The Jerusalem YMCA during the British Mandate Years

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Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 00246]

Photo Essay

The YMCA: A Cherished Social Hub during the Mandate Years

September 5, 2023

-minute read

Ida Audeh

Snapshot

The YMCA in the Talbiyya neighborhood of Jerusalem was remembered very fondly by Jerusalemites who were young adults during the British Mandate period. It was the focal point of their social life; it offered rich cultural experiences to Jerusalem’s middle class and brought people together for play, relaxation, and socializing. When describing the traumatic losses of 1948, the tally includes a way of life represented by the YMCA—a familiar space in which Jerusalem’s multiethnic community could come together for play and enjoyment, when the future looked promising and wide open.

The Young Man’s Christian Association (YMCA) was about 30 years old and had become a global movement with a Central International Committee when Palestinian Jerusalemite Bishara Canaan brought the idea to Jerusalem in 1878; he had learned about it during his student days in London and thought Jerusalem needed exactly such a facility. It was a prophetic intuition from the man who would go on to become the first Arab pastor of the Lutheran Church and whose family would be intimately associated with the YMCA's functioning. (He served as president for three terms; his son Tawfiq would serve his first term as president in 1913–14 and later be appointed president for life.)

In 1878, the first YMCA in Jerusalem opened its doors in a storefront room on Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) Road in the New City just outside Jaffa Gate. It eventually outgrew that space and moved to premises on Jaffa Road.

The YMCA’s Jerusalem Orphanage Band, 1918–20

Source:

Wikimedia Commons

The Jerusalem YMCA in the 1920s

Credit:

British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby

But that facility proved too small for a society that embraced what the YMCA could offer and made it a center of their social life.

In 1920, the YMCA sent a representative to Jerusalem, and he scouted around for a new site; he wanted a location that would overlook the Old City and found it in Nukofrieh, a 28-dunum plot of land owned by the Greek Orthodox Church. The church sold it for the nominal fee of one Palestinian pound. Donations poured in from all over the world, totaling $1.25 million. In 1926, the cornerstone was laid. Construction of the facility was supervised by Arthur Loomis Harman, the architect of New York City’s Empire State Building.1

The plot of land known as Nukofrieh and owned by the Greek Orthodox Church, on which the Jerusalem YMCA was built

The YMCA site at the time of purchase, September 27, 1923

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 04291]

Construction of the Jerusalem YMCA, 1929

Credit:

Apo Documentaries

After seven years of construction, the new YMCA, located on Julian Way north of the elegant Talbiyya neighborhood in the commercial center of the New City, opened its doors in 1933. The YMCA accepted British, Arab, and Jewish members, adopting a neutral position to the ongoing strife between the native Palestinian community and the Zionist movement.

For 15 years, it was the place to be for Jerusalemites who embraced the musical, cultural, athletic, and literary activities it offered.

This Photo Essay explores the 15-year period for which the YMCA offered the events and activities that Palestine’s middle class craved, as described by Palestinian Jerusalemites for whom it was a focus of social life.

Backgrounder The West Side Story, Part 1: Jerusalem before “East” and “West”

Before 1948, Jerusalem was not split between an “East” and a “West.” Rather, a cosmopolitan, multiethnic New City grew organically out of the Old City.

For 15 years, it was the place to be for Jerusalemites who embraced the musical, cultural, athletic, and literary activities it offered.

The New YMCA in Jerusalem, 1933

A view of Jerusalem from the air in 1931, with the YMCA and King David Hotel at the center

A view of Jerusalem from the air in 1931. The YMCA and King David Hotel are in the center of the photo.

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 00246]

The Jerusalem YMCA, 1933

Credit:

Wikimedia Commons

Entrance to the Jerusalem YMCA buildings

Entrance to the YMCA buildings (photo taken in the mid- to late 1930s)

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 03707]

Symbols of the bull and the eagle hover over the entrance to the Jerusalem YMCA

The figures of St. Luke (symbolized by the bull) and St. John (symbolized by the eagle) hover over the entrance to the Jerusalem YMCA

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 03710]

The opening of the YMCA building in 1933 was major news. Seven years in the making, and involving hundreds of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish architects, builders, and artisans, the final result was breathtaking. Built from locally quarried pink stones, it has been called “a sermon in stone.”2

Recalling the excitement around the inauguration, Zakia Jabre Hajjar, whose social life as a teenager and young adult had revolved around activities of the YMCA, told her daughter more than 60 years later: “It was such a beautiful building! Everyone in town was in awe.”

