Place in the Sun
This article was published in issue 52 | Nisan 5780 | April 2020 In early 1969, a very elderly man lay in a darkened hospice room in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood. Almost nothing was left of him...
Tag Archives: Jerusalem
Make Art, Not War
Painting as Oxygen Churchill's painting of Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, 1921, oil on canvas, Private collection, London Churchill Heritage Ltd Best known as the British prime minister who defeated Hitler, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill is famed for his...
New Life in Jerusalem’s Old City
Enter Ganat When the smoke cleared after the Six-Day War, Israel’s government had to make major strategic decisions about the areas conquered. As the gunfire ceased in the Old City in those euphoric days of...
De-Classified Comments
War Talk As long as the Egyptians are in Sinai and not moving, there’s no question of war. I’m not sure any power can demand that they leave Sinai (Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, May 17, 1967)...
Scent of Freedom
Pipe Dreams The average tourist would definitely wrinkle his nose in disgust and pity at the row of old women beaming from the photo of the Russian Compound’s pilgrim hostel in turn-of-the-century Jerusalem. The subjects...
Painter of Jerusalem
Ludwig Blum Often an artist is more popular with the public than with critics and peers. Ludwig Blum was one such. Born in Moravia (now the Czech Republic) to an Orthodox Jewish family, young Blum...
The Youngest Maccabee
Guerrillas in the Hills The year 160 BCE found the Hasmonean family in a sorry state. Judah had fallen in battle, his army decimated and the Maccabee rebellion all but quashed. Seleucid king Demetrius I...
Cast a Giant Shadow
Antiochus' Castle People generally assume the history of Hasmonean Jerusalem began with the Seleucid conquest of Judea from the Egyptian Ptolemies, escalated with Antiochus Epiphanes’ anti-Jewish edicts and the idol he placed in the Temple,...
Pilgrim City
Destination Jerusalem In ancient times, the major challenge faced by the city administration was to provide water and accommodation, both at the roadside, for those approaching Jerusalem on foot, and within the city walls for...
Through Lions’ Gate
From Tel Yosef to IDF What are your roots? I was born on Kibbutz Tel Yosef, in the Jezreel Valley. My parents had come separately to Mandate Palestine from Ukraine during the third wave of...
The Battle on the Hill
Fighting for Jerusalem In 2003, about a year before Reserves General Rafael Eitan drowned off the coast of Ashdod, he spoke to a group of tour guides on the lawn by San Simon Monastery, in...
