Ending the Lack of Occupation in Jerusalem
Image by Neta Ben Ezra
Crossposted from Haaretz
Uri Even-Haim has a thing for abandoned homes. Each week, the fifth-year architecture student at the Bezalel Academy sets off around the capital’s downtown in search of forgotten buildings whose owners have disappeared.
Image by Neta Ben Ezra
“Usually, they are old Jerusalem homes, beautiful buildings with stone arches or unique features,” he said. “Sometimes they hide behind a row of hedges, sometimes they look like another house among a row of houses and sometimes they are like a black hole — no door, darkened windows and a pile of garbage on the floor. It’s a fascinating thing, what happens to this house? What happened to its owners and where is the municipality in this whole story?”
This Saturday, Even-Haim and his fellow abandoned home hunters will conduct two tours of central Jerusalem’s forgotten buildings as part of “Batim Mibifnim” (“Houses from Within”), a Jerusalem event now in its fifth year. (Tel Aviv also has a parallel event.)
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
