Jerusalem is sacred place for Jews, Muslims, Christians

Jerusalem, Hebrew Yerushalayim, Arabic Bayt al-Muqaddas or Al-Quds, ancient city of the Middle East that since 1967 has been wholly under the rule of the State of Israel.

Long an object of veneration and conflict, the holy city of Jerusalem has been governed, both as a provincial town and a national capital, by an extended series of dynasties and states. In the early 20th century the city, along with all of historic Palestine, became the focus of the competing national aspirations of Zionists and Palestinian Arabs.

This struggle often erupted in violence. The United Nations (UN) attempted to declare the city a corpus separatum (Latin: “separate entity”)—and, thus, avert further conflict—but the first Arab-Israeli war, in 1948, left Jerusalem divided into Israeli (west Jerusalem) and Jordanian (East Jerusalem) sectors. The following year Israel declared the city its capital. During the Six-Day War of 1967, the Jewish state occupied the Jordanian sector and shortly thereafter expanded the city boundaries—thereby annexing some areas of the West Bank previously held by the Jordanians—and extended its jurisdiction over the unified city.

Although Israel’s actions were repeatedly condemned by the UN and other bodies, Israel reaffirmed Jerusalem’s standing as its capital by promulgating a special law in 1980. The status of the city remained a central issue in the dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, who claim East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state. Area 49 square miles (126 square km). Pop. (2016 est.) 936,425. (For more information on the conflict between Israel and the Arabs, see Israel; Palestine; West Bank; Arab-Israeli wars.)

Character of the city

Jerusalem plays a central role in the spiritual and emotional perspective of the three major monotheistic religions. For Jews throughout the world it is the focus of age-old yearnings, a living proof of ancient grandeur and independence and a centre of national renaissance; for Christians it is the scene of Jesus’ agony and triumph; for Muslims it is the goal of the Prophet Muhammad’s mystic night journey and the site of one of Islam’s most sacred shrines. For all three faiths it is a holy city, a centre of pilgrimage, and an object of devotion.

Despite a rapidly changing demography, Jerusalem has retained a diverse and cosmopolitan character, particularly in the walled Old City with its Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters: Arabs in traditional and modern attire; Christians, Western and Oriental, in their infinite variety of secular garb and monastic vestments; Jews in casual and Orthodox dress; and hosts of tourists combine in colourful, kaleidoscopic patterns.

Synagogues, churches, mosques, and dwellings in various styles make up the city’s unique architectural mosaic. Sunlight falling on the white and pink stone used for all construction gives even quite mundane buildings an aura of distinction. The scent of cooking and spices, the peal of church bells, the calls of muezzins from minarets, and the chanting of Jewish prayers at the Western (Wailing) Wall all add flavour to the life of the city.

The absence of vehicular traffic within most of the Old City helps preserve its special character. In recognition of its central place in the traditions and histories of numerous peoples, the Old City was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1981.

Yet outside the walls Jerusalem is in every sense a modern city, with its network of streets and transportation, high-rise buildings, supermarkets, businesses, schools, restaurants, and coffeehouses. The persistent mingling of Hebrew, Arabic, English, and other languages in the streets brings to mind the multicultural and political complexities of life in this revered city.

Landscape of Jerusalem

City site

Jerusalem stands on hills at an elevation of 2,575 feet (785 metres). The modern unified city is the largest municipality in Israel or the West Bank and is the heart of an urban agglomeration that spills outside the city limits into adjacent areas of both jurisdictions. At the centre of the modern municipality is the Old City, a walled medieval enclosure of less than half a square mile (roughly one square km), from which the entire city has grown.

To the east the city looks down on the Dead Sea and across the Jordan River to the arid mountains of eastern Jordan (the biblical mountains of Moab). To the west it faces the coastal plain and the Mediterranean Sea, about 35 miles (60 km) away.

Climate

Jerusalem has a mixed subtropical semiarid climate with warm dry summers and cool rainy winters. The average annual precipitation is about 24 inches (600 mm), and snowfalls—which in some years do not occur—are generally light. Average daily mean temperatures range from about 75 °F (24 °C) in August to about 50 °F (10 °C) in January.

