Mounted police

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During Passover vacation week I was happy to catch sight of two beautiful horses going down Agron, a busy street in Jerusalem.

The trailer was being towed by this police truck.

On the door is written "Mounted Police Unit, Jerusalem District."
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You don't see them out and about very often when the situation is calm.

The photo above and the one below are from Palm Sunday 2007.

The mounted police were part of the security for the throngs of pilgrims walking from the Mount of Olives down to the Old City.
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Mighty nice horses those mounted police have!

And that is my M for ABC Wednesday.

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Across the valley

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From sunset to sunset it has been a long and heavy day. The Holocaust memorial day always is.

All these buildings spread out on Mt. Herzl are Yad VaShem, Israel's Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
From the looks of the crane, they are adding even more to it.
An impressive aerial photo is at their website.
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I wish there had never been a reason to build such a memorial place.

But my world today, for That's My World Tuesday, was not only the sadness of Yad VaShem and Auschwitz and Yom HaShoah.

I stood at the highest point of Jerusalem's Har Nof neighborhood to take the first photo. If you turn the camera a quarter turn to the right, this second picture is what you see.
Hadassah Medical Organization, a place of healing, teaching, and learning!
And on the hilltop beyond the hospital--my moshav, a place of new life for the new immigrants who founded the village in 1950!
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O the Chimneys

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The siren just now sounded for Holocaust Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Day.
The shorter, blunter name we usually call this day is Yom HaShoah.

When I lived in Switzerland as a volunteer, this was the view from my window.
It is nothing more sinister than an incinerator that burns people's garbage in order to heat their water.
But there at the foot of the Jura Mountains, I discovered that my sense of the Jewish collective memory is strong and unavoidable.
I could never see the smoke and the chimney without being reminded of Nobel Prize winner Nelly Sach's poem "O the Chimneys."
Here are its opening lines:
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O die Schornsteine
Auf den sinnreich erdachten Wohnungen des Todes,
Als Israels Leib zog aufgelöst in Rauch
Durch die Luft –
.Oh those smokestacks
Above the abodes of death, so ingeniously devised,
When Israel’s body, dissolved into smoke, was drifting
Through the air--

(translated by Reinhold Grimm)
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The entire poem, in German and English, appears in the book German 20th Century Poetry.
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High up bridges and low-down scandals

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Today I'd like to join Louis la Vache's Sunday Bridge Series but also to combine it with a little rant.

Sky bridges, also called skyways, catwalks, or skywalks, connect these apartment buildings.
In case they don't count as a bridge proper, the photo also shows a traffic bridge over the main road.
This is the back side of the same Holyland Park at dawn, in 2008.
Then we were doing salvage digs up there, clearing the area of antiquities before the construction bulldozers and cranes moved in.
(To see what we found, and how, in those Canaanite shaft tombs click on my label "Archaeology.")

Just about everyone who drives by wonders how this huge project was ever permitted to mar the skyline of Jerusalem. Jerusalemites call it a monstrosity.

It is said that the only ones who like it are the residents of the 642 apartments. From their windows and balconies, they are the only ones who don't have to see the outside of the complex. They see only the stunning view of Jerusalem, the surrounding hills, and probably even the desert.
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A few days ago the media ban was lifted on a big investigation of a scandalous scandal; and then we, the people, suddenly understood how the towering Holyland monstrosity ever got off the ground.
Land developers allegedly paid hundreds of thousands of shekels in bribes to public officials to get approval for it. :(
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Judge Avraham Haiman described the affair as “one of the most severe instances of public corruption in Israel’s history, which will send shock waves throughout the country and which has caused irreversible damage to the public interest.”
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If only the hill could revert to being just a quiet 4,000 year old Canaanite cemetery . . . .
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Sharing a bench

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Face to face, two felines in Chile Square, Jerusalem.
The lion is the symbol of Jerusalem, while the stray cat can be found everywhere in Israel.

This picture has a shadow for Hey Harriet's Shadow Shot meme, an animal for Camera-Critters, and a bench for bench-collectors RuneE and Vogon Poet.

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When I sat down to drink water, this surprisingly friendly feline proceeded to walk back and forth across my lap.

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For Poland

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The White Eagle, the symbol of Poland, wears black today.
There will be seven days of mourning.
What a terrible tragedy. How can a country, in the brief seconds of a plane crash, lose its president and his wife and so many of its top leaders??
I can't even imagine such a disaster.

President Lech Kaczynski was a firm friend of Poland's Jewish community, which has enjoyed a revival in recent years after it was nearly wiped out in the Holocaust and later suffered from communist-era repression.
In 2008 he became the first head of state to attend a religious service at a synagogue in Poland. As mayor of Warsaw, he promoted a planned museum on Jewish history by donating city land to the project.

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May President Kaczynski and all the victims of this crash now rest in peace. God help the Poles as they try to come to terms with this and rebuild the government.

