The Museum of the "old Yishuv court" – private collection, preserving the memories of the life of the Jews of Jerusalem in the era of the Ottoman Empire and later. It is a Museum of the old life – in these times strange, partly obscure, sometimes even repulsive, but very interesting.

The Yishuv called all the Jewish population of Eretz Israel, i.e. the territory of modern Israel before the formation of the state. Strictly speaking, we should distinguish between the old Yishuv – Ashkenazi religious community formed in Jerusalem in the nineteenth century, and the new Yishuv, formed after 1882, when in Palestine stretched from Europe Jewish settlers secular views. Over time this tension has worn off, under the old Yishuv began to understand all the Jews who lived in Palestine before 1948.

The Museum is housed in a historic building on a narrow, more like a corridor, street Ohr Chaim. Home more than five hundred years. According to legend, there in 1534 was born the famous Kabbalist and theologian Rabbi Isaac Luria. In Hebrew it is commonly referred abbreviated as Ari, so the Museum building is also called the house of Ari.

Owns the Weingarten family – the owners themselves lived here in one of the rooms until 1948, when the Jewish quarter fell during the siege of Jordanian troops. Residents were taken prisoner. After the six day war in 1976 Weingarten returned and established historical-ethnographic Museum.

Meeting it is amazing to Jerusalem, where every stone remembers Millennium: furniture, utensils, tools that cost ordinary family "only" a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago. The life of Ashkenazi Jews, held in extreme poverty, was devoted to the study of the Torah. Usually, the family huddled in a single room. The Museum recreates the interiors of these rooms: miserable "stove" from kerosene cans, cans basin, copper cookware. Luxury item – iron bed: this was requested by the neighbors at the time that the woman could give birth to her. Next in a small room – a secret synagogue: the Ottoman Empire forbade the Jews to build temples.

The rooms overlook a courtyard close, which was in full swing everyday life: here cook or do Laundry, near children played. The toilet in the yard – the only one on the whole house, close to the bunker, where collected rainwater. Reigned unsanitary conditions, was high infant mortality.

In the twentieth century the standard of living rose slightly: the Museum has a sewing machine, the device for pressing clothes, unusual hand grinder with a hard wheel is a flywheel. The ceiling is already hanging electric lamp: with the arrival in Palestine of the British came the blessings of civilization – electricity, water.

House Ari allows you to experience the atmosphere in which they lived Jewish immigrants, to appreciate the hardships that they faced. And another event famous building: in 1948, on the threshold of the house owner, chief Rabbi of the Jewish quarter Mordechai Weingarten leaves Palestine, the British gave the key to the Zion gate. For the first time since the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans the key to the city back to the Jews.