Motza

Motza (or Motsa) (Hebrew: מוֹצָא) is a neighbourhood in the western edge of Jerusalem, Israel, located 600 metres above sea level. In the Judean Hills, surrounded by forest, it is a relatively isolated place connected to Jerusalem by the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway and the winding mountain road to Har Nof. Originally, the first modern Jewish neighbourhood outside the Old City, Motza is located on the site of a Biblical village of the same name, mentioned in Joshua 18:26. It was the scene of a violent attack in the 1929 Palestine riots.

History

In 1854, farmland was purchased from the nearby Arab village of Qalunya (Colonia) by a Baghdadi Jew, Shaul Yehuda, with the aid of British consul James Finn. Jewish families from Jerusalem joined the enterprise, one of which ran a tile factory, among the earliest industry in the region. Despite preparation for groundbreaking and deciding on the name Motza for the place, legal complications prevented settlement, though a traveller's inn was established at the site in 1871 by Yehoshua Yellin, a notable figure of the Old Yishuv. He built the inn on the foundation of an older Roman building. A B'nai B'rith official eventually solved the legal problems, and finalized a deal in which the Motza residents could pay for their plots in long-term payments.