A program of activities was organized that ran over the better part of a month, from April 7 to 26, 1933. The extensive program included lectures, concerts, band performances, plays, sports competitions, and more (see below).

Zakia Jabre Hajjar walks down a street in Lower Baq‘a near the Germany Colony, Jerusalem, before 1948

Personal Story Zakia Jabre Hajjar: “What I Had in Jerusalem Was Like a Treasure, a Precious Gift, and I Lost It”

A Palestinian Jerusalemite’s memories of growing up in Jerusalem before the Nakba, as shared with her daughter through letters in later years

The YMCA Dedication service, April 18, 1933. The service was attended by General Allenby and YMCA leaders from around the world and was covered by the international press.

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 02594]

Dedication program for the new Jerusalem YMCA, April 1933

Program for the events marking the launch of the YMCA in Jerusalem, 1933

Credit:

British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby

This is how Rizek Abusharr described the Jerusalem YMCA in an article he wrote for This Week in Palestine:

Elegant and impressive in every respect, it features a 152-foot tower that houses 33 bells, the largest of which weighs one and a half tons. Adjoining the tower on each side are two domed buildings.

The inscription on the façade reads in Arabic, “There is no God but God,” in Hebrew, “The Lord our God, the Lord is One,” and in Aramaic, citing Jesus, “I am the Way.” The 40 magnificent columns around the cloistered areas represent the 40 friends of the Prophet Muhammad, the 40 years the Hebrews wandered in the wilderness, and the 40 days that Jesus fasted in the desert. The capital of each column is hewn with the plants and animals of Palestine.

The vestibule at the main entrance of the building has a replica, in mosaic, of the Madaba Map. From the ceiling hangs a lamp with the globe of the earth, signifying Jerusalem as the center of the globe, holy to the nations of the world. The main building contains magnificent lounges, offices, and a coffee shop. The second floor houses the educational arm of the YMCA with a fully functioning library with 40,000 volumes and classrooms for the teaching of languages, economics, law, music, and voice training. The third and fourth floors house 80 rooms for students and visitors to Jerusalem.

The two domed buildings are connected by underground corridors and outside cloisters. One domed building has a fully functioning gymnasium with a basketball court, two squash courts, a weight room, and four outdoor red clay tennis courts. The red clay was trucked from Khan al-Ahmar, halfway towards Jericho. The tennis courts were inaugurated by the then mayor of Jerusalem, Ragheb Bey Al-Nashashibi. The one-kilometer track and the football stadium hosted all sorts of sporting events from day one.3

Jerusalem YMCA lounge, 1933, the year of the building’s inauguration

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 02586]

Jerusalem YMCA reading room and fireplace, 1933 or 1934

YMCA fireplace and reading room. The YMCA hummed with cultural and intellectual activity during the Mandate years.

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 02588]

Physician and ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan, who was elected lifetime president of the YMCA, recalled:

The YMCA was a great blessing for the country. It brought young men of all religions and denominations together. It was a center for study: evening classes were given in English, Arabic, French, bookkeeping, accounting, shorthand, and typing. The evening classes swelled so much that there were no empty places. During the Second World War, first aid lessons were given. Through excellent lectures in Arabic and English the scope of knowledge was greatly widened. The concerts, religious and popular, refined the tastes of the members. The excursions combined with comprehensive talks about the site increased the knowledge of and the love for the country. The library was used by all members for reference and study. The political and scientific journals kept everyone informed about events, politics, and discoveries. The physical department, with its swimming pool, showers, and indoor and outdoor sports strengthened the body. Last but not least, the religious work, such as lectures on religion, missionaries’ moral subjects, religious concerts, Sunday meetings, and pilgrimages to the holy places helped members to tread on the right path. Thus our beloved institution was our pride as its blessings shown [sic] on Jerusalem and its surroundings.4

Bio Tawfiq Canaan

An epidemiologist, ethnographer, and institution builder who made foundational contributions to medicine and health care in Jerusalem and Palestine

Issa Boullata, who grew up in Jerusalem and went on to become a distinguished academic at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, recalled with a sense of wonder his introduction to the library of the YMCA, with its more than 100,000 books and periodicals. He described it in detail in his memoir The Bells of Memory:

