Category: NewYear2021

Only in 2004, nearly half a century after the Hula wetlands were drained, did the Hula Nature Reserve begin to recover. The amendment to Israel’s Water Law that recognized Nature as a legitimate consumer of water allowed the reserve to receive clean Jordan River water together with water from the Einan Springs. The influx of the original water sources of the lake had a remarkable effect. Today the Hula Valley, with its system of canals and waterways, springs, and pools, is trying to correct the damage of what was perceived seventy years ago as an outstanding national achievement.

Interview with Yifat Artzi, Hula Valley ecologist for the Israel Nature and Parks Authority

The Hula Nature Reserve began to recover in 2004 when the amendment to Israel’s Water Law declared that Nature, including springs, riverbeds, and wetlands, is entitled to a fair share of the country’s water sources. The law recognizes Nature as a legal consumer of water in an amount that will enable the preservation and rehabilitation of Israel’s natural landscapes.
Until the amendment to the law, the Hula Nature Reserve’s water supply was made up of the fishpond spillage in the valley. The amount of water was barely enough to keep the reserve alive and not of the quality needed to preserve the flora and fauna that did manage to survive. The ecological well-being of the nature reserve declined year after year.
With the water law change, the reserve began receiving freshwater from the Jordan River, pumped into the nature reserve in ever-increasing amounts. Next, water from the copious Einan Springs, released into the Einan Riverbed, also began to flow into the reserve. The Einan water temperature, which emanates from deep down in the earth, is a constant 21 degrees Celsius (70 Fahrenheit), making the riverbed a thermal haven for plants and animals in winter.
This warmth is crucial for certain fish species, tilapia (St. Peter’s Fish), for example, and water-borne plants such as Ceratophyllum submersum and London pondweed that used to thrive in the Hula. Once the water quality improved, many of the plants that had once prospered in the Hula reappeared. The natural world of the Hula Valley recovered spontaneously. Before the Hula water world’s revival, the pools and ponds had been infested with invasive species such as the dominant and robust catfish, together with carp and mullet that had escaped from the fishponds, and are not even native to the Land of Israel.
Wetlands recover rapidly, with the original flora and fauna reappearing as if out of thin air. The most famous revival example is that of the Hula painted frog, the first amphibian to officially be declared extinct. The frog had not been seen for over fifty years and was considered extinct. In 2011, Yoram Malka, the Hula park ranger, caught a fleeting glimpse of the frog as it leaped across the road. Since then, the extinct frog has been showing up all around the Hula reserve.
The painted frog is a very ancient amphibian species. Fossils of painted frogs uncovered in prehistoric sites in the Hula Valley indicate that the frog has not evolved in hundreds of thousands of years. Biologists searching for the frog’s environmental DNA have discovered traces of its existence in many ponds and water bodies around the valley. It seems that a large population of painted frogs had inhabited the shores of the Hula Lake and its swamps for thousands of years.
The return of the white-tailed eagle to nest in the Hula Reserve is another environmental success story. White-tailed eagles are an endangered species, with a worldwide population of less than 7,000. Israel was the southernmost place where these eagles nested. After the draining of the swamp, the white-tailed eagles vanished from Israel. Attempts to acclimatize them by importing eagles from Europe failed, even though, for many years, a single pair of these imported white-tailed eagles nested in the Hula reserve – but with no offspring. Eventually, it turned out that they were both male eagles. When a female eagle released into the wild as part of a project to get the eagles to nest in Israel, joined the two males, hopes soared. Two chicks hatched, but they became ill and died. Then a new female, released into the wild, arrived in the reserve. The new female paired up with one of the two males, and the couple is now building a large nest on a tree in the Hula reserve. Hopes are high that this single nest will mark the white-tailed eagle’s return to nest in the Hula Valley.

Fish Ladders

The Hula reserve is a contrived natural space. It exists as long as human beings continue to manage it. The reserve water supply is artificial, its water level is carefully controlled, and the infrastructure of embankments and dams is maintained continuously. The reserve was created following public pressure from a few environmentalists fighting to preserve the swamp and lake’s wildlife. However, the nature reserve, established on the area that used to be the lake, could not maintain the swampland’s plants on the peat floor of the swamp.
Outside the reserve, in the drained swampland, the peat dried up, caught fire, and blew away as dust and ashes during the summer windstorms. Every year the height of the Hula Valley floor sank. The nature reserve, buffered behind its embankments, remained at the level of the former lake. Today, the nature reserve is two meters higher than the former swamp’s peat covered floor, disconnected from the rest of the Hula Valley.
The the isolation of the reserve’s ecosystem is detrimental to both the reserve and the valley’s flora and fauna. A few years ago, an area north of the nature reserve, flooded due to extreme winter rains, and was added to the nature reserve. This new area has now been connected to the valley and its water systems, with the aid of “fish ladders” – serpentine water channels that gently descend from the reserve to the Jordan River and the valley floor. The fish immediately caught on to the ladder and started using it, as did the herons and egrets that stand above the ladder trying to catch the fish.

Buffaloes vanished from Israel with the swamps. Following the Six-Day War, a herd of buffalo was discovered in the Bethsaida Valley, north of the Sea of Galilee. The animals were transferred to the Hula Reserve.

