The Dividing Line

Starting off at Jaffa Gate (Shar Yafo) the quickest way (though debatable by some if it is the safest) to the Kotel, the Tunnel Tours, and the Temple Mount is by going straight ahead.

This road is known as David Street and turns into the Street of the Chains (Bab al-Silsilah Street in Arabic). Most people simply know it as the Arab Shuk.

It is the road that divides the Christian and Arab Quarters on one side of the city with the Armenian and Jewish Quarters on the other.

Though before the Jews were driven out of the Old City in 1948, when Jerusalem was divided, the definitions of the quarters were mostly irrelevant as Jews lived in all the quarters and apparently made up the majority of residents of the Old City.

Turning right on this street towards the end of the Shuk we find ourselves at an upper entrance to the Kotel on Misgav Ladach Street.

Misgav Ladach Street is the street where the original Misgav Ladach hospital was located when it was founded in 1854, until it was destroyed in 1948. You can learn more about the intersting history of the Misgav Ladach Hospital while it was in the Old City here.

Today, the rebuilt building, houses the dormitories for the Sephardi Center.

SL

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