Looking east

Yesterday I thought only cats were cat-napping in the warm sun. Today this human did the same, just outside the Jaffa Gate.
What do you suppose? Was he
1. A Northern European "sun-worshipper"?
2. A tired tourist?
3. A patient husband waiting for his wife to finish shopping in the Old City bazaar?
We were lucky today to have good visibility.

From the Tower of David at Jaffa Gate we could see all of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives, and clear over to the mountains of Moab and Edom in the Kingdom of Jordan. Over there is Mt. Nebo where Moses died.

In the deep Rift Valley between Jordan and Israel lies the Dead Sea.

If you click on the photo you can see the faint line of mountains just at the level of the crane arm.

Cat napping in the autumn sun

On my Sabbath stroll this afternoon in the moshav, everywhere cats were half dozing in the last rays of the sun, fully enjoying the warmth before the chilly (down to 8 degrees C) night.
Cats are so smart.

At the dairy goat farm
and at the monastery.
.

Pay a visit to Camera-Critters this weekend to see more animals around the blogging world.

Monastic scarecrow

To counter the nude Parisian scarecrows that Catherine exposed in her hilarious post today, I offer a modest Holy Land scarecrow. He stands in solitude in our local monastery. With the hood, he does look a bit like his Franciscan brothers.
The cross is over the grave of Father Abraham Shmuelof, who began life as a nice Jewish boy in Jerusalem in 1913. He sought peace in his new religious life, but in vain. The website of the "Kehilla" sums it up: "He is remembered simply as 'Abouna,' a dynamic presence not without contradictions, within the Hebrew-speaking Catholic community in Israel."

Apparently he is best remembered for his recordings of the Bible. If you ever need to hear Psalms or any other part of the Bible in the original Hebrew, you can listen here.

Birthday boy

Eyal is one year old today!
My youngest grandson lives in Bondi, Australia.
Happy birthday, dear sweet charming little boy!
Next month Savta Dina will come to meet you for the first time!

Photos are from his parents' blog.

.

God bless the children of the world.

Clouds, strings, and absurdity

Clouds have found their way back to Israel! We even had thunder and lightning and hail yesterday, for all of three minutes. Counting some rain in the night, Jerusalem got but two millimeters.

With big fanfare the Calatrava bridge was dedicated in June. (Click on the bridge label below to see the party.) It is meant to carry the tram or light rail into downtown Jerusalem, but the train tracks are still not completed.

Can you believe this?!? Nir Barkat, elected mayor just a few days ago, might take the bridge down! Ha'aretz tells it this way:

Barkat lambasted the Jerusalem Light Rail project and the Chords Bridge on which the light train would enter Jerusalem. He said he would reexamine both projects' feasibility and not hesitate to replace them with cheaper, more effective alternatives, if such were found.
"Israel's poorest city should invest the money in education, culture and sanitation, not in bridges," Barkat said. Criticizing the NIS 280 million investment in an ostentatious bridge when so many people want to leave the city, Barkat said: "I don't know anyone who would stay in Jerusalem just for a bridge."

Our roads have been dug up and reduced to a narrow passage for years already as the train tracks and this bridge were (and are and will be) being built. And now the incoming mayor is going to undo everything??

.

SkyWatch is under way for hundreds of bloggers around the globe.

Pay them a visit or consider contributing a post yourself. Nice people and nice skies.

And the winner is . . .

Jerusalem's new mayor will be Nir Barkat. He received 51% of yesterday's votes. Rabbi Meir Porush got 42% of the ballots. The secular candidate was victorious over the ultra-Orthodox one.

AP photo from today's Jerusalem Post

Only about 35% of registered voters bothered to vote. The national average for the municipal elections across the country was 40%.

Jerusalem's population of 750,000 is divided into roughly one third to one half haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews), one third not-as-religious Jews and seculars, and one third Palestinians.

The Palestinians are mostly Muslims living in East Jerusalem, the neighborhoods annexed by Israel following the 1967 Six Day War, the areas they want as the capital of a future state.

Only a brave 2% of East Jerusalem Arabs voted.

Most heeded warnings from Palestinian leaders in Ramallah who said that voting in municipal elections is tantamount to recognizing Israel's "illegal" claim on East Jerusalem.

Although the Palestinian Authority has previously urged Jerusalem Arabs to boycott the municipal election, this is the first time the PA's chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, has issued a fatwa banning Arab residents from voting.

