Rehovot

Rehovot (Hebrew: רחובות, romanized: Reḥōvōt, pronounced [ʁeχoˈvot] / [ʁeˈχovot]) is a city in the Central District of Israel, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Tel Aviv. In 2024 it had a population of 155,049.

Israel Belkind, founder of the Bilu movement, proposed the name "Rehovot" (lit. 'wide expanses') based on Genesis 26:22: "And he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said: 'For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land'." This Bible verse is also inscribed in the city's logo. The biblical town of Rehoboth was located in the Negev Desert.

Rehovot was established in 1890 by pioneers of the First Aliyah on the coastal plain near a site called Khirbat Deiran, an "abandoned or sparsely populated" estate, which now lies in the center of the built-up area of the city. According to Marom, Deiran offered "a convenient launching pad for early land purchase initiatives which shaped the pattern of Jewish settlement until the beginning of the British Mandate".

Rehovot was founded as a moshava in 1890 by Polish Jewish immigrants who had come with the First Aliyah, seeking to establish a township which would not be under the influence of the Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, on land which was purchased from a Christian Arab by the Menuha Venahala society, an organization in Warsaw that raised funds for Jewish settlement in Eretz Israel.

In March 1892, a dispute over pasture rights erupted between the residents of Rehovot and the neighboring village of Zarnuqa, which took two years to resolve. Another dispute broke out with the Suteriya Bedouin tribe, which had been cultivating some of the land as tenant farmers. According to Moshe Smilansky, one of the early settlers of Rehovot, the Bedouins had received compensation for the land, but refused to vacate it. In 1893, they attacked the moshava. Through the intervention of a respected Arab sheikh, a compromise was reached, with the Bedouins receiving an additional sum of money, which they used to dig a well.

In 1890, the region was an uncultivated wasteland with no trees, houses or water. The moshava's houses were initially built along two parallel streets: Yaakov Street and Benjamin Street, before later expanding, and vineyards, almond orchards and citrus groves were planted, but the inhabitants grappled with agricultural failures, plant diseases, and marketing problems.^{[citation needed]}

The first citrus grove was planted by Zalman Minkov in 1904. Minkov's grove, surrounded by a wall, included a guard house, stables, a packing plant, and an irrigation system in which groundwater was pumped from a large well in the inner courtyard. The well was 23 meters deep, the height of an eight-story building, and over six meters in diameter. The water was channeled via an aqueduct to an irrigation pool, and from there to a network of ditches dug around the bases of the trees.

The Great Synagogue of Rehovot was established in 1903, during the First Aliyah period.