Where the Action Is
Adam Gilad
January 29, 1998
These are three experiences that have made me most hate being Jewish:
Category
jerusalem
PhotographyImages from the Territory of Belief
Diane Arieff
January 22, 1998
In the company of his friend, fellow world traveler and photographer Maxime du Camp, French novelist Gustave Flaubert visited Jerusalem in 1850. The urbane and sophisticated Flaubert was decidedly unimpressed with this crumbling backwater of the Ottoman Empire: \”Jerusalem stands as a fortress; here the old religions silent rot away. One treads on dung; ruins surround you wherever your eyes wander — a very sad and sorry picture.\”
That same year, a Rev. George Wilson Bridges also made his way tothe Holy City. An English cleric and an amateur photographer, Bridges and his young son traveled through Palestine as part of a seven-year journey around the Mediterranean and the East. Bridges undertook the journey as a form of solace: He had just buried his wife and daughter in Jamaica — victims of a tropical fever they contracted while the reverend was there doing missionary work. Steeped as he was in grief and religious conviction, Bridges found that Jerusalem\’s atmosphere of melancholia and desolation suited him. \”What sight,\” he observed after witnessing Jews praying at the Western Wall, \”even in this wondrous city, so touching, so impressive as this — Jews mourning the ruins of Jerusalem….\”
Education Israel as a Core Requirement?
Beverly Gray
December 11, 1997
My daughter flew home for Thanksgiving with two college friends in tow. At the dinner table, the conversation revolved around computers and the antics of the Stanford Band. At some point in the course of that whirlwind four-day visit, Hilary informed me that, though she\’s been diligently studying Hebrew since she started college, a Junior Year Abroad at Hebrew University is no longer part of her plans. It\’s not that she\’s changed her mind about someday returning to Israel, where she spent an amazing summer two years ago. But she\’s convinced that, given the stringent requirements of the high-tech major she seems to have settled on, even a semester in Jerusalem would derail her progress toward her degree.
Mideast: A Waldorf Education in Israel
Ruth Mason
December 11, 1997
It is 8:15 a.m. in the first-grade classroom in Jerusalem\’s Adam School. Ice cream-colored walls surround a large room decorated with silk cloths, woven rugs, stones, seashells, driftwood, sheaves of wheat, plants and hand-sewn dolls and animals. The blackboard is covered with a large, multicolored chalk-drawn tree with a bird\’s nest in its branches. A small, cozy room off the main classroom, painted in lavender and white, contains rugs, mattresses covered with Indian spreads, a doll cradle and a basket of small hand-stitched beanbags. The children sit quietly at their tables while their teacher, Eyal Bloch, moves from pupil to pupil, slowly shaking hands and greeting each one with a smile, pausing at times to exchange some brief words.
Mideast An Understanding Teacher
Ruth Mason
November 6, 1997
It\’s a hot summer day and 16 teen-agers are walking through YadVashem in Jerusalem with a handful of adults. The scene is acommonplace one until you look a little closer and listen morecarefully. Half of the group is speaking softly in Arabic amongthemselves and they come from villages with names like Julis and KfarYassif. The Arab and Druze teens in the group, as well as the Jewishones, are wearing long white T-shirts displaying the name of theGhetto Fighters\’ House and the word \”guide\” printed in large blockletters across the back.
Different Approaches to Zionism
Jewish Journal
September 11, 1997
Kenneth Bob, a software executive from Long Island,N.Y., is registered to vote in this month\’s World Zionist Congresselections, but he\’s having a hard time deciding how to cast hisballot.
A Brave Show of
Eric Silver
September 11, 1997
\”When\’s our luck going to run out?\” my wife asked after last week\’s triple suicide bombing on Jerusalem\’s Ben-Yehuda shopping street. \”They\’re getting nearer every time.\” It was one of those days when people phone around to count their friends.
Igniting Israel’s Powder Keg
Larry Derfner
September 4, 1997
A spokesman for the Jerusalem police confirmed that the fire was caused by arson, and that the connection Sorek spoke of was one of the possibilities being investigated. The spokesman said that he did not want to elaborate, \”because this is a very sensitive matter.\” He added that no suspects had yet been arrested.
Coping
Naomi Pfefferman
August 7, 1997
En route home were Alice and Leo Howard and their 14-year-old grandsons, Yoni Howard and Adam Blitz, all of whom had survived the July 30 suicide bombings in Jerusalem\’s crowded Mahane Yehuda.\n\nAfter the El Al jet landed, the relatives greeted each other with hugs and tears and counted themselves lucky. The bombs that killed 13 bystanders (as well as the two Hamas terrorists) and wounded nearly 170 people, had left the Howards relatively unscathed. Leo incurred whiplash, Yoni had glass shards embedded in one leg, and most had painful ringing in their ears. But the close family friends who had been with them at Mahane Yehuda were seriously injured and remained hospitalized.\n
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