Back to the grindstone

The Montefiore Windmill has a long and checkered history.

By BARRY DAVIS
Back to the grindstone (photo credit: Courtesy Jerusalem Foundation)
Back to the grindstone
(photo credit: Courtesy Jerusalem Foundation)
There may have been a lot of tilting at windmills over the past century and a half or so, but later this month, the blades of the Montefiore version of the mill grinder will once again rotate proudly through the shimmering air of Jerusalem.
On July 31, to be precise, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will join executives of the Jerusalem Foundation in officially reopening the famous Jerusalem landmark. The foundation has overseen NIS 5 million worth of renovation, repair and restoration work, which has restored the windmill to its former glory, and then some.
Generations of Israelis, and Jews around the world, have grown up with the image of the statuesque structure sitting majestically on the upper slopes of the Yemin Moshe neighborhood facing the Old City.
But the iconic figure has been static throughout almost all of the windmill’s history.
Built in 1857 by British philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore, in fact the mill only worked for around two decades, when steam-powered mills emerged on the scene and made the Yemin Moshe mill obsolete. It seems Montefiore conceived the idea for the project during his fourth trip to Palestine, in 1855. At the time the Crimean War was raging between the Russian Empire and an alliance between Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia. It is thought that the economic fallout of the military campaign exacerbated the already challenging living conditions in Jerusalem, which, in those days, was entirely located within the Old City walls.
Montefiore and British chief rabbi Nathan Adler set about collecting funds on behalf of the Jews of Palestine, which primarily comprised communities in Safed, Tiberias, Hebron and Jerusalem. Montefiore and Adler gave the fund-raising vehicle the no-nonsense title of Appeal Fund on Behalf of the Suffering Jews in the Holy Land.
As Jerusalem Foundation president Mark Sofer observes, it wasn’t just a matter of giving the impoverished Jews here charity. Montefiore was also interested in providing his coreligionists with a means of earning a living, with dignity.
“You have here the first neighborhood built outside the walls of the Old City, with no sustenance – nothing,” says Sofer, “and it was the poorest people who came out of the Old City first. Montefiore built the windmill as a source of sustenance for these Jews.”
Research into the windmill’s history indicates a threefold motive behind the construction project: to enable the Jews of Jerusalem to grind wheat at a substantially lower price than that offered by Arab-owned mills, to provide the mill operators with a source of income and to offer the Jerusalem Jewish community a convenient local facility for grinding their wheat.
In early 1857 a contract was signed with the Holman Brothers, English millwrights located in Canterbury, Kent. The stone for the tower was quarried locally and, considering the tower walls were almost a meter thick at the base and over 15 meters high, quite a lot of stone was required.
The parts were shipped to Jaffa and the heavy machinery was brought to Jerusalem by camel. In its original form, the mill had a Kentish-style cap and four Patent-type sails, the most advanced form of windmill vanes available at the time. The structure’s advanced technology was enhanced by a fantail.
“There wasn’t always enough wind to turn the sails,” explains Jerusalem Foundation director-general Daniel Mimran. “The fantail rotated to enable the sails to catch whatever wind there was, from any direction. This was the most technologically advanced windmill in the world at that time.”
The mill drove two pairs of millstones, flour dressers, wheat cleaners and other machinery. The Holman Brothers’ bill for designing and providing the parts of the mill was a princely £1,450.
Sofer feels the project is about more than the small amount of flour the windmill will produce.
“The renovation of the windmill is, to a large extent, not only a symbol of sustainability, it’s a symbol of everything that the Jewish people, the Israeli people, stand for,” he says. “There are, for me, three things on the macro level which are very important indeed. If you look at the history of the Jewish people, there is a mixture of old and new."
“Jerusalem will never be, and never should be, an ultra-modern monolithic or homogeneous city, because it’s not. It’s got its history, its religion and mentality, coupled with everyday living. You have to have the history and the future living together. That’s what Jerusalem is all about, and what Israel is all about. You cannot throw aside your past, but you have to look to the future.”
Presumably, later this month, when the prime minister presses the button – the replicated original wind-driven mechanism will be backed by a generator, just in case the wind doesn’t show up for the occasion – and the windmill’s mechanism stirs for the first time in over a century and a quarter, those two temporal entities will meet.
Sofer says the Jerusalem Foundation was happy to go along with the restoration scheme.
“We do these three things – community, culture and coexistence, the three Cs – so that Jerusalem will remain a living city, a pluralistic city, and won’t be a museum piece. But this [windmill] project is actually about much more than what the Jerusalem Foundation does. This is by far not our biggest project, but it is a very visible project.”
