Cook’s Tours: the Kaiser and the Father of Zionism ...and... A Note About Birds in Spring

In 1929 the Bezalel artist Ze’ev Raban designed a poster for the Society for the Promotion of Travel in the Holy Land.  To entice potential tourists he included this lyrical description of spring from the Song of Songs.

“For, Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”
Spring began officially last week and with it our major tourist season opened.  About 3.5 million tourists come to Israel each year.   Thomas Cook & Son, the world’s first travel agency, pioneered the development of tourism to Jerusalem.  It also played a part in a historic meeting between Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Theodore Herzl that took place here.

Thomas Cook

Sign for Thomas Cook's agency
on the wall outside the Jaffa Gate

Thomas Cook, an English cabinet maker and Baptist minister, founded his business in 1841 running railway excursions to temperance meetings.  In 1850 he led his first trip abroad, to Calais.  He was the first to develop many of the familiar features of package holidays including travel brochures, hotel coupons and traveller’s cheques.  By the mid-1860’s Cook’s Travel agency was already transporting tourists to Jerusalem.  The journey was not easy.  The road from Jaffa to Jerusalem wasn’t paved until 1867.  The construction was primitive and parts of the road were often washed away by heavy rains.   By the 1870’s, with improvements to the road and to security along it, Cook’s agency began to organise cheap group visits to Jerusalem – “Cook’s Tours”.  They set up tent encampments for their tourists along the way and, because there were as yet no good hotels in Jerusalem, outside the city walls - near to the Damascus Gate,  near the Jaffa Gate and on the Mount of Olives.  They even had servants available for the guests.  The agency opened a ticket office just inside the Jaffa Gate - now a busy centre of commercial activity. 

The Kaiser's tent camp

In 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last emperor of Germany, visited Palestine.  In Jerusalem streets were cleaned and public buildings repaired in his honour.  The wall between the Jaffa Gate and the Citadel was torn down and the moat filled in so that he could ride into the city with his entourage.  A huge camp with 230 tents was set up for him in Jerusalem on the street we now call Rechov Hanevi’im.   Magnificent tents were provided by the Sultan for receptions.  Prefabricated buildings were brought from Germany for the royal visitors to sleep in.  Furniture and carpets were appropriated locally.   The Turkish army guarded the camp.  All the arrangements for this visit were entrusted to Thomas Cook’s travel agency. 

The Kaiser's procession to the
Church of the Redeemer

The official reason for Wilhelm’s visit was to attend the consecration of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem’s Christian Quarter.   The Kaiser had more political purposes in mind.  He wanted to strengthen German national feeling amongst German Protestants and German Catholics in the Holy Land.  He presented his visit in heroic terms with himself entering the city like a Crusader.   The British satirical magazine Punch portrayed him in a cartoon as a “Cook’s Crusader”.

As demand grew, the services available for tourists improved.  By 1895, for example, the municipality required all tour guides in Jerusalem to take an examination in the history and geography of the city.  Those who passed received a diploma.  At the end of the 19th century several modern hotels opened in the Old City and outside the walls. 

The Kaminitz Hotel building today
Photo: DMY

Sandwiched between the Jaffa Road and Rehov Hanevi’im is the building of the former Kaminitz Hotel.   This was the first modern Jewish hotel in Jerusalem.  It was one of the hotels with which Thomas Cook and Son had an annual contract.  Eliezer Lipa Kaminitz had originally opened his hotel by the Jaffa Gate.  He moved it to these more spacious premises opposite the Alliance School in 1883.  It is dilapidated now but this was a five star hotel of its time with luxurious guest rooms, a large garden and a carriage drive leading up from the Jaffa Road.

Herzl on a boat en route
for Palestine

The Kaiser's entourage passes
through the Jewish triumphal arch

In October 1898 Theodore Herzl made his only visit to Palestine.  He had come to meet the Kaiser and to try to persuade him to support the Zionist cause.  Herzl arrived in Jerusalem late on a Friday afternoon.  He walked to the hotel from the railway station despite feeling unwell only to find that all the rooms had been taken by the Kaiser’s entourage.  Kaminitz took pity on him and found a bed for him for one night.  On Saturday afternoon he watched from the hotel as the Kaiser paraded through the two triumphal gates that had been set up to welcome him along the Jaffa Road.  That night the Stern family took Herzl to stay at their home on Mamilla Street where Steimatsky’s bookshop stands today.  The official meeting between Herzl and the Kaiser took place on November 2nd at the Kaiser’s tent camp.  Wilhelm was polite but made no commitment of any kind.  Herzl came away with nothing.

A Note About Birds in Spring

Cranes over the Hula Valley
Photo: אילת לב ארי שלי

With the start of spring the great migration of birds is also in full swing.  Because Israel sits at the junction of three continents, twice each year 500 million birds fly across our skies.   In the spring they journey north to enjoy temperate summers.  In the autumn they head south to find milder winter weather.   Eilat and the Hula Valley are regular refuelling points for the birds during their long migrations.  No wonder then that many bird enthusiasts visit to see the amazing number and variety of birds that pass through.  It’s a spectacular sight.  Timed to catch the peak of the spring migration, the 6th Eilat Bird Festival is on now and continues until April 1st.  The Hula Valley holds its bird festival in November during the autumn migration.

