2 More Films from the JFF

I went to see Hunger with Hanna and her friend Eran, and I had no idea what I was getting into. Hanna had told me something about it, that it was about Ireland and the conflict there, but I hadn't paid attention and I entered the theater with only the name to guide me.

There is almost no speaking in the film, and it seemed that the first words weren't spoken until halfway through. The one real dialogue felt massive, huge not only in its content but in the silence that surrounds it. Gigantic in it's arguments and explanations of the violence and obscenity of the rest of the film. It was the most graphic film I have ever seen. Recounting the Troubles, it showed the Blanket and Dirty protests of the Maze prison. Coming in with only the most naive knowledge of the Troubles, every image and scene were shocking. Refusing to wear the unifroms of soldiers, IRA inmates of the prison chose to only wear their blankets. I learned from brief research later that this choise was not only uncomfortable, but denied the prisoners the ability to see visitors or leave their cells at anytime, as one could only do so in uniform. I also learned that the Dirty protests began in response to inmates being attacked by guards in the washrooms and when emptying their lavatory pots. Not only did the inmates refuse to bathe, but they covered their cell walls in their own feces and spoiled food. As the film showed, the violence shown towards the prisoners was not only the Unionist guards' anger at the larger political situation and the fact that they were guarding IRA terrorists who actively killed people, but also in response to their own fear for their lives. The IRA had an active campaign to kill the prison guards, and this anger and fear and dehumanization was felt in the many scenes of brutality against the naked inmates. Though the film does not clearly follow any one person, the last third of the film solely depicts Bobby Sand's hunger strike, with the actual actor wasting away and covered in terrible bed sores.

My surroundings dictated a great deal of how I reacted to this film. I was formost horrified by the conditions of the prison, and somehow felt a bit betrayed by all things I consider "British." I had forgotten the days of Longshanks, and I had thought somehow the Colonial periods of British history had largely been characterized by a sort of Orientalization of "the natives." I hadn't realized how brutal and hate filled the Troubles had been. My next thought was how in the world have they, both sides, been able to get beyond this and to a relative peace? How does it happen and how can it happen here in Israel? Then I thought about the special role that prisons and the treatment of prisoners play in wartime and conflict; about the impact of the photographs of Abu Ghraib on the situation in Iraq and America's loss of its moral superiority, the Israeli prisoner exchange that has just occured and Gilad Shalit's which is being discussed, about the prisons of South Africa which have been turned into museums with tours led by former inmates.

The last film I saw of the JFF was Be Like Others. The documentarian, Tanaz Eshaghian was apparantly able to make this film without censorship from the Iranian government, and in it she meets with young Iranian men who have either gone through or are considering sex change operations. In Iran homosexuality is considered a sin, the punishment death, however the Islamic government has sanctioned sex-change operations for transsexuals, not homosexuals. And so many men, who have been attacked on the streets by thugs and the police, who are denied jobs, and who are fearful of brining shame upon their families opt for the surgery. One woman in the film who had undergone the surgery and acted as a guide to those who were considering it, counceled parents of the surgical candidates saying in essence that if the government of Iran will allow it, certainly there should be nothing shameful about it. While some of the families embrace their new daughters, most disown their children, and without family support many transsexuals end up as prostitutes or drug addicts, with many suicidal. It was an incredibly sad film, showing people desperate to fit into a society with no place for them. I thought about the Gay Parade I attended at the beginning of the month, and how even though homosexuality is contested issue in Jerusalem there is still the right to be yourself in your own body here. And in NY, a mecca for many people who grow up queer in more conservative parts of the country.

Jerusalem is the new... Brooklyn?

