Below, I share with you a short but interesting video of the history of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem. Besides being a prestigious academy, and one of the accredited 4 institutions of higher education for teaching Architecture in Israel, I have personal links to Bezalel. For one, my son Aaron studied Visual Communication at Bezalel, and thereby started his flourishing and inspiring career. My prior connection, to which I refer here, is that I rented and lived in a studio apartment in the academy campus. during the last period of my life as a bachelor.

A long stone wall with two openings, runs the length of one of the sides of the street. The wall surrounds the original Bezalel Academy complex, which includes the residences of the founders, the Schatz family. Back then, when I rented the flat, the street had narrow sidewalks and much car traffic, a bustling downtown street. Today, Bezalel street, in the center of Jerusalem, is a pleasant pedestrian street, with shops and cafes.

Click below for viewing a short video of the street December 2020:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zCRo5eS3MQWEKi5RDQNhQ_K85cmUQ5wD/view?usp=sharing

In the summer of 1981 I was looking to rent a flat in downtown Jerusalem. I saw a newspaper add of a place at Bezalel St. no. 3, I made an appointment and went to take a look.

Upon opening the wooden door at Bezalel 3, I suddenly passed a threshold from the din of center of Jerusalem into a serene, charming world – the Schatz family homes’ courtyard. I found myself in a sheltered, silent, shady, inviting, courtyard that derives its character from its stone floors and stone walls, trees, vines and bushes, an old well, a family of beautiful Siamese cats, and last but not least, Louise and Zohara Schatz, the landladies (you hear about them in the video I am sharing below). The two sisters – in – law widows introduced themselves and welcomed me in, and I immediately realized I had had the fortune of falling in the hands of a pair of fascinating, extraordinary ladies. They led me to the apartment, lost at the end of the elongated courtyard. The back wall of the courtyard has two doors and a window.

Between the two doors was a sculpted, expressive bust of a bearded man – a copy of the head of Boris Schat’s famous “Mattathias The Hasmonean”. The left door, they explained, is the entrance to the Schatz family’s spacious art studio where Zohara at that time was producing her art. The blue door next to the studio was the entrance to the the charming abode they were offering to rent out. The compact apartment consisted in a simply but tastefully furnished living / sleeping space, a kitchen, and a bathroom, not more nor less than what I needed. In all, 4 apartments opened on to the courtyard. The two larger ones were the homes of Louise and Zohara, and the remaining two they rented out to tenants. I immediately realized that this was my dream home, and was ready to give them a down payment. They told me they had arranged to see other candidates, took my phone number, and promised to call the next day to inform me of their decision. Before leaving them, I asked them to please wish me good look. Apparently they took this request seriously, and the next day they called with their decision to choose me as their tenant. Louise and Zohara spent most of their days in their homes, and often came out to the courtyard and were happy to mingle. More than my landladies and artist aristocrats of the Schatz family, they were very pleasant neighbors and fascinating friends for me. I spent about a year in this very unique paradise in the heart of Jerusalem, and with mixed feelings left to a larger flat with Vicky when we got married. During my stay there, I received many guests, including Marianne and Enrique Wallenberg, family friends from Colombia. When they came to visit me, Enrique, himself an artist, was captivated by the place and immediately took out his paper pad and pencil, and sketched the following drawing, which we have hanging in our family room.

Here is the link to the video: https://youtu.be/X225kjuQfk0

I rode my bike from my home for about 15 minutes to one of the forests to the east of my home city of Bet Shemesh. I chose one of the many dirt roads penetrating the forest. After leaving the intensely lit fields, I relished the shade of the trees and my eyes adjusted to the softer light. The mountain forest landscape revealed itself, with the trees, the rotting tree stumps, the floor covered with layers of pine needles, leaves, shrubs and stones. The sights, the sound and the smell of the forest which I am so familiar with, and which I so cherish, spoke to me and welcomed me.

Yet, together with the spirit of the forest, I sensed an additional voice; an unmistakable voice of agony and tragedy. I seemed to hear the tortured tree trunks, the thorns and thistles and the piles of rubble cry oh, so sad a lamentation.

