Life in Judea-Samaria No Longer Frontier Pioneering

In 1981, when we first moved to Shiloh the heart of Biblical Israel, Judea-Samaria, we were certainly pioneers. And you needed that old-fashioned frontier spirit to survive and enjoy life.  We didn't live in tents, but the prefabricated cement home reached by a dirt path wasn't easy suburban living.

There were just a few dozen other families here in Shiloh. Electricity was provided by a tempermental generator; water was trucked in daily at best. And public transportation didn't reach our neighborhood. Actually, most of the buses only stopped on the main road, a few miles from us. And only after a few months was there a telephone, just one for the entire neighborhood.

It was a twenty minute drive to the nearest communities, and they were also struggling with the essentials of minimalist conditions. Forget about modern life.

During those early years, we were frequently visited by journalists who took for granted that we were just a temporary presence in the area, soon to be removed. Nobody imagined that in forty years Shiloh would be the center of a large bloq of communities, one larger and the rest smaller, stretching west, north and east all the way to the Alon Road and Jordan Valley.

Today's Shiloh is more suburban than rural, and we're not at all isolated. The city of Ariel is just ten minutes  away and has a university, cultural center, government offices and a mall, among other things. Here in Shiloh there are two supermarkets, an enormous hardware/building supply store, clothing store, two clinics, two bus lines, schools and more.

The entire development of Jewish return to our Biblical Homeland, Judea and Samaria, is miraculous and I'd even say Messianic, as in the Jewish prophecies. Only those whose vision is distorted by Leftist ideology can cay that we're marginal or temporary.

It's hard to say when it all changed, but changed it has. In the more veteran towns like Ofra, Shiloh, Efrat, Kiryat Arba, Kedumim and more, there are many families raising second and third generations of children.  Yes, to put it simply, we are here to stay, Baruch Hashem, thank Gd.