From Sudan to Jerusalem

January 18, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Politics 

Refugees travel from Sudan north through Egypt to Israel

One of the hot topics in the news these past months has been the steady influx of refugees from Africa who have crossed the border between Egypt and Israel, and Israel’s subsequent response of building a fence to keep the Africans out.

With 1,000 refugees arriving every month now, the issue is not trivial. It’s further complicated by the historical Jewish imperative to treat the less fortunate with kindness and compassion and not close the floodgates.

Until recently, the subject was mostly theoretical for me. I had never sat down and actually talked with someone who had made the long journey northward and slipped across the Sinai border.

So I was very intrigued when the opportunity arose to spend a Shabbat meal with a refugee from Darfur, now living in Jerusalem and working as a cleaner. “Jack” had earlier in the day given a talk at our synagogue. He joined us at the Shabbat table of our friends Bob and Ruth, accompanied by a volunteer from the U.S. who is helping him write and edit his speaking material.

Jack was quite articulate as he explained who was fighting whom, why, and for how long. We learned about peace agreements that have been broken, and the current struggles by southern Sudan to secede from the violent north.

Near the end of the conversation, I decided to ask a tough and potentially inflammatory question. What did Jack think of the fence Israel is building? He must be against something that would prevent his country-mates from finding safe haven in Israel, I imagined. His answer surprised me.

Jack was all for the fence, he said. He understood Israel’s dilemma and explained that, as a small country, Israel could not be expected to absorb refugees indefinitely. The fence should be built…but here was the kicker: all refugees already in Israel should receive legal resident status and be allowed to work and build their families here.

What would happen to other would-be asylum seekers, I asked? There were other countries in Africa that would take in the displaced Sudanese, Jack assured us. Once word filtered south that there was now a wall preventing entry into Israel, the flow would surely stop.

I’m not sure what to make of Jack’s response. Was he presenting a politically balanced position calculated to win Israeli favor, or was he thinking only about how to make the best of his own situation, while cynically turning a blind eye to others in a similar, bleak predicament?

The fence and the African migration test Israel’s conceptions about what kind of country we want to be. Should we be a refuge for at least some of the world’s most downtrodden? Or must we protect ourselves from the slippery slope of a demographic a danger.

I don’t have an easy answer. And neither, apparently, did our new friend Jack.

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The end of the line on Jaffa Road

January 18, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: General 

Jerusalem’s Jaffa Road has been a main thoroughfare in the holy city since before there were cars. However, the multi-year light rail project putting above ground train lines throughout the city has wreaked havoc in the downtown area of the street, which begins at the entrance to the city from Tel Aviv and continues all the way to the Old City near Jaffa Gate.

And now for the unkindest cut, over the weekend, Jaffa Road was closed for good to vehicular traffic to make way for the testing of the new trains. That means that all the bus lines comprising two thousand buses a day that traveled on the avenue have now been rerouted to narrow, cramped nearby side streets like Agrippas (home of Mahane Yehuda) and Hanevi’im St.

As expected, it’s not going so well a few days into the process with passengers complaining of bus rides that were triple or even quadruple their normal time. Never mind the shop owners on Jaffa Road who have been hurt by the five years of track and infrastructure building, and are now being further penalized for their location.

According to one walker on the two-lane Agrippas St., there’s just enough room for two buses to pass each other with no space even for a piece of paper between them. And with shoppers and pedestrians darting across the street at all times in a Middle Easter free for all, it’s no wonder that the area has become a bottleneck.

However, according to The Jerusalem Post, Egged drivers on Agrippas Street were pleasantly surprised with the flow of traffic on Sunday and Monday, saying it was “much better than expected, giving the situation.” “The riders need patience,” said Egged driver Ya’acov.

In April, the light rail is supposed to begin limited operations on Jaffa Road for a nominal fee, to help people get used to using the train. Until then, however, patience will be in short supply.

