Founding of Petah Tikva

Petah Tikva was founded in 1878 by religious Jews from the Old Yishuv of Jerusalem, among them Yoel Moshe Salomon, Yehoshua Stampfer and David Meir Gutmann, who wanted to leave a life dependent on charity and live by farming. They had first tried to buy land near Jericho, identified with the Valley of Achor, and kept the name of Hosea's promise, "the Valley of Achor for a door of hope" (Petach Tikvah). Instead they bought land of the village of Mulabbis by the Yarkon River, northeast of Jaffa. The swamps brought malaria, and by 1881 most settlers had withdrawn to nearby Yehud.

In 1883, joined by new immigrants of the First Aliyah and helped by Hovevei Zion and later by Baron Edmond de Rothschild, they returned, drained land and planted orchards. Petah Tikva became known as Em HaMoshavot, the mother of the moshavot, the first new Jewish farming village of the modern return, and today it is one of Israel's large cities.