Tablet Magazine - a new read on Jewish life

Every city is a battle against entropy, and Beersheba (to paraphrase a famous saying about Jews) is like other cities, but more so. There’s one spot where you can stand on a rise of fresh grass overlooking a lovely new amphitheater that will stage cultural activities for the residents of Israel’s sixth-largest city. Then you turn around, without moving a step, and see electric pylons receding from the edge of town into the dun sea of the desert, the tin-shack Bedouin empire spreading over the slopes. You can call Beersheba, population 200,000, the “capital of the Negev,” and air-condition spanking new shopping malls until the jeans are cool to the touch. You can open boutique hotels and unfurl the “biggest pride flag in the Middle East.” But the desert will still hem you in, crushing you with heat at 9 a.m. If the sprinklers fail, the green grass by the new amphitheater will be trash-blown sand in a week.