Sanhedria

Sanhedria (Hebrew: סנהדריה‎) is a Haredi neighborhood in northern Jerusalem. It lies east of Golda Meir Street and adjacent to Ramat Eshkol, Shmuel HaNavi, Maalot Dafna and the Sanhedria Cemetery.

Yam Suf Street, in Sanhedria

The neighborhood is named after the Tombs of the Sanhedrin, an elaborate underground complex of rock-cut tombs constructed in the 1st century and thought to be the burial place of the members of the Sanhedrin.[1]

Until 1967, Sanhedria was "frontier" lying adjacent to the Jordanian border and dominated by privately owned Jewish agricultural plots. After the six days-war it was rapidly urbanized, as Haredim expanded in the center and northern quarters of Jerusalem. In the 1990s the population stabilized. Sanhedria is preferred by many Haredim due to its proximity to the Western Wall (2 km), the wide range of religious institutions (the Talmudic college, ToMo) and rabbinical courts active in the neighborhood, and the high status of the population.[2]

Until the 1980s, Haredi, National-Religious and secular Jewish families were equally represented among the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. After that, secular and National-Religious Jews started to move away. At the same time, foreign-born Lithuanian Jews started to move in. Today, nearly all inhabitants are Haredim. The seeming homogenousness covers a microsegregation between different subgroups. These consist of Hassidim (35%), Foreign-Lithuanians (27%), Sephardic Jews (17%), and Lithuanians (16%). No Arabs live in the neighbourhood.[2]