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As darkness falls over Jerusalem each Thursday evening during the Hebrew month of Elul, groups of visitors will make their way to Mount Zion. Among the ancient ruins, a tour guide begins to talk about King David, who, according to Jewish tradition, conquered the city and built its first temple.

But during this month that focuses on repentance, leading up to the high holidays of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, it is not just the glory of King David that is talked about, but also his sins. This is just one stop on the so-called Selichot Tours offered by Yalla Basta, a local family-owned interactive tour company.  Named after the selichot, or repentance, prayers recited at night or just before dawn in the weeks leading up to the high holidays, the evening tours offer a glimpse into both history and everyday life in Jerusalem.  One route explores Nachlaot and the Old City, while another focuses on Nahalat Shiva, Mishkenot Shaananim and Mount Zion.

Through these stories, people will learn the history, learn about the Jewish traditions and hopefully also about themselves,

says Maria Zavin, who oversees marketing for Yalla Basta.  “It’s a way to see the city in a vivid way.” Two local families launched  Yalla Basta in 2012, originally offering tours of the Mahane Yehuda market that allowed participants to taste food and hear stories from vendors.  In recent years, the company has expanded, offering food tours in several neighborhoods as well as tours focused on the holidays.

We’ve always wanted to allow the traveler to experience the local life, not just the dry history,

Zavin says. That’s why when the selichot tour goes through Nachalot, the guide encourages participants to ask passersby on the street “Who was Rabbi Arie Levin?” as they pause outside the building that was once his home.  After hearing locals tell what they know about Levin, who lived in Nachlaot in the early 20th century and was famous for visiting prisoners and taking care of the sick and impoverished, people, the guide tells the group how Levin prepared himself for the high holidays.

There are so many stories to tell,

Zavin says.  Through these stories, the guides also hope that visitors–no matter their religion–will also look inside themselves as they learn about the spiritual journeys of both famous and ordinary; and ancient and contemporary locals. In the midst of exploring synagogues, small streets and ancient ruins on the selichot tours, participants also stop for pastries and hot drinks in Jerusalem establishments, experiencing a small taste of the nightly cafe scene. Contact Yalla Basta for tour times and cost.

When Ruth Wexler started working as a nurse at Jerusalem’s Hansen Hospital in 1983, it was still a place that many people feared. Just a short walk from the Inbal Hotel, this complex behind stone walls was where people were treated for leprosy.

By the time Wexler started working here, leprosy was treated with antibiotics and was called by its modern name, Hansen’s Disease, after a Norwegian scientist named Gerhard Armauer Hansen discovered the bacteria that causes the disease, mainly affecting the skin, nose and eyes. “But everybody still called it the leper home,” Wexler recalls. “And some people were afraid to come inside.” The hospital, which opened in 1887, only closed its doors in 2009. But now it has taken on a second life. A few years ago, this sprawling complex re-opened as the Hansen House Center for Design Media and Technology. The stone buildings that were once a hospital have been turned into art galleries, working spaces and a cafe. The gardens, which patients with leprosy once relied on for fruit and vegetables, are alive again and bursting with colorful flowers and shady green spaces. It has become one of the city’s trendiest public places, hosting many cultural events, including the upcoming seventh annual Jerusalem Design Week in June. This is largely due to Wexler’s passion for the place. When the hospital closed, Wexler organized a historical exhibit about it, which the city’s mayor, Nir Barkat, attended. This exhibit led to the municipality deciding to preserve the property–originally designed by German architect and archaeologist Conrad Schick who was Jerusalem’s first city planner– and open it as a public cultural space, explains Shira Schonfeld, who works for Ran Wolf Urban Planning and Project Management, which manages the Hansen House.

