Grapevine: Israel-Iran: Days of yore

It’s not general knowledge that Iran once had a consulate in Jerusalem.

He was known for hosting numerous social events, and throughout the period of his stay in the Holy Land there is no record of his having engaged in anti-Zionist propaganda. Following his departure from Brenner Street, the apartment was converted into a club for British soldiers serving in the Royal Engineers Corps.

Not far from Brenner Street was the Turkish consulate at 15 Balfour St. The impressive building is an example of Turkish-style architecture.

Under the British Mandate, there were numerous consulates in and around Talbiyeh, as well as in the Old City. Among these consulates were the US, Britain, France, Italy, Greece, the former Yugoslavia, and even Saudi Arabia.

Getting back to Persia, as it was called during the reign of the shah, it voted against the partition of Palestine in November 1947; but once the State of Israel was declared, Persia gave Israel de facto recognition and sold oil to the nascent state. Although full diplomatic relations were not established, there was military cooperation, and Yaakov Nimrodi, an intelligence officer in the Palmah and later the IDF, was appointed as the representative of the Israel Defense Ministry in Tehran.

■ AS FOR the British Mandate, during the period of its administration of the Holy Land, it acquired quite a lot of land, including a large plot in Jerusalem that is designated for a future British Embassy, if and when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved.

Meanwhile, a dispute over another British property in Jerusalem was settled last month in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court when Judge Elad Lang ruled that an Israeli family that was trying to claim the property on the basis of squatters’ rights had no ownership rights to the property because the family could not produce any documentation to support its claims. The property had been purchased by the British prior to the establishment of the state, but according to the family it had been allocated to their grandmother by the state and the Jewish Agency, and she had lived there. This factor, they argued, made them her rightful heirs. Since they could not furnish any written evidence of ownership or protected residency, Lang ruled in favor of the British government, which produced a document signed in 1967 that permitted residency for a limited period of time but without any rights of continuity.

■ PROF. ELISHEVA BAUMGARTEN, a leading scholar of the social and religious history of Jews of medieval northern Europe, has been elected dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University.

The focus of her research is the religious and social history of Jewish communities in urban centers during the period 1000 to 1350.

She is particularly interested in social interactions between Christians and Jews at that time. She is also interested in the lives of women and the gender hierarchy around a thousand years ago.

Publication of her work has significantly deepened our understanding of the daily lives of Jews in medieval Europe and has earned wide recognition in Israel and internationally. Since joining the Hebrew University in 2013, she has served in several key academic roles, including head of the study project at Hevruta – Study Groups for Doctoral Students (2014–2016); deputy dean for research at the Faculty of Humanities; and academic director of the Mandel Scholion Center. For the past three years, she has served as academic director of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.

Baumgarten, who will take up her new role on October 1, succeeds Prof. Nissim Otmazgin, who bolstered the Faculty of Humanities’ international profile through extensive collaborations with leading research universities worldwide. His tenure was marked by a strong commitment to the values of academic freedom, solidarity, and openness.

■ DON’T IGNORE the printed notices on bus stops. Not only have several buses been rerouted while infrastructure work for additional light rail services is being carried out, but some of the bus stops will become Cinderellas well before midnight, meaning that they become invalidated soon after 10 o’clock every night.

■ EVEN MORE important is where searches should be carried out for missing toddlers. The most common calamities involving very young children are finding them in a dangerously dehydrated condition in a locked car or drowned in a swimming pool or a baby bath. Very young children have an insatiable curiosity. If they’re not afraid of water, they will wander into a pool even if they can’t swim. If they see a car door open or ajar, they will climb in, the door will close, and they won’t be able to get out.

So the most important places to start a search are in the family car or that of a neighbor; and in the pool or any place – including a toilet bowl – in which a tiny tot can drown. Parents who drive with infants in the back seat must devise alerts to ensure that no child will be left alone in the car and forgotten when the parent exits.