Arutz Sheva March 31, 2004

Through clandestine means, the Committee for the Renewal of the Jewish Community in Jerusalem’s Shiloach neighborhood purchased a six-and-a-half floor building located among the homes of Shiloach, predominantly an Arab-populated area.

Through clandestine means, the Committee for the Renewal of the Jewish Community in Jerusalem’s Shiloach neighborhood (also known as the Yemenite Village) purchased a six-and-a-half floor building located among the homes of Shiloach, a predominantly Arab-populated area. In the newly completed structure, and in an adjacent building, 10 Jewish families took up residence during the night.

The newcomers were greeted by their Arab neighbors with rocks and bottles; four policemen were lightly injured. Police also found firebombs ready for use on the roof of a nearby building. Police arrested six of the rock-throwers.

IsraelNN’s correspondent reports that during the entire period preceding their entry into their new homes, it was forbidden to any Committee members to be seen in the vicinity of the building. Such exposure could have revealed the identity of those behind the project and endangered its completion. The location of the structure, in one of the most hostile Arab neighborhoods in the capital, also held life-threatening danger for any Jew who would have approached the site unprotected.

Despite the violent Arab reaction to Jews moving into the neighborhood, a brief perusal of the history of the area reveals that the project constitutes redemption of Jewish land and property in Yemenite Village, which was legally acquired 120 years ago.

The dawn of Yemenite Village is in the period of the famous “A’aleh biTamar” immigration of 1882 (5642) from Yemen. When the Jewish immigrants arrived in Jerusalem, they found harsh poverty and overcrowding. They eventually found themselves living in caves outside the Old City of Jerusalem, on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. The established Jewish community ultimately pulled together to financially assist the new immigrants in building a neighborhood adjacent to the Shiloach spring.

Rabbi Boaz, son of Rabbi Yehonatan Mizrachi (and known as “Boaz the Babylonian”) - who was one of the most enthusiastic lovers of Zion - donated half of his 8,000 sq. meters (about 2 acres) of property on a ridge of the Mount of Olives for the construction of homes for the Jews from Yemen in 1885. Six years later, the neighborhood numbered 65 houses. In 1891, the immigrants from Yemen purchased ten dunams (about 2.5 acres) adjacent to the existing neighborhood from an Arab woman and built at the site, with their own hands, forty-five more houses for their families.

However, the idyllic quiet of the village came to an end in 1929 (5689). At that time, the Arab massacre of Jews in Hevron shook the security situation throughout the country. Soon after, the Jews were forced to abandon the village.

The events of 1929 passed and some of the Jews returned to the village, but the atmosphere was already heavy with Arab hatred and hostility. By the summer of 1930, there remained only 20 families. Over time, the local Arabs succeeded in cutting off Yemenite Village from the rest of the Jerusalem Jewish community.

On August 11, 1938, the British police abandoned the village, leaving the Jewish neighborhood unprotected. Three days later, the Jewish residents received an order from the British authorities to leave the village at once, “for reasons of security.” The British regime’s promises that “the Jewish refugees” would be able to return in the near future came to naught. Arab neighbors pillaged the place, destroying homes and desecrating the synagogue, the Torah scrolls and other holy books.

Yemenite Village, like other large swaths of Jerusalem, fell into the hands of the Jordanian Kingdom in the War of Independence (1948). After the liberation of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, the descendants of the village’s original inhabitants found silent alleyways and destroyed houses. Among and on top of the ruins of the Jewish property, new Arab construction was evident.

Today, however, Jewish life has returned once again to Yemenite Village.

[Over the Passover holiday and afterwards, there will be guided tours of Yemenite Village just outside of the Old City’s Dung Gate. For information, call (in Israel) 1-800-300-036 or (from overseas) +972-66-544-407.]

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 1st, 2004 and is filed under ourjerusalem.