Yehoshua Stampfer
Encyclopedia
Petah Tikva
Petah Tikva known as Em HaMoshavot , is a city in the Center District of Israel, east of Tel Aviv.According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, at the end of 2009, the city's population stood at 209,600. The population density is approximately...
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, and a member of its original municipal council. Petah Tikva was founded in 1878 and is nicknamed "Mother of Settlements" since it was the first renewed modern Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine at the time.
Stampfer was born in Szombathely
Szombathely
Szombathely is the 10th largest city in Hungary. It is the administrative centre of Vas county in the west of the country, located near the border with Austria...
, Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
to a religious family. Seeing the results of the national success of the Hungarians in 1867, he longed for a similar independence for his people in Eretz Yisrael. When he was 17, he started the Aliyah
Aliyah
Aliyah is the immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel . It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology. The opposite action, emigration from Israel, is referred to as yerida . The return to the Holy Land has been a Jewish aspiration since the Babylonian exile...
to the Land of Israel by walking all the way to Jerusalem.
He later joined forces with several other pioneers and established his dream to revive the land by building new Jewish neighbourhoods outside the Old City of Jerusalem. Initially he purchased 3.2 km2 for Petah Tikva, which began with a few tents. In 1882 there were already 66 people living in the Petah Tikva.