Heimishe Essen - A Story of Haredim, Zionist Socialists and a Barber

Inscription above the doorway
Beit Ezrahi-Brisker 1924

The Rehavia restaurant Heimishe Essen is in the news this week because it has been dragged into the debate over the exclusion of women.  The building that houses Heimishe Essen has a history of its own.  It was originally the home of Shmuel Ezrahi-Brisker, and thereby hangs a tale. 


Heimishe Essen Restaurant

Heimishe Essen (the name is Yiddish and means home-style food) is a long-established restaurant and take-away on Keren Kayemet Street in Rehavia.  Lately it has attracted more and more Haredi customers.  On Thursdays, the traditional night out for the Haredi community, it has become a favourite haunt of yeshiva students and Haredi activists.  Now the kashrut supervisors of Agudat Israel’s Badatz (Beit Din Tzedek – religious court) have demanded that the restaurant stop employing waitresses on Thursday nights if it wants to retain the prized Badatz kashrut certificate.  The restaurant owner and his staff claim that this demand is prompted by complaints from extremists and explain that Rehavia is not, by and large a Haredi neighbourhood and that the waitresses anyway dress modestly.  Despite this they are about to accede to the Badatz demands.

Shmuel Ezrahi-Brisker came to Jerusalem in 1911 as part of the Second Aliyah.  He prepared for life here by training in two “essential” professions as a barber and as a stage make-up artist.  Arriving in Jerusalem he sought to open a barber’s shop.  He found a site in a building owned by the Russian church and put up a sign advertising “a modern Hebrew barber’s shop”.  The next morning he found that his landlords had moved the sign and hung it over the stable opposite.  The story reached the press and people from all over town came to visit his shop.  Brisker spent the First World War years in Tiberias but on his return to Jerusalem he established a luxurious salon in Zion Square that became an unofficial club and debating chamber for the intelligentsia of Jerusalem.  The poet Chaim Nachman Bialik wrote that Jerusalem had “two distinguished public institutions: a national library and a national barber’s shop”.

Brisker was one of the first to buy a plot in the new neighbourhood of “Janziriyeh” (Arabic for “iron chain”) – today’s Rehavia.  Rehavia was to be a “garden suburb”, planned by the architect Richard Kaufmann with more green space than building.  Brisker didn’t have sufficient funds to build the house he wanted.  He raised half the cost by taking loans but the rest he found in a very unusual way.


Members of Gdud Ha'avodah
take a rest from building Rehavia

Gdud Ha'avodah building Eliezer
ben Yehudah's house, Talpiot 1921

The Gdud Ha’avodah was a group of young Zionist socialists formed in 1920.  They built roads, drained swamps, built settlements and worked on farms.  Gdud Ha'avodah suffered major ideological splits and was disbanded in 1929.  Members of the group established several kibbutzim including Ramat Rachel just south of Jerusalem.   Ironically in 1923 a group from the socialist Gdud Ha’avodah was helping to build the upscale neighbourhood of Rehavia.  They had a tent camp where the Yeshurun Synagogue and Beit Avi Hai stand today.   Brisker approached them and offered them haircuts in exchange for building work.  They agreed the deal and he and his family moved into their new home in 1924.  Brisker was still paying off his debt to them with haircuts for a while after the building was finished.  People said in jest that his house hung by a thread of hair!

Blessings in Disguise

This year Purim coincided with International Women’s Day.  That seems fitting because the miracle of Purim came about through a woman.  Esther had both the courage to confront Achashverosh and accuse Haman of planning genocide and the wisdom to unify the Jewish people and bring them back to G-d in their time of trouble.   In a city holy to three religions and with as long a history as Jerusalem there are inevitably many conflicting traditions and confusions of identity.  As with Purim, not everything is as it seems.  Today’s post honours both Purim and International Women’s Day by looking at sites in the city connected to women whose identity is in some way in doubt.

The Chapel of the Ascension
Photo: Adriaticus

Rabia al-Adawiyya

Near the crest of the Mount of Olives in the neighbourhood of At-Tur is a small domed building surrounded by a wall.  It is known as the Chapel of the Ascension or the Mosque of the Ascension.  At its side is a burial crypt revered by each of the three Abrahamic religions.  All agree that it is the burial place of a holy woman but each one has a different opinion as to who is buried there.   For Muslims it is Rabia al-Adawiyya an 8th Century Sufi mystic born in Basra, Iraq.  Christians believe it to be the burial place of a 5th Century saint, Pelagia, who was born in northern Lebanon and who lived an ascetic life disguised as a monk.  Only after she died was it discovered that she was really a woman.  The Jewish tradition is that the 7th Century BCE prophetess Huldah is buried here.  Hulda is mentioned briefly in the Tanach in Kings and Chronicles.   The King, Josiah, had ordered the refurbishment of the Temple.  During this work a book of the Law was discovered.  The High Priest and royal officials consulted Huldah.  She confirmed that the book was authentic and prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem.  She reassured Josiah that, because of his piety, the destruction will not be in his lifetime.   

