Posing in Tunnel 3A

When our kids were young, we had a videotape they used to love called “Road Construction Ahead” which was all about, well, road construction. It featured hard hats, tractors and lots of concrete.

The truth is, I loved it too – I’m a nut when it comes to anything in the stages of being built – highways, bridges, airports. So, when the annual Jerusalem-area “Houses from Within” event featured a tour of one of the tunnels currently being dug out for the fast train line from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, there was no question I’d be there.

Houses from Within began in 2007 with the aim of allowing Jerusalemites to peek inside beautiful houses that would normally be for the enjoyment of their owners only. The two-day event has expanded to include more than 100 homes as well public facilities (you can tour City Hall or the Jewish Agency), educational institutions (check out Beit Avi Chai or the Mormon Center on the Mount of Olives), museums, churches, hotels (a boutique inn in Ein Kerem, the half built Palace Hotel) and now, apparently, train tunnels (that fits the description of “within” though they’re not exactly a house).

The fast train, which will zip between Israel’s two largest cities in an astounding 28 minutes (compare that with the current train which clocks in at nearly two hours), has been an engineering challenge to say the least, and includes five tunnels in total. We were allowed entrance to Tunnel 3A, the second to last tunnel on the way into Jerusalem.

The 9/11 Memorial outside of Jerusalem

The tunnel is located adjacent to a little known monument memorializing the 9/11 attacks in New York, perched on a hill in the middle of nowhere (the murky directions towards the site called for us to go “straight at the T Junction”).

Once inside the construction fence, we walked into one of two 820-meter long tunnels. The ground was still rough (the rails won’t be laid until much later) and the makeshift fluorescent lights on either side reminded me of a Dr. Who episode that scared the dickens out of me when I was ten.

There are two tunnels to handle trains going in each direction. Why not save money and bore only a single tunnel? Two tunnels make it safer in case of a disaster and would allow the trains to keep running, our engineer and tour guide Sagi told us. While he explained that he was referring to a fire, living in Israel, it was hard not to think about the possibility of a terror attack as well.

Another Israeli aspect to the tour: the Houses from Within program stated that only 20 people would be let into the tunnels at a time, and they’d have to wear hard hats and reflective vests. But Sagi took about 50 of us in and there were two similarly sized groups already inside. No helmets, vests or waivers in case a boulder fell on someone’s head (none did).

Near the end of the tour, one of the participants asked whether the fast train’s construction (due to be completed in 2017) would be finished before the still-delayed Jerusalem light rail is fully functional. “Without a doubt,” Sagi quipped.

Whether that turns out to be the case, I’ll be the first in line to book my ticket. And when we pass through Tunnel 3A, I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren I was there.

This post about the train tunnel appeared over the weekend on Israelity.

Ori Lachmi from the Israeli TV hit "Srugim"

The young man in the light purple shirt and the small knitted kippa looked awfully familiar. He was sitting in the row in front of us at the chuppa of the daughter of close friends. My wife Jody went up to him. “I recognize you, but I can’t place from where,” she said.

He held out a hand. “Ori Lachmi.” Jody continued her quizzical look. “Maybe from ‘Srugim,’” he offered. “Of course!” she blushed, shook his hand and sat down. I did the same, adding “I recognized you immediately,” although I hadn’t.

Lachmi played the character of Ro’i, doctor Nati’s religious gay brother, on the popular Israeli TV series, Srugim. He had one of the only good roles in the show’s rather dreary second season, creating a believable persona and raising some issues that are usually swept under the unpolitically correct carpet in the God-fearing world.

As the real-life wedding proceeded towards the meal and into the dancing, I kept my eye out for Lachmi. Despite the fact I grew up in California, I’ve never seen – or cared much – about movie stars. The last time I was in the presence of a celebrity, it was David Schwimmer who played Ross on Friends, at a sushi bar and frankly it was no big deal. The tempura didn’t taste any different. But this was Ro’i – from my all-time favorite Israeli show.

