Nestled in the Jerusalem Hills in the Sataf Forest, which dates back thousands of years and boasts two natural springs and ancient hillside agriculture of biblical fruits, 21st-century modernity intersected with Mother Nature on Monday with the inauguration of a new environmentally friendly visitor center and a top-line French-style bakery and patisserie.
The $4.5 million project seeks to make the historical and agricultural heritage of the Sataf Forest more accessible to visitors, alongside a boutique-style culinary experience.
“We understand amid two years of war the value of being in nature,” said Ifat Ovadia-Luski, Chairwoman of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, which funded the project and has been spearheading wartime events in nature.
The forest already has about one million visitors a year and the tourist project is the first of three in parks in the hills outside of Jerusalem, with additional such compounds planned at both Yad Kennedy and Bar Behar, according to Anat Gold, KKL-JNF’s central region manager.
The easily accessible center, which will include information about the site, including its ancient agricultural terraces, traditional crops and hiking trail maps, was built over the last six years with an eye to the environment and green building principles.
The site’s dual-purpose roof includes one side planted with native, low-irrigation vegetation that attracts wildlife and the other solar-powered which produces more energy than the center consumes, alongside an underground drainage system to manage runoff and enrich the soil.
About a third of the funding for the project came from both Jewish and non-Jewish Swiss Friends of KKL-JNF. “Sataf is a magical place close to Jerusalem that holds a special place in our hearts,” said Arthur Plotke, president of KKL-JNF Switzerland.
Established by the Zionist visionary Theodor Herzl in 1901 to buy and develop land for Jewish settlement, KKL-JNF serves as the Jewish people’s custodian for about 15% of land in the nation but is best known for the hundreds of millions of trees it has planted throughout Israel.
Over almost two years of war, it has been dealing with putting out fires in northern Israel, where more than 30,000 acres of land were burned as a result of Hezbollah missile fire and rehabilitating the forests there, as well as dealing with damaging natural forest fires in central Israel, including in the Sataf area, during the dry months of the year.
In a sign of the times, the Paris-born patissier at the site Stephanie Biton named one of the pastries after her 29-year-old nephew, Yorai Cohen, who was killed during the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel while serving in an elite police counter-terrorism unit.
Millennial-old forest becomes tourism hot spot
The Sataf site, which covers about 1,000 dunams (250 acres) includes walking trails, bicycle paths and picnic areas, as well as two natural springs, Ein Sataf and Ein Bikura, which run even in the hot summer months, alongside vine, fig and olive trees that dot the Jerusalem hills.
Archaeological research shows that settlement at the Sataf site began around 6,000 years ago, in the Chalcolithic period, and that terrace construction started around 4,500 years ago. The site attained its greatest size and splendor in the Second Temple and Byzantine periods. In Crusader and Ottoman times, Sataf experienced variable fortunes, and in 1949, Moshav Bikura was founded on the ruins of the Arab village of Sataf, which was abandoned in Israel’s War of Independence.
Within a short time, however, the residents were obliged to abandon the community, and during the 1950s, the site was used as a training area by the Israel Defense Forces.
Over the last four decades, KKL-JNF has worked to restore the ancient terraces and irrigation systems at the site as part of an effort to conserve agricultural heritage as it was during Biblical times, and making it one of the most visited forests in the hills outside of Jerusalem.
