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The original caption read: "Clearing of lower end of Tyropean Valley, near Dung Gate (1935)." The photo shows the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City before its destruction in 1948. The Porat Yosef Yeshiva is in the center of the picture with the white dome. Today this area is the entrance way to the Western Wall plaza. (Library of Congress, circa 1935, captions added by Israel Daily Picture)
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the "Temple area. Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock and the western
Temple wall." Presumably the wide white lines are photographic
editor's tape. At the corner made by the tape is the Porat Yosef dome.
The Library of Congress dates the picture "between 1898 and 1946," but
Porat Yosef was not built until 1923. 1946 is the year the American
Colony Photographic Department closed.
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Several ultra-Orthodox rabbinical seminaries in Israel can claim to be the leading Ashkenazic
yeshiva -- the massive Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem with its 6,000 students, Ponevezh Yeshiva in B'nai Brak, or the Hevron Yeshiva in Jerusalem, once the famous Slabodka seminary in Europe which relocated to Hebron until the 1929 massacre of Jews there.
But there are few challengers in the
haredi Sephardic community to the pre-eminence of the Porat Yosef Yeshiva in Jerusalem. The site for the seminary was purchased 100 years ago; the cornerstone was laid in 1914, and the building was inaugurated in 1923. The building contained study halls, a synagogue, classrooms and apartments.
It was all destroyed by the Jordanian army in 1948, along with all of the synagogues and homes in Jewish Quarter. The photos of the war in the Old City and the destruction of the Jewish Quarter were taken by
Life Magazine's John Phillips.
After the 1967 war, the Porat Yosef seminary was rebuilt and overlooks the Western Wall Plaza.
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| The destruction of Porat Yosef Yeshiva (John Phillips, Life Magazine 1948) |