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Good homes

January 17, 2011 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Blogging, design, General, Israeliness, News 

It’s helpful to live in a city such as Jerusalem, with a large selection of historical, architecturally interesting homes, particularly when you write for the Properties section of the International Herald Tribune and the Great Homes section of the New York Times. That said, it doesn’t happen that often, since there’s only so many articles about ‘great’ Jerusalem homes that IHT and NYTimes readers want to read, but let’s just say that the supply is sufficient.

And when I have one of those pieces in the paper, as I did several weeks ago, it gets a good bit of notice, both for me and the person whose house was ‘covered.’ People want to know how you find the homes and how you gauge whether a place is right, or ripe, for coverage. In the case of this last piece, it was about a great home that belongs to a friend of mine, and which I’d wanted to write about for a while. If you read the article, you’ll see why it fits the Properties section. But the timing had to be right, both for me and for him.

Another fairly recent piece had been suggested by someone who knew the owners; turns out the place was perfect for a writeup and the owners were amenable — two details necessary to my final product. But Jerusalem being the small town that it is, there a plethora of great homes, and, I often know the owners or eventually get to know them. For this Baka home, I didn’t know the owners when I interviewed them, but then their daughter married the son of friends, bringing the story full circle.

Yet as I often say, a ‘great home’ isn’t about size, price or budget; it’s about that certain something that sets it apart from, well, most of our homes. It’s a sense of design or color (see this one about a house in Zichron Yaacov), or about living comfortably in a small space.

Certainly, this most recent piece fits all those markers. I wasn’t the only one who thought so; see what blogger Shira Abel had to say a couple of years ago.

In any case, as I always say, viewing a great looking home just inspires you to do a little something with your own place, whether that means rearranging the pictures on the wall or buying new furniture, if the budget allows. Enjoy your abodes.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Gulf War Memories

January 16, 2011 by · 1 Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Politics, Pop Culture, War 

I am dubiously nostalgic, at best, for the First Gulf War. Nonetheless, it’s 20th anniversary time and so the event must be noted. It was not a particularly good time in my life. Unlike many of my peers, whose romantic lives were fueled by the “live for the moment” thrill engendered in the weeks leading up to the war and the war itself, I was dealing with 1. a broken heart, 2. a change in careers, and 3. remodeling my apartment.

They say that war is hell but I say renovations are. Two weeks before the January 15th deadline set by the US, my pal Motti-the-shiputznik (shiputzim is the local term for renovations) convinced me that now was the perfect time to put in that new toilet, sink and bathtub. “But there’s going to be a war,” I protested weakly. “There’s not going to be a war,” he countered. “And even if there is a war, it’ll be over in what? Four or five days, maximum!” Motti then went on to convince me that if I was already doing the bathroom, I should do the kitchen too. And probably the living room.

Needless to say, two days before the deadline, all of Motti’s Arab workers were blocked from entering Israel and the project stalled. And so, dear reader, I spent the Gulf War living as if a SCUD missile had hit my now floorless, wall-less, toilet-less apartment.

In those days I was in another profession, that of theater lighting design. And in a no less surreal situation, due to the bottom falling out of the theater market (the war came early there), I had taken on whatever work I could get: a dinner theater version of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with an Eddie corpse sculpted from margarine out of which guests were supposed to dish their dinner. Just what the world needed at that moment. The project was marred not only by a lack of taste but also directorial sanity and — truth be told — electrical safety.

The venue was an old Turkish nightclub in Jaffa whose roof was made of plywood which meant we couldn’t hang lamps. In any case, the electrical infrastructure was so ancient, it couldn’t power more than a few, yet the director continued to make outrageous demands. The January 15th deadline was closing in. What was I doing there?

“Don’t tell anyone,” the head electrician whispered in my ear, “but I’ve bought tickets for England and my wife and I are flying out tomorrow. I am not going to be here when this war starts.”

“I think I have to go home and seal a room,” I told the director when she made another one of many unfeasible requests that would require me to stay extra hours. “You know, because the war.” “Oh yeah…” she said dreamily. “My mother said she would do that for me.” Well. You don’t say that to a motherless child. I didn’t say anything but it was at that moment I decided to get the hell out of that production, away from theater people and theater in general.