Why is this forest crying so? I biked on, and spotted a small rectangular shaped structure under a carob tree, camouflaged by the play of light and shade, by twigs, leaves and mosses. At first glance, it looked to me like part of the forest nature; but no, what I had found was a structure, built long ago by persons, subsequently abandoned by them, and finally devoured by the forest.

I had found a concrete structure about one by one meter, made of four walls and a slab that was covered with a rusting metal latch. I lifted the latch, and found the deep round hole, too deep to see its dark bottom. I tossed a stone, and after a short pause heard it splash into water. This was an abandoned well, probably centuries old, but covered by the more recent structure, which judging from the concrete and metal, must have been built sometime in the 20th century. Next to the well, was a square trough about three by three meters, carved into a large rock. It is an ancient treading pool for pressing grapes for wine, possibly from the Byzantine or an earlier period. The forest here hides many other ruins of buildings, rectangular building stones, terraces, wells. This is what remains of the Arab village of Deir Aban, which was destroyed and abandoned during the Israel War of Independence in 1948.

I later researched the locality on an interesting Palestinian website that compiles information about Arab settlements that were destroyed in 1948 during the War if Independence https://www.palestineremembered.com/. The website contains much information, among many other localities, about the Palestinian town of Deir Aban (Dayr Aban as per their transliteration), from which the following very partial list was taken:

• Number of houses in 1948 before destruction: 509
• Population in 1948 before they abandoned: 2,436
• Town’s name through history: The Romans called the town Abenezer
• Archaeological sites: Dayr Abban contains three khirbats [ruins]: Khirbat Jinna’ir, Khirbat Haraza, and Khirbat al-Suyyag.

The following photos are some of the 39 photos the website shows of the town before and after 1948:

These photos show the town on barren hills, which today are covered by one of the forests that that the Kere Kayemet LeIsrael (Jewish Fund) planted during the late 50’s and early 60’s the length and breadth of Israel.

In 1990 I purchased the rights on the plot of land on which I eventually built the house where we live. Like the majority of land in the State of Israel, my plot is owned by the state, and I acquired the rights to use it under a lease for 49 years. Recently I was reviewing the official Property Rights Certificate of my plot, which is issued by the national land property registry. In addition to the current information, the certificate includes historical information of the property. The current location is Bet Shemesh Municipality, but the original locality registered on the document, probably as per records either of the Ottoman Turkish Empire before WWI, or of the British Mandate of Palestine from the end of WWI until 1948, is none other than Deir Aban.

The above website, besides presenting a treasure of extensive statistics, facts and photos, also tells the Palestinian Narrative, which I consider a one sided and sterile interpretation of the events, a position which knows no compromise and leads only to hatred and bloodshed. Yet I cannot ride the forest without hearing the tragedies it so eloquently becries. Those ruins were houses and public buildings where human beings lived their lives. Generation after generation of families lived and worked that land, were deeply rooted to it, and then were abruptly and violently torn from it in the fury of a war. It is the story of old women and men and of children whose lives and homes were devastated. Perhaps the forest, if only we hearken to it, wants to reach out to us when we visit it, and tell us that the simple recognition of this suffering is a necessary ingredient for a peaceful, mutually respectful coexistence between the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel.

As I placed the reed mat as the roof of our Succa (Temporary dwelling during the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles), much mischief making was released.

Half a century ago, during our late high school years, I took several trips to Boyacá, the Caribbean and the Pacific costs of Colombia. My friend Mauricio Bautista was usually my travel companion, and one time also his sister Ma. Cristina and my cousin Ilse from Vienna joined us. Another trip we accompanied my photographer aunt Hermi on an Boyacá excursion guided by the renowned Prof. Ernesto Guhl to Villa de Leyva, Raquira and Ecce Homo Monastery.

Making order in our old papers, I found a treasure box with the following prints of photos from those trips. I don’t know for sure who took the photos; possibly Mauricio, or I. Another possibility is that Hermi took some of the better photos, even though the fact that she didn’t sign or stamp them with “Foto Hermi” casts a doubt on this assumption.

These photos show a Colombia that no longer exists.