Officially, winter is still two weeks away, but here we've already had almost 10 inches (25 centimeters) of snow with temps steadily below freezing for a week if not two. The worst is yet to come, I optimistically believe (as in the joke: "Pessimist: 'Things are so bad, they can't get any worse.' Optimist, gleefully: 'Yes, they can! They can!'"); MofM got 100 inches of snow last winter and I'm sure it will be even more this time. Even though I come from a place with similar winter conditions, I find myself utterly unprepared, grossly underdressed, and freezing my butt off pretty much each time I go outside, although I've discovered that two layers of cotton, three layers of wool, and a winter coat will keep you alive. I think, I'm adapting, or at least developing strategies to survive: the most important one -- minimal exposure to the elements; next stage -- finding warmer boots and coat, which is a bit tricky if you stick to strategy one.
Since misery loves company, I've been trying to locate places in countries I've been to that are as cold now. The three other locations on my NY Times weather page -- New York, Tel Aviv, and Moscow -- have so far been almost always warmer. Even Alaska is not as cold. Which surprised me: when they show a certain unsuccessful vice-presidential candidate in her natural habitat, it always seems colder and snowier there.
Which made me wonder whether I can and should move there or at least visit. I've always been fascinated by Alaska. Not sure whether it's because of polar bears and northern lights, or because the place used to belong to Russia and I imagine it as a more or less natural mix of things Russian and American and for that reason feel certain affinity for it. Or maybe it's because it was once considered as a potential homeland for the Jews (if was Russian Far East on the other side of the Pacific, why not far west on this side of it?), which more than 70 years later ended up as a premise of one of my favorite novels. If the real Sitka today is no bustling Jewish metropolis, as it is imagined in the novel, there are still more Jews in Alaska than I have ever thought (around 6,000, according to some sources). State's two largest cities -- Anchorage and Fairbanks -- both have had Jewish mayors, and Alaska's first governor and senator was Jewish. My favorite part about Alaska Jews -- judging from thousands miles away -- is their sense of humor: the Anchorage synagogue's website is www.frozenchosen.org, and its softball teams (men's and coed) are called "10 Plagues" (sadly, neither did great last season, even worse than the Yankess).
I admire adventurous spirit and clever wit of some of my tribesmen, but just as I concur with a fictional Jew who said "...wasn't it a mistake on the part of God to settle Jews in Russia, for them to be tormented worse than in Hell?", so I doubt that Jews and winter mix well on either side of the Pacific (current temperature in Alaska are abnormally high). Benya Krik might have been a gangster, but wasn't he also a visionary: "How would it hurt if the Jews lived in Switzerland, where they would be surrounded by first-class lakes, mountain air, and nothing but Frenchies?" Although there too, I hear, it snows plenty.
Monday, December 8, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Big City Virtue and Vice
In the past two weeks I managed to get away to two big cities. (Just a year ago I would have certainly doubted their "bigness," but today they seem plenty big and urban. Everything is relative.) One trip was business (a conference on the East Coast), the other -- pleasure: CAG took me to a neighboring city which, and not the town we reside in now, should be called Moscow of the Midwest: its size, its politics, its feel are a lot closer to Moscow, at least as I had experienced it growing up (politics-wise it's pretty screwy there now, so let's not get into that).
It was so good to let my metropolitan self out of hibernation. She and I took public transportation from and to the airport, walked sidewalks so packed with people we sometimes had to use our elbows to get through, and ate a pretty decent dinner (not pizza!) around midnight. And when CAG joined us on the second trip, we all saw some good contemporary art in a beautiful and funky museum, breakfasted at a nineteenth-floor restaurant, "listened to the music of the traffic in the city and lingered on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty." I also got my fill of diversity: on my conference trip in addition to people of different ages, colors, and shapes, I ran into a small but vocal bunch of Ron Paul supporters protesting the Fed in front of a Revolutionary War landmark and a few blocks away two African-American men trying to convince passersby that Barack Obama was not quite the change and hope we need (I think they must have been with the Black Panthers).
What the two cities also had in common was their liberal -- some would call it lax -- smoking regulations. I can't remember when was the last time I had a cigarette after my meal or with my drink in an eating/drinking establishment on American soil. Here, pretty much everyone in the bars (and we went to several) was puffing nonstop. So much so that it made my throat itch, eyes tear up, and clothes stink. I did have a cigarette or two with my cocktail, with my beer, and with my other beer, but I was glad to get a chestful of fresh air when we at long last left the last bar. I am a little scared to imagine myself after I finally quit: I no doubt will become one of those intolerable intolerants who are ready to kill anyone lighting up within a mile of them.
I already intensely dislike those who drive drunk; and we saw plenty of them on our bar-hopping expedition. Our state is notorious for its drinking culture, repeat DUI offenders, and lenient regulations and punishments. I haven't paid much attention to it here, in MofM, probably because I don't go out too often or because patrons of bars around here live within walking distance or are too young or too poor to own cars. But the trip to the State's Big City was for me exhibit A in the long-standing case of "the real America" v "wicked and sinful cesspool of the metropolis." I am still staunchly with the defendant -- I think the virtue offsets the vice by a factor of ten at the very least -- but I am beginning to see why puritans so often despise and fear the city. But let me tell you, it's a lot scarier if you're an outsider; when you're on the inside, it's nicer, brighter, and warmer even if a bit grimy with fumes of liquor and cigarettes.
It was so good to let my metropolitan self out of hibernation. She and I took public transportation from and to the airport, walked sidewalks so packed with people we sometimes had to use our elbows to get through, and ate a pretty decent dinner (not pizza!) around midnight. And when CAG joined us on the second trip, we all saw some good contemporary art in a beautiful and funky museum, breakfasted at a nineteenth-floor restaurant, "listened to the music of the traffic in the city and lingered on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty." I also got my fill of diversity: on my conference trip in addition to people of different ages, colors, and shapes, I ran into a small but vocal bunch of Ron Paul supporters protesting the Fed in front of a Revolutionary War landmark and a few blocks away two African-American men trying to convince passersby that Barack Obama was not quite the change and hope we need (I think they must have been with the Black Panthers).
What the two cities also had in common was their liberal -- some would call it lax -- smoking regulations. I can't remember when was the last time I had a cigarette after my meal or with my drink in an eating/drinking establishment on American soil. Here, pretty much everyone in the bars (and we went to several) was puffing nonstop. So much so that it made my throat itch, eyes tear up, and clothes stink. I did have a cigarette or two with my cocktail, with my beer, and with my other beer, but I was glad to get a chestful of fresh air when we at long last left the last bar. I am a little scared to imagine myself after I finally quit: I no doubt will become one of those intolerable intolerants who are ready to kill anyone lighting up within a mile of them.
I already intensely dislike those who drive drunk; and we saw plenty of them on our bar-hopping expedition. Our state is notorious for its drinking culture, repeat DUI offenders, and lenient regulations and punishments. I haven't paid much attention to it here, in MofM, probably because I don't go out too often or because patrons of bars around here live within walking distance or are too young or too poor to own cars. But the trip to the State's Big City was for me exhibit A in the long-standing case of "the real America" v "wicked and sinful cesspool of the metropolis." I am still staunchly with the defendant -- I think the virtue offsets the vice by a factor of ten at the very least -- but I am beginning to see why puritans so often despise and fear the city. But let me tell you, it's a lot scarier if you're an outsider; when you're on the inside, it's nicer, brighter, and warmer even if a bit grimy with fumes of liquor and cigarettes.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Small Town Blues
Five things about New York I miss the most:
1. tall buildings;
2. frequent and round-the-clock public transportation;
3. well-dressed grown-ups. Grown-ups in general, but especially Chinese delivery men, Mexican deli-owners, Puerto-Rican guys wearing Yankees caps, Nepali waiters, African-American teenage girls in private school uniforms, Irish firefighters, and Upper-West-side Jewish mothers pushing their baby strollers in the park;
4. grocery stores within walking distance from the apartment that sell extra yokey egg salad with dill and provide customers with puffy jackets for the frozen foods section;
5. Riverside Drive, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, even West 14th street.
And the beach -- oh, no, that's in Tel Aviv!
1. tall buildings;
2. frequent and round-the-clock public transportation;
3. well-dressed grown-ups. Grown-ups in general, but especially Chinese delivery men, Mexican deli-owners, Puerto-Rican guys wearing Yankees caps, Nepali waiters, African-American teenage girls in private school uniforms, Irish firefighters, and Upper-West-side Jewish mothers pushing their baby strollers in the park;
4. grocery stores within walking distance from the apartment that sell extra yokey egg salad with dill and provide customers with puffy jackets for the frozen foods section;
5. Riverside Drive, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, even West 14th street.
And the beach -- oh, no, that's in Tel Aviv!
Three Months Later…
No, I haven’t been sent back to the old country or a secret detention facility for suspicious foreigners. Actually, crossing the border this time was a breeze: even though I did not have my green card on me (it was waiting for me in NY), I was shooed through the gate for citizens and residents and asked no questions. Since then, I’ve been dividing my time among settling into my new environment (arranging furniture in the new apartment, learning the bus routes, mapquesting driving directions to malls and grocery stores etc.); obsessing about political and economic news thanks to newly acquired, although not without trials and tribulations caused by utter incompetence and indifference of the local cable monopoly, cable TV and high-speed internet; applying for jobs and post-docs; and working on a conference paper that is supposed to jump-start my next dissertation chapter.
