The stories are also populated, of course, by new immigrants from the United States \u2014 Chicago, Ohio, Boston and other places far from the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\t These newcomers are named John and Simon, Helen, Dick and Bonnie, in sharp contrast to locals called Ovadia, Bracha, Boaz and Oren \u2014 but sabras and sojourners alike are drawn to this neighborhood of narrow streets and handsome homes, just as Baka\u2019s residents are today.<\/p>\n Lev was one of those new arrivals, having just graduated from university when she came to Israel in the wave of American immigration following the Six Day War.<\/p>\n She trained as a social worker, part of a 13-month course created for new immigrants, and settled in Baka with her then-husband, where they raised their three children.<\/p>\n \t \u201cThere\u2019s something about this neighborhood,\u201d said Lev. \u201cAll the needs are supplied. You have everything. You don\u2019t have to go anywhere else. The combination of having buildings that are part commercial and then residential, and then the mixture is just fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n It was an undeveloped neighborhood when Lev arrived, without sidewalks and with some of the new immigrants living in absorption huts.<\/p>\n Lev\u2019s neighbors included all kinds of newcomers, some of them Holocaust survivors, others pushed out of the Old City as Jerusalem expanded and changed. There was Doda Rosa, who peddled candy from a shack, as well as \u201cthe Bulgarian guy\u201d who sold chickens, and Oved, whose falafel shop still stands on Bethlehem Road, albeit with a different owner.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was such a charm to it all,\u201d said Lev.<\/p>\n \t Lev, who was always writing something, eventually had a column in The Jerusalem Post, featuring personal essays about her life as a mother and American immigrant. She has also taught creative writing.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember writing a poem,\u201d said Lev. \u201cIt was in 1967, I was looking out over the Judean Hills to the Dead Sea, and I said, \u2018This is my home?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t begin writing the stories found in \u201cBethlehem Road\u201d until many years later. The book\u2019s final story, which was published in The Kenyon Review in 1991, became a kernel for \u201cBethlehem Road,\u201d which she worked on when she earned a master\u2019s degree in creative writing at Bar-Ilan University.<\/p>\n \t Now 80, Lev still speaks about her love affair with Baka \u2014 though she left more than 20 years ago, first for Beit Zayit, a village just outside Jerusalem, then for Tel Aviv, and later, Haifa.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt it took me five years to grieve for Baka, for having left Baka,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n While sitting at the cafe next to her former apartment on a weekday afternoon, Lev pointed out neighborhood locations, including the field on nearby Reuven Street where Arab shepherds once let their sheep graze.<\/p>\n \u201cI would cook in the kitchen and look out at the window and see them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \t Lev recalled how few Americans there were in those days, and how even after nearly 60 years of life in Israel, she is still an immigrant.<\/p>\n \u201cNot every story is about being an immigrant, but the majority of them are, because it\u2019s so true. For most of your life, you feel like an immigrant, but then there are moments where you don\u2019t,\u201d said Lev.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a very close relationship between immigration and exile,\u201d she said. \u201cMany people immigrate, and they feel like they\u2019re in exile from their original home. So you feel like you\u2019re in exile, but you\u2019re told you\u2019re in your home.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tA line of Sherman M-50 tanks and trucks full of soldiers ride towards East Jerusalem to confront the Jordanians on June 5, 1967. (Benny Hadar\/Defense Ministry\u2019s IDF Archive)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Bakaa74_ST_12-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tA residential building in Jerusalem\u2019s Baka neighborhood. (Wikimedia commons\/ Ester Inbar)<\/p>\n![\"Falafel](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/photo-6-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tFalafel Oved on Bethlehem Road (Mitch Ginsburg\/ Times of Israel)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/FINAL-Map-of-BR_455_255-7-e1768723674622-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tA portion of the map included in \u2018Bethlehem Road\u2019 by Judy Lev (Courtesy)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Bakaa_1948-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tJerusalem\u2019s Baka neighborhood during the 1948 War of Independence. (Public domain)<\/p>\n
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