Nahlaot

The story of the great afternoon I enjoyed last Thursday began far from Jerusalem... A really good friend of mine studding his PhD in Economics in Chicago, Asier, had the great idea to introduce me Naomi, an Israeli living also there who was coming back home for the holidays. After crossing some mails, Naomi suggested meeting and walking around the neighborhood of Nahlaot. That allowed me to discover this amazing area and to get to know a really nice and interesting girl.

Nahlaot is a colorful neighborhood of narrow streets and Arabic style stone houses settled in the heart of Jerusalem’s downtown. The area retains much of its original architecture from the 19th century, and most of the new buildings keep the old lines. The neighborhood was planned to accommodate the Yemenite, Kurdish, Jerusalem Sephardi and Greek Jews and that’s the reason why you can still find many synagogues of each of these communities. On Thursday, this lovely area was magnified by the numerous presence of hanukiot of any forms and sizes that burn in this specific time of the year. Naomi and I walked around without direction counting hanukiot, meeting many tour groups, having long conversations about many things and enjoying the beauty of the views and the aureole of the place.

Later on, her brother Jonathan joined us and this way we could go on with the tour but with the guidance of a local. The tour ended at Jonathan’s house and there I knew his girlfriend and their juggler cat, and saw some of their paintings -by the way, if you want to enjoy his pictures click here-. After some conversations –mostly about religion-, we met her sister Ayallen and finished the tour with a delicious shawarma. To sum up, it was a great afternoon plenty of nice views and enriching talks. By the way, in the picture you can see Jonathan and Naomi and the biggest hanukiah we found.