In the years since my friend Sali immigrated to Israel more than 30 years ago, she has become a well-known artist there and beyond. Although she had invited me for decades, I didn’t get around to visiting Sali and her second husband until 1999, and now I cannot imagine why I waited so long.

Roaming the same ancient streets in the old city of Jerusalem, where people not so different from you and me have walked for five thousand years connects me, in a more direct, real way that reading history can, to the continuity of mankind – to the thread that runs backward among us, generation to generation.

Sometimes in Jerusalem, touching an ancient wall or running a finger along the outlines of a dice game scratched in the tile floor of a church by Roman soldiers, I have almost been able to imagine living in such a place thousands of years ago.

You can see some more of Sali’s paintings here and at her blog, Horsefeathers.

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