Sir Moses Montefiore and Those Modern Jewish Agricultural Villages in Palestine , Part II

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

           Motza, First Farmland in 1854 in Western Jerusalem on land Joshua allotted to the Tribe of Benjamin.  

By 1855, modern Jewish Agricultural villages began to spring up in Palestine, way before the 1st Aliyah made it from Russia to the Ottoman Empire's held land of Palestine.  It was the Jews of Jerusalem who bought a parcel of land at Motza but weren't able to do anything with it immediately.  It is   a neighbourhood on the western edge of West Jerusalem. It is located in the Judean Hills, 600 metres above sea level, connected to Jerusalem by the Jerusalem–Tel Aviv highway and the winding mountain road to Har Nof. Established in 1854, Motza was the first Jewish farm founded outside the walls of the Old City in the modern era. It is believed to be located on the site of a Biblical village of the same name mentioned in Joshua 18:26.

First, a Kibbutz, Moshav and Aliyah need to be explained.  

A Kibbutz is an Israeli collective village, the form originating during the 3rd Aliyah or large immigration group from 1918 to 1921.  They contracted the work of large tracts of land.    

A Moshav or Moshav Ovedim, is an Israeli agricultural village where the people possess individual homes and small holdings, but cooperate in the purchase of equipment, etc, the sale of produce, and mutual aid.  The 1st experiments were in 1907 and 1913.  During the 3rd Aliyah, a reaction against the 1st Kevutzah  led to the foundation of the big moshav of 1928.  Since 1948, the moshav is the most common form of the workers' village and there were 411 by 1992, linked to  various organizations.

Aliyah is the group immigration of Jews to Israel   

1st Aliyah (1882-1903)

2nd Aliyah (1904-1914)

3rd Aliyah (1919-1923)       

                                  Sir Moses Montefiore 1881 

At about the same time, Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885) an English philanthropist of Italian origin, who had made a fortune as a broker through collaboration with NM Rothschild, retiring at age 40.  He was even the sheriff of London and was knighted.  

 Montefiore  had bought some land near Jaffa and financed the planting of citrons, but the experiment proved to be unsuccessful.    

Being very pious,  In 1840 he went to Palestine and the Levant on a mission  at the very time of the Damascus Affair and had interceded in behalf of the accused Jews of Russia in 1846 and then in 1872, of the Morocco in 1863, and of Romania in 1867, and of the kidnapped E. Mortara in Italy in 1858.  These journeys were regarded almost as official missions on behalf of the British government.

He visited Eretz Yisrael 7 times with the last visit at age 90 !  He worked to improve the status of the Jews as well as his other benefactions.  

One thing he did was organize the 1st agricultural villages, being president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews from 1838 to 1874.  Most of his later years were spent in Ramsgate, a seaside town in England where he built a synagogue and established a college.  

In 1870 , The Alliance Israelite Universeslle founded Mikveh Israel near Jaffa with the goal to attract  Jews from the "Old Yishuv" to productive work on the land.  By 1878, two groups prepared to go into agriculture at the same time. 

     Old road from Rosh Pina to Safed, Upper Galilee, Israel.

 One group went from Safed to  the Upper Jordan region and founded Ge Oni-later called by the well known name of Rosh Pinnah, upper Galilee village, 1st Palestinian Jewish agriculture site, 1878 by Safed people, had to abandon it, came to life again in 1882 by Bilu immigrants from Romania.  It absorbed new immigrants after 1949.  In 1990, had 1,590 population.  

Aaronsohn b:21 May 1876  Romania-d: 15 May 1919 agronomist and botanist,  discoverer of emmer (Triticum dicoccoides), believed to be "the mother of wheat."  His parents were among the founders of Zikhron Ya'akov, one of the pioneer Jewish agricultural settlements of the First Aliyah.

Aaron Aaronsohn (Hebrew: אהרון אהרנסון) (21 May 1876 – 15 May 1919) was a Jewish agronomist, botanist, and Zionist activist, who was born in Romania and lived most of his life in the Land of Israel, then part of the Ottoman Empire.  He is written about in the book, The Settlers by Meyer Levin, one of the main characters.  

 He botanically mapped Palestine and its surroundings and became a leading expert on the subject. On his 1906 field trip to Mount Hermon, while trekking around the Upper Galilee in the area of Rashaya in what is now Lebanon, The geographical distribution of wild wheats in their historical setting and current context he discovered Triticum dicoccoides, whom he considered to be the "mother of wheat", an important find for agronomists and historians of human civilization. Geneticists have proven that wild emmer is indeed an ancestor of most domesticated wheat strands cultivated on a large scale today with the exception of einkorn, a different ancient species, which is currently just a relict crop.

After Aaronsohn's death while flying, the director of British Military Intelligence, confirmed that Allenby's victory would not have been possible without the information supplied by the Aaronsohn group.

                           Petah Tikvah, 1920s 

The other group went from  Jerusalem to Petah Tikvah in 1878. Unsuccessful at first, a colony growing vineyards and grains founded in 1883 by Hoveve Zion pioneers of the 1st Aliyah.  It became a center of citriculture, later an industrial center.  In 1937 it became a municipality, part of the Tel Aviv conurbation.  By 1990 the population was 133,600.  

