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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.