“The Builder of Jerusalem” Art Quilt

The summer before she passed away I helped my mother tidy up my late father’s study. By then, he was gone for about two and a half years, but my mom hasn’t been able to touch the mess he left behind. 

I loved my dad’s home office. He spent much of his time there, working on various projects on his computer, including his decades-long genealogical research. He was often surrounded by work clutter that reminded me of the mess in my own studio. The small room had its own special, unique smell. Three walls were completely covered by numerous books on the many topics my father was interested in, and on the wall in front of his desk, where he could see them always, hung portraits of our ancestors: my dad’s father in the middle, sandwiched between his great grandparents, and further down, on both sides of the window, my dad’s grandparents. Three generations on the wall and a fourth sitting on the chair: a paternal family tree.

As we were moving things around, my mom and I found an old, rusty key on one of the shelves.

We didn’t know where it came from or what it used to open, but it made me think of the two neighborhoods that my great great grandfather built in Jerusalem. My mom said I could keep the key. After she asked me to make a quilt about her own grandmother, I thought that maybe, one day, I could make one about my dad’s ancestors, as well, and incorporate that key into a quilt.

My Great Great Grandfather Yitzhak Lipkin

My great great grandfather was born in 1834 in Karlin, then a town and now a suburb of Pinsk, in Belarus. He was the youngest son of Miriam Mindel and Yosef Moshe Felz. His father was a follower of the Hassidic sect of Rabbi Aharon of Karlin. In 1849 his parents decided to return to our ancestral homeland, then under the rule of the Ottoman empire. Before they left, they went to the rabbi to get his blessings. The rabbi asked young Yitzhak what he would do in the Holy Land. Yitzhak answered that he will cover himself in sand to his neck and learn Tora. The rabbi blessed him that his descendants would be as numerous as the grains of the sand, that his fortune would be as large, and that his days will be long. And so it was.

After an arduous journey, Yitzhak and his parents settled in Tiberias, one of the “Four Holy Cities” where large communities of Jews had lived for generations. Tiberias was the center of the Karlin Hassidics in the Holy Land. Two years after they arrived his father passed away, and Yitzhak moved with his mother to Jerusalem, where he studied at a yeshiva. After he married Eite Toibe Shcmerling, the daughter of a Hassidic Chabad family, he moved to her native Hebron, where they had nine children, one of whom died in childhood.

Most of the Jews in the Land of Israel at the time lived on halukka, charity collected from diaspora Jewish communities to support their brothers in the Holy Land. Yitzhak, however, refused to live off charity. Shortly after his marriage he began trading for a living. The days were the last days of the Ottoman empire. The regime was weak, and bandits ruled the land. Yet, Yitzhak boldly roamed about from village to city with his goods-laden donkey. He kept trading even after being attacked by robbers several times. Soon, he became famous for his bravery. His Arab acquaintances began calling him “Abu Basal,” the fearless (many people think his nickname is related to his trade in batzal, onions, but my father’s long research dismissed this theory). After he accumulated wealth Yitzhak began lending money as well as trading. He was the first Jew to afford the purchase of a home outside of the Jewish ghetto in Hebron. My father’s research was inconclusive regarding where the surname Lipkin came from, or when and why Yitzhak began using it, but sometime during his 30 years in Hebron he started being known by that name. 

The Abu Basal Neighborhoods

In 1889 Yitzhak, by then a well known wealthy man, returned to Jerusalem. Most Jews in Jerusalem at the time lived inside the Jewish Quarter, one of the four quarters inside the walled city. The Quarter was overcrowded and unsanitary, however, so in the 1890s wealthy Jews began building neighborhoods outside the walls. Yitzhak Lipkin was among them. In 1891, together with his business partner Shlomo Mizrahi, a Kurdish Jewish merchant, he built two of the first Jewish neighborhoods outside the old city walls: Ohel Shlomo (“Solomon’s Tent” named after Mizrahi) and Sha’arei Yeroshalym (“Jerusalem’s Gateways,” called so since it was the western-most neighborhood in Jerusalem, literally the gate to the city). Both neighborhoods soon became known as the Abu Basal Neighborhoods, however, with most people not knowing their real names. 

