Oriel: A Neighborhood for People with Visual Impairments in Israel: 1950-67 (Around the World I‪)‬

The 1950s was a decade of mass immigration to the fledgling, resource-poor State of Israel, including hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries (Lisak, 1999). Almost all the Jews in such countries as Iraq and Yemen were forced to leave their countries because of political developments, and the vast majority came to Israel. According to Israel's Law of Return, all Jews--those who were healthy, those who were chronically ill, and those with and without disabilities--were welcome to settle in Israel. Israel's welfare principles during the 1950s were based on egalitarian principles of the redistribution of resources to benefit "the weaker classes." The following historic account describes the absorption of immigrants with disabilities in Oriel, a unique neighborhood for people with visual impairments that was established in the town of Gedera. Oriel housed 100 families of new immigrants with visual impairments who earned their living working in a sheltered workshop that was established in the neighborhood. The physical planning of the neighborhood took the visual impairment of its residents into consideration in order to maximize their independence. The data for this study were collected from the Archives of the Joint in Jerusalem, the Israel State Archives, and the Museum of Gedera History (1951-67) and were supplemented by recent interviews with the original residents of the neighborhood and their children. ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD