A question for a generation

What comes
after the return?

What would it mean to raise a generation that knows what to do with the return to Eretz Yisrael?

Or B’Sadeh is an emerging initiative reconnecting Jewish life, learning, and community with the land of Israel through hands-on education, ecological restoration, and shared traditions.

Join us for terrace restoration workshops in Ein Kerem
01 / The question

Because return is not the same as relationship.

A people can return geographically without recovering the knowledge, practices, responsibilities, and ways of living that make a place genuinely known to them.

You can be born in Jerusalem and never know how to cultivate an olive tree.

You can celebrate Shavuot every year and never participate in a wheat harvest.

You can study the agricultural mitzvot and never have responsibility for a field.

You can know that Eretz Yisrael is central to Jewish identity without ever developing the practical knowledge to care for a single piece of it.

02 / The proposition

Or B’Sadeh asks,
what comes after
the return?

Stone agricultural terraces descending into Nahal Ein Kerem, seen from the Gan Eden stairs
Nahal Ein Kerem · 2012 · zeevveez · Photograph notes
03 / The response

Not another lesson about the land.

What if belonging were something we learned to practice?

We imagine children and adults learning from farmers, shepherds, craftspeople, and elders—through restoration, cultivation, Jewish tradition, and the turning seasons.

Not nostalgia. Not reenactment. A living relationship between people and place.

Join us in the field
04 / The first place

Beginning in Ein Kerem.

In Jerusalem’s hills, ancient agricultural terraces offer a place to begin. Alongside local partners, young people, and neighbors, we are restoring terraces—and asking how shared work can become a sustained culture of stewardship.

These working landscapes carry generations of knowledge: walls holding soil, springs sustaining gardens, and terraces bearing olive trees, vines, and fruit orchards. [1]

Before 1948, ‘Ayn Karim was a Palestinian Arab village with Muslim and Christian communities. During the war, its inhabitants fled or were displaced; Jewish immigrants later settled here. The landscape also carries the story of that displacement. [2–3]

To care for this place is to learn its stories honestly and respectfully—and to learn how a wall holds, how a tree is tended, and what responsibility asks of us.

Read more about Ein Kerem’s history

Agricultural produce connected the village’s working terraces, gardens, and orchards with nearby Jerusalem. Caring for this landscape today also means learning about the livelihoods and communities it once sustained. [2]

Stereoscopic archival view of Ain Karim village, catalogued 1900
Ain Karim · catalogued 1900 · Matson Collection / Library of Congress · Archive
Rock-cut wine press in Ain Karim, photographed between 1934 and 1939
Ain Karim wine press · 1934–1939 · Matson Collection / Library of Congress · Archive
Archival photograph of Ein Kerem's terraced hills, 1948
Terraced hills of Ain Karem · catalogued 1948 (month not specified) · Willem van de Poll / Dutch National Archives · CC0. Source
Dry stone terraces and remnants of agricultural watch huts in Emek HaTeimanim, Ein Kerem
Emek HaTeimanim / Yemenite Valley · 2011 · Ron Havilio · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Source

Restore

Repair terraces, tend trees, learn the ecology and agricultural knowledge of a particular landscape.

Belong

Bring generations together through work, seasonal rituals, food, craft, and shared responsibility.

Return

Come back next season. And the next. Let care become continuity rather than a one-time activity.

05 / The larger possibility

The model is not the terrace.
The model is the relationship.

One vision. Many ways to bring it to life.

Or B’Sadeh begins with a simple conviction: that our relationship with the land should not be something we merely inherit, remember, or study, but something we actively cultivate.

What begins with the restoration of a single agricultural terrace can grow into something much larger: a living network of places, people, and practices through which Jewish life becomes rooted in the land once again.

These are interconnected directions for the initiative’s development, rather than established programs. The first work is local, practical, and collaborative, beginning in Ein Kerem.

Restoring the Land

Reviving ancient agricultural terraces, cultivating orchards, and restoring the ecological and agricultural landscapes that have shaped life here for generations.

Learning in the Field

Bringing the land into Jewish education through encounters with its seasons, ecology, agricultural traditions, texts, and living practices.

