At the height of his glory, the Jewish community in the Muslim Quarter numbered about 5,000 people.
Here is a lesser-known piece of Jerusalem history, but always relevant: in 1936, the last Jew left the Muslim Quarter of the Old City.
Photo: June Rickner
At the height of its glory (early 20th century), the Jewish settlement in the "mixed district" (then called the Muslim quarter) numbered about 5,000. According to the records of Joshua Yellin, 75 of the 287 yards in the Jewish-owned Old City were then located outside the Jewish Quarter. Eliezer son of Judah was one of the celebrities of that time who lived there. Israel Dov Frumkin; Reuven Rivlin, the grandfather of the president of the state who bears his name; And Joseph Navon, father of Fifth President, Isaac Navon. This settlement was abandoned and extinct in the 1948, 1948 and 1942 riots.
At that time, the Jewish Quarter also sank to its temporary end. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 15,000 Jews living there, but years of famine, economic difficulties, poor sanitation conditions, riots. And the siege had depleted its population - on the eve of the British leaving the country in May 1948 - to only 1,700, later falling under siege.
This somewhat forgotten historical story is relevant today because, 53 years after the liberation of Jerusalem, proportion and especially the euphoria is reduced following the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem and the American recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel: the battle for the political future of the capital of Israel is far from over. Whatever it is, they will not determine the fate of the city, but the facts on the ground - those that exist, and those that do not exist. 220,000 Jews today live in the new neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, in narrow and wide circles around the Old City. Jerusalem "; in the inner core of the historic city; in Jerusalem Between the ancient walls. There - what to do - our situation is far from rosy.
Only about 13 percent of the 35,000 residents of the Old City are Jewish today — compared to about 35 percent at the beginning of last century. About 3,000 of them live in the Jewish Quarter and about 1,500 in the other quarters, mainly in the Muslim Quarter. At the beginning of the 20th century, as mentioned above, the number of Jews in these areas was four times greater than 20,000. After 1967, the State of Israel returned only to the Jewish Quarter, but not to the rest of the Old City. This is a "loophole that calls for a thief" - a loophole that calls for division.
The settlement of the ancient city outside the Jewish Quarter was left by the State of Israel by ideological and individual associations who, over the past decade, did sacred work and restored hundreds of Jews and dozens of Torah and educational institutions, but it is still an "individual stealth" enterprise, without power and government budgets, .
The settlement establishment in the Muslim Quarter has paid a bloody price over its hold over the years. Terror has hit him once or twice. It is a heroic Zionist settlement enterprise no less than the city of David's glory and publicity south of the Temple Mount.
A second and third generation of anonymous heroes has been re-planting here that it seemed only 80 years ago that it would never return. This lesser known enterprise is looking for "dad," but Netanyahu's governments have kept their distance and helped him only a little. Since the Eshkol and Golda governments, which attempted to redeem houses and lands in this area through the "pooling" division operated by the Israel Lands Administration, no significant government involvement has been recorded here.
Here is a mission of critical importance to Rabbi Rafi Peretz, the new minister of Jerusalem, who is well acquainted with the Old City boroughs - changing the direction of the government's action in the Old City outside the Jewish Quarter and finding the way to settle and repatriate many Jews there.
