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Writer's pictureMike Levitt

Motsa (מוצא)


Motsa is today located in an ancient site, in and around the fertile valley of the Sorek Stream and its tributary, the Arza stream. Abundant springs once existed along the valleys of both streams; water still flows from two springs near the site. The area is known to have been occupied from the Epipaleolithic Period (around 20,000 years ago) to the present day. But it is only in very recent times that three of its more or less ancient periods have been properly exposed: the Motsa of the Yishuv (the the body of Jewish residents in the land of Israel prior to the establishment of the State of Israel) from the nineteenth century, biblical Motsa from Temple times and a vast Neolithic city from nine thousand years ago.

The synagogue at Motsa, formerly a khan built by Yehoshua Yellin atop a Byzantine hall

We started by visiting the old synagogue of Motsa and the adjacent Biet Yellin. Located in the Judean Hills on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, 600 metres above sea level, modern Motsa was established in 1854 as the first Jewish farm founded outside the walls of the Old City in the modern era. It is in fact located on the site of the Biblical village of the same name mentioned in Joshua 18:26, on part of which was already located the Arab town of Qaluniya (قالونيا‎).

“[And the cities of the tribe of the children of Benjamin according to their families, were…] And Mizpeh, and Chephirah, and Motsa.”

Motsa was referred to in the Talmud as a place where people would come to cut young willow branches as a part of the celebration of Sukkot (Mishnah, Sukkah 4.5: 178), and Motsa’s name was found stamped on pottery handles in Tell en-Nasbeh (biblical Mizpah in Benjamin).

Motsa was destroyed in the First Jewish-Roman War but, after AD 71, Vespasian settled 800 Roman soldiers in the town, which became a Roman military colony known as Colonia Amosa or Colonia Emmaus. In the Byzantine period the Roman name was preserved as Koloneia, and the Crusaders called it Qalonie or Qalunia, leading to the Arab name of Qaluniya so that, unusually, the ancient name was not preserved in the Arab name. It has been suggested by some that this is the site of New Testament Emmaus, but there is no Christian tradition of association with the site, which is more usually connected with Emmaus-Nicopolis. In the 1945 statistics, Qaluniya had a population of 900 Muslims and 10 Christians, while Motsa had a population of 350 Jews. On 11 April 1948, as part of Operation Nachshon, Hagana forces entered Qaluniya and blew up 50 houses. Today only the ruined compound of the mukhtar remains, with several rooms and complexes, double Ottoman windows, as well as several adjacent buildings.

Map showing the sites around Motsa referred to in the blog

The mukhtar's compound is all that remains of the Arab village of Qaluniya, built upon ancient Motsa

Modern Motsa began when, in 1854, farmland was purchased by a Baghdadi Jew, Shaul Yehuda, from the nearby Arab village of Qaluniya, with the aid of British consul James Finn. A B'nai B'rith official signed a contract with the residents of Motsa that enabled them to purchase the land in long-term payments. Four Jewish families settled there.

Residents of Motsa before 1899, outside the khan which was built atop a Byzantine hall [Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6444487]

A modern mosaic depiction of Motsa and Jerusalem, at the synagogue

In 1871, while ploughing his fields, Yehoshua Yellin, discovered a large subterranean hall from the Byzantine period that he turned into a khan (travellers' inn) which provided overnight shelter for pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. Yellin’s land had been purchased from the Arabs of Qaluniya in 1860 by his father, David Tevye Yellin, and David’s father-in-law, Yehezkel Yehuda.

Left: the Byzantine hall which originally formed the stables of the khan built by Yehoshua Yellin; right: the interior of the synagogue built atop the hall

The Yellin House was built in 1890 by Yehoshua, behind the khan he had built two decades earlier, and which later became a synagogue. He also planted a vineyard and a garden, attempted to manufacture roofing tiles and purchased more lands to continue the settlement at Motsa. It was the beginning of agriculture, industry and private entrepreneurship in the Land of Israel, at the time when the old Yishuv (Jewish population) started to settle beyond the limits of walled Jerusalem. As well as farming, Yellin also established a tile factory which was one of the earliest industries in the region.

Beit Yellin

When Theodor Herzl visited Palestine in 1898, he passed through Motsa, which then had a population of 200. Captivated by the landscape, he and David Wolfson planted a cypress tree on the hill to the west, at the instigation of Shmuel Broza, a farmer in the colony. Herzl described the event in his diary:

At three-thirty I went with Wolfson and Bodenheimer with Broza in the beautiful but still poor moshavah colony, where this courageous young man [Broza] began four or five years ago to work this hard and remote land ... The journey from Jerusalem to this picturesque destination, reminiscent of the Pyrenees, passed easily ... At Motza, on Broza’s hillside land, I planted a young cedar. Wolfson planted a small palm tree. A few Arabs helped us, as did the settlers Broza and Katz. We returned to Jerusalem in the darkness of the night.