The library had a large reading room with tables and chairs surrounded by comfortable leather armchairs; in this reading room were a card catalogue, stands for current newspapers and periodicals, and shelves with reference books and encyclopedias. Its large collection of books was kept in an inner space behind the reception desk, where a librarian was always ready to fetch the books whose catalogue numbers you gave him or her. This was a library different from the “library” of the Christian Brothers’ school and the crate collection of my father. Since Jerusalem had no public libraries, this was my first experience of a real library, and it was here that I continued to form myself intellectually. Here I continued to read the monthlies Al-Hillal and Al-Muqtataf, which my father’s collection had introduced me to, but now I also read other literary journals like Albert Adib’s then-new Lebanese monthly Al-Adib, the older Egyptian publications Al-Risala, edited by Ahmed Hasan al-Zayyat, and Ahmad Amin’s Al-Thaqafa, as well as a newer one, Taha Hussein’s Al-Katib al-Misri, and others.

[At the YMCA library] I discovered many more [authors], including writers in English I began to admire like Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, H. G. Wells, Graham Greene . . . And it was in this Protestant institution’s library that I first came to use The Catholic Encyclopedia and The Encyclopedia of Islam, of whose existence I had not even known.5

Bio Issa Boullata

An accomplished scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies and award-winning translator who traced his creative talent to his Jerusalem childhood

Sports

During the Mandate period, Jerusalem had six playing fields, only two of which were for Arabs: the YMCA field and the Terra Sancta field.

The first soccer match at the new Jerusalem YMCA athletic field, April 1933

The first soccer match on the YMCA athletic field in Jerusalem, April 1, 1933

Credit:

GPO photographer, Wikimedia

Athletic events at the Jerusalem YMCA; the photo was taken between 1933 and 1946

Athletic events at the YMCA (1933–46)

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 13764]

Gymnastics at the Jerusalem YMCA—boys’ drill in the gymnasium, 1934–39

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 22510]

Gymnastics at the Jerusalem YMCA—boys’ drill in the gymnasium, 1934–39

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 22511]

As Issam Khalidi explains in his article, “Body and Ideology”:

Sports were equally a reflection of class and status in Palestine. While football and boxing, for example, were games for the masses, the sport of tennis was largely confined to the English and Palestinians serving in the British administration. The Circle Sportive clubs in Jaffa and Gaza, and the YMCA in Jerusalem were Palestine’s main tennis venues.6

Jerusalem YMCA Tennis Team, photo taken in the late 1930s

Jerusalem YMCA Tennis Team, late 1930s

Source:

British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby

Tennis tournament at the Jerusalem YMCA, with tennis players Raymond Deeb, George Mushabek, Roland Meo, and Atallah Kidess, late 1930s

Tennis tournament at the YMCA with Raymond Deeb, George Mushabek, Roland Meo, and Atallah Kidess, Jerusalem, late 1930s

Credit:

British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby

Tennis tournament at the Jerusalem YMCA, 1939

Tennis tournament at the Jerusalem YMCA, men’s doubles final, August 1939

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 19801]

Group of prize winners from a tennis match with the mayor and deputy mayor at the Jerusalem YMCA, August 1939. Roland Meo, from the Meo family who had been in Jerusalem for centuries, is standing third from the left in the white V-neck sweater. He was Palestine’s tennis champion.

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 19807]

Jerusalem YMCA Boys’ Department, 1937

Source:

British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby

The Jerusalem YMCA was the first facility in the region to offer an indoor pool. Rainwater was collected in cisterns to fill the pool and to provide water for showers. And until 1991, it had the only soccer stadium in Jerusalem.7

Boys enjoy the Jerusalem YMCA swimming pool in 1938

Summer fun on Boys’ Day at the Jerusalem YMCA pool, 1938

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 22513]

Music

The YMCA was one of three sites that offered live music to Jerusalemites. (The other two were the Terra Sancta School and the Palestine Broadcasting Station in Jerusalem, known as Radio Jerusalem.)

In its modern and huge building, raised in the year 1933, the YMCA had a music hall that could accommodate one thousand people. Because of its size, it was at that time the most important music hall in the entire Arab world, with the exception of the Cairo Opera House. European classical music was usually performed at the concerts in this prestigious hall, mostly by symphony orchestras invited from abroad. European Jews who were immigrating to Palestine at that time were beginning to form the nucleus of the later Israeli Symphony Orchestra. In addition, smaller orchestras played specific types of European classical music such as chamber orchestras, quartets, quintets, and six-member orchestras.