The hot dry desert wind, called sharav in Hebrew (or khamsin, from the Arabic word for “fifty,” as it is said to come some 50 days per year), is fairly common in autumn and spring. Average daily humidity is about 62 percent in the daytime but may drop 30 to 40 percent under sharav conditions. Summer exposure to the sun’s rays in Jerusalem is intense because of the lack of clouds and the low humidity but also because the sun reaches such a high angle (80° above the horizon) at that season.

Jerusalem has no serious air pollution. Its elevation ensures the free mixing of surface air, and, apart from automobile exhaust, pollutant sources are few, for there is little heavy industry.

Plant and animal life

Lying on the watershed between the relatively rainy Hare Yehuda (Hills of Judaea) and the dry Judaean desert, Jerusalem has both Mediterranean and Irano-Turanian vegetation. The various red and brown Mediterranean soils, formed by the different types of limestone chalk covering the hills, support as many as 1,000 plant species. In the spring, masses of wildflowers proliferate on slopes and wastelands.

Jerusalem is exceptionally rich in birdlife, which includes 70 resident species and about 150 winter visitors. Those most commonly seen are the hooded crow, jay, swift (which nests in old walls and buildings), and bulbul. Large flocks of white storks overfly the city. In the winter, starlings and white wagtails roost in the thousands at various points in the metropolitan area.

However, goldfinches and linnets, formerly numerous, now rarely appear. Also often observed within the city are the lesser kestrel and the Palestinian sunbird. The only venomous snake is the Palestine viper, but this is rarely seen in urban areas. The smooth lizard and common chameleon frequent gardens and the walls of houses.

City layout

The municipal boundaries, extended by Israel in June 1967 and again in 1993, stretch from the closed Atarot Airport in the north to a point almost reaching the West Bank town of Bethlehem in the south and from the ridge of Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives in the east to Mount Herzl, ʿEn Kerem, and the Hadassah Medical Centre of the Hebrew University in the west.

The Old City, which is believed to have been continuously inhabited for almost 5,000 years, forms a walled quadrilateral about 3,000 feet (900 metres) long on each side. It is dominated by the raised platform of the Temple Mount —known in Hebrew as Har Ha-Bayit, the site of the First and Second Temples, and known to Islam as Al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf (“The Noble Sanctuary”), a Muslim holy place containing the Dome of the Rock, Al-Aqṣā Mosque, and other structures.

The rest of the area within the walls is a typical Middle Eastern city, with its mosques and madrasahs (Muslim religious colleges); its churches, convents, hospices, and residences of high ecclesiastical dignitaries; its synagogues and yeshivas (Talmudic academies); its hidden courtyards and gardens; and its medieval vaulted triple bazaar in the centre and labyrinth of smaller souks along David Street, which leads from Jaffa Gate and the old Ottoman Citadel toward the Temple Mount.

The first neighbourhoods outside the Old City walls, built from the 1860s onward, were scattered chiefly along the main roads from the west and northwest leading into the city. These early Jewish suburbs were paralleled by non-Jewish expansion prompted by Christian religious or nationalistic motivation. The latter included the Russian Compound on the meydan (old Turkish parade ground), near what is today the commercial heart of west Jerusalem; the German Colony, near what became the railway station; and the American Colony, north of the Damascus Gate.

Some early communities, such as Mishkenot Shaʾananim and Yemin Moshe, with its famous windmill landmark, have been reconstructed and resettled or turned into cultural centres. Others include the Bukharan Quarter; Meʾa Sheʿarim, founded by Orthodox Jews from eastern and central Europe, with its scores of small synagogues and yeshivas; and Maḥane Yehuda, with its fruit and vegetable market, inhabited mainly by Jews of North African and Oriental origin.

Residential quarters established between World Wars I and II include Reḥavya in the centre, Talpiyyot in the south, and Qiryat Moshe and Bet Ha-Kerem in the west. The old campus of the Hebrew University at Mount Scopus, northeast of the Old City, formed for some 20 years (1948–67) an Israeli exclave in the Jordanian sector; it was entirely rebuilt after the Six-Day War.

Some Arab districts, such as Talbieh and Katamon (Gonen), whose residents fled during the fighting of 1947–48, are now Jewish neighbourhoods, and thousands of houses were built for new Jewish immigrants in districts to the west, newly incorporated into the city. Arab neighbourhoods outside the Old City include Sheikh Jarrah, Wadi al-Jōz (al-Jawz), and Bayt Ḥanīnā in the north and villages such as Silwān and Bayt Ṣafāfā in the south.