WORK

Ah, it has been a bit. The "work" aspect of this trip finally did catch up with me and I have had a number of meetings over this past week. All of them have gone really well, though I have to say I really dislike Hebrew University's campus. To me it is confusing and ugly and somewhat impractical; the Forum (central area) is located far from the entrance and buildings dot the campus seemingly without rhyme or reason. In all my hours there I have yet to find a classroom. By far the most impressive and interesting meeting was with D.I. at the Israel Museum, who is the head of their educational programming. We share the same philosophy, and we had a really nice, long conversation before he gave me a tour of the expansive programming at the Museum. If I ever get my Hebrew together I would love to do a project with them. (Pictured: work by one of the students at the Museum)

YELLOW SUBMARINE

Galit invited me to an art exhibition at the Yellow Submarine which would host some of her friends' work. This was a hot music venue when I was 16, but it looks as though it's changed around quite a bit. From the moment I walked in I felt vaguely as if I were in a Brooklyn hipster haven. Girls in tiny dresses were setting up racks filled with used clothing to sell, a guy was hawking CDs, a few were promoting parties or projects. In the back room was the art, a photography exhibition called Feels Like Home. I really liked most of the collections, and it was nice to be introduced by Galit to many of the artists. Then Ari, another guy from WUJS, showed up and we bumped into each other. Ari is very into exploiting the fun to be had in Jerusalem during the summer, and I told him I was up for whatever he found, which as ended up being quite a bit... but back to the Submarine. Over the course of the day people began lounging on the floor, and the bar area had a mist which they would turn on and off to fight the heat. Galit and I began to run for it whenever it was on.

TEL AVIV: Ahat La Ahat Festival

I had heard about the Ahat La Ahat Festival, a women's business festival put on by The Center for Jewish-Arab Economic Development. The advertisement used phrases like "crafts" and "easily accesible" which drew me in, but proved to be falsehoods. It was Shabbat (no buses running) so I spent quite a bit of money to get to Tel Aviv (taxi to Center City, sheirut to TA) but it was in TA that it became ridiculous. It turns out the exhibition grounds are as far North as the central bus station (where the sheirut stops in TA) is South. And since all the taxi drivers hand out together they jack up the prices to insanity. The guy asked me to pay 120 shekels! I was a bit proud of myself to get him down to 80, but pissed when I foudn out it should have cost 40. This might be prejudice, but I never liked TA and now I hate it even more. The actual festival was a large room filled with booths, but very few of them were impressive. Most were people selling crap jewelery, a few had bath products, and there were a handful of Arab women selling traditional crafts and olives cured in old soda bottles. There were a few inititatives that were interesting, but on the whole, I should have skipped it. (Pictured: belly dancer entertaining the kids. Really.)

JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL

Every summer the JFF hits town and the cinematheque is packed, and I love it. It is sponsored by Orange, a phone company, and so Jerusalem gets covered with that distinctive color, which I haven't seen since the Gaza Pullout (when the opposition tied orange ribbons on everything). A lot of the films look really interesting, and I plan on spending most of Shabbat in the sweet airconditioning of those dark rooms. Yesterday I saw Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger, an Australian film of a Jewish girl's coming of age. It was very sweet, kind of a mix of Freaks and Geeks and 13, with a good deal of humor but some sadly adult situation for such a young girl. An Orthodox mother with her two pre-teen daughters obviously didn't know what coming-of-age stories are made up of and she horribly embarassed her daughters by covering their eyes during makeout scenes and literally pushing them out of the theater when a reference to sex was made. Keisha Castle-Hughes plays Esther's best friend, and while I loved her in Whale Rider, her post Nativity pregnancy somehow stayed with me, and I had a hard time believing she was 13, especially compared to the tiny girl who played Esther.

Last night Ari invited me to a free screening at the JFF's Moonlight Cinema. These screenings take place at the Old Train Station, in an outdoor theater that can seat 2,000. Things did not start on time (oh Israel) but we got excellent seats and enjoyed the band. Well, we did for a bit, but then the film was an hour late and we were a bit sick of the band. We did find the Jerusalemite teens who pushed toward the stage and danced wildly (and very whitely) to the music. The kids began doing all sorts of different waves and congo lines, oblivious to the pop and rock music.