Earlier this year when I already knew I was moving here – to a battleground state that only narrowly went to Democrats in the last two presidential races (thank you, Ralph Nader, and I can’t believe you’re running again!) – I thought I’d combine my passion for politics and for procrastination, put my dissertation on hold, and go work for the Obama campaign. But then I realized that a red- and egg-head with a foreign accent who just moved to the state from the East Coast would be more of a liability than an asset in an area populated by Arian-looking descendants of vikings. Am I glad now I backed off: a “Russian Red” agitating for Obama would have certainly sealed his reputation as an unabashed socialist among those die-hard Reagan Republicans who so stubbornly refuse not only to vote their economic interests but also to see clearly what massive tax cuts and deregulation have done to the country’s economy. I still plan to partake in some last-minute get-out-the-vote effort but then I expect to be in touch with committed Obama supporters who hopefully won’t get eleventh-hour cold feet. As far as I am concerned, the election day can’t come soon enough; in the last few days the wait, imbued with constantly fluctuating poll numbers and analysis of increasingly frenzied pundits, has become truly excruciating and even the "pulling teeth” metaphor does not do justice: when you get a tooth pulled you know the cost, the outcome, and even who to blame (your nanna for feeding you candy everyday at bedtime and the Soviet government for withholding floss from its citizens). All the trends and signs look good at the moment, but they were also good four and eight years ago. I get very inspired when I see Obama signs in every other window of student dorms and hear kids with Obama buttons brag about how long they waited to do their early voting. But I also get worried that others will have a bad hangover after a three-day Halloween party and decide to lie this one out in bed. I imagine how proud and excited African-Americans must be – I even envy them a little – and I despair almost as much as they do at the possibility of voter suppression. I am fearful of long lines, machine breakdowns, and butterfly ballots, all of which can and have messed up the results.
But most of all, I am worried about Ohio. When CAG and I visited there two months ago, in the wake of the party conventions, we got an earful from his relatives about why they weren't in the Obama camp. Some couldn't quite articulate the reasons that, despite their long-standing allegiance to the Democrats, they weren't comfortable voting for him. Others cited fear of higher taxes and expanded welfare. The candidate's race figured prominently, as did -- most astonishingly to us -- a belief that he was the anti-Christ (this, I report with relief, came from a relative by marriage and not blood). We are yet to check in one last time on were things stand now and attempt last-minute reasoning, but I remain skeptical: I'm afraid that the 150,000-dollar woman and the maverick man, with their new local celebrity, Joe the Plummer, who's now opined not only on candidates' positions on taxes but also foreign policy, would sway the Ohioans to vote "safe."
On the other hand, I am not that surprised that Indiana, previously as red as they come, is now, according to some sources, a tossup. I think it's a myth that the "heartland" -- Indiana included -- is a conservative stronghold: how conservative can be a state whose major highway displays more than a dozen billboards advertising "Lion's Den Adult Superstore"?? Even though "concerned Christians" have tried to shut it down for over two years, the store remains open and, I assume, successful. The same interstate has an exit to Whitestown on the one side of the road and Brownsburg on the other. At first, I took it as a sign of lingering segregation, but now I am wondering whether the fact that these two towns share a highway exit testifies to growing multiculturalism and tolerance. Change is coming; at least I hope. We'll know for sure in five days.
But now I need to turn off the TV, shut off the internet, and get back to my conference paper. If only I had the willpower...
Earlier this year when I already knew I was moving here – to a battleground state that only narrowly went to Democrats in the last two presidential races (thank you, Ralph Nader, and I can’t believe you’re running again!) – I thought I’d combine my passion for politics and for procrastination, put my dissertation on hold, and go work for the Obama campaign. But then I realized that a red- and egg-head with a foreign accent who just moved to the state from the East Coast would be more of a liability than an asset in an area populated by Arian-looking descendants of vikings. Am I glad now I backed off: a “Russian Red” agitating for Obama would have certainly sealed his reputation as an unabashed socialist among those die-hard Reagan Republicans who so stubbornly refuse not only to vote their economic interests but also to see clearly what massive tax cuts and deregulation have done to the country’s economy. I still plan to partake in some last-minute get-out-the-vote effort but then I expect to be in touch with committed Obama supporters who hopefully won’t get eleventh-hour cold feet. As far as I am concerned, the election day can’t come soon enough; in the last few days the wait, imbued with constantly fluctuating poll numbers and analysis of increasingly frenzied pundits, has become truly excruciating and even the "pulling teeth” metaphor does not do justice: when you get a tooth pulled you know the cost, the outcome, and even who to blame (your nanna for feeding you candy everyday at bedtime and the Soviet government for withholding floss from its citizens). All the trends and signs look good at the moment, but they were also good four and eight years ago. I get very inspired when I see Obama signs in every other window of student dorms and hear kids with Obama buttons brag about how long they waited to do their early voting. But I also get worried that others will have a bad hangover after a three-day Halloween party and decide to lie this one out in bed. I imagine how proud and excited African-Americans must be – I even envy them a little – and I despair almost as much as they do at the possibility of voter suppression. I am fearful of long lines, machine breakdowns, and butterfly ballots, all of which can and have messed up the results.
But most of all, I am worried about Ohio. When CAG and I visited there two months ago, in the wake of the party conventions, we got an earful from his relatives about why they weren't in the Obama camp. Some couldn't quite articulate the reasons that, despite their long-standing allegiance to the Democrats, they weren't comfortable voting for him. Others cited fear of higher taxes and expanded welfare. The candidate's race figured prominently, as did -- most astonishingly to us -- a belief that he was the anti-Christ (this, I report with relief, came from a relative by marriage and not blood). We are yet to check in one last time on were things stand now and attempt last-minute reasoning, but I remain skeptical: I'm afraid that the 150,000-dollar woman and the maverick man, with their new local celebrity, Joe the Plummer, who's now opined not only on candidates' positions on taxes but also foreign policy, would sway the Ohioans to vote "safe."
On the other hand, I am not that surprised that Indiana, previously as red as they come, is now, according to some sources, a tossup. I think it's a myth that the "heartland" -- Indiana included -- is a conservative stronghold: how conservative can be a state whose major highway displays more than a dozen billboards advertising "Lion's Den Adult Superstore"?? Even though "concerned Christians" have tried to shut it down for over two years, the store remains open and, I assume, successful. The same interstate has an exit to Whitestown on the one side of the road and Brownsburg on the other. At first, I took it as a sign of lingering segregation, but now I am wondering whether the fact that these two towns share a highway exit testifies to growing multiculturalism and tolerance. Change is coming; at least I hope. We'll know for sure in five days.
But now I need to turn off the TV, shut off the internet, and get back to my conference paper. If only I had the willpower...
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Russians are Coming! Russians are Coming!
Alas, my stay in Israel is over. I'm searched for explosives, checked in, and generally ready for departure.
God and the Department of Homeland Security willing, I will be on the American soil in about 20 hours. But I'm sure I'll have more to tell about this trip as soon as I recover from jetlag.
And, by the way, while the couch is staying in New York, at least temporarily, I am moving to Moscow of the Midwest (unless the above mentioned Department decides to send me back to The Moscow).
Stay tuned.
God and the Department of Homeland Security willing, I will be on the American soil in about 20 hours. But I'm sure I'll have more to tell about this trip as soon as I recover from jetlag.
And, by the way, while the couch is staying in New York, at least temporarily, I am moving to Moscow of the Midwest (unless the above mentioned Department decides to send me back to The Moscow).
Stay tuned.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Relief Found!
With the temperature in the Mediterranean exceeding 30 Celsius (86 F) these days and cold springs in the North off limits for swimming, we headed back to the Dead Sea, where, we'd heard, in the midst of the desert was a wonderful oasis with lush vegetation, unique fauna, and -- most importantly for us at the moment -- cold springs for swimming.
It sounded a little unreal, but turned out not to be a mirage; everything we've been told was true and more!
Just outside of the nature reserve we found ruins of an ancient village and a synagogue with a beautiful mosaic floor (discovered by accident during plowing of an adjacent field).
Nature and culture next to each other. A perfect day that ended with a great meal of fajitas, chumichangas, and beer at a Mexican restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Have I mentioned yet how much I love this country?
It sounded a little unreal, but turned out not to be a mirage; everything we've been told was true and more!
Just outside of the nature reserve we found ruins of an ancient village and a synagogue with a beautiful mosaic floor (discovered by accident during plowing of an adjacent field).
Nature and culture next to each other. A perfect day that ended with a great meal of fajitas, chumichangas, and beer at a Mexican restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Have I mentioned yet how much I love this country?
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Going Up North, Testing the Boundaries
Here in Tel Aviv, you often get a false impression that this country is rather homogeneous: everyone is Jewish but secular; cosmopolitan, sophisticated, hip (including elderly gentlemen constantly hanging out in cafes) and a tad rude (at least on the sidewalks). Of course, there is quite a bit of heterogeneity even here: there are blue-eyed Russian Jews and dark-skinned Ethiopian Jews, Ashkenazim (Jews from Europe) and Mizrakhim (from the "Orient"), Sabras (native-born) and Olim (immigrants), descendants of those who came 150 years ago and 30 years ago; you can even spot "Russian" Russians (wearing crosses around their necks) and head-covered and pant-wearing Muslim women (Muslim men are more difficult to identify as they usually do not dress traditionally). Reportedly, there are even enough religious Jews in this city so that one of the beaches has designated days for men and for women. But the diversity of country's population -- as well as landscapes and lifestyles -- becomes really evident once you leave Tel Aviv.
Jerusalem, for one, is a striking contrast to Tel Aviv. And not only its Old City, where three major religious groups (plus Armenians) live side by side -- if often uneasily -- and cross paths every day. But even in West Jerusalem (the Jewish part of the new city) there is a tremendous range of lifestyles and practices: from flip-flop and shorts-wearing youths to wig- and hat-clad religious couples. On a bus ride from the city center to Hebrew University that takes you through several neighborhoods you can encounter at least a dozen different religious groups and levels of observance, judging by people's outfits and head-coverings (wigs, hats, berets, or head scarfs for women; kipot of different hues, fedoras of many shapes and sizes, and fur hats -- yes, even in July! -- for men).
