Till We Have Built Jerusalem: Architects of a New City

by Adina Hoffman

A biographical excavation of one of the world’s great, troubled citiesA remarkable view of one of the world’s most beloved and troubled cities, Adina Hoffman’s Till We Have Built Jerusalem is a gripping and intimate journey into the very different lives of three architects who helped shape modern Jerusalem. The book unfolds as an excavation. It opens with the 1934 arrival in Jerusalem of the celebrated Berlin architect Erich Mendelsohn, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany who must reckon with a complex new Middle Eastern reality. Next we meet Austen St. Barbe Harrison, Palestine’s chief government architect from 1922 to 1937. Steeped in the traditions of Byzantine and Islamic building, this “most private of public servants” finds himself working under the often stifling and violent conditions of British rule. And in the riveting final section, Hoffman herself sets out through the battered streets of today’s Jerusalem searching for traces of a possibly Greek, possibly Arab architect named Spyro Houris. Once a fixture on the local scene, Houris is now utterly forgotten, though his grand Armenian-tile-clad buildings still stand, a ghostly testimony to the cultural fluidity that has historically characterized Jerusalem at its best. A beautifully written rumination on memory and forgetting, place and displacement, Till We Have Built Jerusalem uncovers the ramifying layers of one great city’s buried history as it asks what it means, everywhere, to be foreign and to belong.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Jewish

366 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 5, 2016

About the author

Born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1967, Hoffman grew up in Peterborough, New Hampshire and Houston, Texas, and graduated from Wesleyan University in 1989. She has lived in Jerusalem since 1992 and writes often about the Middle East and its people, especially those who are overlooked in standard journalistic or textbook-styled accounts.

Her first book, House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood (Steerforth Press, 2000, Broadway Books, 2002) consists of a series of linked essays about her North African Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem. It was described by Kirkus Reviews as “steadily perceptive and brimming with informed passion.” In 2009 Yale University Press brought out her My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet's Life in the Palestinian Century, a life and times of the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali. The first biography ever published about a Palestinian writer, My Happiness was awarded Britain’s 2010 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Prize and was named one of best twenty books of 2009 by the Barnes & Noble Review and one of the top ten biographies of the year by Booklist. Writing in The Independent, Boyd Tonkin called it “a remarkable book… A triumph of personal empathy and historical insight and a beacon for anyone who believes that ‘more joins than separates us.’” A 2011 Guggenheim Foundation fellow, Hoffman is married to MacArthur-winning poet and translator Peter Cole, and in 2011, she and Cole published a book they wrote together, Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza (Schocken /Nextbook), which has been widely praised, with Harold Bloom calling it “a small masterpiece” and the Nation describing it as “a literary jewel whose pages turn like those of a well-paced thriller, but with all the chiseled elegance and flashes of linguistic surprise we associate with poetry... Sacred Trash has made history both beautiful and exciting.” In the Jewish press, the Chicago Jewish Star called it "captivating, with the drama of any good mystery… it has all the ingredients of a compelling work of fiction. Except that it's true."

Hoffman is formerly the film critic for the Jerusalem Post (1993–2000) and the American Prospect (2000–2002). Her essays and criticism have appeared in the Nation, the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, Raritan, Bookforum, the Boston Globe, New York Newsday, Tin House, and on the World Service of the BBC. She is one of the founders and editors of Ibis Editions, a small, Jerusalem-based press that publishes the literature of the Levant. Hoffman has been a visiting professor at Wesleyan University and Middlebury College, and in 2009 was the Franke Fellow at Yale’s Whitney Humanities Center. During the summer of 2011 she was the Distinguished Writer in Non-Fiction at NYU’s McGhee School. She now divides her time between Jerusalem and New Haven.

Reviews

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love architecture and this time last year I toured Israel for three weeks. So I was interested to read a book about its architecture, although it seemed to me that most towns were made up of white washed square, stone apartments.

This book kind of explains that as we learn of the German Jewish architects who traveled to Jerusalem during the height of the Bauhaus movement and left their imprint on the buildings there.

We get biographies of various European architects, many Jewish, but not all, along with Middle Eastern architects and how they arrived in Jerusalem, their philosophy of building, and how they impacted a city that is holy to so many cultures.

Along with the architecture we get a history of a pre-born and newly born Israel and the political tensions that developed along the way.

