Travelers on bus routes along King George Avenue cannot fail to notice the recent spurt of progress on the soon-to-be-opened Knesset Museum. Pedestrians can get a peek inside the entrance foyer.
Museum director Moshe Fuksman-Sha’al had hoped the museum might be ready by Tu Bishvat – the anniversary of the first Knesset’s opening session – just a little over a block away, in what is popularly referred to as the Jewish Agency building but is officially the National Institutions building. The building was constructed in the 1930s for the nascent government. Of those national institutions, the Jewish Agency, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, and United Israel Appeal, then known as the National Fund, are still there, and the room in the building known as the Weizmann Room is dedicated to the memory of Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann.
It is interesting that the current president, Isaac Herzog, served as Jewish Agency chairman prior to his election as president, and before that was an MK.
Land for the building of the national institutions was purchased from the Greek Orthodox Church in 1928. Construction started in 1929 and was completed six years later. A few days after its first meeting in the National Institutions building, the Knesset moved temporarily to Tel Aviv but returned to Jerusalem in 1950, when it moved into Froumine House. There it remained until 1966, when it relocated to its permanent premises in the capital’s Givat Ram. (Froumine House had originally been planned as a residential structure for the family of owners of the large biscuit factory.)
After the Knesset moved out of the building, the Tourism Ministry became its occupant. It moved out in 2004, after which the building was taken over by the Religious Services Ministry, which included the Great Rabbinical Court and the Jerusalem District Rabbinical Court of Appeals.
The building, which ceased to belong to the state in 2002, was eventually vacated in 2015. The new owners paid NIS 10 million, but their plans to demolish the building and construct a 16-story structure in its stead were thwarted by the Society for the Preservation of Israeli Historical Sites, supported by a number of legislators. Ownership of the building was confiscated under the 2010 Knesset Law, and the building was handed back to the state for NIS 45 million.
Construction began four years ago, but it took longer than anticipated because it was discovered in the process that the pipes were rusty, all the electricity had to be rewired, and walls between some of the rooms had to be removed. Sometimes it takes longer to renovate a building than to build from scratch.
A memorial to Shai Doron
■ IT’S COMMON knowledge that weather forecasts in Israel are often inaccurate, but the Jerusalem Foundation is not taking any chances.
A memorial tribute to Shai Doron, the foundation’s late president, initially scheduled to take place on February 23, has been postponed to March 9 due to expected inclement weather conditions. The event, in the Henry Crown Hall of the Jerusalem Theatre, to be held in the presence of Mayor Moshe Lion, is to begin at 8 p.m.
It will not only review Doron’s accomplishments and his belief in a shared city in which all its residents enjoy equal rights and benefits, and in which they integrate to work together for the common good, but will also honor his legacy and advance his vision for Jerusalem. This will be done with the establishment of the Shai Doron Center for Leadership and the Humanities at Mishkenot Sha’ananim.
Doron, who died while on a mission to London last July, was a native son of Jerusalem, and his whole adult life was devoted to working for the city.
Orion Cinema returns
■ NATIVE-BORN Jerusalemites who emigrate to other countries for reasons of marriage or career advancement may move away physically, but they leave their hearts and souls in the Holy City.
A case in point is Vered Kollek, who was born and raised in Jerusalem, but who lives in California with her husband, Farrell Meisel, an international television and entertainment executive.
Kollek, who is also a filmmaker, PR executive, and journalist, reads Hebrew publications online, especially those pertaining to Jerusalem. She was thrilled recently to read that the once legendary Orion Cinema on Shammai Street, which operated in the city for almost 80 years before its closure in the 1990s, will soon be screening movies again. The building itself is a popular site in that it has since included the first of the McDonald chain of hamburger joints, an Irish pub, coffee shops, a cocktail bar, and restaurants. Some of these enterprises were long-lasting; others no longer exist.
The original movie theater, in all its 1,400-seat glory, hosted its first screening in July 1938. The building’s architecture was modeled on New York’s Radio City Music Hall.
Although it was the most spectacular cinema building in the city, owned by the Dabach family, Moshe Yosef Mizrachi, and Arab businessman Daud Dajani, it was then one of many because television did not come to Israel, other than for schools, until 1968.
Once there were two television channels, cinemas began to close. But with the advent of Cinema City, which opened its Jerusalem branch in February 2016, which also includes restaurants, coffee shops, and other commercial outlets, followed by the smaller Yes Planet, there was a revival in cinema interest, even though television by that time offered far greater competition. But humans are social creatures, and the cinema offers a relatively inexpensive opportunity for an outing.
Unfortunately, the Edison Theater, which opened in 1932 and closed down in 1995, can no longer be reconstructed because it was rebuilt into a residential complex. No less legendary than the Orion, it also served as a cultural center. It had all the glamour of an opera house but probably would have had to close, anyway because of its proximity to religious neighborhoods, which were spreading due to extreme population growth.
This growth is continuing. Nearby areas such as Geula and Mea She’arim have undergone gentrification, as more ultra-Orthodox American and French immigrants have settled there and opened up shops and eateries.
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