A new TV show that debuted earlier this month on the Israeli satellite company YES is the talk of the town across certain sectors of southern Jerusalem. “Srugim” (in English: “knitted kippas”) is an extraordinarily accurate depiction of the religious singles scene in Jerusalem.

Set in our own neighborhood (Katamon and the German Colony in particular), the show chronicles the trials and tribulations of trying to find one’s place in the grueling “swamp” that represents the modern Orthodox world in Jerusalem.

Though the show is about Israel singles, Anglos in the city will easily recognize their own lives, between coffee dates at local cafes, shul hopping and the ubiquitous plastic bags containing quiches, humus and drinks that singles carry around on Shabbat as they head to a group meal with other like minded young people.

Srugim is peppered with location shots of local hangouts. And the dumpy apartments with their tiny kitchens will be uncomfortably familiar to anyone who’s ever been single in Jerusalem.

The show has caught on not just with religious residents of the capital. The Muqata blog reports that the series has received rave reviews from publications across the religious/secular divide including Achbar Ha'ir, Maariv, NRG, and others.

That’s because the acting and writing is uniformly excellent. While the show is essentially a soap opera, it’s certainly not as trashy as hop in and out of bed programs such as the infamous Ramat Aviv Gimel. Imagine Melrose Place…with yarmulkes.

Director Laizey Shapiro has gone to great lengths to make sure even the finest details are reliable. “Every time religious people are presented on the screen, the kippa is in the wrong angle or the text doesn’t make sense,” Shapira told the Yediot Ahronot newspaper. All the more important given that all of the actors in the show are secular.

Shapira is a 32-year-old religious bachelor. He attended the Ma'ale School of Television, Film and the Arts, the only religious film program in the country. The series was originally titled “Sex and the Holy City” because, as Shapira says, “I couldn’t ignore the sex issue because I would be ignoring reality. (Nevertheless) there is something pretty special in the fact that you can see such things in a series on religious people.”

So far the show has focused more on dates than sex. Srugim revolves around five main characters. Hodaya and Yifat are roommates. Yifat has a crush on Nati, the cute 30-something but immature doctor who keeps standing her up. Amir likes Re’ut but she wants to keep it as just friends. Hodaya is going out with a non-religious professor at Hebrew University.

Some of the best situations concern the clash between tradition and modernity. In perhaps the show’s most infamous scene to date, Hodaya brings a date home after midnight. He’s drunk and he lives out of the city, so he sleeps in her room (we assume nothing else happened).

In the morning when he crawls out of bed (to Yifat’s horror – “we have rules here, Hodaya”), he asks the roommates if they have a pair of tefillin. They don’t but they knock on the door of their next-door neighbor, a heavily accented American woman who offers her tefillin to him. Hodaya’s date rejects the offer dismissively. He’s not about to use a "Reform lesbian’s tefillin," he huffs, his religious sleep over hypocrisy notwithstanding.

Nati is asked to join a minha minyan at the hospital where he works. He bristles at the request – he’d prefer to spend his free time napping. However, when he notices that the kashrut license for the lobby sandwich vendor’s kiosk is suspicious, he’s not so meek. He reports it to the Rabbinate, which quickly results in the kiosk proprietor’s sacking.

Yifat meets a cute guy with a kippa and asks him out. He tells her he’s not for her – he’s not religious. “Do you keep Shabbat,” she asks. “Yes,” he responds. “Do you keep kashrut?” Yes. “So how are you not religious?” “In ways you wouldn’t like.” As he’s leaving, he tries to give Yifat a peck on the cheek. She recoils. “Now you get it,” he says.

Perhaps the most conflicted of the bunch is Hodaya who starts dating a non-religious professor. She can’t bring herself to tell him she’s religious. He asks her out to a movie on Friday night. “Shabbat?” she asks, then adds hastily that she has “other plans,” not that she doesn’t go to movies on Friday night. In a later scene, her beau cooks her up a plate of his special spaghetti with meatballs. He sprinkles cheese on top and urges her to try it. Will she eat it or not? We found ourselves screaming at the screen – "don’t do it, Hodaya!" She takes a tiny bite and promptly runs to the bathroom to retch.

