RAMLA

ancient ruins at Ramla, courtesy, pokku/Shutterstock posted in
TotallyJewishTravel website

Ramla is a major city in Israel located approximately 12 miles southwest of Jaffa in the Central District, along the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway.  

During the time of Joshua, the site of Ramla was allotted to the tribe of Dan but the town itself was founded over two millennia later, in c. 715–717 CE by the Arab Umayyad governor and future caliph Sulayman ibn Abd al-Malik. It became the only town in Israel founded by Arab Muslims. Although originally established for Arab Muslims, it had from the beginning a large population of Christians, Jews, and Samaritans. The increase of the Samaritan farming population on the outskirts of the town was due to the efforts of Hārūn al-Rashīd, the Abbasid Caliph in the late eighth century. Since the 10^th century, Ramla often served as a place of refuge for the ruling geonim from Jerusalem, accompanied by his rabbinical assembly, at times when intense conflicts would erupt between the rabbinic authorities. At that time, a Karaite and a Rabbanite community, the latter divided into Palestinians and Babylonians, existed in the town; there were also synagogues for the Jerusalemites and the Damascenes. Ramla also became a major transit hub for caravans of Radhanites – Jewish merchants who travelled in convoy from France to China and back again. In the 11^th century however, the flourishing communities of Ramla suffered from a series of blows: a disastrous Bedouin raid in 1025 and two devastating earthquakes in 1033 and 1067 (in the latter, 25,000 people reportedly perished). During the Crusader occupation, beginning in 1099, the Jewish and Samaritan communities were dispersed. However, some did return and when Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela visited the area in 1170–71, he recorded “…there are remains of the walls from the days of our ancestors, for thus it was found written upon the stones. About 300 Jews dwell there. It was formerly a very great city; at a distance of two miles there is a large Jewish cemetery." In the remaining years of the Crusader period, the Jews wandered away once again but by the 14^th century, it was again the largest town in Palestine and a Jewish community was reestablished there. A tradition reported by Ishtori Haparchi (1280–1355) and other early Jewish writers is that Ramla was the biblical Gath of the Philistines but initial archaeological claims seemed to indicate that Ramla was not built on the site of an ancient city, although in recent years the ruins of an old city were uncovered on the southern outskirts. According to many scholars, there was a Gath which is believed to be Tell es-Safi outside of the city limits, and a Gath-rimmon or Gittaim, believed to be in or near the town itself. With the Ottoman conquest, Ramla once more declined, although most pilgrims passed through it on their way to Jerusalem. Throughout the 19^th century, Ramla maintained a small Jewish community – so small, it numbered only 2 families at mid-century, although there was an intense social interchange with Jaffa throughout this period. In 1889, 31 Jewish worker families settled in the town.

At the end of the 1920s, Ramla became connected to wired electricity (supplied by the Zionist-owned Palestine Electric Company). During the Arab riots in 1929, most of the local Jews were ethnically cleansed from the town. Those that were left were, as well, ethnically cleansed during the Arabs riots in 1936. In 1947, when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, Ramla was awarded to the proposed Arab state, but with the massive Arab assault on the Jewish state which started the War of Independence, Ramla was taken over by the Jews. At that time, the town had an Arab majority. Most, but by no means all, fled. After the war, Ramla was a mixed Jewish-Arab town. Poor Jewish refugees from “Arab” countries soon settled there. They were later joined by most of the Jewish community of Karachi, Pakistan. The Karachi Jews ultimately built their own synagogue named Magen Shalome, after the original Magain Shalome Synagogue in Karachi. Ramla also became the center of Karaite Judaism in Israel. In 1963, they established their own Karaite Synagogue on Yosef Klausner Street. In the 90s, the town received thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

From the end of the war and for the next two decades, Ramla was an economically depressed and crime-ridden town. It gradually acquired a very negative reputation in the eyes of the public. Five of Israel's prisons today, are located in Ramla, including the maximum-security Ayalon Prison and the country's only women's prison, Neve Tirza. In recent decades, attempts have been made to develop and beautify the city. New shopping malls and public parks have been built, and a municipal museum opened in 2001. The Ramla Museum is housed in the former municipal headquarters of the British Mandatory authorities. The building, from 1922, incorporates elements of Arab architecture such as arched windows and patterned tiled floors. After 1948, it was the central district office of the Israeli Ministry of Finance.

