Eve

Decorative wheat
for sale

It's the eve of Pentecost and it coincides with the jewish Pentecost as well. Pentecost is the feast of the wheat harvest and also of the first fruits offering. Children will be wearing crowns woven from wheat and people will be eating all kinds of fruit and cakes and food made from fruit. People decorate their homes with wheat stalks as well. Somehow cheesecake has become the main tradition of this feast. I like that. Anyway it was on this feast of the wheat harvest 2000 yrs ago when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles. For christians, it's the spiritual first fruits of the Holy Spirit that we celebrated. This afternoon 1st Vespers was sung at the Last Supper Room and tomorrow 2nd Vespers will also be sung. The chapel of the Holy Spirit ... which is in the hands of the muslims ... will be opened once a year tomorrow for us to visit and pray.

Booza Rukeb peddler

The Municipality has been putting huge pots of shrubs all around the Christian Quarter ... which is a nice surprise. It's part of the Municipality's programme to beautify the Old City especially streets where tourists walk. Well, with tourism bringing in 11 billion shekels this first half of the year ... the govt. really has to get serious with catering to the needs of tourists.

In this heatwave there's one call which nobody misses in the afternoons ... its the peddler selling booze rukeb. That's a homemade ice cream originally created by a christian family almost 80 years ago but is now copied by many others selling their ice cream under that name. It's a gooey stretchy type of ice cream ... like the turkish kind. I've never tried in all my life ... but this summer I will.

Tensions in the Old City have subsided and things seem to get back to normal. However things might look ugly tomorrow because just now the US diplomat to Israel just declared that Israel has the right to annex parts of Palestine. Halloo? since when has US had the right to give away foreign land to other people? The continuing arrogance and self-delusion of the US govt will fall back on its face. The Book of Proverbs has all the warnings. Pentecost takes on a whole different dimension.