But the most diversity we came across on our trip back north last week (again, in search for cooler weather): a day in the Galilee, a day in the Golan Heights, and central north and northern coast on the way back. On this trip we once again realized that all of this variety of people and vistas is packed into a pretty small country: I've heard that Israel is a size of New Jersey, not the biggest state of the Union in any way; and our drive from the central coast to the most north-eastern part and back -- with backtracking and getting lost couple of times -- was less than 600 km (about 350 miles, shorter than a one-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco).
Our first stop was Nazareth, Jesus's boyhood town. On the way there, we passed what is known as the "Triangle," an area of several Israeli-Arab towns adjacent to the Green Line, the border between Israel and the West Bank. I did not know that this area had a special designation, nor that we were going to go through such a tight cluster of Arab villages. But it was hard not to notice: tall white minarets and golden domes of mosques of each township looked beautiful and dramatic on the green background of the Samarian Hills. I was struck by how wrong my preconceptions of "Arab villages" were: from what I could see from the car window, there were no dirt huts with straw roofs; the houses were modern, several stories high, made of pretty, lime-color stone, and some looked quite affluent. This is not to say that all Arab citizens of Israel are rich (although apparently home-ownership among Arabs in Israel is higher by 20 percent than among Israeli Jews) or even economically on par with Jewish Israelis, but I am not surprised to know that almost two thirds of them are not crazy about the proposal to transfer this "Triangle" with its inhabitants to the Palestinian state in exchange for Israel's retention of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Nazareth itself is the largest Arab city in the country with insignificant non-Arab population, but almost a third of its inhabitants are Christians. Here again my expectations were completely off the mark: I thought we were going to a small, quaint, and charming town that had not changed much since two millennia ago, which would be mobbed by Christian pilgrims. But we actually had trouble locating major landmarks: the access to the center of this sprawling city of 65,000 residents was poorly marked, streets had four-digit numbers instead of names, expected crowds of tourists trekking in the direction of holy sites were nowhere to be found, and the sites themselves were often unmarked and obscured by roofs covering the old-city market. (As I've discovered, in this part of the world, the "old city" often means a vast market -- shuk in Hebrew, or souq in Arabic -- plus a few religious institutions; and more often than not the former takes precedence over the latter in visibility and vibrancy. I don't know whether it's an authentic remnant of the past, an economic necessity for the locals who work at the market, something recreated for the tourists -- either to emulate the bygone days or to make money off them -- or a combination of all, but it's a fact that material and spiritual are inseparable at least in their proximity to each other.)
Nazareth is famous as a place where Mary got the news that she would give birth to Jesus, which in Christian tradition is known as the Annunciation. There are at least two churches in the city marking the place of the supposed event: a smallish Greek Orthodox painted inside in a traditional Orthodox way with colorful depictions of the annunciation, various saints and angels, and Jesus looking down from the dome (and where a woman, even if she is wearing a modest skirt and a long-sleeve shirt is considered indecent if she crosses her legs while sitting down); and an enormous, two-story modern Catholic basilica that incorporates the presumed remnants of Mary's dwelling and displays probably a hundred of her likenesses made by artists from all over the world (one Mary looked Japanese and was clad in a kimono and another was black and wore traditional African garb and turban).
We looked at a few more churches, passed by a couple of mosques, had a lunch of falafel with pickles (an ingenious mix of the Orient and Occident), and headed out of this expansive and not very charming place to find ourselves less than an hour later in another Greek Orthodox Church. But this one was located in such a serene place -- right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret), surrounded by a lush and well-tended garden, with seemingly no one but a family of peacocks and a kitten around -- we could not but linger.
The pretty white church with maroon domes belongs to a monastery of one monk, who showed up soon after our arrival and showed us around and inside the church. We talked to him for almost an hour. He was a man in his forties and a monk for almost twenty years first in his native Greece, then in Jerusalem, and now in this monastery of Seven Apostles. He told us he was fluent in four languages: Greek, English, Russian, and Arabic. The last two are the languages of the two main groups of pilgrims the monastery gets from within Israel; his Hebrew, he said, was so-so since Israeli Jews are rare visitors to the church.
After a short stop for dinner in Tiberius -- the biggest town on Lake Kinneret, which is a popular destination for Christian pilgrims as well as Jewish youth groups from Israel and abroad, all of whom seem to take great pleasure in evening boat cruises with loud music and fireworks -- we headed to our overnight accommodations, guestrooms at Kibbutz Manara, almost all the way to the northern tip of the country. The kibbutz is situated on a cliff nearly 900 meters (about 3,000 feet) above the sea level and can be reached either by cable car or by a narrow and windy road part of which runs right along the Lebanese border (we saw the border, the "No Crossing" signs, and a Lebanese village on the other side of the fence the next morning). When I booked our room at the kibbutz I knew it was a mere 100 meters from the border, but somehow -- ignorance? denial? inability to connect information from the media to reality? -- I did not realize this was one of the areas heavily bombed by Hezbollah during the 2006 war. A nearby town of Kiryat Shmona, with a population of some 22,000 (and a place of the best iced coffee I've head in this country, served by a cute young guy in a local Aroma coffee chain) was hit by over a thousand of Katyusha rockets in a month-long conflict, which forced half of the local population to flee the area and the other half to stay in shelters. But there is hardly any damage visible now, at least to a naked eye; and the locals joke about their proximity to the border: at the kibbutz, we ran into two of its members who suggested that we visit the kibbutz orchard but not be alarmed by a fence on the way, "Lebanon is on the other side of the road," they laughingly reassured us.
We chatted with these two women for a while. We intruded on their late-night drink-and-cigarette but they didn't seem to mind warmly answering our questions about the kibbutz, the area, and themselves. The few others we encountered on the kibbutz were just as nice, warm, and open to the strangers. A little bit too open I thought at one instance: we showed up at Manara's gate (that looked a bit like a border crossing or so it seemed to me then) close to midnight, in the dark, but the guard -- in some sort of uniform and with a machine gun -- just waved us through without asking who we were or why we were there. I had expected a lot more suspicion toward strangers in this conflict-prone area. The reservations manager with whom I'd spoken on the phone to book our room greeted me like a long-time friend when I came by in the morning to ask about local attractions and insisted I have some breakfast even though it officially had been long over. This discrepancy between Israelis' rudeness on the sidewalks and especially on the roads and their warmness and conviviality as soon as you engage them in even the most trivial of conversations boggled my mind until our local friends-sociologists explained that Sabra -- a name for a native-born -- comes from tzabar, a name for a local cactus plants that is rough and thorny on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside. The metaphor seems to be accurate, albeit a bit cheesy for me, but I am still looking for a more solid sociological explanation of this phenomenon.
The view from our room at Manara was truly spectacular: down below -- the Hula valley , much of which was neatly divided into rectangular, different-colored patches of farmland and man-made ponds with occasional insets of towns and nature reserves...
...above -- on the other side of the valley -- peeking though the haze, fog, and clouds were the summits of the Golan Heights mountains, rocky, sparsely populated, and homes to ski resorts with natural snow in the winter, with their backs to the Syrian border.
This narrow strip of land no more than 25 km (about 15 miles) between Lebanese border in the west and Syrian disengagement line in the east is a home to many national park, archaeological and historic points of interest, and holy sites for various religions, as well as wineries and cheese-making facilities. Deciding to buy cheese and wine from the supermarket later, we went to see more ruins and some nature reserves. In just one day we saw remnants of several cultures: Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Middle-Ages Arabic, Crusader, Medieval Jewish, all built next and often on top of each other. Greeks worshiping half-man half-goat, Romans with their aqueducts and cardos, Arabs riding graceful mares, Jews studying the Talmud, and Christian warriors had been there centuries before us and now we came to admire the traces they left and imagine their lives. If there is the place to study history, it must be here.
But some 30 minutes away is a modern marvel: the Hula Valley. Human settlements and land cultivation have been here since prehistoric times, but the area turned swampy, malaria-ridden, and inhospitable some 600 years ago. Since mid-19th century there were a series of attempts to drain the valley, but it was completed only in 1958, ten years after Israel's independence. The drainage of the valley was beneficial for agriculture but caused serious ecological problems harming both humans and the wildlife and in the 1990s the valley was redeveloped to accommodate agricultural needs of the country and preservation of the environment. Today, the valley is a home to vast farmlands and a nature reserve, which is an ornithological crossroads for some 500 million migrating birds a year. The coexistence of farmers and birds is not always easy as they sometimes get in each other's way, but it seemed to us that both sides were willing to compromise as we found the valley to be one of the most tranquil areas of the country whose calm was interrupted only by chirping cranes and softly roaring tractors. This is not the Middle East I knew from the American news coverage.
The next day, from the valleys and mountains of the Galilee and Golan we drove back to the coast. At the advice of a friend, we took the "northern road," a route that goes east to west right by the Lebanese border. It was late morning on Friday, the first day of the weekend (I'm still not quite used to the workweek begin on Sunday and end on Thursday), and even the cows we passed by were taking it easy in trees' shadows. We were looking for yet another ruin -- a 5th century synagogue, but we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in front of a closed unattended gate with a sign "Stop! Border in Front of You." The guards must have gone home for Shabbat.
After exploring the synagogue...
