Jerusalem’s Reḥov Heleni ha-Malkah (Queen Helena Street) was named for a Byzantine Christian queen. After Israel gained its independence, a second Helena’s name graced the street. This Helena was the 1st-century-CE queen of Adiabene—a principality located in what is now Iraq—who converted to Judaism. Elaine Rose Glickman recounts some of the talmudic legends about this remarkable historical figure:
Helena became acquainted with Judaism through Jewish merchants who visited her country and—according to legend—hired a tutor in order to learn everything she could. Around the year 30 CE, she turned her back on the dominant [local] religion and—along with her younger son Izates—formally converted to Judaism. . .
[The Talmud relates that Helena, in] addition to giving money for the beautification of the Second Temple and to support the poor in the Holy Land, . . . dipped into the royal treasury to purchase grain from Egypt and dried fruits from Cyprus when famine threatened the lives of Jerusalem’s Jews. . . . Helena also donated several significant pieces of art to the Temple: a gold ornament placed over the door, whose reflection of the sun’s rays would indicate the time to recite the morning Shema prayer, a plate onto which was carved a passage from the Torah, and the golden handles that were fastened to the Temple vessels on Yom Kippur. . . .
Queen Helena also erected a magnificent palace that may have been unearthed during excavations of the City of David, as well as an ornate mausoleum where her body and those of her descendants now lie. Her burial place is known as the Tomb of the Kings, . . . because the tomb was so glorious that early excavators assumed it housed the royal dynasty of Judah.
Read more on Jerusalem Post: http://www.jpost.com/Blogs/The-Streets-of-Jerusalem/The-Queen-who-Built-a-Palace-in-Jerusalem-421181