During the years of the "al-Aqsa" Intifada beginning in 2000 a few synagogues were set on fire and the Jews tried to burn a mosque.

Other sites include: the Commonwealth War Cemetery, largest of its kind in Israel, holding graves of soldiers fallen during both World Wars and the British Mandate period; the Giv'on immigration detention centre; Nesher Israel Cement Enterprises flagship factory, Israel's sole producer of cement; Ramla Railway Station, originally opened in April 1891, making it the oldest active railway station in Israel, rebuilt in 2003; Open House, a preschool and daycare center for Arab and Jewish children which also runs extracurricular coexistence programs for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim children.

RAANANA

view of Raanana, courtesy, Wikipedia

Raanana is a city in the heart of the southern Sharon Plain of the Central District of Israel. Bordered by Kfar Saba and Hod HaSharon on the east and Herzliya on the southwest, it had a population of 75,421 in 2019 and was designated a "Green City" by the World Health Organization in 2005. Raanana is one of the wealthier cities in Israel with a GDP higher than the national average. While the majority of its residents are native-born Israelis, a large part of the population consists of immigrants from the Americas and Europe including the United States, Argentina, Britain, France, the former Soviet Union, and South Africa.

During the time of Joshua, the area that is now Raanana was allotted to the tribe of Menashe, in the southwestern-most region close to the tribal territory of Dan. Long given over to swampland, in 1921, a plot of land was purchased in the area by the Ahuza Society branch in New York through the Palestine Land Development Company. On April 2, 1922, two wagons left the corner of Lilienblum and Herzl Streets in Tel Aviv carrying four "Ahuza" members, three laborers and two armed watchmen. After a five-hour journey, they unloaded their baggage at the place destined to become Raanana.

In its early days, the settlement was actually called "Ahuza Aleph – New York". The Arabs of the region called it "Little America" as most of its residents were English speakers who came from New York. Later it was renamed "Ra'anania" and finally, "Ra'anana" as its official name.

The settlement was built along, and around, Ahuza Street, its main thoroughfare. Initially there were many economic difficulties, but they were gradually overcome. Between 1925 and 1927, the Community House, which would house a variety of public institutions, including the secretariat, clinic, synagogue, meeting place for local committee meetings, assembly hall, culture room, school, kindergarten, clinic, and post office, was built. An attempt was made to raise cattle as the mainstay of the economy, later changing over to the citrus crop. In the latter half of the 20s going into the 30s, rich groundwater table was tapped, and middle-class immigrants of the Fourth Aliyah and later newcomers were absorbed. In 1931, Raanana elected its first mayor, Baruch Ostrovsky, a Ukrainian-born educator from the United States. He remained mayor throughout the British Mandate period and the early years of Israeli independence during which time, Raanana was given local council status (1936). 

With the crisis in citrus farming during World War II, the inhabitants changed over to mixed farming and made the first beginnings in industry. In the 1940s, two housing quarters for Yemenite and other immigrants were built with contributions from Zionists in the United States and South Africa. In 1947, Bessie Gotsfeld, an American Religious Zionist activist who had made aliyah in 1929, founded Kfar Batya children's village in the western part of Raanana for those children who had survived the Holocaust. By 1948, during Israel’s War of Independence, Raanana was a town of 3,000 residents but grew quickly after the war when ma'barot (refugee camp) inhabitants were given permanent housing. In 1958, the Loewenstein Hospital was established and became the only rehabilitation hospital operated by Clalit Health Services, Israel's largest health care provider.  

