Antonio Belda Martinez parish priest of San Jose Moncada.
Lida belongs to the state of Israel and is located 3 km. Rambla, a 18 km. Tel Avid, a 52 km. Jerusalem, a 100 km. de Haifa, a 100 km. Beersheba and 304 km. of Eliat.
Lida origin is lost in the dark.
In times of Joshua it was fortified. It was rebuilt by the descendants of the tribe of Benjamin.
The apostle Peter used to visit. In "Acts of the Apostles" (9, 32) we are told the paralytic Eneas cure San Pedro. Following the miracle the inhabitants of Lydda and Sharon became.
At 70 d.C. the Romans, way to Jerusalem, the they razed.
The Hebrews called Lod, the Greeks changed the name Lidea or Lida and Romans Diópolis (city of God).
In the second and third centuries flourished Academy of Hebrew studies. It was the second city after Jerusalem.
Located at a strategic crossroads operated the "Merchants of Lida", mentioned in ancient Hebrew literature and famous, for efficiency and business acumen.
During the Middle Ages was an important center Dry Cleaning; our Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, to visit her in 1175, attests: "And in it a Jewish, I dyer profession ".
From the main street, a side leads to the Church of St. George which adjoins a mosque.
According to Christian tradition San Jorge was born in Lida. Martyred in 303 He was buried in the crypt of the Church.
The church belongs to the Orthodox community.
It was restored in 1870 on the ruins of the twelfth-century Crusader church, which, at the same time, He had been erected on the ruins of a Byzantine church in the sixth century.
Above the entrance this relief of St. George is.
The church has an apse, arches and columns corresponding to the cross structure built in the twelfth century Richard the Lionheart.
On the right wall of the church hangs a chain. In the past it was customary to tie her mentally ill for about a whole night; the Holy healed them.
In the crypt there is a cenotaph with the sphinx of San Jorge and with the following inscription in Greek: "Saint George, spear carrier, 1871, under the patriarch Cyril ".
The mosque adjacent to the Church of San Jorge, It is built on other sections of the ancient basilica of the Byzantines and Crusaders.
This inscription is engraved on one of its pillars.
