The future of the past: Historic Site Preservation Week

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So many learning opportunities now in Israel during the Annual Historic Site Preservation Week!
You will be hearing in posts to come about the houses of worship we visited on a Beer Sheva synagogue tour. 

But first, look how a full day of lectures began!
It's so Israeli!
The audience joined the accordionist in singing the good old songs of the Palmach days.
It got us in the mood to hear about local history, as well as the present and future of Beer Sheva. 

The low-ceilinged auditorium where we alternately froze and baked from 8:30 to 14:30 was in the old Yad Labanim building.
See more about it in the post where we talked about Brutalist architecture.

The Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites tries to protect the irreplaceable historical buildings and heritage sites associated with Israel’s re-birth.
That means places from before about 1949, but not after.
If funds can be raised, over 250 sites are in need of restoration work.

As one architect speaker said in her presentation, holding on to a place, remembering and cherishing it, and hopefully restoring it--all this first begins in our collective memory.

And another spoke of "the future of the past."  
In order for our youth to understand and appreciate our past, that past has to have a future.
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(Linking to Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)

More Beer Sheva Brutalism: Yad LaBanim

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Here is Beit Yad Labanim, another of Beer Sheva's many examples of Brutalist architecture.

(We saw in the post about BGU's library  that the term Brutalism was coined in 1953 from the French béton brut, "raw concrete," a phrase used by Le Corbusier to describe the poured board-marked concrete with which he constructed many of his post-World War II buildings.)

Originally designed to be Beer Sheva's main synagogue, the money ran out before its completion,  and the strange building stood deserted for years.
In the late 1970s a group of bereaved parents came together to try to have the building's designation changed.
By 1983 they succeeded in completing it as a memorial hall to their soldier sons and daughters who had fallen in Israel's wars.  

See more about the concept of Yad Labanim houses throughout Israel here.
Or see my photos of Jerusalem's Yad Labanim, which also has unusual architecture. 

I have not ventured in yet, but I read that inside are art exhibitions, cultural activities from time to time, and a 300-seat theater. 

Enlarge this photo 2x and see some interesting details!

Pigeons on the roof are kept out by metal grating stretched over the openings.
And that bare patch--is it just the plaster falling off the wall  or  could it be a deliberate "window" into the brutalist reinforced concrete? 
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Haaretz has an entertaining article about Beer Sheva's love-hate affair with Brutalism.
(It is behind a paywall but the newspaper offers ten free articles per month after a simple registration.)

It says this, for instance:

Brutalism and its varied concrete features were seen as an allegory for the young, Israeli-born Jew − rough, direct, aggressive, just like cement itself. 

The architects of Brutalism were themselves native-born, young contemporaries of the state. Their character and vision overlapped with the allegory to a remarkable extent. 

The great irony is that their buildings were constructed mostly for newly arrived immigrants whom the state was sending to the country’s far geographical periphery to live in its Israeli-conceived concrete works. The architects themselves, of course, didn’t follow.

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(Linking to Whimsical Windows, Delirious Doors.)
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The saddest day, year after year

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Memorial Day events began Sunday afternoon  with a ceremony at Jerusalem's Yad LaBanim, an association for bereaved families.
(Every city has a Yad LaBanim to honor its own fallen soldiers.)

Update: I see now how the Jerusalem Post defines it:
"Yad Lebanim (“A Memorial for the Sons”) is the organization that supports bereaved families in cooperation with the Defense Ministry and official government bodies. The Jerusalem memorial, located near the government quarter, is the central memorial for soldiers killed in action in the capital."

The architecture is so unusual, with pyramids and underground halls.

In an earlier post I tried to explain the symbolism.

Inside one pyramid are the names, so many names.
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At the afternoon ceremony Prime Minister Netanyahu said this:

We remember, we weep, and we hurt.
Each family has its own grief, and the grief felt by every one of us merges with the pain of the entire nation of Israel: pain over the life that has been cut short, pain over the fact that all that is now left is memorial day.

There is no real remedy and there is no full solace.

 But there is one deep and fundamental consolation: the knowledge that thanks to those who have fallen, the State of Israel was founded and the Jewish people’s stature took a turn for the better.    Thanks to them, we live here, forever.

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UPDATE: Today the wonderful blog The Real Jerusalem Streets posts a photo of Yad LaBanim covered over with "tents" for shade and security to the VIPs who spoke at yesterday's Yom HaZikaron ceremony.
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The pyramids of the soul's eternal life

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Did you know there are pyramids in Jerusalem?!

In antiquity, pyramids were the symbol of the soul and eternal life.

This sculpture by Bezalel Schatz is planted in a channel (that once had water) representing the Nile.

Our Society for the Protection of Nature guide yesterday said that no one seems to know what it is supposed to symbolize. Strange. When she said Nile I immediately thought bullrushes. No?

Enter into the valley.

The entrance has a lone olive tree of peace and the name Yad LaBanim.

Inside one pyramid we find the reason for it all--the names of the Jerusalemites who fell defending their city and country.

The place is Beit Yad LaBanim, the memorial house for the sons.

Every city has a Yad LaBanim for their fallen, full of photos and archives and exhibits.
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Sit still a while on the bench and ponder their sacrifice.

Let us think of their families today, on Israel's Memorial Day for the defenders and for the victims of terror.

On this day especially, society becomes one big grieving “family,” known in Hebrew as mishpachat hashchol.

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At 7:45 tonight the remembrance day will end and we make the sudden transition to the joy of Israel's 62nd Independence Day.

You can't have one without the other.

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Such is my world for That's MyWorld Tuesday.

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