Monday, November 3, 2008

Home in the Jerusalem Hills

Every week more and more bloggers are contributing a look at their world on That's My World Tuesday. Come join us!
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Welcome to my village in the Jerusalem Hills (also known as the Hills of Judea).
We are just west of Jerusalem.
Perched on a hill, our altitude is plus and minus 600 meters, depending on which terrace you live.
The moshav (meaning collective agricultural village) was founded in 1950 by Jews from Kurdistan (Iraq). Soon new immigrants from Morocco also came.
It was a hard life for them, starting from nothing.

Today there are 234 households with about 620 souls.

I myself am a newcomer to this region of Israel, having formerly lived by the coast. Unlike the members of the moshav, I do not own a house. Instead I rent a simple one-room-plus-kitchen house with a big yard from the days of the founders.

From the next mountain across the valley you can see the sun set on our lovely hilltop.

Because the region is so hilly, no big-scale crop growing is possible.
 In recent years the moshav has moved away from collectivism and gone toward privatism, but once every member family was required to have a chicken house for egg production.

Today only less than a dozen hen houses still have chickens.
 Many others have been converted into warehouses, workshops, and even housing for low-budget renters.

Not much traffic on our narrow winding road.
One bus line takes me to Jerusalem, running once every few hours.
It is a nice quiet life, with nice neighbors.
 At night you hear only the chorus of the jackals, even right under my window.
I am blessed to have the best of both worlds--living in the country with woods all around us and yet being half an hour's bus ride from Jerusalem, the center of the world!
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31 comments:

  1. You are the perfect person to do My World posts. Your posts are always so intereting filled with things about your world. This is no different!

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  2. I visited Israel on my Senior Class trip in college. It was an absolutely amazing time. The beauty and the history in your part of the world is unimaginable! Thank you for sharing these lovely photos.

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  3. I love your posts because you not only have beautiful photos, but I love the fact that you tell us so much about the area. So I totally agree with Louise. Thank you!

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  4. Thank You for the lesson of geography and history... With always nice photos...

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  5. You are blessed to live in such a country, built by hard work and adversity into a wonderful thriving community.
    Greetings from New Zealand

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  6. Very interesting and beautiful. Great landscape :-)

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  7. Sounds like the ideal, to have both worlds, the city and the countryside! Very interesting and so far away from my world: Stockholm, the capital of Sweden :-)

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  8. Looks like a lovely moshav. I can see how it would be hard to farm with all the rocky hilliness. My grandfather was a chicken farmer; it sounds like the moshav was once a chicken moshav. Now sounds like more of a yishuv.

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  9. Dina! What would I do without my daily dose of Israel from you? Every morning is like a homecoming. Thank you for all the time and effort you put into your blog. Always a new angle--always a pleasure.

    Many thanks

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  10. Dina: Thanks for sharing your home with us. The story was very interesting. This almost sounds like a decay of the 1950's ideals.

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  11. Sounds like an almost idyllic lifestyle, Dina. Such peace and quiet with lovely neighbours who I'm sure would help you out whenever necessary. Beautiful vistas, too!

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  12. That sounds like a great place to live and I enjoyed your photographs and post so much.

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  13. Love it! I lived in Beit Izchak, when in Israel. Also a Moshav, with lul, Peca and Mandarines to die for!
    Was similar - quite and quaint.
    But as in your town - the community bonds are eroding as well, so I heard.
    Cheers, Klaus

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  14. Thank you for this peek into your peaceful world! I love the photo of your hill in the sunset!

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  15. It looks much more green than I expected...

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  16. What an idyllic place to live, Dina! It seems like you have a simple but full and blessed life, and as you say, the best of both worlds. But I am not sure I would be happy about hearing jackals under my window!

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  17. Oh lovely, Dina. I feel like I'm right there with you.

    I'm still feeling a bit of a shock about when you went through that bombing however that you mentioned in a comment on my blog. I kept thinking you were safe all the time.

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  18. It's great to see places that in all probability i will never visit.

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  19. Very beautiful place very well captured.

    i hear about a new discovery.it said that archaeologists in Israel announced that they discovered the ancienter Jewish text that has been found never, at the duration of excavations in the fortress Ila 20 km of southly-western Jerusalem, locality where Bible reports that David overcame Goliath. its a 5 lines of text that have been written with black ink in splinter ceramic. they can understand words like slave and king. this text they said dated 3.000 years ago!!! very interesting.

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  20. Beautiful scenery - I really enjoyed seeing so much nature in your pictures. Bye and greetings from Croatia

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  21. Very interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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  22. Good. Thanks for share so important informations.
    Great your life, work and World.

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  23. Thank you for sharing your village with us. Your posts about Israel are always interesting.
    Your photos are lovely and I've been meaning to tell you for ages how much I love your header with the blossom trees.

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  24. It's great to see where all the bloggers live and work. Your surroundings look very beautiful with a view of the mountains.

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  25. I like the quiet life but not always, I would love to see your place in real, I guess that will never happen.

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  26. A visit to your village! I'm glad you find it so hospitable. I wouldn't want to picture you living anywhere you didn't like. But I think you're an adventurer, so you'd find a way to like any place you found yourself.

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  27. yes your posts are very interesting indeed, having been to jerusalem, it is very enjoyable for me.

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  28. Someday I will visit Your World. You have increased my desire to go by ten fold.
    *hugs*

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  29. I'm with Louise's first comment. No better person to guide us through their part of the world, and what a world. You make history come alive.

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