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Marketing history: Where Is Mazkeret Batya? It is 5 km Southeast of Rehovot.
"Mazkeret Batya's 15 minutes of fame came in 1994: Talila, the yuppie heroine of the film Shirat Hasirena, gets completely befuddled on her way from Tel Aviv as she attempts to find the small moshava.
"Where, for God's sake, is Mazkeret Batya?" she asks, cursing and turning the map upside down while running increasingly late for her date with her new beau.
In reality, although badly signposted, Mazkeret Batya is easy to find. Mazkeret, as the locals fondly refer to it, is 5 km. southeast of Rehovot, 25 km. from Tel Aviv and 30 km. from Jerusalem.
And nowadays - thanks in no small part to the local council's considerable marketing strategies - it's unlikely that Mazkeret would be quite so exotic a location.
But back in 1994, Mazkeret Batya had only 2,500 residents. Now it has 9,000, and that figure is projected to jump to 17,000 within the next decade.
According to local council head Meir Dahan, the majority of the development is happening in the east of the town. "There are 1,100 new housing units up to three stories high, 400 of which are duplexes and 700 are standalone houses. There are no high rises, nothing that will stand out or clash with the small, green feel of the town," Dahan asserts. "And that will be the city's maximum capacity. There is no other land available to build on."
With or without high rises, it's a far cry from the town's roots.
Route 6 passes only five minutes away and the train stops in nearby Rehovot. If Dahan's dreams are realized, Route 6 will have an intersection at the entrance to the town and Mazkeret Batya will have its own railway station, both allowing for an easy and speedy commute to the metropolis. What was until very recently a sleepy, idyllic moshava is fast turning into a bustling little suburban hub.
ESTABLISHED IN 1883 by Baron Edmond de Rothschild as the first of the seven original moshavot, Mazkeret Batya started life as an agricultural community. Eleven families from Pavlova in White Russia made a living on land given to them by the Baron.
In establishing Mazkeret Batya (the name means Batya's Memorial, or "in memory of Batya" and was given by Rothschild in honor of his mother in 1887), the Baron used what Dahan refers to as "his Jewish kopf." The ruling Turks deemed the land of Ekron (as it was then known) agricultural, thereby forbidding the construction of private homes or public buildings.
The Baron circumvented the law by building four "Kazermot," Russian for soldiers' houses. These two-story brick buildings housed animals on the first floor and families on the second. Soon after, regular houses began to be built. Kazermot are unique to Mazkeret Batya, as are the stone barns that were built in the same era. Both these original features - as well as the synagogue that dates back to 1927 - remain, giving the town its nostalgic charm.
For the most part, the original settlers of Mazkeret Batya stayed, as did the majority of their children and grandchildren. They were joined in the Fifties by families from Morocco and Libya who were housed in 22 Amidar public housing projects that Dahan describes (quite rightly) as "the stain of Mazkeret Batya." When this population eventually moved on - many moving to private homes as their economic situation improved - their place was taken by 70 Ethiopian families whom the government settled in the town in the '90s.
The Ethiopian children of Mazkeret Batya are integrated into the local school system. Most choose to attend the religious elementary school. Due to financial constraints, these pupils, for the most part, continue on at the local - secular - high school, unlike their peers..."
For fulltext of this article go to original Jerusalem Post publication, referenced below.
Source: Atira Winchester. Marketing history. Jerusalem Post (14 September 2006) [FullText]
"Where, for God's sake, is Mazkeret Batya?" she asks, cursing and turning the map upside down while running increasingly late for her date with her new beau.
In reality, although badly signposted, Mazkeret Batya is easy to find. Mazkeret, as the locals fondly refer to it, is 5 km. southeast of Rehovot, 25 km. from Tel Aviv and 30 km. from Jerusalem.
And nowadays - thanks in no small part to the local council's considerable marketing strategies - it's unlikely that Mazkeret would be quite so exotic a location.
But back in 1994, Mazkeret Batya had only 2,500 residents. Now it has 9,000, and that figure is projected to jump to 17,000 within the next decade.
According to local council head Meir Dahan, the majority of the development is happening in the east of the town. "There are 1,100 new housing units up to three stories high, 400 of which are duplexes and 700 are standalone houses. There are no high rises, nothing that will stand out or clash with the small, green feel of the town," Dahan asserts. "And that will be the city's maximum capacity. There is no other land available to build on."
With or without high rises, it's a far cry from the town's roots.
Route 6 passes only five minutes away and the train stops in nearby Rehovot. If Dahan's dreams are realized, Route 6 will have an intersection at the entrance to the town and Mazkeret Batya will have its own railway station, both allowing for an easy and speedy commute to the metropolis. What was until very recently a sleepy, idyllic moshava is fast turning into a bustling little suburban hub.
ESTABLISHED IN 1883 by Baron Edmond de Rothschild as the first of the seven original moshavot, Mazkeret Batya started life as an agricultural community. Eleven families from Pavlova in White Russia made a living on land given to them by the Baron.
In establishing Mazkeret Batya (the name means Batya's Memorial, or "in memory of Batya" and was given by Rothschild in honor of his mother in 1887), the Baron used what Dahan refers to as "his Jewish kopf." The ruling Turks deemed the land of Ekron (as it was then known) agricultural, thereby forbidding the construction of private homes or public buildings.
The Baron circumvented the law by building four "Kazermot," Russian for soldiers' houses. These two-story brick buildings housed animals on the first floor and families on the second. Soon after, regular houses began to be built. Kazermot are unique to Mazkeret Batya, as are the stone barns that were built in the same era. Both these original features - as well as the synagogue that dates back to 1927 - remain, giving the town its nostalgic charm.
For the most part, the original settlers of Mazkeret Batya stayed, as did the majority of their children and grandchildren. They were joined in the Fifties by families from Morocco and Libya who were housed in 22 Amidar public housing projects that Dahan describes (quite rightly) as "the stain of Mazkeret Batya." When this population eventually moved on - many moving to private homes as their economic situation improved - their place was taken by 70 Ethiopian families whom the government settled in the town in the '90s.
The Ethiopian children of Mazkeret Batya are integrated into the local school system. Most choose to attend the religious elementary school. Due to financial constraints, these pupils, for the most part, continue on at the local - secular - high school, unlike their peers..."
For fulltext of this article go to original Jerusalem Post publication, referenced below.
Source: Atira Winchester. Marketing history. Jerusalem Post (14 September 2006) [FullText]
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