There is no doubt that the reserve must be part of the Hula Valley’s ecological system, as this connectivity is crucial to the environment. Otters are an excellent example of this. The otter population in the valley has been diminishing since fish farming was discontinued in the 1990s. The surviving otters scuttled to the nature reserve, where they could find fish in safe surroundings. Otters, which feed on fish, are timid animals and are challenging to see. Over the years, otter sightings have been occurred from self-operating field cameras and the prominent territorial markings, which they leave on stones and rocks near the water. From these sightings, it seems that the otter population occurred in the Hula Valley and the rest of the country is precarious.
Many of the surviving otters are run over as they try to cross the roads. They have to do this as the Hula Valley roads cross over the streams and canals, forcing the animals to leave the riverbed and try the tarmac, usually at night. One attempt to help the otters and other wildlife in the valley has been to create dry shelves under the bridges. These were built into the water conduits under the roads, allowing the animals to continue along the riverbed without ascending to the road.
Connectivity is a keyword in the attempt to conserve biological diversity along the waterways, from the Jordan River sources down to the Sea of Galilee. A survey conducted along the 90 kilometers of canals in the Hula Valley discovered hundreds of obstacles that partially or fully block fish passage. The modern blockages to the waterways are in sharp contrast to the description of the Jordan River in January 1869, by the Scottish adventurer John MacGregor. He had arrived at the Hula Valley with his canoe – the Rob Roy, planning to descend the Jordan from the Hula to the Sea of Galilee. MacGregor points out that “During the whole course of the Jordan from source to end there does not seem to be one notable cascade or regular fall” (The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red Sea & Gennesareth). MacGregor’s free-running Jordan does not exist today, and fish cannot migrate during the winter from the Sea of Galilee to the Hula Valley to reproduce.

Wild Water Buffaloes

The largest animals in the Hula Swamp were the water buffalo, a large bovid that likes to wallow in the mud. Buffaloes vanished from the landscapes of the Land of Israel together with the swamps. Following the Six-Day War, a herd of buffalo was discovered, roaming in the Bethsaida Valley, north of the Sea of Galilee. The animals were transferred to the Hula Reserve. In a large swamp or lake, damage caused by buffalo churning up mud from the swamp floor is negligible. However, in the pocket-sized Hula Reserve, the damage was significant. Eventually, the herd was moved to a fenced-off area, and local Baladi cattle were introduced into the reserve to control vegetation. Baladi cattle, which had vanished from Israel with modern agriculture, were found roaming the Golan Heights after the Six Day War and in Judea and Samaria’s remote villages. Just like buffalo, Baladi cattle is good for keeping the reserve clear of invasive plants – but, unlike buffalo, they do not enter the water. It also turns out that Baladi cows are very fertile, and today Israeli cow stock is being improved with the genes of Baladi from the reserve.
The Hula Swamp was a balanced wetland. In winter, when rainwater gushed down the riverbeds, the swamp expanded, flooding the areas around it. In summer, the swamp shrank back to size. This ecosystem was beneficial for certain kinds of plants – especially papyrus (Cyperus papyrus) that formed vast swamp stands. Papyrus in the Hula Swamp, the northernmost distribution point for the plant, flourished on the swamp’s peat floor. When the swamp was drained, the papyrus shrank and never recovered.
At the beginning of the 1990s, a plan was hatched to re-flood some of the original swamp areas. The area chosen was the lowest part of the valley, a place where the peat had dried up and which frequently suffered from underground fires. This area could not be used for agriculture. The idea to re-flood this area was part of an attempt to control nitrates from contaminating the Sea of Galilee. A canal was designed to collect the excess water from the fields and divert it to the re-flooded area. To prevent water seeping from the fields straight into the Jordan River, a plastic barrier was inserted into the peat so that water would flow to the canal and not to the Jordan River.
In 1995 the canal to the Agamon, as the re-flooded area would be called, was opened, and a new lake came into being. That same year the Sea of Galilee’s water balance was overturned. Once nitrates from the peat fields were prevented from reaching the Sea of Galilee, the lake filled with massive blue-green algae areas (actually a bacteria called Cyanobacteria), some of which were toxic. It turned out that the Sea of Galilee needed nitrates for a healthy ecological balance.
The farmers of the moshavim, who had given up their lands to create the Agamon, hoped that hotels and tourist facilities around the new lake would generate a new source of income These ideas had many opponents, especially from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, which managed to stall the plan for a few years. In 2007 the “Peat Convention” committed the state to keep the peat wet so that it would not catch fire; together with the Agamon its seemed that a solution has been reached to mitigate some of the damage done by the draining of the swamp. However, it soon turned out that wetlands cannot be restored by simply trying to reverse the damage caused by human intervention.

At the beginning of the 1990s, a plan was hatched to re-flood some of the original swamp areas. The area chosen was a place where the peat had dried up and which frequently suffered from underground fires.

Cranes and Pelicans

Following the creation of the Agamon, thousands of migrating cranes began arriving in the Hula Valley, Cranes summer in Eastern Europe and winter in Eastern Africa. They are strong flyers and can actually cover the whole distance from Europe to Africa without stopping. However, if they can, they prefer to break the long trip into segments, descending in flat areas where they can sleep in shallow waters and find fodder. Cranes feed on agricultural residue and eat everything. When the crops cultivated in the Hula Valley were changed from cotton and fish ponds to peanuts, corn, peas, chickpeas, and almonds, cranes discovered a food bonanza.
The first flocks arrive at the end of Autumn, feeding mainly on the residues in the peanut fields after the harvest and preventing the rodent population’ growth. However, once the peanut residues are finished, the cranes progress from peanuts to the other winter crops, causing much damage.
In the 1990s, cranes were rarely sighted in Israel. There were only a few pairs in the valleys of the north, less than one thousand cranes in total. However, peanuts and the Agamon were a blessing for the cranes. In 2020 the farmers decided to open a crane feeding station at the Agamon to get them away from the fields. The cranes loved the new arrangements, and their numbers increased dramatically. In 2017 fifty thousand cranes descended on Israel, thirty thousand in the Hula Valley alone. The crane feeding station at the Agamon soon became a major tourist attraction, with nearly half a million visitors making their way to the north to see the cranes.
More cranes meant more fodder, and soon the price of feeding the cranes became prohibitive. Initial attempts were made to cut down on the feeding, start feeding later, and change the crop rotation to diminish the number of cranes flocking to the Hula Valley. This made it difficult to predict if visitors would be able to see cranes at the Agamon. Instead of the cranes, it was the number of visitors that decreased. The crane project had turned into a fiasco. Last year, the feeding station’s operation was curtailed, and today the Hula Valley is being weaned of the cranes.

Following the creation of the Agamon, thousands of migrating cranes began arriving in the Hula Valley, descending in flat areas where they can sleep in shallow waters and find fodder.

