What I missed most during my visit to Miami were the pitot, the pitot of the shuk, Mahane Yehuda, the open air market built when Jews began setting up neighborhoods outside the walls of the Old City.

So, soon after my return home I took my eleven year old granddaughter, Hedva Pnina, to share one of my great pleasures of living in Jerusalem, a walk through the shuk.

For centuries the fear of bandit gangs who roamed the deserted expanses outside the Old City Walls had created a crowded, intimate environment of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews living in close proximity with the Moslem, Christian and Armenian communities inside the old stone courtyards.

The Jewish philanthropist Moses [Moshe] Montefiore financed and built the first neighborhood overlooking the walls, Yemin Moshe, in the late 19th century. Other neighboroods soon sprang up and today this network of picturesque buildings decorated with mosaic symbols and handmade iron grilling are at the heart of modern day Jerusalem.

Such is the shuk which in this era of the supermarket remains our colorful and slightly raunchy alternative. Vendors sing out the best tasting tomatoes, corn, aberguines, apples, bananas, the delicious of whatever is in season at the cheapest prices.

Great chunks of yellow and white salt cheeses, the scent of colorful spices pouring out of jute sacks, barrels of pickled veggies and herring whet the appetite. The fragrance from giant trays of cheese and spinach and potato burekas, honeyed cinnamon and cocoa "rogalech" emerging from the ovens of small bakeries which line the street fill the air. After Purim, braids of fresh garlic suspended from the booths, and baskets of giant strawberries anticipate Passover.

But my favorite are the vendors - comedians, philosophers and showmen all. Their natural wisdom tests your own and you know you are a real Jerusalemite when you learn to exchange wisecracks with them while shleping your cart from the fallafel stand at the bottom of the shuk to the assorted roasted nuts and dried fruits shop at the entrance.

Below is my translation from the Hebrew of a poem that appeared in my book, Blackbird:

SMALL TREASURES; Mornings in Mahane Yehuda

Soon we'll go down to stroll in the weather
on a carpet of sage and three-leaved Yemenite clover.

It's a stormy day, skies hurry into laundry drying in the wind
- fold fragrance of distance and horizon into your closet
- place sachet of skies-one-hour-before-the-rain between your clothes.

You talk to the rising storm,
dark clouds are reflected in your eyes
that await the rain.

After rainfall -- bright calm of perennials washed clean
and hallelujah bird-song pairs heaven and earth.

Begin your day in the shuk,
the fruit and vegetable vendors have named you Pure Heart,
for you can measure a full weight in your hand,
- two kilos of dew and ambrosia
- a thousand fruit jewels for your basket.

Walk down Etz Chayim Alley,
there grandfather-prophet leans on his worn wooden crate,

in prayer he kisses the fringes of his prayer shawl
and turns to whisper a blessing,
"You are the first
to bring sage-fragrance to me this morning."

(c) Shira Twersky-Cassel