Another important feature of the hall was the pipe organ, famous for its role in the annual Christmas celebrations. The pipe organ was linked to a large external system of bells containing the notes of the full Western musical scale, in several octaves, so that each musical note played on the organ would ring the identical note on one of the huge bells and resonate all across Jerusalem. This musical phenomenon became a hallmark of the Christmas tradition in Jerusalem during the years that preceded the events of 1948. Salvador ‘Arnita performed this task.8

Writing about the musical performances decades later, Samia Nasir Khoury recalled:

Our piano teacher at Birzeit, Mr. Salvador Arnita, was also the director of music at the YMCA as well as the director of the Palestine Broadcasting Station Orchestra. We were fascinated by the way he played the great pipe organ in the YMCA auditorium with both his hands and feet. And more so, when he played the carillon, which would ring the bells of the tower. I cannot think of Jerusalem without these lovely memories.9

George Bisharat, grandson of the owner of Villa Harun al-Rashid, recalls: “My father learned to love Western classical music in a listening group hosted by a young Jewish man. Palestinian Jews, Christians, and Muslims mingled at the YMCA, swam, and played basketball together.”

Man playing piano at the Jerusalem YMCA, early 1930s

Man playing the piano at the YMCA, early 1930s

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 08557]

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Music room in the Jerusalem YMCA, 1933 or 1934

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 02857]

The inaugural concert of the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS) Choral Society at the Jerusalem YMCA, November 22, 1938

Crawford McNair, director of programmes of the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS), conducting the PBS Choral Society and the PBS Orchestra, at the inaugural concert of the Choral Society, at the YMCA, Jerusalem, November 22, 1938. The concert was broadcast live on the radio.

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 22420]

Jabre, a young adult when she lost her home during the Nakba and lived her life in exile, recalled to her daughter the pleasure she found in singing with the YMCA choir and band: “My brother Afif had joined the PK Band, which stood for Pascal Kamar, the creator of the band. I often accompanied them with my vocals. We would give concerts in the lobby of the YMCA.”10

Theater and Lectures

The YMCA showed films in the large hall11 and housed the first theater in Jerusalem. It also attracted young people disseminating radical political ideas; Samira Khoury remembers becoming politicized in the 1940s through attending YMCA lectures at which the Communist Party passed out pamphlets.12

Joy Totah Ziadeh recalled the YMCA as a place where one could go to listen to public lectures on various topics. “I remember a series of lectures given at the YMCA by a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian and a Bahai, each about his own faith. . . . But they were in Arabic. Even the Jewish one was given in Arabic.”13

Boullata recalled that the YMCA attracted prominent literary figures like Jabra Ibrahim Jabra, who established the Jerusalem Arts Club at the YMCA, and Mounah Khouri, who taught Boullata Arabic literature and later became a professor of Arabic literature at Berkeley.14 It was a stimulating environment in which young people thrived intellectually.

In 1945, the YMCA put on the play Tight Corner, Samia Khoury recalled, as well as “the yearly international dance festival and other performances, such as the [Gilbert and Sullivan] musical The Mikado.”15

Theater performance at the Jerusalem YMCA, photograph taken ca. 1937

On stage at the YMCA, ca. 1937

Credit:

Jabre Family Archive, British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby

Theatrical performance at the Jerusalem YMCA, 1930s

The Christmas Story, YMCA Tableaux, the Annunciation II (taken between 1934 and 1939)

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 19914]

Gatherings—Social and Political

Tea party after a tournament at the Jerusalem YMCA, August 1939

Tea party after a tournament (most likely tennis), August 1939. The YMCA was a great place to socialize with friends.

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 19809]

A banquet for families at the Jerusalem YMCA, January 9, 1940 The photo is titled “Parents and son banquet” but it may have been “fathers and sons” and “mothers and daughters,” given that there are women and girls in the photo as well as men and boys. YMCAs elsewhere in the world appear to have this tradition although not on the same night.

Credit:

Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [matpc 19967]

Dinner party under the stars at the Jerusalem YMCA, June 1947

Dinner party under the stars at the YMCA, June 1947

Credit:

Courtesy of Mary Tlil Sacre, British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby.

