On being a tour guide

This week I was touring around Jerusalem with friends who were on their first trip to Israel.

Some of things we did were repeats for me, others were new.  I've been wanting to see the Chagall Murals at Ein Karem Hadassah (specifically, at the hospital synagogue). Chagall made 12 murals -- each of which represents a tribe of Israel (a son of Jacob). But, it's only open during the weekdays so you have to make a real effort to get out there. So we did. And it was worth it.

From the hospital we walked to Ein Karem -- a walk I've done before -- but it felt new owing to the changed plant life (drying out with the summer heat). Plus, you cannot beat the smell of pine woodlands on a warm day. 

The view on the walk to Ein Karem

We also visited the Temple Mount early on Tuesday morning. We beat the crowds and were treated to a really peaceful visit. We wandered from the door of Al Aqsa

The door of Al Aqsa

Al Aqsa

... to the Dome of the Rock.

View from East side (little dome in front)

Trivia: When the Crusaders held Jerusalem they converted Al Aqsa into a royal palace, including stables for their horses. The Dome of the Rock was used as a church. Later when the Muslims took back Jerusalem they converted these two buildings back to their holy sites and lifted treasures from the Holy Sepulchre to "readorn" their buildings. In the result the Old City of Jerusalem is a study in borrowing, repurposing, and rededicating...and enduring sanctity. 

And, of course, we stopped in at the market - always an adventure. Since you've seen pix of Mahane Yehuda, here's a sound bite.

Sounds of Shabbat

Last night the shabbat horn went at about 7pm.  The horn blows for about 3 minutes and signals that it is time to light the candles -- shabbos has begun. The Haaretz newspaper website has an interactive page where you can hover over your city in Israel, or other cities worldwide to find out when shabbat comes in and goes out.  It goes out tonight in Jerusalem at 820pm (after 3 stars have been seen, usually about an hour after sunset). The buses and stores will open up about an hour later.

I'm housesitting my friends' apartment in a neighbourhood up the hill from where I used to live. You can really hear the horn up here. Here's a little segment:

Signs of Strudel?

Many of you may be familiar with Hebrew's resurrection story.  Around the time that Jesus showed up, Hebrew was used by some for daily communication, but folks were more likely to speak Aramaic (Jesus included).  After the Second Temple Period and the Roman quashing of the Jewish Revolt (around about 66 CE), the Jews were dispersed (again). Hebrew pretty quickly fell out of use as the diaspora adopted the languages of their new locations and created hybrids -- Yiddish being the most familiar one on account of the large percentage of Ashkenaz in Jewish North American populations.  So, for most of the last two millenia, Hebrew has been chiefly a liturgical language (you prayed in it).

Enter Herzl and the Zionist vision. You have a political vision to create a state for a people that haven't lived together for nigh on 2000 years; the cultural and religious practices are still shared, but they don't share a language anymore. What to do? Enter Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (yes, there is a street named after him in Jerusalem, and you can visit the house he lived in, which is not on Ben Yehuda, but on Ethiopia St) who thought revival of Hebrew would unite Jews worldwide.  Of course, Ben Yehuda's project wasn't without controversy -- the ultra-Orthodox objected to the use of the religious language for everyday use (it seems they are over it now).  Driven by his vision, he raised his son (in the 1880s-1890s) as the first native Hebrew speaker and the rest is ... well, history ... or maybe more appropriately, alive. Hebrew is the lingua franca of Jewish Israelis and there is a serious industry in teaching it through ulpan (language courses) to anyone interested (mostly Jews who made or plan to make aliyah). 

Resurrecting a biblical language for everyday use poses some obvious problems: daily life changes considerably in 2000 years. If you cannot find the word in the Bible you need to invent it or borrow it from some other language. In some cases Hebrew has adopted words from other languages like French: soap is sabon (the "v" is often/somewhat interchangeable with "b"); mushrooms are champignons. For a really modern example -- this is my favourite that I know about -- how do you call the @ ? In English this usually goes by the ever-so-boring "at sign". But, in Hebrew it is a "strudel". So, if you were ask me my email address, I'd say: "username, strudel, gmail, dot, com".

why is "@" called strudel? Obviously, because it looks like the pastry!