[Nick Sutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much up until the nineteenth century Jerusalem was a less than a square kilometre contained within massive walls that had been built in the sixteenth century. This area is what is now referred to as the “Old City”, and will almost certainly be the first place on the “must visit” list of any first time visitor to Jerusalem. This book profiles the lives of three influential architects - one Jewish (Erich Mendelsohn), one British (Austen Harrison), and one Arab (Spyro Houris) - active during Jerusalem’s British Mandate Period in the early twentieth century, and the contemporaneous expansion of the “New City” that was taking shape beyond those sixteenth century walls. An engaging read, especially (for me) the final account of the elusive Spyro Houris, which becomes a sort of archival detective story.

[Volker M. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great evocation of architects' working in Jerusalem. Also a great introduction how a historian may work if his work is driven by archival research. This book tells a story, not a narrative. It observes, hints at, and explains and all that without bothersome 'theory'. A great read, I wish I could write like the author.

[Perlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find British Mandate Palestine an endelssly fascinating time period and place, and it's at the top of my reading in terms of volumes. Hoffman digs into the lives and work of three non-native architects who are largely responsible for the look of Jerusalem today: Erich Mendelssohn, Austen Harrison, and Spyro Houris. The era of British Mandate Palestine comes to life and all the various cultures and communities that nudged their views and beliefs forward. I wish the photographs had been more clearly labeled, as sometimes one was left to try to deduce particulars from the surrounding text. In a few places there were some surprising errors of Jewish history, and some romanticization of Arabic culture. I was startled -- and saddened -- by several instances of anti-religious bias against Jews that peeked out in a few places. One overarching love that does emerge clearly, is the author's love of research and sleuthing. I hope she applies that to someday investigating her heritage, to find what lies behinds her preconceived notions and assumptions. Overall, worth a read!

[Linda Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was especially fascinating to read while in Jerusalem and accessible to many of the still standing buildings mentioned. The last part, searching for evidence about the lesser known Greek architect, was a little disjointed, but otherwise the narrative brought to life Jerusalem in the early 20th century, not just architecturally, per se, but the political and cultural environments that affected the development of the modern city.

[David Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adina Hoffman highlights the contribution of three significant architects in the shaping of the Holy City of Jerusalem during the period of the British mandate.

Her research rewards the reader with a blend of politics, aesthetics, religion, and psychology with gentle human touches and clever wit.

I particularly enjoyed understanding the evolution of the Dome of the Rock, regarded as the signature structure of the Old City.

[Marina · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gem of a book on three architects, from three very different walks of life, who lived in and worked in Jerusalem at the time of the British Mandate. Hoffman's writing is captivating and entertaining, and her research into the subject fascinating and informative.

[Michael Lewyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Moderately interesting story of three architects in early 20th-c. Jerusalem. But I would have liked the book more if its pictures were larger, or (better still) if it had listed the address of the architects' surviving works so readers would see them on Google Street View.

[Yossi Khebzou · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is pretty fascinating because it is the first book about architecture I’ve read that doesn’t talk about the big buildings or masterplans, but rather focuses on three individual architects that played a minor role in the reconstruction of Jerusalem. It talks about their ideas, struggles and conceptions of the world they are living in and the one they want to represent. It’s also a struggle by the author to find information on some pretty unknown archives, and a good example on how archival research should be done. Although it is a little boring at times and the pictures are not clear enough, I still recommend to give it a read.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book so much. In many ways it seems to me the most perfect thing to read: a philosophical, intellectual, cultural, geographical & artistic adventure thru time that feeds the brain on many levels. Full of empathy & humanity, Hoffman's work conjures successfully the auras & personalities of her diverse cast of characters, most significantly a number of architects of different origins who all made their mark on the man-made landscape of Jerusalem in the early 20th century. Hoffman is supremely skillful at bringing her scenes to life with textures & moods not often to be found in history books; she is sensitive to a number of ironies & symmetries, successes & sadness, that unfold across the layering of the years in that uniquely historic & war-torn city. For the third of her three subjects, Hoffman shifts to the more risky strategy of bringing us along on her search for the details of her most mysterious & elusive quarry, about whom almost nothing is known. Tho her writing is always strong, this change almost derails the book with its dead-ends & frustrations, but ultimately deepens & even personalizes the story, making the eventual discoveries Hoffman comes across that much more unexpected & thrilling. A masterpiece.

[The Jewish Book Council]

Review by Ira Wolfman for the Jewish Book Council.

[Eli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully evokes a different time and phase in the history of Jerusalem. Interesting stories of 3 architects who lived and worked there.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

See my review at http://www.thereportergroup.org/Artic...

[Margalit]

Read this book with breathless joy; it was like a detective story and as a loving resident of Jerusalem, could not have enough of the information I certainly did not have even though I have been reading about my city and the people who influenced its modern face. Well written and research. Highly recommended.