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(The monument pictured is on Jerusalem's Mount Herzl. It remembers the Jews who fought and died serving in the Polish army during World War II.)

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Yeshivot

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All morning I was wandering around the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Givat Shaul Bet and Har Nof, seeing some things for the first time. What I actually came for was to see Deir Yassin, but that is not a story to go into right now, just before Shabbat.

It was a day for reflection.
There was even a shot for James' Weekend Reflections.

Here is the whole tall beit midrash or yeshiva.

It seemed like every block had at least one yeshiva and sometimes even several yeshivot.

Did I mention that Har Nof is a religious neighborhood of Orthodox Jews?

This yeshiva belongs to the Vizhnitz Hasidic dynasty.

The new Beth Ramchal, which appears to be built right inside one of the old quarries of Deir Yassin.

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Shabbat shalom. Let's try to have Sabbath peace.

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Clouds, hills, and art

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Jerusalem's sky turned cloudy and moody today, in time for SkyWatch Friday.

They say that Calder's "Homage to Jerusalem--Stabile" was meant to resemble the Jerusalem Hills.
The artist chose this spot high on Mount Herzl, overlooking Ein Kerem and the many little mountains.
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Sitting waiting for the bus today, I saw for the first time just how well the red slope parallels the first green slope.

It's a wonderful place for skywatching.

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An Italian lion in Zion

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The "Jerusalem--The Built Heritage" sign says this corner building, completed in 1936, fuses neo-classicism with modernism and was designed by Marcello Piacentini, a renowned Italian architect of the modern monumentalist style.
It was built by the Italian Generali insurance company. Since the mid 1940s it has housed Israeli government offices and no longer has any connection with Assicurazioni Generali.
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But we still call it the Generali Building and it is a well-loved landmark on Jaffa Road, thanks largely to the sculpted winged lion on the roof.
Enlarge the photo to enjoy the lion with his book!

While reading about the Generali Building today, I was delighted to learn that the symbol of Assicurazioni Generali was derived from the flag of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, (which was dissolved by Napoleon three decades before the company was founded).

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Any Italians or Latin-scholars out there who can tell us what is written in the book?

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Lifting and leaning

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Lifting

and leaning.

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For L Day at ABC Wednesday.

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The call of nature

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Three million Israelis (of a population just over seven million) flocked to Israel's forests, nature reserves, and national parks during the Passover week vacation just now ending!
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The intermediary days of Pesach are a rare chance for very religious Jews on leave from their intense studies to get out into nature (and to go a bit wild).
Near my village is an underground spring. Kids like to take off their shoes and wade into the tunnels.
I enjoyed the scene pictured above, so symbolic of the week of Pesach. A religious boy had hung up his suit coat and fedora on the tree in order to climb down to the spring.
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On normal weekdays the spring is a hidden place of silence and solitude, under the fig trees, in the valley.
Not this past week!
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The nearby wadi was also full of big families exploring what feels like a Swiss forest.

The older kids tried to hold the hand of younger brothers or sisters on the more dangerous parts of the trail.
This dead pine tree was still attached at the roots. A dozen little kids were straddling it and bouncing it up and down like a seesaw.

Great fun, and all natural!

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Such was our sunny, warm, fun world all week for That's My World Tuesday.

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Holiday flowers

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The seventh and last day of Passover is beginning this evening.
Happy Shevi'i shel Pesach to my family and to my Jewish readers and friends.

And happy Easter Sunday and Easter Monday to the Christian friends.
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For you all, some red wildflowers beneath the old grapevine just outside my window.
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Shalom and peace.
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Light enters the Holy Sepulchre

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A beam of sunlight from the Anastasis

strikes the tomb of Jesus.

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HAPPY EASTER!

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A shadow over Golgotha

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The Church of the Holy Sepulchre even yielded up a shadow for Hey Harriet's Shadow Shot Sunday--a shadow of a hanging lamp, a shadow hanging over the walls of Jerusalem
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on the wall mosaic that was made for the Millennium 2000 celebrations and Pope John Paul II's visit to the church.
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The other side of the huge mosaic shows the anointing or unction of the body for burial.

Pilgrims customarily kneel and kiss the Stone of Unction, believed to be the place where Jesus' body was anointed with oils and spices.

The marble slab was brought here in 1810 to protect the original stone underneath.

The pilgrims rub the stone with a cloth, trying (I assume) to collect any drop of oil that may have fallen when the lamps were filled.

Some place jewelry or belongings on the stone for a minute, for luck.

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If you would like to see more of the Holy Sepulchre today, on this day of waiting that will soon end and turn into Easter, please click on my "Holy Sepulchre" label for other posts.

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An impressive panoramic tour of the vast church can be viewed at http://www.360tr.com/kudus/kiyamet_eng/index.html (although its creator's notes are a bit strange).