The film, Jellyfish, was written by Etgar Keret and created by himself and his wife. I really enjoy his sotries, which are always a cynical look at Israeli life and which sometimes include elements of magic of whimsy. I really loved the film. It follows mainly three characters in Tel Aviv; a young woman who is herself very lost and who finds a young girl in the sea, a Phillipino woman working in Jerusalem for rude people in order to make money for her family at home, and a bride who broke her leg at her wedding and has to skip her Carribean honeymoon to stay in a dingy TA hotel. I thought the film was cleverly done, the storylines interwove beautifully, and the acting was heartbreaking. I cried. A lot.

WINE TASTING

Ari also invited me to the Israeli Wine Festival hosted by the Israel Museum. It was absolutely incredible. For 55 shekels, you recieve a glass to use at over 40 booths of Israeli wineries. And the tasting portions are generous. And there are no limits. I was familiar with many of the booths; Carmel, Galil, Binyamina. There were also the offshoot lines of the big labels, their trendy eco-friendly wines and summer labels. I'm a fan of white wines, especially reislings and pinot grigio's, but they were few ad far between so I mostly did roses. I honestly think I drank more that night than I did int he past year, but somehow I didn't feel drunk. It was a beautiful site for it, in the sculpture garden over looking all the lights of Jerusalem. It was perfect.

Tel Aviv

There are roughly two types of people in this world; those who love Jerusalem and those who love Tel Aviv, and never the twain shall meet. In fact, they despise each other. I am a Jerusalemite by proxy and dislike Tel Aviv. Where the homes of Jerusalem are made of stone, the apartment buildings of TA are crumbling stucco of the Bauhaus period. Vine covered terraces vs. palm lined boulevards. Old City vs. nightlife. I do like to visit Tel Aviv every now and again, mostly so I can say "I can't wait to get back to Jerusalem!" but also to enjoy those things which Jerusalem doesn't have and TA has in abundance.

I took a sheirut (group taxi) to TA yesterday in the late morning, and arrived an hour later at 12:30. I was really confused because the Tachanat Merkazit, the bus station, was not on my map. I scoured it all the way there but couldn't find it. I later learned that it is south of where my map ends, how does that happen? Anyway, several of my fellow passangers were kind enough to help me find the next intracity sheirut (the number 5) to take me to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. I was dropped off just next to the Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, a little branch of the larger museum.

The Rubinstein Pavilion hosts temporary exhibits, and several years ago I had seen a really fantastic show there of Masha Zosman's work as well as some other young Israeli artists dealing mostly with ecology. The current exhibit was not as exciting for me, Performalism: Form and Perdormance in Digital Architecture. All of the pieces were miniature structures or pictures of structures with their computer blueprints. There were aspects that were interesting; the spacing of the pieces was planned by using architectual computer programs, many of the pieces were astonishing either because of the materials used or their structure, and there were a few I liked that seemed to cleverly marry the buildings shape, materials, and purpose. But many of the buildings were either overly flashy for no reason, having nothing seemingly to do with the intent of space, or were too obvious, like pratt falls, such as the airport shaped like, you guessed it, an airplane. You see, I now consider myself an expert...

I finished a wonderful book by my favorite architect just the other day. My mom bought Breaking Ground by Daniel Libeskind for me while she and my father were in Denver last month, and on my recommendation visited the Denver Art Museum (who's expansion Studio Daniel Libeskind designed), which is really incredible. Not only is the museum architectually interesting, it has wide ranging collections with interactive exhibitions, and is famous for the educational programming. The book discusses architecture's purpose, interweaving stories of Libeskind's immigrant childhood and his recent achievements. In the book he discusses his intentions in building several of his projects, what inspired the designs and the materials and what he hoped to evoke. What was amazing to me is the way he describes all of these aspects of the expansion of the Jewish Museum Berlin, because what he describes is exactly how I felt when I was there. Whereas other Holocaust museums try to reach their audiences through documentation and artifacts, this one does it through spatial emotion. Before reading the book I was very cynical towards the buildings that are planned for the 9/11 Site in NY, but I am now a believer in his plan.