The eastern Hulda Gates today

At the top of the monumental staircases leading to the southern wall of the Temple Mount are two sets of gates that are now blocked up.   In the days of the Second Temple they were the main entrances to the Temple platform.  One name for them is the Huldah Gates.  Some say this is because of a tradition that Huldah is buried in Jerusalem.  Others point out that the Hebrew word “huldah” means “rat” and that on entering these gates you would walk like rats through underground tunnels up to the Temple plaza.

Imaret Haseki Sultan entrance

Endowment charter
of Haseki Sultan Waqf

Three women are also connected with a building on Aqabat et-Takiya (in Hebrew Ma’alot Hamadrasa Street) in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.  In the late 14th Century a woman known as Sitt Tunshuq built a palace in magnificent Mamluk style here to serve as a hostel for dervishes.  Across the street from the palace she built a tomb building (turba) for herself and was buried there in 1398.  Very little is known about Tunshuq though she was clearly a wealthy woman.  It is thought that she may have been the wife of a Mamluk sultan.  Haseki Hurrem Sultan, known in the west as Roxelana, was the favourite wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, the 16th Century Ottoman ruler who built the walls of Jerusalem.  In 1552 she endowed the building of a charitable complex that contained a soup kitchen, a mosque, a pilgrim hostel and an inn for travellers.  Haseki Sultan’s complex was built next to Tunshuq’s Palace which was incorporated into it.   In the 1870s the building became the Saraya, an Ottoman local government office that included the residence of the Pasha. 

Christians came to call the complex the Hospital of Saint Helena.  They believed that it had been established in the 4th Century by Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, to house workers building the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and that it became a hostel for poor pilgrims once the church was completed.  The tradition that this had been the Hospital of Saint Helena or at least stood on the site of the former hospital persisted and was widely believed.  It was even reported in the 1906 edition of Baedeker’s Guide to Palestine and Syria.

Where the Train Stopped in Jerusalem

I know that in a city like Jerusalem we have to make a balance between preserving its heritage and meeting the demands of modern living.    Even so I hate to see a beautiful, historic building knocked down in the name of “progress” or, even worse, just allowed to decay until it has to be taken down.

The Jerusalem railway station in the 1890s.

That’s what I feared might happen to the old Jerusalem railway station.  The station opened in 1892 opposite the Khan as the final stop on the Jaffa to Jerusalem line – the first railway in the Middle East.  When the station finally closed its doors in 1998 it was sadly neglected despite its special architectural and historical merit.  The years took their toll on the building.  Decay, vandalism and the occasional fire almost damaged it beyond repair.

The neglected old railway station in Jerusalem. Photo: Dr Avishai Teicher

In 2008 I had watched in horror as a crane with a concrete ball on the end of a chain demolished the Ashkenazi Orphanage building on Harav Kook Street in the centre of town.   Bought from a wealthy Arab in 1881 the building had been extended and developed into “one of the finest public buildings in the city”.  In this orphanage and the nearby Alliance School the first attempts were made to introduce Modern Hebrew into the school curriculum.  Both buildings have been pulled down.  The Alliance School was replaced by the large, ugly Clal Centre.  The orphanage made way for “7 Harav Kook”, a huge 10 storey apartment complex, being built by developers Africa Israel.

About a year ago, after seeing a short film about the restoration and development of the old Jaffa railway station, I wrote to the mayor of Jerusalem. Follow this link to see the film.  I was impressed by what Tel Aviv had done and ashamed of how the old Jerusalem station was being allowed to decay.  He told me that I needn’t feel ashamed.    The city already had plans for a comprehensive renovation of the station and of the railway track all the way to Malcha.

The renovated Jaffa railway station.  Photo: Dr Avishai Teicher

Since then the first phase of the project has been completed.  The railway track from the old station along Rechov Harakevet to the junction of Emek Refaim and Pierre Koenig Streets has been transformed.  What was overgrown and unsightly is now a popular and attractive urban park with cycle and walking paths.

It was good to hear last week that a contract to renovate the station itself had been awarded to Avi Mordoch, the same developer who had done such a good job in Tel Aviv.  The plan for the site includes the preservation of the building, railway carriages turned into bars and cafes, a visitors’ centre for the railway, shops, galleries, exhibitions and restaurants.  The railway station together with the Sherover Centre under construction nearby will become a major cultural and entertainment focus for the city.   There is already, however, some controversy over the plan.  Both these sites will be open on Shabbat and charedi authorities have expressed their dissatisfaction.