Both attempts failed, but the trial opened the revival of those villages by 1882, the year of the arrival of the 1st aliyah when the Hibbat Zion and Bilu movements started immigration activities and the building of homes in the country.  

Rishon Le-Zion, Nes Tziyyonah, and Zikhron Yaakov were founded  in the same year of 1882, to be followed by other colonies. 

Their handicaps were:  lack of experience, lack of money, disease from malaria from the swamps, and Arab attacks. 

  Baron Edmond de Rothschild (19th August 1845-2 November 1934) French Jew of a banking family, dying at 89.   Altogether, he bought 125,000 acres in Palestine and helped immigrants settle in the Galilee and Samaria.  In his last years, he cooperated with Chaim Weizsmann and Sokolow and in 1919 was the honorary president of the Jewish Agency.  

That's when Baron Edmond de Rothschild  stepped into the picture and took over  with his protection in  1883.  Most of these farmers changed their crops from grain  to fruit growing on vines.  By 1900 Rothschild handed over their care to the ICA society which tried to changed the crops back to grain again.  For that, they acquired some new land in the Lower Galilee and founded additional villages.  

By the time the 2nd Aliyah arrived early in the 20th century,  the Arab labor and guards  were replaced by these new Jews.  This led to disputes, and the foundation of  the Ha-Horesh (contractors for agricultural work)  and Ha Shomer (self defense ) organizations. If this had happened today, it would have been handled differently with the Arabs continuing to work, but they didn't know better. 

              Jaffa with Jews and Arabs picking oranges, 1910

The first Jewish-owned orange grove was purchased in 1855 by the legendary Jewish British philanthropist Moses Montefiore; Baron Edmond de Rothschild also encouraged and financed planting and purchasing of orange groves by Zionist settlers. On the eve of WWI,1914,  there were almost 7,500 acres of orange groves in Palestine, of which about a third were in Jewish hands. Successfully cultivated by both Jews and Arabs, citrus accounted for 75% of all exports from Palestine.

"Jews and Arabs lived amicably on Rothschild's land, with no Arab grievances, even in the worst periods of disturbance. According to historian Albert M. Hyamson, "Rothschild recognised that the overriding interest of the Jews of Palestine was the confidence and the friendship of their Arab neighbours. The interests of the Arab cultivators of the land he bought were never overlooked, but by development he made this land capable of maintaining a population ten times its former size." While Edmond de Rothschild was not always supportive of an inclusive government - he suggested in 1931 to Judah Magnes that "We must hold them (the Arabs) down with a strong hand"  - he acknowledged the importance of co-governance and peaceful coexistence in a 1934 letter to the League of Nations, stating that "the struggle to put an end to the Wandering Jew, could not have as its result, the creation of the Wandering Arab."

In these same years, the Jewish National Fund was created which established training and experimental  farming on a basis of mixed agriculture Deganiah, the 1st Kevutzah, was founded in 1910, now called Kibbutz Deganiah Aleph.  The 1st successful experiments with citrus cultivation were made at the same time.  

By the1920s, the Kibbutz Movement, reinforced by the pioneers of the 3rd Aliyah, was instrumental in the villages  of the Jezreel and Kinnarot Valleys. 

Nahalal was the pioneer of the Moshav Movement.  Citrus cultivation spread speedily in the Coastal Plain, creating the living on the Sharon Plain by individuals.  

There was mass immigration after 1933 when Hitler's moves were against Jews.  At that time, Arabs, under the Nazi influence, were rioting in 1936.  "Stockade" and "Watchtower" villages went up at exposed strategic points.  New neighborhood were created, like Bet Shean and in the  Hulleh Valleys, Valley of Jezreel had Bet Alpha in 1922, Western Galilee, the Hills of Manasseh, and the northern part of the Plains of Zebulun.

In 1930, the Jewish National Fund bought part of the Plain of Bet Shean land at a high price from its Arab owners and Jewish settlement  commenced in the midst of the 1939-1939 riots.  By 1948 and the creation of Israel, the few remaining Arabs fled.  Recently, the area has been developed for cotton-growing.  

 The foundation  of Negbah,  a kibbutz in southern Israel that is located in the northern Negev desert near the cities of Kiryat Malakhi and Ashkelon.  It falls under the jurisdiction of Yoav Regional Council. In 2019 it had a population of 969.  On the eve of World War II in 1939 began the expansion toward the Southern Coastal Plain and the Negev. The new regions posed new problems of soil conservation, irrigation, etc. while giving the opportunity to introduce new branches of agriculture, such as fish breeding and tropical fruit.  

A new type of town, called The Moshav Shittuphi, came into being in the1930s.   It is a type of cooperative Israeli village, whose organizational principles place it between the kibbutz and the moshav on the scale of cooperation.  The construction of pioneer villages proceeded despite Arab opposition and the 1939 White Paper of England.  

The outcome of the War of Independence (1947-1949)  was due to Israel's agricultural developments of villages, man of which put up a heroic resistance to the Arab invaders, for the most part.  

