Beit Yad LaBanim

The story

Beit Yad LaBanim is a public building in the Civic Center of Beersheba, which serves the Yad LaBanim organization in the city as a monument and a memorial to the fallen of Israel's wars, and in it memorial ceremonies and events for the families are held. It was not built for that. In 1959 the mayor David Tuviyahu raised the idea of establishing here a multi-community synagogue, whose task would be to fuse the many communities and diasporas that had come to the city; it was intended to hold eight hundred places for men and four hundred in the women's section, and in the basement floor a museum. The building was designed by the architects Yohanan Ratner and Mordechai Shoshani. The frame was erected by 1961 and the capital at its top was completed in the years 1962–1963, but until 1970 no roof was laid on it and the building remained unfinished. In 1970 the idea arose to designate it for Yad LaBanim, on the argument that its nearness to the central axis of the city is not suitable for a synagogue: there was no agreement to close the main axis to cars on the Sabbath. The efforts to find funding for the completion of the synagogue nevertheless continued, and an offer even came from representatives of Reform Judaism to complete the building. The local Yad LaBanim organization was founded out of the need of the bereaved families to commemorate the fallen from the Negev region, and at first maintained a memorial branch in the city hall. The building received its present purpose in 1983.

• Commemoration
• Communities
• People
• War
• Beersheba