Since 1967 large new housing developments for Jews have been built on the southern, eastern, and northern edges of the city, both within and beyond the extended city boundary. Their construction on territory claimed by both Israelis and Arabs has given rise to repeated confrontations and controversy. Meanwhile, construction of housing for Arabs within the city has been severely limited, which has resulted in large-scale ribbon development of Arab housing, particularly along the road leading north to Ramallah.

Housing

There is a great variety of housing in the city. In the Old City are antiquated buildings constructed of ancient stones; 19th-century Jewish neighbourhoods, some of which have declined into slums; modern quarters with tree-lined streets; and government-built housing projects, mainly for new immigrants. The most common basic dwelling unit in the Old City consists of a complex of structures, often on different levels, built around an inner court that is entered through a narrow corridor.

Since 1967 the government has taken steps to facilitate slum clearance, and the Jewish quarter in the Old City and many older neighborhoods in the New City have been restored and gentrified for Jewish inhabitants. Average housing density is higher among Arabs (about 1.9 persons per room) than it is among Jews (about 1 person per room).

Architecture

The outstanding characteristic of the architecture of Jerusalem is the coexistence of old and new, sacred and secular, in a variety of styles. The most conspicuous feature is the city wall erected in 1538–40 by the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, largely on the foundations of earlier walls dating chiefly to the period of the Crusades but in some places to Byzantine, Herodian, and even Hasmonean times.

The Old City may be entered through any of seven gates in the wall: the New, Damascus, and Herod’s gates to the north, the St. Stephen’s (or Lion’s) Gate to the east, the Dung and Zion gates to the south, and the Jaffa Gate to the west. An eighth gate, the Golden Gate, to the east, remains sealed, however, for it is through this portal that Jewish legend states that the messiah will enter the city.

The Jaffa and Damascus gates are still the main entrances. The city wall remains intact and unbroken, save for a gap (immediately next to the Jaffa Gate) that was cut by the Ottoman authorities in 1898 to facilitate the grand entrance of Emperor William II of Germany on the occasion of his visit to the city.

On three sides of the Temple Mount, parts of the original supporting walls still stand. During the centuries when Jews were excluded from the Temple Mount, its Western Wall became Jewry’s holiest shrine. Since 1967 the wall has been further exposed, and a large plaza has been cleared in front of it. The main buildings on the platform are two Islamic structures: the magnificent gold-capped Dome of the Rock, completed in 691, and the silver-domed Al-Aqṣā Mosque, built in the early 8th century.

The Citadel (with David’s Tower) beside the Jaffa Gate, which acquired its present form in the 16th century, was created over ruins from the Hasmonean and Herodian periods, integrating large parts of Crusader structures and some Mamlūk additions. The large number of churches mainly represent two great periods of Christian architecture, the Byzantine and Crusader eras.

The former is characterized by two- or three-tiered ornamental or basketlike carved capitals. The Crusader architecture reflects Romanesque styling, which features semicircular arches and barrel vaults. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre incorporates elements of both styles, but its facade and layout are architecturally Romanesque.

The best example of the mixed style is the Church of St. Anne (its substructure is Byzantine); others are the Armenian Cathedral of St. James, which combines Romanesque with Oriental elements, and the Tomb of the Virgin, which is Romanesque in its upper part but Byzantine in its lower.

The central part of the triple bazaar, as well as its link with the Cardo (a restored Roman-Byzantine mall), is of Crusader origin. Mamlūk constructions of the 13th to the 15th century, as well as coats of arms of Mamlūk rulers, are found along David Street and near the Gate of the Chain at the Western Wall. The constructions are characterized by “stalactite” or “honeycomb” (muqarnas) ornamentation and the use of multicoloured slabs of stone.

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Ottoman architecture of the early 16th century continued the Mamlūk style and is represented in some structures of the Temple Mount. The rock-cut tombs east and north of the Old City exemplify architecture of the first half of the 1st millennium BCE (Tomb of Pharaoh’s Daughter) and the Second Temple period (Tombs of the Kings, Tomb of Absalom, and Tomb of Zechariah). The restored Monastery of the Cross, in the heart of modern west Jerusalem, dates originally to the 5th century.

As Jerusalem spread outside the walls, its architecture came to be characterized chiefly by iron beams and red-tiled roofs. From 1930 there was a radical change, and flat roofs and reinforced concrete faced with naturally dressed stone predominated. The arrival of a number of German Jewish architects, refugees from Nazism, reinforced the trend toward modernism.