So you see it is complicated. Nothing in Jerusalem or Israel or the Middle East is simple or easy.

Let's hope Mayor Barkat will make it better for all of us.

Quo vadis, Jerusalem?

Quo vadis, Jerusalem?
("Whither goest thou?" is how the King James Version translates the Latin Vulgate verse John 16:5.)
Quo vadis, where are you headed, Jerusalem? Just a few minutes ago the polls closed. Only 35% of Jerusalemites voted and their votes will determine who the new mayor will be. BTW, for the first time 17-year-olds were given the right to vote (formerly the age was 18).
Who will occupy City Hall for at least the next five years? The Jerusalem Municipality building in Safra Square (shown below) looks like a nice place to work.
Uri Lupolianski, a religious Jew, has been in office since 2003.
Either hareidi (ultra-Orthodox) Meir Porush or secular Nir Barkat will be declared winner in the coming hours. Either way, we are in for some big changes.

The lion is the symbol of Jerusalem.

My village is just a few minutes' drive outside the Jerusalem city limits, so I have no right to vote for the mayor. But I feel I am a Jerusalemite at heart.

Quo vadis, Jerusalem? God only knows.

^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^

To see what Q words other bloggers have chosen today, please visit ABC Wednesday.

"Be prepared!"

Like the badge says, you're invited to go visit the newest meme on the planet. Just click on it and you will be taken to other photo bloggers' worlds.
.
We posted yesterday about the fight that broke out at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem's Old City. Fortunately none of the police or the agitated Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks and priests was hurt bad.

And fortunately the violence did not reach the stage of necessitating use of this ugly thing that sits in the courtyard of the church. It is meant for bomb disposal if, God forbid, one should be found.

Here is another one at the Western Wall Plaza.

Yep, that too is my world. The threat of terrorism is part of everyone's life in Israel.

More common than the big metal containers are these "safety pits" which are prevalent in public places. The Hebrew sign says bor bitachon, literally, a "security hole."

A suspicious object, an abandoned bag or whatever, could be put there, at least until the bomb disposal unit arrived.

I always wondered how the lid would stay on if a bomb exploded inside. Well, a few weeks after this picture was taken at Hadassah Hospital, the security guards had put four sandbags around it. And today I noticed they were all split open. Oh well, someday we may find the perfect method.

Does your city have anything similar? Or is this just an Israeli thing?
.

Pow! Boom! Wham!

UPDATE: A 4-minute video that shows the mayhem best is here on YouTube. A must-see!

Tempers flared and fists flew for nearly an hour in the Holy Sepulchre this morning. Greek Orthodox versus Armenians. Israeli army and riot police were called in to break up the fight between the warring monks and priests. One from each side was arrested.

The full story and background can be found in Ha'aretz. A shorter version in the Jerusalem Post. Many readers' comments coming in, both funny and caustic. Both sites just now put up amazing videos of the brawl.

Some pictures will help you understand what is written in the newspapers.

Under the rotunda is the edicule, a small "house" protecting the tomb of Jesus.

A priest stands guard at the entrance. No one passes until he says so. Only two or three people fit into the little chamber inside.

So sometimes the faithful must wait in line for hours to enter.

After what seems like half a minute the priest shoos you out.

A simple marble shelf covers the remains of the stone tomb.

Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics (here called the Latin Church), Armenians, Syrian Orthodox, Copts, and Ethiopians--all these Christians have separate chapels within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The troubles always start when it comes to the common areas, like the entrance courtyard, the Stone of Unction, the Rotunda, and the Edicule.

The Yad Ben-Zvi guidebook says

"The agreements reached by the various religious communities over ownership of different parts of the Church ... are called the Status Quo. These also include the timing of religious ceremonies within the commonly-owned areas .... These accords are very complex and reflect the tumultuous history of Jerusalem and the fortunes of each of the ... communities."

Because of the rivalries the key to the church has been entrusted for many generations to a Muslim family. "The Ceremony of the Key is a holdover from the expulsion of the Crusaders from Jerusalem, when Muslim rulers limited access to the church. Prior to 1831 and the rule of Ibrahim Pasha, Christian pilgrims could only enter on payment of a stiff fee and were locked in for the night. The owners of the key were the Joudeh family, while the Nusseibeh family, also Muslims, were actually in charge of opening the door."
(from guidebook by Sarah Kochav)

The Ha'aretz article gives examples of problems caused by the status quo:

"The Israeli government has long wanted to build a fire exit in the church, which regularly fills with thousands of pilgrims and has only one main door, but the plan is on hold because the sects cannot agree where the exit will be built. In another example, a ladder placed on a ledge over the entrance sometime in the 19th century has remained there ever since because of a dispute over who has the authority to take it down. More recently, a spat between Ethiopian and Coptic Christians is delaying badly needed renovations to a rooftop monastery that engineers say could collapse."

