My Secret Jerusalem Mornings

A personal reflection of Israel with original photography

Having been a freelance translator-editor-writer, working at home, for more than twelve years here in Be’er Sheva in southern Israel, I was surprised last winter when I was offered full-time work on a much longer-term project based in Jerusalem. It sounded like an interesting change of pace, and I decided to go with it.

It went well, or seemed to, but fell apart in September, and I went back to being what I’d been for so long—a freelancer working strictly at home. Now, three months after my work with the Jerusalem project ended, it seems almost like a dream, something I fantasized.

What’s mainly giving that impression are those mornings I had to get up early, very early, to take the hour-and-a-half bus ride northeast from Be’er Sheva to Jerusalem. So early that—before the season progressed and the nights got shorter—I’d go out to the bus stop when it was still pitch-dark out. In the predawn, the familiar urban street no longer felt familiar—the buildings in an utter, mute, profound stillness, an aloof moon overhead that seemed the sovereign of this unknown, secret world.

And taking the bus northeast, I’d see the farm country come slowly out of the dark like a perfect, tranquil revelation of Arcadia—until the climax, the small orange ball of the sun standing on the horizon, with no drama, no flood of light, just a silent proclamation of day out in the farmland, seen only by me and a few other drowsy passengers. 

No, a flood of light came later—stepping out of Jerusalem’s central bus station into an early, cold morning on Jaffa Street; a cascade of golden light such as I’ve seen only in that city and is certainly one of the secrets of its renown. There was still some time before work—maybe I’d risen a little earlier than I’d really needed to; time to sit outside at a café further down Jaffa and have a breakfast of pastry and a scalding-hot cappuccino-on-soy-milk. With a feeling of: “This is where I am”; pretty old, a lot of ups and downs, but able to exult in such a morning as simply and purely as if I was still a kid.