Men’s Club at the Jerusalem YMCA, mid-1940s

Credit:

British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library Facebook page. Courtesy of Mona Hajjar Halaby

A working session of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, held in the Jerusalem YMCA, July 8, 1947

The United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, created in May 1947 to make recommendations for the future of Palestine, held working sessions at the YMCA. The YMCA hall facilities were large enough to accommodate the Arab Medical Conference in 1933, attended by Arab physicians in the region, including Egyptian surgeon Ali Ibrahim Pasha, and opened by Jerusalem Mayor Ragheb al-Nashashibi.

Credit:

Wikimedia Commons

For Jerusalem’s Palestinian community, the stimulating social and cultural life offered by the YMCA came to an abrupt, unanticipated end in 1948. The YMCA, for years the focal point of Jerusalem’s social and cultural life, fell in what became West Jerusalem, which had been emptied of Palestinians. It was no longer accessible to those living in East Jerusalem, which came under Jordanian control.

One of very few Palestinians who remained in West Jerusalem for a few years after the war was Jacob Nammar. He recalls that he continued to go regularly to the YMCA for sports, which helped him cope with the new realities confronting him. He excelled as a basketball player and secured a spot on the Israeli team but found that his skill was not enough to secure his acceptance, even among the sport’s fans; the hostility and racism he faced as a Palestinian eventually became too difficult to live with, and he emigrated.16

For many, the YMCA would be woven into their memories of the satisfying life they enjoyed before everything was lost. Decades after she last saw Jerusalem, Jabre could still recall the intoxication of the city at night: “Ah, the best part was walking home from the YMCA at night, especially at springtime when the air in Jerusalem was soaked with the sweetness of jasmine, wisteria, and lemon blossoms. I would inhale deeply and fill my lungs and almost feel drunk from the delicious perfumes.”17

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Tagged under:

British Mandate

YMCA

Culture

Sports

Music

Theater

Notes

Rizek Abusharr, “The YMCA in Palestine,” This Week in Palestine, no. 289, May 2022.

Abusharr, “The YMCA in Palestine.”

The description was quoted without attribution in Abusharr, “The YMCA in Palestine.”

Mona Hajjar Halaby, In My Mother’s Footsteps: A Palestinian Refugee Returns Home (London: Thread, 2021), 168.

Abusharr, “The YMCA in Palestine.”

Taufiq Canaan, “The Taufiq Cannan Memoirs, Part 2,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 75 (2018): 136–37.

Issa J. Boullata, The Bells of Memory: A Palestinian Boyhood in Jerusalem (Westmount, Canada: Linda Leith, 2014), 40–41.

Issam Khalidi, “Body and Ideology: Early Athletics in Palestine (1900–1948),” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 27 (2006): 49.

Wikipedia, s.v. “Jerusalem International YMCA,” last modified March 10, 2023, 21:55.

Elias Sahhab, “Music in Arab Jerusalem during the First Half of the Twentieth Century,” in Jerusalem Interrupted: Modernity and Colonial Transformation, 1917–Present, ed. Lena Jayyusi (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2015), 64.

Samia Nasir Khoury, “Memories of Jerusalem,” This Week in Palestine, no. 289, May 2022.

George Bisharat, “Talbiyeh Days: At Villa Harun ar-Rashid,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 30 (2007): 95.

Halaby, In My Mother’s Footsteps, 168–69.

Salim Tamari, ed., Jerusalem 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and Their Fate in the War (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Badil Resource Center, 2002), 49.

Ellen Fleishman, “Young Women in the City: Mandate Memories,” Jerusalem Quarterly File, no. 2 (1998): 34.

Joy Totah Ziadeh, “Totah and Ziadeh: Mentor and Student,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 32 (2007): 99.

Boullata, Bells of Memory, 41.

Khoury, “Memories of Jerusalem.”

See Jacob Nammar, “Remembering Haret al-Nammamreh,” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 41 (2010): 59–72.

Halaby, In My Mother’s Footsteps, 170.

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The YMCA: A Cherished Social Hub during the Mandate Years

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Snapshot

For 15 years, it was the place to be for Jerusalemites who embraced the musical, cultural, athletic, and literary activities it offered.

Program for a Gymnastics Exhibition

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