Mahane Yehuda (neighborhood)

Established on the north side of Jaffa Road in 1887,[1][2] it was planned and managed by the consortium of Swiss-Christian banker Johannes Frutiger and his Jewish partners, Joseph Navon and Shalom Konstrum.

The advertisement, placed by Joseph Navon, promised the first fifty families a free plot on the condition that they would build their homes within six months.

[6][7] Five years later, the consortium of Swiss-Christian banker Johannes Frutiger and his Jewish partners Navon and Shalom Konstrum came up with another plan to sell the neighborhood.

[5] At the time of its construction, the only other buildings in the vicinity lay on the south side of Jaffa Road: a two-story home occupied by the British Consul-General of Jerusalem (today the Mahane Yehuda Police Station) to the east,[3] and the neighborhood of Beit Yaakov, established in 1885, to the west.

[12] A 1938 Jerusalem census noted 600 persons living in Mahane Yehuda, including both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews.

[2] These include the landmark Zoharei Chama Synagogue ("Sundial Building"), which is open for prayer services throughout the day.

[18][19] His son, Rabbi Pinchas Menachem Alter, the seventh Gerrer Rebbe, also resided in the yeshiva and was buried beside his father in 1996.

[20] In 2011 the former bus parking lot[1] between Mehuyas and Valero Streets, astride Jaffa Road, was re-landscaped into an urban square.

[22] Mahane Yehuda is one of the settings for Haim Sabato's 2004 novel Ke'afafei Shachar (Like the Eyelids of Morning), translated into English as The Dawning of the Day: A Jerusalem Tale (Toby Press, 2006).