Pelicans are a different story. Pelicans cannot, like cranes, fly over water. They keep to the same migration route from the Danube Delta to Eastern Africa year after year. The pelican is the heaviest of all migratory birds. Because of its weight, it has to stop, feed and rest along the way. In the last decades, water sources where the pelicans used to stop are dwindling in Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. The Hula Valley has become one of the last resorts for the pelicans migrating over the Middle Eastern route, with the pelicans arriving exhausted, hungry, and tired.
Fifty thousand pelicans arrived in Israel last year. Pelicans fish in groups with the single pelican eating an average of 800 grams of fish a day. In the last few years, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel have been monitoring the number of pelicans arriving and leaving the country. In an attempt to get flocks away from the fishponds the INPA stocks non-commercial fish in the Hula reserve and in the Hefer Valley. There are still quite a few pelicans that come to the fish ponds, but, in contrast to the cranes, the number of pelicans wintering in Israel is decreasing and efforts are ongoing to save the world’s largest migratory bird.
Wetlands carry some of the world’s widest variety of plants and animals. However, only in the last fifty years have we learned that they need to be preserved and not turned into farmland. Draining the Hula Valley was a major environmental mistake and a lesson in human humility. Today efforts are being made to try to correct the damage. However, a lot has still to be learned about intervening with Nature, even when these are attempts to repair damage already done.

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s journey to the Land of Israel was much more than a dangerous trip to a remote part of the world. It was a rite of passage for the charismatic mystic who would admonish his followers to disregard all the teachings he made before the voyage

Dan Manor

During the eighteenth century, the belief that a voyage to the Holy Land has profound mystical implications motivated many Jews to undertake the dangerous journey to Ottoman Palestine. These attributes of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, reinforced by actual immigration, played a significant role in the emergence of new ideas in the Jewish world, and especially in the development of the Hasidic Movement.
The cornerstone of the Hasidic engrossment in these voyages was the mysterious attempt of the Ba’al Shem Tov – Master of the Good Name – to travel to Eretz Yisrael in the 1740s. Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba’al Shem Tov, is traditionally accepted as the founder of the Hasidic Movement. However, his biography, as well as his trip to the Holy Land, is shrouded in legend. From Medziboz in Ukraine, the Besht, as the Ba’al Shem Tov is acronymically called, set out, with his daughter Adel and his attendant, Hirsh Sofer, to Istanbul, to take a ship to the Land of Israel.
The Besht arrived in Istanbul on Passover eve. However, when he planned to take a ship to Palestine, a mystical force held him back, warning him that he had to return to Ukraine for the good of his community. On the way back, this time by ship across the Black Sea, the vessel ran into stormy weather. Adel fell overboard; the Besht was imprisoned but managed to escape. These motives of storms, danger of enslavement, and evil forces that try to prevent the voyage all have mystical meanings that appear in many of the accounts of Hasidic journeys to the Land of Israel.

Objections for this deep spiritual ascending of the soul were considered meniyot – hindrances, sent by the forces of darkness

Even though the Besht failed to reach the Holy Land, he encouraged his relatives and close circle to settle in the Land of Israel. In 1747, probably a short time after the Besht’s attempt, his brother in law, Gershon of Kutov, led a small group of Hasidic families that settled in Hebron, and later Jerusalem. In 1764, Nahman of Horodenka, whose son married the Besht’s granddaughter, and Menahem Mendel of Premishlan settled in Safed, and later Tiberias. Thirteen years later, Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk and Abraham of Kalisk led the first Hasidic Aliyah, over 300 people, who settled in Safed, Tiberias, and Pekein in Upper Galilee.

The Ascent of the Tzadik

Half a century after the voyage of the Besht, his great-grandson, Nahman ben Simhah, known as Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, decided to set out for the Holy Land. At the age of 26, he already had eight children and a small circle of followers.
On the eve of Passover 1798, the 26-year-old Nahman ben Simhah announced his plans to depart for Eretz Israel. The declared purpose of the journey was to commune with his grandfather, Nahman of Horodenka, buried in the cemetery of Tiberias.
Objections for this deep spiritual ascending of the soul were considered meniyot – hindrances, sent by the forces of darkness to prevent Nahman from fulfilling the spiritual mission that would hasten the days of redemption.
“As long as I breathe I will deliver my soul and ascend to the Land of Israel,” he explained to his protesting wife: “You can find work as a cook, the older girls as household servants and their younger sister can be taken into someone’s house out of pity. I shall sell everything in the house to cover expenses for the journey.”
The account of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s journey to the Land of Israel was recorded by his closest follower Nathan Nemirov, after Rabbi Nahman’s death, and is based on recollections shared with Nathan by Simeon, Rabbi Nahman’s companion on the trip.

Rabbi Nahman later explained that this was an essential part of the journey, part of the necessary descent of the Tzadik, to prepare for the ascent to the Holy Land

Rabbi Nahman’s announcement of his decision to travel was preceded by a mysterious journey, to the town Kamenets-Podolsk, known as a center of the much-hated Frankist Movement, an extreme Shabbatean offspring. As no Frankists still lived in the town, it seems that the visit had mystical connotations of purifying the souls of the long-gone Frankists. The idea of the Rebbe, the Tzadik, as a redeemer of souls is purely Sabbatean; an ascend to the most sacred levels must start with a descend to purify the most defiled of human space.
A month after his announcement, on May 4, 1798, Rabbi Nahman and Simeon set out from Medevedka, Ukraine. They traveled overland to Nikolayev 270 kilometers to the south and found passage on a barge carrying wheat down the Dnieper River to Odessa. From Odessa they took a ship to Istanbul on a stormy four-day voyage.
While waiting for the steamship to Jaffa, Rabbi Nahman started behaving strangely. “He went about barefoot, without a belt, and without a top hat. He would go about in his indoor clothing, running around the market like a child. There he would play war games, as children do.”
Rabbi Nahman later explained that this was an essential part of the journey, part of the necessary descent of the Tzadik, to prepare for the ascent to the Holy Land. When a group of Hassidim from Ukraine arrived in the city, led by Rabbi Zeev Wolf of Charny-Ostrog, a disciple of the Maggid of Miedzyrzec, Nahman warned his disciple not to reveal his identity to them.