“You’re a bit smitten, aren’t you?” Jody commented. “Go up and talk to him.” “What would I say?” I replied. “Anyway, I’d get all flustered with the Hebrew.”

When I got home, though, I did what any good journalist with a crush would do – I googled him. It turns out that Lachmi is a local Jerusalem boy who grew up religious (unusual on Srugim where all the actors playing religious Israelis are actually totally secular).

Lachmi attended the religious Horev schools (where a number of children of our friends go) but got into hot water after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated when he set up a memorial corner without official school permission. He was suspended from the student council for three months and some students compared him with Rabin’s killer, Yigal Amir, saying they “both took the law into their own hands,” Lachmi told Maariv NRG in a 2010 interview.

He subsequently transferred to the Hartman High School (from which our oldest son graduated). Lachmi majored in theater.

As upset as Lachmi was from his treatment at Horev, that wasn’t the last straw. He had received an offer to act in a film and he ran the script by his mother. There was a scene in which he had to kiss a woman. His mother vetoed his participation. It was Shabbat and “after that, I just got up, turned on the TV and turned it off, turned it on and turned it off several times,” he said. “And the sky did not fall.”

Lachmi is now a proud, but ambivalent, datlash – an Israeli acronym for someone who is formerly religious. He still visits his family regularly on Shabbatot, but says he can’t abide by stringent religious laws that require strawberries to be soaked in soap for five minutes or that forbid eating brocoli at all, for fear of ingesting forbidden worms, he told Maariv.

What was his connection to the wedding? His still religious brother is married to the groom’s sister. And, it turns out, I could have actually talked to him without getting tongue-tied – he’s half Anglo (his mother is from Australia). I did the next best thing: I friended him on Facebook. Perhaps I should now go and stalk the other actors from Srugim. I kind of have a crush on Hodaya too…

Srugim returns to Israeli screens later this month on Yes.

This article appeared yesterday on the Israelity blog.

Thursday night at White Night

On Thursday last week, Tel Aviv celebrated its 9^th annual “White Night,” a city-wide party to mark the UNESCO declaration of Tel Aviv as “the White City,” in honor of its many (white) Bauhaus-era buildings.

My wife Jody and I had never been to White Night (“Layla Levan” in Hebrew) – the throngs of revelers and infamous traffic jams scared us off. But we ventured out this year, parking near the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a 15-minute walk from ground zero: Rothschild Boulevard.

It turned out to be a good choice. Clearly, the entire city had headed outside and jammed into a several kilometer stretch of the street, one of Tel Aviv’s most beautiful with its wide park down the center and majestic trees above.

The basic set up is this: every block or so, there is a small stage where some Tel Aviv rock band trots out its tunes. Some are amateurish, while others quite good (a decent Beatles cover band played near the HaBima Theater).

Niv Kaikov

Our favorite was a singer songwriter named Niv Kaikov whose melodic, jangly-pop songs immediately caught our attention. A beaming woman – clearly smitten but much too old to be a fan – was hawking his CD for only NIS 20. “Are you his mother?” Jody asked, politically way incorrect (what if it was Kaikov’s girlfriend!) “Of course,” she said and we purchased the CD (you can also listed to Kaikov’s music on his MySpace page).

The cafes along Rotshchild were all packed, as was the Iceberg ice cream shop. After having read last year that it sold the best ice cream in town, we joined the line (actually a totally un-Israeli orderly queue) and purchased a two scoop bitter chocolate and Irish cream mix. It was good – though I can’t say if it was better than Aldo (our usual ice cream haunt).

We started our stroll around 9:30 PM when there were still lots of families, strollers and dogs out. When we left two hours later, the demographic had dropped to teens and twenty-somethings and was more wall-to-wall than a free Justin Bieber concert on the Banana Beach.