Among important buildings of the British mandate period are Government House (since 1948 the UN headquarters in the region), the King David Hotel, the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, the Jewish Agency headquarters, and the Young Men’s Christian Association building in west Jerusalem. In the period between 1948 and 1967 much of the residential construction in the Israeli sector took the form of standardized, high-density apartment blocks. Since 1967 design and construction standards have improved. Buildings are seldom taller than eight stories, but since 1967 there has been a growing tendency, despite opposition, for high-rise construction.

This is the case with a number of modern hotels at the western entrance to the city, and the construction of office buildings in the city centre is following the trend. All buildings, however, must follow a city ordinance—originally issued by Colonel (later Sir) Ronald Storrs, British governor of the city from 1917 to 1926—requiring that all buildings be faced in stone.

With only a few exceptions, the ordinance has been enforced continuously since the 1920s. Outstanding modern architecture is represented by the Knesset Building, the Israel Museum, the Jerusalem Theatre, and the Hebrew Union College. More-contemporary trends are represented by the Bank of Israel, the City Hall, and the Supreme Court building. Religious buildings remain a prominent part of the urban scene.

People of Jerusalem

Because Jerusalem is a holy city, uniquely revered by the three major monotheistic religions, its people have traditionally been classified according to religious affiliation. A majority of the city’s residents are either secular or traditional Jews. Muslims are the most homogeneous of the communities, and Christians—who are represented by numerous sects and churches—are the most diversified.

Residential segregation is the norm, and Jews and Arabs live almost exclusively in specific districts. Among the Jews there is a further subdivision of residential districts among ultraorthodox, traditional, and secular Jews, and Armenian Christians likewise form their own enclave in the Old City.

Muslims are the most ethnically homogeneous group, being very nearly all Arabs. The Christian community is somewhat more diverse. Although the city has attracted visitors and settlers from throughout the Christian world (and Christians are by far the smallest religious group), Arabs remain the largest ethnic element among the city’s Christians. Jerusalem’s Jewish population is far and away the most ethnically diverse.

Jews from every part of the Diaspora have settled in the city, adding to the extant Jewish community. Although the political conflict over the fate of the city and the broader region often has been shrouded in religious overtones, it has largely taken the shape of competing national aspirations—one Jewish Israeli and the other Palestinian Arab—and these two groups form the major political and demographic blocs within the modern city.

Demographic trends

Estimates of Jerusalem’s population during ancient times are variable and unreliable, but it is apparent that throughout the Ottoman period the city’s population remained quite small, growing significantly only since the mid-19th century. Estimates based on Ottoman sources indicate that, although the overall population level fluctuated between the 16th and the early 20th century, the number of Jewish residents as a proportion of the total population grew steadily.

Jews had become the largest single religious group by the third quarter of the 19th century, and Christians had surpassed Muslims as a percentage of the population by 1910. Bolstered to a large extent by the influx of Zionist immigrants (which began in the 1880s), the Jewish population continued to grow and had become an absolute majority by the late 19th century.

Jewish numerical predominance strengthened during the mandate period. By 1946 the Jewish majority was overwhelming, and in 1948—when the city was divided—a large number of Arabs, particularly Christians, fled the city (though some later returned). Between 1948 and the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel took control of East Jerusalem, the Jewish population continued to grow, albeit slowly, as immigrants settled in the western portion of the city.

Population growth after that time was rapid. Since 1967 the number of residents in the unified city more than doubled, although the Jewish majority fell noticeably, from roughly three-fourths of the overall population to slightly more than two-thirds. This was largely because of a high rate of natural increase among the Arab population (now mostly Muslim), whereas slower Jewish natural increase needed to be reinforced by migration—for which the two largest sources since the late 1980s have been the former Soviet countries and Ethiopia.

After 1967 Jews began to return to areas of East Jerusalem that had been wholly Arab since 1948. More recently, however, there has been a small net migration of Jews from Jerusalem to other parts of Israel. The average household size in Jerusalem (lower for Jews and higher for Arabs) is above the Israeli average—reflecting the large families characteristic of the Muslim and Orthodox Jewish populations of the city—but slightly lower than the West Bank average.

