German Colony

A friend of mine at HUC recommended a weekly tour that the city offers for free on Saturday mornings. Each Saturday they pick a different neighborhood and give its history; this weekend the tour took our small group through the German Colony. Before arriving there, however, our walk took us along some other interesting neighborhoods. For example, here is a picture taken from the Jaffa Gate: in the top right corner you can see the King David Hotel, which I've mentioned before. Directly below it is a very exclusive neighborhood called Kefar David ("Village of David"). These small apartments cost over a million dollars, and only a few of them are owned by Jerusalem residents; in fact most are owned by wealthy Jews from other countries who visit Israel during the high holidays and want somewhere to stay that is in walking distance to the Western Wall. For this reason, Kefar David is an unusually quiet neighborhood during the rest of the year.

To the left of Kefar David you can see another neighborhood set on the hill, and you can just make out a windmill. Here is a closer look:
This neighborhood is called Yemin Moshe, and in 1857 it became the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls of the Old City. The man behind its creation was Sir Moses (Moshe) Montefiore, who so strongly believed that Jews should work the fields around the Old City that he sponsored the houses as well as the windmill. But he had a hard times convincing those who lived safely within the Old City walls to live here, and in the end he offered the houses for free, and only poor young couples took up his offer. Now, of course, it is one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Jerusalem.
Here is a close-up of the windmill. Behind it you can see the Church and Monastery of the Dormition, which sits atop Mount Zion and in Catholic tradition is venerated as the site where Mary died (Lat. dormitio = "sleep"). I think there'll be a future tour through Yemin Moshe, so hopefully I'll have some more tidbits to pass on later.

Our last stop before the German Colony was at the Lion Fountain. This is one of the only pieces of public art in Jerusalem to depict a specific animal. Because of biblical commandments against representations of humans or animals, the ultra-conservative Jews in the city (the Haredim) oppose such depictions in public spaces. Hence visitors to the city will notice an abundance of abstract art. This fountain is one of the few exceptions.

At last we arrived at the German Colony, which for the most part follows Emek Raphaim Street. It was settled in the last quarter of the 19th century by German Protestants who broke away from the mainstream reformed Protestant churches in Germany. They saw no need for churches or preachers, since they believed each of us carried a temple in our heart. For this reason, they called themselves "templars." (They should not be confused with the Crusader templars several centuries earlier.)

They came to Jerusalem out of religious devotion and a desire to live where Jesus had lived. They were skilled in building techniques and engineering and in a short time had made their small colony an important center of commerce. Here is one of their first buildings, a millhouse which outmoded the Yemin Moshe windmill after the latter had been around for only 25 years or so. Now the millhouse is a private residence.

Here is another characteristic of the houses: they usually have a biblical verse written on the lintel.

Here is a close-up. It says: "The Lord loves the gates of Zion over all of the dwellings of Jacob."

And here is another house with Isaiah 60:1 written on the lintel, where you can also see 1877 as the founding date.

The Germans thrived into the beginning of the 20th century, but at the conclusion of World War I, when the British took control of Jerusalem, they were suspicious of this German enclave. Into the 1930s their suspicions were justified when many of the residents sympathized with the Nazi party beginning to rise in Germany. (These second and third generations of residents did not share their parents' fervent piety.)

The British army eventually loaded the Germans onto boats and sent them off to Australia, when many of them assimilated and stayed. After World War II some of them went back to Germany, and a few came back to Jerusalem. When Israel came into statehood in 1948 they negotiated with the Germans in Australia to buy the properties the latter had been forced to leave. The state of Israel in turn sold the properties, and now most of the buildings are private residences.