Иерусалимдегі Ейн-Карем ауданы

Neighborhood in Jerusalem

Ein Karem (, ʿEin Kerem lit. "Spring of the Vineyard"; in Arabic ʿAyn Kārim; also Ain Karem, Ein Kerem) is a historic mountain village southwest of Jerusalem, presently a neighborhood in the outskirts of the modern city, within the Jerusalem District. It is the site of the Hadassah Medical Center. Ein Karem was an important Jewish village during the late Second Temple period, during which it became important to Christianity. Christian tradition holds that John the Baptist was born in Ein Karem, following the biblical verse in Luke saying John's family lived in a "town in the hill country of Judea". Probably because of its location between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, this location was a very comfortable one for a pilgrimage, and this led to the establishment of many churches and monasteries in the area. During the years of Ottoman and later British rule in Palestine, Ein Karem was a Palestinian Arab village. It was depopulated of its residents during the 1948 Arab Israeli War. After the war it became once again a Jewish settlement. Today, Ein Karem is a vibrant bohemian neighborhood of Jerusalem, with a population of 2,000 (2010). It has retained a very high level of authenticity, its natural environment remains intact, and its old houses are still inhabited and preserved.

The name Ein Karem or Ein Kerem can be literally translated from both Hebrew and Arabic as "Spring of the Vineyard". It is derived from the springs and vineyards established on the village's terraced slopes. In Arabic, other than meaning "Spring of the Vineyard", it could be understood as well as "the Generous Spring".

A spring that provides water to the village of Ein Karem stimulated settlement there from an early time.

Pottery has been found near the spring dating to the Middle Bronze Age.

A well preserved mikveh (Jewish ritual bath) indicates there was a Jewish settlement in the Second Temple period along with some other discoveries such as handful of graves, bits of a wall, and an olive press. A reservoir here was mentioned in the Copper Scroll, one of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

During excavations in the Church of Saint John the Baptist, a marble statue of Aphrodite (or Venus) was found, broken in two. It is believed to date from the Roman era and was probably toppled in Byzantine times. Today, the statue is at the Rockefeller Museum. Excavations in front of the same church, which has at its core the cave which Christian tradition identifies as the birthplace of John the Baptist, have unearthed remains of two Byzantine chapels, one containing an inscription mentioning Christian "martyrs", but without any mention of John. Ceramics from the Byzantine period have also been found in Ein Karem. In the Byzantine period, as part of the establishment of the “Liturgy of Jerusalem", Ein Karem was identified with the "Visitation", an event mentioned in the New Testament where Mary, expecting Jesus, encountered her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. Byzantine sources link Ein Karem with the residence of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, a place not specified in the New Testament. which suits Ein Karem.

Ein Karem was recorded after the Islamic conquest. Al Tamimi, the physician (d. 990), mentions a church in Ein Karem that was venerated by the Christians, also mentioning an old custom of the Jews of Ein Karem to make wreaths from the boughs (branches) of a wild plant belonging to the mint family (Lamiaceae) during the Jewish holiday of Shavu'ot.

It is mentioned under the name St. Jehan de Bois, "Saint John in the Mountains",

Most of the village – some 15,000 dunams – was waqf land set aside charitably to benefit the Moroccan Muslim community in Jerusalem, belonging to the endowment established by Abu Madyan in the 14th century. In 1517, the village was included in the Ottoman empire with the rest of Palestine and in the 1596 tax records it appeared as 'Ain Karim, located in the Nahiya of Jabal Quds of the Liwa of Al Quds. The village had at this time 29 households, all Muslim. The villagers paid a fixed tax rate of 33.3% on agricultural products, which included wheat, barley, summer crops, vineyards, grape syrup/molasse, goats and beehives in addition to "occasional revenues"; a total of 5,300 akçe. All of the revenue went to a waqf. In the course 17th century, the Franciscans manage to recover the ruins of the church raised by the Crusaders over the traditional birth cave of St. John and, in spite of local Muslim opposition, to rebuild and fortify it as the Monastery of St. John in the Mountains. Israeli geographer Yehoshua Ben Arieh described Ein Karem as "the most important village west of Jerusalem" in the 19th century. In 1838, Ain Karim was noted as a Muslim and Latin Christian village in the Beni Hasan district. In 1863 Victor Guérin noted a thousand inhabitants "of whom there are barely two hundred and fifty who are Catholics; the others are Muslim." The ancestors of the latter were held to descend from Maghrabins, that is to say, originating from the Maghreb (North Africa). Guérin describes them as rowdy and fanatical, until a few years before his visit having very often attacked the Catholic monks at the Monastery of St John in order to extort from them food and money, a habit that had subsided only lately. In 1883, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Ain Karim as: "A flourishing village of about 600 inhabitants, 100 being Latin Christians. It stands on a sort of natural terrace projecting from the higher hills on the east of it, with a broad flat valley below on the west. On the south below the village is a fine spring ('Ain Sitti Miriam), with a vaulted place for prayer over it. The water issues from a spout into a trough." In 1896 the population of 'Ain Karim was estimated to be about 1,290 persons.

