Mahane Yehuda ( he, מחנה יהודה, "Camp of Judah") is a historic neighborhood in
Jerusalem
Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...
. Established on the north side of
Jaffa Road
Jaffa Road ( he, רחוב יפו, Rehov Yaffo; ar, شارع يافا) is one of the longest and oldest major streets in Jerusalem. It crosses the city from east to west, from the Old City walls to downtown Jerusalem, the western portal of Jer ...
in 1887, it was planned and managed by the consortium of Swiss-Christian banker
Johannes Frutiger and his Jewish partners,
Joseph Navon
Yosef Navon (; 1858–1934) was a Jerusalem businessman and the man principally responsible for the construction of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway. For his effort, Navon was awarded the Légion d'honneur from the French government, and the Medjidie ...
and Shalom Konstrum. By the end of the 19th century, it encompassed 162 homes. Originally occupied by upper middle-class residents, it became a working-class neighborhood beginning in the late 1920s. Today the neighborhood is part of
Nachlaot
Nachlaot ( he, נחלאות, also ''Naḥlaʾoth'') is a cluster of 23 courtyard neighborhoods in central Jerusalem surrounding the Mahane Yehuda Market. It is known for its narrow, winding lanes, old-style housing, hidden courtyards and many sma ...
.
[ The ]Mahane Yehuda Market
Mahane Yehuda Market ( he, שוק מחנה יהודה, ''Shuk Mahane Yehuda''), often referred to as "The Shuk" ( he, השוק, HaShuq), is a marketplace (originally open-air, but now partially covered) in Jerusalem. Popular with locals and touri ...
("the shuk") located across the street was named after the neighborhood.
Name
Mahane Yehuda was named after Joseph Navon's brother, Yehuda, who died at a young age.[
]
Location
The Mahane Yehuda neighborhood is bordered by David Yellin Street to the north, Yosef ben Matityahu Street to the east, Jaffa Road to the south, and Navon Street to the west.
History
Mahane Yehuda lay on land owned by Bank Frutiger, which owned other tracts around the city. The housing project was initially advertised in the '' Havatzelet'' newspaper in 1882 (issue 26). The advertisement, placed by Joseph Navon
Yosef Navon (; 1858–1934) was a Jerusalem businessman and the man principally responsible for the construction of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway. For his effort, Navon was awarded the Légion d'honneur from the French government, and the Medjidie ...
, promised the first fifty families a free plot on the condition that they would build their homes within six months. If this condition was not met, they would be required to pay Navon 300 groschen
Groschen (; from la, grossus "thick", via Old Czech ') a (sometimes colloquial) name for various coins, especially a silver coin used in various states of the Holy Roman Empire and other parts of Europe. The word is borrowed from the late L ...
for the land. No one answered the advertisement.
Five years later, the consortium of Swiss-Christian banker Johannes Frutiger and his Jewish partners Navon and Shalom Konstrum came up with another plan to sell the neighborhood. This plan called for each home buyer to pay 25 napoléons up front for the land, and the remaining 150 napoléons of the costs – including land, construction, and joint upkeep of the water cistern and roadways – over a 15-year period at a rate of 10 napoléons per year.[ This arrangement proved far more attractive to buyers, who snapped up the initial offering.][ In the month of September 1887 alone, 39 buyers signed up to purchase homes.
At the time of its construction, the only other buildings in the vicinity lay on the south side of Jaffa Road: a two-story home occupied by the British Consul-General of Jerusalem (today the Mahane Yehuda Police Station) to the east,][ and the neighborhood of Beit Yaakov, established in 1885, to the west. By the end of 1888, 50 homes had been built in Mahane Yehuda and some buyers had begun re-selling their homes. A decade later, 162 homes had been constructed. The homes were constructed in typical fashion for the day, with an inner room accessed from an outer room.][
]
Residents
The first homeowners were upper middle class. They included the Sephardi Rishon Letzion
Rishon LeZion ( he, רִאשׁוֹן לְצִיּוֹן , ''lit.'' First to Zion, Arabic: راشون لتسيون) is a city in Israel, located along the central Israeli coastal plain south of Tel Aviv. It is part of the Gush Dan metropolitan a ...
of Jerusalem, Hakham Raphael Meir Panigel
Raphael Meir ben Yehuda Panigel (1804–1893) was the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire.
