“Nes Ziona is celebrating its 140th anniversary and the municipality is preparing to produce many events for the jubilee.” This was announced by the mayor of Nes Ziona, Shmuel Boxer, during a press tour organized by the municipality’s tourism department.
Boxer is a descendant of the founder of the moshav, Rabbi Reuven Lehrer, “who was my grandfather’s grandfather”. Lerer was an affluent and Zionist merchant, who owned an estate in Odessa. There he met a German who owned an estate in Wadi Hanin, and they made a deal to exchange the estates between them, one for the other. Rabbi Lerer moved onto the land in 1883, and Reuven’s estate was the foundation of the Nes Ziona settlement. His original house was destroyed over the years, but a building of the packing house remains, which the municipality renovated and restored, and today it is a tourist center. “We are going to return the heart to the Nes Ziona Center” announced the mayor. “The main street will become a pedestrian street.”
In honor of Women’s Day, the municipality of Nes Ziona launched a project “In its footsteps” of 5 tours in the footsteps of women. This new venture will be integrated into the “House Stories” project that the municipality is already running. The mayor’s adviser on the status of women, Vared Tzaveri Mizrahi, trained a group of women to establish a hospitality community for people and families outside the settlement. Today, Vared presented the projects and a tourist route to journalists.
The tour began at “Nachalat Reuven” named after the founder of the settlement, Rabbi Reuven Lerer. There was a meeting with an actor who played his wife, Paige Laerer. Paige gave us a nice monologue through which we heard the story of the immigration to Israel and the landing on the ground in Wadi Hanin.
After a tour of the Kurkar hills under the guidance of Avner Ben Yehuda Meduel, the journalists were invited to the house of the painter Efrat Kessler. Efrat works as a department manager at the Port of Ashdod, and on the walls of her house hang many paintings by Perry from Blue Hatz. Following the corona virus, she built a studio in the yard of her house where she paints and holds painting workshops. She also offers guests a 3-hour training workshop, which she says everyone leaves with a picture they drew.
We also visited the home of Daria Lebovski who deals in a unique art field of ‘needle felting’. In her garden she built a beautiful studio where she makes dolls and animal figures from wool fibers. Each character has its own story. When visiting her home, she serves self-made refreshments straight from her private garden.
The tourism department of the municipality of Nes Ziona offers more tours following women in combination with host houses. Vared Tzbari says that there are about ten houses around Nes Ziona that are open for hospitality as part of the house stories project. Each of them can host a family or a small group for pleasant activities and experiences.