Canadian Foreign Policy in the Middle East

About a week ago I was at the opening session of the 14th Jerusalem Conference in Canadian Studies. One of the keynote speakers was Irwin Cotler (Liberal MP, Mount Royal) -- he was AG under Paul Martin from 2003-2006. He is an expert on human rights and international law having spent the bulk of his career at McGill; he was first elected to Parliament in 1999. Cotler was speaking on Canadian Foreign Policy in the Middle East, a potentially slightly tricky task if you are generally in favour of Canada's position and a member of the opposition (little "o" since the Libs are not Her Majesty's official opp) and you are a Jew in a Jewish crowd.

 He opened by querying why there is a perception in Canada and Israel that the Harper Government is the best friend Israel has ever had. He asked why this is the case when successive Canadian governments have maintained the same principles -- why  is Harper Israel's best friend? Like any good lawyer in a tricky spot, Cotler focused on the fine distinctions between the traditional Canadian position (obviously espoused by the Liberals!) and Steven Harper's position. First, he suggested there are 10 key principles to Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East. Perhaps curiously, he peppered his discussion of the principles with quotes from Dion and Martin, nothing from Trudeau the elder or the younger. According to Cotler, these are the principles in a nutshell, should you be keen:

1. A cornerstone of the policy is support for Israel and its legitimacy
2. Palestinians are people with a right to a state - support of the 2 state solution
3. support of UNSC Res 242 & 338, which set out the basic framework for conflict resolution
4. Terrorism is unacceptable
5. Genocide is unacceptable
6. support of democracy for good governance
7. demands integrity of international institutions
8. Iran may pose a threat to regional stability
9. support for bilateralism
10. support for UNSC 242 -- there are Jewish and Arab refugees

Then Cotler made 6 distinctions between previous Canadian government policy and Harper policy.

1. Harper has made support for Israel = Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East
2. Conservatives have been especially demonstrative of their support in international forums e.g. Baird's speech at the UN in Nov 2012 to oppose the granting of Palestinian observer state status.
3. Conservatives have been especially demonstrative of their support on the ground, e.g. it was front page news that Baird visited Tzipi Livni at the Justice Ministry in East Jerusalem.  Cotler said he did this too as a representative of the Canadian government. (Small aside -- many governments don't do this as it imparts legitimacy to Israel's annexation of the East.)
4. Canada's closing of its embassy in Iran and the Iranian embassy in Canada was framed as support for Israel
5. Harper suggests that Canada didn't get a seat at the UNSC because of its Middle East policy (support for Israel). Cotler (and others) suggest the problem is Canadian foreign policy in Africa
6. At least eight ministers of Harper's government have visited Israel in the last few years.

Upshot: It's all Israel, all the time from the Harper Conservatives. 


Before the keynote speeches I had an interesting conversation with a Canadian-Israeli lawyer who studied at UBC in the late 60s. He's retired now, but told me he's spent nearly the last 40 years in Israel doing law reform that has used Canadian legislation as a model. One example he gave was the PPSA -- the personal property security act! This is the provincial law that you use to register a security interest against property that isn't real property. Like, when the bank gives you a loan to buy a car and they take a security interest in the car so that if you don't pay your loan, they get the car and can recover. (When I was at law school the PPSA's creation was attributed to Prof Cumming at UofS, although I see that Wikipedia says it was first implemented in Ontario. I think Wikipedia is wrong in this case, Cumming was legendary, but I'm not inclined to do further research on this point!) For my fellow lawyerly types -- this brought up fond memories of reviewing PPSA searches after dinner in my office in Calgary for aircraft financing deals. Shudder! Surely there is a more automated system these days?
 

A Friday morning in Talbiya

This is how it looked before 6am in my neighbourhood today.

