In 1930, Nechama Leibowitz, together with her husband Lipman, arrived in Israel for the first time.
In the book 'Nehama', the biography she wrote about her, Hayutha Deutsch tells that the young couple traveled to Jerusalem for the first time in their lives, and on the way down from the Kastel, Nehama read aloud the sign on the side of the road: "Stay in low gear!"‘
The two – who were fluent in colloquial and diaspora Hebrew but not in the Israeli dialect – did not understand that it was a traffic sign, and thought it was a statement with a purely spiritual meaning: He who comes to Jerusalem must lower his stature in humility. This is how one should enter the gates of the Holy City.
Want more news, videos and stories? Join the Haredim 10 WhatsApp channel >>
But it's not just intellectuals who need to enter Jerusalem in slow motion, amateur photographers too. Since I've lived in the city, I've discovered that there's no need to stage anything, not to move or initiate, but simply to look and experience. Throughout the generations, countless crowns and titles have been attached to Jerusalem. All of that is true: it is holy and sublime, the cradle of the world and a faithful city, but the Holy City is also, pardon me, very, very photogenic.
There are people whose biggest nightmare is getting stuck on the street with a cell phone whose battery is about to run out. What will happen? They are about to become unavailable for a few minutes. How will they be caught? How will they communicate with the world? I know this fear, but in Jerusalem the panic is greater.
More than it bothers me that I won't be available, I'm afraid that an interesting situation will suddenly arise in front of me and that's when the cell phone - and with it the camera - will be deactivated. It's happened to me a few times. Too bad for Davdin.
So, in honor of the upcoming Jerusalem Day, here are some moments when I had a fresh battery. A special Jerusalem photos from the past year.
Happy Jerusalem Day.
How many slanders were spoken in Jerusalem about the light rail project. For years they slandered and warned, until it arrived and in its noble silence began to move through the city, while, along the way, transforming Jaffa Street from just a street of shoe stores and bus soot into a magical pedestrian street. Here is a photo taken there on Passover Eve last year. Rabbi Elisha Levi from the city center placed for the benefit of passersby two huge pots containing flowering trees, along with a stand with the full text of the Blessing of the Trees on it. Whoever goes out on Jaffa Street during the days of Nissan will bless the One who created good trees and good trains for people to enjoy.
My neighborhood in Broida is an old, small neighborhood hidden between the hustle and bustle of Agrippa Street and the bustling Bezalel Street. A meter away from all the urban action, you can find an old cistern, white laundry hanging outside, and usually girls in two braids playing with a rope. We returned to the cisterns. I love taking pictures there because there’s no way to know whether this photo, for example, was taken this week or a hundred years ago.
And this is a picture that can only really be seen in Jerusalem. In Tel Aviv, there is a lot of talk about pluralism, but in fact this city is pluralistic only for pluralists. That is, it is very open and accepting and inclusive. Who? Those who are open and inclusive. Those who accept its basic assumptions in advance. Jerusalem is truly pluralistic. Only there can you meet such a mix of people, sectors and even religions. It is easy to speak for or against Haredim, Arabs or monks, when you don't meet them in a cafe.
After taking this picture, I waited for many minutes to see if, when the dish was ready, the girl at the Aroma counter would announce the customer's name over the loudspeaker: "The Holy Father!".
So the Friedman family donated a building to a yeshiva in the Beit Israel neighborhood. But where does the Friedman family come from? Oh, it’s complicated. For most of the time, you don’t see the city: Los Angeles. And that’s why it’s said: In Yiddish, it sounds less good.
One of the famous synagogues in Jerusalem is the old Shteybel in the Katamon neighborhood on Hais Street, which offers countless minyanim throughout the day, around the clock. It’s not just the diversity in the possible prayer times, from five in the morning until almost midnight, but also the human mix. Sephardim alongside Ashkenazim, Avrechim alongside people of action, rabbis alongside judges (well, well, Elyakim Rubinstein. It’s not like all the Supreme Court justices pray there). I recently took this photo there during the Torah reading during the morning prayer, and it shows a soldier and a Hasidic boy sharing a burden. To the regular worshippers, this sight seemed so natural that they didn’t even understand why I was taking the picture.
The prophet Zechariah, in one of his moving and famous prophecies, already stated that part of the redemption is the simple, seemingly obvious sight of “boys and girls playing in its streets.” It is said that Rabbi Amital used to stop by playgrounds in Jerusalem, just to see this wonder, of boys and girls playing on slides and swings. How not obvious. But no one prophesied about this sight on the way to the Machane Yehuda market: boys and girls getting into her shopping carts. A man goes out to do some Shabbat shopping in the market, with a cart and his Jerusalemite child in it. On the way back, I hope, he will help his father carry home fresh challah for Shabbat.
