Berman's Bakery ( Mafiat Berman) is the oldest commercial bakery in Israel and the second-largest after Angel Bakeries. Founded in 1875 by Kreshe Berman as a cottage industry in Jerusalem's Old City, the family business was the first to open a Jewish store outside the Old City walls and first to build a flour mill in Israel. Berman's Bakery moved to the Mea Shearim neighbourhood of Jerusalem in the late nineteenth century, where it operated as the country's largest through two world wars and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. In 1965 it moved to its present location in the Givat Shaul neighborhood. Here it employs over 400 workers and services 2,000 stores, supermarkets and institutions countrywide. In 2007 the company was purchased by the Mishkei Harei Yehuda agricultural cooperative. At that time it reported revenues of ₪300 million annually. History Berman's Bakery began as a cottage industry established by Kreshe Berman (1829–1933), who, together with her husband Todrus HaLevi Berman (1807–1887) and two small sons, Yehoshua (Joshua) (1861–1939) and Eliyahu (1867–1951), immigrated to the Old City of Jerusalem from Lithuania in 1876. While Todrus, a full-time Torah scholar, studied in the Etz Chaim Yeshiva adjacent to the Hurva Synagogue, Kreshne supported the family (two girls, Rachel and Rivka, were born in Jerusalem) by operating a small grocery store on the Street of the Jews. When their savings ran out, Kreshne began looking for ways to increase business. She began baking honey cakes and peddling them to the thousands of Christian pilgrims who came to Jerusalem annually before Christmas and remained there until after Easter. Often she stood at Jaffa Gate or at Lions' Gate, peddling to pilgrims on their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Once a pilgrim asked her if she sold Russian black bread. Kreshe experimented with different formulas until she developed her own dark bread by adding carob paste to locally made grain. Her sales of honey cake and black bread grew so much that her son Yehoshua left yeshiva to help her manage the business. Jaffa Road store During the pilgrimage off-season, Yehoshua went door-to-door selling his mother's bread to local residents. The business continued to prosper and in 1882 Yehoshua opened the first Jewish store outside the Old City walls, in a line of shops erected outside Jaffa Gate. He transported the bakery goods by horse and mule from the Old City to the