Life in Pisgat Ze'ev

A-Plus: 1 Week, 2 Days

After looking at an apartment yesterday, which I unfortunately did't get to before someone else had rented it, Moshe gave me a ride back to Pisgat Ze'ev. It's about a 15 minute drive from downtown Jerusalem on route 1. Prior to 1967, route 1 was the cease-fire line between Jordan and Israel, and after Israel's victory, the barbed wire and guard towers were torn down, and the strip of land that was freed up became the road. As you drive up towards French hill, you go on an overpass which marks the divide between the western and eastern slope of the Judean hills, the western side green, the eastern side more dry and rocky, and you are presented with a view stretching out all the way to the Dead Sea and the Mountains of Edom, today known as the Kingdom of Jordan. At this point, you have passed over the "Green Line" and entered post-1967 Israel.

Pisgat Ze'ev is situated along a ridgeline descending towards the dead sea, surrounded by a belt of empty land, with hilltop Arab and Jewish settlements stretching off into the horizon. The view is sliced by the enourmous concrete monstrocity Israel has been forced to build over the last few years, the Security Barrier. We came back to the house last night and nobody was home, so I used my new cell phone to call Rafi, who was at the Shul (synagogue.) We came up to the shul and heard Hassidic and Sephardi (middle eastern) tunes eminating from the building in thumping techno-synthesizer style. The shul was celebrating a Tehillim (Pslams) party. All year, neighborhood children came to shul on Shabbat and took part in singing Tehillim for hours on end. After reading Tehillim, the children who came were given tickets. Today was the final party, where they redeemed their tickets for board games, candies, even bicycles.

After the party, on the way out, I struck up a conversation with one of the parents from the shul. As it turned out, he was an unemployed electrical engineer. Most of the employers here were demanding his resume in English, and his English just wasn't up to par, so he came over after the party to show me his resume. We ended up sitting down for a couple of hours translating his resume into English. It was good practice for me, learning new words like "coordination" and "supervision." The house was crawling with very loud children until they clumped together. Some of the family's children went over to other houses. Some friends of the children stayed over here. It was catch as catch can, but there was enough room.

This morning I woke up a bit late, hosed off, and headed for shul. There are more in the neighorhood than I can count. As I was hiking up the hill, a passing driver spotted me with my tefillin and pulled over. I was able to pick out enough Hebrew words to understand what he was saying.
"Which shul blah blah you going blah blah today?" he asked, swinging open his door.
"Chabad. But I'm afraid I'm a bit late."
"You're never late at Chabad."

Today I wanted to go out hunting for apartments, but the house is such a catastrophe from last night that I'm hanging out here to help out a bit and do some of my own work. And besides, the Shabbat energy is already blowing in from the East, over the Hills of Edom.