Sunday, September 24, 2017

Moshe Shertok, "Settler"

Moshe Shertok, Israel's first Foreign Minister and second Prime Minister, was the son of Yaakov Shertok (or, Tzertok).

Yaakov arrived in Eretz-Yisrael in July 1882 and when the first group of Biluim arrived a short time later, he joined them and they lived in a commune in Jaffa's orchards.


In 1906, he rented a house





 in Ein-Sinya, north of Rammalah, 




owned by Ismail Al-Husseini, uncle of Amin, later to become the Mufti.


He found it via an ad:




The house included a flour mill, oil press and fruit orchard. Yaakov, his brother Ze'ev and their sister, Gutteh Katinsky rented it together, intending eventually to buy it.  They brought their extensive library of books as well as the family piano, carried all the way from Jaffa on the back of a camel.  Moshe and his brother Yehudah went to school in nearby Bir Zeit.


And they marketed their produce of kosher for Passover olive oil:





They were, in today's semantics, "settlers".

However, they suffered financial losses and their Arab hired labor constantly stole their harvest, their livestock (they had a sheep herd) and their foodstuffs they purchased in Jerusalem.  There was no doctor and the school, while preparing Moshe to be an Arab language scholar, was empty of Jewish content.  They left and in 1908 were back in Jaffa, in the Amzalag House in Neveh Tzedek.


Thanks to David Assaf.

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