A Stormy Arrival

In May 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte set sail from Toulouse to conquer the East and sever England’s hold on India. A large French fleet, carrying an invasion force of 35,000 soldiers, made its way across the Mediterranean to Alexandria, trying to dodge the English navy under the command of Horatio Nelson. As the battle in the Eastern Mediterranean raged, the Jewish community in Istanbul announced a ban on journeys to the land of Israel.
“Our master did not pay any attention to this,” writes Nemirov, “he wanted to risk his life. He said to the one who accompanied him: know that I want to place myself in danger, even great and terrible danger. However, I do not want to risk your life. Therefore, if you want, take money for expenses and return home in peace. I shall travel on alone, unbeknown to the people of Istanbul. For I risk my life come what may.” Simeon declined and stayed on.
Following the request of a well respected Sephardic sage from Jerusalem, the Istanbul Jewish community permitted one last ship to sail for Jaffa, taking Rabbi Nahman and Simeon to the Holy Land. As they approached Jaffa, the ship ran into a storm.

Making their way to the harbor, the two Hasids who spoke no Arabic or Turkish tried to find their ship. By mistake, they boarded a Turkish battleship

“Everyone cried out to God… but our master sat in silence… when the wife of the Rabbi of Khotin, a learned woman, who had been chanting and praying all night asked him why he was silent, he said: by this, you will be tested. If you are still, the waters of the sea will become still as well.” The passengers followed his counsel, the storm abated, and a fortuitous wind blew them into the port of Jaffa. Rabbi Nahman, in his strange clothes, was not allowed to disembark. The port officials were suspicious that he might be a French spy and refused to let him off the ship. He remained on board proceeding northward and disembarked at Haifa on Monday, September 10, 1798 – the eve of Rosh Hashana.
When the Hasids in Tiberias learned that the great-grandson of the Besht was in Haifa, they petitioned him to come to Tiberias and pray with the community during the High Holidays. Nahman refused. He wanted to spend the holy days of the beginning of the year by himself in contemplation.
After the festive Rosh Hashana dinner, Nahman sunk into a deep depression and announced his wish to depart immediately from Eretz Israel. During this time of deep melancholy, a strange incident developed. An Arab in Haifa took a liking to Rabbi Nahman and began visiting him regularly at his quarters. Failing to gain Rabbi Nahman’s affection, he challenged him to a duel. Rabbi Nahman and Simeon hid in the home of the Rabbi of Charny-Ostrog, who had arrived in Haifa with them. The Arab was appeased, and Rabbi Nahman began to feel better. After a month in Haifa, he left for Tiberias, where he was joyously received.
Rabbi Nahman spent the winter in Tiberias, studying Kabbalah and praying on the grave of his grandfather, and the graves of Rabbi Shimeon Bar Yohai in Meiron, Rabbi Ashkenazi Luria in Safed, and other sages in Galilee. The news that the great-grandson of the Besht was in the land soon spread to the Four Holy Cities and Hasids from around the country flocked to hear him teach.

Acre Under Siege

Napoleon’s forces arrived in Galilee in March 1799. After capturing Jaffa, at the beginning of March, Napoleon advanced along the coast, reaching Haifa ten days later. Rabbi Nahman understood that it would soon be impossible to leave, and he and Simeon headed for Acre, arriving in the city on Friday, March 15, three days before the first French troops appeared before the walls. He hoped to find a ship flying the flag of neutral Ragusa. In Acre, pandemonium ruled. The news of Napoleon’s massacre of the population of Jaffa, coupled with the announcement of the Turkish governor of Acre, Jazzar Pasha, that all civilians should leave the town by Sunday, resulted in a rush for the harbor. In the last possible moment, on Sunday, March 17, Rabbi Nahman and Simeon managed to book passage on a Turkish merchant vessel.
Making their way to the harbor, the two Hasids who spoke no Arabic or Turkish tried to find their ship. By mistake, they boarded a Turkish battleship, that as soon as it left the harbor, was engaged by a French warship. Rabbi Nahman and Simeon, on a ship embroiled in a raging battle, hid in a small cabin afraid to be discovered by the Turkish sailors and thrown into the sea. Their only help was the ship’s cook, who took pity on them and brought them coffee and biscuits twice a day.
Once away from the shore and out of range of the French warships, they ran into a storm. The ship began taking on water, and all excess cargo was thrown overboard. The small cabin where the two stowaways were hiding began to fill with water. To escape drowning, they climbed on top of a large cabinet and prayed in terror as the sailors fought to get control of the ship.
After four weeks at sea, on the eve of Passover, the ship sailed into the harbor of Rhodes. Rabbi Nahman and Simeon, now in the hands of the ship’s captain, were ransomed from slavery by the Jewish community. The ship’s captain, they found out, had a reputation of enslaving and murdering captives he could not sell.
The rabbis of Rhodes were honored to have the Besht’s descendant among them. After spending Passover in Rhodes, they were put on a fast vessel that took them to Istanbul in three days. In Istanbul, it turned out that their papers were not in order, and they had to bribe the officials to let them continue on their way. They took a ship to Galati, ran into a storm during which most of the passengers drowned. They arrived home after traveling overland from Galati via Jassy sometime in early summer, 1799.
Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s voyage was a rite of passage. A dangerous journey that would reveal hidden secrets and insights reserved for the true Tzadik. The trip was a turning point in his life. It was only after his return, at the age of 27, that he agreed to become a public figure proclaiming that any teachings of his before the voyage should be deleted and forgotten. “Where ever I go, I am going to Eretz Israel” became one of his most famous sayings.

Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav’s voyage was a rite of passage. A dangerous journey that would reveal hidden secrets and insights reserved for the true Tzadik

Nathan Nemirov, in his account of the trip, details his Rabbi’s reasons for making the voyage; “The hope of receiving some revealed knowledge at the grave of his grandfather – and also some higher form of insight and illumination that can be had only through a journey to the Holy Land.” The dangers encountered along the way gave the voyage a higher spiritual meaning.
In 1802 at the age of 30, Rabbi Nahman settled in Bratslav, where he spent most of the remaining eight years of his life. In 1810, stricken with tuberculosis and ailing, he journeyed to Uman, where he had chosen to be buried. Despite his illness, he celebrated Rosh Hashanah with several hundred followers. During the first day of the festival, his situation deteriorated seriously, and he coughed large quantities of blood. Nevertheless, despite his great weakness, he gave his traditional teaching on the second evening, speaking for many hours. It was to be his last lesson. Eighteen days later, on October 16, 1810 – the fourth day of the festival of Succot – Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav passed away. He was buried in the old cemetery of Uman.
On the last Rosh Hashana of his life, Rabbi Nachman stressed to his followers the importance of being with him for that holiday in particular. After his death, an annual Rosh Hashana pilgrimage to the Rabbi’s gravesite was initiated. Until 1917, the pilgrimage, called the Rosh Hashana Kibbutz, drew thousands of Hasidim from Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and even Poland. Following the Russian Revolution, the pilgrimage was outlawed, and only a few followers managed to clandestinely get to the grave on Rosh Hashana. Following the 1989 fall of the Soviet Union, the gates were reopened, and since then, over thirty thousand Hasids attend the Rosh Hashana Kibbutz every year.
This year, due to Covid-19, authorities in the Ukraine and Israel prohibited the gathering. The Hasids waited for a miracle. Still, none appeared to prevent what Rabbi Nahman would have considered a miniya.

Legend has it that Noah’s son Japheth founded Jaffa. While that cannot be proven, there is no doubt about the antiquity of this port city, which appears not only in the Bible, but also in the annals of the pharaohs of Egypt and Greek mythology. Hasmoneans, Romans, Crusaders, Turks, French, and British fought over it, each leaving their own mark on the city.

Early Christian pilgrimage literature describes Jaffa as the city that Noah’s son Japheth established after the flood and cite that as the source of its name and the name of its main thoroughfare (Yefet Street). Other sources claim the name stems from the Hebrew word for beautiful (yaffeh).
Long before the Christians arrived on the scene, pharaoh Thutmose III listed Jaffa among the cities he captured in his campaign against the Canaanite kings in 1478 BCE. He conquered the city with a ruse similar to the famous trick behind the fall of Troy. When the Egyptian army failed to force its way into Jaffa, it feigned a retreat and left 500 large wicker breadbaskets outside the city walls. The starving people of Jaffa carried the baskets into the city. When night fell, Egyptian soldiers who had hidden under the bread in the baskets emerged and opened the city gates to allow the rest of the army in.
The el-Amarna letters, the royal Egyptian archive from the time of Akhenaton, reveal that ties existed between Egypt and Jaffa in the fourteenth century BCE as well. The archive includes letters the king of Jaffa sent to the pharaoh.

This connection continued in the following century, judging by the monumental city gate bearing the name and title of Ramses II that excavations of the ancient tell of Jaffa revealed. Another interesting source from the time of Ramses II is the Papyrus Anastasi I, an ancient parchment that the British Museum acquired from a Greek antique dealer named Giovanni Anastasi. It contains a detailed account of a high-ranking Egyptian official’s journey from Egypt to Lebanon. The official stopped in Jaffa on the way and provided a report about the city over thirty-three centuries ago.
Despite the legend, the first time Jaffa is mentioned in the Bible is not in relation to the flood, but much later as a border marker for the tribe of Dan (Joshua 19:46). Hiram, king of Tyre, demonstrated his loyalty to king Solomon by sending his contribution towards the construction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, the cedars of Lebanon, via the Jaffa port (Chronicles II 2:16). The Book of Ezra relates that the cedars for the Second Temple followed the same route (3:7). The prophet Jonah also set sail from Jaffa for his fateful meeting with the whale. Sennacherib, the king of Assyria mentioned in the Bible, lists Jaffa as one of the cities he conquered during his military campaign in the year 701 BCE.
It is unclear who resided in and ruled Jaffa during this time. It could have been Phoenicians from Sidon who controlled the coast as far south as Jaffa or perhaps Philistines, who arrived in the vicinity in the thirteenth century BCE. In the fifth century BCE, the archaeological record indicates that Eshmunezer, king of Sidon, ruled Jaffa, at least according to an inscription on his memorial stone. The city seems to have remained in Phoenician hands for some time as a Canaanite inscription found in Jaffa documents the building of a temple there dedicated to the Sidonite god Ashmun. The Roman historian Pliny, writing in the first century CE, described Jaffa as a city of the Phoenicians.

The conquests of Alexander the Great, in the fourth century BCE, rearranged the population and kingdoms along the coast. Alexander’s troops captured Jaffa in 333 BCE, on the way to conquering Egypt, and Greek colonists soon settled in the city, calling it Ioppe in honor of the mythological daughter of Aeolus, god of the winds. Also known as Cassiopeia, she was famous for her beauty and was the consort of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia. Jaffa and Cassiopeia are the central figures in one of the most famous of ancient Greek myths. Cassiopeia, according to one of the many versions, proclaimed her beauty to be greater than that of the Nereids, the daughters of the sea god, Nereus, and the consorts of the sea god, Poseidon. The Nereids’ complaint prompted Poseidon to send a sea monster to ravage the shores of Ethiopia. In desperation, Cepheus turned to the oracle of Delphi for help. The only way to placate the sea god, the oracle proclaimed, was to tie his and Cassiopeia’s beautiful daughter Andromeda to the rocks in front of the harbor of Jaffa as an offering to the monster.
Accepting this as her fate, Andromeda was chained, naked, to the rocks off the coast. Before any harm befell her, Perseus caught sight of her while flying, on his winged horse Pegasus, above the city on his return from slaughtering the gorgon Medusa. He quickly approached Cassiopeia and Cepheus and struck a deal with them: if he slayed the sea monster before it killed Andromeda, they would give him her hand in marriage. Perseus defeated the monster and returned to Ethiopia with Andromeda to plan the wedding. However, the princess had been betrothed to her uncle Phineus, who asserted his right to marry Andromeda.
A battle ensued. Cepheus and Cassiopeia sided with Phineus. Outnumbered, Perseus understood that he had no choice but to slay his challengers and used Medusa’s head to do so. Following their deaths, Poseidon placed Cepheus and Cassiopeia among the stars, hanging Cassiopeia upside down as punishment for her vanity.
Perseus then wed Andromeda. Their seven children became the rulers of Mycenae. One of their descendants was the Greek hero Hercules.
There are countless versions of this legend. It has inspired many works of art over the ages, and a number of movies, as well as speculation over which of the many large rocks at the entrance to Jaffa harbor was Andromeda’s rock.

