The little shop on Jaffa Street that captured old Jerusalem - opinion

Some of the tricks I use to combat insomnia at three in the morning is to wind back my memory clock to particular nostalgic moments of my youth. One night, I found myself in the Jerusalem of 60 years ago when I visited the city with my uncle and aunt.

It was a dream vacation, and I was 16. It was dark and cold, and the city was very different then. During the week that I was there, two American tourists were shot dead by Jordanian soldiers who picked them off from a sandbagged parapet on top of Dormition Abbey. For a boy my age, this was particularly scary; nevertheless, I was mesmerized by the atmosphere in the Holy City.

My uncle and aunt had been to Jerusalem before. We stayed at the President Hotel, which is now a dilapidated building on Keren Hayesod Street in Talbiyeh.

My aunt had fastidious taste. She was the daughter of wealthy British furniture people who made their fortune in South Africa. They brought their daughter Renee, 12, and her little brother, Jeffrey, seven, on a bat mitzvah trip. My parents allowed me to accompany them as a kind of quasi-babysitter.

My aunt wanted to find an antique jewelry store, somewhere where she could buy some gifts and trinkets for her parents and family. We came across just such a store and entered. A small white-haired woman invited us in.

The dimly lit shop was a labyrinthine space where Victorian sentimental pieces hung alongside Oriental scarabs and semiprecious turquoise and lapis antique necklaces. A low tented ceiling made of damask cloth helped to enhance the atmosphere of a bygone exotic era.

There were other tourists in the shop, and I could see the owner looking suspiciously at my cousins, as Jeffrey started reaching up to touch some of the merchandise.

“I’m afraid I don’t allow children in this shop,” she bellowed. She spoke with a distinct upper-class English accent. “I’m going to have to ask you children to step out of the store.”

“It’s very cold outside,” Aunt Cynthia argued. “Rest assured, the children will behave themselves. Won’t you, children?”

She looked at me expectantly. I nodded and grabbed hold of Jeffrey’s and Renee’s coats. The domineering owner eventually capitulated and allowed us to stay in the shop. She kept peering at us suspiciously while she asked my aunt what she was looking for.

“I rather hoped to find a piece of antique jewelry for my mother, who, by the way, was born and raised in England,” she said.

“These once belonged to the Duchess of Norfolk, who used to frequent this shop,” she announced theatrically as she made sure that all the other customers heard her. Aunt Cynthia lifted the necklace quite gracefully. The owner could see that my beautiful aunt was a woman of great taste and elegance.

In the meantime, Jeffrey and Renee began to get fidgety, signaling the need to finish our business and leave the store. The owner thanked us and guided us out of the shop with a flourish and a look of great satisfaction on her face.

Soon after that night of nostalgic meandering, I found myself back in the city of Jerusalem, a very different place compared with how it looked in 1966. I visit the city center every few weeks, and in 2026 it is certainly much transformed. Despite the brutal modernization, it nevertheless retains much of its old-fashioned charm.

In fact, there are still dozens of olde-worlde shops tucked away in the side streets and alleyways, selling every kind of merchandise, from jewelry and apparel to fabric, footwear, and Judaica. Some of these stores have become landmarks.

They include the iconic Khalifa shoe store at No. 44 Jaffa Street, with its overwhelming array of women’s and men’s shoes and sandals. The shop is tiny, yet cavernous with its endless shelves and wooden stepladders precariously ascended by the overall-wearing female shop assistants, who look and act as if they belong to a bygone age.

Mea She’arim lives in its own 19th-century time warp, as does most of Mahaneh Yehuda, the main outdoor market of what was once western Jerusalem. Nothing has changed there, and if you want to get a wistful whiff of pre-1967 Jerusalem, then that’s the place to wander around.