Jerusalem – You’re driving through the city and you pass by all kinds of streets – Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Henrietta Szold, Golda Meir, Yigal Alon. How many of you actually know who these people are and what they look like?
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Well, a new Jerusalem initiative will enable passersby to get better acquainted with the personality behind the street name.
Israel’s cities are full of boulevards and streets named after various personalities, both Israeli and foreign. Sometimes you know exactly who the name behind the street is and what they looked like, in other cases you may just have a general idea, and there are times when you have no idea whatsoever who the street is referring to.
This is why the Jerusalem Municipality has decided to embark on an operation, the first of its kind in Israel, that will allow residents to enrich their general knowledge on significant personalities.
In the near future, the city will start replacing all signs of streets named after people with new and more detailed ones.
Each sign will feature the name of the street and a black-and-white portrait of the personality on one side, while exhibiting the person’s details, such as date of birth, date of death, and activities the personality is best known for on the other side.
The idea for the new signs was recently proposed to Mayor Nir Barkat by Zion Turjeman, director-general of the Ariel company, a subsidiary of the Jerusalem Municipality. The mayor loved the idea and appointed artist Yotam Kuperberg and entrepreneur Maya Fogel to be in charge of preparing the new street signs.
A Jerusalem Municipality source said, “Finally the citizens will be able to connect between the name and what it represents.”
The only thing that may disrupt the new initiative is the possibility that members of the ultra-Orthodox community may not appreciate seeing pictures of woman appearing on street signs all over the city.
Very important way how to spend taxpayers money. It is like the RFK bridge here in NYC.
Too bad. If they don’t like seeing the pictures of saintly yiddeshe women such as Szold and Meir, Z’l, they can look at their feet as they walk by. It is beyond beleif that even the nuttiest of the hareidim would even raise such nareshkeit. I sometimes think the writers of these new stories purposely try to dream up the “hareidi angle” for each story just to “stir the pot”.
there we go again! does he think that the frumies will allow a picture of a lady like golda meir, etc.? yerushalaim will look like a mess with every second street sign being spray painted
How are they going to know what “rashi” , “ramban” looked like to make a picture? How about all the other streets named after taanoim and amoroim ??
Can they just invest in more signs, so that people can actually know what street they are on?? You know how many times I had to ask? And I want to know, how many people are actually going to read the details on the backs of the signs, as they wizz passed in their cars,,, what a waste!
Some streets are named after a group of people, others after inanimated objects
Just another way for a chiloni to bring in pritzus in our holy city
Nice idea, but a bad idea. Looking at the sign one second longer then needed might distract a driver and cause him to kill a pedestrian. Not the same as advertisements on highways which can also cause accidents. One difference is that when a driver knows that he doesn’t have more then a second, he won’t look at the advertisement, but a street sign is a must and after seeing the street name, the eyes of the driver can stay glued to the biographical information of the street name.
One street can have numerous signs at every intersection (that’s if they’re there like they should be). Does that mean that every sign will be replaced? That sure is a lot of money and I don’t want to know what cutbacks they’re gonna do on other things to pay for this.
Lemaisa I think the image of a city makes the avira ” atmossphere”
I know in many cities much money was invested in the performance of its image.
So putting faces is a gr8 thing it will also educate the passerby!
Why on earth would they want to put a picture of golda meir up? I thought they want to help tourists, not scare them away.
what about rechov yechezkal, malachei yisrael, King david etc. what will the picture be
cute!!
STUPID!