Jerusalem

A man concealing an assault rifle and handgun in a box slipped into a cherished Jewish seminary here and opened fire in the library Thursday night, killing eight people in the deadliest attack in Israel in nearly two years. Witnesses said the assault lasted more than 10 minutes before a seminary student and an off-duty army officer killed the gunman, identified by police as a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem.

Barack Obama's visit to the Western Wall was a public event. The handwritten prayer the presidential candidate left there was meant to be private. But as soon as he doffed the requisite skullcap and left, a snoop pulled a folded piece of paper from a crevice in the ancient wall and offered it to the mass-circulation daily Maariv.

On Thursday afternoon in West Jerusalem you could actually hear the birds chirping. There were no motors roaring and no construction equipment pounding. The silence was almost startling. Yom Kippur, which started Wednesday at sundown and ended Thursday, brought much of Israel to a once-a-year standstill. The annual holiday, which means Day of Atonement, is marked with fasting and prayer by Jews worldwide. But here in the Jewish state, its effects reach into every aspect of life.

Nearly 150 years after Russian Czar Alexander II bought a large plot of land in Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert arrived in Moscow last week bearing a gift: the deed. The move by the outgoing Israeli leader, after decades of dispute on the issue, has caused an uproar here over the timing and, more significantly, the idea of yielding parts of Jerusalem -- a serious red line in this country.

Jerusalem's voters Tuesday ended five years of ultra-Orthodox rabbinical leadership at City Hall, choosing as mayor a secular businessman who has promised to reverse the city's slide into poverty and the exodus of its Jewish population. Israel Radio said near-complete returns gave self-made millionaire Nir Barkat an unbeatable lead over Rabbi Meir Porush and two other candidates.

To me, travel means trying to understand places, appreciating them for what they are, and making them my own. But sometimes my ability to do that breaks down. It happened in Jerusalem, one of the oldest, most revered and emotional cities in the world. Modern West Jerusalem, with its restaurants, shops, hotels and museums, was not the problem. But the Old City -- a 0.

WE were fighting the whole night between the 5th and 6th of June. We entered the city from three sides. My regiment went in from the side of the Rockefeller Museum. I was shooting through a window and a Jordanian shell fell near me. Some people were killed. I was wounded in the head by a piece of shrapnel and evacuated to Hadassah hospital. A day later I heard on the radio that Israeli paratroopers had reached the Western Wall. I said to the guy lying next to me, 'Moti, let's run away.'

THE shooting started around 2 in the morning [of June 7]. My brother was living upstairs and I had told him to come to our apartment because it's on the ground floor. I thought it would be more protected, but it wasn't. Most of the glass was broken because of the explosions. It was terrible. The windows, tiles and furniture were in bad shape.... We had to keep quiet and not move in order to protect ourselves. We were afraid of the unknown: What type of soldiers are they? What do they want?

AS a young paratrooper 40 years ago, Moshe Amirav felt the unmistakable touch of history. Ignoring a minor head wound suffered in the capture of East Jerusalem from Jordanian forces, Amirav raced through the winding lanes of the Old City to join jubilant fellow soldiers at the Western Wall. It was June 7, 1967. Overcome with the sense that God had finally brought the Jews home, he scribbled "Shalom," or peace, on a slip of paper and tucked it between the iconic stones.

ISSA Natsheh watched warily from his West Bank suburb when Israel began building a concrete barrier along the fringes of Jerusalem four years ago. As the partition slowly took shape, Natsheh grew increasingly worried that he would be cut off for good from the city of his birth. Powerless to stop the construction, Natsheh did what he could: He moved back into Jerusalem.