Nahalal () is a

moshav A moshav (, plural ', "settlement, village") is a type of Israeli village or town or Jewish settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists between 1904 and 1 ...

northern Israel The Northern District (; ) is one of Israel's six administrative districts. The Northern District has a land area of 4,473 km2, making it the second largest district in Israel. The Golan Heights has been run as a sub-district of the North ...

. Covering , it falls under the jurisdiction of the

Jezreel Valley Regional Council Jezreel Valley Regional Council (, ''Mo'atza Azorit Emek Yizra'el'') is a regional council in northern Israel that encompasses most of the settlements in the Jezreel Valley. It includes 15 kibbutzim, 15 moshavim, 6 community settlements and two B ...

. In it had a population of . Nahalal is best known for its general layout, as designed by

Richard Kauffmann Richard Kauffmann (1887–1958) was a German-Jewish architect who migrated to Israel (region), Palestine in 1920. His architecture was influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a proponent of the International Style, and was applied to the local l ...

: slightly oval round, similar to a spoke wheel, with its public buildings at the "hub" and individual plots of agricultural land radiating from it like spokes with symmetrically placed roads creating eight equal

sectors Sector may refer to: Places * Sector, West Virginia, U.S. Geometry * Circular sector, the portion of a disc enclosed by two radii and a circular arc * Hyperbolic sector, a region enclosed by two radii and a hyperbolic arc * Spherical sector, a ...

, an inner ring of residential buildings, and an outer

ring road A ring road (also known as circular road, beltline, beltway, circumferential (high)way, loop or orbital) is a road or a series of connected roads encircling a town, city or country. The most common purpose of a ring road is to assist in reducin ...

.Richard Kauffmann
''Die Bebauungsplaene der Kleinsiedlungen Kfar-Nahalal und Kfar-Jecheskiel''
('The construction plans for the agricultural small housing estates Kfar Nahalal and Kfar Jecheskiel'), published by the Department for Agricultural Colonization of the Zionist Executive, Jerusalem (1923), in German.

In the Hebrew Bible

Nahalal was a

Levitical Levites ( ; ) or Levi are Jewish males who claim patrilineal descent from the Tribe of Levi. The Tribe of Levi descended from Levi, the third son of Jacob and Leah. The surname ''Halevi'', which consists of the Hebrew definite article "" ''Ha-' ...

city mentioned in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
. '' Book of Joshua The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian captivity, Babylonian exile. It tells of the ...

, Nahalal, also transliterated Nahallal, was located in the territory of the

tribe of Zebulun According to the Hebrew Bible, the Tribe of Zebulun (alternatively rendered as ''Zabulon, Zabulin, Zabulun, Zebulon''; ) was one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Following the completion of the conquest of Canaan by the Israelite tribes in the Boo ...

(), and given to the

Merarite The Merarites were one of the four main divisions among the Levites in Biblical times. The Bible claims that the Merarites were all descended from the eponymous Merari, a son of Levi, although some biblical scholars regard this as a postdictional ...

division of the Levite tribe (). In the

Book of Judges The Book of Judges is the seventh book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. In the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, it covers the time between the conquest described in the Book of Joshua and the establishment of a kingdom in the ...

it is referred to as Nahalol ().

History

Antiquity

Archaeological findings in the area suggest human settlement there dates to the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

, and continued into the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...

era,

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of Roman civilization *Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...

era, and

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also known as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire centred on Constantinople during late antiquity and the Middle Ages. Having survived the events that caused the fall of the Western Roman E ...

era. Among the artifacts found was an ancient Jewish inscription of the word "Sabbath" on a rock, from Nahalal or nearby

Shimron Tel Shimron (Hebrew: תל שמרון) is an archaeological site and nature reserve in the Jezreel Valley. Shimron was a major city in the north of Israel mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In later times it was also known as Shim'on. It became a ...

Ottoman Empire: Ma'alul

An Arab village in the area,

Ma'alul Ma'alul () was a Palestinians, Palestinian village, with a mixed population of primarily Muslims with a substantial minority of Palestinian Christians, that was depopulated and destroyed by Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Located six kilom ...

, was incorporated into the

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...

in 1517. It was identified with the biblical Nahalal by Rabbi Joseph Schwarz in 1850.

20th century

Arab village of Ma'alul

By the 20th century, Ma'alul's inhabitants were tenants of the Sursuq family of

Beirut Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by populatio ...

