By PEGGY CIDORTeddy Stadium(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)Dump the dust In a remarkable achievement, the residents of the French Hill neighborhood, working together with their Arab neighbors from the Isawiya village nearby, have blocked the plan for a construction waste dump in their neighborhood.The planned location, in Wadi Og, was considered a threat to the health of the residents, who opposed it strongly and managed to organize an unexpected coalition. The original plan was to fill up the wadi with construction waste over the course of 20 years and to build a park on it once it was filled. But the residents refused to relent, claiming that 20 years of noise, dust and debris so near their community would ruin their quality of life.There is also a Beduin tribe that lives in the wadi which would have been covered in debris had this plan been implemented.The Hadassah University Medical Center on Mount Scopus was also part of this group of residents which opposed the plan. The National Council of the District Planning Committee formally ruled against the plan this week and has sent the municipality to search for another solution for a dump area.Modern hostilityHow does modern Jewish existence cope with a world of threats and hostility? That is what Ariel University has been looking into this week.Focusing on the success of the Jewish nation, despite numerous and repeated threats, the study attempts to explain some of these issues, which were debated by scholars from the university and from abroad. Among them were the role of education in Jewish success, the role of religion in Jewish existence, as well as asking what role legal discrimination against Jews in the Diaspora played in the nation’s development and the role of voluntary and forced migration.The reasoning for this conference was to develop renewed thinking on the teaching of Jewish culture and its power to withstand the test of time and of history, in times of globalization, technology and information. Musical familyThe Alayev family, which made aliya from Bukhara in the 1990s and was almost immediately welcomed on all the musical stages in the country, is now in the movies.Soon after their arrival, four generations – all of them musicians or singers – became popular as performers preserving and developing their ancestral musical traditions, appearing on a long list of TV shows and programs. Over the years, they reached other overseas communities and they fill up any concert hall where they perform.Now a documentary tracks this remarkable family. Papa Alayev, named after the father who founded the family musical tradition and led it to its success, was presented at the last Tel Aviv Documentary Festival – DocAviv, and was highly acclaimed. The film has arrived in Jerusalem and will be shown at the Cinematheque. Tal Barda and Noam Pinhas, the two young documentary filmmakers who made the film will be present. The screening will take place on Thursday, December 8, at 8:30 p.m.Smoke in your eyesMunicipal controllers and supervisors at Teddy Stadium will enforce laws forbidding smoking in public places. As of this week, a special unit will patrol the stadium and check for smokers entering with a lighted cigarette. They will also prevent peddlers from loitering.On their first day of duty last Thursday, the inspectors prevented four peddlers from selling merchandise close to the stadium gates, and gave no fewer than 51 citations to smokers who smoked inside the stadium. Six additional citations were given to persons who spilled alcoholic beverages inside the stadium. Twenty-six persons who were caught smoking inside the stadium were forced to pay fines.The municipal inspectors are working in cooperation with the city’s police to ensure full implementation of relevant rules.Opera at the movies The Sherover Cultural Center (which houses the Yes Planet cinema) is presenting to the public a series of operas. All of the programs will be presented in the IMAX hall specially equipped for such musical performances.The series is run as a joint project with the Israel Opera, and will offer a series for children aged four to nine. While the term “opera” has been loosely applied in recent years to include programs on the Beatles, or the hits of the Swedish rock group ABBA, the Sherover program for children – “Opera Kids” – sticks more to the concept, with works by Mozart and Rossini.The series is scheduled to run once a month (every last Monday of the month), with one show for adults and one for children.Prices: NIS 59 for children (5 p.m.) and NIS 145 for adults (8:30 p.m.)Cinema SmadarisoThe Smadar Hall was already packed about half an hour before the meeting began on Monday evening. Young, middle-aged and seniors all were well represented in the crowd.Smadar, the last neighborhood-friendly cinema in the capital, is closing. The news about the imminent demise of one of the first cinemas theater in the city – it dates back to the British Mandate, when it was called Cinema Orient – reached the Jerusalemite aficionados and brought them, concerned and saddened, to hear what, if anything, can still be done.The problem is not a lack of cinema goers; the municipality has ruled that extensive and expensive repairs must be made to the structure, mostly to the ceiling.The management and the representatives of the Lev cinema chain, of which Smadar has been a member since the last crisis seven years ago, were all at the gathering and presented to the public the facts, together with a healthy dose of nostalgia.Because Smadar is private property, taxpayer moneys cannot be used here. But the deputy mayor and holder of culture portfolio, Ofer Berkowitz (Hitorerut), who was present, gave a small reason for hope. The municipality is considering joint cultural and educational activities, which can be subsidized, with the Smadar. This, together with a significant fund-raising effort from the public and some philanthropic support, can generate the sum required for the urgently needed renovations – NIS 3 million.Meanwhile, the scheduled December 31 closing approaches.
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