Raanana belonged to the outer ring of the Tel Aviv conurbation and developed various industries as well as agriculture. Over the years, most of Raanana's farmland became built-up areas. In 1981, it was declared a city.

There is an industrial zone in the north of the city, which is home to the Renanim shopping mall and many high-tech companies, including Emblaze, Hewlett-Packard, NICE Systems, SAP, NCR Corporation (formerly Retalix), Comverse, Red Hat, Waze (prior to Google acquisition), Texas Instruments, Arm Holdings and ZoomInfo. In addition, Microsoft's head office in Israel and Amdocs are located in an office complex at the eastern edge of the city, close to Raanana Junction, where Highway 4 meets Ahuza Street.

Raanana is also home to the Open University of Israel and Raanana College.

The park of Raanana is the largest urban park in the Sharon region. The Founders Museum presents the story of Ra'anana's original settlers until the city achieved local council status in 1936. Raanana Park Amphitheatre has been the venue for musical acts such as Backstreet Boys, Evanescence, Alice Cooper, Lauryn Hill, Tori Amos, Chick Corea, Ian Anderson, Ziggy Marley, The Cranberries, The Stranglers, Seal, Brian Wilson, Regina Spektor, Blondie and Pet Shop Boys.

The main soccer club of the city is Hapoel Ra'anana. In basketball, the city is represented by Maccabi Raanana who play in the National League. The Raanana Roosters are the local rugby team, and the area is a center of the rugby union in Israel, with Rugby Israel being based there. With a large population of American expatriates, the Raanana Express is an inaugural team in the Israel Baseball League.

MOUNT ZION

David's Tomb, Mount Zion, courtesy, BibleWalks.com

Mount Zion is a hill in Jerusalem, located just outside the walls of the Old City. The term “Mount Zion” appears nine times in the Hebrew Bible first for the City of David (2 Samuel 5:7, 1 Chronicles 11:5; 1 Kings 8:1, 2 Chronicles 5:2) and later for the Temple Mount, and now used as the name of ancient Jerusalem's Western Hill. In a wider sense, the term is also used for the entire Land of Israel.

During the time of Joshua, Mount Zion and the surrounding area was allotted to the tribe of Benjamin. According to the Book of Samuel, the mount was the site of the Jebusite fortress called the "stronghold of Zion" that was conquered by King David, then renamed and partially rebuilt by him as the "City of David", “Jerusalem”, where he erected his palace. The Tanakh reference to Har Tzion (Mount Zion) that identifies its location is derived from Psalm 48 composed by the sons of Korah the Levite as "the northern side of the city of the great king…from the City of David, which is Zion (1 Kings 8:1-2; 2 Chron. 5:2)". 2 Samuel 5:7 also reads, "David took the stronghold of Zion: the same is the city of David," which identifies Mount Zion as part of the City of David. Upon King David’s death, he was buried on the mount’s hilltop.  

In the second half of the First Temple period, the city expanded westward and its defensive walls were extended to include the entire Mount Zion area. In the first century CE, a small church was built on the southern end of the hill, identified as the Coenaculum, the "Room of the Last Supper". In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem including the buildings on and around Mount Zion. Josephus, the first-century historian who knew the city as it was before, identified Mount Zion as being the Western Hill, separated from the lower, Eastern Hill (Temple Mount), by what he calls the "Tyropoeon Valley". It must however be said that Josephus never used the name "Mount Zion" in any of his writings, but described the "Citadel" of King David as being situated on the higher and longer hill, thus pointing at the Western Hill as what the Bible calls Mount Zion.

In the year 333, toward the end of the Roman period, the well-known but anonymous Traveler from Bordeaux described a synagogue built at the entrance of David's Tomb. It was the only one spared by the Romans out of seven synagogues that had stood in the area since ancient times. It remained active throughout the period and was even repaired during the reign of Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate (361-3). However, the site was later abandoned and the exact location of David’s Tomb was lost.

