Use it or lose it

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A dirty door with broken glass for today's Monday Doorways.
And to my further chagrin, ISRAEL COINS & MEDALS CORPORATION is what the metal letters on the door say, both in English and Hebrew, in between the menorahs.

If you enlarge this photo, look for the sign next to that door.
It says DANGEROUS BUILDING, NO ENTRY.
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The smaller signs says No Parking, to no avail.

In addition to housing the Coins and Medals office/store, this must have been a hotel once, judging from the remnants of a sign.
This decaying building just off Keren Hayesod Street is one of several in central Jerusalem that have been standing empty for years, caught in legal battles between contractors, investors, and government bureaucracy.
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As I hope your news media have told you, the past month is seeing an unprecedented wave of grassroots "social justice" protests all across Israel (well explained here).
For one thing, young people are demanding affordable apartments to buy or rent, saying that the cost of housing has risen 50% in the last two and a half years.
And thus the current tent encampments of protestors in the big cities now.
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Some of the students went around finding and photographing buildings like the one shown above and then digging in municipal files to find out why the structures are caught in limbo.
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They presented their findings to the Jerusalem Municipality and also got time on the evening TV news.
These young people claimed that these buildings could be renovated and turned into hundreds of available apartments much faster than the years it takes to get permits and finish construction of new housing.

Not to mention that Jerusalem is almost out of space to build new places, at least if we want to stay inside the Green Line (the previous border) and not to encroach on the surrounding green lungs (e.g. the forested Jerusalem Hills).
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This post can surely be for That's My World.
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Pioneering Protestants in Jerusalem

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For today's That's My World let's look at a disappearing world.
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The Israeli army guard would not let me in the gate to photograph back in November 2008.
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Written in stone on the building are the Arabic and the German for "Syrian Orphanage."
The place is popularly known as the Schneller School or Schneller Compound.
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I could only get pictures through the perimeter fence and the barbed wire.
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Some of the buildings are roofless.
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Some are gone.

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The army, which had used the compound since 1948, moved out two years ago.

The plan is to build 600 apartments for the neighboring haredim (ultra-orthodox Jews).

The Jerusalem municipality talks of preserving some of the beautiful old European-style buildings and using them as public buildings or a museum.

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By chance, a wooden crate was recently found inside the old church.

In it was the original stone altar from 1860!

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Last night, at the symposium I showed in yesterday's post, the altar was brought to the Church of the Ascension on Mount of Olives to be installed and rededicated there, at Augusta Victoria.

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You can get an idea of the history and the great meaning of the Schneller School(s) for the German Protestants (and also see old photos of the orphanage and Johann Schneller and the kids) by looking at the PDF program of the international symposium, "Schneller--a living heritage in the Middle East."

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The history in brief:

Schneller was sent to Jerusalem as a missionary from a Swiss village in 1854.

From the Arabs of Lifta he bought plots of land and started building.

He and his wife and 4 apprentices became the first Europeans to live outside the protective Old City walls.

They rescued orphans following the 1860 Druze and Muslim massacre of 30,000 Maronite Christians in Lebanon.

The children (up to 180 orphans at its peak) found a new home and a fine school in Schneller's Syrian Orphanage.

Schneller's son and then his grandson carried on his work.

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In World War II all Germans and Austrians were deported from Palestine; many were sent to Australia.

The British Army took over the compound.

When the British Mandate ended in 1948, they handed the compound to the IDF.

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To read the whole fascinating story, please see this good Jerusalem Post article.

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Today the Schneller tradition of holistic education for peace and for future leaders continues at their two schools, in Lebanon and in Jordan.

And they still teach German.

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UPDATE Oct. 2020:  https://www.israel21c.org/landmark-building-to-house-new-museum-celebrating-jewish-heritage/

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