Else it probably would have been turned into luxury apartments or a boutique hotel,

Schonfeld says. “It was really because of Ruth’s exhibit that this is what it is today.” While Wexler says “it’s a great thing,” that the two acres of land and its buildings have been turned into such a vibrant space, it is still important to her to educate people about its historical role in treating Hansen’s Disease, and in fighting the stigma that is still associated with leprosy. She now gives private tours of the property, including the few hospital rooms that have been preserved as a museum. One of the first things she emphasizes is that

this was never a closed institute. Patients could come and go, and people could come in and visit.

Contrary to the cultural fears people have about it, going back to Biblical times, leprosy is only “mildly contagious,” Wexler explains. Only about 5% of the human population can actually catch it, as most immune systems fight it off, she says. And since the 1940s it has been treatable with antibiotics. “There are good cures and most patients can lead a normal life,” she says. But even though going back to the 1940s, some of the Hansen Hospital patients were medically-fit to go home, many stayed living here, as their families sometimes rejected them due to social stigma and fears of catching the disease, Wexler says. The black and white photos hanging in the museum reflect the community that developed in this pastoral place. Photos can be seen of the residential patients working in the gardens and learning how to sew.

Christians, Muslims and Jews, everybody lived together,

Wexler says. This is the part of the hospital’s history that she really does not want to be forgotten, and this is why she gives tours. For people from outside Jerusalem who come here for the cultural events, “many don’t even realize what this place used to be,” she says. “And I feel that it is a very special human and cultural story, how for everybody who came in, this was a home for them.”

In the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, a small shop called Elia Photo Service, offers a window to the city’s past. The glass cupboards, walls and countertops are covered with black-and-white photos that Elia Kahvedjian took in and around Jerusalem and other parts of Israel for more than six decades, beginning in the 1920s. There are photos of camels in the desert, horse-drawn carts on Jaffa Road, and the interior of the Old City’s Hurva Synagogue before it was destroyed in the 1948-49 war.

He was always with his camera

said Kahvedjian’s grandson, also named Elia, who now runs the shop that his grandfather started in 1930. First located on Jaffa Road, where the elder Elia bought the existing Hanania Brothers photo service shop, the shop moved to its current location in 1949. Now it is a sort of museum, offering images of Jerusalem’s past, and selling the photos taken by three generations of Kahvedjians. But for a long time it was a place to develop film, get portraits taken, and hire photographers for weddings and other events. When the elder Elia passed away in 1999, his son, Kevork, took over the business, and also published the book “Jerusalem Through My Father’s Eyes,” a collection of photos taken by his father. When Kevork died last year after battling cancer, the younger Elia continued the business.

Now it’s my time

the younger Elia said, sitting behind the counter on a recent summer afternoon, where he was telling a group of European tourists his father’s life story, of how he came as an Armenian orphan to Jerusalem during World War I, and built a whole life here. The younger Elia is also a photographer in his spare time.

I really like to show the changes in the city in my photos,

he said, pointing to a shot of the Zion Gate, riddled with bullet holes from the 1967 Six Day War. He then took out a photo his grandfather had taken in the same place in the 1930s, when the gate’s facade was much smoother.

I think it’s important to document things, because they will change again in the future

he said. The shop is located at 14 Al-khanka Street, in the Christian Quarter of the Old City.

When Eli Weisberger began renovating a small shop on Jeruslaem’s Emek Refaim Street to make it into a wine bar, he made a surprising discovery: This building once served as a wine storage cellar for the Templers, a group of Christians from German who settled in the holy land in the late 1800s. It was the Templers who built many of the stone, red-roofed buildings in the German Colony along Emek Refaim.

I had no idea this was here, it was a huge surprise

said Weisberger, who opened the Wine Temple here in 2017. The renovation work eventually exposed the original stone walls and vaulted ceilings of the cellar. Now this sprawling underground three-room complex is filled with tables, a bar and shelves of hundreds of different kinds of wine. Visitors can stop by for a glass of wine, accompanied by a cheese plate. Or, people can simply stop in to have a look at the architecture and the wine collection, which includes more than 5,000 bottles from more than 60 wineries around Israel, all for sale. Weisberger also hosts events, like lectures and tastings in the space. Weisberger also hosts events, like lectures and tastings in the space.