Talbiya - looking southeast

Talbiya - east to Jordan

And [new to this blog -- audio] here's how it sounded: 

Hot in the City

It's truly summer and hot. Not that hot (not hot like Gulf humidity and heat) in that there is a light breeze and the humidity is low.  But it is the hottest it's been this summer. The forecast this weekend is for hair dryer heat -- you know, when even if a little wind blows it just makes you feel hotter.  Here's a screen shot of my favourite weather forecast website for Jerusalem -- 02 Weather Station (02 is the Jerusalem land line area code):

Weather forecast  http://www.02ws.co.il/station.php?&lang=0

Eight months later and I'm still enamoured with the little icons (pictograms) -- this weekend features shorts and t-shirts. If you hover your cursor over the icon it tells you what to wear. The shorts icon says "short pants and t-shirt".  The long sleeve shirt icon says "long sleeves, it is recommended to also take t-shirt and add or remove layer when necessary". Okay, so the syntax is a little off, but you get the point. The winter icons include a raincoat, a jacket, and a coat.

The bus ride home today was slow and hot. The AC was on, but a bit weak so the windows were wide open...energy efficiency is not the priority, that would be not melting!

Open windows & AC

Jerusalem buses do have a great feature that is somewhat energy efficient and most definitely life saving -- blackout blinds. Pulling them down is the only way to survive if you happen to have a seat on the sunny side of the bus. Fortunately, it usually doesn't take much negotiation to get the person ahead or behind you to agree to blocking their view for the sake of cooling off a couple of degrees. Still, I made an effort to remember the better side of the bus to sit on for my usual route to and from the uni. The commute usually takes about 25 minutes, but in slow traffic it can be closer to 50 minutes, so it is worth memorizing where you want to sit!

A blackout blind on the bus

A hot weekend in Jerusalem is when the evenings stay hot. Normally, you can expect to need long sleeves for your walk home from dinner or the pub. In a heat wave, it's not necessary to carry an extra layer unless you are going to the movies where the AC is usually set at about 17C (I think that's the lowest you can set AC). Early this week I went to see Hannah Arendt (no, she's deceased, but there's a new movie about her) at the Cinematheque. I took an extra layer, but I could have used a second or thicker first layer. It was amusing watching all the women (and older men) enter the theatre with sweaters in hand.

Anyway, because it normally cools down in Jerusalem at night air conditioning is not really a necessity in many homes. Granted, during the day it can be sticky, but at night, up here in the hills, you can usually count on a breeze and a temperature in the low twenties. So, in fact, lots of folks don't have AC. And certainly, anyone who lives in an old place that hasn't been renovated doesn't have the built in wall units. Instead they have fans; you switch out your winter space heater for a fan. And, you hope you work in a building with AC and get to the museums or movies once in a while.

The truly adaptive folks can spend the really hot nights sleeping on the flat roof of their Arab-style house or building...like this one.

Talbiya rooftop

One day: two commemorations, two people

On the west side of town, today is Shavuot (it started last night at sundown): the end of the counting of the Omer. The 7 weeks' count starts on the second day of Pesach. Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah and when the Jewish people became devoted to serving God. It is the third pilgrimage holiday festival (Passover and Sukkot being the two others) when Jews are meant to travel to Jerusalem.  Since it's a full holiday, it's Shabbat styles out there: uni is closed for 2 days, restaurants and shops closed yesterday afternoon, and there are no buses. Shavuot is marked according to the Jewish lunisolar calendar.

On the east side of town, today is Nakba. The Nakba is marked according to the Gregorian calendar -- it is always 15 May, the day after the Gregorian date of the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel (14 May 1948, but is commemorated always on the 5th day of the Jewish month of Iyar - 16 April this year - as Yom Ha'atzmaut). Nakba is Arabic for catastrophe. Yup, the Jewish people won their state, and some number of Palestinians were displaced, dispossessed and dispersed.  Apparently, the commemoration of the Nakba only really got going in the 1980s. It was promoted by the PLO and various others as a means of keeping the Palestinian issue on the Israeli agenda as both Israeli-Arabs and Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza were encouraged to participate in public rallies.

In search of hummus, tahini, and pita, with a friend, I was in the Old City and on the east side at Damascus gate today. The Old City looks pretty much itself on any touristic day -- packed with folks wandering around exploring the city with 4 of their 5 senses -- sight, sound, smell, taste. But, things outside of Damascus Gate (the main Arab entrance to the Old City) were different. First, it's just more active because it isn't a religious holiday on the east side. Second, there were groups of police on horses and other groups of police that looked ready for any potential neighbourhood riot. While we were there in the early afternoon, things were pretty quiet. Hopefully, it'll all be peaceful.