Ha’aretz, Israel
June 16 2005

The Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem. After the Six-Day War in 1967, it
was restored and important archaeological digs took place there.
(Lior Mizrahi / BauBau) Many years ago, when I was writing my
doctoral thesis, I used to visit the Jewish Studies reading room in
the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University
in Jerusalem. I arrived when the library opened, so I could be the
first to get to all the necessary books on the shelves.

Drawn to the Quarter

By Yehoshua Schwartz

One day a stranger stood next to me, a man of average height with a
thick mustache, and asked for one of the books on my desk.
Incidentally, he also asked about the subject of my research. I told
him I was working on the Jewish community in Judea during the
Roman-Byzantine period, and that I was now researching the Ayalon
Valley. He immediately asked if I was familiar with a large number of
archeological artifacts from the region, which were relevant to my
research. I was disheartened. I thought I had already read
everything, that I knew everything. He recommended that I order from
the library storehouse the Kibbutz Nahshon newsletter from the
mid-1960s, and look for a personal column called “Al Harekhes” (On
the Mountain Ridge).

The man standing next to me was Rami Yizrael, the writer of the
column and of the book under review. I learned from him that day not
only about the Ayalon Valley region, but also about modesty,
particularly academic modesty: There are serious scholars who are not
a part of the academic world, and important things are published not
only in the “research literature,” but also in popular journals, and
they and their writers should not be regarded with scorn.

The book before us includes Yizrael’s most important articles
published over the years, in addition to several new studies, and
deals mainly with three areas: the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem’s Old
City, various sites and places in Jerusalem and its environs and
various sites in Israel, especially Tiberias and Safed. The articles
are research studies in the full sense of the word, but they have a
practical aspect as well, and are highly recommended reading when you
are on a tour or a field trip.

Advertisement

We cannot deal with the broad variety of subjects in the 20 chapters
of the book, and will have to make do with drawing several
conclusions from Yizrael’s studies about the Old City in Jerusalem,
the subject of the first section of the book and its first seven
chapters. These articles were written in the wake of a comprehensive
study conducted by the writer at the initiative of the Association
for the Restoration and Development of the Old City, and as part of
an attempt to strengthen its tourist potential.

The Jewish Quarter was a “quarter,” but not a European-type ghetto
(or the “voluntary ghetto” that covered an area of 30 dunams in the
Armenian Quarter), or the harat in Eastern countries. It was not
surrounded by an (interior) wall, and was not restricted only to
Jews. In medieval cities, residents were concentrated according to
their ethno-religious origin, and in Jerusalem, which is sacred to
the three religions, this phenomenon was especially prominent. In the
Jewish Quarter, one could find Jews and Muslims alongside one
another, and the same was true in the Muslim Quarter, an area that
was popular among the Jews because of its proximity to the Temple
Mount, and in light of the fact that it was impossible to settle in
the closed Armenian Quarter, or in the Christian Quarter, which the
Church leaders closed to Jewish residents.

An interesting phenomenon in the Jewish Quarter is the connection
between the Jewish residents and the synagogues, especially starting
in the middle of the 19th century. Until then, there were synagogues
in the Jewish Quarter, but because of the Omar Laws, which restricted
the construction of non-Muslim houses of prayer, these were not
particularly impressive buildings. In the 1860s, the Ottomans
moderated the laws restricting the rights of minorities concerning
the construction of houses of prayer, and the residents began to
build synagogues. As a result, the Jewish population multiplied
sevenfold in the 19th century, and the number of synagogues
multiplied by 13, almost double the increase in the population. These
synagogues attracted many worshipers, about 600 on average per
synagogue in the middle of the 19th century.

Overcrowding and poverty

The increase in the number of residents in the Jewish Quarter led to
terrible overcrowding and poverty. The development of the new city
led the educated, the rich, laborers from the First and Second Aliyah
(waves of immigration to Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries), and most of those who could afford it, to leave the
Jewish Quarter for the new city. By World War I, only poor people
remained in the Old City, as well as the religious leadership of
Jerusalem and most of its institutions. The process of abandoning the
Jewish Quarter accelerated during the British Mandatory period
(beginning in 1922), since the gap between the standard of living of
the new city and the old one, only continued to grow.

The situation continued to deteriorate in the wake of the Arab riots
that began during Pesach in 1920. These were the first riots against
the Jews of Jerusalem in generations. They were not limited only to
the Jewish Quarter, or even to the Old City, and were renewed every
few years until the 1948 War of Independence. The British forces
often included Arab policemen, who did not interfere with the
rioters, and sometimes even helped them. During these first riots,
several members of the Haganah defense forces exhibited initiative
and heroism. Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi, for example, penetrated the Old
City wearing a disguise, passed via Hagai Street and Hashalshelet
Street, and exited via the Jaffa Gate, in order to report on the
situation to the Haganah. Nehemiah Rabin (a member of Hagdud Ha’Ivri
– the Jewish Brigade, and father of the late prime minister Yitzhak
Rabin) and Zvi Nadav (one of the veterans of the Hashomer defense
group) evacuated the wounded.

During the 30 years of the British Mandate, the number of Jewish
residents in the Old City steadily decreased. In the new city during
that period, another 28 Jews were added for every 10 residents,
whereas in the Old City barely two out of every 10 Jewish residents
remained. The buildings in the Jewish Quarter, which were hundreds of
years old, were decrepit, and the sanitary conditions and other
services were also in a bad state.

After the Arab Revolt of 1936-1939, it was mainly an impoverished
population that remained in the Jewish Quarter, with a large number
of children and elderly people. In addition, there was a lack of
authorized leadership there to confront the large number of problems
that made life difficult for the residents. The Jewish Quarter was
not fortunate during the War of Independence. After 13 consecutive
days of fighting, it fell into the hands of the Arab Legion, on May
28, 1948, about two weeks after the establishment of the State of
Israel.

Yizrael believes that the fall of the Jewish Quarter was the greatest
and most scathing failure of the War of Independence. During that
war, other communities fell as well, but the Jewish Quarter was the
largest, and the only urban community. Other Jewish neighborhoods
fell as well, but the Jewish Quarter was much more than a
neighborhood. The author believes that the failure was worse because
there were several opportunities to save it, which were not
exploited.

Jordanian rule

The 19 years of Jordanian rule in the Jewish Quarter only accelerated
the process of neglect. The Jewish Quarter was not restored during
this period, but turned into a kind of refugee camp for those Arabs
who had been uprooted from the Western neighborhoods of Jerusalem and
from the surrounding villages. No real new buildings were
constructed, and the infrastructure, which had been damaged during
the war, was poorly maintained. However, this situation preserved the
physical character of the quarter.

After the Six-Day War in 1967, a new chapter in the history of the
Jewish Quarter began. It was restored, important archaeological digs
took place there, and the writer, as well as other researchers, began
to tour and to research it. In recent years, the political-security
situation has led to ups and downs in the fate of the Jewish Quarter.
During periods of calm, Jews streamed into the Jewish Quarter and
into the entire Old City. In times of crisis and attacks, people
rarely tour its alleyways.

Recently, we were informed (Haaretz, May 1) that “Israelis are
returning to the Old City in Jerusalem.” We can hope that they will
return with Yizrael’s book in hand, and tour there – as in Tiberias,
Safed and Petah Tikva, and all the other sites researched in the
author’s book – out of the enjoyment of learning and the love of the
country that underlie the research studies and are so deeply
ingrained in the heart of soul of the writer.

The writer is dean of the faculty of Jewish Studies at Bar-Ilan
University