Once upon a time in Jerusalem,
And this time – the Strawberry Garden, Ohel Moshe neighborhood, Nachlaot, late sixties.
The Strawberry Garden was built at the end of the 19th century as the center of the Ohel Moshe neighborhood – one of the first Jewish neighborhoods built in the Nachlaot neighborhood.
The garden was named after the large strawberry trees that have been there for many years. Scattered around the garden are several cisterns, which were used by the residents of the neighborhood and its surroundings until the 1930s.
The cisterns supplied water to the besieged city during the War of Independence, and the garden located in the center of the neighborhood was the meeting place for the residents of the neighborhood, a sort of bonfire of the local tribe.
The small neighborhood houses faced the spacious yard with the strawberry trees and served as the meeting point for the residents and children of the neighborhood, the gathering of the women on washing day, with laundry tubs full of hot water and a washing board on which the dirty clothes were rubbed and a gathering place on Saturdays and holidays after prayer in the synagogue.
Among the residents of the neighborhood were mythological Jerusalem figures whose memories the strawberry garden snorts –
Yitzhak Navon, later the president of the country, inspired by the garden, wrote The Spanish Orchard, whose plots take place around the garden,
The great Yossi Banai, another resident of the neighborhood wrote in his memoirs – “I return to the neighborhood, to the strawberry tree, to a red red kite tied to a string”, together with Simon and little Moises.
Over the years, the neighborhood was neglected, the old residents preferred to move out of the neighborhood to the new housing estates and buildings built in the developing city, and in the seventies and eighties, drunkards, homeless drug addicts and eccentric people who contracted the Jerusalem syndrome began to frequent the garden.
The garden became a neglected place with worn benches. The fruits of the strawberry tree that filled the floor and were not collected thin and hungry cats, and a gathering place for the city’s eccentrics.
In the 1980s, a neighborhood rehabilitation project began in Nachlaot at the initiative of the municipality and with the participation of local residents.
The neighborhood was lazily renovated, sidewalks were built, the neighborhood paths were renovated, and young people, students, and new residents slowly began to return to the unique neighborhood with the familiar Jerusalem aroma.
The members of Hadag Nahash, the band so identified with Jerusalem, moved to the neighborhood and wrote in their song Gan Hatut-
“Two religious people bet on what they don’t have in their cards, a woman from the Israeli Border Police is ground to a pulp in the heat of June, and one from Bezalel with a camera looks lecherous. This is the nearest garden, the strawberry garden, just coming to it is good for my health.”
Over time the neighborhood developed, the streets were tidied up and a new population from Israel and abroad who were looking for the old Jerusalem character moved to live in the neighborhood, The houses were renovated and upgraded, and the charm and splendor returned to the Jerusalem neighborhood so much.
In 2009, the renovation and restoration of the garden was completed after a long struggle by the residents demanding its restoration, and today the garden is clean and tidy and available to anyone who wants to feel what the city used to look like.
So when Friday came, and the old religious man from the Strawberry Garden was just closing up shop, one could embrace the days that were and will never be again in the most special city in the world.
Shabbat Shalom to all, far and near, from Jerusalem.
