Kiryat Ye'arim

Kiryat Ye'arim is an ultra-Orthodox community adjacent to Abu Ghosh, also known as Telz Stone.[5] It is classified as a local council in the Jerusalem district or region; its jurisdiction covered 0.5 square kilometers in the 2021 statistical table.[6] The locality was conceived as a community of educators and their families living around a yeshiva and religious institutions.[1]

The modern town and the ancient archaeological site are separate locations: the modern locality lies west of Abu Ghosh, while the ancient site occupies a nearby hill associated with the Convent of the Ark of the Covenant.[1][2] The ancient place is generally identified with Tell or Deir al-Azar within Abu Ghosh, approximately 13 kilometers west of Jerusalem.[7] The modern Jewish town takes its name from the ancient site.[8]

In the biblical account, Kiriath-Jearim belonged to the Gibeonite confederation and was also called Kiriath-Ba'al or Baalah.[7] It lay on the border of Judah and Benjamin and was associated with Caleb's family and with a period when the tribe of Dan camped nearby.[7] Joshua identifies Kiriath-baal with Kiriath-jearim and lists it among the towns of Judah.[9]

The Ark narrative places the Ark at Kiriath-Jearim after its return from the Philistines, in the house of Abinadab, before David brought it to Jerusalem.[7] It remained there for twenty years, under the care of Abinadab's son Eleazar.[10][2] The village appears in this narrative as a religious center during the Philistine-Israelite struggle for control of the Judean Hills; its history is also described as including renewed prosperity under Solomon followed by decline.[10] Kiriath-Jearim was the hometown of Uriah son of Shemaiah, who fled to Egypt and was executed by King Jehoiakim, and residents of the town returned from the Babylonian exile.[7]

Archaeological work has revealed settlement and monumental construction during the Iron Age.[11] The excavators reported intensified settlement during Iron IIC, dated to 700–586 BCE, together with reconstruction of a large platform.[11] Roman soldiers of the Tenth Legion were later stationed in the area, whose position on the road to Jerusalem and access to springs gave it strategic importance.[12]

During the Byzantine period, a church was built on a hill overlooking the village in the area associated with the Ark narrative.[10] It was destroyed during the Persian invasion in 614.[10] The Crusaders subsequently identified the Kiriath-Jearim site with the New Testament's Emmaus and called it Fontenoid, a name associated with springs below the tell.[7] A church and monastery were built on the Byzantine ruins in 1924.[10]

The surrounding Abu Ghosh area formed part of later efforts to create a continuous chain of Jewish settlement between the coastal plain and Jerusalem.[12] During World War I, Abu Ghosh residents sold approximately 3,000 dunams to the Palestine Land Development Company; purchases by the Jewish National Fund and private Jewish entrepreneurs increased during the British Mandate.[12] Modern Kiryat Ye'arim, or Telz-Stone, was among the communities established on lands around Abu Ghosh.[12]

The modern locality was established in 1975 by people associated with the Lithuanian Telz yeshiva, with the intention of housing educators and their families around religious institutions west of Abu Ghosh.[1] An account of its origins links the initiative to Rabbi Eliezer Sorotzkin's decision to move the Telz yeshiva to Israel and to patron Irving Stone's purchase of 600 dunams in the Jerusalem Hills near Abu Ghosh, although that account supplies no exact year for the decision or purchase.[13]

Rabbi Mordecai Gifter moved to Israel in 1976 and founded a Telz yeshiva at Kiryat Telz-Stone near Jerusalem with the support of Cleveland philanthropist Irving Stone.[14] Three years later, following the death of Rabbi Boruch Sorotzkin, head of the Cleveland Telz yeshiva, Gifter returned to Cleveland to succeed him.[14] A publication cataloged with the date [1996] connects the place name Kiryat Ye'arim with Yeshiva Keter David, also rendered Keser Dovid, in Telshe Stone or Telse-Stone.[15]

Kiryat Ye'arim became a local council in 1992, when it had approximately 1,500 residents.[4] Its subsequent efforts to enlarge its jurisdiction included a committee appointed in 2001 to examine transferring 955 dunams; the committee recommended 270 dunams in 2004, but the interior minister opposed the recommendation.[4] Another committee, appointed in 2010, recommended against expansion into open land, while a committee convened in 2013 supported an expansion proposal without producing a change on the ground.[4]

During the early COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, an infection linked to a relative arriving from France spread at a Purim gathering.[16] Approximately 30 people were initially infected, and 2,000 of the town's approximately 6,000 residents were exposed and isolated.[16] Measures included closing synagogues and the local ritual bath and arranging grocery deliveries; council head Yitzhak Ravitz credited these steps with halting the subsequent spread.[16]

