Ben Shemen (, ''lit.'' very fruitful) is a

moshav A moshav (, plural ', "settlement, village") is a type of Israeli village or town or Jewish settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 and 1 ...

in central

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

. Located around four kilometres east of

Lod Lod (, ), also known as Lydda () and Lidd (, or ), is a city southeast of Tel Aviv and northwest of Jerusalem in the Central District of Israel. It is situated between the lower Shephelah on the east and the coastal plain on the west. The ci ...

, it falls under the jurisdiction of

Hevel Modi'in Regional Council Hevel Modi'in Regional Council () is a regional council (Israel), regional council located partly in the Shephelah region and partly in the Central Coastal Plain region of the Central District (Israel), Central District of Israel. It was founded i ...

. In it had a population of .

Etymology

The village's name is taken from

Isaiah Isaiah ( or ; , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "Yahweh is salvation"; also known as Isaias or Esaias from ) was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named. The text of the Book of Isaiah refers to Isaiah as "the prophet" ...

5:1:

Let me sing of my well-beloved, a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well-beloved had a vineyard in a very fruitful hill.

and also reflects the JNF's planting of olive trees in this area.

History

The moshav was founded in 1905 on the land of the former Arab estate of Bayt ‘Arīf. It was one of the first villages established on

Jewish National Fund The Jewish National Fund (JNF; , ''Keren Kayemet LeYisrael''; previously , ''Ha Fund HaLeumi'') is a non-profit organizationProfessor Alon Tal, The Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, The Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben Gurion ...

land. The first Jewish National Fund forest is also located in Ben Shemen. In 1910 Ben Shemen was the site of the Bezalel Artists' Colony (1910), a predecessor to the Ben Shemen youth village. According to a

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Ben Shemen had a population of 90 Jews. Which had increased in the 1931 census to 353 residents, in 30 houses.Mills, 1932, p
19
/ref> In 1923 it was split in two, with a group of trial farms eventually becoming a separate moshav, Kerem Ben Shemen. The Ben Shemen Youth Village was established adjacent to the moshav in 1927 and is today a large

agricultural Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

. In 1945, the lands of Ben Shemen amounted to 2,176 dunams, of which 607 dunams were devoted to

orchards An orchard is an intentional plantation of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit- or nut-producing trees that are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of lar ...

, 947 dunams to field crops, one dunam for

bananas A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – berry (botany), botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa (genus), Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called pla ...

, and 594 dunams were left uncultivated. According to Marom, "Citrus growing remained undeveloped in Ben Shemen, with the youth village specializing in orchards and field crops". During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, Ben Shemen was the site of a British search for weapons. Similar searches were a common British response to Jewish opposition to the

White Paper of 1939 The White Paper of 1939Occasionally also known as the MacDonald White Paper (e.g. Caplan, 2015, p.117) after Malcolm MacDonald, the British Colonial Secretary, who presided over its creation. was a policy paper issued by the British governmen ...

. In 1947 Ben Shemen had a population of 75. The village experienced extensive damage during the early days of the

1948 Arab–Israeli war The 1948 Arab–Israeli War, also known as the First Arab–Israeli War, followed the 1947–1948 civil war in Mandatory Palestine, civil war in Mandatory Palestine as the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. The civil war becam ...

and had to be reconstructed.

Immigrants Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

from

Romania Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...

joined the moshav in 1952. Some houses were built by Bezalel Academy of Art and Design founder Boris Schatz.

Archaeology

During road-work near Ben Shemen in 1975, a burial cave containing three ossuaries was found. An

Aramaic Aramaic (; ) is a Northwest Semitic language that originated in the ancient region of Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, the southern Levant, Sinai, southeastern Anatolia, and Eastern Arabia, where it has been continually written a ...

funerary inscription on one of them mentions "Levi son of Menashe" and is dated to the late

Second Temple period The Second Temple period or post-exilic period in Jewish history denotes the approximately 600 years (516 BCE – 70 CE) during which the Second Temple stood in the city of Jerusalem. It began with the return to Zion and subsequent reconstructio ...

, probably during the first century BCE or CE. Additionally, a boulder that collapsed from the cave wall had a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

funerary inscription written in red, which according to its style, was probably inscribed during the 2nd or 3rd centuries CE. Di Segni suggested that the appearance of the Hebrew name "''Yo'ezer''" on the inscription indicates that the area had not been completely cleared of Jews after the

Jewish–Roman wars The Jewish–Roman wars were a series of large-scale revolts by the Jews of Judaea against the Roman Empire between 66 and 135 CE. The conflict was driven by Jewish aspirations to restore the political independence lost when Rome conquer ...

. Jews who did not participate in the revolt may have survived in the area, converting to

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, which states that Jesus in Christianity, Jesus is the Son of God (Christianity), Son of God and Resurrection of Jesus, rose from the dead after his Crucifixion of Jesus, crucifixion, whose ...

and preserving the family name for generations to come. Others have argued that, despite its rarity, a Christian usage of an

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

name doesn't require additional explanation.

Gallery

File:Al-Haditha 1942.jpg, Ben Shemen 1942 1:20,000 File:Beit Nabala 1945.jpg, Ben Shemen 1945 1:250,000 File:Lydda and Ramla area - 9 July 1948.PNG, Depopulated villages in the Ramle Subdistrict File:בן שמן - מראה כללי.-JNF043819.jpeg, Ben Shemen 1927 File:בן שמן - מראה-JNF026408.jpeg, Ben Shemen 1928 File:Ben Shemen ii.jpg, Ben Shemen 1948. Photograph from

Palmach The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Phalanges/Companies") was the elite combined strike forces and sayeret unit of the Haganah, the paramilitary organization of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of th ...

archive File:Ben Shemen iii.jpg, Ben Shemen. 1948. Used as a base by the

Yiftach Brigade The 11th Brigade (also known as the Yiftach Brigade) is a reserves unit in the Israel Defense Forces, composed mainly of fighters that completed their compulsory service in the Egoz Unit, Unit 621 – 'Egoz'. History In the 1948 Arab–Israeli ...

File:Ben Shemen i.jpg, Ben Shemen 1948. Dining room File:Ben Shemen iv.jpg, Ben Shemen. Harvest File:Ben Shemen v.jpg, Ben Shemen. Processing wool File:Ben Shemen vi.jpg, Ben Shemen being evacuated in early 1948

Notable residents

* Benjamin Elazari Volcani * Aharon Yadlin *

Shimon Peres Shimon Peres ( ; ; born Szymon Perski, ; 2 August 1923 – 28 September 2016) was an Israeli politician and statesman who served as the prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the president of Israel from 2007 t ...

References

External links

Ben Shemen, Cross-Israel Highway: Reproduction of an oil press
Israel Antiquities Authority {{Authority control Moshavim Populated places established in 1905 1905 establishments in the Ottoman Empire Jewish villages in the Ottoman Empire Jewish villages in Mandatory Palestine Populated places in Central District (Israel) Romanian-Jewish culture in Israel