Meir Shfeya ( he, מֵאִיר שְׁפֵיָה) is a

youth village A youth village ( he, כפר נוער, ''Kfar No'ar'') is a boarding school model first developed in Mandatory Palestine in the 1930s to care for groups of children and teenagers fleeing the Nazis. Henrietta Szold and Recha Freier were the pion ...

and agricultural boarding school in northern

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

. Located near

Zikhron Ya'akov Zikhron Ya'akov ( he, זִכְרוֹן יַעֲקֹב, ''lit.'' "Jacob's Memorial"; often shortened to just ''Zikhron'') is a town in Israel, south of Haifa, and part of the Haifa District. It is located at the southern end of the Carmel mount ...

, it falls under the jurisdiction of

Hof HaCarmel Regional Council Hof HaCarmel Regional Council ( he, מועצה אזורית חוף הכרמל, ''Mo'atza Azorit Hof ha-Karmel'', ''lit.'' Carmel Coast Regional Council) is a regional council located in the northern Israeli coastal plain. The council serves a larg ...

. In it had a population of .

History

The site of Meir Shfeya was originally a Muslim village named Shefeia, meaning "the edge or margin". In 1859, the population was given as 100, who cultivated 11

feddan A feddan ( ar, فدّان, faddān) is a unit of area used in Egypt, Sudan, Syria, and the Oman. In Classical Arabic, the word means 'a yoke of oxen', implying the area of ground that could be tilled by oxen in a certain time. In Egypt, the fe ...

s of land. In 1882, the

PEF PEF, PeF, or Pef may stand for the following abbreviations: * Palestine Exploration Fund * Peak expiratory flow * PEF Private University of Management Vienna * Pentax raw file (see Raw image format) * Perpetual Education Fund * Perpetual Emigratio ...

's ''Survey of Western Palestine'' (SWP) described as "a small village with a

well A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. T ...

to the north." A population list from about 1887 showed that Shefeia had about 130 inhabitants, all Muslims. Modern Meir Shfeya was established in 1891 as a

moshava A moshava ( he, מושבה, plural: ''moshavot'' , lit. ''colony'') was a form of rural Jewish settlement in Ottoman Palestine, established by the members of the Old Yishuv since late 1870s and during the first two waves of Jewish Zionist imm ...

adjacent to

. The name is a combination of Meir, named for Amschel Mayer (Meir) Rothschild, the grandfather of

Baron Rothschild Baron Rothschild, of Tring in the County of Hertfordshire, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1885 for Sir Nathan Rothschild, 2nd Baronet, a member of the Rothschild banking family. He was the first Jewish mem ...

, and a distortion of Shefeia. In 1904

Israel Belkind Israel Belkind ( be, Ізраэль Белкінд, he, ישראל בלקינד; 1861–1929) was a Jewish educator, author, writer, historian and founder of the Bilu movement. A pioneer of the First Aliyah, Belkind founded the ''Biluim'', a gro ...

, a founder of Bilu, established an educational institute in the village under the name Kiryat Sefer,Orphanage which became a youth village
Ynetnews which took in orphans from the

Kishinev pogrom The Kishinev pogrom or Kishinev massacre was an anti-Jewish riot that took place in Kishinev (modern Chișinău, Moldova), then the capital of the Bessarabia Governorate in the Russian Empire, on . A second pogrom erupted in the city in Octob ...

. This made it the first youth village in the country. In 1917 the

Herzliya Hebrew High School The Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium ( he, הַגִּימְנַסְיָה הָעִבְרִית הֶרְצְלִיָּה, ''HaGymnasia HaIvrit Herzliya'', Also known as ''Gymnasia Herzliya''), originally known as HaGymnasia HaIvrit (lit. Hebrew High Scho ...

was temporarily moved to the village due to the expulsion of

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

s from

Tel Aviv Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the G ...

and Jaffa during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. World War I left many orphaned children in Jerusalem. A girls school called ''Aliza's care center'', established in the yard of the

Diskin Orphanage The Diskin Orphanage was an orphanage in the Old City of Jerusalem, established in 1881 by Yehoshua Leib Diskin. From the Jewish Quarter, it moved to Street of the Prophets outside the walls of the Old City. In 1927, it moved to a new building ...

on Nevi'im Street with funding from the American Zionist women's organization,

Hadassah Hadassah () means myrtle in Hebrew. It is given as the Hebrew name of Esther in the Hebrew Bible. Hadassah may also refer to: * Hadassah (dancer) (1909–1992), Jerusalem-born American dancer and choreographer * Hadassah Lieberman (born 1948) ...

, moved to Shfeya in 1923. In the Mandatory era, the

1922 census of Palestine The 1922 census of Palestine was the first census carried out by the authorities of the British Mandate of Palestine, on 23 October 1922. The reported population was 757,182, including the military and persons of foreign nationality. The divis ...

attributed a population of 81 to Meiriya (Shafiya), of which 38 were Muslims and 43 were Jews, increasing sharply in the 1931 census to 208; 40 Muslims and 168 Jews, in a total of 18 houses. In 1929, the annual convention of Junior Hadassah voted to acquire a farm at Rabia, near Meier Shefaya, where graduates of the school would engage in agriculture. A budget of $7,500 was allotted for this project over a period of three years until the farm became self-supporting. By the 1945 statistics the village had a population of 330, all Jews. The village was used as a training base by the

Haganah Haganah ( he, הַהֲגָנָה, lit. ''The Defence'') was the main Zionist paramilitary organization of the Jewish population ("Yishuv") in Mandatory Palestine between 1920 and its disestablishment in 1948, when it became the core of the Is ...

due to its remote location in a mountainous area. In 1957 it was made a partnership between the State and the organisation, and today exists as a youth village.A little history
Meir Shfeya Image:PikiWiki Israel 12917 Settlements in Israel.jpg, Meir Shfeya in 1925 File:Fureidis 1938.jpg, Meir Shfeya (Shefeya) 1938 1:20,000 File:Jaba 1945.jpg, Meir Shfeya (Shefeiya) 1945 1:250,000 File:Meir Shefeya.jpg, Meir Shfeya youth village.

Palmach The Palmach (Hebrew: , acronym for , ''Plugot Maḥatz'', "Strike Companies") was the elite fighting force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Yishuv (Jewish community) during the period of the British Mandate for Palestine. The Palmac ...

archive photograph. 1946

Notable residents

Sara Levi-Tanai Sara Levi-Tanai ( he, שרה לוי-תנאי; c. 1910 – 3 October 2005) was an Israeli choreographer and song writer. She was the founder and artistic director of the Inbal Dance Theater and recipient of the Israel Prize in dance. Prizes and aw ...

, choreographer and songwriter

References

External links

Official website
*Survey of Western Palestine, Map 8:
IAAWikimedia commons
{{Authority control Youth villages in Israel Jewish villages in the Ottoman Empire 1891 establishments in the Ottoman Empire Populated places established in 1891 Populated places in Haifa District Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization of America