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.)

Saints and Hansen's in Hawaii and Jerusalem

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Mazal tov! Congratulations to Hawaii. Their first saint was canonized in Rome this morning by Pope Benedict XVI.
Father Damien came to Hawaii in 1864. Saint Damien spent many years ministering to the leper colony on Molokai.
But no one tells his story more movingly than Cloudia at Comfort Spiral in her post today.

Nineteenth century Jerusalem also had what were then (mistakenly) called lepers, and they were housed behind this meter-thick stone wall in Talbieh.
Talbieh was not the prestigious neighborhood it is today. It was on the pale of settlement, subject to attacks by bands of robbers.
This one little gate was therefore the only entrance to the compound.

Jesus Hilfe (the Jesus Help Asylum) was established in 1887 by the city's Protestant community.
(Another source says that Jesus Hilfe was the name of the builder.)
It was designed by Conrad Schick, a German missionary and self-taught architect.
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The Herrenhut Brotherhood of the Moravian Church ran the facility between 1887 and 1950. Staff came from Europe to care for the patients, who were mostly Moslems, although there were some Christians and a few Jews. The German Deaconess sisters were devoted to treating the suffering ones.

Rabbi Aryeh Levin (1886-1969) was our Jewish version of a saint. He is called The Tsadik (the saintly one) of Jerusalem.

He was one of the few brave enough to set foot inside the hospital.
He voluntarily came to visit the sick regularly, it is said, and especially on Rosh Hashana when he would blow the shofar.

Each floor had access to its own toilet via a bridge.
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A cure did not exist back then, so care of the patients was based on the accepted principles of hygiene, fresh air, proper nourishment, physical activity, and spiritual support.

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Norwegian Dr. Gerhard Hansen identified the leprosy bacillus in 1879. Since then the disease has been known by the less ominous name of "Hansen's Disease."

In 1948, following the establishment of the State of Israel and the division of Jerusalem between Jordan and Israel, the asylum found itself on the Israeli side of the city. Some of the patients and staff left, moving to an asylum in the Arab village of Silwan.

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In 1950 the Moravian Church sold the entire compound to the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Ministry of Health took over the running of the place and renamed it the Hansen Government Hospital.

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With the development of an effective cure for Hansen's Disease, patients were gradually rehabilitated and discharged. The last in-patients left the hospital in 2000.

As you can see in the photo, the mezuzah is gone from the doorpost and most of the buildings are abandoned.

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Part of the site now serves as an outpatient clinic and learning center for the disease, the incidence of which has dropped significantly.  [See update below!]

Rivka Regev, the daughter of the hospital’s veteran general physician, lives in the compound to this day.

In the old days, the inhabitants tended a vegetable garden, fruit trees, and some livestock for their own needs.
The biblically inspired garden had a system of wells, channels, and four big cisterns.

 See the new plantings?!

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Volunteers from Israel and abroad, supported by the Society for the Protection of Nature, hope to "restore the old garden, to cultivate a biblically-ecologically organic sound garden of healing herbs and to invite the community to participate in maintaining the garden through educational activities for school children, the elderly and people with special needs."
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Rivka Regev is the living spirit behind the vision of reclaiming the wilderness.

Schick's elegant architectural treasure appears on the list of buildings intended for preservation under the auspices of the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites.

Nothing seems to be moving in that direction yet, but let us hope and pray that "Jesus Hilfe" will be saved.

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2 good articles about Hansen's Hospital:

From the Jerusalem Municipality

Leprosy, the Jew and the World

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Links about St. Damien: Catholic News Service

Damien Blog with video of today's Canonization Mass

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UPDATE: "In 2009, the Unit became the responsibility of Hadassah Hospital ... and the Hansen Hospital has moved to another historic building - Hadassah's  Beit Habriut at 24 Strauss Street. Following a government decision in May 2009, the Hansen Hospital compound - designated for preservation - was transferred to the Jerusalem Municipality Culture and Art activities in November of 2011."
See more at Hadassah's article. 

Guided tours are available and there are photographic exhibitions inside.
In fact,  photographers who first went in and recorded their impressions with much feeling are the ones who brought public attention to the building's plight and moved it closer toward preservation.
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Here is more about the artifacts now on display.

And the most comprehensive and entertaining telling of the Hansen's story is at this blog:
http://israelightly.wordpress.com/2013/05/31/the-hansen-compound-from-leper-hospital-to-multimedia-art-center/
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Made in Jerusalem

Remember the Roman antiquities in the basement that we posted about yesterday?
Preserved under and behind glass are two kilns used by the Roman Tenth Legion 1,900 years ago.

If you wouldn't mind, click and enlarge this and the other photos of signs. They tell the whole story.

Stamped on the tiles are the symbols of the Legio X Frentensis--a warship and a wild boar.

I read elsewhere that the Romans added the unclean, traif, unkosher boar/pig just to anger the Judean subjects of Caesar. Maybe . . .

Here is how the tiles were hung on a slanting roof.

Here's how the tiles were manufactured.

Much like the sauna in today's Northern countries, the Roman bathhouses served as a social meeting place. The Legionaries built, used, and maintained them.

Pillars of round or square bricks supported the floor of the caldarium, the room with a hot plunge bath.

Hot air from a furnace circulated under the floor and in hollow bricks in the wall, heating the caldarium.

Trapezoidal bricks were designed especially for arches and vaulted ceilings.

Each segment fit snugly into the other, forming pipes to carry either water or sewage. The pipes could stretch for miles.

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Thankfully, the Roman soldiers in Jerusalem knew how to build as well as do battle. And thankfully, the Israel Antiquities Authority had the good sense and the vision to preserve part of this site right here in the middle of modern Jerusalem.

Roman Tenth Legion

Guess what's under Jerusalem's International Convention Center!
Hint: today's post is for R Day at ABC Wednesday.

R is for Roman kilns from over 1,900 years ago!

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

The Roman Tenth Legion was stationed in Jerusalem for over 200 years. When they were not busy quelling Jewish rebellions (The Great Revolt, 66-70 CE, and the Bar-Kochba Rebellion, 132-135 CE), destroying the Temple and Jerusalem and killing her citizens, the Legionnaires were busy building infrastructure and army camps, public buildings, and bathhouses.

When foundations for the convention center were dug, the Roman factory was discovered.

For the full story, click on the photo above.

Two of the kilns were left in place and put on display under the blue glass.

Once, while at the Book Fair, I walked slowly on the glass floor, looking down in wonder. A woman sitting on the stool drinking coffee called to me, "Did you lose something?" Then I realized that many visitors don't even know the antiquities are there.

The kilns and some of the earthenware products are enclosed in a glass room. The door is more often than not locked.

Upstairs, glass cases on the wall show the roof tiles, pipe sections, and bricks that the Roman soldiers produced at the factory. Maybe tomorrow I can show you them.

But my favorite is the story (described in the sign above) of the hobnail sandal (cleats protruding from the bottom of the sole), called caliga.

Some of the square bricks had sandal-prints in them. Apparently while the bricks were drying, before they were fired, a soldier stepped on them by mistake! So, beside the prestigious Tenth Legion stamp of LXFRE, Legio X Frentensis, there is a footprint of a simple Roman soldier.

This is so very human! I almost cried.

Sometimes archaeology does that, lets you feel a bond with one individual, one in whose footsteps we now walk.