Life in the eternal capital of the Jewish People has its funny side.

STREET WISE
The taxi in which I was riding was approaching my destination in a neighborhood that included a cluster of streets named after the Biblical kings of Judah, such as Hizkiyahu (Hezekiah), and another cluster named after the Hasmonean (Maccabean) heroes and their line, including the father of the five Maccabean brothers, the priest Mattityahu (Mattathias), who launched the revolt against the Greek-Syrian occupiers of Eretz Yisrael nearly 20 centuries ago.

The driver reported to the dispatcher on the intercom that he would shortly be available for another call.

The dispatcher told, the driver to proceed - after letting me off - to Hizkiyahu Hamelech (King Hezekiah) Street.

Because of the static, the driver apparently didn't hear clearly, and he called to the dispatcher: "What did you say? Mattityahu Hamelech?"

The dispatcher snapped back over the static: "Hizkiyahu Hamelech! Mattityahu was never a king!"

PLUMBING SONG OF SONGS
My sister, Malka Jagendorf of Jerusalem, was once shopping in a hardware store. A man came charging into the store urgently looking for materials and tools to repair a burst pipe that was flooding his bathroom.

"Not to worry," said the proprietor, rapidly fetching the various required items, as he quoted from Song of Songs 8:7: "Much water cannot quench love..."

The proprietor's assistant promptly completed the verse: "...and no flood can sweep it away."

WATERS OF EDEN
My friend and his wife, American tourists, were shopping in the Supersol supermarket at the top of Agron Street. They were already at the checkout counter when his wife suddenly remembered she wanted some mineral water, a particular brand called "Mei Eden" (Waters of Eden).

She returned to the shelves, but couldn't find what she was seeking, and she called out to her husband: "Where's the Mei Eden?"

The cashier piped up: "Genesis chapter 2, verse 10."

She was right.

FAR FROM HOME
"The scoundrels!" exclaimed the Jerusalem taxi driver.

When we boarded the taxi, he had said he never heard of the place we wished to get to, but "we'll find it, God willing."

(He was bareheaded, which did not necessarily indicate anything about the extent of his religiosity or secularity.)

I noticed and remarked to him that he had no intercom in his taxi, indicating that he was not associated with any taxi fleet.

"That's right," he said. "I like my freedom. I drive where and when I want, and I don't have to answer to anyone or share my earnings with anyone."

We had hailed him in the Kiryat Hayovel neighborhood in southwestern Jerusalem, where we live, as he was heading back towards downtown Jerusalem about three kilometers away. When I asked him where he lived, it transpired that at the point where he had picked us up he was a 30-40 minute drive from his home in the Neveh Ya'acov neighborhood in northeastern Jerusalem.

I said: "You're pretty far from home."

"You call this far from home?!" he exclaimed sarcastically. "For 2,600 years I was even farther from home. Two thousand six hundred years ago Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylonia sent us into exile. But we never - never! - let go of the connection with Jerusalem!"

MESSIAH AND THE CABBIE
My friend Dr. Jenny Weil of Jerusalem was chatting with a taxi driver about his never having been abroad.

He was bareheaded, and there was nothing in his demeanor that suggested he might be religious. Jenny asked: "Aren't you at all curious to see some of the world?"

The cabbie replied that he had no intention whatever of going abroad, not even for a brief visit. "It'll be just my luck," he explained, "that davka when I'm abroad Messiah will come, and I want to be here when he comes!"

BERLIN BUT NOT GERMANY
One of Jerusalem's streets is named for Rabbi Haim Berlin (1832-1912), who had settled here in 1906, and was head of Jerusalem's Ashkenazi community during the last three years of his life.

My friend Rabbi William Eidelsberg, who had recently come from his native New York with his wife to settle in Jerusalem, was looking for Rabbi Berlin's street in the city's Kiryat Shmuel neighborhood. He stopped an elderly lady and asked: "Can you please tell me where Berlin Street is?"

She replied indignantly: "What do you mean, 'Berlin Street'?! Do you think you are in Germany? Here you must say Rabbi Berlin Street!"

BAD RENDEZVOUS
I was awaiting my turn in the Leumit Health Fund clinic. Two men came along and sat down next to me. One was telling the other that he was not there for himself, but had accompanied his elderly mother; she, however, had wanted to go up the stairs to the third floor alone, without his help.

Soon the mother came along, saw her son and started shuffling toward him.

Suddenly she noticed the other man, whom she knew, and said to him in Old Jerusalem-style Yiddish: "Vos toost doo doh?! Dir vill ich in Bays Hamikdosh zayn, nit in Kupat Holim!" / What are you doing in this place? You I want to see in the rebuilt Temple performing your priestly functions, not in any medical clinic!"