I really want to help people learn more about wine

said Weisberger, who spent more than a decade working for various Israeli wineries before opening the Wine Temple

In Israel people drink less wine than in Europe, and I think we should drink more here.

The Wine Temple is located at Emek Refaim 8, and is certified kosher.

A red-headed boy leads his sheep across a grassy field, interspersed with trees. The music of a flute plays and the rolling, rocky hills of Judea rise in the background. These are the opening scenes of the new evening sound and light show King David, which transforms the 1,000-year old stone walls of the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem’s Old City into a surround-sound movie theater five nights a week. Once the sun sets, David and his story come to life in this Crusader-era citadel via 18 laser projectors and 20 speakers.

In addition to telling the story of the life of David–the shepherd boy who became a Biblical King–the show also illuminates the citadel walls with hundreds of works of art made throughout history that have immortalized David.  So viewers see Michelangelo’s famous carved marble David statue and Chagall’s bright painting of David with a harp, among dozens of others, as David is one of the most portrayed people in the art world.

My idea was to take people on a walk through a gallery of art,

said Renee Sivan, the museum’s archaeologist who curated the show.  “Seeing these works of art lets people have a different appreciation and see the appreciation different people had for David.” Sivan, who previously created the museum’s other sound and light show, The Night Spectacular, which tells the story of the history of Jerusalem, wanted to present a fuller picture of David.

King David is not only a king, he’s a musician, a poet and also very very human,

Sivan said. But producing the life-like images of David and the other historical figures that illuminate the walls was not simple.  Sivan wanted them to be historically accurate, in every detail, from what they wore to how they moved. “And that’s difficult because we have very few indications and pieces of archaeological evidence from the era of King David,” she said.  She spent months researching what fabric dyes were available in the region at the time in order to portray David and others in authentic clothing.  And she scoured museum collections around the world for visual evidence of historical events associated with David.  For example, she relies on stone carvings found in Egypt to know what the Philistines, who fight David in a battle, looked like. “This is how I knew exactly how they moved and what they wore,” she said. Her goal was also to create a show that would appeal to a wide variety of audiences.  And this one has something for everyone, she said, from beauty, to history, to art to action. She said she knew all her work was worth it when she recently took her 7-year-old grandson to see it.

His eyes were wide open, just looking the whole time,

she said. Tickets to King David are 55 shekels for adults, 50 shekels for senior citizens and 45 shekels for children ages 3 to 18.  Combined tickets for both the museum and the show are 70 shekels for adults and 55 shekels for senior citizens and children

A Place for Art and Culture; old and new

Before the state of Israel was established, botanist Baruch Chizik and artist Aharon HaLevy traveled around rural Palestine, cataloguing all of the plants they encountered. Chizik studied and identified the various flowers and cacti while HaLevy painted them.
It was part of a larger cooperative scene of scientists, artists and linguists who worked together to find, document, and even create modern Hebrew names for the plants growing in the Holy Land.

Now, some of the botanical art from this period, in addition to later periods,is part of the Seeds of the Land exhibition in the Anna Ticho House, a stone home in the center of Jerusalem that was home to one of the city’s most influential couples..

“The exhibit looks not just at the art, but at the way modern artists use plants to express feelings and political ideas,”

said Timna Seligman, curator of the Ticho House, which is part of the Israel Museum. The exhibit, on the ground floor of the building, runs through November, 2019. The contemporary pieces include delicate glass sculptures by contemporary artist Dafna Kaffeman, and pages of Haaretz newspapers from the Six Day War period faded with paint and imprinted with silhouettes of local wildflowers in a project by Larry Abramson. Both Kaffeman and Abramson include work from earlier Israeli botanical artists. The exhibit is especially fitting for the space because this was once home to Anna Ticho, an artist who often painted local landscapes. Her husband, the eye doctor Avraham Albert Ticho, is credited with treating the then-common eye disease of trachoma, and saving thousands of people from blindness.