HaMoshava Motsa: Farmer Broza, at whose house Herzl stayed during his Jerusalem visit in 1898, and planted a tree there [David B. Keidan Collection of Digital Images from the Central Zionist Archives: Photographs on the History of Zionism and Israel. Public Domain]

After Herzl died in 1904 at the age of 44, it became an annual pilgrimage site by Zionist youth, who planted more trees around Herzl's tree. In August 1915, during the First World War, the trees were severely damaged, apparently as a result of the injury of the Arabs of the neighbouring villages. Su'ad al-Husseini, the daughter of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, claimed that it was her father―together with his friends Rajab and Rushdi al-Yamam―who had cut the cedar when he learned to ride horses in the fields of the family in Qaluniya, as an expression of their hostility to Zionism. Nevertheless, after the establishment of the State of Israel, the stump was returned to its place and placed in a glass case and trees were planted around it: the tradition begun by Herzl was extended when an avenue was established―with trees planted by Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Zalman Shazar, Ephraim Katzir, Yitzhak Navon and Chaim Herzog―the so-called Avenue of the Presidents, whose trees have since mostly died.

The General Federation of Labour in Palestine established a sanitorium― the first Jewish "health resort" in the country―in 1923. It was named Arza (ארזה, a feminine form of Erez―ארז―meaning “cedar”) by David Remez, in reference to Herzl's tree. The building―also known as the White House―was designed by architect Joseph Berlin in neo-classical style but with touches of modernity, the façade following a style that was common in Jerusalem at the time. The façade includes a semi-circular porch with Doric columns. A Bauhaus style administration building was erected in 1930, designed by an unknown architect.

The Arza Sanitorium in 1934 [By EP Tal & Co - Das Palästina Bilder-Buch, EP Tal & Co/Verlag Wien, 1934, Public Domain]

Field Marshall Edmund Allenby talking to Dr Abraham Rosenthal―first medical director of Arza Sanitorium―and Haim Arlosoroff―head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency―during his visit to Arza in 1933 [Zvi Oron-Orushkes, Central Zionist Archives, Public domain]

At the beginning of the War of Independence the compound was shelled by Arab forces, and was used as a military headquarters of various Jewish forces including the Beit Horon battalion. With the privatization of the Federation’s assets in the 1990s and the sale of the Israel Land Development Company, which was responsible for the compound, the site was abandoned and fenced off. Both the sanitorium and an administration building erected in the compound in 1930 were designated for preservation. In 2013 construction of a new residential complex began on the site, and in 2019 work began on the preservation and restoration of the main building, which will become a cultural centre. It is intended that the Avenue of Presidents will also be rehabilitated. However the Council for Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel has stated that it does not view the preservation as appropriate or fully complying with the law vis-à-vis the designations of the historic buildings of the Arza compound. I was not able to see the sanatorium building, as it is submerged somewhere in the centre of the present building site.

Today the site of the Arza sanitorium is a building site for a residential complex which will, apparently, preserve something of the former, historic structures

Motsa was also home to one of Israel's oldest wineries, the Efrat Winery, later renamed the Teperberg Winery when it moved to Tzora.

Despite good relations with neighbouring Arab communities, the village was violently attacked during the 1929 Palestine riots. Several residents of Qaluniya attacked an outlying house belonging to the Makleff family, killing the father, mother, son, two daughters, and their two guests. Three children survived by escaping out a second-story window; one, Mordechai Maklef, later became Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army. The attackers included the lone police officer and armed man in the area, as well as a shepherd employed by the Makleff family. The village was subsequently abandoned for a year.

Refugees from Motsa sent a letter to the Refugees Aid Committee in Jerusalem describing their plight and asking for help: “Our houses were burned and robbed...we have nothing left. And now we are naked and without food. We need your immediate assistance and ask for nothing more than bread to eat and clothes to wear.”

The children of Motsa attended school in one of the rooms built above the vaulted hall discovered by Yehoshua Yellin. Their teacher was Moshe David Gaon, later father of singer and actor Yehoram Gaon. According to a census conducted in 1931 by the British Mandate authorities, Motsa had a population of 151 inhabitants, in 20 houses. In 1933 the villagers founded the neighbouring Motsa Illit (Upper Motsa).

Yellin continued to live in the house until the end of the Great War, after which it was leased, and eventually abandoned in the 1960s, when it fell into disrepair and was plundered for its masonry. In 2006, the Yellin and Yehuda families―together with the Council for the Conservation of Heritage Sites in Israel―restored the Yellin House and opened a visitor centre there.

