Beit HaKerem (neighborhood)
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Beit HaKerem (Hebrew בית הכרם: "house of the vineyard") is a neighborhood in west-central Jerusalem Israel, renowned for its greenery. To its north/west is the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood, and to its south Mt. Herzl and the Shaare Zedek Medical Center. The Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University is located to its east, while to the Yefeh Nof neighborhood and the Jerusalem Forest lie to its west.
The neighborhood was founded in 1922 as one of six garden-neighborhoods that were developed at the time in Mandatory Jerusalem. Beit HaKerem was planned by Ricard Kaufman, an architect notable for his Bauhaus style, and was at the time separated from the rest of the city by large swaths of undeveloped land. The middle class character of its initial residents was so pronounced that the neighborhood was nicknamed with an acronym of the words teacher, clerk, and author. Additionally, Beit HaKerem's founders intended it to be demographically secular, and to that effect its charter prohibited the building of a synagogue.
Beit HaKerem has expanded with the rest of Jerusalem and today boasts a population of 15,000. While there is still a majority of secular residents, many Modern Orthodox people also live there and maintain numerous religious-communal institutions.
A new outdoor shopping mall was completed late in 2006, competing with the long-serving centre in nearby Kikar Denia.
The new Jerusalem Light Rail will go directly from Beit Hakerem to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, the center of the city and the Old City eliminating the noisy buses that currently traverse the main thoroughfare, Sderot Herzel. It will commence operation early in 2009.
Among Beit Hakerem's residents were Israeli Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Benjamin Netanyahu.
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