Assignment # 7 - Outside the Walls

I hope you enjoyed today's scavanger hunt through the German Colony, Yemin Moshe, Mishkanot Sheaninim, and Mamilla. You need to turn in or show me your group's pictures to receive credit for this assignment by this Thursday (Nov. 2nd).

Assignment # 6 - On top of David's Tower?

This week's reflection should be about our jaunt to the Tower of David Museum, through our walk on the walls to the Coneculum and David's Tomb. Although we took it easier this siyur, I hope that you will begin to share your thougts on the viewpoints of Jerusalem as we experienced a bird's eye view of the city. You are also invited to share your thougths on Kingdom of Heaven and how it relates to the ideas and themes we have been discussing in this course. This assignment is due Sunday Nov. 2.

Assignment # 5 - Jewish Quarter & Davidson Center

This reflection is due Sunday 22/10. Please share your thoughts and analysis of your experiences in the Old City this past Sunday. Be sure NOT to critique the acting or flatter the actor - he is already aware of his talents and faults. To jog your memory: we entered through Zion Gate, visited the Cardo, the replicated menorah for the Temple, the Broad Wall, my favorite place in the Old City, and concluded with a virtual tour of the 2nd Temple at the Davidson Center. Good Luck on your midterms.

Kudos to a clever student for the tip on this article:

Jordan plans new Temple Mt. minaret
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Etgar Lefkovits, THE JERUSALEM POST Oct. 11, 2006
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Israel has not objected to Jordanian plans to construct a fifth minaret on the Temple Mount, and the Hashemite Kingdom is pressing ahead with plans to do so early next year, a senior Jordanian official said Wednesday.

The minaret, which will be constructed on the eastern wall of the Temple Mount near the Golden Gate, will at 42 meters be the highest of the minarets on the Mount and the first to be built in more than 600 years, Dr. Raief Najim, vice chairman of the committee running the project, told The Jerusalem Post in a telephone interview from Amman.

He said he spoke with Israeli authorities about the plan last year and did not hear any objections to the proposed construction. He revealed that he toured the intended site with a top Jerusalem police commander, a senior government official and the head of the Antiquities Authority and none of them voiced any opposition.

"Even though the political situation has changed, I do not think they will refuse to construct such a thing," he said.

The Prime Minister's Office said Wednesday that no decision was taken to approve the construction of the minaret. The Antiquities Authority declined comment.

Earlier this week, King Abdullah II issued an international tender for the design of the minaret, which is expected to cost 400,000 to 500,000 Jordanian dinars (NIS 2.4 million to NIS 3m.).

The winner of the tender will be chosen in three months, Najim said, adding that construction work could begin early next year.

Najim, who met with Abdullah on Monday to finalize the plans, said that the minaret will be constructed in Hashemite style to differentiate it from the previous four minarets, which were built in the Mameluke style, and will include seven sides representing the star on the Jordanian flag.

According to a decades-old regulation in place at the Temple Mount, Israel maintains overall security control, while the Wakf, or Islamic trust, is charged with day-to-day administration.

A leading Israeli archeologist lambasted the plan. "I am against any change in the status quo on the Temple Mount," said Bar-Ilan University's Dr. Gabi Barkai, a member of the Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount. "If the status quo is being changed, then it should not just be the addition of Muslim structures at the site."

In contravention of the law, Antiquities Authority archeologists have not been carrying out full-time supervision of the site for much of the last decade due to their concern about renewed Palestinian violence, despite the reopening of the compound to non-Muslims two years ago.

During this period, Israel has been keen to involve the Jordanians in the ongoing repair work on the Temple Mount, as they are considered more moderate than the Palestinian heads of the Wakf appointed by Yasser Arafat on his return to the West Bank 10 years ago.

The other minarets include three near the Western Wall and one near the northern wall. The first minaret was constructed on the southwest corner of the Temple Mount in 1278. The second was built in 1297 by order of a Mameluke king, the third by a governor of Jerusalem in 1329, and the last in 1367.

"For the past century all Hashemite intervention [here] was restoration and maintenance, and now for the first time there will be a new monument on the site," Najim said.

Is a Smaller Jerusalem Better?

w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m
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Last update - 03:09 12/10/2006
A small Jerusalem is better
By Moshe Amirav

On October 17, the National Council for Planning and Construction is supposed to discuss a new plan that will change the face of Israel's capital. At issue is the construction of 20,000 residential units west of Jerusalem, which will dramatically change the direction of the city's expansion and will weaken it economically and politically.

The public uproar surrounding the new plan, which has led to the submission of 15,000 objections, stems from fear that the planning mistake of the 1970s is repeating itself. At that time, Israel invested huge sums in the construction of about 40,000 residential units in East Jerusalem. These turned into seven neighborhoods, including Ramot, Gilo and Pisgat Ze'ev, which today house about 180,000 Jewish residents.