"Stronghold Settlements" were now built all over the country on an unprecedented scale, and the Moshav Olim and Kephar Avodah were introduced.  A later innovation is Administrative Farms which grow mainly industrial plants relying on hired labor.  

A new immigrants' absorption scheme, "from Ship to Village," was put into operation in 1934.  From the foundation of the state until 1987, 543 villages were set up, as against 277 existing before the war. 

 The aggregate figure of the Jewish agricultural population in Israel was 360,000 compared to 111,000 in 1947.  the area under cultivation has greatly expanded during the years of statehood (412,500 acres in 1948 and 1,100, 000 acres in 1987), as has irrigated area of (600,000 acres in 1987 compared to 72,500 in 1948).  

However, since the early 1900s, the area of cultivated land has remained almost unchanged.  From 1939 to 1948, the war years, the farmers suffered severe setbacks and then had to deal with drought in the early 1990s.  Afterwards, grain and fodder production greatly increased.  Local grown wheat covered 1/3 of the country's needs.  Barley, maize and sorghum provided most of the fodder required by husbandry.  

Employment peaked in 1960 with over 17% of wage-earners engaged in agriculture, but numbers fell and in the mid-1980s stood at only 5.6%.  Since the 1970s, the stress in agriculture has been on the specialized farm, concentrating on highly intensive branches, mainly for export.  New branches have included flowers, off-season vegetables, and special crops, often grown in artificial conditions.

In general the importance of agriculture in the nation's economy  decreased in the 1970s and 1980's.  I moved to Israel in the fall of 1980.  

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, leaving behind a thriving greenhouse industry that exported flowers and bulbs all over the world. The Gazans looted and destroyed the facilities. After persistent rocket attacks and the election of Hamas, Israel closed its border with Gaza in 2007.  Al Jazeera explains it as a theft. 

The theft of entire greenhouses and their equipment has put out of action about 70 acres of the roughly 1000 acres left by Jewish settlers as the basis of a Palestinian agriculture industry when Israel withdrew from Gaza last September.  The looting began when gunmen from a militia hired to protect the greenhouses abandoned their posts early this month because they had not been paid, officials from a government company that operates the project said. 

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Aaronsohn#:~:text=Aaron%20Aaronsohn%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%9F%20%D7%90%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%9F,part%20of%20the%20Ottoman%20Empire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Montefiore

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motza

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/negbah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshav_shitufi

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Pinna

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petah_Tikva

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_She%27an

What Kept Jews From Farming Before Israel 1948 ? Part I

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

    Jews of the Great Silk Road to China where they learned trading

Our history has shown that our men were traders, walking on the Silk Road to China for trading, shopkeepers, jewelers, bankers, but denied the right to buy land to be farmers.  

After the destruction of the 2nd Temple in 586 BCE, Israelites continued farming as one of their  occupations.  They were involved in farming not only in Judah, but also when they were living in Babylonia and Egypt as well as in pre-Islamic Arabia, Ethiopia and in the European countries that trading had taken them.  

“Right after the publication of expulsion decree, Luis de Torres converted to Christianity in order to save himself and became a “Converso”. De Torres, who was fluent in Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, French, Spanish and Portuguese, served as an interpreter for the governor of Murcia, who recommended him to Columbus, who was seeking for an interpreter. At that time, Columbus still believed he was heading to the Far East, therefore thought that De Torres’ knowledge of the Hebrew language would help him establish contacts with Jewish merchants in Asia. Thus the Jewish interpreter got to take part in the most famous expedition in history…”

With the decisions of the Romans in 325, Jews were even more persecuted, now by the Christian populations.  Governments would not allow Jews to buy land.  They often were not allowed in trade unions.  About all that was left for them to make a living was in lending money, so farming was out.  Many Jews were even expelled from countries.  England expelled Jews from 1290 to 1655, 365 years.  Jews were then expelled from France in 1306. Not only from farming, but just land to live on was being denied to Jews all over the world. 1492 was the Spanish Inquisition where Spain expelled Jews who moved to Portugal, and then they also expelled Jews.                                      

Joseph Nasi in the Tiberias area during the 16th century encouraged farming. In 1561, he received from the sultan a lease of Tiberias and an adjacent area which he endeavored to develop as an autonomous Jewish center.   In Poland, 100,000 Jews had been murdered in the Chmielnicki massacres from 1648 that lasted to 1656.  Jews had even been expelled from Russia in 1727 and again in 1747, bringing on the exclusion to the Pale of Settlement created by Catherine the Great.  At least Nasi tried to get Jews back into the Ottoman Empire's Palestine.  Nasi was born in 1520 in Portugal as a Marrano (hidden Jew). It was when he joined his aunt in Constantinople that he came out as a Jew.  That's why, with his birth name of Joao Miguez, that he was friends with the Sultan Selim.     

Then Jewish farmers turned to other means when country's legal restrictions against Jews owning land commenced. 

