of the track and of the infrastructure for the new light rail is costing millions.
.
I find it humorous that in what should be such a sophisticated project they protect the still-open tubes from rain with left-over plastic bottles.

.

Darkness at Noon

A dark sky at 1:00 p.m. yesterday, but no rain for the past week.
.
Tons of earth have been removed from this construction site on prime real estate near the Knesset. In fact, last July I posted these same cranes, but they were lying on the ground, being painted. The fancy-shmancy residential Mishkenot HaUma will be built here.
~~~~~~~~~
You might find some brighter skies over at SkyWatch Friday. Hundreds of them.

Growing pains

.
Welcome to Jaffa Road, the main artery in the heart of Jerusalem.
But for months now this artery has been clogged.

You see the train in the mural on the building? This is how the tram, the Light Rail will look, IF the track-laying is ever finished.

Let us survey the situation.

To the anger of the merchants whose stores line the street, the sidewalks have been fenced in and potential customers are hard-pressed to navigate the narrow space.

Public transportation is reduced to one lane, in one direction only.

If something like this heavy dump truck has to come up and merge into traffic, your commute across town can last a LONG time.

Part of the Jaffa Road traffic is diverted to the parallel Prophets Street, itself just a narrow 2-lane street with even narrower sidewalks.

.

If you saw my Thursday post, you may remember that the new mayor has threatened/promised to review the feasibility of the Light Rail project with its new Bridge of Strings and to replace them with cheaper, more effective alternatives IF he can find any.
Oh give me a break!! He wouldn't stop all this in the middle, would he?

.

We are all invited to visit other bloggers' worlds at the new and growing meme, My World.

Archaeologist in the sky

Way up on the scaffold, see the man with the camera?
That's our boss, fearless Zvi.
What won't an archaeologist do for a good photo of his excavation site!

Many other angles on the sky over at Sky Watch Friday.

Go over and crane your neck with us.

A crane's tiny but essential load

.
Part of the fun of my current dig is watching the crane next to us building a tall apartment complex. But this afternoon I saw the crane lower its heavy chains right in the middle of the construction company's container-offices across the street. Someone filled up the two plastic bottles with cold water and the crane operator raised them.
If you click on the photo you can see the bottles dangling.
Then the brave and thirsty man climbed out of his cabin and reached out to pull the bottles in.
All this about twelve stories up.

A sign of the times

On Sunday I gave in to the thrill of exploration and just followed my nose. It led me to this mysterious fence just a few blocks from Jerusalem's Central Bus Terminal.
Inspired by this guy's example I did even better and found an open gate. Pieces of a crane were scattered on the ground and you already know my fascination with cranes from a previous post.
There is a man back there painting them green. I didn't let him see me because he would have thrown me out of the forbidden-entry site. My first time to see a crane up close and I was shocked how thin and fragile it looked.
Digging of the deep foundation for Mishkenot HaUma was about to begin. This prime location makes the project and future apartments some of the most expensive in the whole country.
In 1988 I went back to college to take the 2-year program in Translation Studies at Bar-Ilan University and then worked as an editor and Hebrew-English translator. So these three signs in Translationese made me smile. Each one sounds awkward (not to mention ostentatious).
Hebrew was most economical with only four words.
English needed five.
And French a whopping seven words.

If you'd like to invest in a condominium here, LOL, complete with a "Parisian avenue" inside for upscale shopping, watch the Yair company's short video. And tell me what you think of it, the truth!

Stonemason in a monastery courtyard

Cutting stone (LOTS of it) the modern way.

The shrill grating sound was grating on my nerves even for the few minutes it took me to walk through this monastery courtyard.
How do these guys stand it all day?
.