Givat Shaul

Givat Shaul lies far west of Jerusalem’s city center and near the city’s main entrance. It is a mixed commercial and industrial area, with offices, light industry, large stores and discount warehouses, as well as publishing houses, mechanic shops and artist studios. Residential districts, including ultra-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox areas, border the neighborhood.[5]

For statistical purposes, Giv'at Shaul is designated sub-quarter 092. The 2022 statistical table divides it into northern, eastern and central areas. It also includes an industrial-area section encompassing Har HaMenuchot Cemetery, Kanfei Nesharim and Giv'at Shaul B, as well as a section covering Motza Tahtit and Ramat Motza. The reported population at the end of 2022 was 14,920.[6]

The founding society, Hevrat Givat Shaul, was established in 1907 by Aryeh Leib Beharad, Moshe Kopel Kantarovitz and Rabbi Nissim Elyashar. It purchased land for the future neighborhood from residents of nearby Deir Yassin. The neighborhood itself was founded in 1908.[1] It began growing on Jerusalem’s far western edge around 1910, as Jewish quarters expanded before the First World War.[7]

The neighborhood was named for Rabbi Yaakov Shaul Elyashar, the Rishon LeZion, who was also known as Yissa Berakhah.[8] His son Nissim was among the founders.[1] The National Library archive also records a second naming rationale: from the neighborhood’s summit, residents could see Tel el-Ful, which it identifies as biblical Givat Shaul, the capital of King Saul, and now near Pisgat Ze’ev.[1] The original purpose of the settlement was to provide small agricultural plots beside homes so residents could grow fresh produce for Jerusalem.[1]

A small number of people began settling there in 1910. Most were of Yemeni origin and could not afford to buy a plot in the city. They built small wooden houses, and a synagogue was later established in the basement of one of them. The settlement’s early residents thus combined household life with agriculture and communal religious practice.[1]

Fighting on the approaches to Jerusalem during the First World War destroyed several houses, and some residents fled. The British paid compensation, and the neighborhood was rebuilt in 1919. Trees and fruit orchards were planted and vegetable gardens prepared; some courtyards also contained dairy cowsheds whose products were sold in Jerusalem.[1]

During the British Mandate and especially after the establishment of Israel, educational and medical institutions, small factories and workshops were established in Givat Shaul. The Friedman stove factory was one example. In the 1970s and 1980s, the cowsheds closed and many workshops shut or moved away. Residential buildings, high-rise offices and industrial plants subsequently occupied vacant lots and sites where older homes had been demolished.[1]

A surviving photographic collection contains images taken by Shulamit Beit Yanai between 1990 and 1999, during a period of intensive development when many early houses stood abandoned. Most have since been demolished. The collection record lists 73 items, dates the collection to 1990–2000 and says the photographs were brought to the Yad Ben-Zvi Archive by Beit Yanai and published in her 1999 book, Givat Shaul: People and Places—Then and Now, edited by Emanuel Margaliot.[1]

The 2022 sub-quarter figure of 14,920 covers the statistical area designated Giv'at Shaul, whose boundaries include several named sections and nearby areas rather than only the neighborhood’s central residential streets.[6] A 2013 report’s analysis of 2008 socioeconomic data classified Central Givat Shaul among general Jewish neighborhoods in clusters 4–6, the lowest range discussed for that population group. It also characterized the area as having a high proportion of ultra-Orthodox residents, but not an ultra-Orthodox majority.[9]

In the 2013 Knesset election, Givat Shaul had a reported turnout rate of 78%, among the higher rates in ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods or areas with a substantial ultra-Orthodox population.[9] These figures describe the sources’ respective periods and classifications and should not be read as a present-day socioeconomic or electoral profile.

By 2009, Givat Shaul was one of Jerusalem’s largest industrial zones by number of jobs, with 2,400 manufacturing positions and compensation totaling NIS 261.4 million.[9] An undated reference figure gives the industrial zone’s built-up area as 350,000 square meters and describes it as a western industrial area developed alongside an enlarged industrial zone at Tel Arza.[7]

Givat Shaul also developed as a commercial hub competing with Jerusalem’s city center, while government ministries and public institutions relocated from the center to sites that included the neighborhood.[10] Its business mix includes large stores, discount warehouses, offices and light industry alongside artists’ studios.[5] The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation’s KAN studios are also located there.[11]

