The capital’s swimmers are hung out to dry as the beloved Jerusalem Pool closes after 59 years.
By ILAN CHAIMThe iconic Jerusalem Pool: Lost to real estate developers.(photo credit: RONIT LOMBROZO)
At the end of this month, the State of Israel will earn the distinction of having the only major capital in the world without an Olympic-size, 50-meter length swimming pool. After extended court battles, Jerusalem’s swimming public has lost its oasis for the past nearly 60 years to real estate developers.Contrary to the outline plan for Jerusalem established by Keren Kayemet, the public will be deprived of its statutorily guaranteed public pool for at least the next four years of construction of a high-profit housing complex that will eventually replace the iconic Jerusalem Pool with one shrunken to a length of just 33.3 meters.Full disclosure: I have been swimming in Breichat Yerushalayim off and on since the summer of my freshman year in 1968, when it had two diving boards and a deep end of four meters. Each year I make it a point to swim to Tel Aviv and back (in total kilometrage).Over the years I have taught my four children to swim and dive there and recently set a new record for water slides (11) with the oldest of my seven grandchildren on my lap. It looks like we’ve had our last slide.It didn’t have to be this way. It is our misfortune to have a mayor who favors running and car racing, but apparently doesn’t care about swimming – let alone the Talmudic value of teaching one’s children to swim.This is not to suggest that the municipality has been entirely idle in this regard. It has been reported that another Olympic-size pool is planned for the capital, whose foundation was included in the planning for the recently opened Pais Arena in Malha. In fact, a municipal website until recently featured a computer-generated depiction of its entrance – complete with the name of the donor.As a dedicated swimmer and responsible journalist, I went to the arena in search of the graciously donated pool and was turned away with the news that it doesn’t yet exist. If this were a movie, we might think Salah Shabbati is in town (millennials may want to Google if they are not familiar with the Israeli classic). The Jerusalem Sports Authority told The Jerusalem Post that these plans have been suspended.Jerusalem’s largest pool was built amid great but expected controversy between the capital’s ultra-Orthodox and secular residents. When it opened in 1958 as the result of an initiative by hotelier Chaim Schiff and Moshav Shoresh, haredim demonstrated in the German Colony’s streets against the heretical proposition of men and women swimming together. The fact that it was proudly open on Shabbat only added to the heresy.An old friend from a religious family recalled recently that on her first visit to the pool in 1960 at the age of 10, she had to hide the embarrassing fact that she went there from her schoolmates. The religious opposition peaked when the haredim performed the kabbalistc ritual of pulsa dinura on February 14, 1958 to curse the pool.While the pool’s management eventually compromised with female-only swimming on Monday evenings and male-only swimming on Wednesday nights, the Jerusalem Pool remained open for mixed swimming at all other times, from 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. – the only pool in the city offering such convenience.There is something profoundly missing in the culture of a country that is so rightfully acclaimed for the number and variety of its swimming venues and water sports, yet neglects to teach its children how to swim. This is also our birthright – though ironically most of the hundreds of thousands of American Birthright participants come here knowing how to swim as the result of the nationwide instructional heritage of the American Red Cross.Transparency alert: I happened to benefit from growing up in Pittsburgh, where my progressive elementary school, Colfax, boasted a swimming pool. From first grade, we progressed through the system, learning the skills that gave us our neat little cards that certified and encouraged our aquatic progress from beginner to swimmer.As time went on, I graduated to teaching swimming to classes ranging from three-year-olds to adults in the US, and could only look on in disbelief at the number of unnecessary drownings in Israel each year due to the lack of basic swimming education.The fact that the Jerusalem Pool had one evening a week restricted only to male swimmers and another evening only to women swimmers just highlighted this appalling lack. On Wednesday evenings, boys from several yeshivas would take over the pool for undisciplined play without any instruction, in apparent neglect of the religious obligation to teach one’s children how to survive in the water.This lack of instruction is reflected by other faithful pool users from the local Arab community, whose children also may be seen enjoying themselves at play in the Jerusalem Pool without actually being able to swim using any recognizable technique.While nobody in their right mind would want Jerusalem to hold an Olympics – and one Olympic-size pool wouldn’t be enough anyway – the fact is that in Israel’s modern, neo-Hellenistic capital the Greek marathon is a valued sport. This certainly leaves room for a decently sized pool, unlike the cheaper, 25-meter half-size pool recently opened in East Talpiyot.The venerable swimming pool at the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus is a compromise 33.3 meters long, requiring the numerically challenged swimmer to count to 15 in order to swim half a kilometer, unlike the more natural and relatively uncomplicated 10 laps this requires at Breichat Yerushalayim. Old swimmers will have to learn new tricks – and also find new pools to swim in.Such notable venues as Ramat Rachel and the YMCA have been undergoing seemingly endless renovation, and prospective Jerusalem Pool refugees are scouring the city in search of alternative sources of chlorinated water.There is apparently one last hope, however: the rumor that the new Olympic-size pool will eventually be completed under the Pais Arena in Malha. In support of this, the new pool was featured for some time on the website devoted to our capital’s development, www.jerusalemconstructionnews.com/.The elusive new Jerusalem Olympic pool has since disappeared from the website, but its eventual completion may soften the sadness at the demise of its forerunner.
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