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"LET MY TONGUE CLING TO THE ROOF OF MY MOUTH
IF I DO NOT REMEMBER YOU,
IF I DO NOT SET JERUSALEM ABOVE MY HIGHEST JOY"
PSALM 137:6
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Teddy
Kollek was Jerusalem’s greatest builder
since Herod the Great who rebuilt the
Second Temple 2,000 years ago. Born in Vienna,
Teddy immigrated to Palestine in 1935 and was one of
the founders of Kibbutz Ein Gev on the eastern shore
of the Sea of Galilee. That first year he
contracted typhoid five times and endured several
bouts of malaria. In later years he fondly
remembered those pioneering days at Ein Gev. “We
came to an empty land; we started growing trees and
we fished in the Sea of Galilee,” he said. “We saw
our dreams materialize.”
During the Second World War, he was an intelligence
liaison to British intelligence and laid the basis
for intelligence cooperation between the U.S. and
Israel. After the war, he procured supplies
for Israel’s fledgling army, the Hagana.
Networking from his hotel in New York City, Teddy
established connections which facilitated Israel’s
purchase of weapons from the U.S. and from various
countries in Central America.
After a 12-year stint as Prime Minister David Ben
Gurion’s director general in the prime minister’s
office, Teddy Kollek transferred his energies to the
Israel Museum in Jerusalem. When most of
Israel’s founding fathers considered an art museum a
luxury the young state could not afford, Teddy
raised the money to establish the national museum.
The immigrant from Vienna argued that while Israel
needed to absorb immigrants and build its military
power, it also needed expressions of culture and
civilization.
“He really forged the landscape of modern Jerusalem
as we know it,” says James Snyder, director of the
Israel Museum which houses the
Dead Sea Scrolls. “He
saw the museum as the jewel in that landscape. The
idea of this modernist museum complex on the crest
of Jerusalem was his.”
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Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
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Entrance to the Israel Museum |
Miskenot Sha'ananim |
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Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
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Kids' Favorite: the Monster
Slide |
Teddy's favorite: the
Biblical Zoo |
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In 1965
he was elected Mayor of Jerusalem and subsequently
reelected five times until he was defeated by Ehud
Olmert in 1993.
Throughout his tenure as mayor it was widely known
that his home phone number was listed in the
Jerusalem phonebook. When he was home, which
wasn't very often, given his long hours -- he
answered the phone himself in his very gruff manner.
One well-known anecdote is about the time he arrived
home in the wee hours of the morning and found a
note from his wife Tamar lying on the kitchen table.
It said that a woman had called at 1.30 a.m.
complaining about a pothole in her neighborhood
which the municipality had ignored for over a month,
despite her repeated phone calls and complaints.
He called the woman at 3.30 a.m. and promised that
the pothole would be repaired that very morning.
Teddy was the first to arrive at city hall and let
himself in with his own key. Once a week he
would randomly choose a neighborhood to check that
the garbage had been collected and that shrubbery
and flowers were being maintained. He
organized a committee of Dutch Friends of Jerusalem
who annually donated thousands of tulip bulbs to the
city. He kept the municipal gardeners very
busy!
Teddy’s fund-raising genius was legendary.
Many years ago I had a cousin who was working in the
office of the mayor of Tel Aviv. He told me
that the mayor had invited a wealthy American
shopping mall magnate to Tel Aviv’s city hall in the
hopes of convincing him to sponsor an art project in
the city.
It was my cousin’s job to greet the magnate and
bring him up to the mayor’s office. On the way, the
American tycoon told him that he had just had lunch
with Teddy Kollek in Jerusalem. My cousin
raised his eyebrows and asked, “How was it?”
“Cost me half a million dollars!” replied the
shopping mall magnate.
One prospective donor to the Israel Museum promised
a major gift if Teddy would lose 40 pounds.
Teddy gained six, yet he convinced the donor that
the Museum was too vital to the city to be penalized
because of a willpower-less chairman.