 From 1804 onward, the Russian government founded a large number of Jewish colonies in the southern and western provinces. By the mid 1800s, there were 240 Jewish colonies including 70,000 Jews.  By 1914 with World War I, the population there was 100,000 Jews.  After the War, Russia continued Jewish colonies in Ukraine,, White Russia, the Crimea and Biro-Bidian/Birobidzhan, all the places now in Russia's plans to take back again since their break-away from the Communist Russia.  These Jewish centers had to have assistance from outside Jewish sources as it wasn't all Russia who assisted them to start. Could it be it was Russia's way of isolating Jews from the rest of the Christian population?  After all, Jews were not allowed to live in Russia proper, but otherwise were kept in the Pale of Settlement.                                 

                        Railway station in Birobidzhan

As for Birobidzhan, "The story of the Jews in twentieth-century Russia as told through the strange history of the Soviet solution to the Jewish question. In 1929, the Soviet Union declared the area of Birobidzhan a homeland for Jews. It  is a town and the administrative center of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Russia, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway, near the China–Russia border. As of the 2010 Census, its population is 75,413, and its official language is Yiddish.  

By the end of the  1920s, the Jewish farming population had grown to 250,000 but declined due to the large numbers of villagers into industry.  During World War II, Jewish farms in European Russia (the only place in Europe that they were allowed on land for farming) were destroyed.  After the war, those few farmers who survived, tried to return to their farms.  

       The New Odessa Community:  The first group of “Am Olamniks” arrived in New York in January 1882 and made plans to form a socialist agricultural commune. They sent scouting parties to Texas, Oregon, and Washington before deciding to locate their community in Oregon’s Douglas County. In September 1882, thirty-four Am Olamniks arrived in Portland, and after negotiating the purchase of 760 acres from Hyman and Julia Wollenberg in March 1883, many relocated to the heavily-wooded land between Wolf and Cow creeks in the upper Umpqua River Valley. According to the Articles of Incorporation for New Odessa, the community was created for “mutual assistance in perfecting and development of physical, mental, and moral capacities of its members.”

In the United States, a few Jews bought land in the 1880s when a number of communal villages were founded by members of  the organization, Am Olam Movement. Am Olam was a movement among Russian Jews to establish agricultural colonies in America. The name means "Eternal People" and is taken from the title of an essay by Peretz Smolenskin. In the 1880s there were 26 colonies promoted in 8 states, like Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Montana. Eventually the majority of Am Olam colonies were set up upon a "commercial" rather than communalist basis. The land was owned in common but divided into sections farmed by individuals. 

Seven Jewish agricultural colonies were established in Kansas: on the High Plains in Beersheba (Hodgeman County), Gilead (Comanche County), Hebron (Barber County), Lasker (Clark County but established in Ford County), Leeser (Finney County), Montefiore (Pratt County), and Touro (Kearny County). .None lasted very long.  They must have been very new to farming and gave up.

A new generation of Jewish farmers see a fertile future in South Jersey:  These 1st Jewish farms are taking another try at it.    

    " After decades of failed Jewish farming experiments in the mid-nineteenth century, our story continues in 1881. In that year, small groups of young Jews in the Russian Empire formed a radical movement called Am Olam . These groups came together in response to murderous anti-Jewish pogroms sweeping Ukraine following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Members of Am Olam believed that emigration to the United States would allow them to escape repression and create utopian agricultural colonies. 

     Funded by local Jewish communities, from 1881 to 1886, Am Olam settled and then abandoned more than twenty communes in far-flung locations around the United States. A total of several hundred idealistic Am Olam members emigrated from the Russian Empire. Some of these groups dissolved en route from Europe to New York or shortly after their arrival there." 

" Some returned to New York, some moved to a Am Olam commune in South Dakota (Crémieux), while a handful of others purchased private farms in Kansas and Missouri. Like Sicily Island, Crémieux failed within three years."

During same year of 1881, the 1st aliyah group went to Palestine.  Four more aliyote  will follow later.  

Noshing:  Eating with the help of Minnesota's Only Organic Jewish Farmer;  Looks like they're trying farming again

  Another group, the Jewish Agricultural Society, tried to help those few Jews who wished to try farming, Surprisingly, by 1945 when the war was over, there were estimated to be 80,000 to 100,000 Jewish farmers, but by the 1970s their number was under 10,000.                                    

There were Jews in Argentina due to the efforts of the noted Jewish philanthropist, Baron Maurice de Hirsch.  He founded the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) with capital money of $10 million dollars in the late 1890s.  His aim was to transfer a million Jews from Russia to Argentina and settle them on the land but by  1900 the results failed to justify those high hopes with only 4,000 families totaling 30,000 persons.  At heart, they weren't farmer material. Many had left.  German Jewish refugees had joined the dwindling population, but the number decreased because members of the younger generation would leave.  By 1990, only a few Jewish families were in land-cultivation (farming).  

Before WWII, many Jewish farming communities existed in Poland, Bessarabia (Romania) and Carpatho-Russia (Czechoslovakia). The ones in Romania and Poland were founded in Czarist times, and those in Czechoslovakia were among the oldest in Europe.  They all had to struggle hard to maintain their existence.  Isolated Jewish communities also existed in Canada, Germany, Lithuania, Hungary, Cyprus, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Uruguay.  the total Jewish farming population throughout the Diaspora on the eve of WWII was almost half a million as follows:

USSR, 150,000;  Poland, 135,000;  USA, 100,000;  Romania,43,000;  Czechoslovakia, 31,000;  Argentina, 25,000;  

Jewish farmers thus accounted for slightly over 3% of the total Diaspora.  The Jewish population at that time was 16 million.  The Jewish population of today (2022) is about 14 million with 6 million in Israel, 6 million in USA and 2 million scattered). Remember, 6 million were slaughtered in WWII.  

