Mount Scopus (Har HaTzofim, the Mountain of the Watchmen) is the ridge northeast of the Old City that has served as a strategic observation point for every army that has approached Jerusalem. The name comes from the Greek word “skopeo” (to look), and from the summit, the entire city is spread out below. The Roman general Titus camped here before his assault on the city in 70 CE. The British general Allenby viewed the city from here before his entry in 1917. And the Hebrew University, founded on the mountaintop in 1925, became an island of Israeli sovereignty behind Jordanian lines after 1948. Today, Mount Scopus is also home to the British War Cemetery, where Commonwealth soldiers who fell during World War I in the battles for the Holy Land are buried in rows of white headstones overlooking the Judean Desert — a solemn reminder of another chapter in Jerusalem’s layered military history.
The Hebrew University
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem was founded on Mount Scopus in 1925, with Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, and Martin Buber among its early supporters. Einstein gave the university’s inaugural lecture at the opening ceremony, delivering a speech in French on the state of physics — a moment that symbolized the blending of European intellectual tradition with the Zionist aspiration to build a center of learning in the Jewish homeland. The original campus was designed as a bold architectural and cultural statement: a Jewish university on a hilltop overlooking the city of David, combining ancient heritage with modern scholarship. The Hadassah Hospital was also established on Mount Scopus during this period, becoming the premier medical institution in the region and serving both Jewish and Arab patients. Together, the university and the hospital represented the highest aspirations of the Yishuv — the pre-state Jewish community — to build institutions of excellence in the land of Israel.
The 1948 Convoy
After the 1948 war, Mount Scopus became an Israeli exclave within Jordanian-controlled territory. The university and Hadassah Hospital, both on the summit, were cut off from the rest of Israeli Jerusalem. On April 13, 1948, a convoy of doctors, nurses, patients, and university staff heading to Mount Scopus was ambushed by Arab forces near Sheikh Jarrah in one of the most devastating events of the entire 1948 war. The convoy, which included armored buses and ambulances, was pinned down under relentless gunfire and firebombs for hours. British forces stationed nearby were aware of the attack but failed to intervene in time, arriving only after the massacre was essentially over. 78 people were killed, including Dr. Haim Yassky, the director of Hadassah Hospital, and many of the finest medical professionals and academics in the country. Among the dead were surgeons, nurses, researchers, and a patient being transferred for care — people who had dedicated their lives to healing, not fighting. The massacre sent shockwaves through the Jewish community and remains one of the most painful memories of the war. The wreckage of the armored buses, riddled with bullet holes, is displayed along the road as a memorial. After the war, Mount Scopus became a tiny island of Israeli sovereignty surrounded entirely by Jordanian-controlled territory — accessible only by a fortnightly UN-escorted convoy that brought supplies and rotated the small Israeli garrison that maintained a symbolic presence on the hilltop. For nineteen years, from 1948 to 1967, the campus stood empty and silent, its buildings deteriorating, while the university operated from a temporary campus in western Jerusalem. It was only after the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel reunified Jerusalem, that the Mount Scopus campus was reclaimed and a massive expansion began, transforming it into the sprawling modern university campus that stands today.
The theatre
The university’s open-air theatre offers what many consider the finest view of Jerusalem. The Old City, the Dome of the Rock, the Mount of Olives, and the Judean Desert are all visible in a single panorama. On a clear day, the view stretches eastward all the way to the mountains of Moab across the Jordan Valley, and on rare occasions the shimmering surface of the Dead Sea — the lowest point on earth — is visible in the distance. The view at sunset, when the limestone of the Old City glows gold, is extraordinary. The theatre itself is used for graduation ceremonies and public events, and sitting in its stone seats, one feels the full sweep of Jerusalem’s geography and history laid out like a living map.
Visit with Hoshen Tours
Mount Scopus offers views, university history, and the story of the 1948 convoy. Hoshen Tours visits the theatre and tells the story of the mountaintop university that became a symbol of Israeli resilience — from Einstein’s opening lecture in 1925, through the trauma of the convoy massacre and the nineteen years of isolation, to the joyous return after 1967.