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Economy of Jerusalem

A major source of livelihood in Jerusalem is government and public service employment. Since 1967 business activity and investment in the city have been stimulated by the housing boom and the ever-increasing influx of pilgrims and tourists—except in periods of high political tension and violence, such as the two Palestinian uprisings known as intifadahs (1987–93 and 2000–05) and when conflicts escalate along the Lebanese and Gazan borders.

Personal income for both Jews and Arabs has risen steadily. Extreme poverty is concentrated among sections of the Muslim population, particularly in the Old City, and among strictly Orthodox Jews; several neighbourhoods populated by Jews from Africa, Yemen, and the Levant are also economically disadvantaged, albeit less severely. Generally speaking, unemployment levels are higher in Jerusalem than in Israel’s coastal cities. In politically stable times, thousands of West Bank Arabs enter the city to work as unskilled labourers, especially in the hospitality and construction industries.

Israel’s global prominence in high-tech industries has had an impact on Jerusalem as well: two high-tech office complexes—one in the neighborhood of Malha, next to the city’s largest shopping mall, and the other in Har Hotzvim—employ thousands of highly educated scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

Manufacturing and services

The establishment of heavy manufacturing industries has not been encouraged, in the interest of preserving the traditional character of the city. Combined with transport and marketing difficulties, this has limited the city to a number of small industries. While science-based industries have developed since the 1980s, the percentage of the workforce engaged in the manufacturing industry remains quite small, whereas about two-thirds is engaged in services.

In the late 1990s the most important enterprises were electrical and electronic equipment, chemicals, food, and printing. There are still small workshops producing giftware, religious articles, curios, and printed fabrics, although the manufacture of such items is increasingly outsourced abroad. Some Arabs work in Jewish-owned enterprises, particularly in the construction and tourism sectors, but virtually no Jews work in Arab-owned enterprises.

The tourist boom stimulated the construction of first-rate hotels in the city, which receives a very large number of tourists. Many of these visitors are Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrims; accordingly, in addition to the traditional summer vacation months, the heaviest influx is linked with the Jewish High Holidays (Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur), as well as Passover, Christmas, and Easter.

Transportation and communication

The main link to and from Jerusalem is Highway 1, a four-lane (sometimes six-lane) east-west highway that runs from Tel Aviv–Yafo to Jerusalem. Because Highway 1 is often congested, a parallel four-lane highway, Route 443, was built connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem via the planned community of Modiʿin, which lies roughly halfway between the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem metropolitan areas.

A north-south road bisects Jerusalem in its course along the watershed between the coastal plain and the valley of the Jordan River and links the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Nāblus to the north with the West Bank towns of Bethlehem and Hebron and the Israeli city of Beersheba to the south. Another road links Jerusalem with the city of Jericho in the West Bank, about 36 miles (58 km) by road to the east, and from there it follows the Jordan River to Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee) in the north. A secondary road cuts across the Samarian Highlands west of Jericho to Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank.

Road construction has increased considerably in the city since the mid-1970s, but traffic congestion remains one of the most acute problems for urban planners. The north-south Menachem Begin Highway has eased commuter traffic within the city limits, but little can be done about bottlenecks in much of Jerusalem, an ancient city with narrow streets.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem’s main urban thoroughfare, Jaffa Road, has been off-limits to all vehicular traffic since the inauguration of the city’s light rail system in 2011; gradually, more and more of downtown Jerusalem is being turned into pedestrian walkways. In addition to modernizing the city’s mass transit system, the light rail system was the catalyst for the construction of a new Jerusalem landmark—the majestic Chords Bridge, designed by the renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.

Public transportation for Jewish districts in both west and East Jerusalem is provided mainly by bus cooperatives. Interurban service to Jewish-inhabited areas in Israel and the West Bank is also operated by the cooperative from the Central Bus Station near the western entrance to the city. Services to Jewish areas do not operate on the Sabbath (i.e., from shortly before sundown on Friday to shortly after sundown on Saturday) nor on important Jewish holy days.

Services to Arab-inhabited districts of the city as well as to areas of the West Bank under the control of the PA are provided by privately owned companies out of a bus station near the Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem. Private taxi services operate on the Sabbath and holy days within nonreligious areas of the city and also connect Jerusalem with certain other destinations including Ben-Gurion International Airport. Separate sherut and taxi services operate from the Damascus Gate to Arab towns and cities in the West Bank.

