Yedidya Atlas
(Editors note: this is the third in a series on Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria)

When my youngest son pedals off on his bicycle to school and I leave my suburban home, with its attractive garden, to drive to a business meeting in the city, I could be describing a suburban scene in dozens of communities from Teaneck to the Five Towns to New Rochelle….. except I’m not. I live ten miles north of Jerusalem in the Judean hills and when I look out my car window I see the hills where my ancestors dwelled, the land promised by God to their descendants, including my wife and myself, our children and grandchildren, and their children not yet born.

For me, and those who feel as I do, building a new community involves more than developing a pleasant environment in which to raise children. It also means continuation of a mission to carry out God’s Promise in the heart of our national homeland, paving the way for the ingathering of the Exiles.

Beit El, in the King James Bible “Beth-el” (the “House of God”) is known, of course, as a city in ancient Israel. Abraham made an altar to God in the area (Genesis 12, 8), giving the name Beit El to the city previously called Luz. It is where Jacob had his dream of a ladder ascending to heaven with angels ascending and descending upon it (Genesis 28, 13-14). It is in Beit El where Jacob (like Abraham and Isaac before him) received God’s promise that the Land of Israel would belong to their descendents.

Beit El was a favorite place of worship. In troubled times the Children of Israel went to Beit El to ask counsel of God (Judges 20:18, 31; 21:2). Here the Ark of the Covenant was kept for a long time under the care of Pinchas, the grandson of Aaron (20:26-28). Here also Samuel held in rotation his court of justice (Samuel I, 7:16). When Israel was divided, Beit El was included in the northern kingdom. Jeroboam made Beit El the chief sanctuary of the northern kingdom, setting up the golden calf there (Kings I, 12:28-33; 13:1). Hence, the prophet Hosea (Hosea 4:15; 5:8; 10:5, 8) calls the city in contempt Beit-Aven, i.e., "house of iniquity." The city was also the centre for the prophetic ministry of Amos. When the northern kingdom fell, Beit El apparently escaped destruction by the Assyrians, remaining an abode of priests (Kings II, 17:28, 29) and it was later occupied by Josiah, king of the still-independent southern kingdom.

When the first Jews returned to Israel from the Babylonian Exile, several hundred of them rebuilt Beit El. Subsequently, during the Hasmonean revolt, Judah Maccabee and his men found refuge in the hills of Beit El, going forth from there to do battle against their Syrian Greek enemies. With the fall of the Second Temple, the Jewish community of Beit El was also destroyed. It remained neglected and unproductive until it was reestablished on the Jewish autumn holiday of Sukkoth 1978, just a decade after Israeli forces had assumed control of the area in the Six Day War. Beginning with a handful of young pioneering families in hilltop caravans, Beit El today consists of approximately 1,000 families in private and semi-detached homes raising thousands of children.

Today’s Beit El is a town of orthodox Jews with its own mayor and municipal council situated in the heart of the Binyamin region, just to the east of Arab Ramallah. Its Pisgat Ya'acov (“Jacob’s Heights”, named after the patriarch Jacob) neighborhood has a hilltop observatory with a commanding view—as far east as the mountains of Jordan, as far west as Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean Sea, south to Jerusalem, and on clear days, as far as Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights. It has a higher elevation than Jerusalem and summer nights are cool. Occasionally, we have snow in winter.

The chief rabbi of Beit-El is Zalman Melamed who is also the Rosh Yeshiva, or dean, of the Beit El Yeshiva Center which includes eight educational institutions: a boys high school; post-high school Yeshiva and post-graduate Kollel; a college for teachers; two high schools for girls; a Hesder Yeshiva, combining religious study with military service and a pre-military preparatory academy. Perhaps best known is the Arutz Sheva internet communications network comprising INN (IsraelNationalNews.com with its multi-media websites in English, Hebrew, French and Russian) and its affiliated “virtual multi-media yeshiva” the www.yeshiva.org.il site, both of which operate out of studios in Beit El (except for INN-TV and the weekly newspaper B’Sheva, Israel’s fourth most widely read paper, which operates out of Petah Tikva).

Arutz Sheva, often called “Free Israel Radio” because it is the only independent news network in the Middle East, was established in Beit El as an internet network when the Israeli authorities succeeded in taking the station off the Israeli airwaves after fifteen years of efforts to ban it. When the Israeli government refused in the 1980s to grant it a license, Arutz Sheva broadcast from a ship in the Mediterranean. In February 1999, while Netanyahu was Prime Minister, the Knesset finally passed a law legalizing Arutz Sheva and absolving it from charges of earlier illegal broadcasting. Left-wing opponents of the station appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which, not surprising in view of its own strong left-wing bias, overturned the Knesset law in March 2002. And in October 2003 ten employees of Arutz Sheva were actually convicted of operating an illegal radio station from inside Israeli territorial waters.

Beit El also has locally owned and operated industries including a tefillin factory, paper carton factory, aluminum factory, jewelry workshop, graphics and publishing enterprises, book stores, supermarkets, and more.

The thousands of children growing up in Beit El, the third generation since its reestablishment, are inculcated with strong Jewish-Zionist values to carry on the mission of building the Land and State of Israel for the Jewish people. Like their parents and compatriots in the other Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria, Beit El’s children serve in elite army units and many return to establish new neighborhoods and communities in the area. One such satellite settlement/neighborhood of Beit El is Givat Assaf, situated between Beit El and Ofra, but within the Beit El municipality. It was established in honor of Assaf Hershkowitz of Ofra, murdered by terrorists six years ago. Hershkowitz, thirty years old, the father of two young children, aged five and three, was the oldest son of Arye Hershkowitz who had been killed in a terrorist shooting attack only three months before his son. Young couples from Beit El made the fitting Zionist response by establishing the new community adjacent to the key junction where Assaf was murdered. Today Givat Assaf has 18 young families with their own synagogue, mikveh, and nursery/kindergarten serving their more than 30 small children.

Beit El is known for its absorption of new immigrants, not only from western countries but also from the former USSR, Ethiopia and even northern India (the Bnei Menashe tribe). Beit El aims to reach a population of over ten thousand by the end of this decade in the spirit of the Biblical injunction: “Arise and go up to Beit El and dwell there…” (Genesis 35, 1).

Yedidya Atlas is a commentator for Arutz 7 and a long time resident of Beit El.