...there were actually two of them side by side in this little ancient town, and the lintel of the second one (which is now at the Louvre) read "Peace in this place and all of Israel. Yosef Halevi son of Levi made this lintel. May his deeds be blessed. Peace" -- and a lunch of bread, cheese, grapes, and wine in the shadows of oak trees, we continued east, to another marvel -- of nature this time -- Rosh Hanikra, whose cliffs and grottoes are a product of thousands if not millions of years of interaction between rocks and water. Unlike sparsely attended attractions in the Golan and Galilee some 100 kilometers away, which seemed to be of interest mostly to local families (often religious and, I assume, Zionist; although once we spotted a lone Muslim couple), this one was packed with Russian, Australian, French, British tourists on bus tours, as well as with Israelis with kids on a weekend getaway.
Inside...
...and outside:
I thought that the white of the rock surrounded by the blue of the water and the sky resembled the colors of Israeli flags displayed only fifty or so meters from the grottoes entrance: Rosh Hanikra is yet another border crossing to Lebanon. In fact, this is where on the first day of our trip the bodies of the two Israeli reservists whose kidnapping started the war of 2006 were exchanged for several Lebanese militants held in Israeli prisons and two hundred bodies of combatants. But two days later, nothing reminded of the exchange. I kept wondering how many of our fellow visitors to the grottoes even knew about it: when you're on vacation, especially in a foreign country whose language you don't know, and don't stray far from the beach, historic sites, or nature attractions, it is easy to be oblivious to the present-day significance of places you visit and lives of people who inhabit them. But one should try lest the trip will become another "been-there, done-that" dot on the map.
Jerusalem, for one, is a striking contrast to Tel Aviv. And not only its Old City, where three major religious groups (plus Armenians) live side by side -- if often uneasily -- and cross paths every day. But even in West Jerusalem (the Jewish part of the new city) there is a tremendous range of lifestyles and practices: from flip-flop and shorts-wearing youths to wig- and hat-clad religious couples. On a bus ride from the city center to Hebrew University that takes you through several neighborhoods you can encounter at least a dozen different religious groups and levels of observance, judging by people's outfits and head-coverings (wigs, hats, berets, or head scarfs for women; kipot of different hues, fedoras of many shapes and sizes, and fur hats -- yes, even in July! -- for men).
But the most diversity we came across on our trip back north last week (again, in search for cooler weather): a day in the Galilee, a day in the Golan Heights, and central north and northern coast on the way back. On this trip we once again realized that all of this variety of people and vistas is packed into a pretty small country: I've heard that Israel is a size of New Jersey, not the biggest state of the Union in any way; and our drive from the central coast to the most north-eastern part and back -- with backtracking and getting lost couple of times -- was less than 600 km (about 350 miles, shorter than a one-way between Los Angeles and San Francisco).
Our first stop was Nazareth, Jesus's boyhood town. On the way there, we passed what is known as the "Triangle," an area of several Israeli-Arab towns adjacent to the Green Line, the border between Israel and the West Bank. I did not know that this area had a special designation, nor that we were going to go through such a tight cluster of Arab villages. But it was hard not to notice: tall white minarets and golden domes of mosques of each township looked beautiful and dramatic on the green background of the Samarian Hills. I was struck by how wrong my preconceptions of "Arab villages" were: from what I could see from the car window, there were no dirt huts with straw roofs; the houses were modern, several stories high, made of pretty, lime-color stone, and some looked quite affluent. This is not to say that all Arab citizens of Israel are rich (although apparently home-ownership among Arabs in Israel is higher by 20 percent than among Israeli Jews) or even economically on par with Jewish Israelis, but I am not surprised to know that almost two thirds of them are not crazy about the proposal to transfer this "Triangle" with its inhabitants to the Palestinian state in exchange for Israel's retention of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Nazareth itself is the largest Arab city in the country with insignificant non-Arab population, but almost a third of its inhabitants are Christians. Here again my expectations were completely off the mark: I thought we were going to a small, quaint, and charming town that had not changed much since two millennia ago, which would be mobbed by Christian pilgrims. But we actually had trouble locating major landmarks: the access to the center of this sprawling city of 65,000 residents was poorly marked, streets had four-digit numbers instead of names, expected crowds of tourists trekking in the direction of holy sites were nowhere to be found, and the sites themselves were often unmarked and obscured by roofs covering the old-city market. (As I've discovered, in this part of the world, the "old city" often means a vast market -- shuk in Hebrew, or souq in Arabic -- plus a few religious institutions; and more often than not the former takes precedence over the latter in visibility and vibrancy. I don't know whether it's an authentic remnant of the past, an economic necessity for the locals who work at the market, something recreated for the tourists -- either to emulate the bygone days or to make money off them -- or a combination of all, but it's a fact that material and spiritual are inseparable at least in their proximity to each other.)
Nazareth is famous as a place where Mary got the news that she would give birth to Jesus, which in Christian tradition is known as the Annunciation. There are at least two churches in the city marking the place of the supposed event: a smallish Greek Orthodox painted inside in a traditional Orthodox way with colorful depictions of the annunciation, various saints and angels, and Jesus looking down from the dome (and where a woman, even if she is wearing a modest skirt and a long-sleeve shirt is considered indecent if she crosses her legs while sitting down); and an enormous, two-story modern Catholic basilica that incorporates the presumed remnants of Mary's dwelling and displays probably a hundred of her likenesses made by artists from all over the world (one Mary looked Japanese and was clad in a kimono and another was black and wore traditional African garb and turban).
We looked at a few more churches, passed by a couple of mosques, had a lunch of falafel with pickles (an ingenious mix of the Orient and Occident), and headed out of this expansive and not very charming place to find ourselves less than an hour later in another Greek Orthodox Church. But this one was located in such a serene place -- right on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (the Kinneret), surrounded by a lush and well-tended garden, with seemingly no one but a family of peacocks and a kitten around -- we could not but linger.
The pretty white church with maroon domes belongs to a monastery of one monk, who showed up soon after our arrival and showed us around and inside the church. We talked to him for almost an hour. He was a man in his forties and a monk for almost twenty years first in his native Greece, then in Jerusalem, and now in this monastery of Seven Apostles. He told us he was fluent in four languages: Greek, English, Russian, and Arabic. The last two are the languages of the two main groups of pilgrims the monastery gets from within Israel; his Hebrew, he said, was so-so since Israeli Jews are rare visitors to the church.
After a short stop for dinner in Tiberius -- the biggest town on Lake Kinneret, which is a popular destination for Christian pilgrims as well as Jewish youth groups from Israel and abroad, all of whom seem to take great pleasure in evening boat cruises with loud music and fireworks -- we headed to our overnight accommodations, guestrooms at Kibbutz Manara, almost all the way to the northern tip of the country. The kibbutz is situated on a cliff nearly 900 meters (about 3,000 feet) above the sea level and can be reached either by cable car or by a narrow and windy road part of which runs right along the Lebanese border (we saw the border, the "No Crossing" signs, and a Lebanese village on the other side of the fence the next morning). When I booked our room at the kibbutz I knew it was a mere 100 meters from the border, but somehow -- ignorance? denial? inability to connect information from the media to reality? -- I did not realize this was one of the areas heavily bombed by Hezbollah during the 2006 war. A nearby town of Kiryat Shmona, with a population of some 22,000 (and a place of the best iced coffee I've head in this country, served by a cute young guy in a local Aroma coffee chain) was hit by over a thousand of Katyusha rockets in a month-long conflict, which forced half of the local population to flee the area and the other half to stay in shelters. But there is hardly any damage visible now, at least to a naked eye; and the locals joke about their proximity to the border: at the kibbutz, we ran into two of its members who suggested that we visit the kibbutz orchard but not be alarmed by a fence on the way, "Lebanon is on the other side of the road," they laughingly reassured us.
We chatted with these two women for a while. We intruded on their late-night drink-and-cigarette but they didn't seem to mind warmly answering our questions about the kibbutz, the area, and themselves. The few others we encountered on the kibbutz were just as nice, warm, and open to the strangers. A little bit too open I thought at one instance: we showed up at Manara's gate (that looked a bit like a border crossing or so it seemed to me then) close to midnight, in the dark, but the guard -- in some sort of uniform and with a machine gun -- just waved us through without asking who we were or why we were there. I had expected a lot more suspicion toward strangers in this conflict-prone area. The reservations manager with whom I'd spoken on the phone to book our room greeted me like a long-time friend when I came by in the morning to ask about local attractions and insisted I have some breakfast even though it officially had been long over. This discrepancy between Israelis' rudeness on the sidewalks and especially on the roads and their warmness and conviviality as soon as you engage them in even the most trivial of conversations boggled my mind until our local friends-sociologists explained that Sabra -- a name for a native-born -- comes from tzabar, a name for a local cactus plants that is rough and thorny on the outside but soft and sweet on the inside. The metaphor seems to be accurate, albeit a bit cheesy for me, but I am still looking for a more solid sociological explanation of this phenomenon.
The view from our room at Manara was truly spectacular: down below -- the Hula valley , much of which was neatly divided into rectangular, different-colored patches of farmland and man-made ponds with occasional insets of towns and nature reserves...
...above -- on the other side of the valley -- peeking though the haze, fog, and clouds were the summits of the Golan Heights mountains, rocky, sparsely populated, and homes to ski resorts with natural snow in the winter, with their backs to the Syrian border.
This narrow strip of land no more than 25 km (about 15 miles) between Lebanese border in the west and Syrian disengagement line in the east is a home to many national park, archaeological and historic points of interest, and holy sites for various religions, as well as wineries and cheese-making facilities. Deciding to buy cheese and wine from the supermarket later, we went to see more ruins and some nature reserves. In just one day we saw remnants of several cultures: Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Middle-Ages Arabic, Crusader, Medieval Jewish, all built next and often on top of each other. Greeks worshiping half-man half-goat, Romans with their aqueducts and cardos, Arabs riding graceful mares, Jews studying the Talmud, and Christian warriors had been there centuries before us and now we came to admire the traces they left and imagine their lives. If there is the place to study history, it must be here.