Director Shapira was asked in his Yediot interview about his own personal dating do’s and don’ts as a religious single. He responds honestly. “With us everything is much more dissolvable in terms of keeping a distance. It also looks very ridiculous – even though this is Jewish law. People are beginning to cut corners. Many more people are saying out loud that they cannot go out with a girl and not touch her. I'm not talking about sex, although there are those who go there as well. Several years ago I would say this is absolutely impossible, but things change."

If you missed an episode, you’re not in Israel or you don’t have YES, you can catch Srugim online: http://yes.walla.co.il/srugim (the show is in Hebrew, no English subtitles).

It was supposed to be a simple process. 16-year-old Amir had lost his teudat zehut – his identity card – when it fell out of his pocket on a bus a few months back. By Israeli law, once you turn 16, you’re supposed to carry your ID with you at all times.

Getting a replacement card meant a trip to the dreaded office of the Interior Ministry. Actually it’s not so bad…anymore. But when I first got to Israel 20 years ago and I needed to renew my student visa, it was a nightmare. A crowded room full of hundreds of people, all smoking, waiting to meet with the surliest of Israeli clerks. Nothing was computerized back then. The process could take hours.

Nowadays, smoking is forbidden, people wait their turn, and the clerks…well, if you’re really nice, they may almost smile.

Armed with two photos and his Israeli passport, Amir headed downtown. He walked up to the information booth and told the woman behind the desk that he needed to replace his ID. “Did you bring a parent?” she asked. “No,” he said. “I didn’t know I needed to.” He was, after all, 16 now and this was a replacement ID.

That was on Monday. On Tuesday, I accompanied Amir back to the Interior Ministry. We arrived at 1:30 PM and the door was shut. We knocked. A man poked his head out and, just like the guard in the Wizard of Oz, told us abruptly “We’re closed,” and pointed at a sign clearly stating that opening hours were from 8:00 AM until 12:00 PM.

“But I checked on the Internet,” Amir said. The Interior Ministry’s website reported that the office was open until 4:00 PM non-stop. The sign on the door, however, clearly hadn’t been updated in the 20 years since I first visited. “The Internet lies,” Amir muttered as we trudged away.

We went to a nearby coffee shop and ordered two mocha ice coffee blends as consolation.

Two days later we were back, this time well before 12:00 PM. We got in and took a number. As we sat in the waiting room, I studied the people. There is probably no better cross section of the Israeli public than a government office. The room was a hodge podge of different communities: ultra Orthodox, ultra secular, Russian and American immigrants, Arab residents of East Jerusalem. A majority of the women seemed pregnant, or so it appeared from a quick sampling.  

After about an hour we got called up the station 4. “Good afternoon,” I said in my best Hebrew with a sprig in my verbal step. Yardena, whose nametag indicated she was the head of the division, managed a wan upturn of a lip.

Yardena asked Amir some questions, took his papers and pictures and asked to see his passport. All the while other clerks were asking her questions or thrusting applicants’ papers in her face.

Although chaotic, everything seemed in order. She busily stamped and signed this document and that. And then she cried: “Oy! I cancelled your passport by mistake.”

Horror spread across our faces. “But he’s traveling overseas in two days!” I said.

Cancelling a passport is not an error that can easily be rectified. Yardena in her confusion had gone so far as to cut the corners of his passport to make it invalid. Even though Amir has dual Israeli and American citizenship, an Israeli citizen needs to leave and enter the country on his Israeli passport.

Yardena thrust a yellow paper in front of us. It was an application for a new passport. “Do you have two more photos?” she asked. Fortunately Amir did. We quickly filled in the form. Yardena meanwhile was working the phone. She dialed then hung up and redialed the number of an official in the passport department at least 50 times, all the while avoiding eye contact with us.

Finally, Yardena got up, took our paperwork and hustled out of the room. My mind began to imagine the worst. Amir would miss his flight. The airline would rebook him and charge us double. The passport would take weeks to arrive in the mail.

