On a Beit Harav Kook study tour we visited the old "colonies" of Mazkeret Batya (originally called Ekron), Rishon LeZion, and Rehovot in central Israel.
Mazkeret Batya was founded in 1883.
In 1927 its first synagogue had to be razed, due to structural problems; and in 1928 the new Great Synagogue was built instead.
The sign notes a surprising fact: toward the end of the British Mandate, in the period leading up the war and to Israel's independence in 1948, the Haganah force had a "slick," a secret weapons cache hidden under the bimah (the table on which the Torah scroll is unrolled and read).
Pictures of the interior of the synagogue after its 1989 renovation can be seen here.
Written in stone:
A GIFT OF THE BENEFACTOR BENJAMIN EDMOND
AND THE BENEFACTOR ADELHEID
ROTHSCHILD
In the year Tarpaz
Baron Rothschild and his wife, Adelheid, were great supporters of early Zionism.
He purchased huge tracts of land from the Arabs and got the Jewish pioneering families started in working the land.
Rothschild changed the name of the Ekron community to Mazkeret Batya in remembrance of his mother, Batya, who had just died.
You can learn more about Mazkeret Batya in this nice article by a tour guide
and/or at Wikipedia.
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(Linking to inSPIRED Sunday.)
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