Peter’s Vision
After Alexander’s death, his generals split the huge empire he had created. Jaffa became part of the inheritance of Ptolemy and the Ptolemaic empire that he founded in Alexandria. The next two centuries were rife with battles between the Ptolemaic empire centered in Egypt and the Seleucid Empire based in Syria. The latter eventually gained control over Palestine. In the second century BCE, the Seleucids weakened and succumbed to the growing power of Rome, enabling the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom to develop as an independent entity. At the time, Jaffa was an affluent Greek port city and its people did not view these developments favorably. Both the Jewish historian Josephus Flavius and the Book of Maccabees recount that Jaffa’s Jewish population was massacred by its Greek neighbors. In retaliation, Judah Maccabee attacked the city in 160 BCE, but was not able to gain control of it. Thirteen years later, Judah’s brother Jonathan launched another attempt to capture the city. The frightened population opened the city gates to the Jewish forces, but again the Hasmoneans did not manage to remain in control of Jaffa. Finally in 143 BCE, Simon, the third of the Maccabee brothers, captured Jaffa and turned it into the Hasmonean kingdom’s outlet to the sea.
Jaffa remained in Jewish hands for 106 years, until 37 BCE, when Pompey and the legions of Rome conquered it. A large Jewish community of seafarers and merchants remained in the city after the conquest.
A Talmudic tale relates that during the reign of Herod the Great, in the first century BCE, Nicanor, a wealthy Jew from Alexandria, had two huge copper gates made in his hometown for the Second Temple in Jerusalem and sent them there via the Jaffa port. A storm broke out while the ship carrying the gates was at sea, leading the sailors to throw one of the gates into the ocean to lighten the ship’s load. They were about to cast the second gate overboard when Nicanor stepped between the sailors and the gate, insisting that they throw him into the water before the gate. Nicanor’s dedication was rewarded by the immediate abatement of the storm. Furthermore, when the ship docked in Jaffa, the discarded gate miraculously washed up on the shore.
This story, which inspired the name of Jaffa’s The Gates of Nicanor Street, may have some basis in reality. According to Josephus and the Talmud, the outer gate of the Second Temple was known as the Gate of Nicanor. In 1902, a sarcophagus was discovered in Jerusalem with the inscription: “The remains of the children of Nicanor of Alexandria who made the gates.”
Christian sources also mention Jaffa, assigning it a key role in the development of Christianity. The Book of Jonah inspired the concept of the “sign of Jonah,” a sign that Jesus gave in Jerusalem as testimony to his divine mission. Furthermore, just as the biblical prophet Jonah passed through Jaffa, the Christian apostle Simon, the son of Jonah who became known as Peter, visited Jaffa. The New Testament relates that the faithful invited Peter to Jaffa after Tabitha, a god-fearing young girl, died. Peter entered her chamber, asked the mourners gathered there to leave, and “kneeled down, and prayed; and turning him to the body said, Tabitha, arise. And she opened her eyes: and when she saw Peter, she sat up. And he gave her his hand, and lifted her up, and when he had called the saints and widows, presented her alive. And it was known throughout all Joppa; and many believed in the Lord” (Acts 9:40-42).
Peter “tarried many days” (Acts 9:43) in Jaffa, staying at the home of another Simon, Simon the Tanner. There are a variety of traditions about where exactly in Jaffa Simon’s house was located; the Armenian church believes it was on the street in the Old City today known as Simon the Tanner Street, Catholics believe it was where St. Peter’s Church stands today, and the Russian-Orthodox church believes it was in the Orthodox church of Saint Peter near Jaffa in Abu Kabir.
While in Jaffa, messengers arrived from a Roman officer stationed at Caesarea, inviting Peter to visit him. The Roman officer, Cornelius, a god-fearing man, had a vision telling him to summon Peter. At that time, however, Jews did not stay in non-Jews’ homes because of the dietary laws, which created a dilemma for Peter over whether to accept the invitation. The Book of Acts describes the vision that shaped his decision: “Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour: And he became very hungry, and would have eaten: but while they made ready, he fell into a trance, and saw heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him, as if it had been a great sheet knit at the four corners, and let down to the earth: Wherein were all manner of four footed beasts of the earth, and wild beasts, and creeping things, and fowls of the air. And there came a voice to him, Rise, Peter; kill, and eat. But Peter said, Not so, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is common or unclean. And the voice spake unto him again the second time. What God hath cleansed, call not common. This was done thrice: and the vessel was received up again into heaven” (Acts 10:9-16). The message was clear and Peter made his way to Cornelius’ house. This opened the doors for non-Jews to join the church.
The Christian era came to an end in Jaffa in 638 CE, with the Muslim conquest. The new regime established a new regional capital in Ramle and Jaffa’s proximity to Ramle made it a significant port. However, when the power of the Muslim Umayyad dynasty waned and the Abbasid dynasty arose in its stead, the new rulers moved the main capital of the Islamic world from Damascus to Baghdad, turning Palestine and its surroundings into a remote province of the empire.