In 636, the Arab conquerors allowed the Jews to resettle Jerusalem. Initially settling near Temple Mount, they later chose Mount Zion as their place of residence, and a Jewish neighborhood began to develop. In the late 8^th/early 9^th centuries, a neighborhood of Karaite Jews developed on the eastern slope of the mount, on the western side of the Kidron Valley. In the 10^th century, the site of David’s Tomb was rediscovered and it became a place of Jewish pilgrimage ever since. In 1033 a strong earthquake shook Jerusalem resulting in the Jewish and Karaite communities leaving and migrating north, settling in what is now, the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. After the Crusader conquest in 1099, Jews were banned from Jerusalem but could briefly visit the Western Wall and the Temple Mount with special permission. Mount Zion was off limits but with the conquest of Jerusalem in 1187 by Saladin and the rise of Muslim Ayyubid dynasty, the Jews returned and settled in Jerusalem and Mount Zion in particular. But only a few individuals actually did return. In 1236, an Egyptian Jewish merchant had negotiated with the governor of the city to renew the Jewish settlement there. The negotiations were positive for the Jews resulting in the settlement of a man who went by the name of Baruch the Good and Beneficent. As a stable Jewish community developed, it was said that the Ramban would sometimes pray in the local synagogue. The community was later described by both Jewish and Christian travelers in the early 14^th century. In 1335, the Franciscan fathers purchased property on the mount including the supposed “Room of the Last Supper”, and began to harass the Jews in the area. Jews also held property there, namely David’s Tomb. Eventually, the Mameluke authorities intervened and confiscated the Franciscan property. This caused a reaction from the Franciscans who accused the Jews of having dispossessed them of their share of the tomb, and in 1428 the pope issued an order forbidding the fleets of Italian towns to transport Jews to Israel. The dispute over the ownership of the Tomb of David continued for an extended period and resulted in great difficulties in Jewish immigration by sea and the renewal of the prohibition against transporting Jews in Christian ships (c. 1468).

From 1516, Israel now came under Ottoman Turkish rule. In 1524, the local Arabs turned the ancient Mount Zion synagogue into a mosque. Nevertheless, a Jewish presence was maintained there and the area became a place of Jewish burials as well as a place of pilgrimage.  

During the 1948 war, Mount Zion was conquered by the Harel Brigade and became the only part of the Old City to stay in Israeli hands until the armistice. At first it was linked to the Jewish neighborhood of Yemin Moshe across the Valley of Hinnom via a narrow tunnel, but eventually an alternative was needed to evacuate the wounded and transport supplies to soldiers on Mt. Zion. A cable car capable of carrying a load of 250 kilograms was designed for this purpose. The cable car was only used at night and lowered into the valley during the day to escape detection; it is still in place at what is now the Mount Zion Hotel.

At the end of the war, the mount remained in Jewish hands, overlooking the Arab occupied part of Jerusalem. David’s Tomb was turned back into a synagogue. Between 1948 and 1967, when the Old City was under occupation and Israelis were forbidden access to the Jewish holy places, Mount Zion became the closest accessible site to the ancient Jewish Temple. Until eastern Jerusalem was liberated by Israel in the Six-Day War, Israelis would climb to the rooftop of David's Tomb to pray. 

Important sites on Mount Zion that are of interest to Jews, aside from the Tomb of David are: the Chamber of the Holocaust (Martef HaShoah), the precursor of Yad Vashem; the Catholic cemetery where Oskar Schindler, a Righteous Gentile who saved the lives of 1,200 Jews in the Holocaust, is buried; the Protestant cemetery where a number of prominent individuals from the 19th and 20th centuries are buried including the architect Conrad Schick who, among his many works, helped build Mea Shearim, and the diplomat and social worker James Edward Hanauer who was of mixed Jewish and Swiss ancestry; Pope’s Way, the winding road leading up to Mount Zion, so named in honor of the historic visit to Jerusalem of Pope Paul VI in 1964.