Back to TA... After finishing up at the Pavilion, I visited the main building which was a short but sweaty walk away. I had hoped to catch the exhibit Depletion, but I missed it by a day or two. I was dissapointed to find very little work by Israeli artists. Their permanent collections, primarily of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism was not what I was in the mood for. I did a quick walk through of the entire museum and plan to return at the end of July if I get a chance during the conference (doubtful) for their installment of a decade of Israeli art; The 1970s: My Own Body. Overall I was surprised by how unexciting the TA Museum is, especially compared to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. I was excited to then head to...

The Reuven Rubin Museum. First of all, that is one of my favorite names in the world, due to a very kind adopted grandfather I had growing up in Indiana, Mr. Rubin. Secondly, I was introduced to Reuven Rubin at the Jewish Museum in New York when I was in the museum education course and I did a bit of research on a painting of his that I love, Goldfish Vendor. It turns out the RR Museum is a decently far walk from the TA Museum, and I was seriously sweating by the time I got there and thankful for the airconditioning (on a side note, Israelis do not seem to sweat, and I really want to learn their trick). The RR Museum is small but impressive, and I learned a lot from the audioguide as well as the wall text. Because Rubin came to Israel during the beginning of the state, and his work follows his own experience in watching Tel Aviv grown from tents on a sand dune to a real city, there is a lot of idealism and Zionist spirit in his work. Still some of the pieces also reflected the distance between even united communities, and he often had European and Mizrahi communities balance each other but not interact in his work. I also found it interesting, as the audioguide told me, that because there had been little Jewish art history (thou shall not make a graven image, etc) that Rubin, as many other artists did and do, referenced Christian symbolism in his pieces.

I then looked towards more contemporary art at the Nahalat Biyamin Market of Tel Aviv, where artists come to sel their crafts. I arrived just before closing, so that I was able to wander the stalls before everyone packed up. Galit, a friend from WUJS, came to meet me and together we walked to a cute coffee shop filled with books for an iced tea and ice coffee. Megan (also from WUJS) joined us there after bringing a lost dog back to its owner ont he other side of town. It was so nice to hang out with them, to catch up on their lives since they've both made Aliyah (become Israeli citizens). I am especially impressed with their Hebrew. Megan took us to her favorite restaurant, King George, which is exactly the kind of place there aren't enough of in Jerusalem. From their we grabbed seats just off King George Street to joke around and hang out before I had to grab a sheirut home. (Pictured: Megan and Galit)

Because it was late when I finally got back to Jerusalem, most buses had stopped running and so I got on the 6, knowing it would be a bit of a walk to my apartment. I was dropped off at the far end of a long, dark road, one which I'm usually comfortable with but seemed especially dark that night. A young man also got off the bus and said something about being afraid, as a joke I'm sure but I'm so focused in Hebrew on understanding the words I often miss the sarcasm. So we walked together, speaking completely in Hebrew. It was a nice way to end the night.

Moving Along

Just after the pigua my family suffered a crisis, but things are all better now, or at least on their way.

Just when I was feeling the worst, I had a desire to go sit on the slide near my old apartment in this area. I used to go their, three years ago, just when I wanted some alone time, or a special treat with friends. It's a slide that could only be in Israel. The same way that this country makes tie-dyed IDF shirts, they can make a slide out of cement. Not only is it cement, but it has been painted so many bright playful colors that have chipped off to expose each other that it somehow still looks gray. I find its snail shape to be very comfortable, forcing someone sitting in just the right spot to curl up and be comforted. The thing was, is was so out of my mind that night I couldn't find it. I walked in straight lines all over that tiny little neighborhood and could not find this giant piece of concrete in a large square between the buildings. I walked back and forth for over half an hour. Finally I found a boy, and acted out for him what a slide is, and he took me to it, all of 20 feet away in plain sight.

