The many plaques bearing their names that adorn buildings and institutions around the settlement are its most obvious manifestation. The Gluck dining hall on the yeshiva campus was dedicated, among others, by Jean and Eugen Gluck, the co-chairs of the American fundraising organization, and by Rosie and Mark Friedman.
A plaque honoring the parents of the Friedman brothers is hung on the wall of the local kollel, or study center. Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer who has worked for Trump for the past 15 years and who advised him on Israel during the campaign, has several close friends in the settlement. Another close friend of the new ambassador is Baruch Gordon, an American immigrant from Memphis, who served as manager and director of the Arutz Sheva English news site before his latest appointment as director of development for Beit El Institutions.
Gordon refused to speak with Haaretz, saying he intended to keep silent until after the Trump inauguration. Friedman, who grew up on Long Island, also has a childhood friend who lives on the settlement. Save for a handful of Palestinians performing odd jobs here and there, few adults could be seen out on the streets of Beit El on a recent afternoon spent there.
Men and women of working age in Beit El, as in almost all the settlements, tend to commute to jobs on the other side of the Green Line because there are few employment opportunities at home. Which can make life a bit lonely for someone like Shai Alon, head of the local council here. Alon, who did not grow up in Beit El, moved to the settlement with his wife and children 15 years ago. So does he visit Ramallah often? But if people from Ramallah want to come here, I can guarantee you they will feel very safe.
Like other Beit El residents, Alon expresses nostalgia for a time when things were normal. By normal, he means the era before the Oslo Accords when Jews could build as they wished in the settlements. Beit El is an eclectic mix of neighborhoods, in part because of the on-and-off-again ban on construction in the settlements. Spacious single- and double-family homes can be found alongside temporary trailer-type dwellings.
Located atop a hill near the Palestinian city of Ramallah, Beit El has the feel of a family-friendly Orthodox suburb, where children leave their bikes unlocked on the sidewalk and the main roundabout is decorated with three-foot tall sculptures of pomegranates, grapes and figs. Hebrew signs caution drivers to watch out for kids crossing the street.
Friedman likely inherited his affinity for Beit El from his late father, Morris Friedman, a New York rabbi and Beit El supporter whose name is plastered in black capital letters on the exterior of a girls school in Beit El. With his long white beard and a wide moustache, Katz is a of legendary figure in Beit El.
Badly injured as a soldier in the Yom Kippur War, he was evacuated from the battlefield by Ariel Sharon, then an Israeli military commander. He went on to help establish Beit El. Katz did not return multiple calls from the Forward.
Katz spoke little English at the time, and Morris Friedman and other Orthodox Jews took pity on him and invited him into their circles. Though most Beit El residents had never heard of David Friedman, word quickly spread around the settlement about the possibility a hometown champion in the embassy after Trump announced his appointment in December.
Like the English pilgrims to the New World, the settlers saw themselves as pioneers who were charting a course that would change history.
The first 30 families moved to a military outpost near the site, which was built on private Palestinian land seized by the Israeli government. But a year later, Begin relented and the settlement of Beit El took root. The next year, the Supreme Court changed course and ruled that the army could confiscated private Palestinian land for military purposes, but not for civilian settlements.
About 60 families lived in caravans on the hilltop with no utilities, using gas stoves to cook their food and warm themselves against the high altitude chill. In the s, with the support of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, the settlement was hooked up to water and electrical lines from Jerusalem. Years after the army base was moved in to its present location near the Gaza border, nine seasons of salvage excavations began in ahead of the urban spread of the West Bank settlement.
Archaeologists discovered that while the Khirbet Kafr Murr settlement was at its height just ahead of the Jewish Revolt, it had ongoing roots stemming from the 8th century BCE, although it had been briefly abandoned following the Maccabean Revolt.
The team has also found stone cups — used during the Second Temple era for their innate purity — and glass artifacts, he says. Only two mikvaot or ritual baths have been discovered, one of which is already covered by an apartment tower, as well as a pottery center and industrial production of olive oil and wine. An impressively large, rather amateurly built defensive wall was constructed to protect the villagers. It cuts across a large olive press, which Aharonovich believes was put in place but unfinished ahead of the revolt.
We stand upon a portion of the excavated section of the defensive wall, which runs 32 meters feet , with a width of between The wall at Kafr Murr was built quickly, as an emergency measure, says Aharonovich, which is seen in the crooked walls and differently sized stone.
According to Aharonovich, it is similar to the walls found at Gamla in the north and Yodfat in the lower Galilee which also faced the Romans during the revolt. Aharonovich says that inter-disciplinary residue analysis of the pottery is currently being undertaken at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
The dank, humid conditions of the cistern have made it impossible to discern what was stored in the pots otherwise. Other hi-tech analysis is being done at Bar-Ilan University on some of the hundreds of grape pips, found in an unusually deep wine press reserve that abuts the already built apartment towers.
Aharonovich says the reservoir could have held up to four tonnes of grape juice. The early Byzantine settlement was much smaller than the previous Jewish one. There is also what looks similar to a Roman bathhouse, which may have been used by pilgrims during their stay in the area, and a large dovecote. The settlement was destroyed in the CE earthquake that shook the entire region.
Numerous finds point to the earthquake — from piles of shattered vessels, to an intact skeleton of a donkey, which was found next to an iron ring to which he was likely bound. All told, the archaeological evidence uncovered at Khirbet Kafr Murr paints the picture of a small village that had several periods of growth, which were punctuated by violent conquest and natural destruction.
Even as the Jewish Beit El settlement expands in the heart of the West Bank, an envisioned archaeological park at the center of the new neighborhood, says Aharonovich, would preserve all of the settlement periods — Jewish, Christian and early Muslim. Gazing at the tall construction cranes alongside the new apartment towers, one can only they think that perhaps this is no field of dreams.
If they build an archaeology park, they, the residents, will surely come. In Streetwise Hebrew for the Times of Israel Community, each month we learn several colloquial Hebrew phrases around a common theme. These are bite-size audio Hebrew classes that we think you'll really enjoy.
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