Zanoah () 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 adjacent to

Beit Shemesh Beit Shemesh () is a city council (Israel), city located approximately west of Jerusalem in Israel's Jerusalem District. A center of Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodoxy, Beit Shemesh has a population of 170,683 as of 2024. The city is named afte ...

, it falls under the jurisdiction of

Mateh Yehuda Regional Council Mateh Yehuda Regional Council (, ''Mo'atza Azorit Mateh Yehuda'', ) is a Regional council (Israel), regional council in the Jerusalem District of Israel. In 2024 it was home to 51,125 people. The name of the regional council stems from the fact t ...

. In it had a population of .

Modern history

The village was established in 1950 by

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

Yemen Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...

, and was initially named ''Dayraban Gimel'' after the nearby depopulated

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

village of

Dayr Aban Dayr Aban (also spelled Deir Aban; ) was a Palestinian people, Palestinian Arab village in the Jerusalem Subdistrict, Mandatory Palestine, Jerusalem Subdistrict, located on the lower slope of a high ridge that formed the western slope of a mount ...

. Subsequently, the moshav was renamed Zanoah after the ancient biblical settlement in the

Judean Lowlands The Shephelah () or Shfela (), or the Judaean Foothills (), is a transitional region of soft-sloping rolling hills in south-central Israel stretching over between the Judaean Mountains and the Coastal Plain. The different use of the term "Judea ...

, mentioned in the

Book of Joshua The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian captivity, Babylonian exile. It tells of the ...

(15:33-34). It is possible that this settlement appears in the Amarna letters under the name "Zano". The ancient settlement is identified with ''Khurbet Zanuʻ'', 1km south of the moshav. In the following years the founders left and were replaced by immigrants from

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

Education

The Beit Shemesh Yeshiva is located in Zanoah. Most of the students are from Ramat Beit Shemesh Alef. Aside from

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

study, the curriculum includes English language and mathematics, and unlike many such institutions in Israel today, students study for the

Bagrut Te'udat Bagrut (, ''lit.'' "graduation certificate", Arabic: شهادة بجروت) is a certificate that attests that a student has successfully passed Israel's high school matriculation examination. Bagrut is a prerequisite for higher education ...

matriculation exams. From 2004 to 2015, when it closed, Zanoah was also the home of Yeshivat Yesodei HaTorah, which offered a

gap year A gap year, also known as a sabbatical year, is a period of time when students take a break from their studies, usually after completing high school or before beginning graduate school. During this time, students engage in a variety of educatio ...

program for international English-speaking students.

History of archaeological site

The old site lies on a hill, adjacent to the watercourse Nahal Zanoah, a stream that runs north and drains into

Nahal Sorek Naḥal Sorek (; ), also Soreq, is one of the largest, most important drainage basins in the Judean Hills. It is mentioned in the Book of Judges 16:4 of the Bible as the border between the ancient Philistines and the Tribe of Dan of the ancient ...

. Although listed in Joshua 15:34 as being a city in the plain, it is actually partly in the hill country, partly in the plain. The ruins of ''Khurbet Zanuʻ'' which lie on a high hill south of the moshav are thought to be the ancient village of Zanoah, mentioned in Egyptian letters, later part of the

tribe of Judah According to the Hebrew Bible, the tribe of Judah (, ''Shevet Yehudah'') was one of the twelve Tribes of Israel, named after Judah (son of Jacob), Judah, the son of Jacob. Judah was one of the tribes to take its place in Canaan, occupying it ...

(

Joshua Joshua ( ), also known as Yehoshua ( ''Yəhōšuaʿ'', Tiberian Hebrew, Tiberian: ''Yŏhōšuaʿ,'' Literal translation, lit. 'Yahweh is salvation'), Jehoshua, or Josue, functioned as Moses' assistant in the books of Book of Exodus, Exodus and ...

15:34), and in the "

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 ...

... reinhabited," as recorded in the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

(

Nehemiah Nehemiah (; ''Nəḥemyā'', "Yahweh, Yah comforts") is the central figure of the Book of Nehemiah, which describes his work in rebuilding Jerusalem during the Second Temple period as the governor of Yehud Medinata, Persian Judea under Artaxer ...

