Haim Aharon Valero

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Haim Aharon Valero
Born	1845 (1845) Jerusalem, Ottoman Empire
Died	1923 (aged 77–78)

Haim Aharon Valero (1845–1923) was a banker, entrepreneur and a prominent figure in the Jewish community of 19th century Jerusalem. Under his direction, the Valero Bank, founded in 1848 by his father Jacob, acted as catalyst in the development of the Jewish community under Ottoman rule. The bank's capital and financial services were employed in the acquisition of land and building, helping transform Jerusalem and nearby townships from stagnation and poverty towards the modernization of the 20th century.

Biography

Haim Aharon Valero was born in Jerusalem in 1845. He benefitted from a broader education, including five languages: French, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew and

). At the age of fifteen he started working as clerk in the bank run by his father and by 1875 became the manager of the Jerusalem branch. By this time the bank had no other partners. In 1880, after the death of his older brother Joseph, he became director of the bank.

Haim Aharon's father,

.

Jacob Valero married Esther Aziza Levi and had three children. Initially he worked as a

.

Valero married Simha Papu and had seven children with her. After she died at the age of 38, he married his niece, Miriam Valero, and had two more children. He died in 1923 and was buried at the Mount of Olives cemetery.

Valero Bank

The early operations of the bank consisted of financial services for the local community: deposits, loans, transfers. The bank was the main conduit for the transactions of the

. In his ‘Jerusalem Memory Book’ (1913), Nahum Dov Freiman assessed the resources of the Valero Bank at 3,000,000 francs (£120,000). The bank made a significant contribution to the economic development of the city and played a significant wider role in the transfer of funds from Europe to a wide range of Jewish organizations.

The strategy of the

.

Affiliation with the Rothschild family

The Valero bank provided a range of services to the Rothschilds, a very prominent family of European bankers based in Vienna, Paris and London. Haim Aharon developed close business contacts with Baron Edmond James de Rothschild. When the baron, as patron of Jewish settlement activity, began substantial investment in Jewish community of Ottoman Syria in the 1880s, he was assisted by the bank through transfers and deposits. There was a strong social connection too – when visiting Europe, Haim Aharon and members of the family stayed as personal guests of the Rothschilds.

Acquisition of land

Over the years of the bank's contacts within the spheres of finance and real estate, the bank gained titles of land, often through defaults on loans made for land purchases in various parts of the country. At the same time Haim Aharon also made his own land purchases in Jerusalem including many plots along Jaffa Street, at the Damascus Gate, in the suburbs that are today Katamon and Mekor Chaim, as well as in the towns of Hebron and Jaffa. Yeshayahu Press described Haim Aharon as ‘the Rothschild of Jerusalem’. A number of important buildings were erected on land acquired from the Valero family, including Bikur Cholim Hospital and the Mahane Yehuda market (which was originally named the Valero Market).

In the latter part of the 19th century the bank faced competition from European banks, which by then established a growing presence in

. Haim Aharon died eight years later.

Communal activism

His activities and wealth soon earned Haim Aharon an important standing in the city, both in the Jewish and the wider community. His education and mastery of different languages were critical to Haim Aharon's ability to perform his various roles in the social, commercial and political spheres. He served as the representative of the Jewish community with the city authorities, under the tutelage of the Ottomans, but amongst his friends Haim Aharon counted many of the local Arab residents, including several of the leading Arab families. Between 1831 and 1841, after the conquest of Jerusalem by Egypt, he served as member of the district management committee. This enabled him to extend his business and social networks and in 1868 he was appointed as one of two Jewish representatives on the Jerusalem municipality.

In the mid 19th century the population of Jerusalem was 13,000, of whom 5,000 were Jews, mostly Sephardic and Oriental. By the 1880 the Jewish population trebled with the majority being

to bear the title ‘President of the Kollel’. He handled the committee's financial affairs and came to be known as ‘trustee of the poor’. His eldest son continued this activity, to be followed in the 1880s by Haim Aharon.

Valero was one of the representatives of the

Jaffa Street

for the building of a Sephardic old people's home, opened in 1908.

Commemoration

At a cost of over $2.-Million, the Valero compound – a chaotic parking lot that houses the city's annual

market" – is being redeveloped into an urban square. The project, designed by architects Rachel Weiner and Vered Singer, is being carried out by the Jerusalem municipality's Eden Company with funding from the municipality and the Transportation Ministry.

The new Valero Square, illuminated by decorative lighting and surfaced in

. The alley bordering the new square on the north is named after Haim Valero.

See also

Aaron Valero (1913–2000), grandson of Haim Aharon Valero, Israeli physician and educator.

References

Bibliography

• Freiman, Nahum Dov (1913). Jerusalem Memory BookVol 1, Jerusalem; Ariel,1980 (Reprint of 1913 edition)(Hebrew).
• Kark, Ruth and Glass, Joseph (2007). Sephardi Entrepreneurs in Jerusalem: The Valero Family 1800-1948 (English Translation Edition)"".
  ISBN 978-965-229-396-1
• Kark, Ruth and Glass, Joseph (2005). The Valero Family: Seven Generations in Jerusalem, 1800-1948 (Original Hebrew Edition).
  ISBN 965-229-336-9
• [1]
• "Guide to Palestine and Egypt", by Macmillen & Co, (Page 15), Published 1901.
• Montefiore Simon Sebag, (2011). Jerusalem The Biography(Page 344, 360).London. W&N (Orion)
  ISBN 0-297-85265-5
• Yehoshua Ben Arieh, Jerusalem in the 19th Century, II: emergence of the New City, Yad Ishak Ben Zvi and St Martin's Press (1986)
• Mordechai Eliav, Eretz Israel and its Yeshuv in the 19th Century 1777–1917, Jerusalem Keter (Hebrew 1978)