NESS ZIONA – Nes Gadol Haya Po – Central Israel

Ness Ziona, is nestled between the larger cities of Rishon LeZion and Rehovot, and contains within its name its most important historical contribution.  It is in Ness Ziona that the Israeli flag was born.  But the story of the town, and the flag, doesn’t start with modern Zionism, but rather with messianic Christianity.  

In the 1800s, there was a flurry to settle the land of Israel as part of an eschatological exercise by German Christians known as Templers.  They saw the redemption of the Holy Land as a necessary precursor for the End of Days.  As part of that effort, many German Templer communities were founded and developed on land bought by the Germans in the Ottoman Empire.

But sometimes, those idealistic Germans didn’t really realize what they were getting into.  Far from being empty, there were already Arabs living in small villages and farms in the land of Israel, and those Arabs were not always friendly.  Also, after centuries of neglect, the land referred to in the Bible as the “land flowing with milk and honey” was actually full of rocks and malarial mosquitoes.  When the Germans arrived, the land did not match the expectation they had from the Bible or even from the Orientalist photographs which were becoming available.  

One such idealistic German was Gustav Reisler who purchased land in 1878 in Wadi Hunayn, near Ramle.  He planted an orchard and lived there with his wife and children on a property of 2,000 dunams.  Tragically, malaria took the life of his wife and all his children.  He left the land of Israel and made a trip to Odessa alone in 1882 where he met a young Jew, Reuven Lehrer, who dreamt of living in Israel.

Reisler suggested a land swap, trading his land outside of Ramle for Lehrer’s estate outside of Odessa.  Reisler told Lehrer that the land was ripe for agriculture and was “close” to Jerusalem.  The two men shook hands and Reuven Lehrer became the proud owner of Reisler’s holdings in the land of Israel while Reisler took possession of Lehrer’s estate surrounding Odessa amounting to 20,000 dunams.  

I guess from the manor house in Odessa, Reisler’s land was “close” to Jerusalem, but Lehrer’s dream of seeing the holy city from his front porch was not realized.  Nevertheless, Reuven Lehrer set up his own little estate with the help of a Sudanese worker who had belonged to Reisler and brought the rest of the family there in 1883.  

The family with their 5 children lived there alone for 4 years.  To attract others to join him, Lehrer posted advertisements in Jaffa port to come to the new town of “Tel Aviv”.  Neither his advertising nor the name was very successful and only a few people were gathered to what became known instead as “Nachalat Reuven”. (The city called Tel Aviv today was only founded in 1909.)

An important moment in the history of Ness Ziona was in 1891 when Michael Halperin, a wealthy Zionist Jew from Vilna, purchased additional land, giving some clout to the small “Nachalah”.  It was Halperin, a socialist, who designed a flag, with 2 blue stripes, a star of David in the center, and the words “Ness Ziona” – a standard of Zion – embroidered on the bottom.  He carried the flag as he came riding into town on his horse to attend the circumcision of the first boy born in the town.  This act of chutzpah was in direct defiance of the Ottoman law which prohibited hoisting a flag other than the Ottoman one, and a recognition of the town’s independence from the Rothschilds who controlled most of the surrounding Jewish-owned land.  

If the flag sounds familiar, it is because this is the flag design that was used at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel and would become the template (minus the words “Ness Ziona”) for the Israeli flag of today.  Popularized by the Zionist Congress, and proud of its status as the birthplace of the Zionist flag, Nachalat Reuven adopted the name Ness Ziona.  The settlement grew and today this little town is in high demand for being a quaint village in the center of the country.