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Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
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Sign by the Jaffa Gate |
Tower of David Museum |
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Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
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Liberty Bell Park |
Damascus Gate Plaza |
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In 1966
Teddy created the non-profit Jerusalem Foundation
which was the machine which raised money and
supervised thousands of new projects around the city
in every neighborhood, for every resident. He
built a soccer stadium called the Teddy Stadium and
next to it, the Jerusalem Mall.
In other building projects, the
Old City walls were
doubled in height by exposing their lower courses
and they were surrounded by promenades and gardens.
Below the Old City Citadel by the Jaffa Gate, he
built a crafts center, an outdoor amphitheater in
the old Herodion reservoir, a cinematheque in
Gehenna (the Hinnom Valley), and a center for youth
orchestras (with a donation from Herb Alpert and his
family). The old Turkish khan (an inn) was
transformed from a rubbish-filled warehouse into a
charming theater. In an interview on his 70th
birthday in 1981, Teddy said the key was “attention
to detail and follow-up. That’s how things get
done.”
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Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
Photo: Gila
Yudkin |
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First Century AD Sidewalk |
Biblical Oryx in Jerusalem |
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When
Teddy was defeated in the 1993 election, he
continued fundraising for the city from his office
at the Jerusalem Foundation. When tourism came
to a complete halt after 9/11, I sought a job at the
foundation because of my great admiration for Teddy.
Then I got to see him often, usually in the elevator
as I was leaving to go photograph one of his
projects to report to donors on how their money had
been spent. If I didn’t see him, I would
always know he had been around by the whiff of Cuban
cigar smoke in the elevator.
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Photo: Gila's
Archive |
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May 27, 2002, Teddy's 91st
birthday |
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We had a
party for him at the Jerusalem Foundation on the
occasion of his 91st birthday. I sat next to
him and told him that I had guided thousands of
pilgrims who had admired his work of beautifying the
city, restoring its archeological treasures and
preserving its historical buildings. And I
asked him, “What is the project you are most proud
of?” Without hesitation he replied, “The zoo.”
I have to admit that I was surprised. My
colleagues told me they thought he was joking.
But within a year, I understood his answer.
In 1993 he had raised the funds to move the old
Biblical Zoo to a new expansive lovely location on
the outskirts of the city. In a city often
wracked by strife and divisions, the Biblical Zoo is
a relaxing, fun destination for secular, orthodox,
ultra-orthodox Jewish, Christian and Moslem city
residents as well as immigrants and tourists, all
intermingling. Once while photographing
various projects around the zoo, I counted nine
different languages, not including the monkey
screams and elephant squeals.
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Photo:
Gila Yudkin |
Photo:
Gila Yudkin |
Photo:
Gila Yudkin |
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Non-biblical giraffes |
The Jerusalem Citadel |
Flaming Flamingos |
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Endlessly dedicated, pragmatic and
optimistic, Teddy Kollek would have agreed
with Sir Ronald Storrs, the first British
mayor of the city (1918 to 1926) who said,
“There are many positions that afford their
holders more power and fame, but in a sense
I cannot explain, there is no promotion
after Jerusalem.”
Teddy died on January 2, 2007 at the age of
95 and a half. He is assured an
eternal prominent place in the annals of the holy
city. |
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Copyright 2007
Gila Yudkin. Permission needed for any reuse. |
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Coming to Jerusalem
soon? Would you
like to find the venues where you can quietly be
transported back in your imagination to the time
of Jesus? To David? To Abraham?
Are you a camera buff who would like to bring
home a collection of exotic photos no one else
has? Are you eager to eat hummus or kubbeh
elbow-to-elbow with the "natives" -- or is
dining in the style of King Solomon and the
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Make every
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This up-to-date PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
46-page guide gives you the Top Ten places to
meditate on the Bible, the Top Ten lesser-known
churches worth visiting, the Top Ten most
rewarding roof-top views and the Top Ten places
for sampling Middle Eastern soul food. Many of the
Top Ten are places built, renovated, restored,
preserved or were frequented by Teddy Kollek. More on
Gila's Jerusalem Guide....
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GILA
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TCHERNIKOVSKI
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JERUSALEM
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