But some 30 minutes away is a modern marvel: the Hula Valley. Human settlements and land cultivation have been here since prehistoric times, but the area turned swampy, malaria-ridden, and inhospitable some 600 years ago. Since mid-19th century there were a series of attempts to drain the valley, but it was completed only in 1958, ten years after Israel's independence. The drainage of the valley was beneficial for agriculture but caused serious ecological problems harming both humans and the wildlife and in the 1990s the valley was redeveloped to accommodate agricultural needs of the country and preservation of the environment. Today, the valley is a home to vast farmlands and a nature reserve, which is an ornithological crossroads for some 500 million migrating birds a year. The coexistence of farmers and birds is not always easy as they sometimes get in each other's way, but it seemed to us that both sides were willing to compromise as we found the valley to be one of the most tranquil areas of the country whose calm was interrupted only by chirping cranes and softly roaring tractors. This is not the Middle East I knew from the American news coverage.
The next day, from the valleys and mountains of the Galilee and Golan we drove back to the coast. At the advice of a friend, we took the "northern road," a route that goes east to west right by the Lebanese border. It was late morning on Friday, the first day of the weekend (I'm still not quite used to the workweek begin on Sunday and end on Thursday), and even the cows we passed by were taking it easy in trees' shadows. We were looking for yet another ruin -- a 5th century synagogue, but we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in front of a closed unattended gate with a sign "Stop! Border in Front of You." The guards must have gone home for Shabbat.
After exploring the synagogue...
...there were actually two of them side by side in this little ancient town, and the lintel of the second one (which is now at the Louvre) read "Peace in this place and all of Israel. Yosef Halevi son of Levi made this lintel. May his deeds be blessed. Peace" -- and a lunch of bread, cheese, grapes, and wine in the shadows of oak trees, we continued east, to another marvel -- of nature this time -- Rosh Hanikra, whose cliffs and grottoes are a product of thousands if not millions of years of interaction between rocks and water. Unlike sparsely attended attractions in the Golan and Galilee some 100 kilometers away, which seemed to be of interest mostly to local families (often religious and, I assume, Zionist; although once we spotted a lone Muslim couple), this one was packed with Russian, Australian, French, British tourists on bus tours, as well as with Israelis with kids on a weekend getaway.
Inside...
...and outside:
I thought that the white of the rock surrounded by the blue of the water and the sky resembled the colors of Israeli flags displayed only fifty or so meters from the grottoes entrance: Rosh Hanikra is yet another border crossing to Lebanon. In fact, this is where on the first day of our trip the bodies of the two Israeli reservists whose kidnapping started the war of 2006 were exchanged for several Lebanese militants held in Israeli prisons and two hundred bodies of combatants. But two days later, nothing reminded of the exchange. I kept wondering how many of our fellow visitors to the grottoes even knew about it: when you're on vacation, especially in a foreign country whose language you don't know, and don't stray far from the beach, historic sites, or nature attractions, it is easy to be oblivious to the present-day significance of places you visit and lives of people who inhabit them. But one should try lest the trip will become another "been-there, done-that" dot on the map.
Monday, July 14, 2008
What We Do to Escape Hot and Humid Tel Aviv
One thing that I have eliminated from my daily routine lately is checking the weather. For the past month and a half, it's been a steady 88 degrees F (around 30 C). And I haven't seen a drop of rain since my second day here in late April; the only precipitation has been fat drops of condensation on outdoors restaurants' furniture in the evenings. Even though Tel Aviv is located a bit closer to the equator than New York, its summers are not much hotter, if at all: it might shock some folks back home, but the difference in average temperatures is only 2 degrees F. (Winters, however, are quite different, with TA boasting a lot milder ones: apparently, they haven't seen snow here since 1950!).
But this is not to say that it's not hot here now. With rarely a cloud in the sky, the sun is vicious and we've had our noses, shoulders, and chests burned quite a few time; and we sure sweat a lot each time we go outside during the day. Until two weeks ago, the sea, only two blocks away, was a great and easy relief. But recently it's become too warm to be really refreshing; more importantly though, it's now invaded by gigantic jellyfish -- we both are still nursing wounds from being stung.
So what do we do? We get up at six in the morning, board a bus with dozens of other tourists from all over the world (although I was the only Russian), and go south, to the Judean Desert, where the high that day was expected to be 108 F (42 C). Truthfully, I was somewhat reluctant to go, but everyone was trying to convince me that the dry heat of the desert is much easier to deal with than the coastal humidity of Tel Aviv; besides I did not want to miss my chance to see Masada and the Dead Sea, two main attractions of the region, even if it meant enduring the desert heat for half a day.
After picking up more tourists in Jerusalem and an unplanned detour to near Ramallah in the Palestinian territories (the driver took a wrong turn), we arrived to Masada right before high noon. Masada is an isolated cliff 400 meter tall that sits right next to the Dead Sea. Since the sea is the lowest point on earth -- 400 meter below the sea level -- the top of the cliff actually lies at the sea level, but you won't ever guess it looking at it:
While the cliff was discovered and turned into a fortress (Masada is a romanized transliteration of the Hebrew word for fortress) a few centuries BCE, it was Herod the Great -- a client king of Judea under the Romans and a prolific builder of impressive castles, fortresses, and temples -- who erected (or rather had slaves erect for him) a glorious three-level palace with water cisterns, storerooms for food, and bathhouses. Masada was supposed to be his winter residence and a refuge in case of a revolt against him: according to some sources, he suffered from paranoia, but it is also a well-known fact that the Jews -- his subjects -- did not like him too much; and who could blame them -- Herod was not simply a lackey for the Romans, but a cruel and murderous ruler. Ironically, he never even visited the palace (maybe because he never got cold enough in Jerusalem) to see it for himself in all its glory, which is evident even today.
But Masada is an important Israeli symbol not for Herod's palace, but because it was a last holdout during the late-first-century (CE) uprising of the Jews against the Romans. Hundreds of Zealots -- members of a militant Jewish sect and political movement -- fled Jerusalem after its destruction to here and endured a months-long Roman siege, in the end of which they committed mass suicide so that not to be captured and enslaved by the succeeding Romans. It's a powerful story (even though some of its details are disputed based on archaeological findings, according to one Israeli archaeologist we've met) and no wonder that Masada is the only fortress we've been to here that displays national flags.
For most of the two millennia since the uprising (except for a monastery that lasted for about 200 years), the fortress was uninhabited, forgotten, and lost, if you can believe that such an imposing cliff can be "lost." It was rediscovered in the mid-19th century, when most of the fortress was in ruins. Only what's below the black line in the next picture was still standing:
Because of the scorching heat, our tour guide and most of fellow tourers were eager to get back to our air-conditioned bus or the gift shop. But we roamed around a bit more and even considered taking the snake path, instead of a cable car, down the cliff. But it was too hot, we were sweating enough as it was, and we didn't have enough water for the half-hour hike down. But we promised each other that next time -- with any luck or, rather, better planning, during a colder season -- we would hike up the mountain. Hopefully, we'll be back before long: the hike seems quite strenuous even for relatively fit and youthful 30-somethings.
And after all, didn't we come here to get a break for the heat of the city?! The other stop on our trip was the Dead Sea beach at Ein Gedi Spa, owned and operated by a nearby kibbutz. The spa offered massages and hot mineral springs, but since we just had had the latter on our previous excursion, and we don't yet have arthritis, we headed straight to the sea. It was almost as hot as the springs though, not at all refreshing, and quite slimy. But it was fun nonetheless. The water pushes you all the way to the surface and all you can do is float on your back, not even swim. Any other position is almost impossible to hold and, I think, is prohibited.
The sea is so salty, that minutes after emerging from the water and drying up, CAG had serious salt deposits on him and had he not insisted on taking a shower before heading back to Tel Aviv, we would have brought probably about half a pound of sea salt for our cooking.
In addition to salt therapy, I went for the mud treatment which is supposed to be exfoliating, southing, and generally rejuvenating, but I can't tell yet whether it had any effect.
The shower to wash off the mud was the most refreshing experience of the day. As the sun was moving down behind the Judean Hills, we piled into our bus and headed back from the shores of the Dead Sea...
...through the mountainous Judean Desert...
...to the sun-burned eastern slopes...
...and green western slopes of the Judean Hills...
...back to the coastal Tel Aviv. After a day in the desert, the driver cranked up the AC so much that in the end of a two-hour drive (plus half an hour in pre-Tel Aviv traffic), I was ready for some hot and humid air of the big city. Who said it's unbearable here? He must have not been to the desert in mid-July!
But this is not to say that it's not hot here now. With rarely a cloud in the sky, the sun is vicious and we've had our noses, shoulders, and chests burned quite a few time; and we sure sweat a lot each time we go outside during the day. Until two weeks ago, the sea, only two blocks away, was a great and easy relief. But recently it's become too warm to be really refreshing; more importantly though, it's now invaded by gigantic jellyfish -- we both are still nursing wounds from being stung.
So what do we do? We get up at six in the morning, board a bus with dozens of other tourists from all over the world (although I was the only Russian), and go south, to the Judean Desert, where the high that day was expected to be 108 F (42 C). Truthfully, I was somewhat reluctant to go, but everyone was trying to convince me that the dry heat of the desert is much easier to deal with than the coastal humidity of Tel Aviv; besides I did not want to miss my chance to see Masada and the Dead Sea, two main attractions of the region, even if it meant enduring the desert heat for half a day.