Our choice to park near the museum was not entirely to avoid the blocked off streets of central Tel Aviv. The Litvak Gallery, at 4 Berkowitz Street, had a marvelous exhibition of works from world renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly – and it was totally free for the evening (the exhibition runs until July 31 although you’ll have to pay).

And in front of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art itself was “Indie City,” a showcase of local bands on two stages (the three bands we caught a few notes of were all pretty downbeat and emo).

Oh, and to top it all off, we splurged for a dinner at Liliyot, a kosher restaurant, also in the museum area, that helps give youth-at-risk and high school drop outs a second chance (and serves up some inspired creations – imagine grilled chicken livers on toast with bananas and vanilla caramel). Not cheap but worth it.

Jody and I have a number of festivals and events we attend every year – the wine festival at the Israel Museum, the Jerusalem Film Festival and Jacob’s Ladder. Now we’ll be adding White Night in Tel Aviv to the list.

I whited the night first on Israelity.

It’s been a good week for comedy in Israel. First, the twice-a-year Comedy for Koby show has been traveling around the country to great acclaim – I blogged about it earlier this week on Israelity. And yesterday afternoon, raunchy (and embarrassingly funny) U.S. comedian Sarah Silverman improbably appeared on a panel at Shimon Peres’ “Israeli Presidential Conference” entitled “My Recipe for a Better Future” (Silverman is also performing two nights of standup next week in Tel Aviv).

But Silverman’s introduction to Israel was in a much less glamorous setting. Last night, she attended that most mundane of Israeli activities: the school play, in which her niece was on stage. I was there too: Silverman’s sister, Susan, lives around the corner from us, and our kids go to school together at Jerusalem’s Sudbury Democratic School. (Here’s a nearly 20-year-old clip of Silverman riffing on her sister’s recent marriage:)

Part time paparazzi that I am, I was feeling pretty confident as I sauntered over to Silverman and introduced myself to the controversial comic superstar. Silverman was nearly incognito in sweats and a baseball cap – but it didn’t much matter: most of the Israeli kids there probably never even heard of her. I gave her some tips on where to eat the best falafel in Israel and wished her a good trip – her first ever to Israel.

Silverman then noticed the cargo pants I was wearing and bemoaned the fact that she couldn’t get similar pants for women. She then turned to her sister and made some racy comment – which I unfortunately couldn’t completely hear – that compared my pants with a woman’s body part. Either Silverman was already in performance mode, or she just naturally wisecracks.

I mentioned that I already blogged about her on Israelity and I told her about my personal blog, This Normal Life.

“This Normal Life,” she mused. “I’ve heard of that. I’m sure I’ve been on your site.” Sure, Sarah, nice small talk. But she continued. “So…where did you come up with the name?”

“Do you really want to hear?” I asked. “It’s a sad story.”

“What, did someone die?” she said.

“Actually, yes,” I replied.

I proceeded to explain how I started the blog in 2002 after a cousin, Marla Bennett, was killed in the terrorist attack at Hebrew University and how I wanted to demonstrate to the world that, despite all the murderous atrocities in those difficult years, Israel was still a “normal” place and we were going about our normal activities, not cowering in our homes waiting for the next bomb to go off.

I then changed the subject and asked if she’s picked up any good material yet for her act.

As the Democratic kids left the stage to thunderous parental pride, I was struck by how I had shared with the famous Sarah Silverman that inherently Jewish reality, the one that is so part and parcel of everything we do in Israel, it’s even included in the Jewish wedding ceremony: that, even in our greatest joy (meeting a celebrity, shlepping nachas from our talented kids), we must always remember our sadness and suffering. At the wedding, the groom breaks a glass. Some of us blog. Ah, the vagaries of modern life in our beleaguered state.

Welcome to the real Israel, Sarah. We’re pretty normal here. Most of the time.

This post appeared on Israelity yesterday.

I’ve always suspected it. My kids seem to be permanently attached to Facebook and other social media services. Now, new research proves I’m right. And it’s not just my family – it’s the whole country.