Tel Motsa

Excavations in Motsa (2012)―led by archaeologists Shua Kisilevitz, Zvi Greenhut, and Anna Eirikh-Rose on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority―were carried out just above the mukhtar’s house of Qaluniya, prior to construction of a new overhead bypass to carry Highway 1. The excavations, which are now beneath the highway bridge, revealed a public building, storehouses and silos dating to the 9th century BCE. A wide, east-facing entrance in the wall of the public building is believed to have been built in accordance with temple construction traditions in the Ancient Near East: the sun rising in the east would illuminate an object placed inside the temple, symbolizing the divine presence. This temple dates back to the Kingdom of Judah of the mid-8th century BCE.

The Motsa temple (covered over with tarpalins)

Various sacred pottery vessels, chalices and small figurines of men and horses were found near the altar of the temple. This rare cache has been dated to around 750 BCE. The temple appears to have operated alongside the First Temple in Jerusalem. The discoveries provide evidence for the existence of temples and ritual enclosures throughout the Kingdom of Judah before the religious reforms centralized ritual practices at the Temple in Jerusalem. Animal bones from kosher animals, showing signs of having been cut―possibly indicating that they were sacrificed―were found at the site. The temple at Motsa was a rare find from the First Temple period. The excavations also uncovered remains from the Roman–Byzantine, Crusader and Ottoman periods.

Tel Motsa: silos used for legumes, mostly lentils

Neolithic township

In 1928, N. Shalem reported finds of Neolithic flint tools which he found―at a now-unknown site―below the village of Moza. In the early 1960s, a survey conducted in the area prior to the start of infrastructure work on Highway 1 between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem documented a scattering of Neolithic flint surface finds over a large area. Excavations carried out in 2012, south of the Yellin house, unearthed architectural remains from the Roman period, beneath which were remains of a Neolithic settlement. Starting in 2013, several trenches were dug south of this excavation, in preparation for the construction of Highway 16―a proposed connection between the Motsa interchange of Highway 1 and the Begin Boulevard (Highway 50). All the trenches yielded evidence of a Pre-Pottery Neolithic period settlement and a subsequent trial excavation was conducted in 2015 to estimate the settlement’s size and density. The trial excavation was expanded in 2016, and further excavations revealed finds from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, Pottery Neolithic and Chalcolithic (pre-Ghassulian and Ghassulian) periods, as well as from the Early and Intermediate Bronze, the Middle Bronze II and the Roman periods. By 2017, archaeologists formed two clear conclusions: Tel Motsa and the region to its south, including the area south of the former Highway 1 route at the Motsa Turn, belong to one, continuous occupation sequence that began in the Neolithic period; and the Neolithic settlement probably covered an area exceeding 300 dunams, making it one of the largest Neolithic sites in the Levant―dubbed a ‘mega site’.

Views of the excavations of the neolithic town; bottom right: groundwork for the tunnel for the proposed Highway 16 at Har Nof

In the current extensive excavation carried out between 2017 and 2019―south of the Yellin house, between Motsa and Motsa Ilit in the areas that would be damaged by the roadworks and related development work―archaeologists Dr Hamudi Khalaily and Dr Kobi Vardi have unearthed the remains of a huge Neolithic settlement of some 2,000-3,000 residents, some 9,000 years old. Their preliminary report can be seen here. The findings have been reported internationally just this week; there is huge interest because previously it was believed that Judea was uninhabited in Neolithic times, and that sites of this size existed only on the eastern bank of the Jordan, or in the Northern Levant. Sadly it appears that the site will be re-buried. According to Amit Re'em, Jerusalem District Archaeologist, the Israel Antiquities Authority recognises the need for the new access road to Jerusalem. However significant parts of the prehistoric site will remain preserved, and the entire excavation area has been digitally documented with 3D technology to capture every detail. The IAA is also planning to develop on-site displays and illustrations telling the history of the settlement, and the nearby archaeological remains at Tel Motza are to be preserved for the public.

The street plan of the settlement shows that its development was planned. Finds include houses of worship, thousands of flint tools―used for axes and weapons―and several metal weapons. In the course of the excavation, evidence of extensive sheep and goat herds was found, as well as warehouses where legumes―mainly lentils―were preserved.

A number of small finds were discovered as burial offerings placed in the numerous graves, which were found in and amongst the houses. These offerings demonstrate trading relationships with faraway places, since they include stone-made objects worked from a stone which has not yet been identified, obsidian artefacts from Anatolia and shells from the Mediterranean and Red Seas, carefully crafted alabaster beads, and medallions and bracelets made of mother of pearl.

Motsa: all in all a fascinating and historic (pre-historic) place!

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