Jerusalem hotels, restaurants, attractions, tours & events. Helping since 2008

What do a singing bus, drunken debauchery on the cheap, a rising chef and a play based on a poem about pogroms all have in common? They are all on the agenda for this week in Jerusalem.

• Sha'arei Tzedek hospital has been a Jerusalem mainstay for generations, but few know the medical center predates the state by nearly 50 years. The city celebrates the hospital's 110th birthday this Thursday night with a blockbuster concert featuring American Jewish music superstar Avraham Fried and his Israeli adult-friendly pop counterpart Rami Kleinstein (pictured).

• If you haven't been to any of the Design Week events yet, Friday is your last chance. The Bezalel 7 gallery is closing out the festival with workshops for the whole family.

• If it's a December weekend, it must be Hamshushalaim. On Saturday night, the musical bus roams around town, and the Incubator hosts a program of synagogue rock - among other attractions all around the city. For example, The Museum of Islamic Art hosts the Shahrier ensemble, playing Middle Eastern music, accompanied by belly dancer Gal Shomron for three sets. Visitors to the Bloomfield Science Museum. meanwhile, can enjoy a wide variety of multimedia encounters on the subject of women in science.

• Sunday's the day to get boofy blitzed - responsibly, of course - and HaTza'atzua wants to make sure it happens without putting too large a dent in your wallet. After 21:30, get all the beer you can gulp or wine you can politely sip for 40 to 50 NIS.
  
  Yerushalmi card holders have been enjoying a slew of benefits since the card's launch in 2008, and the perks of having one just keep getting tastier. Several restaurants around the city are now offering specials to Yerushalmi card holders. Check out the deals at Italian eateries Spaghettim and Luciana, and Mamilla's kosher brasserie, Kedma.
  

• Even super-chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Ferran Adria had to start somewhere. Jerusalem restaurant Colony is offering diners six chances to taste the food of the gastrostars of tomorrow. On Monday, Masa sous-chef Yom Tov Levi creates a meal of modern dishes based on the classical kitchen.
  

  Austrian lounge-jazz singer Simone Kopmajer and her band hit the stage at Gerard Bechar on Monday as part of this year's Hot Jazz concert series, which features local as well as international jazz musicians from all over the world. Kopmajer records for Japanese label Venus Records.

• What better way to mark the onset of winter than with a performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, at the Jerusalem Theatre on Tuesday. The American Drama Group Europe, which hails from Munich and spent all of November in China, continues its mini-tour of Israel in the weeks ahead.
  

  The Israel Museum's new exhibition, Sharon Lockhart: Noa, opening this Tuesday, explores the junction between filmmaker-artist Sharon Lockhart and choreographer Noa Eshkol, who developed a notation system describing human movement. Lockhart's installation is a dialogue between Eshkol's works and those charged with their interpretation.

• The pogroms of Eastern Europe are thankfully a thing of the past, but H.N. Bialik's poem "The City of Slaughter" comes alive once again at Beit Avi Chai this Wednesday with the production of Kishinev 1903, about the attacks that led to the consolidation of the Zionist movement over 100 years ago.

And check out our full events section for everything else happening around town.