Beit Hadassah, Residential building and visitor centre in Hebron, West Bank, Palestine

Beit Hadassah is a residential and visitor complex in Hebron's old city, centered on a building from 1893 with a second floor added in 1912. Its sloped roof and facade set with several Stars of David make it easy to recognize. Apartments occupy the upper floor, while the ground floor holds a museum of Hebron's Jewish history and a memorial to the 1929 victims; a synagogue and a children's playground are also on site.

Beit Hadassah was built in 1893 by Rabbi Haim Rahamim Yosef Franco, known as the Harif, as a free infirmary and aid centre called Chesed L'Avraham, its first floor funded by North African Jewish communities. In 1911 a second floor was added with funds from the Jewish communities of India and Baghdad, and the Hadassah women's Zionist organisation later sponsored a clinic there. During the 24 August 1929 riots the clinic was looted and burned and 67 Jews of Hebron were killed. From 1936 to 1948 the complex served as a cheese dairy run by the Abu Eiseh and Ezra families, then passed to UNRWA and an Arab girls' school until the mid-1970s.

The building's name comes from Chesed L'Avraham, the charity clinic opened in 1893; Hadassah of America later sponsored a clinic there that treated Jewish and Arab patients free of charge. The pharmacist Ben Zion Gershon worked in the adjacent building, and rabbis such as Hanoch Hason and Joseph Castel lived beside the complex. From 1936 to 1948 the Abu Eiseh and Ezra families used it as a cheese dairy.

The building is located in the old city and can be visited through guided tours that provide access to different sections. Visitors should prepare for limited opening hours and check conditions beforehand, as the local situation varies.

In April 1979 nineteen women and about forty children from Kiryat Arba entered the empty building at night by a ladder from a truck, and stayed for months without running water or electricity. Rabbi Moshe Levinger counted on Prime Minister Menachem Begin refusing to expel women, and Begin indeed let them remain.