Crusaders, Mamelukes, and Turks
In the spring of 1099 CE, the knights of the First Crusade advanced along the coastal plain on their campaign to wrest Jerusalem and the holy land from the Muslims. After capturing Caesarea, the Crusaders turned inland and camped near Ramle, inspiring fear in the Muslim population. The residents of Ramle and Jaffa fled and a small Crusader garrison occupied the cities to control the route linking Jerusalem to the sea.
The first Crusader kingdom lasted for 88 years, until the fateful battle in 1187 at the Horns of Hattin, where Saladin defeated and destroyed the Crusader army.
A third crusade, led by Richard the Lionheart, king of England, and Philip II, king of France, set out from Europe to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims. The Crusaders managed to regain a foothold along the coast and take Jaffa, but failed to gain control of Jerusalem. The capital of the new Crusader kingdom was set up in Acre instead.
Richard had left his brother John to rule in his stead while he led the Third Crusade. However, when word of his brother’s misconduct reached him, he prepared to return to England. He met with Saladin in Ramle to sign a peace treaty that delineated the borders of the second Crusader kingdom. Jaffa became the southernmost town of the new kingdom and was reinforced with massive walls and fortifications. Archaeologists have discovered inscriptions in Jaffa that report on the fortifications set up by German emperor Fredrick II. Louis IX of France also contributed fortifications, as well as churches and monasteries.
The days of the second Crusader kingdom were numbered. After Baybars led his fellow Mamelukes, a caste of Egyptian warrior slaves, to victory over the Mongol hordes in the Harod Valley in 1260, he became the new sultan of the Mamluke Empire. Baybars focused his attentions on eliminating the Crusader kingdom. Jaffa fell in 1268. The Christian population of the town was massacred and Jaffa was razed to the ground. All that remained was a small, sparsely populated village on the hill overlooking the small anchorage between the rocks.
The Mamelukes systematically destroyed the cities along the coast so that the Crusaders would not be able to use them as a beachhead. In 1516, when the Ottoman army passed through Jaffa on the way to capturing Egypt, it was reported that the city was unoccupied. The few Christian pilgrims who landed in Jaffa on their way to Jerusalem in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, described the place as a ruin with one or two guard towers and caves in which pilgrims used to huddle in fear, while waiting for a caravan to take them to Jerusalem.
In the eighteenth century, the number of pilgrims arriving in Jaffa grew steadily as did the frequency of Christian pirate raids on the coastal plain. The Ottoman authorities responded by fortifying some of the coastal settlements. In 1703, they built two large towers at the entrance of the Jaffa harbor and garrisoned Ottoman soldiers in it. The improved security measures brought an influx of new settlers to the area. By 1763, Jaffa could boast 400 houses. This growth attracted the attention of Galilee strongman, Daher el-Omar, who occupied the city in 1773. Two years later, the Ottoman governor of Egypt, Muhammad Bey Abu Dhahab, besieged Jaffa and massacred its population.

The Modern Era
In February 1799, after conquering Egypt, Napoleon Bonaparte set his sights on the holy land. His forces crossed the Sinai Peninsula, seized control of Ramle, and on March 3, 1799, set up camp in front of the walls of Jaffa. Three days later, the French army launched its attack on the city. At 4 p.m., Napoleon’s soldiers breached the wall and stormed into Jaffa, where the local garrison engaged them in a fierce battle. Fighting raged from house to house, claiming the lives of hundreds of Ottoman troops. After the battle ceased, the French massacred the surviving inhabitants.
The next day, an epidemic of Bubonic plague broke out in Jaffa, infecting some of the French troops. Napoleon left the wounded and sick soldiers behind in the Armenian monastery in Jaffa and continued his march northward to Acre. Even though Napoleon successfully fought some of his most dazzling battles in the following weeks, Jazzar Pasha, the octogenarian Ottoman governor of Acre, with the aid of the British fleet, stemmed Napoleon’s tide of success. Napoleon was forced to retreat to Egypt. When he passed through Jaffa in the midst of the retreat, he ordered that the wounded and sick soldiers there be poisoned. What happened next is unclear. The French military surgeon allegedly refused to follow his orders and so an Ottoman doctor who had been taken prisoner was entrusted with the gruesome task, which he probably did not carry out. British troops, fighting alongside the Ottoman Turks, who arrived in Jaffa a few days after Napoleon took flight, reported finding the wounded and sick still alive.
After Napoleon’s retreat, the new Turkish governor, Abu Marek, began rebuilding Jaffa. In 1807, Muhammud Abu Nabut was appointed to replace him. Cruel and ruthless, he not only rebuilt the city walls, but also added new wharfs to the harbor, a fort and fortifications, and Jaffa’s main mosque, the Mahmudiya, named in his honor. Nabut’s term in office lasted 11 years, until 1818, and he brought stability, security, and prosperity to Jaffa. The number of vessels calling at the harbor grew annually, together with the number of pilgrims and volume of cargo landing at the port.
In 1831, the ambitious governor of Egypt, Muhammad Ali, and his son, Ibrahim Pasha, seized control of Palestine. He settled families from Egypt in a series of agricultural communities around Jaffa and invited Jews from Turkey and North Africa to settle in Jaffa.
With English assistance, the Turks managed to evict the renegade governor in 1840. However, British aid came with a price; the Ottoman sultan was forced to open his territory to foreign influences. Jaffa subsequently became a center of activity for European powers, the main port of Palestine. With the discovery that the local thick-peeled orange has a long shelf life and can easily be exported, Jaffa turned into a booming center of expanding citrus groves, packing centers, and export warehouses dedicated to the world-famous Jaffa orange.
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 brought about another surge in shipping traffic to the Jaffa Port. In 1892, the railroad between Jaffa and Jerusalem began operating. Jaffa became the economic heart of Palestine and home to an expanding business community and a modern intelligentsia.
Economic prosperity aided the development of new neighborhoods outside the Old City walls. Ajami and Jabaliya rose to the south, Manshiye to the north, and Nuzha and Salame to the east. In the 1870s and 1880s, the walls of the Old City were demolished to accommodate the expanding population and enable additional construction.
The growing prosperity of Jaffa attracted new populations to the town: Christians from Lebanon and Malta; Muslims from Syria and Egypt; Jews from Europe, who were part of the first wave of immigration inspired by modern Zionism, together with Jews from North Africa; and various Christian European organizations that established churches, hospitals, and schools.
In the early 1850s, several Christian families from Germany and the United States founded a small settlement northeast of Jaffa, naming it Mount Hope. An American group from Philadelphia, led by Clorinda Minor, joined them. The members included Johann Adolf Grosssteinbeck, the grandfather of author John Steinbeck. In 1858, Arabs attacked the settlement, murdering the men, raping the women, and burning the buildings. In 1866, another group of Christian Americans followed the charismatic preacher George Jones Adams to the holy land, purchased property near Jaffa, and attempted to establish an agricultural community. This attempt too was unsuccessful and the group sold its land to the Templers, a group of German Christians who founded a series of successful agricultural settlements across the country that flourished until the British expelled the Templers, at the outbreak of World War II.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Jaffa become the center of Zionist settlement activities in Palestine. Hovevei Zion, B’nai B’rith, and the Zionist Organization all opened offices in Jaffa. The first Hebrew secondary school, the Herzliya Gymnasium, was established in 1905, the same year that the future mayor of Tel Aviv, Meir Dizengoff, established the Geulah Company to purchase real estate. In 1908, Arthur Ruppin opened the Zionist Organization’s Palestine Office on Jaffa’s main street. Earlier, in 1887, Jews from Jaffa built the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls of the Old City, Neve Tzedek. Dozens of new Jewish communities followed. In 1909, the neighborhood of Ahuzzat Bayit was established; it eventually became Tel Aviv.

