Throughout history, the area of Palestine experienced turbulence and radical transformations. Ruled by many, dozens of armies trampled through the coastal regions and into the central mountainous range surrounding Jerusalem. Agriculture and land use dominated its economic past from the Iron Age to the present.
Palestine, like much of the Mediterranean coastal regions, possessed minimal cultivable land areas. Mountainous areas, deserts and valley regions typified the landscape. Periods of physical and political insecurity caused populations to ebb and flow. The Arab rural population employed extensive agricultural methods, assuring bare subsistence existence. Drought, wars, locust plagues, malaria outbreaks, intermittent rainfall, extensive rural debt, rapacious tax farmers and greedy moneylenders collectively conspired against rural financial solvency. With few notable exceptions, the region lacked an abundance of nutrient-rich soil, efficient horticultural practices, or sufficient water to grow but a limited amount of cash crops, such as citrus in the coastal plain.
Since the beginnings of Zionist immigration to Palestine in the middle of the 1800s, a dedicated few of the new arrivals chose agricultural work. They established their own settlements away from Arab villages or urban Jewish growth. Many early immigrants rejected lives of active religious study, likewise shunning occupations in commercial trades. Early rural Zionist communities evolved into incubators for adoption of modern agricultural techniques. These immigrants spawned socialist ideals among the variations of Zionism in the forms of collectivist agricultural communities, kibbutzim and moshavim.
Individual Zionists invested financially in rural, communal agriculture. By 1914, private Jewish buyers owned 75% of all the land purchased by new Jewish immigrants. Not until the 1920s did national Jewish organizations play central roles in providing the major funds and impetus for collective rural and urban settlement. Drip irrigation, shade house agriculture, aquaponics and mineral-rich fertilizers from the Dead Sea became some of the techniques developed in a slowly emerging Zionist and Israeli agricultural revolution.
Diversity is one of Israel’s most distinctive features. Finding common ground on sacred ground, Israeli Jews have returned to their homeland from more than 100 countries, forming a population of diverse culture, religious observance and…
A current map showing the political borders of Israel and its nearest neighbors in the Arab world.
By Scott Abramson A Disadvantaged Land in a Pivotal Location The State of Israel lies at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, at the intersection of three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe. Together with…
The war that began Oct. 7 with Hamas’ killing of 1,200 people and abduction of more than 240 others shook Israel and Israelis to their core. Particularly impacted was Israel’s vibrant economy. With hundreds of…
In 2016, Israel leads the world in desalination advancements. The small country of roughly 8 million people boasts five active plants that currently produce over 50% of Israel’s drinking water.
August 21, 1933 J. Elazari – Volcani (Issac Vilkanski) SYSTEMATIC AGRICULTURAL COLONIZATION IN PALESTINE REPORT PRESENTED AT THE XVIIITH ZIONIST CONGRESS PRAGUE, 1933 Special Printing from the Protocol of the XVIIIth Zionist Congress 1934 Published…
An Interdisciplinary Unit on Israel and Water
These posters are an ideal way to bring teachers of general studies and Judaic studies together, while making explicit connections for students. Posters can be used for parent and community education, while adding aesthetic and visual value to your institution.
Israel has a plastic problem. The Israel Union for Environmental Defense (Adam Teva V’Din) reports that Israelis produce twice the international average of plastic waste per person per day. Aside from all the plastic bags, takeaway containers, forks, knives and spoons, we throw out 250 million plastic cups every month. The Tel Aviv-Yafo and Jerusalem municipalities are working toward removing disposable plates, cups and cutlery from public preschools and schools.
Boys from an alternative agricultural high school tend Bat Shlomo Vineyards, with winning results for the student farmers and the finished product. At 15, Shilo Eliash was thoroughly urban. Growing up in Petah Tikva near Tel Aviv, he thought of agriculture – if he thought of it at all – as a menial job for foreign workers. Yet when he heard about a new alternative high school for religious boys dedicated to educational, personal and spiritual development through a connection with the land, he persuaded his parents to let him try the boarding school far from home near the Jordan River.
With 20 maps and prose, trace the progression of Jewish physical and demographic growth toward state building from 1882 to 1948 (25,000 to 600,000), with two-thirds in place by 1940.
Degania Alef is established as the first Kibbutz in Israel. The idea for a communally operated agricultural settlement in the land of Israel did not, however, originate with the founders of Degania Alef.
Kenneth W. Stein, “Zionist Land Acquisition: a core element in establishing Israel,” in Michael J. Cohen, (ed.) The British Mandate in Palestine: A Centenary Volume, 1920-2020, Routledge, 2020, pp. 189-204.
An invaluable glimpse at Palestine’s population: gaping socio-economic distances and vast communal differences between Muslims, Christians and Jews that set the strong preferences for separation of the populations.
In ancient Israel, Tu B’Shvat was the day when farmers offered the first fruits of their trees in the form of a tithe or tax to the Temple after the trees had turned 4 years old.
Dive in, or choose a pathway: Topics, Types, Eras and/or Languages. Explore robust content. Come back often for more.