The plan, which was initiated by Golda Meir's government in order to "strengthen the capital," was severely criticized by all the experts. Thirty years later, its destructive consequences have become evident: From a compact city of 37 square kilometers, Jerusalem has turned into a huge metropolis that covers 120 square kilometers, twice as large as the area of Tel Aviv and Haifa combined. Instead of channeling government investments into infrastructure, industry and tourism, they were channeled into the construction of these neighborhoods, which led to the flight of businessmen and the economic elites from the city.

During the past two decades, about 300,000 Jews have left the city, most from the middle or upper class. Jerusalem has turned into the poorest city in Israel, and today, Jewish neighborhoods comprise only one-third of the city's eastern part. The other two-thirds house about a quarter of a million Arabs, who have upended the demographic policy designed to reduce their proportions. The Jewish majority has shrunk to only 66 percent, and there is a fear that in another 20 years, the city will be binational - half its residents will be Palestinians.

The idea that a "bigger Jerusalem" would strengthen the city turned out to be mistaken. A "small Jerusalem" is preferable. Now, the National Council for Planning and Construction is about to repeat exactly the same mistake, but the consequences are liable to be far worse. A group of wealthy businessmen and a world-famous architect, Moshe Safdie, have joined forces to convince the municipality and the government that Jerusalem is not big enough, that it lacks built-up areas, and that 120,000 Jews must urgently be brought to it. Here lies the trap of the mistaken idea: There is no need to enlarge the city; just the opposite - it should be made smaller.

The solution is to strengthen the downtown area and invest in employment infrastructure, on one hand, and to relinquish the Arab neighborhoods, on the other. All the studies have proven that these two steps would strengthen the city economically and politically. They would raise the city's economic level from 90th (last) place, where it is now, to a respectable place in the top decile of Israeli cities. They would also increase the city's Jewish majority from 66 percent to 96 percent and ensure Jewish hegemony in the Israeli capital. But who listens to experts when wealthy businessmen promise the magic formula: the construction of 20,000 residential units on the slopes of the mountains west of the city?

The consequences of the Safdie plan, which calls for these thousands of new apartments, are liable to be a disaster for the capital. The plan would destroy the green landscape west of the city, while the economically strong population that the entrepreneurs promise to bring from the coastal plain to Jerusalem will not come. Tens of thousands of Jerusalemites will migrate from the city to private homes and cheap apartments in the luxury neighborhoods that will be built. The percentage of Jews in the city will decline to 50 percent within the coming decade, and Jerusalem will collapse economically and politically.

But now, just like 30 years ago, the experts' warnings will apparently be rejected under pressure of the entrepreneurs. Dozens of Knesset members from Labor, Yisrael Beiteinu, the National Religious Party and Meretz have signed a manifesto against the plan. But unless the interior minister and the prime minister intervene to stop the plan, or at least to downsize it, Jerusalem will continue on its planning march of folly, which holds that a "big Jerusalem" is the solution for strengthening the city.

The author served in the past as a member of the Jerusalem Municipality's administration

Reading Homework

Just a reminder that for our siyur this week at 1 PM on October 12th - you do not have to bring your sourcebooks, notebooks, or pen/pencil. The following Sunday, October 15th, we are leaving at 1 PM for a exciting investigative siyur to the Old City - you do need your sourcebook, notebook, and a pen. Please make sure that you have read up to the 2nd Temple period (including the sects in the city); consult the table of contents is your are not sure. As for the following lecture, please have completed up to and including the Arab/Muslim arrival and conquest. Have a happy Moed!

Assignment # 4 - Finding the Lost Temple

For this assignment I would like for you each to do some research and virtual digging into the past and present of the Temple Mount (Har Habayit) and Holy 2nd Temple. On the right margin of the blog you will find some helpful links. Be careful regarding wherever you search that what you find might be fact, fiction, or wishful thinking. Discuss please how you relate to temple, the role the temple played in Jerusalem in the past and could/would play in the future. As Jews traditional made pilgrimage to the Temple on the holiday of Sukkot, I hope that your study will act as a replication of the experience. It is due next Thursday, October 12th. Chag Samach.

Only in Jerusalem - Part 1

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Something always gets lost in translation, but usually not an entire city.

"Jerusalem. There is no such city!" the Jerusalem municipality said in the English-language version of a sightseeing brochure it had published originally in Hebrew.

The correct translation: "Jerusalem. There is no city like it!"

Carrying a photograph of the brochure, Israel's Maariv newspaper said Wednesday tens of thousands of flyers had been distributed before city hall realized its mistake.