The Renaissance-style building on 29 Rechov
Shivtei Yisrael, corner of 34 Rechov Hanevi’im, was built between 1911
and 1917. It started out as the Italian
Hospital of the Mission, and was managed by nuns. During
World War I, because Italy
was an enemy of Turkey,
the Turks seized the building.
The British took over the building during
Mandatory times and used the Italian
Hospital during World War
I to headquarter the British Royal Air Force. Three years later, when the
British began leaving Palestine, both the Arabs
and the Hagana tried to “grab” this strategic property
near the border with eastern Jerusalem.
Fortunately, the Hagana discovered the exact time of the British pull-out and
the Jews were able to take over the building.
During the War of Independence it was a
frontal Israeli firing post, facing the Jordanian Legion.
Following the war, the building functioned as
a home for the mentally deficient. The Ministry of
Education occupied it in 1963. On the door of
the former chapel of the Italian
Hospital is an enormous mezuzah to show that the structure is now a Jewish building.
Machanayim
On the corner of Hanevi’im and Shivtei Yisrael streets — diagonally opposite the Italian Hospital — stands an arresting
edifice that dates back to 1885. The building was constructed by a Swiss
Protestant missionary named Jacob Johannes Frutiger. He called it “Machanayim” and engraved the name above the door. The
name comes from a passsuk in Bereishis (32:3): “Yaakov said when he saw them, ‘This is a G-dly camp!’ So he called the name of that place Machanayim.”
Atop the roof is a high balcony that offered
its residents and guests a splendid view of the Old City.
Frutiger became one of the richest bankers in Eretz Yisrael, but when he
started to suffer from forgetfulness (possibly Alzheimer’s), his son took over the bank. However, his son was soon arrested for
not carrying a lantern at night. This Turkish law assumed that anyone without a
light was bent on disreputable purposes.
His imprisonment did little to repair the
standing of the bank, whose reputation was ruined, and as a result the family
had to sell the house. Menachem Ussishkin, director of the Jewish National
Fund, bought it and lived there from 1922 until 1927. Eventually, Lord Herbert
Plumertook, the
British High Commissioner, took over the
gorgeous domicile. Ussishkin was so upset that when he built ahouse in Rehavia,
he emblazoned “Machanayim” above the door!
At a later date the original Machanayim house
became the Evelina de Rothschild School. Today it houses offices of the Israeli
Ministry of Education.
At 26 Rechov Hanevi’im there is a private balcony from where (at a certain angle) the makom Hamikdash can be seen.
In front of the new apartment block at
26-aleph Rechov Hanevi’im is a small memorial garden with a few
benches. It is dedicated to Daniel Bitton, a 42-yearold bus driver who was
killed, together with 25 other Jews, in a suicide bombing on a No. 18 bus travelling
down Jaffa Road
near the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, on Feb. 25, 1996. A few days later, on
March 3, 1996, an additional 19 people were murdered by a suicide bomber on
another 18 bus.
The U.S. Consulate General, founded in the Old City
in 1844, relocated to an address near the beginning of Rechov Hanevi’im in the late 19th century. In 1912, it moved to its present address on
Agron Street.
Overlooking the busy Kvish Chail Handasah (Highway
1), at the corner of Haneviim
Street, is Mitzpe Tomer. The lookout’s name commemorates a 19-yearold Israeli border police officer,
Mordechai Tomer, who was killed when a traveling car bomb detonated in April 2002.
Directly ahead, looking out from Mitzpe
Tomer, is the site where Kiryah Ne’emanah (Batei Nissan Beck) was
founded in 1879. Chassidim purchased this area in order to build the ninth
colony founded beyond the Old
City walls. Thirty houses
were built by the chassidim, and the other half of was built up by Persian
Jews. Other neighbourhoods for Syrian Jews and Jews who came from Georgia were
built in the area. In all, there were 200 homes.
During the 1929 Arab riots, the Kiryah Ne’emanah area was subjected to terrible Muslim fury. The residents were
murdered and plundered by the Arabs. Three of the eight shuls of the area were
vandalized and then set on fire. After the riots, only a handful of Jews returned,
and Muslims and Christians occupied the rest of the homes. These Jews also
suffered from Arab terror in the 1936 Arab riots. In 1948, the last of the Jews
in the neighbourhood left the area, escaping before the Arab forces occupied
eastern Jerusalem and the Old City.
Today a few brave families have come to live in the area among the Arabs.
From 1948 until 1967, the eastern end of
Rechov Hanevi’im, which forms a triangle with the Old City walls
and the southern side of the neighbourhood of Musrara, was part of the no-man’s-land between Israel
and Jordan.
The area was returned to Israel
with the reunification of Jerusalem
after the miraculous Six Day War.
In the late 1980s, it was proposed to widen
the narrow, two-lane Rechov Hanevi’im into a 32-meter-wide superhighway.
This would have entailed the destruction of historic garden-courtyard buildings
lining the street, and the plan encountered stiff opposition from Jerusalem residents. An
alternative proposal suggested laying the highway across the courtyards while
retaining the outer stone walls, to maintain the 19th century character of the
street. Neither idea has come to fruition.
