In Their Own Words
From 1978 to 1985, Hebrew University professor Yigal Shiloh led the largest excavation ever undertaken in the area south of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount known as the City of David, the location of the city at the time of David and Solomon.
How that dig was started with the help of the firm hand of legendary Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollekis related in a tribute to him by South African philanthropist and community leader Mendel Kaplan, recently published in a memorial volume to Kollek, who died in 2007 at the age of 90.1 Unfortunately, Kollek did not live to see the publication of the volume.
In Kaplan’s words:
In February 1977, I walked across the hillside of the City of David with Hershel Shanks’s The City of David: A Guide to Biblical Jerusalem in hand. It shocked me that walls uncovered by Kathleen Kenyon, the Spring of Gihon and the Pool of Siloam had been allowed to become a cesspool and rubbish heap.
I phoned the mayor, Teddy Kollek, who arranged for two archaeologists, Dan Bahat and Gideon Foerster, to meet me the next day, visit the site, and discuss what should be done. A few days later, Teddy arranged a meeting of all the interested parties— the Israel Department of Antiquities, the Institute of Archaeology of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israel Exploration Society, and the Jerusalem Foundation— and asked me for a proposal. I suggested that we commence an archaeological excavation that our family would sponsor to uncover the remains of the City of David.
There followed a heated discussion about the feasibility of such a project and whether it might not be best to focus attention on a particular area. Teddy lost his patience, pounded the table and in Hebrew, thinking that I did not understand, said: “Listen— you have a South African willing to spend a large amount of money and all you are doing is putting him off.” To me he turned in English and said: “It is February and before Pesach, in April, you will receive a positive response.”
He was true to his word. For nearly ten years, the appointed archaeologist, Yigal Shiloh, and the City of David Society made great progress uncovering some of the remains of the City of David. In the twenty years since Yigal passed away, there have been successive digs, all helping to explore and explain the early capital of the Jewish People.
It is only thanks to Teddy Kollek’s determination to push this project to its conclusion that our family has been able to enjoy a partnership in the exploration of our own heritage in Jerusalem.
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