Ben Shemen ( he, בֶּן שֶׁמֶן, ''lit.'' very fruitful) is a
moshav
A moshav ( he, מוֹשָׁב, plural ', lit. ''settlement, village'') is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 an ...
in central
Israel
Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...
. Located around four kilometres east of
Lod, it falls under the jurisdiction of
Hevel Modi'in Regional Council
Hevel Modi'in Regional Council ( he, מועצה אזורית חבל מודיעין, ''Mo'atza Azorit Hevel Modi'in'', ''lit.'' Modi'in Region Regional Council) is a regional council in central Israel. It was founded in 1950 and covers an area fro ...
. In it had a population of .
Etymology
The village's name is taken from
Isaiah
Isaiah ( or ; he, , ''Yəšaʿyāhū'', "God is Salvation"), also known as Isaias, was the 8th-century BC Israelite prophet after whom the Book of Isaiah is named.
Within the text of the Book of Isaiah, Isaiah himself is referred to as "the ...
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 and was one of the first villages established on
Jewish National Fund
Jewish National Fund ( he, קֶרֶן קַיֶּימֶת לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, ''Keren Kayemet LeYisrael'', previously , ''Ha Fund HaLeumi'') was founded in 1901 to buy and develop land in Ottoman Syria (later Mandatory Palestine, and subseq ...
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 is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses incl ...
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
Ben Shemen Youth Village ( he, כפר הנוער בן שמן, ''Kfar HaNo'ar Ben Shemen'') is a youth village and agricultural boarding school in central Israel. Located near Ben Shemen and Ginaton, it falls under the jurisdiction of Hevel Modi ...
was established adjacent to the moshav in 1927 and is today a large agricultural
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...
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. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...
. In 1945, the lands of Ben Shemen amounted to 2,176 dunams
A dunam (Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; tr, dönüm; he, דונם), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area equivalent to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amount o ...
, 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 which are generally grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of lar ...
, 947 dunams to field crop
Produce is a generalized term for many farm-produced crops, including fruits and vegetables (grains, oats, etc. are also sometimes considered ''produce''). More specifically, the term ''produce'' often implies that the products are fresh and g ...
s, one dunam for bananas
A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large herbaceous flowering plants in the genus ''Musa''. In some countries, bananas used for cooking may be called "plantains", distinguis ...
, 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, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, 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 (or First) Arab–Israeli War was the second and final stage of the 1948 Palestine war. It formally began following the end of the British Mandate for Palestine at midnight on 14 May 1948; the Israeli Declaration of Independence had ...
and had to be reconstructed. Immigrants
Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not natives or where they do not possess citizenship in order to settle as permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Commuters, tourists, and ...
from Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
joined the moshav in 1952. Some houses were built by Bezalel Academy of Art and Design
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design ( he, בצלאל, אקדמיה לאמנות ועיצוב) is a public college of design and art located in Jerusalem. Established in 1906 by Jewish painter and sculptor Boris Schatz, Bezalel is Israel's oldest ...
founder Boris Schatz
Boris Schatz ( he, בוריס שץ; 23 December 1866 – 23 March 1932) was a Lithuanian Jewish artist and sculptor who settled in Israel. Schatz, who became known as the "father of Israeli art," founded the Bezalel School in Jerusalem. After S ...
.
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 Companies") was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmach ...
archive
File:Ben Shemen iii.jpg, Ben Shemen. 1948. Used as a base by the Yiftach Brigade
The Yiftach Brigade (also known as the Yiftah Brigade, the 11th Brigade in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War) was an Israeli infantry brigade. It included two Palmach battalions (the 1st and 7th), and later also the 2nd, which was transferred from the ...
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
Archaeology
During road-work near Ben Shemen in 1975, a burial cave containing three ossuaries was found. An Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
funerary inscription on one of them mentions "Levi son of Menashe" and is dated to the late Second Temple period
The Second Temple period in Jewish history lasted approximately 600 years (516 BCE - 70 CE), during which the Second Temple existed. It started with the return to Zion and the construction of the Second Temple, while it ended with the First Jewis ...
, probably during the first century BCE or CE.
Additionally, a boulder that collapsed from the cave wall had a Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
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 ...
funerary inscription written in red, which according to its style, was probably inscribed during the 2nd or 3rd centuries CE. Di Segni suggests that the Hebrew name "''Yo'ezer''" on the inscription indicates that the area had not been completely cleared of Jews after the Jewish-Roman Wars. Jews who did not participate in the revolt may have survived in the area, converting to Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...
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 (often abbreviated 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 writings by the Israelites. The ...
name doesn't require additional explanation.
Notable residents
* Benjamin Elazari Volcani
* Aharon Yadlin
*Shimon Peres
Shimon Peres (; he, שמעון פרס ; born Szymon Perski; 2 August 1923 – 28 September 2016) was an Israeli politician who served as the eighth prime minister of Israel from 1984 to 1986 and from 1995 to 1996 and as the ninth president of ...
See also
*Ben Shemen Interchange
Ben Shemen Interchange ( he, מחלף בן שמן) is a major freeway interchange complex in central Israel, connecting Highway 1, Highway 6, Route 443 and Route 444, as well as several local roads. The interchange is located near moshav Ben Sh ...
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