Kfar Saba deserves to be better known. Sharona Liman is making that her mission.
Cities like Paris, London and even Tel Aviv are full of fascinating places to visit, but Kfar Saba? A joke, right?
No, not at all, says Sharona Liman, 53, a tour guide who specializes in tours of Kfar Saba, which she says needs only a "rebranding" to make it recognized as one of Israel's most interesting cities. "Kfar Saba has so much to offer – history, art, nature, and lots of interesting stories – if only people knew."
Sharona, the daughter of American-born parents and a mother of two, grew up loving hiking and travelling around the country. She earned a degree in Land of Israel studies at Beit Berl College and became a licensed tour guide, but although she has guided many groups from overseas around Israel, first Covid and then October 7 hit her profession badly.
When tourism from overseas slowed, she recalled that she had previously prepared tours on Kfar Saba for groups from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and for new olim groups among others, as well as for local school children learning about their city.
Why not expand the tours to other people as well? "I had learned so much about Kfar Saba," she says. "There was so much to talk about." So she has organized a number of different tours of the city.
Some tours include visits to sites connected with the political history of Israel and pre-State Israel. A history tour, for example, explores the area of the city on Rothschild Street between the venerable Penguin Ice Cream shop and Café Landwer, which, she says, has 11 historic houses worthy of preservation within two blocks. She feels the city could make more of this area. "Imagine if they were to put up old-style street lighting and benches so that the area said 'moshava'. It would be just like Zichron Yaakov."
Politically, Kfar Saba has always been significant in Israel's history and many buildings with ties to Kfar Saba's politics still remain. In the 1920s, when many workers came to the area to plant citrus and the demography shifted to blue collar Mapai (later Labor), the town boasted the home of one of the first Moetzet Poalim (workers' council) in the country. Across from where the Arim mall stands today was the Beit HaMiflaga (The Party House.) "There was no need to specify which party," says Sharona, who points out that Kfar Saba was once known as a "red" city, like Haifa.
Kfar Saba's history includes more drama that most of us realize. On the eve of Pesach in 1917, Jews from Jaffa and Tel Aviv were deported by the Turkish authorities from those cities and half were sent to Kfar Saba. The reason was that the Turks didn't want locals to have contact with the British and they wanted to keep them out of the war zone.
"Kfar Saba at the time had only 12 houses and suddenly 900 people became refugees here. It was hard for them. Many had to beg until they could leave in May 1918 and many others died of illness."
A number of monuments can be seen in the city, which in its early years was the site of both an Arab and a Jewish village, side by side. Jews had bought the land from Arabs and after the War of Independence, the Arabs were expelled.
The city offers not just history: Kfar Saba is also quite an artistic city. There are dozens of sculptures and art works to be seen, including some by well-known artists such as Naftali Bezem, who designed the "Bearers of Light" relief on Kfar Saba's Culture Hall building in memory of the townspeople who fell in the War of Independence.
"Did you know that famous poets and authors had a connection here?" asks Sharona. In June, the month of Hebrew Book Week, Sharona leads a tour that references, among others, Haim Hefer, who wrote a poem about Kfar Saba and Natan Alterman, who wrote the lyrics to the well-known (and incongruous) song "Tango Kfar Saba".
As for religion, one, perhaps apocryphal story concerns the first Torah scroll in Kfar Saba, which was brought by horse and cart, along with other necessary goods from Petah Tikvah. On the way, a Bedouin robber attempted to steal the goods. When he discovered the Torah and asked what it was, the driver said it was a holy book in which was written V'Ahavta Lereiacha Kamocha – You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The thief was so impressed that he not only gave back the goods, but helped deliver the Torah.
Perhaps Sharona's most intriguing sounding tour is titled "Love," which she holds twice a year, on Valentine's Day, February 14 and on Tu B'Av, or by request.
She mentions a morsel of information which will surprise many people: David Ben-Gurion had a romantic link to Kfar Saba. In 1907, David Grun, as he was called then, came to Kfar Saba from Petah Tikvah, because his fiancée, Rachel Melkin, lived here with her family. She had been his childhood sweetheart in Plonsk. Rachel eventually broke off the engagement because she suspected, probably rightly, that Ben-Gurion was so involved with Zionism that he would have little time for a family. He later married Paula, who accepted him as he was, but many years later, when he was a widower and Rachel a widow, they reconnected, though probably not romantically. But who knows?
As for Golda Meir, no, there is no romantic story, but there is a legend that Golda Meir visited Pinchas Sapir at his home in Kfar Saba on work matters, and complained of leg pain. He sent her to the shoemaker Yehoshua Hochman, who worked in the green hut near the town hall. And maybe... maybe... that's where Golda's shoes were born...
"These tours are a way of putting Kfar Saba on the map," says Sharona. "I see that as my crusade and my mission."
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