Lion of Yokneam, Israel, Installed Along the Lion’s Trail

By Jerry Klinger

YOKNEAM, Israel — Having completed the Wilfred Israel memorial in Yokneam, honoring a man who gave his life to save Jews during the Holocaust, Mayor Simon Alfasi, learned of the Lion’s Trail project.  He asked if the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservationwould donate one to his city.  The answer was yes.

A site in a new residential area was selected just below the historical Tel of Yokneam. Jewish eyes have looked out upon the Jezreel Valley from the Tel and the site of the Lion for over 3,000 years.

Tels in Israel are quite common.  They appear as artificially built hills, the layered detritus of human settlements, communities, cites, built upon the ruins of earlier habitations.  Archeologists have found evidence of human settlement at Tel Yokneam dating from the middle Bronze Age, about 4,000 years ago, through the Ottoman period just 100 years ago.

Tel Yokneam is about 200-feet high and spreads out over about 10 acres.  It is strategically sited making it important economically and militarily.  Yokneam is the junction of two major routes, ancient and modern.  It sits at the junction of the coastal highway (the Via Maris), bypassing the difficult passage around Mount Carmel, where modern Haifa is today. It is also at the eastern road up from Megiddo going to Damascus.

When areas of Israel were divided among the Hebrew tribes that had followed Moses through the desert, none was allocated to the tribe of Levi. The problem was resolved, 48 cities were given to the Levites as their homes.  Yokneam was one of them.  Sufficient land only to support each city agriculturally was allocated to them.

The Levites were dispersed across the “Land.” They were the glue that initially held the tribes together before the glue failed over time.

Kings arose, such as David. Centralized rule from Jerusalem eventually decayed, corrupted. The Land was split by Civil War.  The new weakened Kingships, unable to reunite, fell to stronger external invaders beginning the 2,000-year darkness of exile until the reestablishment of the Modern State of Israel.

Yokneam continued under Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, Islamic, and Ottoman rule. Modern Israel did not resettle the Tel.

The top of the Tel is an archeological park interpreted by a museum.  The views from the summit are stunning, breathtaking. History, past and present, are spread out like a meal being savored.

The Lion of Yokneam was completed as the Gaza/Hamas/Hezbollah war continues to rage to the North and the South, far away.  Nothing is far away anymore in modern war.  The missiles of death developed so effectively by the Nazis in the latter days of World War II to randomly kill and terrorize as many Britons as possible, makes Yokneam easily within reach.

Modern Yokneam (Illit) is a mélange of modern and ancient. It is a city of dreams and enterprise.  It is a juggernaut, a key of Israel’s modern technology world.

When the Lion of Yokneam was completed, Mayor Alfassi named the traffic circle it sits upon Ha’Gevurah – Strength – Power.  The meaning has meaning to ancient Yokneam and to Modern Yokneam.

The Lion of Yokneam, the tenth Lion in the Lion’s Trail, made the minyan, the assemblage for a community of prayer possible. The Yokneam Lion is also the last in the trail for now.

A future Lion of enormous size is proposed to overlook Gaza.  A symbolic Lioness, the Women of the IDF sculpture project, is funded needing only a home somewhere in Israel that wants it.  And a third Lion, on the back of a throne sculpture honoring an Indian Maharajah – “Jam Sahib” -who saved many Jewish children during the Holocaust, is being fabricated for a September dedication at the Indian Jewish Cultural Center in Nevatim.  Few know that Jews have lived in India for 2,000 years.

The text of the Lions’ Trail’s dedication marker at  Yokneam reads:

“And unto the families of the children of Merari, the rest of the Levites out of the tribe of Zebulun, Jokneam and her suburbs”… Joshua 21:34

The Jewish people have lived here for over 3,000 years.

Donated by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation with the support of the City of Yokneam”

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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.