Ein Karem

En Kerem (Arabic عين كارم, DMG ʿAyn Kārim; Hebrew עֵין כֶּרֶם ʿEjn Kerem, German 'source of the vineyard') is an ancient settlement within the present-day city limits of Jerusalem. According to Christian tradition, John the Baptist was born here, so that today the site is the destination of pilgrimages.

The reason for the foundation of the village was a water spring. Archaeological finds prove a settlement since the Bronze Age. This is probably the site of the Old Testament Bet Kerem (Jer 6:1 EU; Neh 3:14 EU).

The Bible records in Luke's Gospel that after the announcement of Jesus' birth by the angel from Nazareth in Galilee, Mary went "to a town in the hill country of Judea" (Luke 1:39 EU) to visit Zacharias and his pregnant wife Elizabeth. Theodosius (530) records that the place where Elizabeth and Zacharias lived was five miles from Jerusalem.

En Kerem's main attraction is the Church of St. John the Baptist, which features the Cave of the Nativity of John - a late 19th-century Catholic church building built on the remains of predecessor buildings from the Byzantine and Crusader periods. Similar to the Paternoster Church, it contains panels of the Canticle of Zechariah in many languages. Next to it, on the opposite slope, there is the "Gorny Monastery" (Mountain Monastery) of the Orthodox Church, the construction of which began in 1871. The monastery is run by nuns and is dedicated to the Russian Orthodox saint Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna of Hesse-Darmstadt. The construction of the Cathedral of All Saints of Russia, located on the monastery grounds, started in 1911 but dormant after Russian payments ceased due to World War I and Sovietization, was completed in 2005 and consecrated in 2007. The Russian Orthodox "St. John the Baptist Cave Church" is also located on the site.

A little below this monastery is the Visitation Church, also called "Visitatio Church" or "Magnificat Church". The footpath to this church leads past the "Marienquelle".

The UN partition plan for Palestine, adopted by UN members in 1947, assigned ʿAyn Karim to the Corpus Separatum Jerusalem. In the war for Israel's independence, the fighting reached ʿAyn Karim on July 9, 1948, and the village was evacuated on July 10 by most of the remaining inhabitants - nuns and monks excepted - many of whom had already left the village since April. Zahal took the place on 11 July. It initially remained militarily vulnerable and largely uninhabited. From December 1948 onwards, Jerusalemites made homeless by war and flight began to be sent to the largely empty site.

After the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus was evacuated in the course of the Palestine War in 1948, a replacement building on the hill in En Kerem with a medical training center was opened in 1961 after years of delays.