Batei Mahse

The Batei Mahse (Hebrew: בתי מחסה, lit. 'Shelter for the Needy') is an apartment complex built from 1857 to 1890 in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, intended to house the city's poorer residents.

The complex is the first modern Jewish housing initiative built in the Land of Israel. The purpose of the building was to build shelters for poor residents (a kind of financial welfare). The initiative for its establishment was started by Kollel Hod, an organization founded by Jews from the Netherlands and Germany donating to the Jewish Quarter during the period of the Old Yishuv.

The construction of the complex enabled the community to grant apartments to poor families for a period of three years for free or for a controlled fee. At the end of the 19th century, housing prices rose in Israel, and many Jewish families found themselves unable to pay full rent to their landlords, leaving them homeless. The socio-economic situation led to the decision of Rabbi Azriel Hildesheimer to establish Kollel Hod for the establishment of the Mount Zion Toba Shelter Company for the Poor. The complex built included 100 apartments that were built to a fairly high standard of living compared to what was customary in Jerusalem at the time.

Funding for the construction of the building was obtained by various Meshulach, including: Moses Sachs, Chaim Tzvi Schneerson, and Azriel Zelig Hausdorf, who were sent over the diaspora to collect donations from Jews living in various countries, even as far away as Australia. A particularly donation was made by Baron Wilhelm Carl de Rothschild of Frankfurt.

Each apartment (numbered with an engraved lintel in Hebrew letters) consisted of two rooms and a kitchen, and in the center of the paved communal courtyard were large cisterns. Tenants who received an apartment were considered fortunate in the quarter, as many tried to make connections to get one. 1/3 of the apartments were distributed to Hungarian Jews, 1/3 to German and Dutch Jews, and 1/3 to poor Jews from other countries.

The original intention of the complex was to distribute the apartments to poor Torah scholars, however, 2/3 of the apartments were given to Hungarian and Germanic Jews who were not poor at all. David Yellin wrote on the subject, saying:

And when it is time to divide the houses among the poor Torah scholars in Jerusalem, the descendants of Hungary will jump to the top of the list, and the Germanic Jews will follow. It is true that the population of Hungarian Jews is lacking in this demographic... and among the children of Germany there are no poor, and in the many iniquities, even wealthy Torah scholars [are not found] among them, but finally here the origin of the money was in the homelands of these two kollels, well they decided... to divide the right to reside in these dwellings into 3 parts, 1/3 for the Hungarians, 1/3 for the Germanics, and 1/3 for the Kelal Yisrael and their poor in the lands of Hungary or Ashkenaz, who were not born into holiness and purity, including those of Israel: the Ashkenazim and Sephardim and the Westerners and the Yemenites and all the Jewish communities to his countries of exile.

The complex, located near the Old City wall, was the last courtyard left in control of the defenders of the Jewish Quarter when it fell during the 1948 Palestine war (with the central cellars used as shelter for Jews), and from the square in the compound, the defenders of the Quarter were taken captive by the Jordanian Legion. In the courtyard of the building, at the corner of Gilad Street, the bodies of those who died in combat were buried, since they could not be buried outside the walls of the besieged Quarter. The mass grave was erected with the approval of the Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Places, Rabbi Yitzhak Avigdor Orenstein, despite the historical prohibition of burying the dead inside the Old City. The deceased were transferred on 4 August 1967 to a mass grave on the Mount of Olives, where they received a military burial and official tombstones.