Riots again

Spoke too soon - riots picked up this afternoon at the carpark nearby our place, and also in the ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim over the arrested woman. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443836348&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull and http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1101002.html

This is known as the fight for Jerusalem - secular Jews versus orthodox Jews. I was pretty surprised yesterday evening when I was walking home from our working-dinner ... well first of all, I was surprised that there was a pizza restaurent opened at all on the Sabbath ... then I saw almost every other restaurent along the road was opened and jammed packed with secular Jews on Sabbath night! I was very very surprised because the riots were just less than a km away, and the Sabbath law was openly flouted! I mentioned this to our team and Michal, a jewish convert said I'm leaning towards the ultra-orthodox camp. Just then as we were walking our separate ways home on Jaffa Street, a large group of ultra-orthodox came up our way. Michal and the rest laughed loudly and pointed and said "Your friends are here! Go join them!" I laughed back and walked through the crowd.

Anyway during the working-dinner, found out Michal was my same age. But she's married with two kids ... I thought she was maybe 30 or something and she was terribly flattered. Anyway she did her doctorate in the States in Catholic Theology (a jewess!!!!) and Art. She converted to Catholicism although remaining in the hebrew-speaking community ie these hebrew-speaking catholics (we don't call them jewish converts) celebrate the Jewish feasts as well. But she doesn't keep the Sabbath and ate a salami-pizza! Anyway she had some wise words for me ... get on with the research and finish it; don't drag on or it'll be a bigger burden as time goes on; just a small contribution to the academic world is enough, there's no need to write about everything because it'll never end. Wise words because I am stuck in a rut at the moment in the research.

This afternoon I went to the Holy Sepulchre for the daily procession and of course prayed for you all. They had new prayer books printed but I found them too big, clumsy and floppy. Imagine carrying one of these books with a candle at the same time ...... and walking up and down stairs ... not a good idea at all.