When the 1947–1949 Palestine war started, 'Ain Karim became a major base of operations against nearby Jewish neighborhoods. In February 1948, the village's 300 guerilla fighters were reinforced by a well armed Arab Liberation Army force of mainly Syrian fighters, and on March 10 a substantial Iraqi detachment arrived in the village. This was followed within days by some 160 Egyptian fighters. On March 19, the villagers joined their foreign guests in attacking a Jewish convoy on the Tel Aviv–Jerusalem road. Immediately after the April 1948 massacre at the nearby village of Deir Yassin ( to the north), most of the women and children in the village were evacuated.

After the war ended, Israel incorporated the village into the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem.

Only the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Bible, the base for the Christian Old Testament, names a place in the hills of Judah as "Carem" .

According to the New Testament, Mary went "into the hill country, to a city of Judah" when she visited her cousin Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah. During the Byzantine period, Theodosius (530 CE) gives the distance between Jerusalem and the town of Elizabeth as 5 mile (8 km). The English writer Saewulf, on pilgrimage to Palestine in 1102–1103, wrote of a monastery in the area of Ein Karim dedicated to St. Sabas, where 300 monks had been "slain by Saracens", but without mentioning any tradition connected to St. John.

The Church of the Visitation, or Abbey Church of St John in the Woods, is located across the village to the southwest from St. John's. The ancient sanctuary there was built against a rock declivity. It is venerated as the pietra del nascondimento, the "stone in which John was concealed," in reference to the Protevangelium of James. The site is also attributed to John the Baptist's parental summer house, where Mary visited them. The modern church was built in 1955, also on top of ancient church remnants. It was designed by Antonio Barluzzi, an Italian architect, who designed many other churches in the Holy Land during the 20th century.

The Catholic Monastery of St. John ba Harim (St. John "in the Mountains" in Hebrew) is centered on a church containing the cave identified by tradition as the birthplace of Saint John the Baptist. The church is built over the remnants of a Crusader church and its porch stands over the remains of two Byzantine chapels, both containing mosaic floors. The current structure received its outlook as the result of the latest large architectural intervention, finished in 1939 under the guidance of the Italian architect, Antonio Barluzzi. In 1941–1942 the Franciscans excavated the area west of the church and monastery. The southernmost of the rock cut chambers they found can probably be dated to the first century CE. Some remnants below the southern part of the porch suggests the presence of a mikve (Jewish ritual bath) that is dated to the Second Temple Period. The church is mentioned in the Book of the Demonstration, attributed to Eutychius of Alexandria (940): "The church of Bayt Zakariya in the district of Aelia bears witness to the visit of Mary to her kinswoman Elizabeth." The site of the Crusader church built above the traditional birth cave of St John, destroyed after the departure of the Crusaders, was purchased by Franciscan custos, Father Thomas of Novara in 1621.

The monastery of Les Sœurs de Notre Dame de Sion (Sisters of Our Lady of Zion), built in 1860, They established an orphanage here. Alphonse himself lived in the monastery and is buried in its garden.

The convent was established by the Jerusalem mission of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1871 gorny meaning mountainous in Russian. It was nicknamed "Muskobiya" (Arabic for Muscovite) by the local Arab villagers, which mutated in Hebrew to "Moskovia." Apart from the structures serving the nunnery and a pilgrims hostel, it now contains three churches, enclosed within a compound wall. The Church of Our Lady of Kazan (Kazanskaya) is dedicated to the holy icon of Our Lady of Kazan and is the oldest among the three churches, being consecrated in 1873. The Cathedral of All Russian Saints, with its gilded domes, was started before the Russian Revolution and could only be completed in 2007. The cave church of St. John the Baptist was consecrated in 1987.

According to a Christian tradition which started in the 14th century, the Virgin Mary drank water from this village spring, and here is also the place where Mary and Elizabeth met. Therefore, since the 14th century the spring is known as the Fountain of the Virgin. The spring waters are considered holy by some Catholic and Orthodox Christian pilgrims who visit the site and fill their bottles. What looks like a spring is actually the end of an ancient aqueduct. The former Arab inhabitants built a mosque and school on the site, of which a Maqam (shrine) and minaret still remain. An inscribed panel to the courtyard of the mosque dates it to 1828–1829 CE (AH 1244). The spring was repaired and renovated by Baron Edmond de Rothschild.

St. Vincent Ein Kerem is a home for physically or mentally handicapped children. Founded in 1954, St. Vincent Ein Kerem is a non profit enterprise under leadership of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul.

The Monastery of St. John in the Wilderness, containing a cave associated with the saint, is located close to Ein Karem and Moshav Even Sapir.