Lewontin was not alone. In Jaffa, he got help from Yahiel Pines – native of Różan, Grodno province, and Chaim Amzaleg, who was born in Gibraltar. Pines came from a Hasidic family and represented the Fund of Sir Moses Montefiore – the famous English philanthropist – in Palestine. The religious community didn't love Pines for his sympathies with Zionists, Zionists didn't love Pines for his orthodoxy, Sephardic Jews didn't love Pines for his Ashkenazi origin, and Ashkenazi - for his sympathy with Sephardic Jews. But he was loyal to himself and made lots of efforts to establish settlements and to turn Hebrew from the language of the Torah into a spoken language. He introduced the words Compass, Tomato, and Clock into the modern language. Chaim Amzaleg was the son of a famous merchant from Morocco, a friend of Moses Montefiore, whose family settled in Jerusalem since 1834. He was Deputy British Consul in Jaffa and Honorary Consul of Portugal in Jerusalem. Respect and recognition of Chaim Amzaleg, his material standing, and impeccable reputation helped to lobby the interests of the first pioneers to the Turkish authorities. The nephew of Chaim Amzaleg – Josef Navon – a Jerusalem banker and businessman, builder of the railroad between Jaffa and Jerusalem, held talks with the Arab landowner Mustafa Abdullah Ali Dajan, who was willing to sell land in 12 kilometers to South of Jaffa in the area of the Ayun Kara spring - the biblical Ein Kara, mentioned in the Book of Judges. That was Pines who prompted it to Levontin after several months of fruitless search. The purchase took place under the name of Chaim Amzaleg to avoid breaking Turkish restrictions on the sale of land to foreigners. They purchased almost 3.3 thousand dunams (Turkish dunam is equal to 10 acres) at a price of 15 francs (5.5 rubles) per dunam. (The total cost was about 400,000 dollars). More than half of this amount was deposited by Zvi Levontin HaCohen, an uncle of Zalman David Levontin. He was the oldest of the settlers.
This is a special tour and a unique route. Its difference from the usual city tour is that your mobile phone is the guide. As in every excursion, it takes time to get used to the tour guide, his style, rhythm and pathways. The only difference is that in this case, you are the storyteller, you are walking yourself and set the pace for yourself - all according to your style. Just give yourself time to get used to it and you will come to life with a story full of the vicissitudes of the lives of real people, a story about their joys and sorrows, a story in which urban legends rise from the past, instill hope and simply sums up: here it all began.