On Wednesday, October 4, I gave a colloquium talk at Bar-Ilan University, which is near Tel Aviv. After the talk was over, I needed to go to Jerusalem. Ariel Felner, one of the Ph.D. students at Bar-Ilan, lives in Jerusalem, and he volunteered to give me a ride.

Ariel is very proud to be an 8th-generation resident of Jerusalem -- his family was living there before Israel existed! When I told him that Thursday was the only day I would be in Jerusalem, he protested that one day wouldn't be enough time to see Jerusalem adequately. He said that if I could remain there until Friday (the first day of the Israeli weekend), he could show me around that day.

I rearranged my schedule so I could remain in Jerusalem on Friday the 6th, and Ariel took me sightseeing Friday morning. He did a very nice job -- among other things, he took me to some history museums that helped me make sense of the things I had seen the day before. Thanks again, Ariel!

Each image is a "thumbnail" - click on it to see the full-sized image.

	Sarit Kraus was the host for my colloquium talk at Bar-Ilan University on Wednesday, October 4. Here she is that day in her office.		A view from the balcony of my room at the Jerusalem Inn, early in the morning before Ariel arrived.
	Security forces assembling in the Jewish Quarter of the old city. Israeli security forces were on alert because October 6 was the Muslim "day of rage" and people expected that some violence might occur. For the same reason, there were very few tour groups on the streets that day. At one of the museums we visited, we were the only visitors there!		Security preparations at the Western Wall. The area was quiet in the morning when we were there -- but there was some violence there that afternoon after the Muslim religious services were over.
	The tomb of one of the architects of the current wall around the old city.		A view of the Montefiore windmill. The reason it's a bit blurry is because I had to do some severe cropping to get this picture.
	The "Tower of David." I'm not entirely sure why it has this name, since it seems to have nothing to do with David. However, the grounds around the tower house a very nice historical museum, which gave me a much better idea of Jerusalem's history.		At the Tower of David museum, there also was a wonderful exhibit of glassworks by Dale Chihuly.
	Just inside the wall around the old city.		A view of Jerusalem from near the Israel Museum. We had planned to see an art exhibit in the museum, but it was too crowded.
	Ariel Felner, outside the bus station where he dropped me off so I could catch a bus to Hod HaSharon.		Ariel Felner and me.

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Epilogue:

On Friday afternoon after Ariel and I parted, I took a bus from Jerusalem to Hod HaSharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv where my friend Amnon Lotem and his family live. At several different places along the way, individual soldiers got on and off the bus. Since military service is compulsory in Israel, I think they probably were going home. The Israeli soldiers carry machine guns even when they're off-duty: it felt odd to me to have people riding on the bus with machine guns, but it seems to be a normal occurrence here.

On the way, the bus went through the Tel Aviv airport. The bus stopped at the airport entrance, a security guard (again with a machine gun) got on and made an announcement in Hebrew, and a few people got off the bus. Since I don't know any Hebrew, I didn't pay much attention to what was going on. Presently the guard got back on the bus, and started questioning each of the people on the bus, one at a time. Since I was sitting in the front row, I was the third person he questioned. I replied that I didn't speak Hebrew, and then he asked in English if I had a bag under the bus. I replied that I did, and he asked me to get off and identify it. I got off the bus, and found that all the people who had gotten off were still there, waiting along with their bags. Mine was the only bag still underneath the bus. I identified it, and we all got back on the bus and the bus continued its journey. If I hadn't gotten off to identify the bag, I imagine they would have taken it and blown it up!