This week in Jerusalem: Peggy Cidor’s round-up of city affairs

As the plan to drastically transform the entrance of the city moves into its next stage of implementation, prepare for significant impact on incoming and outgoing traffic.

By PEGGY CIDOR
FROM THE ‘human tapestry’ that is ‘Nine Measures’: ‘Office,’ inkjet print, 1983. (photo credit: Courtesy)
FROM THE ‘human tapestry’ that is ‘Nine Measures’: ‘Office,’ inkjet print, 1983.
(photo credit: Courtesy)
Detour ahead
As the plan to drastically transform the entrance of the city moves into its next stage of implementation, prepare for significant impact on incoming and outgoing traffic. Shazar Blvd. will be blocked at the String Bridge. Alternate routes will be designated, but traffic issues are likely to become more common there in the next three years. Public transportation will be prioritized and some of the roads leading to the city exit will be barred for private cars. The grand project, whose budget stands at NIS 1.4 billion, is expected to create about 65,000 new jobs in hotels, tourism and business and will add a vast amount of office space. Traffic changes are scheduled to begin on July 1.
Tone it down
Three years of negotiations have yielded an agreement on the issue of a call announcing Shabbat in most of the city’s neighborhoods, including primarily secular ones. City council member Arieh King (United Jerusalem), who holds the Environment portfolio, announced that the proposal that has gained the approval of all sides is that speakers in neighborhoods will play Shabbat songs to announce the time for Shabbat at a moderate sound level for about 10 minutes. This should eliminate the pirate speakers installed without permits that play songs loudly for about an hour until Shabbat starts. Sources at Safra Square indicated that this solution might be a model to solve a similar problem with high-volume loudspeakers calling Moslems for prayer five times daily, including at night, disturbing many neighbors.
The 90% solution
“Nine Measures,” an exhibition at the Agrippas 12 Gallery, is about Jerusalem and its unique beauty. Born in London, artist Ruth Schreiber has lived and worked in Jerusalem for almost 40 years. In this exhibition, Schreiber presents a corpus of theme-related works of art from different periods. “I collect and extract measures and samples from the city’s genetic code and its human tapestry,” she explains about her work, which attempts to decipher the verse “Ten measures of beauty descended to the world, nine were taken by Jerusalem” (Talmud: Kiddushin 49b). Through photography, video, painting, sculpture and embroidery, Schreiber’s corpus of work provides a personal, mostly urban, visual lexicon. She explores her place within the reality and the feelings of belonging and strangeness that accompany her in that process. A gallery talk will take place on June 21 at noon; the exhibition will run until June 29.
Swimming in Beit Hanina
The municipality is moving forward with its plan for a public swimming pool – the city’s seventh – for the Beit Hanina neighborhood. The project will include a business area at the site that will bring meaningful change the center of the large neighborhood in the north of the city. Architect Nahman Etchtein planned the NIS 60m. pool complex, which is a part of a larger plan to add public pools across the city where swimming lessons for students will be given as part of a comprehensive project to increase the sports involvement of the young generation. The half-Olympic-sized pool in Beit Hanina will include a shallow area for small children, plus a gym.


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