Beautiful, impressive poster – invitation to the cornerstone-laying ceremony for the establishment of the Sha’arei Chessed neighborhood of Jerusalem that took place on Sunday, Lag BaOmer, 1909.
The invitation is decorated with many verses. Blue stamp on the frame that also includes the time it took to walk (in those days) from various places in Jerusalem to Sha’arei Chessed. Under the title “Make known to them the way they should go, ” it says: From the Knesset Yisrael neighborhood, 5 minutes south; from Jaffa Gate, from behind Nachalat Shivah, 23 minutes by foot – with the further away parts paved for passage by carriage as well.
The cornerstone laying took place in the presence of the geonim Rabbi Chaim Berlin and Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, as stated on the invitation. Conspicuous in his absence from the list of participants is the revered rabbi of Jerusalem, the gaon Rabbi Shmuel Salant. The reason for this was that he was already elderly and ill by then. Historians of the time relate that in the end, the elderly and ill Rabbi Salant insisted on attending the event despite his frailty. This invitation attests that it did not even occur to the event’s organizers that the elderly rabbi of Jerusalem would attend the event.
Refer to the Hebrew catalog text for a brief biography of the Sha’arei Chessed neighborhood of Jerusalem.
This neighborhood seems to be the fulfillment of the divine prophecy from Yeshayahu about the “face-lift” that Hashem would perform on the city of all-encompassing beauty that collapsed from the difficult exile “Suffering and storm-tossed, unconsoled one – I declare that I will set gems as your floor tiles and lay your foundations with sapphires. I will set your window-frames with rubies and your gates with carbuncle stones, and all your borders with precious stones.” (Yeshayahu 54)
Specifications: [1] framed poster, approximately 24×30 cm.
Fine condition. Aging stains. Fold mark.