The Middle Eastern sun beat down on the crowded, filthy streets of the Holy City. Towards the end of Ottoman rule, Jerusalem wasn’t a particularly attractive tourist destination to put it mildly, though certain groups of Jewish and Christian pilgrims did embark on the risky journey even during this period, for primarily religious reasons.
Winds of change began to blow over the city during the latter half of the 19th century. The great colonialist powers helped the Ottoman government wrest back control of Jerusalem, after a brief period of Egyptian rulership under Muhammad Ali and Ibrahim Pasha. In exchange for this aid, the international powers were given a foothold in the famous city, which still struggled to display the grandeur many expected of it.
Britain, Prussia, and France were the first to establish their own institutions and compounds in Jerusalem, and other superpowers followed. Churches and cathedrals were built alongside consulate offices, and this helped attract visitors from all over the world.
The Jews weren’t sitting idly either; Jewish philanthropists who made their fortunes abroad (the most famous being Sir Moses Montefiore) invested in land purchases, sparking a building boom that extended beyond the walls of the Old City. Thus, the “New City” was born. While it was perhaps a bit dangerous in those early days, the living conditions in the new neighborhoods were far better than those within the Old City walls. Meanwhile, the Zionist movement was growing stronger, and it too set its sights on the city from which it drew its name. People like Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the reviver of the Hebrew language who arrived in 1881, came to settle in Jerusalem, breathing new life into the stone alleyways.
All this led to a lively influx of tourists, visitors and guests of different sorts– Jews, Christians, and Muslims, traders, statesmen, and religious pilgrims. There were people and families in quantities and types that the city hadn’t seen for centuries. Among them was a man named Herzl, whose peculiar story we will elaborate on further down.
One individual by the name of Menachem Mendel Boim of Kaminitz realized that anyone would could provide a decent place to stay in the city would be exploiting a tremendous economic opportunity. Menachem Mendel grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Kaminitz (also spelled Kamyenyets or Kamenets), Lithuania, but dreamed of raising his children in the Land of Israel. When he was betrothed to Tzipa, the daughter of Rabbi Uri Lipa, he conditioned their marriage on her family’s acceptance of their immigration to the Holy Land. But a few years later, when the young couple finally fulfilled the husband’s dream, things began to go awry.
The Kaminitz family, who adopted the name of their original hometown, settled in Safed, where they faced an assortment of tribulations: During the 1833 plague, Tzipa and Menachem Mendel lost their firstborn son; during the 1834 Syrian Peasant Revolt (the region was considered part of Ottoman Syria at the time), they experienced physical violence and their home was looted; and the 1837 earthquake left them destitute and homeless.
They decided to move to Jerusalem. There, in the Holy City that was slowly beginning to show signs of modern development, they built their guest house – the first Jewish hotel in the modern Land of Israel. It was quite a modest inn, but it was clean and respectable with its European stylings, providing accommodation along with Tzipa’s excellent home-cooked meals to tourists of all religions who made their way to Jerusalem.
Although it was the first of its kind, this modest establishment wouldn’t have entered the annals of history had it remained as it first was. It was Menachem Mendel’s son, Eliezer Lipman Kaminitz, who took the family business to the next level. First, he moved the hotel to Jaffa Street (it was located in a previous incarnation of what is now Jerusalem’s well known Clal Center), but he wasn’t satisfied with that location. In 1883, he rented a building situated between Ha-Nevi’im (The Prophets) Street and Jaffa Street from the Volhynia Kolel and officially opened the new, modern “Hotel Jerusalem”. Despite Eliezer’s attempts at rebranding, the establishment quickly became known to all as the newest incarnation of the, by now familiar, “Kaminitz Hotel”.
This was no longer a modest inn offering only clean beds or a decent breakfast. A garden was planted in the courtyard and a wide path was paved for carriages. The hotel rooms were equipped with all the comforts of the era: chamber pots, mosquito nets, and bathing basins awaited travelers who often arrived dusty and tired. The hotel lobby offered a daily page summarizing the latest international headlines from the Reuters News Agency. In the center of the room stood the pinnacle of modern technology in the form of an elegant telephone device. The telephone number was 53.
Modernization took over all aspects of the hotel’s management, including its marketing. Advertising posters were designed and sent to selected newspapers in Europe, and the Kaminitz family signed deals with travel agents who met tourists arriving at the train station and offered them tour packages that included the finest accommodations to be found in the area – the Kaminitz Hotel.
