“How many cities can boast gay-bars alongside probably the highest density of houses of prayer, in the world?”

So what to choose for my first post in Renew Magazine? I live in Jerusalem, and have done so for 30 years. It’s not an easy city to live in, but not necessarily for the reasons one would think. On a daily basis, I don’t worry about the Middle East conflict. But the spirit of the Middle East shapes my life at any given moment. Jerusalem has all the facilities of any modern western city. Nevertheless, we’re in the Levant. For good and for bad, everything here is personal. Yesterday I went in to a store to buy something. The sales-woman couldn’t read the price on the tag and we got into a discussion about the advantages of multi-focal glasses. She then proceeded to tell me everything about her mother’s eye-surgery. I left before we had time to decide to get together for lunch.

As a collective, we are a loud, curious, involved, enthusiastic, pushy, opinionated and connected lot. In my mother-tounge, Swedish, we have a unique word called “lagom” which is best translated as ‘just so’. It is no coincidence that there is no ‘lagom’ in Hebrew. We in Israel, and I make no exceptions for race, gender, religion and age here, are not ‘lagom’. We are sometimes not enough, not on time, not exact, not what I expected. And often more generous, more open-minded, more inventive, more rude, more hospitable. I don’t like the rudeness. But other then that, for me, that’s perfect. A senior Swedish diplomat I talked to recently said that he finds that there are very many interesting people in Jerusalem. I couldn’t agree more, and I feel fully, truly alive and challenged.

Waiting at a traffic light, near my home in a central Jerusalem neighborhood, I look to my right. At the pedestrian crossing stands a donkey and rider. This is not a usual occurence in my part of town, but neither is it unheard off. Many tourist-spots such as the scenic outlooks and the amazing road that winds through the desert to the Dead Sea, feature strategically placed camels, and some donkeys. These are tourist-displays, not authentic, integral animals. These days only certain bedouins actually use camels. Supposedly, there are camel-races in the desert and at the Thursday early-morning market in Beer-Sheba you can buy, or sell camels, goats, sheep and donkeys. There is a camel-farm somewhere in the south of Israel that produces Yuppie camel-milk ice-cream. But other than that, the ill-tempered, yellow-teethed beasts serve mainly as decorations. And for city-dwellers like us, they are as exotic as they are to you.

On the radio yesterday there was an item about a German woman who had an idea for a start-up project. (I swear it’s true, at least I swear it was on the radio). She sells camel-shampoo. That is a very good idea, at least to the extent that she certainly has found a commercially underexploited niche. In her heavy German accent she explained how to take a small amount of shampoo in you hand, make a nice lather and gently massage it in to the camel’s fur. Since camels are rather large, that seems equally perverse and impractical. Maybe another startup that combines car-wash facilities and camel-shampoo would be more effective. And I would throw in some camel tooth-paste, while we’re at it. There is a real need for that.

 

Even beyond the camel-scene, there is a lot of dumb stuff going on. We manouver our way between that and a lot of accumulated wisdom. In the spirit of not ‘lagom’, Jerusalem boasts a huge range of people, sites, cultures and possibilities. How many cities can boast gay-bars alongside probably the highest density of houses of prayer, in the world? Of archeological sites next to high-tech industrial parks? Of restaurants representing every possible ethnic cuisine? Of desert to the east and green hills to the west? Of the smooth new electric tram, crossing the path of donkeys?