Yosef Shenberger

Yosef Shenberger was born in Frankfurt, Germany to Yehuda, a member of the Orthodox Jewish community founded by Samson Raphael Hirsch.

As a result of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Shenberger emigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935, where he found work as an architect at Ma'atz, the Public Works Department of the Ministry of Transportation, which ultimately became the National Roads Company of Israel. In the 1940s, he designed the dormitory of the Mekor Haim yeshiva, and an industrial complex

in Tel Arza on behalf of PAGI (not to be confused with Poalei Agudat Yisrael – PAI) a Haredi workers' organisation.

After the State of Israel was established in 1948, Shenberger served as deputy director of the Jerusalem Development Department at the Jewish Agency. After 1950, he started to work as an independent architect in Jerusalem, and became a member of the Planning and Construction Committee of the Jerusalem Municipality. In 1963, he was a panel member on the committee in charge of the competition to procure a design for the Jerusalem Municipality building. He designed Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak and, along with David Anatol Brutzkus, the new campus of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.

In 1954, Shenberger was on the panel that was tasked with selecting which exhibits would be shown at an applied arts exhibition in Italy. It was the first time that Israel had been invited to participate in such a venue. In 1959, he was involved in a project to establish sebils (water fountains) for the Arab sector at Abu Ghosh, Tayibe and Meron. At a press conference together with Zev Vilnay that announced the initiative, Shenberger said that he had previously renovated a dilapidated sebil that had been established by Suleiman the Magnificent on Mount Zion.

In 1970, Shenberger took on his friend Tuvia Kätz as a colleague and business partner.

Shenberger was an Orthodox Jew. During his later years, he lived in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem until his death in 1982. He was buried in the Mount of Olives Jewish Cemetery. His daughter Rachel (1942 – 2019) was married to Yisrael Gans, a rosh yeshiva (dean) of Kol Torah, one of the yeshivas that Shenberger designed.

The Jerusalem Municipality named a street after Shenberger in the Ramot neighborhood.