Relax in Rehavia

A summer walk through a shady neighborhood.

By AVIVA BAR-AM
Parked cars in Jerusalem's Rehavia 521 (photo credit: SHMUEL BAR-AM)
Parked cars in Jerusalem's Rehavia 521
(photo credit: SHMUEL BAR-AM)
On the corner of Ussishkin and Ben- Maimon streets, a historic villa stands lonely and neglected. It was built by Julius Jacobs, a British Jew who served in World War I. When Jacobs became interested in Zionism, he got a job with the British administration in Palestine.
Jacobs was unusually honest and straightforward. Thus he found himself torn between his love for Palestine (and the secrets he learned from his highly placed Hagana friends) on the one hand and his position in the British civil administration on the other.
Finally he asked to be given a less sensitive job so there wouldn’t be any conflict of interest. His new office was in the King David Hotel and he was hard at work there – and killed – when the building was blown up by the Jewish resistance. Jacob’s widow eventually leased – and then sold – the house to the State of Israel, and it ultimately became the first Prime Minister’s Residence.
Make the Jacobs home part of a perfect summer street stroll through the shady Rehavia neighborhood. The walk can be as long as you make it, depending on whether you stop to shop, eat or rest on a bench with an apple and a good book. Begin on the corner of Keren Hayesod and Keren Kayemet streets with the National Institutions and end up at the Kings Hotel just a moment away from your starting point.
Established in the early 1920s over a wasteland of rocks and weeds purchased from the Greek Orthodox Church, Rehavia was constructed with solely Jewish labor. Most of the workers were members of Gedud Ha’avoda (the Workers’ Battalion), a Zionist-socialist group founded in 1920. Imbued with a passionate desire to settle, build and defend the Land of Israel, these stalwart young men and women farmed, drained swamps, paved roads and erected buildings.
And where did these socialist laborers live while they were building the bourgeois neighborhood of Rehavia? In tents located right where the National Institutions are today.
According to the plan prepared by German-born Richard Kaufmann, who designed over 150 of Israel’s towns, farming communities and garden neighborhoods, that plot was originally intended to house the Gymnasia Rehavia. Apparently, however, when the school’s directorate decided that the location on a major street was unsuitable for the first modern high school in Jerusalem, it ended up as home to pre-state Israel’s three largest Zionistic institutions.
If you look around you will see that the complex, designed by Yochanan Ratner in 1931, includes an open courtyard facing three large wings. Shaped like a horseshoe and constructed in modified International (Bauhaus) style, the building on the left as you face the courtyard houses Keren Hayesod (United Israel Appeal); the Jewish Agency is in the middle and the wing on the right holds offices of the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (Jewish National Fund).
The Knesset held its first half a dozen sessions in the complex’s auditorium and it was here that Dr. Chaim Weizmann was sworn in as the country’s first president.
Not surprisingly, the large courtyard was the scene of many a festival and demonstration. When the United Nations decided to partition Palestine on November 29, 1947, Golda Meyerson (Meir) spoke to the large, excited crowd down below.
In the middle of the War of Independence, on March 11, 1948, a car bomb went off in the courtyard. Twelve people were killed – and the Keren Hayesod wing collapsed, only to be rebuilt one story higher. Note the northern wall, next to the JNF: it slants down, like the glacis at the Tower of David, and tiny barred windows resemble the slits in the Old City walls used for firing at the enemy.
BEGIN WALKING down Keren Kayemet Street, stopping at a little alley that leads to a three-winged apartment building at No. 8. Called Rosh (“head” or “top” of) Rehavia, the structure was erected in the mid-’30s specifically for people who wanted to live in the new, elegant neighborhood but couldn’t afford to build their own houses. The apartments were large and modern for the times, a real boon if you wanted to be close to the affluent middle class. You will recognize the architectural style as International, for the building is extremely functional, with straight lines and rounded balconies. And, as usual, the inner stairwell is well lit by light coming in from plenty of windows. Wondering about the strange pole made of glass bricks surrounded by plants and flowers in the middle of the courtyard? For a very short while, it served as a fountain; now it is a statue.
A lively crowd used to gather at the Hermon Coffee Shop, at 10 Keren Kayemet Street, where a clothing store operates today. Its location near the National Institutions, the Prime Minister’s Residence and the homes of famous Jerusalem writers, artists and intellectuals made it the perfect venue for unusually colorful debates.
Across the street, the interesting home of Shmuel Ezrahi Brisker at No. 19 was built by the Gedud Ha’avoda and for very little money. It seems that the all of the workers from Gedud Ha’avoda cut their hair at Brisker’s famous barbershop in Zion Square. The laborers ran up a huge bill, which their society was supposed to foot. Unfortunately, the paymaster ran out of money. Brisker, who had only managed to raise half of the amount he needed to build his house, agreed to take out their debt in labor.
Look for the stone on the façade that reads, in Hebrew: Beit Ezrahi Brisker, 5684 (1924).