Yardena didn’t come back for a quarter of an hour while we sat alone at her desk stewing as the office of the Interior Ministry closed and the waiting room began to clear out.

Finally, Yardena returned. This time she was smiling. “It’s all taken care of,” she said. Go to room 207 and wait there. You’ll get your passport today.”

We breathed a sigh of relief and thanked her, although I’m not exactly sure what for. 10 minutes later we walked out with Amir’s new passport, “hot off the press,” Amir remarked. I thought of bagels.

Instead we went back to the coffee shop and ordered another round of ice coffees (I had vanilla, Amir had white chocolate, we both asked for extra whipped cream to celebrate). It was a semi-sweet reward for several days of dealing with the worst of Israeli bureaucracy. Coming up next: Amir gets his driver’s license. I shudder even thinking about visiting the local DMV.

If you missed my other post this week on the bulldozer terror attack, please click here or visit: http://www.thisnormallife.com/blog/_archives/2008/7/22/3804787.html

Amir and I were downtown when the police cars and ambulances started zooming past us, their sirens blaring. We had just finished an ice coffee at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and were waiting at a bus stop to go home.

One after another, the police sped down Jaffa Road. There must have been at least 100 vehicles in just a few minutes. The reason was clear: there had been a terror attack. But we didn’t know what or where.

I called Jody to see if she had any information. She had been with a client and hadn’t listened to the news. Next I called home to make sure the kids were safe. They were. I asked Merav to check the web. There was nothing. All the while the sirens continued to whiz past. We began to speculate on what had happened.

Was it a suicide bomber on a bus? An explosion at a cafe? The police all seemed to be heading in the direction of the King David Hotel. Wasn’t British Prime Minister Gordon Brown staying there? Had U.S. Democratic candidate Barack Obama already arrived. About that time, my cell phone died, leaving us incommunicado.

The bus came and we got on. The driver had the radio turned up loud and every alighting passenger asked if he’d heard anything. He hadn’t. The news reported everything was as usual (as usual as things can be in Israel).

At the corner of King David and Agron Streets, the police had blocked off the road. We were directed into a monumental traffic jam heading up the hill. We thought we’d turn left onto Keren Hayesod at the summit, but instead we were forced to turn right, back to where we’d come from. We got out and decided to walk.

As we approached Liberty Bell Park, the streets were beginning to fill up. Photographers toting cameras with telescopic lenses, reporters with microphones, a video crew all raced past us on foot. A helicopter hovered overhead.

Traffic was blocked, but pedestrians were getting through. At the foot of King David Street, opposite the King Solomon Hotel, a large crowd had gathered. Police were everywhere. Hundreds of onlookers were sneaking under the police tape to get closer. The atmosphere was like a rock concert, only somber. And still we didn’t know anything.

We pushed our way through the crowd. Finally, a glimpse of destruction. Two crushed cars and a gargantuan yellow tractor. An apparent copy cat attack of the one three weeks ago where a Jerusalem Arab plowed a tractor into a bus downtown killing 3. There were rumors in the crowd that a bus had been flipped here too, but we didn’t see it.

We stayed for a while, craning our necks, trying to learn more, then finally we headed back home. I checked Haaretz, The Jerusalem Post, YNET. The story was now up. The similarities to the previous attack were chilling. Bulldozer on the rampage. Driver shot dead by a civilian, followed by a policeman. 16 wounded, one in serious condition.

The bulldozer driver had apparently been working just around the corner in nearby Yemin Moshe, one of Jerusalem’s most fashionable and expensive neighborhoods. Two accomplices fled and the police were sealing off any possible escape routes.

Immediately after the attack, politicians began calling for a ban in the employment of East Jerusalem Arabs as construction workers in the city. But how? Jerusalem these days is one big construction zone. Bulldozers abound. Do we need to fear walking past a new building going up like we once avoided cafes and buses? What means will the terrorists use next?

Amir went down to his room to continue researching his options for when he joins the army. He has his placement interview and examination in just over two weeks. Then he’ll be part of the force protecting the rest of us from such heinous attacks. Merav and Aviv were watching TV, oblivious to what was going on just a few minutes away from our house.

