Mekor Chaim (also Makor Haim, , ''lit.'' Source of life) is a neighborhood in southwest

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

. It was named for Haim Cohen, a wealthy Jewish businessman who donated large sums of money toward the purchase of land in Jerusalem before World War I.

History

The funds donated to

Hovevei Zion The Lovers of Zion, also ''Hovevei Zion'' () or ''Hibbat Zion'' (, ), were a variety of proto-Zionist organizations founded in 1881 in response to the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire and were officially constituted as a group at a conf ...

by Haim Cohen were transferred to the

Jewish National Fund The Jewish National Fund (JNF; , ''Keren Kayemet LeYisrael''; previously , ''Ha Fund HaLeumi'') is a non-profit organizationProfessor Alon Tal, The Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, The Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben Gurion ...

, which purchased 120 dunams of land on the southern fringes of Jerusalem. Mekor Chaim was established in 1926 by the religious Zionist Mizrahi movement. It was planned as a village of 20 small farmsteads, and was built along one main street which developed parallel to the railway line. Each family received a two-dunam plot for a house, garden and orchard. In the early days, the families had cow sheds and chicken coops. The building contractor, Mar Haim, was head of the first neighborhood committee. He arranged for the Hamekasher bus company to open a regular route between Mekor Chaim and the city center. Initially, there was one central water tap in the south of the neighborhood. The committee purchased the water from the municipality and placed a watchman at the tap to count how many buckets each family drew. Later, raised water cisterns were built in the garden of each home. During the Arab riots of 1929, the residents took shelter in the synagogue, which was built like a fortress. According to a

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

conducted in 1931 by the British Mandate authorities, Mekor Chaim had a population of 202 inhabitants, in 41 houses.Mills, 1932, p
41
/ref> Located between the Arab villages of

Malha Malha is a neighborhood in southwest Jerusalem, between Pat (Jerusalem), Pat, Ramat Denya and Kiryat Hayovel in the Valley of Rephaim. Before 1948, Malha was an Arabs, Arab village known as al-Maliha (). Malha is now an upscale neighborhood fea ...

and Beit Safafa, and far from other Jewish neighborhoods, Mekor Chaim was exposed to Arab sniping and endured a lengthy

siege A siege () . is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or by well-prepared assault. Siege warfare (also called siegecrafts or poliorcetics) is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict charact ...

that began in December 1947. Convoys of supplies from Talpiot to Mekor Chaim were turned back by the British Army. In the 1948 war, the

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

was stationed there and it was the site of fierce battles. After the

Six-Day War The Six-Day War, also known as the June War, 1967 Arab–Israeli War or Third Arab–Israeli War, was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab world, Arab states, primarily United Arab Republic, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan from 5 to 10June ...

, the Talpiot industrial zone was developed, ending the neighborhood's isolation. In the mid-1980s, the Jerusalem city council established zoning laws to stop the encroachment of commerce and preserve the residential character of Mekor Chaim. The

Israel State Archives Israel State Archives (ISA; ''Arkhiyon Medinat Yisra'el'') is the national archive of Israel, located in Jerusalem. The archive houses some 400 million documents, maps, stamps, audio tapes, video clips, photographs and special publications. His ...

was located in the neighbourhood, but was forced to move after it was discovered that the building didn't have an occupancy permit.

Education

The Sudbury Democratic School is located in Mekor Chaim.

References

{{Neighborhoods of Jerusalem Neighbourhoods of Jerusalem 1926 establishments in Mandatory Palestine Populated places established in 1926