The first thing people do when they walk into Batya Vintage House isn’t shop.

They take a deep breath and exhale.

Some wander slowly from shelf to shelf, running their fingers over painted ceramics, old books, weathered maps and forgotten treasures. Others stop in the doorway, smiling with the unmistakable look of someone who has just stumbled into a memory.

“It’s like my grandmother’s house,” they’ll tell owner Batya Ezri.

For Ezri, that reaction is the entire point.

Tucked in the center of Jerusalem on Shlomzion HaMalka Street, Ezri’s colorful shop feels less like an antique store and more like a living room assembled from generations of stories.

There is always good music playing — Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Joan Baez — a table where visitors are invited to sit, and shelves crowded with objects that seem to have arrived from a dozen different lifetimes. Unlike many antique shops, which can feel heavy with history, Batya Vintage House is bright, welcoming and full of conversation.

“I don’t think people come here only to buy,” Ezri says. “They come to feel.”

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That relationship with the past began long before she opened the shop.

Ezri’s parents owned an antique store in the very same space during the 1980s, specializing in Persian art and jewelry. Before she was even old enough to start school, Ezri spent her days climbing the stairs, examining objects in display cases and accompanying her father to flea markets.

“At Jaffa flea market, everyone........

© The Times of Israel