So since then, I've been taking it a little easier. I spent Shabbat with Hanna's family again, and we went out Saturday night to an off-beat English film. I spent Sunday afternoon in Tmol Shilshom, a favorite cafe where one can seat and read for hours, which is what I did. Now I love Tmol, it is comfortable with great food, but this was not its finest day. No. The water glass was dirty, the service slower than usual (and I was in no hurry), but what really ruined it for me was finding two pieces of plastic in their bread. I brought it to the waiter's attention and after a quick talk in the kitchen he came back to apologize and tell me they were bristles from a brush used to brush the top of the bread. I did not press him further to explain how something that is supposed to be used after the bread is formed could get inside the not yet made dough. This is a country of miracles after all.

Sunday morning I went to the Museum of Italian Jewish Art. It's very small, but suprisingly interesting and beautiful. Inside the museum they have actually imported the Conegliano Synagogue, built originally in the 1700s. The other 4 rooms are filled with Judaica as well as Arks, Elijah's Chairs (for the bris, circumcision ceremony), and wall decorations from other Italian museums. I was first struck by memories of when I visited Italy, specifically the small synagogues of Venice built in the first ghetto which were similar in size and shape as the Coneglian one. When looking at the arks though I thought about the recent museum work I had done with Eastern European ark work. While both Italian and Galician arks have beaituful wood carvings, the Italian ones, as well as all decorations except for one Elijah's chair, were completely floral in motif and had no animals within the designs, whereas those from Galicia were chockfull of animals, real and imagined. (Pictured is the Conegliano Synagogue, a picture of a postcard, there was no photography allowed)

I spent Sunday night with Naomi, cooking dinner and watching a western I've been dying to see, 3:10 to Yuma. I grew up watching John Wayne movies with my Grandpa and Daddio, in fact every single one. When I was 10 I spent all my birthday money on a framed picture of John Wayne, which I never did hang up because I felt his eyes watching me too often (and who knows if he had an itchy trigger finger). But yes, I am well versed in the black hats, horse-riding tricks, and forlorn sweethearts of such films. Naomi found it crazy that I could call out what was going to happen in each scene. I love that it was packed with almost every type of western cliche and plot line there is, from Stagecoach to The Shootist.

Today I got up wanting to finally visit the Armenian Museum. I walked through the Old City and was having a little trouble locating it, and asked a nearby man to help me. He told me that the museum, as well as the neabry Armenian church, St James' Cathedral were closed for renovations. I have already been to the Cathedral, but I was dissapointed about the museum. I snuck in to take a few pictures of the outside of the church and talked for a bit with an Armenian priest there. He asked me where I was from, and I told him Chicago, and then he asked where I was from before that. I think he was trying to see if I was Armenian myself, and I told him I'm not, but I have Armenian friends, which sounded pretty silly even to me. But Sandy and Armen, I did try!

Instead I went to the The Tower of David. This citadel stands just inside Jaffa Gate and is a historical museum of the city of Jerusalem. There's a little introductory animated film which follows the many different cities that have been built, and destroyed, on the spot where we sat. It told about the vast armies, the many rebellions, and the holy sites that mark this place. After the film, I toured the citadel. The museum uses a mix of architecture, pointing out what aspects of the citadel were built at which time, as well as artifacts from the Jerusalem area. In an hour I was able to travel about 3,000 years in time. I enjoyed it, especially the air-conditioning, but I truly loved the Chihuly pieces. Chihuly did a show here for the millenium which I have a DVD of, and I absolutely find inspiring. I was so happy to see that they've kept two of his pieces. (Pictured: Yellow Tower and Glass Grass)

I then met up with Lutz and his girlfriend Lizzie for coffee in a cute cafe inside the Mahene Yehuda Shuk, it's called Emile. We sat for a long time, discussing non- and anti-Zionist Israelis as well as German influence, both literary and architectural, in Israel. I then joined Lutz on a walk to his Ulpan while Lizzie took their Shuk gorceries home. We stopped in a second-hand bookshop which is heaven for Lutz. I am amazed that last time we hung out he was in kitah bet (beginners Hebrew) and that now he is reading and speaking in Hebrew for his dissertation. I wish I had the talent of learning languages. (Lutz pictured browsing)

I grabbed an ice cream at the falafel place tonight, and a very cute two and a half year old Arab boy showed off to me the candy he was getting. I asked him what was tasty, and he very seriously walked to the ice cream case and pulled out a dulce de leche cone for me. This is a kid with extremely good taste.

