Emek Refaim

Emek Refaim (Hebrew: עמק רפאים‎) is the German Colony, a neighborhood in Jerusalem, as well as its main street. It takes its name from the biblical Valley of Rephaim which began its descent from Jerusalem here.

Emek Refa’im can be translated as either "the valley of the ghosts" or "the valley of the giants." The 2nd-century CE Aramaic Targum of Onkelos translates the words as meshar gibaraya, or "plain of the mighty." Jerome’s 4th-century Latin Vulgate translates the phrase as "vallis Raphaim," and the English King James version follows the Jewish commentators, translating it as "the valley of the giants."

The first residents of Emek Refaim were German Templers, who settled there in the 19th century. Biblical inscriptions in German Fraktur script can still be seen on the lintels of some of the homes. As enemy aliens, the Templers were interned and later deported by the British during World War II. They built one- and two-storey houses similar in appearance to the homes they left in Württemberg.

Many of the buildings on Emek Refaim date from Ottoman and British Mandate times. Some of the distinctive German Templer buildings are still standing, as are elegant villas that belonged to wealthy Arabs before the establishment of the State of Israel.

Some homes in the area were abandoned by local Palestinians or expropriated after 1948, and many issues of property ownership and displacement have yet to be resolved. A former Arab resident of the Bauerle House, located at 10 Emek Refaim (originally built by the Templers), wrote about a painful visit to her home after 1967.

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