According to a just released poll by the well regarded market intelligence firm Comscore, during April the average Israeli spent nearly 11 hours performing online social networking actions. That’s the highest in the world.

I’m not sure how to compare these poll results on Israeli behavior with the rest of the world – it seems to me that our friends in North America are just as busy updating their status and chatting as we are. But then I haven’t spent as much time watching a teenager in Los Angeles glued to his iPod Touch as I have my own kids. Indeed, the incessant ping and beep of a message arriving has become the new background music to our once analog life.

Dvir Reznik suggests that Israel’s high ranking in the Comscore poll may be because our cell phone data plans are more generous that those overseas.

Reznik is the VP of Marketing at Israeli startup Onavo, a company which compresses data to make mobile use more economical (I blogged about Onavo for Israelity when they raised a $3 million round of financing). Reznik explained that, while most Americans seem content with (or are at least forced to settle for) only a few hundred MB of data flow a month, Israelis can easily jump into the 2-5 GB range for roughly the same price. (The flip side: our out-of-country roaming charges are the fifth highest in the world).

And where is much of the social media consumption occurring? On our increasingly ubiquitous smartphones, of course.

The Comscore poll also found that Israel has the second highest relative number of social network consumers, with 90% of Internet users having their own social media profile. Canada came in with 85% while, in the U.S. and Western Europe, it was a paltry 60-70%. (The Philippines was in the top spot with 93%).

All this is fun to write about, but it’s not necessarily a good thing for the social future of humankind. An influential new book called “Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other” by Sherry Turkle has been widely quoted since its publication earlier this year.

In the book, Turkle cites some very disturbing research about how social media is adversely impacting our in-person relationships. It’s not just parents who are annoyed at their children texting at the table; kids are craving the attention of their distracted parents too. It affects the bond that forms between mother and baby during nursing, with the Imma too busy checking messages to spend time with her infant. And teenagers told Turkle that in many cases they actually prefer to chat online than to speak to a friend in person.

But for Israelis, that’s not the important take away. We’re number one, gush the newspaper reports, to a chorus of knowing “pokes.” In a world where our little country is being increasingly delegitimized, any claim to fame is welcome. And, in case you’re wondering, yes, I’ve already posted a link to this article to Facebook and Twitter.

I social media’d this piece on Israelity yesterday.

A Dry Bones aliyah cartoon from 1976 (more at www.drybonesblog.com)

In our daughter’s 12^th grade class on Monday, on the cusp between Memorial and Independence Days, her teacher asked something along the lines of “what was the most Zionist, nationalist moment, for you personally.” Merav was unsure how to answer. Many of her friends referred to their families’ aliyah.

“But I was just a baby then,” she said, and indeed she had been only a year old as she crawled her way through the oversized immigration processing hall, built to handle 2-3 planeloads of Russians all making aliyah at once, at the old Ben Gurion Airport.

I began to think how I would answer the question.Aliyah seems the logical response too – and we were old enough to appreciate what we’d done (as well as all the subsequent bureaucracy). But there are other answers I could give.

Getting my Israeli driver’s license and taking strange pride in my ability to successfully navigate Israeli traffic has definitely made me feel one with the nation.

Starting a company in 1998 and walking around the shell of our new investor-backed offices, I felt more than just an entrepreneur’s dream come true; I would soon be contributing to the Zionist enterprise by employing a staff of 15 fellow immigrants who might stay in the country due to the sweat and vision that had gone into the making of that day.

Another defining moment of Israeliness came from the tragic side. When our cousin Marla Bennett was killed in the terrorist attack on the Hebrew University cafeteria in 2002, we were thrust into the pan-Israeli world of mourners, and every year when Yom HaZicharon comes around, I feel just that much closer to my brethren.

