Bnei Ayish 3.23

Bnei Ayish is a town and local council in the Central District of Israel. Located around ten kilometers from Ashdod and adjacent to Gedera, it had a population of in.HistoryThe town was founded in 1957 on land that had belonged to the depopulated Arab village of Yasur. Before 1948, the area had served as a military base for British Army troops during the Mandate era. It was named after Rabbi Akiva Yosef Schlezinger, whose name is abbreviated to Ayish.Bnei Ayish originally served as a transit camp for immigrants from Yemen in the early 1950s. Today its population is almost entirely made up of Jews of Yemenite descent and immigrants from the former Soviet Union.