This modern back-to-the-land movement isn’t limited to Jews, but many have embraced the farmstead as the 21st century’s answer to the synagogue or Jewish community center, reflecting the intersection of Jewish values, environmental sustainability and social justice. Climate change, the costs of urban living and the perennial desire to reconnect with nature have all contributed to the wave.

 

Resource: 

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 21-23. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birobidzhan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am_Olam

https://sites.rutgers.edu/jewish-agriculture/a-world-of-jewish-farming/am-olam/

https://www.inquirer.com/philly/columnists/kevin_riordan/a-new-generation-of-jewish-farmers-see-a-fertile-future-in-south-jersey-20170725.html

https://tcjewfolk.com/noshin-eating-with-help-mn-organic-jewish-farmer/

https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/historical-records/new-odessa-colony/#.YvaAN3bMKUk

https://momentmag.com/a-new-generation-of-jewish-farmers-return-to-the-land/

The Valley of Jezreel in Central -Israel and Its Importance to Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

                                 The little purple land mass above is Zebulun's land next to Issachar, one portion,'

                   Next to Issachar's border, from the eastern side to the western side-Zebulun, one portion

                                                                                 

Jezreel means “God will sow” – a hint at its fertility, although by modern times neglect had turned most of it into swamps. But beginning in 1911, Jewish pioneers drained the swamps, making the valley bloom again.               

Today it is Israel's breadbasket, sprouting wheat, cotton, sunflowers and even fish ponds.  The Jezreel Valley is a green fertile plain covered with fields of wheat, watermelon, melon, oranges, white beans, cowpeas, chickpeas, green beans, cotton, sunflowers and corn, as well as grazing tracts for multitudes of sheep and cattle. The area is governed by the Jezreel Valley Regional Council of the northern district of Israel. The Max Stern College of Emek Yizreel and the Emek Medical Center are located in the valley. In 2006, the Israeli Transportation Ministry and Jezreel Valley Regional Council announced plans to build an international airport near Megiddo but the project was shelved due to environmental objections.

Among its many attractions are historical and biblical treasures such as Tel Megiddo (Armageddon) national park, the mosaics at Beit Alfa and Tzippori national parks, the cultural mosaic represented by the Circassian village and museum in Kafr Kama and the pioneering and historical museums at Kfar Tabor and Kibbutz Ein Dor, family fun and hands-on learning at places like  the silk and honey farm at Moshav Shadmot Dvora.        

This is where the tribe of Judah's brother, Zebulun, the 6th son of Jacob and Leah, was told would be his land, and so his descendants, the tribe of Zebulun received territory from Joshua;  the Valley of Jezreel.  It lies next door to Issachar's land, the 5th son of Leah and Jacob. They entered the land with 60,500.  having increased by 3,100 during the Exodus of 40 years which started in about 1310 BCE-ending in 1271 BCE in Canaan.   

Archaeological sites in the Jezreel Valley are currently excavated and coordinated by the Jezreel Valley Regional Project. Excavations include the Ein el-Jarba site.     

           Israel before 1948.  

 Issachar, full brother to Zebulun, was the 3rd largest tribe with 64,309, increasing by 9,900 on the Exodus.    Their land was between Mt. Tabor and the  Jordan River, also  including much of the fertile Valley of Jezreel.  Apparently some of the tribe was saved from the Assyrian exile 722-721 BCE , and men of Issachar answered Hezekiah's summons to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. The total of all 12 tribes upon arrival in Canaan was 601,730 with a loss after the 40 Exodus of 1,620.   Before the date of May 14, 1948, Israel's birth in the 20th century, the population of Jews was 600,000.  

The central Jezreel Valley, roughly 380 square kilometers in size, or 146.719 sq miles,  is bounded on the north by the Nasareth mountains and Mount Tabor, on the east and south by Mount Gilboa and the mountains of Samaria respectively, and on the west by Mount Carmel.

The status of the tribe declined during the period of the monarchy, but it maintained its identity and its territory and is mentioned by Isaiah (8:23) and Ezekiel (48:26-27).  

The rabbis associated Zebulun with trade, and the scholarly descendants of Issachar were supported by the tribe of Zebulun.

According to the Tanakh, the valley was the scene of a victory by the Israelites, led by Gideon, against the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the Children of the East (Judges 6:3), but was later the location at which the Israelites, led by King Saul, were defeated by the Philistines (1 Samuel 29:1–29:6).                                      

    Oil and even natural gas has been found under this land and sea.  
   In this wide, flat valley, there is the ancient town of Megiddo.  This valley has also been called the “Plain of Megiddo” in Zechariah 12:11.

