STAMPFER, JEHOSHUA

STAMPFER, JEHOSHUA (1852–1908), a founder of *Petaḥ Tikvah. Born in Szombathely, western Hungary, Stampfer attended Azriel *Hildesheimer's yeshivah at Eisenstadt. The obtainment of national independence by Hungary in 1867 aroused in Stampfer a desire to go to Ereẓ Israel to ensure the survival of the Jewish people and the Torah. Leaving home in 1869 and completing his journey to Jerusalem on foot, he joined a group of young people who were trying to establish an agricultural settlement in the country. In 1878 he and his companions settled on land that belonged to the village of Mulabbis, near the Yarkon River, and founded the first Jewish agricultural settlement, *Petaḥ Tikvah. For many years Stampfer was chairman of the Petaḥ Tikvah local council, which sent him abroad to collect funds from philanthropists and also encourage settlement in Ereẓ Israel. In 1903 he attended the *Zikhron Ya'akov assembly, which was convened to form the organizational framework of the yishuv; he was the representative of the conservative faction, which had as one of its aims the abolition of women's right to vote. He administered the affairs of Petaḥ Tikvah in an ultra-Orthodox spirit and accepted the first pioneers of the Second Aliyah with mixed feelings: he was pleased by the influx of new blood to the country and tried to help the newcomers integrate and learn farming, but, on the other hand, he bitterly opposed their detached attitude toward religion and feared their influence on the settlers and their children. Stampfer's son, solomon isaac stampfer (1877–1961), became the first mayor of Petaḥ Tikvah in 1934.

bibliography:

Y. Yaari-Poleskin, Ḥolemim ve-Loḥamim (19462), 38–46; idem (ed.), Sefer ha-Yovel le-Petaḥ Tikvah (1929), 107–22; M. Smilansky, Mishpaḥat ha-Adamah, 1 (1944), 65–68.

[Yehuda Slutsky]