In another hour we have guests coming from overseas for a pizza party. Tonight I have a conference call with the States. Just another day in Jerusalem. Life goes on. But a normal life? Never.

For the last several months, I’ve been seeing a lovely Chilean woman named Anchela. Now before you get all up in arms, it’s purely platonic. Anchela is my Alexander Technique therapist.

As part of the tikkun for my new office chair (see my previous post here), I’ve started a regimen to address my aching back. Developed by Frederick Matthias Alexander at the end of the 19th Century, the technique aims to improve posture and relieve back pain by recognizing and overcoming “reactive, habitual limitations in movement and thinking.”

Alexander was a Shakespearean orator who developed problems with losing his voice. After doctors told him there was no physical cause, he observed himself in the mirror where he realized he was needlessly stiffening his whole body in preparation to recite or speak. He noted that other individuals experiencing voice problems would tighten the muscles of the upper torso, especially the neck; he suggested that this pattern of tensing would rotate the head backwards and downwards in relationship to the spine and disrupt efficient overall body alignment. It took 8 years for Alexander to solve his own voice problems. He then applied his technique to a variety of posture and back related problems.

Alexander was as interested in changes in perception as he was in physical treatment. My sessions with Anchela include both bodywork done while lying on a table and instructions on how to stand up and sit down.

My Alexander Technique lessons come under the umbrella of Maccabi Tivi, the alternative health care branch of our local HMO. Set in a dank downtown Jerusalem mall, the Macabi Tivi office is a sanctuary, a breath of incense-scented air, flickering candles and soft Windham Hills-tinged music piped in through the ubiquitous stereo that permeates the entire space. The center offers acupuncture, chiropractic treatment, herbs, nutrition consulting and more. And it’s cheap. 10 sessions with Anchela cost me a little over $200.

The Alexander Technique stresses “lengthening” the body. The exercises and treatment are all about stretching and developing better posture. Lying on the table, Anchela pulls at my feet, dangles my arms and swivels my neck. It’s like a massage but gentler. And all the while we talk.

I have learned over the months that Anchela met her Israeli husband while he was backpacking in South America and followed him here. She doesn’t have the kindest words for post-army Israelis on tiyul. “They don’t stop and see the scenery,” Anchela told me one time. “It’s like they’re always rushing to get to the top of a mountain so they can plant the Israeli flag there and then rush back down again.”

I also learned that Anchela lives in the suburb of Modi’in, has a 17 year old son who studies at the Omaniyot arts school in Jerusalem, a 12 year old daughter who just celebrated her bat mitzvah, and that she doesn’t like snow (now there’s something we have in common). And that Anchela is Spanish for Angela.

That’s what’s great about going to the doctor in Israel. It’s so casual, much more so than in North America. In addition to our personal chats, Anchela comes dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. The waiting area is scattered with chairs in no particular order. Anastasia, the Russian-born staffer at the front desk has a caustic wit and heaven forbid you should be late.

There’s also something about the medical experience in Israel that emphasizes how much of a melting pot this part of the world is. A Chilean therapist treating an immigrant from California taking direction from a tough Russian, that’s got to account for something.

Anchela and I speak in English – her Hebrew is fluent, mine not so (but getting there). Even so, I don’t always understand what she’s saying. “Keep your hips loose. Don’t fall into your chest. Keep your neck back and your head up,” she says encouragingly. How do you keep your neck back and your head up at the same time? It’s like walking and chewing gum. Chevy Chase used to make fun of Gerald Ford on Saturday Night Live that way. I nod and pretend I understand what she’s talking about.

During our last visit, I was distracted by some issues at work. I had to think up a response for a software development problem we were having at the company. Lying on the table, I was more taciturn than usual when Anchela burst out, “You’re doing great. Better than ever!”

I told her my mind was elsewhere. “Maybe that’s what you need,” she said. “Now let your arms be free, no resistance, just let them hang.” I complied with a little more gusto, having received such high praise.