But that’s not it either – because the terror war that killed Marla and 1,000 other Israelis in those horrible years made me just as inclined to consider fleeing to the “safety” of the old country than to stick it out here as a brave soldier in civilian clothes (obviously I didn’t flee as I’m writing here from Jerusalem).

When I started becoming non-religious at the beginning of 2000, after 25 years in the Orthodox world, I had to re-jigger my entire value system about why I was living in Israel. I found, to my delight, that it wasn’t the kosher food and the synagogue options that were keeping me here, but a deep Zionism and appreciation of the rhythm of life, the Jewish calendar, and the community that we’d built, religious or otherwise.

Travel abroad often makes the heart grow fonder, especially with the third world destinations we’ve been to recently – India, Egypt, Africa and now Nepal. Upon each of our returns, Israel seems so much saner, organized; even genteel. That feeling of coming home to our own country, warts and all, applauding when the plane touches down at the airport, always fills me with a quiet nationalistic fervor.

But by far my most Zionist moments have been our family hikes throughout Israel. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to any regular readers of This Normal Life: Aviv and I have chronicled all 12 tiyulim we did over the course of our youngest son’s bar mitzvah year (here’s the latest).

To walk the land is, in many ways, to make it your “own,” with clear Biblical roots, going all the way back to Joshua and the Israelites (although they didn’t just walk). Modern day hiking bumps into numerous archaeological sites, which add visceral detail to the history of the Jewish people in the Holy Land.

And Israelis are inculcated with a love of hiking from a very young age. Beginning in first grade, all Israeli school children head out for their tiyul shnati – the “annual trip.” The youngest just go for the day, but by high school, overnight hikes can stretch up to a week.

So, when I want to feel most Israeli, most Zionist, most connected to this country; and to imagine I not only immigrated in my thirties, but grew up in this land, I hit the trails.

That’s my answer, and I’m sticking to it. How about you? This is a great opportunity to contribute to this discussion by leaving your comments. I’d be very happy to hear.

This post was published on the Israelity blog yesterday on Yom Ha’atzmaut.

Jody and her mom Adriane find the shofars at the Beit El Yeshiva

Dr. Clue is the world’s leading team-building company specializing in treasure hunt activities. Dr. Clue is also my brother, Dave. He was just here in Israel for our youngest son Aviv’s bar mitzvah and, as his gift, he planned a special treasure hunt in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Dave normally organizes hunts for companies like law firms and hi-tech startups, as a way of prodding teams to work more cooperatively. For Aviv, it was less about group dynamics and all about fun.

A treasure hunt can open your eyes to sites you’ve never even heard about; it’s a remarkable way to get to know a city. Our route had us searching for historical plaques, obscure addresses and hidden mosaics throughout the ancient walled streets. Did you know that the Royal Austrian Post Office was located across from the Tower of David museum until 1914? Or that there are two shofars above the door to the Beit El Yeshiva? Have you ever even been to the Church or St. George or St. James Cathedral (we hadn’t)?

But before we could go scavenging, we had to answer the clues, and they were tough: 10 brain twisters including one where we had to organize monopoly cards in the right order to spell out a direction; a Morse code game with lions symbolizing dashes and zebras as dots; and a personalized food twister where recognizing the pattern of our son’s favorite dishes (from meatloaf to sushi) spelled out an address on HaNevel Street.

Sample clue: hieroglyphics

Once we’d solved all the clues, we only had an hour left to find the locations – for each minute we arrived back at the starting point past the cut-off time, we’d be docked 2,000 points. Dave had rachmanus (sympathy) on our group, which ranged in age from 48 to 74, and waived the penalty we’d accrued for being 6 minutes late. We still lost out to the teenagers. But who’s counting (OK, I was).

So, what’s the connection for readers who didn’t participate in our private family adventure? Dave is working on plans to come back and open up his Old City treasure hunts to overseas tour groups, as well as the general public. He’s already done this in countries ranging from Switzerland to Dubai; he’s even run a program on a cruise ship to the Great Barrier Reef (I’m definitely in the wrong business)!