Indeed I was trapped in the press of the crowd on Palm Sunday and it took me much time and patience and will power to reach the one and only door. The doors are high but not wide.

As mentioned in the paper, this is the Ethiopian compound on the roof of the church. The monks live in these tiny monastic cells in great poverty.

And here is the famous ladder which no one dare remove since the 19th century.

Location, location, location, status quo, status quo, status quo.

Welcome to the Middle East!
.

Old City cats

.
Here's a sampling of cats I encountered on a guided tour in Jerusalem's Old City last week.


These are the well-cared-for cats inside and outside a home in the Jewish Quarter.
But mostly the Old City has street cats, and LOTS of them.

We humans have to walk through a metal detector and have our bags X-rayed before entering the Western Wall Plaza, but this kitty just slipped through.
 
Scavenger cats under the restaurant tables in search of a fallen morsel.

(Animals on several continents are appearing at the weekly Camera-Critter Sunday.)
.

Old City vehicles

.
The walled Old City is to the east of the new city.
The Christian Quarter (about 4,000 people) in the upper left, Armenian Quarter (2,000) in lower left, Jewish Quarter (3,000) bottom center.
The Muslim Quarter (26,000) is all the rest, including the large rectangle of the Temple Mount.

Aerial photo borrowed from the Internet.

The bustling bazaar streets that we saw in yesterday's post are still asleep at 6:00 a.m.
 I used to walk this street every morning to my dig at the Western Wall Plaza.
More cats than people just before sunrise.

The steps and the narrowness of the major shuk/market streets make them impassable for cars.

When I moved to Israel in 1968 donkeys still transported goods and sometimes people inside the Old City.
Now only this tourist donkey is left, and he works just outside the Old City.
Here he is seen at the New Gate.

These carts are the "modern" way to go.
The only brakes are the tire chained to the cart. Just step on it to slow down.
The stone steps and ramps you saw in photo #2 are slippery when wet.
Whenever I hear a young driver coming down the crowded lane fast behind me, I stand aside, out of both respect and caution.

Photo by friend Kristine S.

Garbage collection is done with little tractors and wagons.

.

Old City people

Something new in the Old City: a free tour! Sandeman does free tours in seven European cities and now in Jerusalem too. After a guided walk of over 3.5 hours you tip the guide as much or as little as you want. They start at the Jaffa Gate Tourism Office every day at 11:00.

The walled Old City is less than one square kilometer but everything is in it!
We walked through all four quarters: Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian.
You might enjoy seeing some of the people we saw on Tuesday.
Greek Orthodox priests near the Jaffa Gate.

Meir was our Israeli guide. He spoke good English and knew his stuff.

This group of girl soldiers must have been visiting the sites as part of their training. Education about the country is given to all young soldiers.

Yes, they have to carry their gun everywhere.

Indian tourists, with women in the lovely sari.

Jewish kindergarten kids were running after their teachers in the Jewish Quarter.

All kinds of folks at the Western Wall Plaza. The ramp leads up to the Mughrabi Gate into the Temple Mount.

The narrow bazaar streets were packed with tourists. Sandeman guides wear red so you don't lose them in the press of the crowd.

Must be hard to take this lady in a wheelchair up and down the steps of the crowded streets.

A game of sheshbesh on the street.

School must have just let out.

Arab girls in their school uniform.

Ladies doing lunch in the Muslim Quarter.

Mothers out shopping.

Sometimes I wonder how the residents of the densely packed Old City feel about sharing their narrow streets with all these tourists all during the year. I wonder how it is to live there in the old stone houses, in all that intense religious history, to be at the very center of the world.

How would you feel about writing your address as, say, #10 Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem?

Light

The afternoon sky above the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Below the dome is the place where Jesus was buried, according to tradition.
The first showers of last week are long gone. Israel is back to blue skies and T-shirt temperatures.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Last week 359 bloggers shared their part of the sky on the weekly SkyWatch Friday. Keep looking up!