El Rom ( he, אֶל רוֹם, ''lit.'' To Height) is an
Israeli settlement
Israeli settlements, or Israeli colonies, are civilian communities inhabited by Israeli citizens, overwhelmingly of Jewish ethnicity, built on lands occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers Israeli se ...
organized as a
kibbutz
A kibbutz ( he, קִבּוּץ / , lit. "gathering, clustering"; plural: kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1909, was Degania. Today, farming h ...
in the northern
Golan Heights
The Golan Heights ( ar, هَضْبَةُ الْجَوْلَانِ, Haḍbatu l-Jawlān or ; he, רמת הגולן, ), or simply the Golan, is a region in the Levant spanning about . The region defined as the Golan Heights differs between di ...
in the municipal territory of the
Golan Regional Council
Golan Regional Council ( he, מועצה אזורית גולן, ar, مجلس الجولان الإقليمي) is a regional council that supervises regional services to Israeli settlements located on the Golan Heights. It is made up of 18 moshav ...
. The international community considers Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights
illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this.
In it had a population of .
Geography
The kibbutz is about south of
Mount Hermon, at an elevation of above
sea level
Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...
. El Rom and the nearby
moshav
A moshav ( he, מוֹשָׁב, plural ', lit. ''settlement, village'') is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 an ...
Odem are the two
Jewish settlements in Israel with the highest elevation after
Nimrod
Nimrod (; ; arc, ܢܡܪܘܕ; ar, نُمْرُود, Numrūd) is a biblical figure mentioned in the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles. The son of Cush and therefore a great-grandson of Noah, Nimrod was described as a king in the land of ...
.
History
The kibbutz was founded in 1971 by a core group of settlers from the ''Machanot HaOlim''
Zionist youth movement. Although they had intended to settle in
Beit HaArava in the southern
Jordan River Valley, they were eventually persuaded to move to the Golan Heights. The original settlement was shelled during the
Yom Kippur war
The Yom Kippur War, also known as the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, or the Fourth Arab–Israeli War, was an armed conflict fought from October 6 to 25, 1973 between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egy ...
; most buildings were repaired, except for one or two prefabs.
Climate
El Rom has
Mediterranean-type climate, with warm and dry summer followed by cold and humid winter. Being at the northern part of the Golan Heights and at an altitude of over above sea level gives it a unique year-round weather in comparison to most of Israel. Summer time, in between May and September, is dry with almost no precipitation at all and temperatures of during the day in the hot months of July and August. Nights are mostly cool due to the continental wind blowing from the vast desert to the east. Winter temperature averages in the cold months of January and February during the day and lows of , at times dropping down to . The rains start in September and go on until May, filling up the reservoirs and giving a lot of water to the
Sea of Galilee
The Sea of Galilee ( he, יָם כִּנֶּרֶת, Judeo-Aramaic: יַמּא דטבריא, גִּנֵּיסַר, ar, بحيرة طبريا), also called Lake Tiberias, Kinneret or Kinnereth, is a freshwater lake in Israel. It is the lowest ...
. The annual precipitation averages of rain and occasional snow, but the last few years show lesser precipitation and higher temperatures.
Fog
Fog is a visible aerosol consisting of tiny water droplets or ice crystals suspended in the air at or near the Earth's surface. Reprint from Fog can be considered a type of low-lying cloud usually resembling stratus, and is heavily influ ...
is very common throughout the year.
Economy
The economy is based primarily on
agriculture
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to ...
. Crops include
apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...
s,
pear
Pears are fruits produced and consumed around the world, growing on a tree and harvested in the Northern Hemisphere in late summer into October. The pear tree and shrub are a species of genus ''Pyrus'' , in the family Rosaceae, bearing the p ...
s,
strawberries
The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown hybrid species of the genus '' Fragaria'', collectively known as the strawberries, which are cultivated worldwide for their fruit. The fruit is widely ap ...
, and
grape
A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters.
The cultivation of grapes began perhaps 8,000 years ago, ...
s for
wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
. A
cider house producing British-style alcoholic
cider
Cider ( ) is an alcoholic beverage made from the fermented juice of apples. Cider is widely available in the United Kingdom (particularly in the West Country) and the Republic of Ireland. The UK has the world's highest per capita consumption, ...
operates on the kibbutz.
They also raise
cattle
Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult mal ...
and
chicken
The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adult m ...
s. In 1984, the kibbutz established
El Rom Studios to provide an alternative employment opportunities and revenue stream. The studios command a large share of the market for adding
subtitle
Subtitles and captions are lines of dialogue or other text displayed at the bottom of the screen in films, television programs, video games or other visual media. They can be transcriptions of the screenplay, translations of it, or informati ...
s as well as other translation services for
film
A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...
and
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
. In Israel, since foreign language movies and TV programs are rarely
dubbed, there is a constant need to provide these services.
See also
*
Israeli-occupied territories
Israeli-occupied territories are the lands that were captured and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War of 1967. While the term is currently applied to the Palestinian territories and the Golan Heights, it has also been used to refer to a ...
*
Status of territories occupied by Israel in 1967
The status of territories captured by Israel is the status of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula; all of which were captured by Israel over the course of the 1967 Six-Day War.
The Sinai peninsula status wa ...
References
{{Golan Regional Council
Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights
Kibbutzim
Kibbutz Movement
Populated places established in 1971
Golan Regional Council
Populated places in Northern District (Israel)
1971 establishments in the Israeli Military Governorate