Imagine if every visitor to Jerusalem took a morning to explore the Old City in an entirely new way – a far cry from the “follow my flag” type of tour guide-led group? What a boon it would be for the city and for engagement with the Holy Land. Nir Barkat – are you listening?

This post appeared earlier this week on Israelity.

Purim in Jerusalem…and all the restaurants are booked solid. That didn’t stop our party of 11 from joining the merrymaking mosaic of Israeli society out to celebrate the defeat of the evil Haman some 2,000 years ago.

My wife Jody had the foresight to reserve a table at the uber-popular Caffit café far in advance. There was already a line out the door for the more spontaneous in spirit. With every seat taken, the poor waiters were overtaxed and, despite the faux-hula skirt costumes and the promise of big tips, their smiles were strained.

Our waiter did his best to take all 11 orders, including multiple shared meals, amid repeated requests for ice and extra napkins.

It was as the drinks came out that it happened. I didn’t see it coming – no one did. Suddenly there was a crash and a cascade of cold sticky liquid onto my hair, face, shirt and pants. Or maybe it was the other way around. Somehow, the waiter had dropped a ceramic tray with a glass of Coke Zero onto my head.

It took me a few seconds to take in my new wet reality. Every face at the table was staring at me in shock. The waiter behind me was quickly joined by another and then the manager, all instantly offering apologies and protestations that nothing like this had ever happened before. They were probably right.

As the wait staff mopped up around me, I checked for glass – miraculously I had been spared. Had the glass cracked over my head, I could have been sitting there in my own blood not just a mess of highly caffeinated (but no calorie) chemicals and syrup.

I was remarkably sanguine about the entire incident. My daughter took me to the bathroom but the Coke was already drying. As I walked back to the table, I felt like a mini-celebrity, as the restaurant staff appeared unusually deferential – perhaps they feared a lawsuit were I to pull a glass shard out of my favorite polo shirt.

The rest of the meal went off as well as could be expected given the overcapacity crowd – slow service, a couple of mixed up orders, but a truly extraordinary fried halumi cheese and mushroom medley over a bed of caramelized onions and mashed potatoes. The restaurant brought us dessert on the house.

When it came time to pay, Jody made sure that the bill didn’t include a charge for the smashed Coke. Not that I didn’t drink it – I’m sure I imbibed a considerable amount through my pores. But next time, I’ll take a straw, please.

I first reported on my “refreshing” experience on the Israelity blog.

Hodaya, the most famous "datlashit" from the TV show "Srugim"

In the U.S. and most western countries, Jews tend to identify their religious affiliation through one of the major Jewish movements, be it Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Jewish Renewal, and even Secular Humanistic Judaism. Not so in Israel, where one’s religious standing is far more nuanced. In a country that loves army-influenced acronyms, a whole school of literary shortcuts and word play have sprung up.

The two simplest and most frequent appellations are “dati” and “hiloni” – “religious” and “secular” respectively. Within the religious category, however, there is “haredi” (“ultra-Orthodox”); “dati leumi” (“national religious” also known as “modern Orthodox” and the basis for the main characters in the hit Israeli TV drama “Srugim”); “dati lite” (religious but not too stringent, as in “I’ll kiss you and still put on tefilin in the morning”); “masorti” (“conservative” but with a lower case “c” – as in, “we keep kosher but watch a movie after Shabbat dinner”); and a pejorative label used by haredim to describe anyone less frum than them: “reformim” (no translation required).

The strangest? “Hardal” (an acronym for “haredi leumi” – for those ultra-Orthodox who also serve in the army). The funny part is that the word in modern Hebrew also means “mustard.” Does that mean that they prefer spicy condiments on their glatt kosher army rations?

