Ein Karem is an ancient village southwest of historical Jerusalem, and now a neighborhood of the modern city, within Jerusalem District, Israel. It is the site of the Hadassah Medical Center. It was a Palestinian village in Mandatory Palestine's Jerusalem Subdistrict, depopulated during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War on July 16, 1948.
Christian tradition holds that Saint John the Baptist was born in Ein Karem, following the biblical verse in Luke saying John's family lived in: "town in the hill country of Judea". Probably, because of its location between Bethlehem and old Jerusalem, this location was a very comfortable one for a pilgrimage, and this led to the establishment of many churches and monasteries in the area. In 2010 the neighborhood had a population of 2,000. It attracts three million visitors a year, one-third of them pilgrims from around the world.