Ending the Lack of Occupation in Jerusalem
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Crossposted from Haaretz
Uri Even-Haim has a thing for abandoned homes. Each week, the fifth-year architecture student at the Bezalel Academy sets off around the capital’s downtown in search of forgotten buildings whose owners have disappeared.
“Usually, they are old Jerusalem homes, beautiful buildings with stone arches or unique features,” he said. “Sometimes they hide behind a row of hedges, sometimes they look like another house among a row of houses and sometimes they are like a black hole — no door, darkened windows and a pile of garbage on the floor. It’s a fascinating thing, what happens to this house? What happened to its owners and where is the municipality in this whole story?”
This Saturday, Even-Haim and his fellow abandoned home hunters will conduct two tours of central Jerusalem’s forgotten buildings as part of “Batim Mibifnim” (“Houses from Within”), a Jerusalem event now in its fifth year. (Tel Aviv also has a parallel event.)
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