Where it gets really interesting is that there is a whole new emerging lexicon of terms for religion “in transition.” For the formerly religious, there’s “datlash” (“dati l’sheavar,” literally “religious in the past”) and its parallel “hozer b’shealah” (“return to questioning”). Going in the other direction and becoming religious, you can say “hozer b’tshuva” (“returning to repentance”) or “ba’al tshuva” (a true “master” of repentance).

A religious person who believes men and women should receive equal rights to be called up to the Torah would be a “datash” (for “dati l’shivyoni,” a religious egalitarianist), while someone who thinks he or she might become religious down the road (maybe after marrying a religious person – these kinds of “mixed marriages” are becoming increasingly common in Israel – would be a “datla” for “dati l’etid” (literally “religious in the future”).

My favorite of all is a new one I just heard from an Israeli friend: “Hashash” (for “hiloni shomer Shabbat” – apparently someone who is entirely secular but also keeps the Sabbath). The word in modern Hebrew also means “fear” or “apprehension” which led my friend to say to me “I have a hashash that you are really a hashash.” Perhaps she would prefer that I was a “hozer b’shealah l’sheavar” – a religious person who becomes non-religious and then becomes religious again.

Confused? Just invent one of your own!

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My first foray into Hebrew jargon was published on the Israelity blog.

Change has come to downtown Jerusalem

It has been years since I’ve been to downtown Jerusalem at night, but it’s the “in” spot for the teenagers in our house. After our sushi dinner last week, my wife and I decided to take a walk around. Frankly, we were blown away.

I expected to find a run-down city center, its main artery decimated by years of light rail construction. What we discovered instead was a multi-block area of pedestrian walkways, upscale restaurants and seaside-style bars with lounge chairs to chill out (now if only Jerusalem had an actual sea…)

When I first came to Israel over 25 years ago, Ben Shetach Street was a dingy road with the hulking Bituach Leumi (social security) building on one side and the Meuchedet HMO down a dirty side street.

Not any more.

The block reminded me of a European walkway, no less classy than those we once frequented in Italy and France, with sidewalk bistros sporting white tablecloths and meaty menus (by which I mean, a slab of steak for NIS 150 – $40 – and up).

As we continued our exploration, we hit Yosef Rivlin Street – what my kids call “Bar Street” – which was packed with hundreds of post-high school and army young adults sipping beer and vodka and smoking large nargilas (water pipes filled with distilled tobacco and spices). Whoever said that there’s no nightlife in Jerusalem hasn’t been downtown recently.

As we strolled past more bars – interspersed with trendy art galleries – we hit the intersection with Jaffa Road known as “Cat Square,” a significantly less upscale corner – it’s where Israeli troublemakers hang out to drink and pick fights.

Mike’s Place, which started out in Jerusalem several decades ago but left a few years back to focus on its Tel Aviv flagship, has returned big time and set up shop right in the heart of Cat Square, taking over half of the old Village Green vegetarian restaurant that used to be uber-popular but whose healthy quiches and sprout salads can no longer compete with the nearby gourmet ravioli and chocolate mud pies.

A bit further west, though, the downscaling continued: the Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall seems stuck in a time warp, reminiscent of the city center I remembered from the 80s, perhaps because it’s night crawling demographics skew lower – mostly rambunctious teenagers. Nearby “Crack Square” is the English-speaking dropout immigrants’ equivalent to Cat Square – we avoided it.

Our final stop was at the Birman bar on Dorot Harishonim Street where a very tall, eccentric man was leading a band consisting of two accordion players and a violin. The man, who’s long mangled white hair seemed more appropriate for Tel Aviv than more staid Jerusalem, looked familiar.

A sign on the wall provided the answer: he was Dan Biran, who ran for mayor of Jerusalem in the most recent elections on a platform espousing that all religion was evil. I saw him deliver that speech in Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue where, I recalled, his proclamations of secular emancipation fell on deaf ears.

It was a perfect cap to a wild evening stroll through the “new” Jerusalem.

This article appeared earlier this week on the Israelity blog.