September 16 (erev Rosh Hashanah)  We went to Yahuda Market this morning to shop for Rosh Hashanah dinner. (Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year and everything pretty much shuts down starting around 3pm on Sunday until after dark on Tuesday.) It’s hard to explain how loud, crowded, chaotic, colorful and odiferous Yahuda Market is. It’s an exhilarating assault on the senses.  As we entered the market we saw a visually impaired person with a guide dog, a black lab. If you look carefully at the photo below you can see the dog and handler (in the red shirt) crossing the train tracks (click on the link for a larger image). It’s difficult enough navigating the crowds and narrow alleyways of the shuk – let alone doing it with a dog, and lacking good or any vision. The fellow had just finished a successful shopping trip in the very crowded market with the dog at his side.  Notice the full basket of items. Given the tumult of the area and on this day in particular, this handler and dog are really amazing.

The man in the red shirt has a guide dog on his left side

 We’ve seen three visually impaired/blind people in the three weeks we’ve lived here; two of them with guide dogs.  Not sure if there are more blind people in Israel than in other places? A result of the wars and suicide bombings? Or maybe we’re just more aware because of our work with Guiding Eyes, and just seeing more such folks because we are living in the city and getting around by mass transportation?

There is likely always tension in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. The film
denigrating the Prophet Mohamed has not only affected decorum in the Arab countries, but also here. So far, no injuries but there was a pretty big demonstration outside the Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem after Friday prayers. Observant Muslims pray 5 times a day but Friday at noon, Jumu’ah, is their big event each week. Because of the unrest caused by the film, the State Department has sent out alerts to all Fulbright people and U.S. government workers in Jerusalem to keep away from the Old City and Arab neighborhoods until things calm down.

On Wednesday evening we went to a great Italian restaurant, Pera e Mela, in Safra Square near the Jerusalem City Hall and other municipal buildings.  We had a lovely evening sitting outdoors, drinking wine, and eating hand-made pasta with mushroom creme sauce (Marty) and salsa rosa (Carol) (in NYC we’d call that vodka sauce).  Suddenly we heard an announcement over the load speaker at the
tram station that an unattended bag was left on the station. The police came
immediately and blocked off the crowded area and proceeded to blow it up.  Standard operating procedure. These are rather tense times
in the middle East, but the Israelis seem to be used to this sort of thing. As
soon as the even was over, hectic activity resumed.

 Friday, September 7, 2012.  Jerusalem is a major metropolis, both ancient and modern, nestled among the Judean Hills. This area has been the site and source of many struggles and wars. The Israelites and Philistines fought here many generations ago. It is also the place where battles related to the Israeli war of independence occurred in 1948. The landscape is striking; a mixture of rugged hills with forests, desert, and settlements.

The Judean Hills               

A settlement in the hills

Our first stop on our exploration of the Judean Hills was the Domaine du Castel winery in the village of Ramat Reizel. Here all the streets signs are in Hebrew and the tour book did not give a street address. Ruth, the tour guide asked us to call her on her cell when we were close. That we did. She gave us directions as we were driving – “go down the street and look for a bus stop; keep to the right and look for a flag; turn right after 50 meters onto a dirt road; take the dirt road to the end.”  Things are definitely not easy to find in Israel – exacerbated because neither of us read Hebrew.

On the way to the winery in Ramat Reizel

Outside the Domaine de Castel winery

The owner of Domaine du Castel has been making wines since 1995. He started as a chef in Tel Aviv, and then ran Mama Mia, a pretty well-known Italian restaurant in Jerusalem. He started the winery to have a good local wine to serve to his customers. When it became too difficult to keep the restaurant open because of the Intifada in the early 2000s, he turned to wine making full-time. He is completely self-taught. Now, he makes several thousand bottles of fabulous whites and reds per year. In the last few years, his winery has achieved “kosher” status –meaning that only religious Jews handle the wine – as a non-observant, the owner instructs, but no longer handles his own wine! After a brief tour of the cellars, we had a tasting of the wines. It’s not like tastings in the U.S. You sit at a table with three bottles of wine, a plate of cheeses (soft, semi-soft and hard) and a basket of bread. It’s a meal – and we pretty much finished two bottles. The wines and cheeses were terrific, as was the ambience. Yes, we bought a case, which turns out to be the most expensive wines we ever owned.

 Domaine du Castel wine cellar

The owners private collection