Holy Exposures Commentary and Photos of Israel

Do posters equal voters?  As I reported last week, Shalom Lerner has a huge “poster” lead in Ramat Bet Shemesh Aleph, and in Sheinfeld / Givat Sharet.

The battle lines have been drawn.  Shalom Lerner has the majority of posters up in RBS.  Aside froma couple for Sheetrit, and one for Abutbul, I think Lerner has the Ramah in a landslide.

Sheinfeld is still mostly Lerner.  Migdal Hamayim has Vaknin and Lerner.  RBS Bet has mostly no posters up since it is a sin to vote… (or so the pashkevilas say).  The old Bet Shemesh, including the city center, are mostly Vaknin posters.

What do you think?

With this being an election year, I would think that the mayor would make it his top priority to keep the streets clean.  If we have garbage in the streets now, what will be after the election?

Is this problem due to our neighbors being pigs (sorry, but let’s face it, we have to take responsibility too)?  Or do we, the clean neighbors, expect the municipality to clean up even when our neighbors are slobs?

On the patio of the hotel restaurant.  Give that bird a watermellon!

When I think of Caesarea, and its 18 hole golf course near the beach, it usually comes with a longing for my golf clubs that I left in the USA 14 years ago.  It’s situated about 50KM north of Tel Aviv and is easily accessible from the main Coastal Highway.

Caesarea, is actually however, a top Israel tourist destination. The town is built on the ruins of a Herodian village from the times of the Roman era. The tourist section, which is much bigger than the inhabited portion, is filled with activities, Roman ruins, and the famous Roman Amphitheater.  Click here to learn more about the city’s impressive history.

The central tourist area has many artisan shops, including a “yekev” vineyard factory store.  The Israeli army brings cadets to Caeserea for training and for history lessons.  A soldier has to know what he’s fighting for.

Here are some photos of the beach, the Ampitheater,  Roman Ruins, and Aqueducts, which were quite an engineering feat.  (Remember the Monty Python skit about “what have the Romans done for us”?)…

Believe it or not, another five years has passed, and it’s time once again to elect a mayor in Bet Shemesh. The elections are set for November. Suprisingly, the current 3-time elected mayor, Danny Vaknin, has not been out on the town.

Having arrived in Bet Shemesh in 1994, a year after Vaknin had won the election from Fadida, I’ve only experienced two elections since, in 1998 and in 2003. In the past elections, there had been a whole series of parlour meetings, campaign stops, questions and answers sessions, and generally good-old politicking beginning many months before the elections.

We are now in September, less than two months away from election day on November 11. This time around, the candidates have only been out on the campaign for a few weeks. I know of four candidates. There may even be more.

The incumbent Danny Vaknin runs for Likud. Natan Sheetrit runs for Moledet, Shalom Lerner for the national religious camp (Mafda”l), and Moshe Abutbul for Sha”s.

I was driving today through the Givat Sharet and Ramat Bet Shemesh sections of Bet Shemesh. I noticed a whole bunch of mayoral election banners, mostly for Shalom Lerner, and more interestingly, none for the incumbent Mayor Danny Vaknin.

Here’s a gallery of some of the banners out there so far. If the election was decided by number of banners, then Shalom Lerner would be leading by a landslide.

Here are some general shots of the Jerusalem Shuk, also known as Mahane Yehuda (literal translation - “the camp of Judah”).

You may ask yourself, what do the police and the shuk Mahane Yehuda have in common with me?

A while back, I was at the Shuk in Jerusalem (Israelis refer to Mahane Yehuda simply as “The Shuk”) which means “shopping area” in Hebrew.  As I am accustomed to do, I had my camera with me on that fine day.   I photographed some of the stalls, and generally blended in to the atmosphere.

I took a photo of this Arab worker sitting on an empty stall.

Then, I panned my camera and took a photo of the shuk’s main road with my wide-angle lens.  Within 10 seconds, two policemen (whom you can see in the right corner of the photo) had confiscated my camera, asked to see my ID card, and were questioning me about my ’suspicious’ activity.

I told them to relax and that I was doing an article for a newspaper in the USA.  Along with my strong American accented Hebrew, there was little to cause them further suspicion.  Then, they wanted to take the film in the camera since I had photographed them.   I then reasoned with them further that with such a wide-angle lens it would be hard to discern their faces, much less their identities.