3:13). During the 1st-century CE, the village was known by the name ''Zenoha''. An

overhead power line An overhead power line is a structure used in electric power transmission and distribution to transmit electrical energy along large distances. It consists of one or more conductors (commonly multiples of three) suspended by towers or poles. ...

now runs through the ancient site. The site reeks with antiquity, with the signs of an old settlement everywhere. The area of the old settlement is extensive, with razed structures that once stood as walls and houses. Shards of broken pottery are strewn extensively throughout the grounds, with several open-mouthed cisterns and antres. Zanoah is mentioned in the

Book of Nehemiah The Book of Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible largely takes the form of a first-person memoir by Nehemiah, a Hebrew prophet and high official at the Persian court, concerning the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile and the ...

as one of the towns resettled by the Jewish exiles returning from the

Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were forcibly relocated to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The deportations occurred ...

and who helped to construct the walls of Jerusalem during the reign of the Persian king,

Artaxerxes I Artaxerxes I (, ; ) was the fifth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, from 465 to December 424 BC. He was the third son of Xerxes I. In Greek sources he is also surnamed "Long-handed" ( ''Makrókheir''; ), allegedly because his ri ...

(Xerxes). Nehemiah further records that those returnees were the very descendants of the people who had formerly resided in the town before their banishment from the country, who had all returned to live in their former places of residence. Whether the reference there refers to the Zanoah in the

Shefelah The Shephelah () or Shfela (), or the Judaean Foothills (), is a transitional region of soft-sloping rolling hills in south-central Israel stretching over between the Judaean Mountains and the Coastal Plain. The different use of the term "Jude ...

(Joshua 15:34) or to the Zanoah in the Judaean mountains (now known as ''Khirbet Zanuta'') is now unclear, as there were two places by the same name. Based on the archaeological evidence, Zanoah in the Shefelah was a settled village during the Persian period. According to the

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

, compiled in the 2nd-century CE (Munich MS., ''Menahot'' 83b), the finest of the wheat used to grow in the valley adjacent to Zanoah, from whence it was taken for the ''Omer'' offering in the

Temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (30 May AD 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilius, was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist from the Roman province of Syria Palaestina. In about AD 314 he became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima. ...

(3rd–4th century CE) mentions Zanoah in his ''

Onomasticon Onomasticon may refer to: *Onomasticon (Eusebius) *Onomasticon of Amenope *Onomasticon of Joan Coromines *Onomasticon of Julius Pollux Julius Pollux (, ''Ioulios Polydeukes''; fl. 2nd century) was a Greeks, Greek scholar and rhetorician from Naucr ...

'' as a village "within the borders of Eleutheropolis (Beit Gubrin) on the way to Ailia (Jerusalem)," and which was still inhabited in his day. C.R. Conder and H.H. Kitchener described the ruins of ''Khurbet Zanûa'', visited by them in 1881. An archaeological survey of the site was conducted in 2008 by Pablo Betzer on behalf of the

Israel Antiquities Authority The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA, ; , before 1990, the Israel Department of Antiquities) is an independent Israeli governmental authority responsible for enforcing the 1978 Law of Antiquities. The IAA regulates excavation and conservatio ...

(IAA).

Excavators and Excavations Permit for Year 2008
Survey Permit # S-44 The site has never been excavated.

Gallery of the nearby Zanoah Ruin (Kh. Zanua)

File:Old house in the Old Zanoah Ruin.jpg, Zanoah ruin, old house of recycled stones File:Remains of arched doorway of house - Zanoah.jpg, Arched doorway, Kh. Zanua (Old Zanoah) File:Zanoah ruins - voussoir stone.jpg, Voussoir stone in Zanoah File:Gaping hole of cistern.jpg, Gaping hole in cistern at the Zanoah Ruin File:General ruins of Kh. Zanoah.jpg, General view of ruins at the Zanoah ruin (Khurbet Zanua) File:Khirbet Zanoah(cistern).jpg, Open cistern at the Zanoah ruin File:Khirbet Zanoah, near Beit Shemesh.jpg, Open pit in the Old Zanoah File:Mouth of pit.jpg, Stone covering of cistern File:Razed stones at Zanoah Ruin.jpg, Razed blocks of hewn stones at Zanoah File:Stone relics - Kh. Zanoah.jpg, Stone relics at ruin of Zanoah File:Rock-carved foundation of house at Zanoah ruin.jpg, Rock-carved foundation of house in the Zanoah ruin File:View of Khirbet Zanoah.jpg, General view of ruins at Khurbet Zanua (Zanoah) File:Stone relic of Zanoah Ruin.jpg, Stone relic of Zanoah File:House foundation at Kh. Zanoah.jpg, House foundation at Kh. Zanoah

Notes

References

External links

Zanoah in Antiquity
Archaeological Survey of Israel {{Authority control Moshavim Populated places established in 1950 Populated places in Jerusalem District Hebrew Bible places Canaanite cities 1950 establishments in Israel Biblical cities Talmud places Yemeni-Jewish culture in Israel