Yishuv Yashan - Old Yishuv

The House of Yurburg in Jerusalem

By Zevulun Poran

Translated by Irene Emodi, Tel Aviv

In the second half of the nineteeth century the Jewish population in the old city of Jerusalem grew. It was estimated that 13,340 inhabitants lived in the old city in 1859 - 6,000 of them Jews, 4,000 Muslims and 3,340 Christians. The Jewish quarter was terribly crowded. In the Bible verses there is a shocking description of the living conditions of the Jews in the old city. This is what is written:

• "Those who see the places of living that look like dusty holes will be most astonished . . . if kind-hearted souls want to help these poor people, then the first thing they need is a clean and healthy place of living."
• Their economic conditions were also poor. The majority lived on "distribution" funds, collected by emissaries in the Jewish communities in Europe. Few were small tradesmen, had a grocery store or workshop. There was endless poverty and suffering. The majority of the Jewish population were Sephardic Jews, who had lived here for many generations, and a few were Ashkenaz Jews. All of them lived in terrible circumstances and unbearable poverty. Nevertheless, aliyah to Israel did not cease - from Kurdistan, North Africa, Eastern Europe. The holiness of Jerusalem attracted them in spite of the economic difficulties and living problems. In those years the philanthropist and public personality Sir Moshe Montefiori (1784-1885), helped the Jews in Eretz Israel. He visited Israel seven times, together with his wife Judith. Montefiori was well aware of the Jews' difficult living conditions and decided to do something about it. Montefiori thought of a daring idea - to move the Jews out of the suffocating quarter to beyond the walls of Jerusalem. The financial means to realize this idea were also found. At that time, 5614 (1854), a rich and generous Sephardic Jew called Turo died in the town of Orleans in the U.S.A. In his will Turo left a sum of money - about    $ 60,000- to the poor people of Jerusalem. This donation was handed over to Montefiori by the administrator, and he decided to use it to realize his plan, i.e. to purchase a piece of land and set up a neighborhood for the Jews outside the walls of the old city.

That is what happened. In 5620 (1860) the first building for the Jews was completed, outside the walls of Jerusalem, on a rocky hill, opposite Mt. Zion. The quarter was called Mishkenot She'ananim. Half of the settlers were Sephardic and the other half Ashkenaz.

In 5628 (1868) a new neighborhood was established - the second one - of Jews of Moroccan origin, (presently: to the west of the "King David" hotel), and this quarter was called Mahaneh Israel or in the popular tongue: the neighborhood of the western people.

A year later Ashkenaz Jews bought an area of land to the west of Mahaneh Israel and here on the second of Ayar 5629 (1869) the third quarter was established, called Nahlat Shiva, named after its seven founders.

*

Further on I plan to speak about the Nahlat Shiva quarter and the interest it holds for us, former residents of Yurburg.

Rabbi Yoel-Moshe Salomon, one of the quarter's founders and one of the editors ofthe "Torah meZion" newspaper says the following in his memoirs:

On Lag ba Omer 5626 (1866) Rabbi Moshe-Yoel Salomon went for a walk on the road leading to Yaffo. On the same road (opposite the Russian compound and the police - at present) he came upon a field where lentils and beans were growing and peasants were working. Salomon struck up a conversation with them regarding the purchase of the land for building there. The peasants agreed to sell the land and asked for half a cent per ell. Rabbi Yoel Salomon informed his friend Rabbi Yosef Rivlin, the man whose dream it was to further Jewish settlement, about his offer to buy the area, and he encouraged him to do so.

Next day Rabbi Moshe Yoel Salomon found another five partners for this idea and they were:

• Yoshua Yelin, the founder of the well-known Yelin family in Jerusalem;
• Michael Hacohen, a partner in the newspaper business;
• Benjamin (Beinish) Salant, the son of Rabbi Shmuel Salant, the chief Ashkenaz Rabbi in Jerusalem;
• Haim Halevy (Kovner), the first emissary who went abroad to collect donations for building the "Hahorva" synagogue;
• Arie Leib Horowitz in whose wife's name - she was a Turkish national - the quarter's land was registered and to whom the property certificate was registered. That is why at the time the jesters of the "Nahalat Shiva" founder's generation would say: " seven people held on to one woman. . ."
• After a while, Rabbi Yosef Rivlin, called "Yasha der Shtettel Macher (Yasha the town maker)" laid the foundation for a number of neighborhoods in Jerusalem and was the first man to build his home at Nahlat Shiva and also the first to settle there. When all the houses of the quarter had been built, all seven families settled there.

Soon Nahlat Shiva became a very lively neighborhood. Apartments were rented there, shops and even coffee shops. . .slowly it became the nucleus of the new town outside the walls of Jerusalem. Two streets in the neighborhood are named after the two founders today - Yoel Moshe Salomon Street and Yosef Rivlin Street, both of them old-timers of Lithuanian origin, the grandsons of the pupils of the Gerer Rebbe..

(Taken from http://www2.jewishgen.org/yizkor/jurbarkas/yur475.html, May 2005)

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