The Valley of the Cross is the rugged valley below the western edge of Jerusalem, where the road beyond the last house on Rabbi Elbaz Lane becomes a stony path toward the remains of Sheikh Badr. More than a backdrop, it defines the threshold of Shmuel Ash’s new, isolated life: the city ends at the lane, and the valley begins beyond it.

Setting and approach

The valley lies below the slope of Shaarei Hesed. At the time Shmuel arrives, house number seventeen stands at the end of Rabbi Elbaz Lane, where the neighborhood and city give way to rocky fields extending toward the ruins of Sheikh Badr. The damaged road becomes a stony track that descends in an uncertain, winding course, as if reluctant to continue into the desolation.

The scene is set after the rain has stopped. In the soft light of evening, a small flock of sheep and a shepherd in a dark cloak are visible among the rocks on the opposite hillside. The view joins the city’s inhabited edge to a sparsely settled landscape, placing the house between the two.

A boundary landscape

The valley’s edge is marked not by a single clear line but by a sequence of transitions: street becomes rough road, road becomes track, and the city’s final houses open onto rocky ground. The path’s hesitating turn back toward inhabited places gives the landscape a quality of separation without making it wholly unreachable. Shmuel’s destination is still connected to Jerusalem, but it stands at the point where the city seems to fall away.

That threshold resonates with the city’s more overt divisions elsewhere in Shmuel’s winter walks. Near the frontier between Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem, warning signs on coils of rusted barbed wire announce the border, mines, no-man’s-land, and exposure to enemy snipers. The Valley of the Cross is not identified with that frontier; rather, its quieter boundary between city and abandoned land belongs to the same wider geography of edges and restricted passages.

The house at the valley’s edge

The house on Rabbi Elbaz Lane appears half-buried in the hillside, below street level and nearly covered by earth up to its windows. From the lane, it resembles a stocky figure kneeling to search in mud. Its low, heavy position makes the dwelling feel set apart from the city above it, while its gate—rusted, warped, and sunk into the ground—allows passage only through a narrow opening.

The house is also divided internally. Shmuel’s permitted domain is limited to the library where he works, the kitchen he shares with Atalia, and his attic room. The bedroom of Gershom Wald, Atalia’s room, and the closed room Shmuel supposes belonged to the late Shaltiel Abravanel remain outside his access. The spatial divisions within the house extend the sense of boundaries established by the valley and the city around it: proximity does not mean entry, and a threshold does not guarantee knowledge.

Narrative significance

The Valley of the Cross establishes the setting of Shmuel’s life at the end of the city, in a house whose physical isolation is reinforced by rules of privacy and secrecy. The shepherd looking toward Jerusalem from the opposite hillside provides a distant human presence, but the scene does not turn the valley into a settled community. It remains a liminal landscape: close enough to the city to be reached by a lane, yet opening onto rocky fields and the remnants of a village beyond its last houses.