“We always try to make sure that the temporary exhibits we have here have some connection to Anna,”

Seligman said. In addition to this exhibit, the Ticho House is a place worth exploring. With its arched doorways and stone work, the house is also a well-preserved example of typical Jerusalem architecture. Recent renovations have exposed ornate ceiling drawings on the top floor of the house, now home to the Anna Cafe, a Mediterranean restaurant. Entrance is free, and its location, near the main downtown thoroughfare of Jaffa Road makes it an ideal stopping place during a day of exploring the city.

“Visitors can stop in, have a look around and even enjoy a drink or meal,” Seligman said. “It’s really a lovely place, especially in the summer when the gardens are in bloom.”

When Mark Jam opened the Red & White Wine bar downtown last year, he wanted to create an elegant place for people to relax and ponder their experiences in Jerusalem. “Wine is just the medium for this,” he says.
“It can be a rough city, with a lot of hustle and bustle, and people need space to stop and reflect.”

Located on Shlomo HaMelech Street, just up the hill from the Mamilla Mall and along the border that used to divide the city between Israel and Jordan from 1949 through 1967, Red and White welcomes visitors with wine, cheese, jazz music and conversation.  The high ceilings, tall windows and candles on each table add to the sense of welcoming space. Although all are welcome, Jam especially likes to serve couples.

I love taking care of couples, setting them up with some nice wine and food, then letting them have the space for a conversation together,” Jam says.

It makes me really happy, creating a space for them to have a nice experience together.” Jam is also the only person working behind the bar and waiting on tables in this little place.  He selects all the wines himself, mainly from wineries around Israel.  They can be purchased by the bottle or in various amounts from his Italian-made wine dispensing machine. He serves artisan cheeses from a farm in the Golan Heights, and prepares all the food himself.  The menu includes lasagna made from sheep’s cheese, fresh tomatoes and mushroom sauce; cheese sampler plates; and fresh kalamata olives. If you order coffee, it will be from beans roasted by Jam.

I’m old-school like that,

he says.  Red & White opens each evening at 6 p.m., and stays open until the last person leaves, he says.  “One day it may be at 11, or it could be until 2 a.m.,” Jam says, adding that it’s a good idea for patrons to make a reservation. On a recent March evening, he spoke of plans to set up more tables on the sidewalk as the evenings get warmer, and how he plans to stay open during Passover.

But I will just have wine during Passover,

he says, explaining that he will close his kosher kitchen during the holiday, when Jews refrain from eating any leavened grains. “I like to keep it simple.” Besides, with so many Jerusalem restaurants open during the holiday, the copious amounts of food served at the long Seder meal, and the elaborate feasts served to guests in the city’s hotels, a quiet night of simply sipping wine will be a perfect outing, he says.

No matter how many people come, it’s important for me to be open,

Jam says.”  If I just provide a space for one couple, or one person, that’s enough.” Red & White is located at 8 Shlomo HaMelech Street.  The phone number is 02-645-1212, or it can be found on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Red-White-Wine-Bar-Store

Along the shop-lined cobblestone pedestrian Yoel Solomon Street in the city’s Nahalat Shiva neighborhood, one store stands out among the others because it has two names. The door reads Cadim, but the sign on the building says Altogether 8. While it can be confusing, the shop does indeed have have two names because two different ceramic art cooperatives–among the oldest businesses on the popular street– recently joined forces.

It now ensures that we have more variety and a high quality of work,

says Cecilia Lind, an artist who joined Altogether 8 three years ago and is now one of 15 artists in the new joint cooperative.  “We are getting used to working together and rebranding ourselves.” For nearly 30 years, Cadim and 8 Altogether were two different shops on two different sides of Yoel Solomon Street, run by two different groups of local artists. In January, they merged, with the artists of Altogether 8 moving into Ruach Cadim and bringing their wares and–their sign–with them. Ranging in ages from 28 to 84 and hailing from all over the country the group is still getting to know each other, but the artists say the larger cooperative will help them do better work and still keep prices affordable for customers.  The cooperative nature allows the artists to split the overhead for renting and running the shop, as well as for other expenses like marketing and accounting.  Each artist works in the shop a couple of days a month, with their other days free to spend in their studios.  They meet once a month for a potluck meal to get to know each other better and deal with the logistics of running the shop.

