I've written about the ancient city of Caesarea, its archaeological park, its antiquities and its fabulous port several times ... today I'm going to take you through modern Caesarea, a vital city with beautiful neighborhoods, a new high-tech industrial area, and even Israel's sole 18-hole golf course (which is presently in repair). Recently, Michal and I joined her summer hiking buddies for a birthday outing spent meandering through modern Caesarea and the Ralli Museum.

It was significant for the establishment of Israel that, in 1882, Baron Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild (1845 – 1934) became an ardent Zionist and began buying land in Palestine. As a leading proponent of the Zionist movement, he provided the land for the pioneering agricultural colony at Rishon LeZion. Rothschild promoted industrialization and economic development, buying more than 125,000 acres of land to set up business ventures.

In 1948, the Rothschild family, through the Caesarea Edmond Benjamin de Rothschild Foundation, purchased the land which makes up modern Caesarea. It was land which was vacant and disused when the War of Independence ended. Although all the other Rothschild land was turned over to the State of Israel, in 1952 the Caesarea portion was leased back for 200 years by a new charitable foundation known as the Caesarea Development Corporation (CDC), which has responsibility for maintaining Caesarea. The CDC transfers all profits from the development of Caesarea to the Foundation (half owned by the State of Israel), which supports organizations that advance higher education and culture across Israel.

The great grandson of the Baron continues to head the CDC, making Caesarea the only locality in Israel managed by a private organization rather than a municipal government. CDC provides all of the locality's municipal services, markets land for development, manages the nearby industrial park, and runs Caesarea's golf course and country club. The result, and the Baron's legacy, is a unique community that combines quality of life, green concerns, industry and tourism.

As we began our walk through Caesarea's exclusive neighborhoods, we noticed the medallions in the sidewalks designating the CDC management. Much more noticeable were the line of fish statues situated on the grass adjacent to the sidewalk. These large statues were all imaginatively decorated by the local school children, with mosaics, found objects and in other creative ways. We soon arrived at a park which contained the ruins of the Palace of the Bird Mosaic, a 45 by 50 foot floor of a mansion dating from the Byzantine period, about 1,300 years ago. There was almost nothing left of what must have been a huge structure, but the mosaic floor of the main salon was remarkably well-preserved, with intricate, geometric patterns of various fish and other animals around the perimeter.

Our walk continued past many single family homes, most of them large, some of them beautiful and all of them very expensive. As we stared at the geometric-shaped, marble roof of one low-slung villa, the owner, who was lounging by the pool, invited our group of eight to see the garden. He explained that the house was shaped like an airplane and the direction it was facing was towards Jerusalem.

After a walk of a few hours, we arrived at the Ralli Museum opposite the town center. The large, private museum was built by Harry Recanati.

His family's fortune came from their part ownership of the Israel Discount Bank founded by his father Leon in 1935 and the banks investment in businesses.

The Recanatis were from Thessalonici of Italian and Spanish (Sephardi) origin.

Harry, born in 1919, joined the bank but after his father appointed a younger son as his successor (an unheard of act in Sephardi circles) Harry left Israel to run a subsidiary Ralli Brothers in 1962 in London. He finally retired in 1969 to devote himself to art. Therefore my interest had been piqued by the sign at the entrance to the museum which mentioned that Harry Recanati had no connection to any other family of the same name.

As a piquant end to the family rift, during the banking crisis in 1982 when almost all banks were nationalized, the Bieski tribunal on the banks decided that all bank managing directors at the time would be precluded from ever running a bank, but by that stage the youngest brother had died and the second brother paid the price.

Harry Recanati's Ralli Museum is quite magnificent. In fact, five Ralli Museums have been established in various countries and admission to all of them is free of charge. The original building (Museum 1) in Caesarea holds his huge collection of mostly surrealistic Latin American art, plus a number of works by the Spaniard, Salvador Dali. The second, newer building contains European art from the 16th to 18th centuries illustrating Biblical themes. What is unusual about the artwork is that although it is all of high quality, many of the artists are relatively unknown outside of their native countries.

To me, the most exceptional feature of the two buildings was that Museum 2 is very reminiscent of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. The courtyard even includes a replica of Alhambra's Fountain of the Lions. Near the fountain are several statues of prominent Sephardic Jews from the middle ages, including some persons said to be of Jewish descent, such as Christopher Columbus. Lining the walls of the courtyard are many plaques explaining aspects of Sephardi Judaism in Spain in the so-called Golden Age – the period of approximately two centuries preceding the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

After our wanderings through the two Ralli Museums, we went off to celebrate the birthdays of two people in our group. A leisurely lunch and two birthday cakes later, we congratulated ourselves on a terrific day spent in modern Caesarea, a town which would have remained a ruin if not for the foresight of Baron Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild.

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Steve Kramer

Steve Kramer moved to Israel with his wife and two young sons in 1991 from Margate, NJ. After working for years in the beer distribution business in America, Steve had several jobs in Israel before...
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