U n d er British m andate (1917-1948), the G erm an-influenced Romantic Jew ish style in Palestine w as paralleled by the E nglish's ow n search for a regional style expressing a similar fascination w ith the Orient.56 Based on the Balfour declaration of 1916 which committed Britain to the establishment of a national Jewish hom e in Palestine, the British m andate could be considered as sponsoring its ow n version of Jewish style. Sim ultaneous to the efforts of their colleagues elsew here in the em pire like Lutyens in New-Delhi, British a rc h ite c ts like A. H a rriso n a n d C liffo rd H o llid ay in P alestin e w ere crystallizing a historicist m onum ental style fusing neo-classical symmetrical plans w ith sculpted facades eclectically incorporating historical Islamic and biblical m otifs. N otable exam ples of this tren d are concentrated in the Jeru salem YMCA b u ild in g , th e S cottish C h u rch , a n d th e R ockefeller Archeological M useum (1927-35) (fig.8). A lthough b o th the Romantic Jewish style and the British M andate style w ere eclectic in their use of the "Orient," the latter w as m ore preservationist and archeological in tendency, especially w ith regard to the O ld City of Jerusalem. This w as particularly manifest in British to w n planning. W illiam M cLean's Jerusalem m aster-plan and the su b seq u en t plans of C. R. A shbee a n d Patrick G eddes (1922) enforced restrictive zoning and building codes aim ed at m aintaining and restoring the traditional m edieval character of the O ld City (fig. 9 , 10).57 The O ld City was ringed by a green p ark system w here buildings w ere prohibited, in order to
^ M ic h a e l Levin, "Jerusalem A rchitecture D uring the British M andate" (Discussion Paper No.4), in M odem Architecture in Jerusalem, ed. Ora A him eir and Michael Levin (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, 1984), iv-22.
57H arry Kendall, lerusaiem . The City Plan Preservation and Developm ent D uring the British M andate. 1918-1948 (London: His M ajesty's Stationary Office, 1948); S. Shapiro, "Planning Jerusalem: The First Generation, 1917-1968," in Urban Geography of lerusaiem (A Companion Volume To The A tlas of Jerusalem ), ed. D avid H. K. A m iram et al. (Berlin: W alter De Gruyer, 1973), 139-153.
preserve an uninterrupted vista of its picturesque fabric. Beyond the park, the density an d character of n ew buildings were controlled by codes enforcing am ong o th er things Jerusalem stone as the only m aterial allow ed for cladding. U nder A shbee's direction, the Pro-Jerusalem Society restored several traditional stru ctu res such as the ram parts and old m arkets. This preservationist trend w ould register in the Jewish style only several decades later.
The British emphasis on the Old City was in fact deliberately conceived as a direct challenge to a Zionist memory exclusive of the Medieval and the A rab Palestinian tradition. C. R. Ashbee, w ho w as critical of the Balfor Declaration and Zionism, w as openly sympathetic to the cause of Palestinian nationalism .58 He m ade no m istake about the political im plications of the British Medievalizing style. Ashbee campaigned for restoration of the Dome of the Rock, a symbol w hich he described, through the w ords of a fictional friend in his diaries, as a nemesis of Zionism 59
The challenge of the British style to Zionism was distinctly escalated by the design done by A sh b ee's friend, Patrick G eddess, for the H ebrew University on M ount Scopus (1919-25). Chaim W eizmann, then the leader of the Zionist movement, specifically recruited Geddess for the task of planning w hat at the time was deem ed to be Zionism 's m ost im portant institution and symbol.60 In his plan, th e various d ep artm en ts of the university are organized as an interlocking series of cloisters radiating from a central hexagonal podium (fig. 11,12). At the m iddle of this grand podium rises a
58c.R. Ashbee, A Palestine Note Book 1918-1923 (Garden Ciiy, N.Y.: Doubieday, 1923), 59. 59C.R. Ashbee, 108.
60For an extensive account of G ed d es's design, see Daniel Bertrand Monk, An A esthetic Occupation: Architecture. Politics and the Menace of M onuments in Mandate-Era Palestine 1917-1929 (Diss. Princeton University, 1995), 169-220.
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gigantic hexagonal stru c tu re w hich G eddes identified as "A ula A cademica." This exclusively cerem onial dom ed m on u m en t is m ore or less a replica of the Dom e of the Rock, w hich is dow nhill in the O ld City. The only m ajor com positional difference b e tw ee n the tw o is th a t G eddes replaced th e octagonal plan of the Dom e of the Rock w ith a hexagonal one to represent the Jew ish sym bol of the s ta r of D avid. G eddes th o u g h t of his Dome as a u n iv ersal sym bol unifying hum anity, steering it aw ay from sectarian an d n a tio n a list d iv isio n s. S u ch w as his p e rc e p tio n of Z io n ism a n d its u n iv ersity .61 Ashbee com m ented on his friend's work:
G eddes's chief w ork out here has been the plans, en ebouche, for the Zionists' University, a magnificent schem e and a wonderful report. But it has d eft Jewry in twain. The orthodox and the ritualists have no use for a Universitas in the real sense o f the word, and as he desires, nor have the political p rop agand ists for the scholar and the man o f science... The Zionist university m eans that the Jews h ave the chance once again of rebuilding the Tem ple in their H oly City. W ill they d o it? W ill it be a University or only a Zionist university? G eddes has throw n d o w n the glove to Jewry. It is another challenge to the theocratic state and the old D evil o f Sectarianism w h o stands betw een us and our search for Truth. Will the Challenge b e taken up?62
A lthough he tried h a rd to rally the different com m unities around his design, G eddes failed to w in the final endorsem ent of his client. Ironically, the rector of the university, Judah Magnes, w ho was then a "universalist" Zionist, u sed G eddes's ow n logic to reject his design, arguing that the im agery of 'A u la
61ln his interim report on the H ebrew University G eddes wrote, "Israel acheived som ething fa r g reater than d id Hellas. She discerned far hig h er tru th s—the Unity of the Cosmos, the Unity of the moral ord er and the interior H arm ony of both... this tem ple of Unity, w ith its central dom e of synthesis seeks to express anew the ancient message of Israel, Unity in n ature and Art, Unity in H um anity, and in life/' cited by Monk, 193.
Academica' w ould antagonize the Palestinian Arabs.63 C haim W eizm ann d id not support G eddes w hen it counted the m ost.64 Instead, Geddess was asked to design some other individual buildings in the university, before he and h is assistant Frank M ears w ere sum m arily fired by M agnes. That tim e G eddes w as advised to pursue a stepped form evocative of the Assyrian architecture of the ancient N ear East.65 Obviously, the real reservation ab o u t the A ula A cadem ica is th a t it re p re se n te d a m ed iev al D iasp o ra m em ory th a t in terru p ted the direct flow of the Zionist n arrativ e from a biblical Jew ish origin to a m odem Jewish state. One of the alternative proposals that M agnes solicited for the university was for the W olffsohn Library by Richard N eutra (1922).66 R ichard N e u tra 's terraced b u ild in g w as distinctly m arked by a synthesis of abstract m o d ern ist vocabulary w ith im ages evocative of the A ssyrian Ziggurats (fig. 13). N e u tra 's m o d ern ist design pointed to a new chapter in the narrative of Zionist style.