Mekor Chaim

The funds donated to Hovevei Zion by Haim Cohen were transferred to the Jewish National Fund, which purchased of land on the southern fringes of Jerusalem. Mekor Chaim was established in 1926 by the religious Zionist Mizrahi movement. Located between the Arab villages of Malha and Beit Safafa, and far from other Jewish neighborhoods, Mekor Chaim was exposed to Arab sniping and endured a lengthy siege that began in December 1947. Convoys of supplies from Talpiot to Mekor Chaim were turned back by the British Army. In the 1948 war, the Haganah was stationed there and it was the site of fierce battles, facing an Arab siege that was exacerbated by the neighborhood's isolation. A monument to the 12 defenders killed during the 1948 War of Independence was constructed in the 1990s outside the community's original synagogue. After the Six-Day War, the Talpiot industrial zone was developed, ending the neighborhood's isolation. In the mid-1980s, the Jerusalem city council established zoning laws to stop the encroachment of commerce and preserve the residential character of Mekor Chaim. ==Education==

The Sudbury Democratic School is located in Mekor Chaim. == Archaeology ==

During road construction at Mekor Chaim in the 1970s, archaeologists uncovered a sealed, rock-cut, single-chamber tomb that had remained undisturbed for roughly two millennia. The tomb contained more than twenty-five burials. A coin of the Roman emperor Domitian suggests that the tomb remained in use, or was at least revisited, as late as 80/81 CE, during the inter-revolt period between the First Jewish–Roman War and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Among the finds was an inscribed ossuary bearing the words , Hebrew for "Mother Miriam", which contained the bones of a 65-year-old woman. ==References==