City Focus Israel: Petah Tikvah

This city of 183,000 residents was founded in 1878, long before Israel’s independence. The city was the first agricultural settlement in the Ottoman Empire in what would later become the British Mandate of Palestine and Israel.

The land was purchased from an Arab man, as it was an unwanted malarial swamp. Funding from the Rothschild family help residents drain the swamp, allowing residents to move in in permanently in 1883.

The city was founded by religious Jews from Jerusalem, and population growth came with later, large aliyot (large waves of Jews moving to Israel).

Today, Petah Tikvah is home to around 70,000 orthodox Jews, and two Haredi Yeshivas (one is pictured here.)