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The flutter of wings in the Holy Sepulchre

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(Mouse clicks will bring you the fine details.)

These stone birds are not the only birds to inhabit Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
The church, on the traditional place of Jesus' crucifixion and burial, was built in 335 by Emperor Constantine and his mother, destroyed by the Persions in 614, and rebuilt by the Crusaders in 1149.
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The nooks and crannies high up in the cavernous structure are like heaven for pigeons.
The puffed up pigeon in the picture above looks like she might even have a roosting place.
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There she is, up in the right hand corner.

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And this is the beauty that is even higher up, over the pigeon's little "station."

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Camera-Critters meme is celebrating two years today. You are welcome to join in by contributing an animal photo.

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Try to imagine

The view from inside a tomb, before the stone rolls and seals it.
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A verse to reflect on

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A window in the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem.
Some colors were even reflected on the side for James' Weekend Reflections.

The Hebrew says "Beyadcha afkid ruchi," meaning, "Into thy hand I commit my spirit."

Psalms 31:5a

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Shabbat shalom.

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Spelling it out

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I have lived as a working volunteer with a wonderful monastic community of contemplative Protestant nuns in Switzerland. During my years with the sisters I have lived their heavy and solemn feeling during the liturgies of Good Friday.
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Still . . . what is a blogging Jew to post on Good Friday?
Relations have improved in our times, and thank God for the State of Israel.
Historically, however, Holy Week has been a dangerous time for us.
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One knight in the First Crusade (1096) wrote, "Behold we journey a long way to seek the idolatrous shrine and to take vengeance upon the Muslims. But here are the Jews dwelling among us, whose ancestors killed him and crucified him groundlessly. Let us take vengeance first upon them. Let us wipe them out as a nation."
These Crusaders on their way to the Holy Land did indeed slaughter entire Jewish communities in Rhineland cities.
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Deicide was not the only charge. As recently as the early 20th century, pogroms erupted during Holy Week in Eastern European and Russia when rumors spread about Jewish "crimes." Inflamed by outlandish accusations such as the claim that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to make matsa for Passover, unruly gangs searched out Jews to kill and maim.

Two crucifixes that I will never forget are NOT IN ISRAEL but in the Czech Republic.
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This famous statue on the bridge in Prague is topped by Hebrew (!) letters spelling "Kadosh kadosh kadosh Adonai tsevaot," -- "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts."
(Well, this photo is from my second visit in 2006. By then someone had thankfully removed one and a half letters from the name of God, making it no longer his name.)
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I was even more shocked when we found the explanation in the Jewish museum:
A long time ago some Jew was falsely accused of writing something wrong in a letter. He was arrested and as a punishment was made to pay for these gold Hebrew letters on the crucifix.
Normally the sign says INRI.
But not in the medieval cathedral of Nymburk in central Bohemia.
There it was spelled out quite clearly: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
And the blood drips.
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Yes, Good Friday is a difficult day for both Christians and Jews.
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A heavenly sky

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I was outside the entire day on guided walks in Jerusalem and the Judean Hills.
Can't believe I came home without a sky photo for SkyWatch Friday.

Instead you can enjoy the heavenly dome of a church!

A round church!

Our guide was able to arrange a visit inside.
 Most people have never seen what lies beyond the high stone wall and locked gate. We were lucky today.

The church was begun in the 1880s and completed in 1927.

The convent, school, and hostel belongs to the Catholic Arab women's order called the Congregation of the Rosary Sisters. It is the only native congregation of the Holy Land.

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The order's cofounder, Mother Marie-Alphonsine, born in the Old City in 1843, was beatified just a few months ago.

The sisters went to Arab countries in order to educate girls and raise the "dignity and nobility" of women.
By now they have one million graduates.
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The place is a beautiful island of tranquility in the middle of busy west Jerusalem's Agron Street.

I don't blame the sisters for not opening their gates very often.

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UPDATE Oct. 8, 2014:   See a short video about the Rosary Sisters in the Holy Land.
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UPDATE Dec. 22, 2022:  An article from the Latin Patriarchate Jerusalem about these sisters: 
https://www.lpj.org/posts/portraits-of-sisters-in-the-holy-land-final-chapter-the-rosary-sisters.html
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Symbolic red

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Antependium: a decorative hanging for the front of an altar, lectern, or pulpit.
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Such linens and cloth hangings are also called paraments.
They "clothe" the furnishings in the chancel.
The liturgical colors of the paraments change, following the seasons of the Christian calendar.
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Red, the color of fire, is a symbol for the Holy Spirit; so on Pentecost the paraments are red, and also during ordinations of clergy.
Red is also the color of blood and of martyrdom--the color for any service that commemorates the death of a martyr.
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Red is used by some churches for Holy Week.
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Red is the April 1 theme for City Daily Photo's Theme Day.
Click here to view thumbnails for all participants
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Wishing the Christian readers a blessed Holy Week.
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