The single-track Jaffa-Jerusalem railway, offering spectacular scenic views as it wound through the Hills of Judaea, opened in 1892. For many years it connected Jerusalem with Tel Aviv–Yafo and Haifa on the coast and with Beersheba inland. Before 1948 it was also possible to travel by rail to Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt. In 2018 a modern high-speed rail link opened, connecting Jerusalem and Ben Gurion International Airport on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The rail link is slated to eventually reach the city of Tel Aviv.

An airport on the northern edge of the city served a limited amount of inland traffic for a time but closed in 2000 at the outbreak of the Second Intifadah.

Administration and society

Government

Jerusalem is governed by a Municipal Council that is composed of 31 members who are elected every four years.The council is headed by the mayor, who since 1975 has been elected by direct popular vote. Israeli Jews form the largest and most politically active section of the population. Arabs in East Jerusalem, with few exceptions, remained Jordanian citizens after 1967.

Most, however, regard themselves as Palestinians by nationality. Although they have the right to vote in municipal elections, few have done so, because the majority refuse to recognize Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem. No Arab has served on the Municipal Council since 1967, although some have served on the council’s staff. Arab residents of East Jerusalem were permitted to vote in the 1996 elections for the Palestinian National Council (the legislative arm of the PA). Official correspondence is issued by the municipality in both Hebrew and Arabic.

Jerusalem is not a high-crime city; instances of crimes including drug trafficking, petty theft, and prostitution have been typical of those in any large city. Palestinian militants operating out of the West Bank waged intermittent bombing attacks against Jews in west Jerusalem beginning in the late 1990s. The assaults peaked between 2000 and 2004 and largely subsided in the last half of the decade. Except during such periods of political unrest, however, all areas of the city are quite safe.

The use of Israeli troops and of Border Police units in quelling political disturbances in Jerusalem—sometimes with great loss of life—has exacerbated Palestinian hostility to Israeli rule. From the mid-1990s police officers of the PA, operating out of uniform, began to exercise authority in Arab-inhabited districts of East Jerusalem. However, unlike the Palestinian population of the rest of the West Bank, which is now subject to Palestinian courts, the Arab population of Jerusalem remains subject to Israeli law and to the Israeli judicial system.

Jerusalem is the hub of Israel’s government. It is the seat of the president, the Knesset (parliament), ministries, and the Supreme Court of Israel. Most countries do not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, although some foreign embassies and legations were located in Jerusalem until 1980, when United Nations Resolution 478 called on member nations to withdraw diplomatic missions from the city. Italy maintains consulates in the eastern and western parts of the city.

In May 2018 the United States and Guatemala opened the first embassies in Jerusalem since 1980. Diplomats living in the Tel Aviv–Yafo area go to Jerusalem to present their credentials to the president and transact business at the Foreign Ministry. The prime minister’s office and many other ministries are concentrated in Kiryat Ben-Gurion, the government complex, which is flanked by the Knesset Building on one side and the Bank of Israel on the other. The Ministry of Justice, the National Police Headquarters, and certain other government offices are located in East Jerusalem.

In addition to housing the Supreme Court and the Chief Rabbinate, Jerusalem houses the head offices of many world Jewish bodies, such as the Jewish Agency and the World Zionist Organization, as well as the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority (Yad Vashem), which commemorates the victims of the Holocaust.

Responsibility for the city’s holy places and religious communities is vested in Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, which has a liaison for each of the main denominations. The administration, protection, and care of holy places are in the hands of the respective religious authorities. Penalties of several years’ imprisonment may be inflicted for desecrating these places.

Municipal services

Jerusalem has always depended on human ingenuity for its water supply. The underground aqueduct thought to have been built in the time of King Hezekiah (8th century BCE) is still extant, and many reservoirs and rainwater cisterns date from ancient times. Until the 1920s there was no piped supply. Rainwater was stored in cisterns, and vendors sold water in the streets.

Since the 1950s the New City has been supplied from the Israeli national water grid; East Jerusalem was reconnected to the west Jerusalem system in 1967. By the early 21st century the water network was extensive, yet the supply was under considerable strain as reserves were being steadily depleted. Electricity is supplied by the national grid of an Israeli government corporation, as well as by a small diesel plant in East Jerusalem, and the city has an extensive modern sewerage system.