Panigel was born in Pazardzhik, Bulgaria, but his family emigrated to the Land of Israel when he was a child. In 1828 and in 1863, he was a ...
, Rabbi Eliyahu Navon and his son Joseph Navon
Yosef Navon (; 1858–1934) was a Jerusalem businessman and the man principally responsible for the construction of the Jaffa–Jerusalem railway. For his effort, Navon was awarded the Légion d'honneur from the French government, and the Medjidie ...
, Shalom Konstrum, Israel Dov Frumkin
Israel Dov Frumkin ( he, ישראל דב פרומקין; 29 October 1850 – 10 May 1914) was an author and pioneer of Hebrew journalism.
Family
He was born into a Chabad family in Dubrovno, in the Russian Empire. Frumkin's step-grandfather was ...
, and Ephraim Cohen (principal of the Lemel School).[
Beginning in the late 1920s the neighborhood began attracting working-class Jewish immigrants from ]Kurdistan
Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages ...
, Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...
, and Aleppo. The lower-middle-class and poor Baghdadi immigrants continued there to speak the Judeo-Arabic
Judeo-Arabic dialects (, ; ; ) are ethnolects formerly spoken by Jews throughout the Arabic-speaking world. Under the ISO 639 international standard for language codes, Judeo-Arabic is classified as a macrolanguage under the code jrb, enco ...
vernacular, eat traditional cuisine, and retain the traditional ways of arranging marriages.
A census conducted in 1916 by the office of the Histadrut recorded 152 families comprising 512 individuals in Mahane Yehuda. A 1938 Jerusalem census noted 600 persons living in Mahane Yehuda, including both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews
Sephardic (or Sephardi) Jews (, ; lad, Djudíos Sefardíes), also ''Sepharadim'' , Modern Hebrew: ''Sfaradim'', Tiberian: Səp̄āraddîm, also , ''Ye'hude Sepharad'', lit. "The Jews of Spain", es, Judíos sefardíes (or ), pt, Judeus sefa ...
.
Religious institutions
Synagogues
Mahane Yehuda is home to eight synagogues
A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of wors ...
. These include the landmark Zoharei Chama Synagogue ("Sundial Building"), which is open for prayer services throughout the day. The three-story stone building with a wooden attic (originally there was also a fifth-floor gallery) was constructed atop a Mahane Yehuda apartment purchased by Shmuel Levy in the early 1900s; the building was originally designed as a hostel for 50 guests with the synagogue on the third floor.
The Silvera synagogue and beth midrash, posthumously named Zechut Aharon, was established by Señor Aharon Silvera (d. 1925) of Aleppo on the upper floor of his two-story apartment in Mahane Yehuda. The Degel Reuven Synagogue, also on a second floor, was founded in 1893 for Mizrahi Jews
Mizrahi Jews ( he, יהודי המִזְרָח), also known as ''Mizrahim'' () or ''Mizrachi'' () and alternatively referred to as Oriental Jews or ''Edot HaMizrach'' (, ), are a grouping of Jewish communities comprising those who remained ...
.
Sfas Emes Yeshiva
In 1925 the Hasidim of the fourth Gerer Rebbe
A Rebbe ( yi, רבי, translit=rebe) or Admor ( he, אדמו״ר) is the spiritual leader in the Hasidic movement, and the personalities of its dynasties.Heilman, Samuel"The Rebbe and the Resurgence of Orthodox Judaism."''Religion and Spiritua ...
, Grand Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Alter
Avraham Mordechai Alter ( pl, Abraham Mordekhaj Alter, he, אברהם מרדכי אלתר; 25 December 1865 – 3 June 1948), also known as the ''Imrei Emes'' after the works he authored, was the fourth Rebbe of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger, a po ...
(the ''Imrei Emes''), founded the Sfas Emes Yeshiva
Sfas Emes Yeshiva ( he, ישיבת שפת אמת) was an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva in Jerusalem, serving the Gerrer Hasidic community until 2016. Founded in 1925 in the Mahane Yehuda neighborhood of Jerusalem, it was one of the few Hasidic yeshiva ...
in Mahane Yehuda. The Rebbe came to live in the yeshiva from 1940 until his death in 1948, and was buried in the yeshiva courtyard.[Frankfurter, Rabbi Yitzchok. "A Riveting Visit to the Historic Home of the Pnei Menachem of Ger ''zt"l''". '']Ami
AMI or Ami may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media
*AMI-tv, a Canadian TV channel
**AMI-télé, the French-language version
* AMI-audio, a Canadian audio broadcast TV service
*''Ami Magazine'', an Orthodox Jewish news magazine
Businesses ...