Experiencing Belonging

Creating immersive opportunities for olim, families, and communities to develop a deeper relationship with Eretz Yisrael through shared work, learning, and experience.

Cultivating Community

Bringing people together through restoration, seasonal celebrations, harvests, shared meals, music, and the rhythms of a living agricultural calendar.

Cultivating a Land-Based Economy

Reviving practical skills, traditional professions, and productive livelihoods rooted in the land—from shepherding, agriculture, and food production to weaving, craftsmanship, and regenerative enterprise. Building the foundations of a local economy in which ecological stewardship, cultural knowledge, and meaningful work sustain one another.

A restored terrace becomes a classroom. A classroom becomes a gathering place. A harvest becomes a celebration. Traditional knowledge becomes practical skill, and practical skill becomes livelihood.

What emerges is more than a collection of programs. It is the possibility of a living culture—one that can educate its children, restore its landscapes, sustain its communities, and create meaningful work rooted in place.

06 / An invitation to think and build together

There is a place for you in this story.

Or B’Sadeh is taking root.

What begins on the agricultural terraces of Ein Kerem will take many hands to grow: educators, farmers, artisans, researchers, community builders, and people who feel called to this vision.

We are restoring terraces, gathering people, and laying the foundations for the educational, cultural, and economic life that can grow from them.

This is an invitation to help shape and build what comes next.

Join us in the field

Take part in community restoration days and hands-on work in Ein Kerem.

Bring your knowledge

Collaborate as an educator, grower, craftsperson, researcher, or practitioner.

Help the vision take root

Explore partnerships, resources, and opportunities to support the initiative as it grows.

Stay connected

Hear about upcoming gatherings, restoration days, and new opportunities to participate.

The field is where we begin.

If something in this vision speaks to you, we’d love to hear from you.

Be Part of What We’re Building
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Sources & photograph credits

A landscape with a history

  1. Israel’s 2015 Tentative List submission: Ein Karem, a village and its cultural landscape, hosted by UNESCO. Documents terraces, water installations, traditional mountain agriculture and layered cultural histories. This is a state submission, not World Heritage inscription. For springs, gardens and vineyards, see also Bethlehem University, “Ein Karem” (2020).
  2. Arnon Golan, “The 1948 Wartime Resettlement of Former Arab Areas in West Jerusalem”, Middle Eastern Studies 51(5), 2015, pp. 804–820. Discusses displacement, the village’s produce market in Jerusalem, and subsequent immigrant settlement.
  3. For the pre-1948 Muslim and Christian community, see Ein Karem: British Mandate period and its census references. The historical account above is a short synthesis; the proposed meaning of restoration is Or B’Sadeh’s interpretation.

Photographs

All photographs are documentary images downloaded and served with this website. Display copies are resized and compressed; some layouts crop the image. The hero has a dark overlay for legibility. No AI reconstruction or generated content is used. Historical and contemporary views show the locality, not an exact matched viewpoint.

  • Ein Kerem panorama · 24 February 2024 · Tombah / Jacob Bahar. Source · CC0 1.0. Resized/compressed for display.
  • Nahal Ein Kerem terraces · 1 August 2012 · zeevveez. Source · CC BY 2.0. Resized/compressed for display.
  • Emek HaTeimanim terraces and watch-hut remains · 22 January 2011 · Ron Havilio. Source · CC BY-SA 3.0. Resized/compressed for display under the same CC BY-SA 3.0 license.
  • Terraced hills near Ain Karem · 1948; month unspecified · Willem van de Poll / Dutch National Archives. Source · CC0 1.0. Resized/compressed for display.
  • Ain Karim village · catalogued 1900 · Matson Collection / Library of Congress. Source · Public domain; no known restrictions. Resized/compressed for display.
  • Ain Karim wine press · 1934–1939 · Matson Collection / Library of Congress. Source · No known restrictions on publication. Resized/compressed for display.

The 1948 photograph is dated only to the year; it is not presented as evidence of conditions before the displacement. Archive dates and titles follow the catalogues.