By The Jerusalem Post (World News) | Created at 2025-01-10 18:20:06 | Updated at 2025-01-10 22:02:48
3 hours ago
Movers and shakers in Israeli society.
By GREER FAY CASHMAN JANUARY 10, 2025 20:18
Cars come to a standstill as the light rail passes outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City
(photo credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)
ONE OF the things that one can always be sure of at a Chabad synagogue service is that there will be a lot of babies and young children. The bar mitzvah of Meir Zev Canterman, the son of Rabbi Eli and Chana Canterman, who are co-directors of Chabad of Talbiyeh and Mamilla, was no exception. There were nearly as many infants as adults.
Chabad Shabbat services tend to start later than most others, but this one started later still because the Cantermans do not have their own center and move around from place to place. They would love to have a permanent venue, but it’s more important for them to interact with people than to have a building.
The bar mitzvah service took place in the Renanim Synagogue in the Heichal Shlomo building next door to Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue.
But it couldn’t start until the regular congregants finished their service and went home.
The bar mitzvah service was led by Yisrael Hershtik, a member of the famous cantorial family. He is a good friend of the Cantermans, and his glorious operatic voice was so strong that it almost sounded as if there were a choir and not just a soloist. Here and there, he interspersed the liturgical melodies with tunes from the classics.
The Cantermans are also musical. Meir Zev, with his own fine voice and perfect enunciation, handled himself very well when he read the whole of last Saturday’s Torah reading, including the supplementary section.
When candies were thrown at him from the women’s gallery, the boys in the congregation scrambled to pick them up from the floor and throw them at him a second time around.
Like so many Chabad women, Chana Canterman is a superb cook, who often has some 20 or more people sitting around her Shabbat table. But this time, she hired a professional caterer: a French woman who prepared a sumptuous kiddush, which was not only pleasing to the palate but also to the eye in the beauty of its presentation.
The Heichal Shlomo building – which includes a museum, classrooms, offices, and a theater style auditorium replete with stage – lends itself to different events, with the entrance lobby serving as a banquet hall that has previously been used by Chabad of Rechavia for Rosh Hashanah services and for Passover Seders.
Progress in construction
■ WHILE THE President Hotel on Ahad Ha’am Street in Talbiyeh continues to function as a social space, construction is going on at a rapid pace on the adjacent plot of land where, after a long hiatus, the Alef Hotel is taking shape. It looks like it will be a boutique hotel, several of which are in various stages of completion around the city, in addition to at least four larger hotels and numerous residential projects on Jaffa and Keren Hayesod streets, as well as their surrounds.
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Some of the towers are located on the edge of Independence Park. When the first of these high-rises went up some 20 years ago, it was not as tall as the others, and the early occupants were told that nothing would close out the view. Promises, promises. These days, one can barely see the park from the street because three-quarters of it is surrounded by very tall buildings.
There is also visible progress in the remodeling of the old Knesset Building on King George Street. Destined to become the Knesset Museum, it now has all the windows and doors in place, including new entry and exit doors.
In the days when the building was known by its original name – the Froumine Building, named after a family that owned a large cookie enterprise – the members of Knesset used to go across the street to Cafe Ta’amon, which was also frequented by Jerusalem’s bohemian crowd – poets, artists, and entertainers.
Even after the Knesset moved from downtown to its present location in Givat Ram in 1966, MKs used to meet with friends at Cafe Ta’amon. If they wanted to eat something more substantial, they went around the corner to the Eden Hotel on Hillel Street. The Eden is now being converted into a much larger luxury residential complex, and the Ta’amon has been replaced by a pharmacy.
Municipality to crack down on traffic laws
■ THE JERUSALEM Municipality intends to crack down on those people who believe that laws were made to be broken. Ignoring traffic regulation is most obvious on light rail routes. It is illegal for private vehicles, both two-wheeled and four-wheeled ones, to ride along the light rail tracks – but many do. Likewise, people cross the road on the tracks against the traffic lights, which is also illegal, and the municipality wants to put a stop to these practices and has advertised this intention in the Hebrew media.
Are Jerusalem businesses doing well?
■ AT THE recent Jerusalem business conference, the impression was given that the capital is doing well. But if that’s the case, why are there so many empty shops with “For Rent” signs on the windows? Even Castro has disappeared from King George Street. The men’s wear store on one side of the street, vacated several months ago, and the women’s wear store, which was a fixture diagonally across the road, closed down last month.
But like everything else, there are exceptions to the rule. The Yehuda Patisserie, which is one of the most veteran French cake shops in the inner city, was well patronized during Hanukkah, and the lines of people queuing continued on Friday morning.
Part of the reason that some stores are going out of business is that they open too late in the morning and are too expensive.
Coffee shops open very early and do a good trade from people on their way to work. Discount stores, such as Max Stock, Gina, and Lior Adika open as early as 8 a.m. and also do well from early morning shoppers. They have a lot of attractive merchandise at prices far lower than in other stores and have obviously learned that it pays to earn less per item and sell more, than to earn more per item and sell less in total sales. These stores are never empty.
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