This ancient city of Megiddo  has also been mentioned in ancient Egyptian writings of 1478 BC. This strategic location is at the opening of a narrow pass on the ancient great highway connecting Egypt to the south and Assyria to the north. 

 According to the Hebrew Bible, the valley was the scene of a victory by the Israelites, led by Gideon, against the Midianites, the Amalekites, and the Children of the East (Judges 6:3), but was later the location at which the Israelites, led by King Saul, were defeated by the Philistines (1 Samuel 29:1–29:6). According to textual scholars, the account of an ancient Philistine victory at Jezreel derives from the monarchial source, in contrast to the republican source, which places the Philistine victory against the Israelites at Mount Gilboa (1 Samuel 28:4,1 Samuel 31:1–31:6).

According to 2 Kings 9:1–9:10, after Jehu kills King Jehoram, he confronts Jezebel in Jezreel and urges her eunuchs to kill Jezebel by throwing her out of a window. They comply, tossing her out the window and leaving her in the street to be eaten by dogs. Only Jezebel's skull, feet, and hands remained.

Through this pass, in 1918, British forces were able to successfully invade and defeat the Ottoman Turks during World War I.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezreel_Valley#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20Hebrew%20Bible,1%E2%80%9329%3A6).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zebulun#:~:text=Zebulun%20(Hebrew%3A%20%D7%96%D6%B0%D7%91%D6%BB%D7%9C%D7%95%D6%BC%D7%9F%E2%80%8E%2C,the%20Israelite%20Tribe%20of%20Zebulun.

Being Jewish in Russia Was the Pits

Nadene Goldfoot                                            

It started with living in Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine.  Duke Vladimir, (958-1015) also the Prince of Novgorod, son of Prince Sviatoslav,  became powerful and had solidified the frontiers against incursions of Bulgarian, Baltic and Eastern nomads.  His religion was that of a Slavic paganism.  He converted to Orthodox Christianity in 988 and Christianized the Kievan Russians.  This caused the Jews of that area to have to be involved in a debate against becoming Christianized in 986. Jews had emigrated to Kiev in the 700s, possibly from Khazaria and Jewish merchants had visited in the 800s and 900s.

Kiev in the 1100s had a Jewish Gate.  What?  Jews had to enter by a special gate?  Talk about discrimination.  That goes with being forced to live in the Jewish Quarter, which may or may not have been their choice. It was actually a ghetto and Jews were persecuted and  the ghetto looted in 1113.  During this period, the Jews were attending a western yeshivot and sent their questions of a religious nature to the German rabbis who were the experts living in Worms, Germany.
By 1240, the Tatars destroyed the community.
Kiev was excluded from the PALE OF SETTLEMENT.

1321 and Jews were entering Lithuania which would later be a part of the PALE OF SETTLEMENT along with Latvia, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine.  .
1398 and Karaites made up a community in Lithuania in Troki.
In the late 1400s, Jewish traders from Lithuania helped to spread the knowledge and people of a Judaizing sect in Novgorod and Moscow and this started a drastic reaction.  It sounds like they were proselytizers.
1495 saw 10,000 Jews living in Vilna, Grodno and Kovno.  This same year they were excluded from Lithuania
1566 to 1572 those in Lithuania then had to wear the Jewish badge to identify them.

By 1563, 300 Jews were drowned at Polotsk and Vitebsk on refusing to accept baptism.  Boy, that sure told the Jews what a nice religion they didn't accept.

In 1667, the Jews were expelled from Eastern Ukraine when it was annexed to Russia.  Clauses prohibiting Jews from visiting the country of Russia were inserted in treaties signed by Russia with foreign powers in 1550 and 1678.  Expulsion orders were given out in 1727, 1738, and 1742.

In 1753, 35,000 Jews were driven out of Russia.  Where did they go?  To the neighboring countries that hadn't become as nasty yet.
                                                                     

In 1762, Catherine II permitted all aliens to live in Russia except the Jews.

                                                    CZAR RULE

Poland was partitioned off in 1772, 1793 and especially in 1795.  The great Jewish masses of White Russia (Belarus) , the Ukraine, Lithuania and Courland (Latvia) became Russian subjects and for over a century, the great majority of the world's Jews were under the horrid rule of the Czars.

By 1796 Jews were restricted to towns, the start of the land called the PALE OF SETTLEMENT. This was comprised of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.   Only the Karaites had equal rights with Christians in 1795.  Poland was the world's greatest center of talmudic study.  S. Russia, particularly Odessa, was the focus of Hebrew literary revival and the place where many remarkable people in Zionist and contemporary Jewish history had congregated and lived, just like Worms, Germany was the center when Jews lived there.

In 1802 Jews had a Council for Jewish Affairs established.  2 years later it defined the PALE.  Jews were legally restricted to live in the villages in 1807-1808 which limited their activities of the KAHAL( a Jewish congregation having autonomous rights and responsible for taxation, abolished in 19th century)  in religion and charity and prohibited the traditional Jewish clothing.  It took measures to promote agriculture among the Jews.

Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812 and the Jews remained loyal.  He issued several restrictive measure of his infamous decree relating to commerce and finance which restricted Jewish rights.
Alexander I (1801-1825) was benevolent at first.  He changed his attitude later and caused 20,000 Jews to be expelled from the provinces of Vitebsk and Mohilev in 1824.  Those remaining were forbidden to live near the frontier.
                                                                     

 About 600 oppressive acts regarding the Jews were published during the reign of NICHOLAS I a Czar reigning from 1825 to 1855.  He regarded Jews as an injurious element.  He tried to assimilate Jews by his police methods so introduced the kidnapping of boys called Cantonists.  Jewish clothing was forbidden to wear  in 1850.  Intellectual life was strictly supervised (the beginning of big brother is watching you).  If you converted to Christianity you were exempt from paying income tax for several years.

In 1827, military service was brutally imposed on Jews.  Jews became subject to this decree from this year and a much higher number of Jewish children were taken away from their families with the intent of converting them to Christianity.  This was the act of taking adolescents into the army and had actually started in 1805 and lasted until 1856.  The Jewish communities were bound to supply yearly a certain number of recruits between ages of 12 and even sometimes 8 to 25.  Service in the armed forces lasted for 25 years. and wasn't counted until they had reached age 18.  Jewish recruits were educated at special schools outside the PALE OF SETTLEMENT and then sent to far away places, the eastern provinces like Siberia.  Thousands were converted and assimilated this way while many died of hardship.  Most of these children, called the CANTONISTS, were from poor Jewish families.  The more wealthy Jews were able to buy their children.  The same thing has happened in other places as well.  However, there was a brutal police force that imposed on the the Jewish community the act of kidnapping these children and this had led to widespread corruption and deep resentment on the part of the poorer Jews against the rich.  No wonder some families cut off fingers and tried to make their children unfit for service.
                                                                     

Isador Kaufman 1853-1921, a Yeshiva Boy

In 1835, the frontiers of THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT were restricted and this remained a law until 1915.  In 1836 a censorship was imposed on Jewish books.
In 1844 the Kahal was abolished.  Alexander II tried to Russify the Jews by education and the gradual relaxation of restrictions.                                    

In 1864 the judicial law contained no anti-Jewish discrimination.  At this time there were 65,000 Jewish farmers.  They became prominent in economics, culture and left-wing politics.  Social anti-Semitism now began to replace or reinforce the former religious prejudices.

1881 was when Alexander II was assassinated causing the Jews to become the chief victims.  Horrid pogroms in the early 1880s took place and caused Russians to see Jews as a foreign element to be kept apart from the village population.
                                                                         

1891 started THE MAY LAWS pertaining to where they could live, when they could work.  Jews were expelled from Moscow and a law called NUMERUS CLAUSES was introduced into their high schools and secondary schools. " (4) The measures laid down in paragraphs 1, 2, and 3 shall apply only to the governments within the Pale of Jewish Settlement [that is, they shall not apply to the ten governments of Poland].They were laws discriminating against the Jews.  The administration of the May Laws by petty officials who were very often ignorant of their meaning intensified abuses"                                                                       

                                                                        
My grandfather left Telsiai, Lithuania in June 1893 for England at age 22.  

Many Jews turned to ZIONISM.     Some opted to emigrate to the USA. They all wanted to leave.                                

1897 was the turning point for Jews to be interested in socialism like the Bund and the revolutionary movement.

1905 was the start of an organization advocating Jewish rights.  By 1906 they elected 12 Jewish deputies to the Duma, representing the Liberal Party. Anti-Semitism reached a peak with the Beilis case, one of many Blood Libels.In 1911 the body of a boy was found in Kiev and Menahem Mendel Beilis was charged with ritual murder.  The investigation lasted for 2 years with violent anti-Jewish propaganda in the Russian and anti-Semitic press and by a wave of protest in Jewish and libnertal circles in the world.  In 1913 the trial was held and Beilis was acquitted.  He traveled to Palestine and later in 1920  to the USA. His story was the subject in the book The Fixer by Bernard Malamaud.
                                                                     

Much emigration to the USA took place between 1900 and 1920.  I know from the reports of one family that they had to pay a leader to take them out, traveling at night.  Their story was about a foggy night and they had let go accidentally the hand of one of their children and almost lost her in fleeing.

1914 was the beginning of WWI and lasted until 1917.  At the outbreak of the war, 5,600,000 Jews lived in the empire of the Czars including almost 2 million in Poland.  Those living near the war zones were deported.  There happened to be 300,000 Jewish soldiers in the Russian army at the time.    Jewish shtetls (villages) were the scapegoats for Russian defeats.  Jews were expulsed from Kovno, Grodno and Courland.  They could do no printing in Hebrew or Yiddish.
Lithuania's 100,000 Jews were expelled and emigrated to Russian interior during war.
                                                                               
After the Russian Revolution on April 2, 1917, the government ended all anti-Jewish decrees.  Then Jews became active in the Kerensky regime and later men such as  Trotsky, Zinoviev, Sverd and Lov were prominent  in the Bolshevik Revolution.