Pigua

I woke up early yesterday to meet with an old friend, and former madricha, counselor from my Jewish camp, Keren. She is also involved in peace education here in Jerusalem and had worked with a number of incredible organizations, as well as done her own peace program freelancing. We sat at the nearby Aroma and talked about her work, and my work, and then she gave me a list of people to contact and fun things to do. This included the "Dialogue in the Dark" museum, which I hope to go to very soon.

From there I headed down to one of her other recommendations, the Begin Museum. While waiting at the bus stop up on Har Hasofim, I met a Japanese-American woman, Harumi, who was heading to the same area and needed help with the buses. I offered to ride together, and we had a really nice conversation about peace work (she had worked for the Rotary Foundation), the vast differences between Japan and Israel, and the fun of being a tourist. We got off at the Mashbir on King George and then I guided us over to Jaffo Street to change buses. I couldn't find the number we wanted, and so I asked a woman where the 18 was. She gave me a long answer, which I know imagine included "the roads are closed because there was a terrorist attack" but I honestly didn't understand her emphatic response and so I smiled and nodded and then said we should try up at the shuk. Then we realized the road was closed, that something was happening, and we began to hear the people around us talking about a pigua.

A pigua is a terrorist attack, and I have always associated the words with a car- or suicide-bombing in Israel. I began asking people what happened, had the been a pizuz, an explosion? No, there had been a man in a tractor running people over. My first instinct was to think "How do they know this is terrorism and not a crazy person?" my second is "How do you get a tractor onto Jaffo?" We found a little shop with a television that people were crowded around and joined them to learn what was happening. The scene was awful; flattened cars, broken glass, an overturned bus. Just up the street, but I was seeing it on tv. The reason the media was there so fast is that the attack actually occured just below a building which hopuses foreign and domestic media services. In the aticles I learned that a man working on a construction site in a bulldozer, drove the wrong way down on-way Jaffo, hitting as many vehicles as possible, and rammied and turned over a bus. Itw as thought that he was then going to turn onto Mahene Yehuda, the outdoor food market, and begin crashing through the crowded little streets. A policeman was able to climb onto the bulldozer and kill the man. On the news services that I saw in the evening, they were offering videos of the terrorist being killed. I find that a bit horrifying, I can't believe that is something you can watch on the news.

Harumi and I decided to continue with our plans, which would take us far from the area. We walked through the City Center and onto King David Street to head towards Mishkenot HaShananim. It is remarkable how normal Israel, and maybe Jerusalem can be even in the midst of an attack. I expected to see people gathered around televisions or radios, but life goes on and people were sitting at cafes or window shopping in the City Center. Later that day, in the afternoon, I went to Mahene Yehida to buy some salads, to feel like I was doing something to support the people who work there. I wasn't sure if it would be open, but every store was except for one. The only hint that something had happened were the cleaning crews scrubbing blood off the streets.

Old City, Old-New Friends

Today I woke up and wanted to go directly to the Old City. I remembered that the last time I lived in this area, we walked to the Old City often, or I thought so, and I remembered that it wasn't a bad walk. I forgot that I hadn't lived here in the height of summer though. As I began my walk it all seemed good enough, but as it continued and I still didn't see familiar signs that told me I was getting close to the Old City I realized it was a much longer trek than I had thought. Lots of people in Israel love hiking, and the country is actually know for its trails, but I am not a hiker and I think the most I'll ever care to do is the hike I did today.

Along my walk I did get to see that the construction that is going on all over Jerusalem has spread up here as well. I was walking along the No. 1 Highway, also known as the Bar-Lev street. The Bar-Lev line had been the demarcation between the area of the Sinai that Israel had captured from Egypt during the 1967 war. The street I was walking on had been the no man's land between Israel and Jordan from 1967 to 1973, with Jordan in control of East Jerusalem and Israel the West. Even today the East side of the street is Arab and the West is Jewish, clearly defined by the architecture and water towers.