A bit further down the street, at No.14, stands one the most historic structures in the city. Established in 1909 and moved to its present site a decade later, the Gymnasia Rehavia was the first high school in Jerusalem in which boys and girls studied in the same classrooms. The prestigious school had some illustrious teachers, among them Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, later to become Israel’s second president, and his wellknown wife Rahel Yanait.
Instead of continuing down this winding street, which contrasts sharply with the grid-like design of the neighborhood, retrace your steps and walk down the stairs into a park between the Brisker House and 21 Keren Kayemet.
Kaufmann’s plan called for a wide, elegant and tree-lined boulevard cutting through the neighborhood as far as Ramban Street. Unfortunately, however, not only does it feature an ugly cement bomb shelter and very few trees, but at narrow Alharizi Street the continuation of the “boulevard” is blocked by a gate leading to the former residence of Yitzhak Ben-Zvi. It seems that Ben-Zvi needed extra space to host garden parties and receptions as part of his duties. So he “borrowed” part of the boulevard from his neighbors, and forgot to give it back.
Turn right onto Alharizi, noting the one-story original house at No. 28, and at the next corner turn left onto Ibn Ezra Street. The building at No. 20 started out as a guest house (in those days called a “pension”), was later expanded and transformed into a residence for senior citizens and more recently turned full circle to become, once again, a pension: the Gallery Hotel.
Built in 1924, the dwelling at the corner of Ramban and 22 Ibn Ezra Street belonged to Gad Frumkin, the only Jewish Supreme Court justice to serve during the British Mandate. The sign that reads “Havatzelet” (lily) over the door was a gesture to his father, who published a historic newspaper of that name for over 40 years.
Arthur Ruppin, who dedicated his life to the establishment of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel, built the modest dwelling at 30 Ramban Street.
Residents later added the top two floors and part of the western wing, but you can still observe the beauty of the original style and stones utilized in the bottom story. Most interesting is the gardener’s residence – a small, yellow, covered rotunda around the building to the right.
The house on the opposite corner, at 32 Ramban, belonged to Menahem Ussishkin, one of the giants of the Zionist world and chairman of KKL-JNF for almost 20 years. Built in 1931, it bears the name “Mahanayim” above the door, to remind the owner of the fabulous villa called Mahanayim where he resided from 1922 to 1927, until the British appropriated it for the high commissioner.
In August 1933, on Ussishkin’s 70th birthday, he got the cross-street named for Yehuda Halevi (a Spaniard and one of the greatest Jewish poets of all time) changed to Ussishkin Street. It was probably also at his urging that what was then called Shmuel Hanagid Street, the crooked byway that led to the National Institutions, became Keren Kayemet Street.
TURN LEFT onto Ussishkin and descend to lovely Ben-Maimon Boulevard. Julius Jacobs’s house stands on the corner. Each of Israel’s first four prime ministers (David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett, Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir) lived here, and it was inside this relatively modest dwelling that major government decisions were made.
Eventually the building deteriorated, and when Yitzhak Rabin became prime minister for the first time in 1974, he and his wife, Leah, moved to more elegant surroundings. Although over a decade ago it was decided that the historic edifice would be turned into a memorial to Eshkol, today it is surrounded by dry weeds and boasts graffiti- covered walls.
Turn left onto Ben-Maimon, which was intended by Kaufmann to be a European-style thoroughfare (unlike the Kuzari Garden, which was for pedestrians only). Although the ambience pales by comparison to Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, the uneven stone path in the middle that begins at 32 Ben-Maimon does have some of the same features, like benches, trees, and a working kiosk. Bask in the cooling shade as you continue, enjoying the sight of some beautiful buildings.
Not surprisingly, the house at 8 Ben- Maimon looks a lot like the building next door (No. 6). That’s because they were both built in 1934 by Nassib Abcarius, a very wealthy and highly respected Greek Orthodox Egyptian lawyer who fell in love with a woman 30 years his junior. As if that weren’t enough, Lea Tannenbaum was the ultra-Orthodox daughter of a rich merchant from Mea She’arim.
After an Alexandria wedding, the adoring husband built one house for himself and Lea and another next door for renters. The love nest wasn’t inhabited for long because, unfortunately for Abcarius, his wife quickly demolished the family funds and, they say, made off with another man. Peer through the gate to see what’s left of the words “Villa Lea,” inscribed there by her besotted husband.
Emperor Haile Selassie, who fled his native Ethiopia after it was conquered by Mussolini in 1935, resided for a time in one of the Abcarius residences. Villa Lea was divided into apartments after Abcarius’s death in 1947, and soon housed some of Israel’s most illustrious personalities. Among them were former defense minister Moshe Dayan, former president Chaim Herzog and former cabinet minister Yosef Burg. Weizmann married his wife, Reuma, in the house of the unrequited lover.
Continue up the street to reach Paris Square, turn left, and at the end of the next block you will return to the National Institutions – your starting point.