'', February 17, 2016, pp. 60–73. His son, Rabbi Pinchas Menachem Alter
Pinchas Menachem Alter ( he, פינחס מנחם אלתר, June 9, 1926 – March 7, 1996), also known as the ''Pnei Menachem'' (), after the works he authored, was the seventh Rebbe of the Hasidic dynasty of Ger, a position he held from 1992 un ...
, the seventh Gerrer Rebbe, also resided in the yeshiva and was buried beside his father in 1996.[ A red-brick ohel was placed over both graves.][
]
Modern-day
Unlike buildings fronting Jaffa Road in the historic neighborhoods of Ohel Shlomo and Sha'arei Yerushalayim to the west, the buildings of Mahane Yehuda facing Jaffa Road were preserved during construction of the Jerusalem Light Rail
Jerusalem Light Rail ( he, הרכבת הקלה בירושלים, ''HaRakevet HaKala Birushalayim'', ar, قطار القدس الخفيف, ''Qiṭār Al-Quds Al-Khafīf'') is a light rail system in Jerusalem. Currently, the Red Line is the o ...
.
In 2011 the former bus parking lot between Mehuyas and Valero Streets, astride Jaffa Road, was re-landscaped into an urban square. This 5-million-shekel project, renamed Valero Square after Jerusalem banker Jacob Valero Jacob Valero (1813–1874) was the founder of the first private bank in Palestine (region), Palestine, Jacob Valero & Company.
In 1839, Jacob (Ya'akov) Valero appeared in Jewish communal records as a shochet, ritual slaughterer of the Sephardi com ...
, was faced with granite and limestone and new lighting was installed.[ Valero Square hosts the annual municipal arba'at haminim market preceding the holiday of Sukkot.] In December 2014 a 2-million-shekel urban art
Urban means "related to a city". In that sense, the term may refer to:
* Urban area, geographical area distinct from rural areas
* Urban culture, the culture of towns and cities
Urban may also refer to:
General
* Urban (name), a list of people ...
installation was unveiled in Valero Square. Titled "''Vorayda''" (Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
for "flower"), the installation includes four huge red nylon flowers resembling poppies Poppies can refer to:
*Poppy, a flowering plant
* The Poppies (disambiguation) - multiple uses
*'' Poppies (film)'' - Children's BBC remembrance animation
*"Poppies", a song by Patti Smith Group from their 1976 album '' Radio Ethiopia''
*"Poppies", ...
posted atop metal trunks, which "open and shut pneumatically under the influence of movement and sound under and around them". Within two months, however, the nylon petals had been "seriously damaged by rain, wind, snow and pollution".
Landmarks
Synagogues
*Degel Reuven Synagogue
*Sathon Synagogue
*Silvera Synagogue and Beth Midrash
*Yad Mordechai Synagogue
* Zoharei Chama Synagogue ("Sundial Building")
Yeshivas
*Sfas Emes Yeshiva
Sfas Emes Yeshiva ( he, ישיבת שפת אמת) was an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva in Jerusalem, serving the Gerrer Hasidic community until 2016. Founded in 1925 in the Mahane Yehuda neighborhood of Jerusalem, it was one of the few Hasidic yeshiva ...
Other
* Ohel of the Gerrer Rebbes in the Sfas Emes Yeshiva courtyard
*Mani's Pharmacy (102 Jaffa Road), founded in 1927
*Oplatka Pharmacy (110 Jaffa Road), founded in 1917[
]
In literature
Mahane Yehuda is one of the settings for Haim Sabato's 2004 novel ''Ke'afafei Shachar'' (Like the Eyelids of Morning), translated into English as ''The Dawning of the Day: A Jerusalem Tale'' (Toby Press, 2006).
References
Notes
Sources
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{{coord, 31.7847, N, 35.2108, E, source:wikidata, display=title
Jaffa Road
Nachlaot
1887 establishments in Ottoman Syria