After a few tense minutes, (the time it takes for a not-so-smart policeman in any country to understand an argument with logical reasoning), they returned my camera to me with the caveat that I could not photograph them anymore.  Once I had the camera back in hand along with my ID card, I jokingly told them that without some more photos of them, I wouldn’t be able to share with them the article I would be writing about the Shuk…  I never did get their names!

Enjoy the photo, i hope it was worth it…

The photo that caused a stir

Growing up back in the USA, I don’t recall ever seeing or hearing of Rebbe Nachman or the Nachman M’Uman graffiti.  Breslov Hasidim were those guys who came around asking for donations and handed out booklets of Breslov teachings.  In Israel, you can’t go far without running across at least one of the ubiquitous Nachman slogans.

There’s a great Wiki article that discusses in detail the origins of Bresolver Hasidism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachman_of_Breslov

(Tens of) Thousands of Breslevers and Rebbe Nachman lovers travel yearly to Ukraine to Uman, the burial place of this Tzaddik.  The Breselov Hasidim believe that there’s some magic in saying three times “Na, Nach, Nachma, Nachman M’Uman” as a verbal amulet for good luck.  They also make sure to spread the landscape with painted graffiti, bumper stickers, and posters with this saying.

I remember one day I was driving in Tel Aviv and saw a hillarious bumper sticker “Na, Nach, Nachma, Nachman Bialik”, who was the secular poet and author of the early to mid 1900’s, and is considered one of the founding “literary” founders of the State of Israel.

Here’s one of the often-seen Nachman M’Uman signs in South Tel Aviv, not too far from the beach.

Nachman M'Uman

Rebbe Nachman in Jerusalem

The man in the photos is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (Shlit”a).  These posters were part of the last Israel national government elections.  The posters are for the Sha”s party, which is comprised of ultra-orthodox Sefardic Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent.

Rabbi Yosef was the Chief Sefardic Rabbi of Israel in the 1980s (Rishon Leziyon) and is considered by many the leading living religious authority on Jewish laws for the Sefardic community in Israel and worldwide.  He is the spiritual leader of the Shas party and has, since its inception, either hand-picked or given explicit approval of all the party’s candidates.

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef wants you to vote Shas

One of the posters has additional handwritten text which says “Whoever votes for Shas in the elections, Rav Ovadia Yosef promises him heaven (Gan Eden) without sin.  So only vote Shas!”

Editor’s Note:  You can’t beat that!  Just vote for a political party and all your sins are absolved.  Maybe we can teach something to the Americans?  Who knows, one day you may see a campaign poster that says “Barak Obama guarantees you heaven (with 70 virgins) if you vote democrat” in the coming elections

Husan חוסן is a sprawling West Bank town on the southern edge of Jerusalem, straddled by Gilo, the tunnels road, and Beitar Ilit.  Most of the residents work in neighboring Beit Lechem, or tend to their fields or herds.  Commerce is practically non-existent in Husan.

In good times, Husan has also been a prime source of day labor for Israeli contractors in Jerusalem and as far as Bet Shemesh.  In bad times, such as in the recent second Intifada, Husan acted as a springboard for hostilities.  The road that connects Beitar Illit with the tunnels road that heads north to Jerusalem and south to Gush Etzion also shares a two kilometer southern border with Husan.  Beitar residents would often be stoned, or worse, by projectiles thrown from the Husan residents from their higher vantage point.

The Israeli army clamped down on Husan with several measures to alleviate the stress and risk of injury or death of Beitar residents.  A huge link fence was erected on most of the southern border of Husan that would effectively eliminate terrorist attacks from the high points.  Next, the army declared the tunnels road and the Beitar access road to be inaccessible to Husan residents.  Husan residents were now trapped in their village except for taking a long walk across the tunnels road to Beit Jara or Beit Lechem, and a loophole that allowed transit vans from employers in other cities to pick up Husan residents for work.  However, Husan is several kilometers long in its own right.  As a result, an odd daily ritual could be seen, as Husan residents either walked or were transported from their homes to the edge of the city, where they would walk across the army baracades, and then step into other vans that would take them to their work or shopping in nearby cities.

Here’s some images of this daily spectacle and of the environs: