JERUSALEM as we know it has been gradually sacrificed on the altar of urban renewal, with scores of high-rise buildings replacing four- or five-story structures.
After all the disputes surrounding the future of the former President Hotel, which had been intended for mixed residential-commercial use, the building and its land were sold recently for NIS 310 million by MVRDV Even Israel, the company headed by Nachum Rosenberger, who is also the key shareholder in the Osher Ad supermarket chain.
He explained that the company wants to focus more on its downtown properties, one of which is at the intersection of Jaffa Road and Hanevi’im Street. What this in part entails is tearing down the building that houses the Abraham Hostel and several adjacent shops.
Anyone who is nostalgic for the Jerusalem of yesteryear should take a quick trip around the city to feast their eyes on sites that will soon disappear. Just look at the number of high-rise buildings that are now reaching skyward on Jaffa Road, with more in the planning stages or already under construction.
One can only surmise when it will be time to convert Mahaneh Yehuda into a modern commercial center, thereby removing all its charm. Already begun: modern paving, sleek new stores, and an ever-growing number of eateries. As for the Abraham Hostel and its immediate neighbors, in its place there will be a 43-story tower.
As things currently stand, traffic in Jerusalem is a nightmare and is bound to get worse as the number of residential units increases.
When the 15-story Clal building on Jaffa Road was completed in 1972, it was the city’s first indoor shopping mall, which was a nine-day wonder before it became a white elephant. It still stands out against the city skyline but is gradually being dwarfed.
With all the new sophisticated construction techniques, how has no one come up with a solution for uneven road surfaces, potholes, dangerous cracks in paving, and so many other underfoot perils, not to mention a blot on aesthetics in upscale neighborhoods?
Mabua experiences renewal
■ MABUA – ISRAELI MIDRASHA (formerly Beit Prat) is experiencing renewal, with a new name, a new home in Talbiyeh, and a renewed commitment to its mission to cultivate a broad, inspiring, and unifying Israeli-Jewish movement.
Mabua inaugurated its new name and home with an exciting event dedicated to cultivating mutual trust within Israeli society, which featured shared learning, dialogue, and music.
The evening was attended by members of the Mabua community and dozens of partner organizations, such as The One Hundred Initiative, The Fourth Quarter, Shaharit, and Tikkun.
President Isaac Herzog, in giving his blessing to the event, said: “For 20 years, Mabua has been an important voice in society – a voice that spreads light and deepens connection. The wicked winds of division that blew here before October 7 are a place to which we must not return. You are a valuable force that brings us closer to the good and the unifying within us. You fulfill the Talmudic saying ‘Torah scholars bring peace to the world.’”
Mabua CEO Anat Silverstone said: “Our dialogue must consist of more trust and radical listening, and with it tremendous hope. Without this, we will not survive this national crisis.
“At Mabua, we know how to have this kind of discourse. We’ve practiced it for many years in our beit midrash and in our community.”
Werdiger matriarch comes to Jerusalem
■ NOW IN her late 80s, Nechama Werdiger, the matriarch of a large family scattered in different parts of the globe, will travel anywhere from Melbourne, where she lives, to join in family celebrations of life-cycle events.
This month she was in Jerusalem for the wedding of Ayala and Shimon. Ayala is one of her great-granddaughters. Werdiger, who is generous to a fault, co-hosted a sheva brachot, which she arranged with the bride’s grandmother Michelle Feiglin, one of her three daughters.
Werdiger also has two sons, 28 grandchildren, and close to 100 great-grandchildren. Better still, she remembers all their names.
When she and Feiglin hosted the sheva brachot dinner at the Sheyan restaurant last week, it was very much not only a family celebration but a reunion of Australian expatriates who had known each other in the old country and in some cases were relatives of relatives or had gone to school with grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Reb Moshe Zalman Feiglin. The first Chabadnik to settle in Australia, Reb Feiglin arrived in 1912, choosing to settle in rural Shepparton, Victoria.
Born in Russia, he had first gone to the Holy Land, where his oldest child was born; but finding it too difficult to provide, he continued traveling south until he reached the farthest place in the world from Russia.
Despite there not being much in the way of Jewish education in those days, all of his nine children remained observant as have their descendants, and most at some point lived in Melbourne.
Werdiger, née Serebryanski, was born into a Chabad family in Ukraine, but during the Holocaust the family sought shelter in Uzbekistan, a refuge for many Jews. She arrived in Australia as an adolescent and married Nathan Werdiger, a Holocaust survivor who went to Australia with next to nothing, was helped by relatives, and died a billionaire in 2015.
In Jerusalem, the ever-youthful Nechama Werdiger – who looks nowhere near her age and has a slim figure – was quick to join the dancers in the women’s circle and kept rushing around to greet the 80-plus guests.
The restaurant is a favorite with the Werdiger family.
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