My wife and I moved to San Francisco's Bernal Heights neighborhood four years ago. Located on a hill at the southern end of the city, it's just about the only place in town where Palestinians, queer families, Israeli software engineers, anarcho-punks, and gang bangers all call home. Hummus and za'atar are as easy to come by as Volvos with Coexist stickers, used Fairuz records, and late night gunfights.

I took the following pictures over the course of the last several months. A brief window onto a much larger collection of similarly-themed, Mideast-focused snapshots from around town, they'll give you a good sense of how little distance really exists between this Californian city, and a part of the world that, as Jews, many of us know about already, and as Americans, are discovering through the war in Iraq.