Janna's Jerusalem Journies: Jerusalem's Gems

Jerusalem has many unique neighborhoods and fun places to go. Katherine and I read about many of them in texts in our Hebrew book, so we decided to go out and explore some of them. Skye and I were told about others, and one of them was even an idea we got from a post card.

Mea Shearim

As I have mentioned before, Jerusalem has many distinct neighborhoods, most of them historical. One of these, from our Hebrew text book, is called Mea Shearim (מאה שער'ם), which means "hundred gates" or "hundredfold". It was established in 1874 and was the second settlement outside the old city walls. The settlement was surrounded by walls with gates that were locked every evening, there is said to have been 100 gates--one of the meanings behind the name. The other meaning behind the name is from Genesis 26:12, which says, "Isaac sowed in that land, and in that year he reaped a hundredfold; God had blessed him", and this was read when the settlement was founded.

Mea Shearim is populated by mostly Haredi Jews, or ultra orthodox. The neighborhood allows tourists, but they are asked to remain inconspicuous and to dress modestly. During Shabbat, no photography, cell phones, smoking or driving is allowed.

Katherine and I wandered around the neighborhood one afternoon. It was extremely obvious when we were there, it instantly looked and felt like a different world. A world from 19th century Eastern Europe! Walking through the neighborhood we saw many metal stands with posters glued to them, or posters just glued straight to building walls. The posters are called, "pashkevilin" which are basically just announcements or news that normally a Rabbi deems appropriate for the neighborhood residents.

We didn't know about the "modesty announcements" at the entrance, or the modesty requirements, but luckily it was a rainy afternoon and we had coats and scarves covering everything. Well, Katherine had a scarf, I didn't, though I had my coat buttoned all the way to my collar bones, and still had a woman tell me I better be careful if we went through the narrow streets. Thankfully she wasn't being mean at all, just informing me. She was American and was admiring some of same art that we were in one of the shops.

It was easy to get lost in all the narrow streets, but we just kept wandering around and taking in all the differences in culture (even from our own Jerusalem neighborhood).

Katherine in front of the pashkevilin

Me in front of one of the tiny shops on the main street

Need a portrait of a Rabbi?

Clothes line in the narrow streets. Awesome!

Old City Gates

Skye and I bought a post card that has a picture of all the gates in the old city walls. We decided it would be fun to walk the whole thing and find each gate. So one day after church Skye, David and I headed to the walls of the old city. There are 11 gates total, and 4 of them are sealed. It was a fun low key afternoon stroll.

Jaffa Gate

New Gate

Damascus Gate

Herod's Gate

Golden Gate (sealed)

Lion's Gate

Dung Gate

Zion Gate

Church of the Redeemer and the Austrian Hospice

Another nice afternoon after church, Skye and I decided to have a date day and explore the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer and the Austrian Hospice in the old city. Both were recommended by various people.

We had been wanting to go to the Church of the Redeemer for a while, it's a German church. For 15 shekels you can climb up to the tower for a fantastic view of the old city and the Mount of Olives and then head back down to a nice little museum attached to the church. The first part of the museum is below the church, it's excavations that date back to early times, and nearly proves that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the place where the Crucifixion happened (which is too bad because as you know, I hate the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but I love the Garden Tomb, which is where the protestants say it happened). It also shows the different era's of architecture over the years, so that's pretty cool.

The little museum was nice also. They had artifacts like coins and pottery, and had information about how the church established itself and its ministries. One of which was an all girls school whose gate and clock tower still exist right in front of our grocery store in the city center!

Next we walked over to the Austrian Hospice. The Hospice was built between 1855 and 1858 when it opened to house pilgrims coming to Jerusalem. The hospice is still a guest house, but is open to the public offering a fantastic view of the old city, a quiet and relaxing garden, a viennese cafe and small chapel.

You walk through a rather uninviting door in which you have to buzz in, go through a gate, and up some stairs, then suddenly, you've walked into a small piece of Europe. Suddenly, somehow, the noisy, packed and stressful streets of the old city have disappeared and it's like a breath of fresh air. We were actually quite shocked at the different vibe and feeling of the hospice. We walked around and felt like we could stay there for hours soaking in the familiar feel of Europe. We haven't had a chance to eat in the cafe yet, though on another occasion I went for coffee with my friend, Flavia, and noticed they served a Kalte Plate! Which is a plate of HAM, cheese, veggies and bread. So we'll be back!

Headed up the tower for the view in the Church of the Redeemer

View from the top....see the Dome of the Rock to the right?

view from the other side of the tower, the two gray domes are the Church of the Holy Sepulcher

And back down the tower....

Excavations--if you look closely, you can see part of an old a wall

Colorful hallways in the Austrian Hospice

Statue in the hospice

View from the top of the hospice

Purim-February 24

Purim isn't a neighborhood or a place in Jerusalem to see. It's one of the Jewish holidays. And we didn't participate, we only wandered around to check it out, so I'm not giving it its own blog. Purim comes from the book of Esther when the Jews were saved from being killed, thanks to Esther and Xerxes. The holiday is celebrated with special purim cookies, giving cookie baskets and other sweets to friends and family and giving to the poor. In the Bible it says they celebrated with "gladness" aka....drinking. So that's what everyone does. They put on costumes and drink. It's like a tiny little Karnival celebration, only not nearly as awesome. Actually, according to wikipedia the wearing of costumes may have been brought by the Italian Jews who were possibly influenced by Roman Carnival, so there you go, no wonder it reminded me of Germany's Karnival. Wearing costumes may have also come about because of how God "disguised" His presence during the events of Esther. (Thank you, wikipedia).

We gathered a small group of friends and decided to walk around the city center and Nachlaot to see what it was like. We just wanted to keep things low key, we didn't even dress up, boring I know. We started the evening with a purim cookie from English Cake, one of the best bakery chains here. They are basically a short bread cookie that is wrapped around some sort of filling, chocolate was the best! After that we walked around a while checked out people's costumes, then went to a bar in the middle of the shuk. The staff were all in costume and we made it in time for drink specials. It was a fun relaxed evening. I don't think we were out late enough to catch all the craziness that Purim can be, but we got a pretty good idea.