Jerusalem. The Jaffastreet

Image from the book: Jewish Palestine: A Celebration of the Yishuv

On the right, at Jaffa Street 36 (on the corner of Heleni haMalka Street), is one of the hotels run by the Warshavsky family (the building still exists and has more recently housed Café Hillel). The hotel chain was launched by Todros Warshavsky (1873 or 1877–1940), who also served as a community leader (mukhtar) in Jerusalem’s Beit Yisrael neighbourhood, a role he inherited from his father, the Alter Mukhtar Shmuel Mordechai Warshavsky, who had come to the Yishuv from Berdichev (Berdychiv, now Ukraine). Among the family’s hotels were the Tel Aviv Hotel, renamed Hotel Ron in 1958 (now the Jerusalem Hostel), at 44 Jaffa Street, which was run by Todros Warshavsky’s son Shaul Warshavsky (1906–1964). Famously, in 1948, Menachem Begin gave his first public speech after emerging from the underground from the hotel’s porch, which was later blown off during the Zion Square bombing of 1975. In later years, Shaul Warshavsky’s daughter Esther Landner (1935–2012) and her husband, Yehoshua Landner (1928–2013), inherited the hotel, where her mother continued to provide guests with three meals a day until her death in 1978. Todros Warshavsky’s son Mordecai Warshavsky (1915–1985) took over the Palatin Hotel at 4 Agripas Street, which is apparently still run by Mordecai Warshavsky’s son Tody Warshavsky. Todros Warshavsky’s son Israel Warshavsky (1901–1956) ran the Atlantic Hotel on Ben Yehuda Street, which was totally destroyed when Arab terrorists bombed several buildings on the street on 22 February 1948.

Copyright 1934 by Uvachrom A. G. Munich.