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Advanced level – רמה מתקדמת
The Windmill
In 19th century Jerusalem, in what is now the neighborhood of Rechavia, there was a
Christian village called Ginzaria, named after a widespread local plant. The land
was dry and covered with thorns. The Jews who lived in the Old City thought that
the land was uninhabitable.
The Greek Orthodox Church, which owned the land, wanted to help its poor
parishioners to grind their own flour inexpensively, thus being able to make an
honorable living from their own manual labor. So, it built a windmill in the middle
of the local agricultural fields. This windmill was different than all the others. It
had an internal combustion engine that could turn the grindstones even when there
was no wind. Thus, it was unnecessary to wait for a strong wind to grind wheat.
However, when a steam-powered windmill was built at the beginning of the 20th
century, this windmill fell out of use, and the economic situation of the community
started to falter.
After World War One, the Greek Orthodox Church faced bankruptcy and was
forced to sell many of its lands. The "Palestine Land Development Company"
bought the land upon which the windmill stood plus some land around it. This was
the first time land had been bought in Jerusalem by a Jewish organization and not by
individual people. In this way the Jewish organizations showed that they believed
that Jerusalem could grow beyond the confines of the Old City.
At the beginning of the 1930's, a German Jew named Zalman Schocken asked the
famous architect Erich Mendelsohn to design homes for him in Rechavia.
Mendelsohn arrived in Palestine intending upon staying only a few weeks. When
the residents of Palestine heard that the famous architect had arrived, many asked
him to build homes and other buildings for them. Mendelsohn saw that there was
much business to be had in Palestine so he stayed on. He bought the windmill and
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