Ein Karem

This guide to Ein Karem, a hillside village on Jerusalem's edge, traces a valley that farmed vineyards and olive groves around its spring for centuries before falling nearly silent in one week of July 1948, when fighting for the surrounding high ground emptied it after months of buildup. It follows the unusual fact that, unlike most Arab villages lost in that war, Ein Karem's stone houses were left standing, and how Jewish immigrant families from Iraq, Egypt and Yemen moved into them through the 1950s. From there it turns to the artists who later filled the same lanes.