1918 saw changes for Jews.  There were Jewish departments in the commissariats of national affairs and of education.  April 1919 the Soviet government ended the non-communist Jewish institutions
1919  Vilna, Lithuania went to Poland.
                                                                             
A Civil War started and with it was a wave of more pogroms but the Soviet government said that anti-Semitism was a criminal offense.  Jewish traders started to disappear.  Many went into heavy industry.  The Soviet Government became anti-religious.   and it became against the law to teach in public schools any religious teaching.  There was an economic revolution what affected all life.  Older Jews held onto their traditions, but the younger ones were affected by the changes.  The government recognized that Jews were not a nationality, so they discouraged Hebrew and persecuted Zionism.   They didn't like Jews but discouraged them from leaving Russia for Palestine, too.

Like the rest of the world, from 1921 to 1929, life was better for the Jews economically.  Jews were placed on the land to farm in the Ukraine, Crimea and in Biro-Bidjan.  The American Jewish Agricultural Corporation helped them, but not many Jews wanted to be farmers.
                                                                     

In 1930, Jews were being discouraged to continue with their religion.  Prominent Jews were taken away in purges of the 1930s.
                                                                       

1939 WWII started.  Poland was invaded by the Nazis on September 1, 1939.  "  In addition to stipulations of non-aggression, a treaty included a secret protocol that divided territories of Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet "spheres of influence", anticipating potential "territorial and political rearrangements" of these countries"   Countries were annexed such as Belarus, W. Volhynia, E. Galicia, N. Bukovina, Bessarabia (Moldova and Ukraine) , Lithuania and Latvia and this led to the mass-deportation of Jews by the Nazis, especially the intelligentsia from these places.
July 1940 Lithuania had 175,000 Jews.  Russians deported 25,000 and from Latvia.  The remaining were massacred by the Nazis and Lithuanians by 1943.                                                                              

1941 the Nazis invaded Russia.  Their aim was to exterminate the Jewish population.  There were 500,000 Jews in White Russia (Belarus).
                                                                                 

Russian Jew 

Only half escaped to the interior.  200,000 were slaughtered immediately.  The Soviet government appealed to the World Jewry in 1941 but quickly the anti-Jewish trend showed itself again.Many outstanding Jews were taken away, including most of the people of Yiddish culture.
                                                           
1947-1948 Jews were supporting Israel.  Russia adopted a strong pro-Arab and anti-Israel policy.

1952 showed the chutzpa of the Russians  to charge Jewish doctors of plotting against the state, part of another campaign against Jews after suffering from the Nazi Holocaust.
                                                                       

Joseph Stalin 1878-1953, Russian dictator from 1929 to 1953. 

 
1953 Stalin died! All doctors who survived prison were released.  The government continued to be anti-Semitic and restricted Jewish cultural expression.  Jews were removed and placed in different centers, changing the population.

1955 Russia strongly supported Arabs
1959 Jews living in Russia 2,268,000.
1967 After Six Day War USSR broke off relations with Israel and came out in support of the Arabs, especially supportive of Egypt.
Jews demanded the right to emigrate to Israel.  At this time, all synagogues were shut down and Russians were atheistic.  There was no religion practiced.  Many Jews were put in prison for wanting to leave.
                                                                           
 Sharansky was one of them.  He was able to write to my Hebrew teacher in Israel from prison in 1980 and she in turn sent back lessons, in secret.
                                                                     

Natan Sharansky, born 1948 in Russia. Chess champion, computer scientist, Knesset member 

1970s Jews started to come to Israel.  250,000 left Russia and of those 150,000 went to Israel.  By mid 70s, Russians came to USA instead.
Natan  Sharansky was denied an exit visa to Israel in 1973. The reason given for denial of the visa was that he had been given access, at some point in his career, to information vital to Soviet national security and could not now be allowed to leave. After becoming a refusenik, Sharansky became a human rights activist, working as a translator for dissident and nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov, and spokesperson for the Moscow Helsinki Group and a leader for the rights of refuseniks.

Sharansky was released on 11 February 1986 as part of a larger exchange of detainees. He was the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev due to intense political pressure from Ronald Reagan.

1980s saw doors closed to Jews again.  Finally in last years of 1980s, Gorbachev allowed emigration. Everyone felt freer, Jew and anti-Semites.  Now the USA severely limited Soviet Jews from entering.  Israel received almost 200,000 Jews in 1990 and it continued into 1991.

     I made aliyah in 1980 and joined a group of Russian Jews who were teachers of English in Russia.  We were all learning Hebrew in an ulpan lasting 10 months and had to pass a 3 hour Hebrew test at the end.  They were far better at learning languages than we Americans.  They could not return to Russia, but we were free to return to the USA having dual citizenship.  I loved them for loving my female German shepherd who I had brought with me.  One time we Americans and Russians had a big disagreement on managing our ulpan lunch money, and though we argued, they always loved my dog.  She brought us together.  

1989 census of Jews in Russia: 1,449,167, probably higher.  Some records say only 12,312 Jews remained.  
1991 relations with Israel re-established, just before liquidation of USSR.                                       
2015:  Russia meeting with Iran about nuclear plans of Iran.   Russia backs Iran in arming terrorists who are attacking Israel.  
                                                  

A Jew praying at the wall in Jerusalem

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natan_Sharansky
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/10508-may-laws