Bakeries became particularly associated with Givat Shaul. Angel’s Bakery was founded in Bayit Vegan in 1927 by Salomon Angel and moved into the industrial zone in 1958, near Berman’s Bakery. Berman’s had operated in Jerusalem since 1875, when it was founded in the Old City by Lithuanian immigrant Kreshe Berman; after relocating to Mea She’arim, it moved to Givat Shaul in 1965.[11][12]

The Jerusalem flour mill, Tahanat Yerushalayim, was established in Givat Shaul in 1950. It supplied flour to Jerusalem and beyond and was the only mill in the city serving those customers. In the 1950s, it was used as a concealed store of grain and flour amid concern about another siege like the one in 1948. The mill contained eight hidden internal silos in addition to the visible external silos, and testimony relayed in the report indicated that a secret bunker was also on the site.[13]

The mill closed after 65 years of operation and was demolished in 2021 for Ir Olam, a proposed residential and commercial quarter intended to connect Beit Hakerem, Givat Shaul and Kiryat Moshe.[13] A 2022 update to the industrial-zone master plan permitted residential use in five entrance-area complexes, up to 25% of their permitted building area, subject to meeting public-space needs in nearby Givat Shaul, Kiryat Moshe and Har Nof. An early mixed-use plan for the former mill site included about 360 housing units, 38,000 square meters of employment and commercial space, and 6,600 square meters of public buildings.[14]

By 2024, Angel’s Bakery had shifted its key operations to Netivot and Lod. Third-generation manager Yaron Angel turned off the ovens at the Givat Shaul operation for the last time. The company had sold its shares in the business, including two hectares of land, to entrepreneurs seeking to build residential complexes; Angel said the company had no room to expand in Jerusalem.[15] Road 16, opened in 2022, provides a southwestern entrance route linking Highway 1 at Motza with Givat Shaul and the Begin Highway at Byte Street, with an interchange at Givat Shaul.[16]

Susan’s House, established in Givat Shaul in 2002 in memory of a young woman who wanted to help children through art, provides at-risk teenagers with a place to create glasswork, ceramics and jewelry. Its stated aim is to help participants build self-worth and life skills. The center was described as working with about 30 teenagers at a time, ages 15 to 18.[2]

Visitors can tour the facility, meet the young artists, participate in an art activity and visit its showroom. Its address is 31 Kanfei Hanesharim, Givat Shaul. The visitor account presents these encounters as a way for guests to engage with and encourage the teenagers.[2]

The neighborhood is adjacent to Har HaMenuchot, a hilltop cemetery at Jerusalem’s western edge. The cemetery opened in 1951 on 300 dunams and held more than 150,000 burials by 2008; it subsequently expanded onto the hill’s northern and western slopes.[17] Nearby, the Kfar Shaul Mental Health Center was established in 1951 between Givat Shaul and Har Nof, on the grounds of the former Arab village of Deir Yassin.[18]

On November 23, 2022, a terrorist bomb exploded near a bus stop in Givat Shaul shortly after 7 a.m.; a second explosion occurred at Ramot Junction at about 7:30 a.m. A contemporaneous report said a 16-year-old was killed and almost two dozen people were wounded. It quoted Israeli police describing the devices as “high quality,” packed with nails and remotely detonated.[3] A later report said Islam Faroukh planted devices at both locations and gave a different injury count of twelve, while also reporting one civilian killed. The two reports therefore differ on the number of wounded.[19]

A separate terrorist shooting took place at the Givat Shaul intersection, at Jerusalem’s entrance, on November 30, 2023. Two gunmen opened fire on civilians at a bus stop, killing three and wounding 14, four critically. Two soldiers and an armed civilian at the scene shot and killed the attackers. The report attributes details about the attackers’ identities and backgrounds to other reports.[4]

The neighborhood’s history is also connected to the events at nearby Deir Yassin during the War of Independence. A Jerusalem Post review says that Irgun and Stern Group fighters attacked the village on April 9, 1948. Accounts differ on how to characterize the fighting and on the death toll. The review describes house-to-house fighting, notes earlier claims of 245–254 fatalities and a later survivor-based estimate of 107, and discusses historian Eliezer Tauber’s research, which listed 101 fatalities and argued that most were killed during the battle rather than in a subsequent deliberate massacre.[20] These are attributed accounts of a historically contested episode; the figures and interpretations are not presented here as a settled consensus.