Next week will be my last session with Anchela. I’ve used up the annual allotment of treatments that the HMO provides. Am I cured? Not quite, though my back no longer aches and my chair has become more friend than foe.

I’ll miss Anchela. I’ll miss our chats and her soft voice, but most of all I’ll miss my new friend.

Some have called it a monstrosity. To others it’s a thing of beauty. One thing’s for sure: the new Bridge of Strings at the entrance to Jerusalem, which was formally dedicated two weeks ago in a multi-million dollar ceremony, has generated a huge amount of controversy both online and with the general public at large.

One thing everyone can agree on, though: it is a striking piece of architecture. The NIS 246 million bridge, designed by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, was built to provide an uninterrupted overpass for the city's new light rail line, slated to start running in 2010. The white bridge is held up in the air along the entire length of its 360 meters by 66 iron strings that descend gracefully from a 188-meter high tall spire that towers over its surroundings.

Calatrava is no stranger to bridge building – he has built more than 40 around the world, including, most recently, a bridge nearing completion over the Grand Canal in Venice. The bridge in Jerusalem, he said, is his unquestionable favorite, reminding him of a harp or a tent in the desert.

The design of the bridge is not the problem, say local architects; it’s the location. “It’s impossible to see the bridge in its full glory,” explained architect Hillel Schocken to the Haaretz newspaper.

“The bridge has no room to breathe,” added architect Saadia Mandel. It “needs a giant living space so that we’ll be able to sense it.”

Mandel and Schocken are quite right. The bridge is boxed in by some truly ugly apartment buildings, the kind where laundry hangs down from the balconies. From the main entrance to the city, all you can is the bridge’s tall white spire; its delicate strings only come into view when you are nearly upon them.

Possibly realizing that its surroundings might not do it justice, Jerusalem City Hall handed out a colorful pamphlet at the inauguration ceremony with a computer-simulated image of the bridge in the future, surrounded by two modern high-rises that do not yet exist.

Jerusalem architect and historian David Kroyanker, while liking the bridge in general, nevertheless wondered why Jerusalem needs a new landmark “in order to brand itself. (Jerusalem) is a historical city thanks to its walls, the Dome of the Rock and its churches.”

Local pundit and comedian Jackie Levy also appreciates the bridge, calling it “a spectacular and interesting creation in and of itself.” However, he went on in an article in the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot, “this bridge is the kind of luxury that is given as a gift to someone who already has everything.” Jerusalem, he explained, is lacking in so many things that a bridge of this magnitude, whose price tag tripled over the course of its construction, is “pretentious and wasteful.”

However, not all the opinions were negative. Architect Kroyanker hopes the bridge will contribute to the city’s modernist image. “This doleful city deserves some secular symbolism,” he said. And he is relieved that “nothing worse” was done. “In Jerusalem, there has been a tendency over the last few years to integrate elements that I call 'ultra-Orthodox aesthetics,' like the menorah, the Star of David," he said. "The bridge is the least of all evils."

My own opinion on the bridge is positive. I agree that it is out of character in its bleak surroundings, but the entrance to Jerusalem has always struck me as pitifully uninspiring with its narrow winding road ending in a profusion of plebeian traffic lights and pedestrian traffic.

The northern entrance to San Francisco, where I grew up, is flanked by the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. The New York skyline never fails to draw gasps from visitors approaching it from all sides. Even our own little Tel Aviv has its share of skyscrapers and a wide highway flowing into its bowels (not to mention a huge billboard from Chabad proclaiming the Lubavitcher Rebbe as the messiah – only in Israel!).

If the Bridge of Strings can add a little grandeur to Jerusalem, it may be able to restore some of the pride that we have lost as the city gets poorer and dirtier. A simpler, more traditional bridge might have saved money, but it’s not the sort of statement that would proclaim to the world that we are about more than ancient relics, that we are a modern metropolis full of verve and creativity.

That’s a tall task for a bridge but it should be pointed out that Paris’ venerable Eiffel Tower was also derided as a “monstrous and purposeless installation in the heart of our capital city." It is my hope that, in time, Jerusalem’s Bridge of Strings may become similarly beloved.