One of my favorite places in the world stands on this street; The Museum on the Seam. This art museum gets its name from being on the seam line of the two communities. The art inside explores topics related to many issues of coexistence in Israel; obviously the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as well as social and economic issues, globalization, and many others. The last time I was here they had a wonderful exhibit on graffitti found in the neighborhoods around the museum, anti-Arab and anti-Semitic, and how certain words were crossed out or substituted to change the messages. You can see past exhibits here; DeadEnd, Equal and Less Equal, and Bare Life. I was first introduced to the Museum by chance, when I was 16 and living in Jerusalem during the Second Intifada. My group had been volunteering at home for the elderly when a car bomb went off outside. We were told to run to the Old City, and as we appraoched the stone walls I saw huge posters, specifically one caught me, with the word COEXISTENCE using the three Abrahamic faiths' symbols. Was it mocking us? Was it pleading? Was it optimistic? I ound out later that the posters were part of a Coexistence exhibition touring the world and presented by the Museum on the Seam. I believe that experience has been, and continues to be, my inspiration in my work. There will be more on this museum after I tour its new ehibition which opens later in July.

I entered the Old City through the Damascus gate, having first walked through the shopping area just outside and buying more water (and proudly completeing the entire transaction completely in Arabic!). The Old City is divided into four Quarters (Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Armenian), each with at least one main gate to enter through (respectively; Dung Gate, Damscus Gate, New Gate, and Jaffa Gate) though you can travel between each quarter easily, and sometimes seamlessly, though the internal winding streets. When entering the Damascus Gate, the shuk is mostly for the community that lives in the area, and as a tourist I go mostly unnoticed and uninterested in the practical commodities offered there like socks and shoes. The shuk changes as you get into the Christian Quarter or near religious sites; the things being sold become tackier and the sellers more pushy. The Armenian Quarter is almost entirely closed off from the public, and only has a few stores open. The Jewish Quarter, which was rebuilt after being destroyed by Jordan after 1948, had a very American-Jewish touristy feel to me, with expensive shops, larger walkways, and an emphasis on archaeology.

I took my time today, wanting to go at my own pace and see specific sites. Looking for a rest, I sat in a sweet shop and had a piece of knaife for a bit before continuing on to the Via Dolorosa, the sreet of the Stations of the Cross. I slowly made my way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This large building houses several of the last Stations, and is made up of a dozen different churches under the one roof (and several out back as well). It is dark, and confusing, and the entrance has a number of "guides" offering different explanations of the different rooms for a fee. What they really need is to get organized and have a guide ine ach area explaining the significance of eahc point. I did it with a book years ago, but today I just soaked in the atmosphere.

I then headed towards the Kotel, the Western Wall. I have had really emotional experiences at the wall in the past, but today I did not. I was turned off by all the "religious" women begging for tzedakah, charity, while talking on their cell phones. At the Kotel itself one such woman was making a scene, practically licking the wall while beging for change and telling people what they could and could not do. I just sat and people watched for a bit, and got to see what I imagine was a consecration ceremony; a large group of young religious boys who stood in front of the Wall and then ran to recieve praise from their beaming parents.

I walked out through Jaffa Gate and towards the new shopping area, Mamilla. I did some research because I was so intrigued by this new space, and found out it's actually quite old. it was built in the 1800s under Ottoman rule as a mixed Arab and Jewish business area. It was then destroyed by shelling between 1948 and 1967. It has now been rebuilt as a beautiful thuroughfare which leads from the City Center to Jaffa Gate. The views are incredible. While it's under construction (and maybe even after) art has been hung between shops that reflect on the many ideas of Jerusalem. What I personally like most is that the archways echo the Cardo, an unearthed Roman shopping center which had been the lifeline of Jerusalem 2000 years ago. Each shop is held in an arch, just as they had been on the Cardo.