Drainage repairs in the Christian quarter have uncovered Byzantine pavements, which have been restored. Additionally, parts of the Via Dolorosa, said to follow the path along which Jesus carried the cross to Golgotha, have been repaved to facilitate the Christian Holy Week pilgrimage.

Municipal services of all kinds in Arab areas of the city remain significantly deficient by comparison with those in Jewish districts.

Health

The Hadassah Medical Centre at ʿEn Kerem, one of the most-advanced institutions of its kind in the world, treats patients from throughout Israel, as well as from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Jordan, as does the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus. Other hospitals include Shaʿare Tzedeq, which pays special attention to the requirements of Orthodox Jews; Biqur Ḥolim; St. John’s Ophthalmic Hospital; Alyn for children with a variety of physical disabilities; an Arab Muslim hospital, Al-Maqāṣid al-Khayriyyah, at Al-Ṭūr; and an Arab Christian hospital, Al-Muṭallaʿ (Augusta Victoria Hospital), on the Mount of Olives, run by Lutheran organizations that mainly care for the Arab population.

A medical centre that also serves the Arab population was opened in 1982 at Sheikh Jarrah in northeast Jerusalem. Also important are the Austrian Hospice inside the Old City, the French Hospital, St. Louis (for terminal cases), and the Sisters of Charity. After unification of East Jerusalem and west Jerusalem, the Kupat Ḥolim, which is the medical insurance arm of the Histadrut (the Israeli General Federation of Labour), established several clinics in the eastern part of the city. Supplementing the regular medical facilities are the Magen David Adom and the Red Crescent (counterparts of the Red Cross), which provide additional emergency services.

Most families belong to one of the medical insurance funds run by the Israeli labour federation and other nongovernmental bodies. Medical insurance is by law obligatory for all Israeli citizens. The municipal social welfare department takes care of social cases that are not covered by medical insurance. Municipal clinics have been established for mothers and children. Health supervision, including dental inspection and treatment, is provided in all of the city’s schools. All health services are subsidized by the Israeli government.

Education of Jerusalem

Because of the high birth rate and the strong religious convictions of many among the population, education has always involved complex issues. The language of instruction is Hebrew in most Jewish schools and Arabic in Arab schools. English is the most common second language. Separate Jewish school systems exist for the various religious traditions. In these the curriculum concentrates much more heavily on the study of Jewish religion, history, and sacred texts.

In structure and curriculum, as a rule, the government-controlled Arab schools follow the Jordanian system. While the majority of school-age children attend government schools, there are numerous private institutions maintained by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian religious organizations; in the Christian schools the language of instruction is sometimes English or French. State kindergartens were introduced in East Jerusalem in 1967. Education is the single most important item in the city’s budget, and the municipality is responsible for maintaining classrooms from kindergarten through high school.

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (opened 1925) is Israel’s oldest, though no longer the largest, institution of higher learning, with an enrollment exceeding 20,000 students. It has two main campuses—at Mount Scopus in the east and at Givʿat Ram in the west, in addition to the medical school at ʿEn Kerem and the Faculty of Agriculture in Reḥovot. The old buildings on Mount Scopus have been renovated and supplemented by a new complex of buildings.

Al-Quds University (1995), a Palestinian Arab institution with headquarters at Abū Dīs, just outside the city limits in the West Bank, operates partly in buildings in East Jerusalem. Other institutes of higher learning are the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (1906), the Samuel Rubin Academy of Music (1945), the Hebrew Union College (a branch of the Reform Jewish seminary founded in Cincinnati, Ohio), several teachers colleges, a Mormon university, and an Armenian seminary.

The Jewish National and University Library (1892), with more than five million volumes in its main and dependent libraries, is Israel’s largest. It holds the foremost collection of books, incunabula, and periodicals of Judaica in the world, as well as an excellent library on all fields, particularly archaeology and Oriental studies, including the history of Palestine.

In addition, there are the Library of the Knesset (1949) and the State Archives (1949) and the Municipal Library and its branches. The Gulbenkian Library (1929) is one of the best Armenian libraries outside Armenia. The Khalidi Library (1900) in the Old City holds several hundred Arabic manuscripts and several thousand Arabic books. Numerous other libraries serve a variety of needs.

Social services provide adult education, senior citizen clubs, and youth clubs among a variety of programs in both parts of the city. Community centres are focal points of educational and recreation programs in the neighbourhoods.