The two neighborhoods, built side by side along Jaffa Street, the main entryway to the city, included one or two story homes built around central courtyards (for protection against robbers), with rain water reservoirs in the middle. Most homes had two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, as well as a small private garden. For the time, and compared to the residences inside the Jewish Quarter, these homes were modern, spacious and very luxurious. Ohel Shlomo included about 50 units, and Sha’arei Yeroshalym about 40. Yitzhak himself moved to the biggest unit in Sha’arei Yeroshalym, and, except for his eldest daughter who remained with her family in Hebron, all of his other children and their families moved to the two neighborhoods as well. He sold or rented the rest of the houses to other Jewish individuals, arranging easy payment terms.

The picture below shows Yitzhak and some family members. My own grandfather Zwi is standing right behind him.

Yitzhak’s wife, Eite Toibe, was killed in an accident in 1899. He himself passed away in 1927, at the age of ninety three, leaving behind a tribe of over one hundred descendants. He is buried on Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, overlooking Temple Mount.

“The Builder of Jerusalem” Quilt

Yitzhak Lipkin was a distinguished man with many accomplishments, but he is mostly remembered for the Abu Basal Neighborhoods. In the quilt, I chose to include several elements: his portrait, of course, an envelope addressed to him I found in my dad’s archive, a picture of one of the neighborhoods, and several maps depicting them, which I gathered from various history books in my father’s collection. I had all of the above commercially printed on canvas.

On one side of the quilt I put my great great grandfather’s portrait against a digitally-manipulated picture of Ohel Shlomo. On the other side I put the envelope and different maps. The envelope was simply addressed to Mr. Yitzhak Lipkin, Jerusalem. No street address was necessary, probably because there weren’t that many people in Jerusalem at the time, and because Yitzhak was so well known that any post office clerk would have knows who he was and where he lived.

I arranged the maps so that the most detailed was at the top, and the most general at the bottom. I painted the two neighborhoods in each of the maps to clearly mark them.

After sandwiching the quilt, I hand stitched the left side, adding my own touch to my ancestor’s image.

I machine quilted the right side of the quilt, as I didn’t want the stitches to obscure the maps.

As a final touch, I stamped the neigrborhoods’ nickname, the Abu Basal Neighborhoods, on the bottom-most map, and wrote the year they were built in both Hebrew letters and Latin numbers.

 The finished piece is 28″ x 43.”

In the end, I didn’t attach the key to the finished piece. I wasn’t sure where to put it, and whether it would add anything. I’m still thinking about it, though, and would love to hear what you think.

Aftermath

At the time they were built, the Abu Basal Neighborhoods were luxury dwellings. Over the years, many well off and well known people lived in them, including many members of my extended family. With time, however, new neighborhoods were built in Jerusalem, with even better, more modern housing. Gradually, these 19th century neighborhoods began to sink. By the time I was born, the Abu Basal Neighborhoods were run down slums, populated by my grandfather’s elderly cousins and other old, poor residents. My dad took us to visit every now and then, for we were still proud of what they stood for and had been: an important part of Jerusalem’s modern history. When my kids were little, I took them there, as well. A few years ago, the Municipality of Jerusalem built a light rail along Jaffa street. The construction of the rail required the destruction of half of each neighborhood. The buildings closest to Jaffa Street were torn down, including the house where my great grandfather Haim lived. When I visited after the rail was constructed, I was sad to see that the character of these once-enclosed neighborhoods was completely altered.

On my most recent visit, in April 2023, I learned that even that was no more. While a few crumbled buildings in Sha’arei Yerushalyim remained, dwarfed by tall buildings, Ohel Shlomo was completely gone, replaced by a still-in-construction sky scraper.

The sign at the construction site honored my ancestor, the builder. Like many printed sources mentioning him, however, (including Wikipedia), it was riddled with mistakes. Nothing in the sign was correct, except for his name, picture and nickname.  Whoever wrote that sign even gave him a new father! I was glad my dad wasn’t there to see—this sign would surely have killed him…  Just like that, a piece of Jerusalem history was completely erased. Abu Basal, like my maternal grandfather’s shop, which used to be right across the street, is gone. At least a new small side alley now carries the Abu Basal name…