The Twentieth Century
On the eve of World War I, the Ottoman authorities appointed Hassan Bek governor of Jaffa. He led the efforts to transform Jaffa into a modern western city. Old alleyways were expanded and new roads constructed. The Jamal Pasha Boulevard was built together with a new mosque in the Manshiye neighborhood. When the war began, Bek expelled all Jaffa residents who were citizens of enemy states, including many Russian Jews.
The British captured the city in 1917. Under their stewardship, Jaffa became the largest Arab city in Palestine and the center of the Palestinian national movement. Its population grew from 32,000 on the eve of World War I to over 100,000 on the eve of the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. Meanwhile, the development, side by side, of a Jewish and Arab national movement, both with aspirations to the twice promised land, caused relations between Arabs, Jews, and British to deteriorate. The Arab riots in 1921 and 1929, in which many Jews were killed, led many of Jaffa’s Jewish residents to move to the new Jewish community of Tel Aviv. The riots ultimately brought about an official separation of Tel Aviv from Jaffa and its recognition as an independent municipal entity.
Tensions escalated further into the Arab revolt that began in 1936 and changed the face of both Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Striking Arab workers temporarily shut down the Jaffa Port, inspiring the Jews of Tel Aviv to build a new port of their own. In an attempt to bring the revolt to an end, the British bulldozed wide corridors through the narrow, old alleys in the heart of Jaffa’s Old City, so armored cars could access the innermost hideaways of the leaders of the revolt.
In 1947, the British turned the issue of the Palestine Mandate over to the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to accept the United Nations’ Partition Plan for Palestine, which recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and a special international regime in the city of Jerusalem. Jaffa was to become an Arab enclave inside the Jewish state.
As hostilities between Jews and Arabs grew in late 1947, sniper attacks and gunfire intensified along the outskirts of the neighborhoods between Jaffa and Tel Aviv. The British tried to manage the conflict by erecting barricades manned with armed guards between the two cities, but to no avail.
In January 1948, the Lehi underground group, known in English as the Stern Gang, blew up the Saraya building, the Arab administrative headquarters in Jaffa. The blast claimed 21 lives. In April 1948, the Irgun (IZL), another Jewish underground group, set out to take over Manshiye, Jaffa’s northernmost neighborhood. The British intervened to prevent Jaffa from falling into Jewish hands. Even with British protection, Jaffa’s Arab residents feared for their safety. The ensuing weeks saw a mass exodus from Jaffa: by land to Ramle and Jerusalem, and by sea to Gaza and Lebanon.
On May 13, two days before the establishment of the State of Israel, the remaining leadership of Jaffa surrendered the city. The 3,600 remaining Arabs were concentrated in Ajami.
Following the establishment of the State of Israel, Jaffa filled with Jewish immigrants and its harbor became a major entry port for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants pouring into the country from Europe and the Arab world.

In 1950, Jaffa was officially reunited with Tel Aviv. A large part of the Old City was destroyed together with the entire Manshiye neighborhood. When a modern, new port opened in Ashdod, the old Jaffa port became redundant and only a handful of fishermen continued to use it.
In 1961, the Old Jaffa Development Corporation was established to renovate the Old City and turn it into an artists’ colony. Jaffa soon filled with galleries, nightclubs, restaurants, and souvenir shops. But as the years passed, the artists aged and demanded that the nightclubs close and the tourists stop disturbing the tranquility of the alleys under their studios. Entertainment moved to Tel Aviv, leaving Jaffa to deteriorate into poverty.
When Ron Huldai was elected mayor of Tel Aviv in 1998, he decided to make the development and restoration of Jaffa a priority, establishing the Governance of Jaffa to plan and implement the process.
In recent years, Jaffa has been changing. Like many old cities around the world, development of the inner core of the city attracts a more affluent population and causes real-estate prices to rise, making it difficult for the existing population to afford to live there. This process of gentrification is also happening, on a large scale, in Jaffa. Since the new affluent population is largely Jewish, while the existing population is predominantly Arab, political issues are added to the socioeconomic friction.
Jaffa remains one of the most fascinating places in Israel. Even though many of its ancient buildings have been destroyed, there is still much to be seen. The city has a long history, a myriad of architectural styles, and a wealth of trendy places to shop, eat, and barter while gaining new insight into the entwined history of the two peoples residing in this land.