Fortunately, sometime around January 13th or 14th, someone on the production team put the project on hold and everyone went out to dance at the “End of the World” parties that were happening all over Tel Aviv. I went back to my temporary digs at a friend’s apartment and started the long-overdue task of sealing up the room, as we had been instructed, with cross-hatched tape on all the windows so that they wouldn’t cut us when they shattered, plastic sheeting over all the windows and doors and a bucket half-filled with water and a wet rag for the door frame — all to prevent the poison gas that was surely heading our way from seeping in.

And of course, into the sealed room went the gas masks, symbol of a new kind of war we were about to experience: the low-profile war. Meaning, Israel was going to sit back and not take action.

According to the Home Front Command’s history, “Israel maintained a low profile from the day Iraq invaded Kuwait, and did not participate in the political contacts between Iraq and the U.S.A. Despite this ‘low profile’ policy, the IDF, through HAGA (the Civil Defense), took a number of steps… regarding the home front:
“1. Handing out personal protection kits to all residents in Israel for protection against unconventional weapons.
2. Wide-ranging use of the media to disseminate information and directions on how to use he masks and how to behave during an alert.
3. Publicizing directions for preparing a sealed and secure room in every home and in public places, and instructions to avoid large gatherings.
4. Cooperation between medical and rescue organizations in the rear.”

So, we had sealed rooms and our gas masks in handy-dandy carrying cases. But we weren’t allowed to open the boxes yet. And when we were given the go-ahead, here is what we found:
1. A gas mask
2. A canister filter, to be affixed onto the end of the mask
3. A packet of talcum powder (in case of mustard gas)
4. A packet of gauze (for the above)
5. A syringe for the self-injection of Atropine

That last one was the most intriguing to a lot of people. What was Atropine? What were the effects? Could it get you high?


Friend or foe? The Atropine syringe

Finally, the first SCUDs fell. Needless to say, at first, many people were so convinced that they had been gassed, they injected themselves with Atropine and had to be hospitalized. In our neighborhood however, a strange thing happened on the first morning after the second round of shelling. The old HAGA guys came around with a megaphone and told everyone to get out of the sealed room and into the local bomb shelter.

The local bomb shelter? Where the hell was that? I’d been so busy dealing with plaster, plastic and tape, I’d never considered the conventional warfare option.

Neither had anyone else, it seemed, as the neighbors — mostly young hipsters in sweats, and elderly folks, (also in sweatsuits or PJs but with the addition of bathrobes) — began trailing out of their buildings, down the street and over to the local elementary school. We — me, my friend, her boyfriend and his dog — sat down along with everybody else on the floor in the musty bomb shelter with our hastily thrown-together knapsack of granola, sweatshirts, flashlight — and of course gas masks.

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Under the radar

January 16, 2011 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General 

Israel’s toughened ear-to-the-ground media has the reputation of not letting anything by them. Especially celebrity visits.

Jim Carrey was forced to hire a double to hang out in the King David Hotel while the actor escaped to tour around the country. And Leo Dicaprio’s altercation with paparazzi when he and Israeli girlfriend, model Bar Rephaeli, paid a night time visit to the Kotel a few years back was testament to the veracity photographers will employ to get their picture.

But sometimes, famous people can slip in and out of the country without anybody knowing, and emerge unscathed. Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington barely raised a stir when he and his wife Paulette spent a week here last month.

It was only after the Washingtons left that details of their visit was disclosed. Media reports disclosed that the two toured Jerusalem, purchased gold wedding rings with their initials engraved at the Padani jewelry store at the Mamilla Mall, as well as wine, cigars and other gifts at the outdoor venue.

The two reportedly also spent most of their time with Washington’s good friend, Dr. David Davis, who heads a Messianic Jewish congregation Kehilat HaCarmel in Haifa.

The actor, who is an easily recognizable figure to any Israeli with access to a DVD machine, must have surely raised some eyebrows on his trip. But owing to the dearth of publicity surrounding it, they must have treated him with the respect and class that he’s garnered over the years as one of Hollywood’s top actors.

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