Mister Handmade in Israel and I recently went on a guided tour of
Beit Rishonim (Founders' House) in Ness Ziona, a town in central
Israel. The little museum,
which originally served as the schoolhouse, the synagogue, the city council
building and the community centre, now documents the history of the town since
its founding. Built in 1907 by Reuven Lehrer and his family, the museum houses pictures
of the first settlers, artifacts and historical documents.
Ness Ziona's first communal building, 1907.
Ness Ziona was first known as
Wadi Hunayn,
after the
local Arab village. In 1878 the
German Templer
Gustav Reisler purchased land there and changed its name to Wadi Chanin. He planted an orchard there but after his family died from malaria, Reisler
returned to Europe. In 1882 he travelled to Odessa and met Reuven Lehrer, a
religiously observant Russian Jew with Zionist ideals. Lehrer owned farmland
in Russia and Reisler traded his Palestine land for Lehrer's land, Lehrer
believing that the land he had received was "near" Jerusalem. In 1883 Lehrer
emigrated to Palestine with his eldest son Moshe. His wife and four of his
children arrived the following year. They settled on the land which became
known as
Nahalat Reuven (Reuven's Estate).
In 1887, after the family had begun to cultivate grapes, almonds and raise bees, Lehrer posted signs at the arrival gate in the Jaffa port imploring
fellow Jews to help him settle the land. These new arrivals established a separate neighbourhood named Tel Aviv (the city of Tel Aviv did not yet exist). In 1891
Michael Halperin, a member of the
First Aliyah, bought more land in the
wadi. He arrived at a village ceremony riding his horse and waving a blue and
white flag inscribed with the words "Ness Ziona" emblazoned in gold. "Ness
Ziona" means "Banner to Zion". This motto is based on a verse in the Book of
Jeremiah (
Jeremiah 4:6). In 1897 Halperin offered this flag, minus the words Ness Ziona, to
the
first Jewish Congress in Basel, which was presided over by
Theodor Herzl. It was later adopted by the State of Israel as the national
flag. Halperin's actions led the settlers to change the settlement's name to
Ness Ziona.
In due course, the colonies of Nahalat Reuben and Ness Ziona, the neighbourhood of Tel Aviv in Ness Ziona and the
Arab village Wadi Hunayn merged into a single, larger village. Its main
export was citrus, grown in orchards that were irrigated by numerous wells dug
around the village. The residents worked in the orchards and sold their yield
in the cities. Lining the walls of
Beit Rishonim are old
photos of camels carrying boxes of oranges to the market in Jaffa and the
first Jewish pioneers toiling in the fields. By the 1920s, despite
difficult struggles against neighbouring Arabs, malaria and challenging
agricultural conditions, Ness Ziona was thriving and prosperous.
Photo credit: The Ness Ziona Workers, 1883-1948, by Yoav Regev
The Great Synagogue of Ness Ziona, located next door to
Beit Rishonim, bottom photo, was built in the 1920s, during the period of the
Third Aliyah. In 1924 the British Army contracted with the Israel Electric Company
to supply wired electric power to Ness Ziona. Until the 1948 War of
Independence this amalgamated village was the only mixed Arab-Jewish village
in
Mandatory Palestine. The co-existence of Arabs and Jews was, on the whole, peaceful, though
the village was attacked by Arab forces in the
1936–39 Arab Revolt, and again during the 1948 war.
After the establishment of the State of Israel, Ness Ziona's population
almost tripled. Families from Iran, Morocco, Yemen and Iraq moved in in
the 1950s and 60s, living in
ma'abarot (immigrant and refugee absorption camps ) at the edge of town
until they could afford to buy something of their own. Today the city's
population is still relatively small - around 50,000 - with an
annual growth rate of two percent.
Ness Ziona's story is a story of hardship and poverty, famine and disease,
but also of great love for the Land of Israel, a story of the
establishment and development of the beekeeping industry in the town, the
first of its kind in Palestine, and the story of how the national flag was
raised for the first time in the town.
