House of Blues
Image by Shlomit Nadler
Crossposted from Haaretz
In the salad days of the state, the Histadrut labor federation was active in all aspects of Zionist worker’s needs, from housing to health to leisure and culture. Included in the union’s activities were projects aimed to advance the education and vocational training of women.
Image by Shlomit Nadler
In 1962, the Working Women’s Council (today’s Na’amat ) inaugurated Beit Elisheva, a unique women’s training and cultural center on Eliezer Hamodai Street in the Katamon neighborhood of Jerusalem. Like other public Histadrut buildings from that period, Beit Elisheva was architecturally unique and expressed a fascinating connection between a local tradition of building in stone and internationally inspired Modernist daring.
Fifty years later it is in bad shape. The entire building is shabby, worn and nearly impossible to recognize because of later additions and dozens of air conditioning units pocking the building with no apparent order.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
