Once upon a time in Jerusalem,
And this time – the house of Talitha Komi, 1890,
King George Street and today’s Mashbir Square.
The Talitha Komi House was established as an orphanage for Christian girls that was established at the end of the world at that time,
Far away from the walls of the old city, to allow the orphan girls to receive an education for the life of nuns, away from the temptations of the city.
The name Talitha Komi is taken from one of the stories from the New Testament about Jesus who restored to life the house of the head of the synagogue Yair.
The meaning of the word Talita is a little girl in Syrian Aramaic, and the name of the building in Hebrew is – “Wake up girl”,
Which could easily become the name of a contemporary oriental song.
The building was designed by the renowned architect Konrad Schick, a German missionary architect who came to Israel in 1846, and later also designed, among other things, the Mea Shearim neighborhood and the Tovia Memorial neighborhood in the Nahalaot neighborhood.
Talitha Komi’s building was designed in an Arabic style with round domes, and verses from the New Testament in German were written on its walls, and among other things, the wife of Emperor Wilhelm II Yarom Hoda also visited the place on her journey to the Holy Land.
In 1940, Germany was belatedly declared an enemy country and during the Second World War the building was evacuated and the British Mandate office workers entered.
In March 1948, following the explosion in the office building on Ben Yehuda Street, business owners affected by the explosion were temporarily moved to the building, and later, after the establishment of the state, the building was filled with lawyers’ offices, various artists and evacuees from the center that was hit on Ben Yehuda Street.
At the end of 1951, the state purchased the magnificent building and the courtyard from the Lutheran Church, and in 1962, the state sold the building to the settlement training company without a tender and at a low price.
At the end of 1965, the local committee approved the plan to build on the site, which included the demolition of the existing building and the construction of the Migdal Ha’ir building – the first tower in the heart of the city center that rises in all directions with its ugliness, and the Mashbir building for the consumer.
In 1980, the magnificent orphanage was destroyed to the sound of public protests, and on its ruins, Beit Rajwan was built – a gray and square commercial and office building, the antithesis of the magnificent building that stood there before.
As a memorial, a small part of the front of the historic building that included a balcony, the clock that was one of the symbols of the building, and the inscription Talitha Komi in Latin letters are preserved.
For the new and young generation of the regenerating city, the restored facade became a meeting point, and the conclusion – “Let’s meet at Talita Komi at eight in the evening” was an agreed code name for a meeting point.
To the young people among us, it will be made clear, that long before the era of mobile phones and obsessive communication, coordinating a meeting and going down to the city with other friends from high school who arrived by bus from all parts of the city, required an agreed meeting point.
If you arranged with friends at noon at the end of school to meet in the evening, you would arrive at the place and simply wait for the other friends to arrive in the old, stuttering Egged buses with the patience of a Bedouin.
You just sat and waited on the bench for the other friends.
No mobile phone, phone calls, or obsessive WhatsApps, no sending a location or a message about being late or not arriving.
Just sit quietly and wait for friends, who arrived each on their own time, without being jumped in the car by the parents, and only according to the time of the bus’s arrival, each from their own neighborhood and line.
An act that seems clearly illogical to the current generation, but that’s how it actually went.
A stranger will not understand this.
This is our Jerusalem-
An orphanage for nuns established at the end of the world, beyond the mountains of the darkness of the old city walls, designed by a German missionary, the emperor’s wife who came to visit,
The sale of the building for lentil soup without a tender to a private company in a central location in the heart of the city, the construction of an ugly office tower in the heart of the historic city that towers over the world and can be seen from anywhere in the city,
The Mashbir branch for the consumer at the intersection of spirits that are well felt during the harsh Jerusalem winter,
A mute testimony to the glorious past, in the form of a facade restored to fulfill its duty, to one of the most coveted charms from the glorious past of the most special city in the world.
