Neve Yaakov

View of Neve Yaakov

Neve Yaakov also Neve Ya'aqov, (Hebrew: נווה יעקב) (lit. Jacob's Oasis), is a disputed residential development[1][2][3][4] of 30,000 located north-east of Jerusalem, north of Pisgat Ze'ev and south of al-Ram.

Initially founded in 1924, it was largely abandoned during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Rebuilt after the 1967 Six-Day War on territory occupied and annexed by Israel and henceforth considered an illegal Israeli settlement by the United Nations and European Union Israel disputes this, officially classifying it as a neighborhood of Jerusalem.

History

View of high-rise apartment buildings along Neve Yaakov Blvd.

Neve Yaakov was established in 1924 on a small parcel of land purchased from the Arabs of Beit Haninah by members of the American Mizrachi movement. HaKfar HaIvri Neve Yaakov (The Jewish Village of Neve Yaakov), home to 150 families, was named for the leader of the movement, Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, who died in 1915. It was an hour's walk to the Old City, where most Jews of Jerusalem lived at the time. From 1924 to 1948, Neve Yaakov and Atarot were the only Jewish settlements north of the Old City.

The village suffered from financial problems and lack of a regular water supply. After years of hauling water in buckets from a well six kilometers away, the village received a government water pipeline in 1935. Electricity was hooked up in 1939.

After years of peaceful co-existence with the surrounding Arab villagers, from whom they purchased vegetables, fruit and eggs, the inhabitants of Neve Yaakov were attacked during the 1929 Hebron massacre, and many families returned to the Old City. In the course of the Great Uprising (1936 to 1939), shots were heard from the Arab side almost every night. The British Mandate government supplied a cache of arms to defend Neve Yaakov, and members of the Zionist Haganah pre-state army moved in to guard the village and its water pipeline.

During the peaceful years from 1940 to 1947, the village operated a school that accepted students from all over the country. Children’s summer camps and convalescent facilities were opened, taking advantage of the rural atmosphere and fresh air. Veteran Jerusalem residents remember hiking to Neve Yaakov to buy fresh milk from dairy farmers.

When the Jordanian Arab Legion advanced toward Jerusalem from the north during the Israeli War of Independence in 1948, Neve Yaakov and Atarot were abandoned in the wake of advance warning that they were about to be attacked. The region was occupied by the Jordanians until 1967 until after the Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and environs.

After 1967, a new Jewish neighborhood was constructed on the site of the original village, with 4,900 apartments in high-rise buildings. Due to its location outside the internationally recognised borders of Israel, it is considered by the United Nations and European Union to be an Israeli settlement. The new neighborhood was populated by Jewish immigrants from Bukhara, Georgia, Latin America, North Africa, France and Iran. In the 1990s, when large waves of Russian and Ethiopian Jews came to Israel, many settled in Neve Yaakov.

Kiryat Kaminetz

Neve Yaakov Mizrach

In 1982, Kiryat Kaminetz, a housing development on the eastern edge of Neve Yaakov named for the Jewish community of Kamenets, Poland destroyed in the Holocaust, was built on the eastern side of the existing neighborhood. Several hundred apartments were populated by young, Haredi Jewish families, many of them from English-speaking countries. In 1992, 700 new apartments were added to Kiryat Kaminetz on the eastern slope of the mountain; this new neighborhood is also known as Neve Yaakov Mizrach (Neve Yaakov East). The latter has a high concentration of Hasidic and Sephardic Haredi families, with a variety of schools and synagogues serving each population. Neve Yaakov Mizrach is also home to two yeshivas catering to American students: Yeshivas Bais Yisroel and Yeshivas Lev Aryeh.

The Haredi character of the neighborhood has expanded further since 2004 with an influx of newlywed couples, both Israeli-born and Anglo immigrants, to the older sections of Neve Yaakov. This new trend has been characterized by calling the older section the Mitchared (literally, "becoming Haredi.") The total Haredi presence in Neve Yaakov is estimated at 900 families.