Niemandsland

In the 1920s and 1930s, several important Jewish institutions were established on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem: the Hebrew University, the National Jewish Library, and the Hadassa Hospital. In the Jewish community in Palestine, the Jishuw, they had a really important, but also highly symbolic meaning. As a result of the Arab-Israeli war of 1948, however, they were now on Jordanian territory. In a difficult-to-access enclave administered by the UN, they became the plaything of competing claims to sovereignty. The Jewish cultural assets located there, primarily books and other collections, slipped away from the scholars who had carefully guarded them for decades. Using these objects and their fate, Yfaat Weiss tells the story of Jerusalem after war and division in her essay.