This week in Jerusalem

Municipal officials try to ease unbearable traffic conditions with a Begin Highway extension

By PEGGY CIDOR
traffic jam highway 1 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
traffic jam highway 1 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski)
A time for love The Jewish calendar is very well organized: After the three weeks of mourning culminating in Tisha Be’av comes Tu Be’av, Judaism’s version of Valentine’s Day, this year on August 14.
To celebrate Tu Be’av, Ma’aleh Film School’s Festival of Love will show movies, host a tisch chaired by MK Uri Orbach (Habayit Hayehudi), and offer music and street theater. The event, which takes place on Emek Refaim Street and surrounding areas, includes a lecture on the philosophy of love by the Hebrew University’s Dr. Avinoam Rosenak. People who come dressed in white will be eligible for a raffle for a trip (for two, of course) to a destination in Europe. Tickets cost NIS 55 at the Ginot Ha’ir Community Center. For more information: 566-4144.
And now, a time for jazz It is barely halfway through summer, and at the municipality there is apparently genuine concern that young, and older, residents might feel the need for yet another outdoor cultural event. So here they are, with a line-up of six evenings of contemporary and popular jazz music programs – all performed by local artists and musicians. Every Thursday at 9 p.m. throughout August and September at the Shimon Ben-Shetah pedestrian mall it will be all that jazz, free of charge, late into the night throughout August and September.
Begin the second The Begin Highway will soon be extended towards the south, the municipality announced this week. City architects and planners hope this will ease the unbearable traffic in the city. The new segment will be built in several stages, the first being a new road that will connect the Golomb junction (between Kiryat Hayovel and Ramat Sharett) with the railway station at Malha. Later, roadworks to widen the road between the Kiryat Moshe and Golomb junctions will begin.
The work will cost NIS 1 billion and will be carried out by the municipal Moriah company.
The new segments will include two tunnels and two bridges. After the extension is completed, the highway will connect Gilo to the Malha railway station, with an access road connecting to Malha mall.
The Begin Highway will be extended to 12 km. with an estimated completion date of 2015.
A song, and a date to remember
Poet Eliaz Cohen never thought his latest poem would have such an impact and inspire so much praise. In one of his stints in reserve duty, Cohen, who insists that the soldiers under his command learn a few words of Arabic to make the contact with the Palestinians at the checkpoints more humane, took with him a copy of one of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s last books of poetry. Deeply impressed by it, Cohen write a poem called “At the Jiftlik Checkpoint with Mahmoud Darwish,” in which he describes his love for Israel and his life as a settler in Gush Etzion while struggling for more understanding among believers from both sides.
Cohen noted that the poem was written on the third anniversary of Darwish’s death. He sent the it to Haaretz’s literary supplement, which published it. A few days later, professor of Arabic literature Faruk Moasi asked for his permission to translate it and to publish it on several Arabic literary websites, where, he says, the poem was highly acclaimed.