After picking up more tourists in Jerusalem and an unplanned detour to near Ramallah in the Palestinian territories (the driver took a wrong turn), we arrived to Masada right before high noon. Masada is an isolated cliff 400 meter tall that sits right next to the Dead Sea. Since the sea is the lowest point on earth -- 400 meter below the sea level -- the top of the cliff actually lies at the sea level, but you won't ever guess it looking at it:
While the cliff was discovered and turned into a fortress (Masada is a romanized transliteration of the Hebrew word for fortress) a few centuries BCE, it was Herod the Great -- a client king of Judea under the Romans and a prolific builder of impressive castles, fortresses, and temples -- who erected (or rather had slaves erect for him) a glorious three-level palace with water cisterns, storerooms for food, and bathhouses. Masada was supposed to be his winter residence and a refuge in case of a revolt against him: according to some sources, he suffered from paranoia, but it is also a well-known fact that the Jews -- his subjects -- did not like him too much; and who could blame them -- Herod was not simply a lackey for the Romans, but a cruel and murderous ruler. Ironically, he never even visited the palace (maybe because he never got cold enough in Jerusalem) to see it for himself in all its glory, which is evident even today.
But Masada is an important Israeli symbol not for Herod's palace, but because it was a last holdout during the late-first-century (CE) uprising of the Jews against the Romans. Hundreds of Zealots -- members of a militant Jewish sect and political movement -- fled Jerusalem after its destruction to here and endured a months-long Roman siege, in the end of which they committed mass suicide so that not to be captured and enslaved by the succeeding Romans. It's a powerful story (even though some of its details are disputed based on archaeological findings, according to one Israeli archaeologist we've met) and no wonder that Masada is the only fortress we've been to here that displays national flags.
For most of the two millennia since the uprising (except for a monastery that lasted for about 200 years), the fortress was uninhabited, forgotten, and lost, if you can believe that such an imposing cliff can be "lost." It was rediscovered in the mid-19th century, when most of the fortress was in ruins. Only what's below the black line in the next picture was still standing:
Because of the scorching heat, our tour guide and most of fellow tourers were eager to get back to our air-conditioned bus or the gift shop. But we roamed around a bit more and even considered taking the snake path, instead of a cable car, down the cliff. But it was too hot, we were sweating enough as it was, and we didn't have enough water for the half-hour hike down. But we promised each other that next time -- with any luck or, rather, better planning, during a colder season -- we would hike up the mountain. Hopefully, we'll be back before long: the hike seems quite strenuous even for relatively fit and youthful 30-somethings.
And after all, didn't we come here to get a break for the heat of the city?! The other stop on our trip was the Dead Sea beach at Ein Gedi Spa, owned and operated by a nearby kibbutz. The spa offered massages and hot mineral springs, but since we just had had the latter on our previous excursion, and we don't yet have arthritis, we headed straight to the sea. It was almost as hot as the springs though, not at all refreshing, and quite slimy. But it was fun nonetheless. The water pushes you all the way to the surface and all you can do is float on your back, not even swim. Any other position is almost impossible to hold and, I think, is prohibited.
The sea is so salty, that minutes after emerging from the water and drying up, CAG had serious salt deposits on him and had he not insisted on taking a shower before heading back to Tel Aviv, we would have brought probably about half a pound of sea salt for our cooking.
In addition to salt therapy, I went for the mud treatment which is supposed to be exfoliating, southing, and generally rejuvenating, but I can't tell yet whether it had any effect.
The shower to wash off the mud was the most refreshing experience of the day. As the sun was moving down behind the Judean Hills, we piled into our bus and headed back from the shores of the Dead Sea...
...through the mountainous Judean Desert...
...to the sun-burned eastern slopes...
...and green western slopes of the Judean Hills...
...back to the coastal Tel Aviv. After a day in the desert, the driver cranked up the AC so much that in the end of a two-hour drive (plus half an hour in pre-Tel Aviv traffic), I was ready for some hot and humid air of the big city. Who said it's unbearable here? He must have not been to the desert in mid-July!
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Headline of the Week
"July 1. Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Closed due to Traders' Strike."
I know, collectivism and solidarity in this country are not what they used to be 30, 40, or 50 years ago, but where else are traders and other financiers unionized???
This country seems to be in a constant "labor action": the postal workers just ended an Italian strike, bus and taxi drives blocked a major highway protesting high gas prices a couple of weeks ago (gasoline is about $8 per gallon here, so if anyone back home is complaining -- please be quiet, we just spent about $80 filling up the tank of a small and supposedly fuel-efficient Hyundai Getz), college students are threatening to sabotage upcoming school year because tuition is supposed to go up by $150 per year, not to mention well documented strikes of school teachers and university professors.
Now, we are awaiting -- with eagerness and terror at the same time -- the looming strike of the sanitation workers. With eagerness because they very much like to roar their trucks right outside of our bedroom window at five in the morning and we are hoping to get some peace and quite while we sleep; with terror -- well, the temperature has been at a steady 87 degrees and we are frightened to learn first hand what tons of garbage smell like after sitting uncollected for an indefinite period of time.
Of course, even here, where about half of the labor force is unionized, unions don't always get everything they want especially, sadly, in education . But recently, the Finance Minister rolled back some unpopular tax reform because of a mere threat of a general strike.
Surprisingly, in this land of perpetual labor actions, I have not seen a single picket line. Can it be because strikers go to the beach or cafes instead? Both are always crowded... And who would blame them in this weather!
I know, collectivism and solidarity in this country are not what they used to be 30, 40, or 50 years ago, but where else are traders and other financiers unionized???
This country seems to be in a constant "labor action": the postal workers just ended an Italian strike, bus and taxi drives blocked a major highway protesting high gas prices a couple of weeks ago (gasoline is about $8 per gallon here, so if anyone back home is complaining -- please be quiet, we just spent about $80 filling up the tank of a small and supposedly fuel-efficient Hyundai Getz), college students are threatening to sabotage upcoming school year because tuition is supposed to go up by $150 per year, not to mention well documented strikes of school teachers and university professors.
Now, we are awaiting -- with eagerness and terror at the same time -- the looming strike of the sanitation workers. With eagerness because they very much like to roar their trucks right outside of our bedroom window at five in the morning and we are hoping to get some peace and quite while we sleep; with terror -- well, the temperature has been at a steady 87 degrees and we are frightened to learn first hand what tons of garbage smell like after sitting uncollected for an indefinite period of time.
Of course, even here, where about half of the labor force is unionized, unions don't always get everything they want especially, sadly, in education . But recently, the Finance Minister rolled back some unpopular tax reform because of a mere threat of a general strike.
Surprisingly, in this land of perpetual labor actions, I have not seen a single picket line. Can it be because strikers go to the beach or cafes instead? Both are always crowded... And who would blame them in this weather!
Periphery vs. Center
When my parents visited Israel a few years back, they weren't too impressed -- it was too "Third World" for their tourist appetites spoiled by former imperial capitals of Rome, Madrid, and London. I think, in Tel Aviv it is hard to remember that you are *not* in Europe: the architecture, the people, the fashions, the food are pretty much like elsewhere in the West, adjusted for the weather of course -- the Bauhaus buildings and chicken schnitzels are, no doubt, of European descent, although there are a lot fewer blonds around here than, say, in Sweden. But once you leave the city, you do get a different, non-European (although by no means non-civilized) feel to the land. Where in Europe will you come in contact with banana plantations, pomegranates, or an orange tree in the middle a town?
I keep recalling a poem by my favorite poet, Joseph Brodsky, which is worth reproducing here in its entirety (although this is not the best translation I've seen, and it's even better in the original Russian):
It must be the amazingly tasty and rich food, the good wine, the ubiquitous Roman ruins, the warm and incredibly blue Mediterranean sea, the cypresses, olive and fig trees, and especially the chirping birds and buzzing insects that make me think of this poem.
Here is CAG cheering imaginary -- and apparently flying -- chariots at the Roman Hippodrome in Qesarya:
Remains of Roman thermal baths in Khamat Gader, where Roman legionaries soothed their battle wounds:
Sunsets into the sea (you can never have too many of those -- simply breathtaking):
The source of our sustenance, olives and grapes:
A perfect final resting place -- a cemetery on the shore of Lake Kinneret:
If you don't read the news and just take in the magnificent views of the yellow hills, blue waters, green orchards, and orange sunsets you would think this is indeed the place of internal serenity. Or would you?
The border fence separating Israel and Jordan and the adjacent Golan Heights bear frequent signs warning of land mines, which remind of many military battles fought here over the past 60 years and of the disputed status of the Golans (captured by Israel from Syria in 1967 and now a subject of peace negotiations between the two countries -- yes, Syria and Israel are still officially at war, the border between them is called a disengagement line, and many roads along it on the Israeli side are marked on our road map as for "military use only").
The Jordanian border fence:
A little sign on the left says "Danger: Mines" (we didn't dare to leave the car):
One of the area kibbutzim -- a purely agricultural, albeit collective enterprise -- sports a Syrian tank at the entrance as a reminder of a massive attack by the Syrian army it endured and repulsed during the 1948 War of Independence:
So even if you aren't up to speed on current events, you still get the sense that this land is less than tranquil, as it maybe used to be two thousand years ago as imagined by a Jewish poet in the Soviet Union. For better or worse, the periphery of an empire has become the center of the world attention.
On a lighter note: While we were visiting the thermal baths (close to Jordan but still on the Israeli side), CAG received a text message on his cell phone welcoming him to a Jordanian mobile network and wishing us pleasant stay in the country. There might be a fence, and perhaps even a mine field, between the two countries, but modern technology is truly beyond borders. Maybe there still is hope?
I keep recalling a poem by my favorite poet, Joseph Brodsky, which is worth reproducing here in its entirety (although this is not the best translation I've seen, and it's even better in the original Russian):
Letters to a Roman Friend
Now it's windy and the waves are running crisscross.
Soon it will be fall, and nature's face will alter.
