Course Check

• On Sunday I got on the a number 4 (kahv arbah) bus on Keren HaYesohd to check my memory of its route ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/street-of-prophets.html ). Contrary to what I remembered it turned off Nathan Strauss at Yehezkayl, and I discovered we were skirting Kerem Avraham (see http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/07/love-and-darkness.html ) where James Finn (a British consul and an antiquarianon on the cusp of collector and archaeologist) set up a farm to employ poor people in the mid 19th century. The Jews he employed were so poor that he had to give them breakfast at the Jaffa Gate in order for them to have strength enough to walk the mile or so to his farm.
• The bus passed Shneller. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Archaeology/jerott.html ) named for a German Lutheran missionary, Father Johann Ludwig Schneller, who bought land around 1850 from the village of Lifta for an orphanage and vocational school and orphanage for Christian Arab refugees from Syria. The nearby staff houses stell show the names of German towns over their lintels. The Ottomans (Turks) commandeered the property for and army base during World War I.
• The British took it over after they conquered the country and, with its French ally broke up the Ottoman Enpire into entities still trying to work thebselfes out today.
• The State of Israel in its turn put military administrative units and an armory on the Schneller campus.
• It has now been sold to an Ultra-Orthodox group which promises to preserve the buildings. People who think about it expect the Christian inscriptions to disappear some night, and perhaps the buildings as well. Next week I’ll take the bus again to see whether the unexpected route was a deviation caused bycelebrations of Succot ( http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/sherover-promenade.html and http://jerusalemblog.blogspot.com/2006/10/red-rock.html ).

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox