This time – the Pargod Theater in a photo from the mid-seventies.
The Pargod Theater was founded in 1969 by Aryeh Mark, who was a theater and stage personality. Initially, it served as a neighborhood workshop and was located in the basement of a house on Tzipori Street, in the Nachalat Achim neighborhood, next to Nachalot.
In 1972, the theater moved to its now-known location, on Bezalel Street on the corner with Nissim Bacher. The theater occupied a cave-like basement that was previously a stable, a water cistern, and a hammam. Mark lived on the floor above. He renovated the stable/hammam for a year and a half by himself.
In the 70s and the 80s, besides theater performances, every Friday at noon, there were live jazz sessions with talented local jazz players, both young and old. The sessions were led by the piano player Danny Gottfried.
At the end of the 80s, the rock era began. Mark moved on to manage the Jarrar Becher Center, and the Pargod Theater served as a home for live performances by well-known artists and less well-known artists. I remember seeing the great Meir Ariel there, playing the guitar surrounded by 20 other people sitting on small straw chairs. I also saw the selection for Shlomo Bar’a band. He performed in front of an audience for the first time at Pargod.
Other artists such as Avner Strauss also performed there, as well as C. Hyman, who was a waitress there and also performed for the first time at Pargod. I also remember Dana Berger’s debut and other artists such as the actor Niko Nitai, and a quiet young mime Hanoch Rosen, who started performing there at the age of 17. Since then, he continues to try to go through glass and escalators.
Sometimes, the shows were so intimate and small that if one of the spectators went to the bathroom, the artist stopped playing and waited for them to return. At the same time, the Jerusalem rock band scene emerged in that period (there used to be such a thing … and it was quite big) with artists such as the late Migabat Bearers, The Phe and the Talpaim, and other bands, as well as the greatest Jerusalem band of all – Hadeg Nahsh that celebrated 25 years of activity. This band also performed for the first time in front of an audience at Pargod, in 1996.
A lively hammam and stable in a city full of talented young people full of energy, vigor, and rage. Those were the days …
But the bureaucracy did not overlook this place. In 1973, the Jerusalem Municipal Housing Company Perzot acquired the building, as part of a transformation plan for the Nachalot neighborhood.
In 1975, the company wanted to demolish the theater and build an apartment building in its place. Thanks to the aggressive and active intervention of the mayor of that time, Teddy Kolek, the demolition was prevented. Teddy also took care of budgeting for the place for several years while it served as a cultural and artistic center.
Since then, there have been additional attempts to demolish the building, but they were all stopped until 2000. That year, the Perzot company activated the eviction order for the building, so it could replace it with an apartment building. For those who don’t know what all this means, Perzot was a municipal government company cooperating with the Jerusalem Municipality. It was responsible for the development of the Nachalot neighborhood, demolishing the theater and the performance center to build a 10-apartment building in its place.
Here is what followed.
In 2003 Mark appealed to the Supreme Court to prevent the company from destroying the building, hoping the theater’s activity could be resumed.
In 2005, the Supreme Court approved Perezot’s request to demolish the building whose walls witnessed so many astonishing sounds and are an original piece of history.
As mentioned, the theater was closed at the request of the Perzot company and ceased to function.
Then, 12 more years passed, and nothing happened. In January 2012, the municipality finally approved the liquidation of the Perzot company. All the while, Perzot did nothing with the building that had been closed since 2000. As part of the liquidation procedure, the court decided that an apartment building would be built there.
Today, as we approach the end of the year 2022, nearly 23 years after the bustling and vibrant theater closed down, the building still stands still. It is abandoned, like a stone that cannot be replaced.
Most of the talented, kick-ass generation of secular Jerusalemites of the 90s left the city a long time ago. The building looks like a statue and silent testimony to stupidity, malice, and a bureaucracy that lacks sensitivity and intelligence, in the heart of the city, on Bezalel at the corner of Nissim Becher.
This is our Jerusalem — small and intimate jazz performances and pantomime shows, horse stables that became a debut cave for young Jerusalem artists, a hammam that became a theater, art and creativity as opposed to bureaucracy, gray officials without vision and courage, and Hadag Nahsh, the best and most prolific band that ever existed in Israel.
Shabbat of peace to the far and near Jerusalem
Photographer – unknown
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