Page 26 - Mahane Yehuda - Advanced -RevF Heb-English-eBook-FP-V2491-HTML5

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Advanced Level -‫שוק מחנה יהודה‬

The Banai Family

If you were talking about the Mahane Yehuda Market, it's impossible
not to mention in one breath the Banai family who arrived at the
Mahane Yehuda Market in the 20’s of the 20th century.
The family was part of a union of merchants, most belonging to the
Persian ethnic group, who asked the city board to assist them to buy
land for building shops. With the money from the loans they took out
in 1922-1923 four rows of shops were built, which today are on
Tapuach Street and Agas Street, about which Ehud Banai also sings
(“No. 1 Agas Street, above the vegetable shop”).

Yossi Banai, G-d rest his soul, told many stories about his childhood
in the Mahane Yehuda Market, and his love for the old neighborhood
is seen in his songs. Also in his songs there are the characters of his
childhood friends with whom he grew up, Simon and Little Mo’iz and
others who have become inseparable from the history.

Chaim Banai G-d rest his soul, who passed away in August 2008,
once told about his family’s history and of their brave connection to
the market: “I was born on Agas Street, in the Mahane Yehuda
Market. My grandfather, Eliyahu ben Ya’akov Banai, built a large part
of the market and also our house, under which was my father’s fruit
and vegetable store. When my grandfather moved from the old city to
the new one, he wanted to buy land and to build a house on it. He
went to the sheikh he knew to show him lands that are for sale: the
sheikh showed my grandfather a land for 15 Egyptian pounds per
dunam* and a land for 10 Egyptian pounds per dunam. My
grandfather, who thought in big terms (thought big), decided to buy
the expensive land that seemed better to him then because of its high
price. On the land worth 15 Egyptian pounds he built Mahane Yehuda
and on the land worth 10 Egyptian pounds they built the neighborhood
Rehavia. If at that time my grandfather would have tried to save
(money), today part of the neighborhood Rehavia could have been
mine…”

*A unit for measuring land area, about 1/4 acre

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