A walk to the playground

Yesterday we walked down to our local playground. On our way we noticed black smoke rising from the local Arab village. Apparently they started a fire, perhaps to celebrate the Jewish New Year, but more likely to harass the Jewish soldiers on duty at the checkpoint.

The village view from the playground (not taken yesterday).
The smoke came from just below the orange-roofed building on the right.

As we played hide and seek with Cassidy we heard loud pops, and looking down we saw the Arabs shooting fireworks at the soldiers. We stood around with a group of people watching and soon a man from our neighborhood, presumably in his thirties, struck up a conversation with Tom. He's an observant American Jew who used to teach Jewish philosophy in the Old City but now runs a business. As a side note he said the local Israeli municipality built a playground down in the village of Shuafat but the locals burned it down, so the Arabs sometimes come up to French Hill for the playground. A similar thing happened when the municipality built a post office in Shuafat, except they firebombed it. I guess they really like French Hill.

He then asked Tom about himself and Tom responded by telling him of his university studies into the Jewishness of Yeshua. They had an interesting discussion about the historical Yeshua, in which Tom described Yeshua as wearing tzitziyot (the traditional fringes that this man was wearing). Never a dull moment.

As we walked home the black smoke was dying down and the fireworks had ceased. I guess it's just another Rosh Hashanah in Jerusalem.