Kiryat Ye'arim had 6,560 residents at the end of 2022, up from 6,470 at the beginning of the year, an increase of 1.4 percent.[17] The net gain of 90 reflected natural growth of 260, the arrival of 10 immigrants, and an internal migration balance of minus 160.[17] A separate report published in January 2022 gave an approximate population of 7,000 in roughly 1,200 households.[4]

In 2011, the locality had approximately 3,200 residents, and children aged 0–14 constituted 44 percent of its population.[5] A 2015 study listed Kiryat Yaarim among six towns with exclusively Haredi populations and placed it in the third socioeconomic cluster from the bottom in the Central Bureau of Statistics index used in that publication.[18] That classification describes the historical data cited in the 2015 study, rather than a current socioeconomic ranking.[18]

The cited educational sources use the Kiryat Ye'arim name, but they do not establish that these institutions are administered by the modern local council.[3][19] Kiryat Ye'arim Youth Village, outside Jerusalem, was founded in 1952 and reports 110 residents in grades 7–12, most of them from Ethiopia.[3] Its courses include graphic design, film, and agriculture, and students participate in therapeutic horseback riding.[3] Enrichment activities encompass jewelry workshops, photography, sports, music, cooking, carpentry, and gardening.[3]

The village also offers Kol Kore, an experiential literacy program intended to help new immigrants bridge language gaps.[3] Its educational provision therefore includes both classroom subjects and practical, creative, and language-support activities.[3]

The Kol Ami Jewish Peoplehood Academy at Kiryat Yearim brings together Israelis who have finished high school and Jewish peers from abroad.[19] Its curriculum combines personal development, learning, volunteering, public diplomacy, Jewish texts, physical endurance, navigation, and exploration of the idea of a unified Jewish people.[19] Leadership training, preparation for service in the Israel Defense Forces, and development of self-identity and Zionism also form part of the program.[19]

A joint Tel Aviv University–Collège de France expedition began excavating the ancient site in summer 2017 under Israel Finkelstein, Thomas Römer, and Christophe Nicolle.[11] Before that campaign, it was among the major biblical sites that had not undergone systematic excavation; earlier work included surveys in the 1980s and 2013 and a small salvage excavation in 1995–96.[11] Gabriel Barkay's 1995 salvage work within the convent grounds recovered pottery from the tenth century BCE.[2] The joint Israeli-French expedition worked around the convent in 2017–2019 and also recovered tenth-century BCE pottery.[2]

The principal discovery was a large, elevated, rectangular artificial platform, reconstructed as approximately 150 by 110 meters and covering about 1.65 hectares.[11] Its Iron Age walls were approximately three meters wide and survived to a height of about two meters, with the structure aligned north–south and east–west.[11] Optically stimulated luminescence dating suggested an Iron IIB date, approximately the eighth century BCE, while pottery near the walls was broadly dated to 900–700 BCE.[11]

The excavation was conducted on private Catholic convent grounds near Abu Ghosh.[11] The hilltop summit was unavailable for excavation because of the need to avoid disturbing the convent, possible erosion, and Byzantine-period construction over the summit.[11] The Convent of the Ark of the Covenant is occupied by the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Apparition, and its property was under French protection following a 1949 agreement with Israel.[11]

The church and monastery built on the hill in 1924 stand on the remains of the earlier Byzantine church.[10] The church is named Notre Dame de l'Arche de l'Alliance, or Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant.[10] A separate Crusader church in Abu Ghosh was built around 1142 at a place then believed to be Emmaus, partially destroyed in 1187, and rebuilt by the French government in 1899.[20]

The ancient site's association with the Ark belongs to the biblical narrative, rather than to an archaeological discovery of the Ark itself.[2] Finkelstein stated that he did not believe the Ark existed and that excavation had found no physical evidence of its presence at the site.[8] The platform's builders and purpose also remain matters of interpretation: the excavators considered an Assyrian project after 720 BCE or construction by the Northern Kingdom of Israel before 732 BCE, and proposed possible shrine and administrative functions.[11] A later reconstruction was tentatively connected with fortification efforts by the Seleucid general Bacchides.[11]

The modern council's expansion proposals produced a separate planning dispute.[1][4] In 2021, local leaders sought approximately 1,000 additional dunams for plans including about 5,000 housing units and 350,000 square meters of commercial space; nearby communities and environmental advocates opposed the proposal on landscape-preservation grounds, while Ravitz argued that development could integrate with nature.[1] In January 2022, a boundary committee recommended against transferring the 1,000 dunams from Mateh Yehuda Regional Council, while recommending an approximately 285-dunam expansion for Abu Ghosh; ministerial approval was still required.[4] The committee pointed to planned housing alternatives outside Kiryat Ye'arim, whereas Ravitz maintained that the locality faced a severe land shortage.[4]