Shifts in these bright colors stir me more profoundly,
Postumus, than changes in my lady's wardrobe.
To a certain point a girl can satisfy you --
if you don't go farther than her knees or elbows.
But how much more joyous the unbodied beauty
of an autumn wood: no kisses, no betrayals!
-----------------
Postumus, I'm sending books, I hope you'll like them.
How's Imperial Rome? -- A soft bed, hard to sleep on?
How fares Caesar? What's he up to? Still intriguing?
-- Still intriguing, probably, and overeating.
In the garden where I sit a torch is burning.
I'm alone -- no lady, servant, or acquaintance.
Not the humble of this world, nor yet its mighty --
nothing but the buzzing of an insect chorus.
-------------------
In this graveyard lies a merchant out of Asia.
He was clever, able, yet he passed unnoticed.
He died suddenly, of fever. Not to this end
did he sail here, but to make a profit.
Underneath unpolished quartz there lies beside him
an Imperial legionnaire, renowned in battle.
Target of a thousand thrusts, he lived till eighty.
Rules here, Postumus, are proved by their exceptions.
--------------------
Birds aren't very bright, my Postumus, that's certain;
but there's misery enough even for bird-brains.
If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire
let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore.
One who lives remote from snowstorms, and from Caesar,
has no need to hurry, flatter, play the coward.
You may say that local governors are vultures.
I, for one, prefer a vulture to a vampire.
-----------------
I'm prepared, hetaera, to wait out this downpour
in your company. But let us have no haggling.
Snatching silver coins from this, my covering body,
is like ripping shingles from the roof above you.
This roof's sprung a leak, you say? But where's the puddle?
I have never left a wet spot; no, not ever.
Better go and find yourself a proper husband:
he will do it to your sheers and pay the laundry.
---------------------
Here we've spent -- I swear it -- more than half our lifetimes.
As a slave -- now white-haired -- told me near the tavern:
"When we look around is, all we see is ruins."
A barbarian perspective, though a true one.
I'm back from the mountains carrying fresh wildflowers.
I'll get out a jug and fill it with cool water.
What's the latest from that Libya nor wherever?
Are we still engaged in all that desert fighting?
--------------------
Friend, do you remember our Proconsul's sister --
rather skinny, though her calves were heavy?
You had slept with her...Well, she became a priestess--
priestess, Postumus, with gods for her companions.
Come and visit me, and we'll drink wine together.
Plums are ripe and bread is good. You'll bring the gossip.
I shall make your couch up in the star-swept garden
and teach you to name our local constellations.
-------------------
Soon, dear Postumus, your friend who loves addition
will pay his debt, his old debt, to subtraction.
Take my savings, then, from underneath my pillow --
though not much, they'll pay the cost of my interment.
Post on your black mare to the House of Hetaeras
hard against the wall of our provincial city.
Give each girl the sum for which she once embraced me:
let them mourn me for the same amount of money.
-------------------
Dark green laurels on the verge of trembling.
Doors ajar. The windowpane is dusty.
Idle chairs and the abandoned sofa.
Linen blinded by the sun of noonday.
Pontus drones past a black fence of pine trees.
Someone's boat braves gusts out by the promontory.
On the garden bench a book of Pliny rustles.
Thrushes chirp within the hairdo of the cypress.
(Translated by George L. Kline, from A Part of Speech)
It must be the amazingly tasty and rich food, the good wine, the ubiquitous Roman ruins, the warm and incredibly blue Mediterranean sea, the cypresses, olive and fig trees, and especially the chirping birds and buzzing insects that make me think of this poem.
Here is CAG cheering imaginary -- and apparently flying -- chariots at the Roman Hippodrome in Qesarya:
Remains of Roman thermal baths in Khamat Gader, where Roman legionaries soothed their battle wounds:
Sunsets into the sea (you can never have too many of those -- simply breathtaking):
The source of our sustenance, olives and grapes:
A perfect final resting place -- a cemetery on the shore of Lake Kinneret:
If you don't read the news and just take in the magnificent views of the yellow hills, blue waters, green orchards, and orange sunsets you would think this is indeed the place of internal serenity. Or would you?
The border fence separating Israel and Jordan and the adjacent Golan Heights bear frequent signs warning of land mines, which remind of many military battles fought here over the past 60 years and of the disputed status of the Golans (captured by Israel from Syria in 1967 and now a subject of peace negotiations between the two countries -- yes, Syria and Israel are still officially at war, the border between them is called a disengagement line, and many roads along it on the Israeli side are marked on our road map as for "military use only").
The Jordanian border fence:
A little sign on the left says "Danger: Mines" (we didn't dare to leave the car):
One of the area kibbutzim -- a purely agricultural, albeit collective enterprise -- sports a Syrian tank at the entrance as a reminder of a massive attack by the Syrian army it endured and repulsed during the 1948 War of Independence:
So even if you aren't up to speed on current events, you still get the sense that this land is less than tranquil, as it maybe used to be two thousand years ago as imagined by a Jewish poet in the Soviet Union. For better or worse, the periphery of an empire has become the center of the world attention.
On a lighter note: While we were visiting the thermal baths (close to Jordan but still on the Israeli side), CAG received a text message on his cell phone welcoming him to a Jordanian mobile network and wishing us pleasant stay in the country. There might be a fence, and perhaps even a mine field, between the two countries, but modern technology is truly beyond borders. Maybe there still is hope?
Monday, June 30, 2008
In Rome do Like Romans? Not When It Comes to Coffee!
One of the most vivid memories of my very first visit to the US is a hot August morning almost twelve years ago when my dear friend AD took me to "Tom's Restaurant" in New York and introduced me to a wondrous drink called iced coffee. With lots of ice and just a tad of milk, it was amazingly refreshing and energizing. "What a great country!" I thought and immediately wanted to move there. This is my American dream: a large cup of coffee with slowly melting and slightly crackling ice on a hot summer day.
The dream was shattered somewhat a few years later when I discovered on my trip to the American South that a considerable segment of American population were deprived of this liquid wonder: they had iced tea but no iced coffee, although they had heard about it from a French woman who had passed by several years prior. And how dismayed was I when at one restaurant they offered to pour hot coffee over ice cubes for me! Not willing to engage in such sacrilege, I respectfully declined and had my coffee hot. But ever since then I associate iced coffee with urbanity, cosmopolitanism, and -- yes, I admit -- civilization.
When I first arrived in Tel Aviv, I was very happy to discover that it's a city with thousands of cafes always packed with people and many open late into the night if not round the clock. Our guidebook says that Tel Aviv today is "nothing short of a coffee empire." Ten years ago all you could get here was "nescafe" -- instant coffee -- and Turkish coffee, locally known as bolz (literally meaning "mud"), but since the late 1990s they "ceded their place to the more sophisticated espresso, latte, macchiato and cappuccino." Sounds good, yes? No! Because if you like your coffee black, or with milk but on a darker side, you have to be persistent. The local favorite is, hands down, "cafe hafouk" -- a very milky cappuccino. Espresso and Turkish coffee, of course, come black, but although tasty they are usually too little for me. Hardly any place makes a regular cup of java, even the local chain -- and our neighborhood coffee shop -- "Cup 'o Joe." So, I've settled for cafe Americano; but even then I am usually offered milk and get surprised looks when I turn it down, and I've seen a few baristas who did not know how to make it (a shot of espresso and some hot water, but not too much).
And sadly, they haven't heard about the iced coffee here. Or about the real iced coffee to be precise, because what they call iced coffee in this country is not iced coffee but a very sweet mixture of shaved ice, little coffee, and tons of milk -- what in America we would call a Frappuccino. It's good, quite addictive, but even then you can't have several of those a day. There is also cafe kar (cold coffee) -- one part espresso, five or so parts milk, and some ice cubes. Is no one lactose intolerant in this country?! I also started to doubt whether Tel Aviv was a civilized place.
I pretty much gave up on having normal iced coffee until my return to the US (which is approaching way too fast). That is until CAG and I hosted our friend and rabbi M from New York. He was kvetching about local coffee habits just as much I had, but he was brave enough to ask for what he wanted -- and hopefully start another coffee revolution around here. In couple of coffee shops here in Tel Aviv he asked for the cold coffee with cold water instead of milk. Baristas were skeptical and somewhat uncertain about his order (partly because of his broken Hebrew) but adventurous enough to entertain his unusual requests. Even though M assured me that the concoction was pretty close to the gold standard of iced coffee back home, I too was skeptical at first: hot espresso over ice did not sound quite right to me.
But then the three of us took a road trip up North, hoping for some relief from the almost unbearably hot and humid weather, only to end up in a 105 degree heat on the shores of the Kinneret (this is how the Sea of Galilee is known locally). After the morning of hot (!) thermal springs on the border with Jordan, walking around Kibbutz Dganya (the first collective farm in Palestine, established in 1909), and looking at the graves of prominent 19th-century Zionists like Moses Hess, Nakhman Syrkin, and Ber Borokhov at the Kinneret Cemetery, we all were desperate for a cold caffeinated beverage. But even the local version of iced coffee was hard to come by in this part of the country.
We finally found a gas station with an espresso machine -- somewhere on the road to En Dor and Kfar Kish (The Village of Quiche, I gather). We rushed to the counter and in a bizarre mixture of languages demanded three espressos with cold water over ton of ice cubes. The men working there had never heard of such a strange brew. At first, they thought we wanted a bag of ice, a bottle of water, and three espressos. Then even the most stubborn of us stopped insisting on trying to express themselves in their rudimentary Hebrew that clearly was not adequate for such a complicated drink order, and we explained ourselves in English, which was only moderately better as a result of prolonged exposure to near-tropical heat and hours of caffeine deprivation. The younger man spoke very decent English; he followed our instructions meticulously, but through the entire process he looked bemused: he had no idea what he was making. “Americanim meshugeim!” he must have thought. “These crazy Americans and their weird ways!”