Cultural life

Israelis often say that while Jerusalem is the country’s political, historical, and religious capital, Tel Aviv is the nation’s financial, culinary, and cultural capital. In recent decades, however, Jerusalem has been narrowing the gap when it comes to both the number and quality of its cultural institutions.

The Israel Museum (1965) continues to be the foremost cultural attraction—especially after its four-year $100 million renovation and expansion (2007–10). In addition to its large collection of Western and Israeli paintings, the museum houses a comprehensive Middle Eastern archaeological collection, several important Dead Sea Scrolls and other relics (displayed in the Shrine of the Book annex), a notable collection of Jewish ritual art, Middle Eastern ethnological exhibits, a sculpture garden, and a youth wing. The Rockefeller Archaeological Museum (1938), located in East Jerusalem, concentrates on the archaeology of the Holy Land.

Jerusalem’s Museum Row, situated opposite Israel’s Knesset, comprises the aforementioned Israel Museum; the Bible Lands Museum (1992), one of the world’s finest museums dedicated to the history of the ancient Near East; the interactive Bloomfield Science Museum (1992); and Israel’s National Library, which is on the Givʿat Ram campus of the Hebrew University.

There is an Islamic Museum on the Temple Mount (the area is known in Islam as Al-Ḥaram al-Sharīf), where the Al-Aqṣā Mosque and the Dome of the Rock are located. The L.A. Mayer Memorial Museum for Islamic Art (1974) in west Jerusalem houses a world-class collection of antique clocks. The Museum on the Seam (1983), located in the former no-man’s-land that divided Jewish west Jerusalem from Arab East Jerusalem, is a contemporary art museum often dealing with controversial social and political themes.

Among important scholarly research institutes in the city are the École Biblique et Archéologique Française (1890), the Studium Biblicum Franciscanum (1924), the Pontifical Biblical Institute (1909), the British School of Archaeology (founded in 1919, from 1998 operating as part of the Council for British Research in the Levant, Jerusalem), the William Foxwell Albright Institute of Archaeological Research (1900), and the Ben-Zvi Institute (1948). All these have libraries dealing with theology and the ancient and modern history of Israel and the Middle East; some have collections of antiquities and valuable manuscripts.

Jerusalem has become a major centre for the performing arts, especially since a wave of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet countries in the early 1990s included a large influx of accomplished musicians, actors, and directors. The annual Israel Festival attracts leading troupes from around the world every spring. Newer annual festivals, such as the winter Festival of Light and the Festival of Sacred Music, are growing in popularity.

The Jerusalem Theatre in west Jerusalem holds performances by visiting acting companies and is the home of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. An especially dramatic outdoor venue for large concerts and performances is the Sultan’s Pool, at the foot of the Old City walls. The Jerusalem Cinematheque shows a wide variety of films in many languages and hosts the annual Jewish Film Festival. The biennial Jerusalem Book Fair is one of the world’s notable international fairs for authors and publishers.

The Jerusalem Foundation (1966) raises funds for the preservation of the city’s multireligious heritage and for the beautification of the city. This foundation is responsible for creating many of Jerusalem’s parks, gardens, woodlands; of particular note is the Wohl Rose Garden, situated between the Knesset and the Supreme Court building. There are small gardens, playgrounds, and recreation areas dotting the city. The Biblical Zoo, relocated and expanded in 1982, houses specimens of all the animals that are mentioned in the Bible. In 2015 the Gazelle Valley Park was inaugurated as a reserve for gazelles, a native animal that had long been absent from Jerusalem’s landscape.

The English-language daily Jerusalem Post is published in Jerusalem, as is the Arabic daily Al-Quds. The major Hebrew daily newspapers, however, are all published in Tel Aviv–Yafo. The headquarters of the Israel Broadcasting Authority (television and radio) are in Jerusalem. Radio broadcasts are mainly in Hebrew and Arabic, though some programs are also broadcast in other languages. The PA broadcasts radio and television programs from transmitters located outside the city.

The municipality and a public lottery subsidize professional sports and facilities for the public. The main outdoor sports arena, Teddy Kollek Stadium (named for the city’s longtime mayor), seats more than 20,000 spectators. The adjacent Payis Arena hosts indoor sporting events and concerts. The leading professional sports are football (soccer) and basketball. Beitar Jerusalem football team has won Israel’s national championship several times.