“June 10, 1967 -

Michal and I and our friends Shaike and Ros recently returned from a four day vacation in Jerusalem where we stayed in a rented apartment in the Katamon neighborhood just minutes from the Jerusalem Cinemateque, as we went to attend the annual Jerusalem International Film Festival. We were also close to the Old City, the German Colony, Rehavia and Talbiyeh, among the most interesting locales in Jerusalem.

This yearly festival of documentaries and feature films from around the world originated in 1984, the brainchild of Lia and Wim van Leer. Lia was the director of the first 24 festivals, only giving up direct control this year, the Festival’s 25^th anniversary. She and her late husband, a Dutch engineer, pilot playwright and film producer, opened Israel’s first film club in Haifa in 1955, which later became the Haifa Cinemateque. The van Leers opened several other cinemateques in Israel, including the one in Jerusalem in 1981. In 2002 Lia van Leer was awarded the prestigious Israel prize for her creative projects.

I’ve been attending the Festival for years, but only for a day to see a few movies. This year we wanted to get into the spirit of things and see a half-dozen films. We were lucky to find a small apartment for short-term rental in Katamon, one of Jerusalem’s nicest neighborhoods which has a mix of religious and secular families. The name “Katamon” comes from the Greek words for “near the monastery”, referring to the nearby San Simon monastery. The Katamon quarter was developed during the British Mandate period, mostly by Greek Orthodox Arab entrepreneurs from the Jerusalem area. They intended it to be an upper class Arab neighborhood like Rehavia and Talbiyeh were.

About 100 homes were built in the 1920’s and 1930’s on land purchased from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, which is still a major landowner in Jerusalem. The one-floor homes were usually inhabited by their owners. The extra apartments in houses of two or three floors were rented by other Arab families. The neighborhood’s original buildings are elaborate with masonry work, ornamental metal grills, courtyards, gardens, and stone or iron fences around the properties.

In late 1947, prior to Israel’s War of Independence, various sites in Katamon were utilized by local Arab irregular forces to attack Jews. Heavier fighting occurred once Israel declared its independence in May 1948. By then the nearby British army base had been evacuated and the British officials and army officers had left their homes in Katamon. After the Jews conquered the quarter in the War of Independence it was abandoned by its Arab inhabitants. The first new inhabitants were refugees from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, who had lost their own homes when the Jordanian Arab Legionnaires kicked them out. Later, families of new immigrants moved into Katamon. The neighborhood didn’t ever attain the high level of Talbiyeh or Rehavia, but its great location and many nice apartment buildings make it a very desirable neighborhood in its own right. (See Jerusalem – A Walk Through Time by Yad ben-Tzvi).

The evening of our arrival we saw a feature film in Yiddish about an itinerant Jew who wandered into a small shtetl in Galicia (now part of Moldova and he Ukraine) and got a job with a cobbler. It was made in 1937 and called The Jester. A bit of a shmegege (looser), the protagonist fell in love with the cobbler’s daughter but his love was unrequited. There’s a scene where the shmegege plays a leading role in a Purim spiel, upsetting the shtetl’s social order. Parts of the Purim spiel were infamously used in a Nazi anti-semitic propoganda film, The Eternal Jew.

The next morning we had breakfast with David Rubinger, the famous Israeli photographer, in one of the German Colony’s many cafes. David’s photographs are among the most well known in Israeli iconography, most notably his photo of three paratroopers gazing at the liberated Western Wall during the Six Day War of 1967. (Search on the internet for David Rubinger and click on “images”.) We had been befriended several weeks ago by David at the pre-wedding party in Jerusalem of Bonnie Roche, who attended Atlantic City High School with Michal and me. David told us how he had moved to Israel from Vienna as a teenager in 1939 and other adventures. He has lived through tempestuous times in Israel, including the horrific murder of his wife by an Arab gardener, but he retains an optimistic outlook on life and appears far younger than his age. His latest book, a memoir and personal history of Israel with many of his photographs, is Israel Through My Lens: Sixty Years as a Photojournalist, which is highly recommended.

We were fortunate in the additional five movies that we picked. Because there are so many to choose from, one’s choices are greatly dependent on the scheduling of the films. That day, we saw Acne, a film about a Jewish adolescent in Uruguay suffering from acne and the usual teenage travails. Later in the day we were somewhat shocked by the interesting documentary from England, The Lie of the Land.  It was about British farm policies which wreak havoc on small farms there.

The next day our choices emphasized food. We saw The Chicken, The Fish and the King Crab. This documentary covered the Bocuse D’Or, an international food preparation food contest founded by legendary French Chef, Paul Bocuse. In the evening we saw an excellent feature film from Brazil, Estomago – A Gastronomic Story. This gritty drama featured a down and out guy who learned to cook, a friendly but always hungry street walker and a restaurateur who took them both under his wing. It has a gruesome but poetic ending. In between the two movies we prepared Shabbat dinner in our apartment, hosting our older son Moshe and his girlfriend Jenn on Moshe’s 27^th birthday.

On the last day of the 10-day festival, Michal and Ros saw a documentary about the Amazon, while Shaike and I were awed by a Korean film, The Chaser, about a disgraced detective turned pimp who had to chase down a serial killer of call girls.

Our 4-day interlude in Jerusalem was terrific. While we are used to frequent trips there for the day or evening, having the chance to live there for several days, made us muse about actually residing there one day. There’s no denying it, Jerusalem is one of the most special cities on earth. But don’t just take my word for it – any season of the year is a fabulous time to see for yourself.