When the drinks were ready, we snatched them hurriedly from the counter, had a few sips, and reassured the man -- still unsure of what he had made -- that he makes a mean iced coffee almost the way they make it back home. And then we were off to take a peek at the supposed site of the future Armageddon. As long as Israelis learn to make coffee with a little less milk, I don't think we need to worry about the end of the world quite yet.
The dream was shattered somewhat a few years later when I discovered on my trip to the American South that a considerable segment of American population were deprived of this liquid wonder: they had iced tea but no iced coffee, although they had heard about it from a French woman who had passed by several years prior. And how dismayed was I when at one restaurant they offered to pour hot coffee over ice cubes for me! Not willing to engage in such sacrilege, I respectfully declined and had my coffee hot. But ever since then I associate iced coffee with urbanity, cosmopolitanism, and -- yes, I admit -- civilization.
When I first arrived in Tel Aviv, I was very happy to discover that it's a city with thousands of cafes always packed with people and many open late into the night if not round the clock. Our guidebook says that Tel Aviv today is "nothing short of a coffee empire." Ten years ago all you could get here was "nescafe" -- instant coffee -- and Turkish coffee, locally known as bolz (literally meaning "mud"), but since the late 1990s they "ceded their place to the more sophisticated espresso, latte, macchiato and cappuccino." Sounds good, yes? No! Because if you like your coffee black, or with milk but on a darker side, you have to be persistent. The local favorite is, hands down, "cafe hafouk" -- a very milky cappuccino. Espresso and Turkish coffee, of course, come black, but although tasty they are usually too little for me. Hardly any place makes a regular cup of java, even the local chain -- and our neighborhood coffee shop -- "Cup 'o Joe." So, I've settled for cafe Americano; but even then I am usually offered milk and get surprised looks when I turn it down, and I've seen a few baristas who did not know how to make it (a shot of espresso and some hot water, but not too much).
And sadly, they haven't heard about the iced coffee here. Or about the real iced coffee to be precise, because what they call iced coffee in this country is not iced coffee but a very sweet mixture of shaved ice, little coffee, and tons of milk -- what in America we would call a Frappuccino. It's good, quite addictive, but even then you can't have several of those a day. There is also cafe kar (cold coffee) -- one part espresso, five or so parts milk, and some ice cubes. Is no one lactose intolerant in this country?! I also started to doubt whether Tel Aviv was a civilized place.
I pretty much gave up on having normal iced coffee until my return to the US (which is approaching way too fast). That is until CAG and I hosted our friend and rabbi M from New York. He was kvetching about local coffee habits just as much I had, but he was brave enough to ask for what he wanted -- and hopefully start another coffee revolution around here. In couple of coffee shops here in Tel Aviv he asked for the cold coffee with cold water instead of milk. Baristas were skeptical and somewhat uncertain about his order (partly because of his broken Hebrew) but adventurous enough to entertain his unusual requests. Even though M assured me that the concoction was pretty close to the gold standard of iced coffee back home, I too was skeptical at first: hot espresso over ice did not sound quite right to me.
But then the three of us took a road trip up North, hoping for some relief from the almost unbearably hot and humid weather, only to end up in a 105 degree heat on the shores of the Kinneret (this is how the Sea of Galilee is known locally). After the morning of hot (!) thermal springs on the border with Jordan, walking around Kibbutz Dganya (the first collective farm in Palestine, established in 1909), and looking at the graves of prominent 19th-century Zionists like Moses Hess, Nakhman Syrkin, and Ber Borokhov at the Kinneret Cemetery, we all were desperate for a cold caffeinated beverage. But even the local version of iced coffee was hard to come by in this part of the country.
We finally found a gas station with an espresso machine -- somewhere on the road to En Dor and Kfar Kish (The Village of Quiche, I gather). We rushed to the counter and in a bizarre mixture of languages demanded three espressos with cold water over ton of ice cubes. The men working there had never heard of such a strange brew. At first, they thought we wanted a bag of ice, a bottle of water, and three espressos. Then even the most stubborn of us stopped insisting on trying to express themselves in their rudimentary Hebrew that clearly was not adequate for such a complicated drink order, and we explained ourselves in English, which was only moderately better as a result of prolonged exposure to near-tropical heat and hours of caffeine deprivation. The younger man spoke very decent English; he followed our instructions meticulously, but through the entire process he looked bemused: he had no idea what he was making. “Americanim meshugeim!” he must have thought. “These crazy Americans and their weird ways!”
When the drinks were ready, we snatched them hurriedly from the counter, had a few sips, and reassured the man -- still unsure of what he had made -- that he makes a mean iced coffee almost the way they make it back home. And then we were off to take a peek at the supposed site of the future Armageddon. As long as Israelis learn to make coffee with a little less milk, I don't think we need to worry about the end of the world quite yet.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Tel Aviv the White City
As I've mentioned before, Tel Aviv is a young city in this ancient land; it will celebrate its centennial next year. Hence, the city's architecture is mostly modern and often Modernist. The City Center, where we are staying, was built mostly in the 1930s and 1940s and is peppered with what they call here The International Style buildings, or Bauhaus. Many Bauhaus architects left Germany in the 1930s fleeing anti-Semitism and ended up in Tel Aviv and elsewhere in Palestine, where they resumed their work and built what has become the heart of Tel Aviv -- the White City, declared by UNESCO a World Cultural Heritage site. These buildings -- most of them are still residential -- are functional, simple, and industrial-looking. Some look like ships:
Their windows are usually narrow to protect apartments from sunlight and heat. This building is called "The Thermometer" because of its staircase window:
Many buildings sport balconies and are surrounded by gardens; both are not only necessary in the subtropical climate (although it now feels like tropical!), but were also designed to promote sociability among residents:
Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to rent an apartment in one of these gorgeous buildings. Ours is what is often called the Tel Aviv's own "box" style (our apartment is on the second floor with the balcony with the awning and a small Israeli flag):
Next week were are planning to go to an exhibit about Bauhaus in Birobidzhan, which marks 80 years of Jewish settlement in the Soviet Far East. Since I've never been east of Moscow, I had no idea there was a Tel Aviv on the Pacific!
Their windows are usually narrow to protect apartments from sunlight and heat. This building is called "The Thermometer" because of its staircase window:
Many buildings sport balconies and are surrounded by gardens; both are not only necessary in the subtropical climate (although it now feels like tropical!), but were also designed to promote sociability among residents:
Unfortunately, we were not lucky enough to rent an apartment in one of these gorgeous buildings. Ours is what is often called the Tel Aviv's own "box" style (our apartment is on the second floor with the balcony with the awning and a small Israeli flag):
Next week were are planning to go to an exhibit about Bauhaus in Birobidzhan, which marks 80 years of Jewish settlement in the Soviet Far East. Since I've never been east of Moscow, I had no idea there was a Tel Aviv on the Pacific!
Friday, June 6, 2008
Jerusalem: The Caves, the Ruins, the Narrow Streets
One of the most amazing things about Jerusalem's Old City is that you can walk truly ancient streets and touch the structures that are thousands years old.
Here is the Cardo, a shopping street (then and now) that was built by the Romans nearly two millennia ago:
The Cardo is by far the widest street in the Old City; others are a lot narrower -- some are only eight steps wide:
This is in the Christian Quarter, one of the quietest if you get away from the Way of the Cross and the Golgotha. Armenians, by the way, although also Christians have a Quarter of their own. They were among the first ones to adopt Christianity en masse and acquire real estate in the Old City. The Jewish Quarter, while the oldest in the Old City (it was part of King David's Jerusalem as far back as 1,000 BCE) has the newest buildings and the widest streets as most of it had been destroyed on many occasions and was finally rebuilt after reunification of Jerusalem in 1967. But even its relatively wide streets are pretty narrow:
Just outside of the Old City, you can rest by burial tombs that are between 2,100 and 3,000 years old:
And here is where residents of ancient Jerusalem got their water and building stone from:
The way to the 2,700-year-old water tunnel (above) and King Solomon's Quarry, the source of building stone for the First Temple from around 950 BCE (below).
But all of it just a few steps away from the pleasures and comforts of modern life, like a drink and a -- rare! -- cigarette at the legendary and luxurious King David Hotel:
And of course, there was plenty of coffee consumed to keep us going on this adventure:
Beverages make us happy!
Here is the Cardo, a shopping street (then and now) that was built by the Romans nearly two millennia ago:
The Cardo is by far the widest street in the Old City; others are a lot narrower -- some are only eight steps wide:
This is in the Christian Quarter, one of the quietest if you get away from the Way of the Cross and the Golgotha. Armenians, by the way, although also Christians have a Quarter of their own. They were among the first ones to adopt Christianity en masse and acquire real estate in the Old City. The Jewish Quarter, while the oldest in the Old City (it was part of King David's Jerusalem as far back as 1,000 BCE) has the newest buildings and the widest streets as most of it had been destroyed on many occasions and was finally rebuilt after reunification of Jerusalem in 1967. But even its relatively wide streets are pretty narrow:
Just outside of the Old City, you can rest by burial tombs that are between 2,100 and 3,000 years old:
And here is where residents of ancient Jerusalem got their water and building stone from:
The way to the 2,700-year-old water tunnel (above) and King Solomon's Quarry, the source of building stone for the First Temple from around 950 BCE (below).
But all of it just a few steps away from the pleasures and comforts of modern life, like a drink and a -- rare! -- cigarette at the legendary and luxurious King David Hotel:
And of course, there was plenty of coffee consumed to keep us going on this adventure:
Beverages make us happy!
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