Sofer adds that the Jerusalem Foundation’s interest in the restoration project is a perfect fit for its support credo too.
“Philanthropy is not about handouts,” he states.
“You make a program, build an institution – like the windmill – but, at the end of the day, the idea is not give X a hundred dollars or Y a thousand dollars, but to make something that will allow the people, themselves, to build up their own lives. That is what philanthropy is all about, and that is where the Jerusalem Foundation is coming from.”
IT WAS no mean feat, to build the windmill here in the mid-19th century. In addition to the logistics of getting the parts up the hill to Jerusalem, all kinds of artisans and a large number of laborers were required.
In the spring of 1857 Thomas Richard Holman made the trek from Canterbury to Palestine to oversee the formation of the work team. He was later joined by his brother Charles, and two expert millwrights from England – Messrs Kemp and Mace – and dozens of manual workers, mostly Arabs, were hired.
The work progressed at a furious pace, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week – Sunday was, naturally, a rest day in England, and the Holmans observed the rules of the Christian Sabbath here too. The cornerstone was laid on May 5, 1857, and the construction work was completed the following year.
The windmill was eventually closed down in 1891, partly due to the lack of wind – hence the advantage enjoyed by the subsequent steam-driven models. The meteorological shortfall was not helped by the fact that the machinery was designed for soft European wheat, which required less wind power than the local wheat.
As Mimran and I made our way to the windmill it was clear that the restoration work was very much still in full flow. Two Dutch experts were busy putting the final touches on the windmill cap which, unlike most of the previous restoration attempts, replicates the original Kentish design.
“What we are doing today is based on the plans drawn up in the middle of the 19th century,” says Mimran proudly.
The windmill was largely left untouched after it fell into disuse, although, almost a century after it was built, its location did offer certain strategic advances.
That was also its ruination.
“The windmill stood here, in splendid isolation, until 1948 when it was blown up by the British,” Mimran continues. “The cap was used as a firing position for the Hagana, and in early 1948 the British high commissioner issued an order to have the windmill destroyed.”
The mill received its first, partial face-lift in 1955, but received an initial serious makeover in 1967, shortly after the Six Day War, by the Jerusalem Foundation.
“They put a bronze cap on the top and installed something like windmill vanes, not real ones, for symbolic purposes only,” adds Mimran. “This whole area is a sort of symbol of the first Jewish community outside the walls of the Old City.”
The next restoration project took place in 1982, with the help of a donation of a wealthy Jewish family from Mexico.
“Then they assembled the famous Montefiore carriage and built the piazza here,” explains Mimran.
Sadly, the carriage was badly burned four years later.
However, it was subsequently repaired and restored, and the bars that prevented the public from accessing the carriage were replaced by sturdy glass.
The next chapter in the windmill’s ongoing restoration story was in 2000.
“There were cracks in the structure, and it became a dangerous place,” says Mimran. “That’s when we brought the Tourism Ministry into the picture. We reinforced the structure and replaced the sails, and the dome – although, again, the cap wasn’t based on the original design.”
The current restoration plan was initiated around four years ago when the Dutch-based Christians for Israel group suggested not only beautifying the windmill, but also restoring it to something like its initial operational state.
“We found the original order for the windmill, from the company in England, in the National Library,” says Mimran. “Then we went to the municipality’s Preservation Committee, for ratification of the plan, and then to the Tourism Ministry. Everyone was enthusiastic about the plan, and the whole thing grew and grew, and we ended up with a budget of NIS 5 million – NIS 2m. from Christians for Israel, NIS 1m. from the Jerusalem Municipality, NIS 1m. from the Tourism Ministry and the last NIS 1m. from the Prime Minister’s Office. The Prime Minister’s Office recognized this as a heritage project.”
Mimran is excited by the impending resurrection.
“The structure has been mostly empty for well over a century, but it will soon be brought back to life. We have gone back to the original design, of four levels – the ground floor for taking in the flour [the meal floor], the one above is for the millstones, the third level is for the sacks of wheat and the top level is for dispersing the chaff and dust.”
The ground floor also houses a screen where members of the public will be able to watch a short film about the history of the windmill, but Sofer is keen to point out that it won’t just be about esthetics and symbolism.
“The mill will actually produce flour which will be used to bake bread,” he says enthusiastically. “It will be like a boutique bakery. It won’t be competing with any of the local bakeries, with their large-scale factories, but the idea is to actually produce a certain amount of bread for sale. This is a real, living project.”
It is also a very inviting project. The original stones have been spruced up a treat, joists and various other wooden fixtures have been added, and one gets a real sense of history inside the tower. Over a century and a half after he conceived the idea, Sir Moses would have been delighted.