Business was booming and the guests, for the most part, were very pleased with the service, the cleanliness, and the excellent food, which had a good reputation among local Jerusalemites as well. For example, as the British consul’s wife Elizabeth Finn wrote, European bread could only be obtained at Kaminitz.
Although the meals at the hotel were strictly kosher and one of the spacious rooms was designated as a synagogue and Beit Midrash (Jewish study house), guests came from all over the world and from a wide range of religions and nationalities.
In the hotel guest book, preserved today at the National Library, you can find the complements showered upon the establishment by its guests (mostly male, since the custom of the time mandated that when couples and families arrived at the hotel, it was the man who was given the privilege of inscribing his impressions). The guest book entries were written in Yiddish, 19th-century Hebrew, Arabic, English, French, German, and many other languages.
Alongside plenty of unclear signatures and unfamiliar names, one can also find the autographs of a range of well-known figures. Among the hotel’s guests were people like Baron de Rothschild, Ahad Ha’am, Nahum Sokolow, Lord Herbert Samuel, Joseph Carlebach, Menachem Ussishkin, Dr. Joseph Klausner, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Henry Morgenthau Sr., Naftali Herz Imber, and others.
There is only one dubious guest experience at the famous hotel that we’re aware of, and it involved Theodor Herzl.
Herzl arrived in Jerusalem to meet with the last German Emperor, Wilhelm II, who was then visiting the Holy Land. Given everything described above, the Kaminitz Hotel was Herzl’s preferred choice of accommodation. He booked rooms in advance – for himself and for the several companions who joined him.
But the Emperor’s visit was an Olympic-scale event for Jerusalem, which, despite its historical significance, was still a relatively small city. The demand placed on tourism and transportation services was immense, and Herzl, who had fallen slightly ill with a fever during the trip, ran into complications.
The train that was supposed to arrive on Friday afternoon in Jerusalem was either delayed or at full capacity, and the Zionist visionary had to wait for a later train that was not on the original schedule but was added due to the overload. Reports on this are somewhat contradictory, but one thing is clear – the train with the ailing and miserable Herzl only arrived at the Jerusalem station in the evening, after the Jewish Sabbath had already begun.
The hotel carriage that was supposed to be waiting for him at the station was no longer there, and Herzl adamantly refused to use any other carriage so as not to offend the Sabbath-observant Jews in the city. Lacking any other option, the small group set out on foot, at the slow pace of someone feeling unwell and unused to the Middle-Eastern weather and rough roads.
The travelers weren’t too bothered. They were sure they would soon arrive at the hotel and enjoy a good meal, a bath, and a warm bed, where Herzl could recover for his meeting with the German Emperor. But an unpleasant surprise awaited them. Once the Sabbath had begun, the hotel staff assumed that Herzl wouldn’t be arriving that day. There was a long waiting list full of German nobles and military men who had accompanied the Emperor to Jerusalem, so the staff figured there was no need to leave the rooms empty. When Herzl arrived, someone else was sleeping in his bed.
There is general consensus about the story so far, but from this point on, it differs depending on the teller. It was late at night and Herzl had no place else to go, so he had no choice but to stay within the confines of the hotel. What happened next seems to be a matter of opinion.
According to the most uneventful version of the story, he was given a tiny, uncomfortable room to share with one of his companions. Other versions claim that he had to make do with an old bed that was dragged out of storage and placed in a corridor without any privacy, or that Herzl simply slept on a pool table in the lounge since there were no beds available.
Either way, the members of Herzl’s small entourage were less than impressed with the hotel after this miserable experience. The next morning, they left and spent the remainder of their time in the country at “Stern House” near the Mamilla neighborhood.
This unpleasant incident didn’t affect the business of the Kaminitz family, who by then had become successful hoteliers, opening establishments in other cities including Hebron, Jaffa, Jericho, and Petah Tikva.
As for the hotel itself, by the early 20th century, the building was too small to meet demands, and it moved to a more spacious building near the Old City’s Jaffa Gate.
When World War I broke out, the Ottoman authorities confiscated the building on Ha-Nevi’im Street. Since then, it has served as a post office, school, residential building, and workshop.
If you make your way to Ha-Nevi’im Street in Jerusalem, you can see a faint shadow of this once magnificent hotel. The building still stands today, neglected and gloomy, with the threat of demolition looming over it due to insufficient interest from the authorities.