We are really a community, and support each other,

says Lind, who lives in the Greek Colony, where she has an in-home studio. The ceramics in the united shop range from Boris Katz’s whimsical lion-shaped Hanukkah menorah to Amnon Israeli’s peacock-adorned bowls to Ruthie Simon’s blue and white kiddush cups.  Lind’s work includes a ceramic tea set with stripes and other textures embedded in the clay, and painted in greens and blues. “The work here, it’s modern but it pays respect to the city,” Lind says as she was working in a the shop on a recent Friday. “It’s an old art form, but maybe used in a new way. So it’s like when they build a new building in Jerusalem, but they still use the same kind of stones and the same architecture, like the arched doorways.” Simon says the colors in her work are inspired by the white stone of the city’s buildings and the often clear blue sky.  She also incorporates pomegranates, grapes and other local fruits into her designs.

Jerusalem definitely influences my work,

says Simon, who was born in the coastal city of Ashkelon, but has lived and worked in an old stone house in Jerusalem’s Nachlaot neighborhood for more than three decades. But it’s not just the city that influences her work, but also its people, and the people who visit, whom she often meets when it’s her turn to work in the shop. “It’s really an intimate meeting between the artists and the people who come into the shop,” Simon says.  “I get inspiration and ideas from them.”

Behind a door in one of the alleyways of Mahane Yehuda, a staircase leads up to a modern kitchen with big windows looking down onto the produce vendors and shoppers in the bustling outdoor market. An eggplant is roasting on an open flame, purple cabbages are soaking in water and small bows contain a variety of freshly-chopped herbs.

This the Jerusalem Atelier, a cooking and dining space in Mahane Yehuda, where a group of visitors will soon arrive to participate in a culinary workshop, learning not just the traditions and recipes from the city’s diverse cuisine, but how to prepare dishes with the best ingredients from the surrounding market.  In addition to culinary workshops, the Atelier also offers tours of the market, food and wine tastings, as well as 11-course chef’s meals, where diners watch as their food is prepared.

I want to show people that the market is a fascinating place, a place you can experience gourmet food, but that it is still an authentic market, the place where people buy their daily fruits and vegetables and bread,

explains Tali Friedman, the chef who opened the Atelier in back in 2009, before Israel’s food scene began to attract so much international attention.  Friedman, who studied cooking Paris and Israel, grew up near the market, and says it has always influenced her cooking.  Although over the years she worked in some of the city’s top restaurants, she was always trying to incorporate her grandmother’s style of cooking, based on fresh vegetables, meat and fish purchased in Mahane Yehuda. When she started to teach cooking more than a decade ago, she often found herself bringing students to the market, teaching them about selecting the best fresh ingredients.

I always kept coming back to the shuk,

she says.  That led to her begin offering food tours for tourists, and then to eventually open the Atelier. As the market has become a more popular place, now filled with dozens of bars and restaurants in addition to bakers, butchers, produce vendors and spice shops, the Atelier has also become more popular, hosting cooking workshops nearly everyday. Most couples and small groups opt for a tour of the market followed by a culinary workshop in which they prepare a six-course meal.  They enjoy that meal along with local wine at the large table in the space’s kitchen, or on its rooftop.

Visitors can enjoy really fine food,”Friedman says.  “But they also learn about the people of the market.

The custom tours and workshops can be arranged for couples or small groups by contacting The Jerusalem Atelier.

In a small art studio near the bustling Mahane Yehuda market, a table is covered with freshly-painted ceramic coffee mugs, mezuzot, and tiles. Paint brushes dipped in pale green, pink and purple paint are also scattered on the table.