The Neighborhood of the Community of the Hebrews

The story

In a neighborhood in the east of Dimona lives the largest community in Israel of the Hebrews — African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem — more than two thousand five hundred people. The group was founded in Chicago in 1966 by Ben Carter, an African American steelworker who was born in 1939 and changed his name to Ben Ammi Ben-Israel. In 1967 the believers settled in Liberia in West Africa, and in 1969 they began to arrive in Israel: a first group was housed in Arad, and a second group, thirty-four souls in six families, arrived in December 1969 and received ten immigrant apartments in Dimona. At the end of 1980 the absorption center of Dimona, which stood empty, was leased to the members of the group; they renovated it, and many of them moved to live in it. There the community stands to this day. In 1991 its members received the status of temporary residents, and at the end of 2003 the Ministry of the Interior granted them the status of permanent residents. In 2006 the community in Dimona was recognized as an urban kibbutz. The community lives a communal life, keeps a vegan way of life and runs a chain of restaurants and a clothing factory. It hosts hundreds of visitors a year. Smaller communities of the Hebrews live in Arad, in Mitzpe Ramon and in Tiberias.

• Communities
• People
• Dimona