, absentee landlords who had acquired the land earlier. In 1921, they sold all but 2,000

dunam A dunam ( Ottoman Turkish, Arabic: ; ; ; ), also known as a donum or dunum and as the old, Turkish, or Ottoman stremma, was the Ottoman unit of area analogous in role (but not equal) to the Greek stremma or English acre, representing the amo ...

s of Ma'alul's land to the

Zionist Zionism is an Ethnic nationalism, ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in History of Europe#From revolution to imperialism (1789–1914), Europe in the late 19th century that aimed to establish and maintain a national home for the ...

Palestine Land Development Company.

Moshav Nahalal

Nahalal was the first ''moshav ovdim'' (workers' cooperative agricultural settlement) in

Mandatory Palestine Mandatory Palestine was a British Empire, British geopolitical entity that existed between 1920 and 1948 in the Palestine (region), region of Palestine, and after 1922, under the terms of the League of Nations's Mandate for Palestine. After ...

. Its founders

immigrated Immigration is the international movement of people to a destination country of which they are not usual residents or where they do not possess nationality in order to settle as permanent residents. Commuters, tourists, and other short- ...

to Palestine from

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountain ...

as part of the

Second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...

and

Third Aliyah The Third Aliyah () refers to the third wave, or aliyah, of modern Jewish immigration to Palestine (region), Palestine from Europe. This wave lasted from 1919, just after the end of World War I, until 1923, at the start of an economic crisis in P ...

between 1904 and 1914, at the end of Ottoman rule. Some of them had been members of the first

kibbutz A kibbutz ( / , ; : kibbutzim / ) is an intentional community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. The first kibbutz, established in 1910, was Degania Alef, Degania. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economi ...

, Degania. After working in farming communities for a decade, they dreamt of establishing an income-sharing farming community similar to a kibbutz, but they wanted to maintain the

nuclear family A nuclear family (also known as an elementary family, atomic family, or conjugal family) is a term for a family group consisting of parents and their children (one or more), typically living in one home residence. It is in contrast to a single ...

and household structure (kibbutzim had communal dining, and children were kept in separate housing, where they also slept). The founders first arrived to the lands given to them by the

Jewish National Fund The Jewish National Fund (JNF; , ''Keren Kayemet LeYisrael''; previously , ''Ha Fund HaLeumi'') is a non-profit organizationProfessor Alon Tal, The Mitrani Department of Desert Ecology, The Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Ben Gurion ...

on September 11, 1921. They first saw the allotted land from the hill, noticing that small rivulets transformed the plain into marshes that attracted

malaria Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...

-spreading

anopheles ''Anopheles'' () is a genus of mosquito first described by the German entomologist Johann Wilhelm Meigen, J. W. Meigen in 1818, and are known as nail mosquitoes and marsh mosquitoes. Many such mosquitoes are Disease vector, vectors of the paras ...

mosquitoes. Heeding the warnings of experts, such as Dr.

Hillel Yaffe Hillel Yaffe (; 1864–1936) was a Russian Jewish physician and Zionist leader who immigrated to the Land of Israel in the First Aliyah during the Ottoman Empire. In the early 20th century he was instrumental in curing malaria, which at that tim ...

, the Jewish pioneers temporarily settled on a nearby hill, near the Arab village of Ma'lul. Later they came down from the hill and divided the land, initially into 80 equal parcels, 75 to the members and 5 to Nahalal agricultural school. The physical layout of Nahalal, devised by architect Richard Kauffmann in 1921, became the pattern for many moshavim established before 1948. It is based on concentric circles, with the public buildings (school, administration offices, services, and warehouses) in the centre, the homes of non-farming families (craftsmen, teachers, etc.) around the centre, then a ring street with the farmers' homesteads bordering on it on the outside, and beyond those, ever-widening circles of gardens and fields. The equal parcelling of the land became the trademark geometric shape of Nahalal. According to a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Nahalal had a population of 437 Jews. On 22 December 1932, a member of Nahalal, Yosef Ya'akobi, and his 9-year-old son David were killed when a bomb was thrown into their home. Halim Basta, a Coptic policeman for the Mandatory government solved the crime the following year, identifying followers of

Izz ad-Din al-Qassam (; 1881 or 19 December 1882 – 20 November 1935) was a Syrian Muslim preacher and a leader in the local struggles against British and French Mandatory rule in the Levant and an opponent of Zionism in the 1920s and 1930s. Qassam was born in ...

as the murderers.

Hillel Cohen Hillel Cohen-Bar (; born in Jerusalem, 5 October 1961) is an Israeli scholar who studies and writes about Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine/Israel. He is an associated professor at the Department of Islam and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew Uni ...

,
''Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: 1929''

Brandeis University Press Brandeis University Press is a university press supported by Brandeis University, a private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, Waltham, Massachusetts. It publishes a wide range of academic titles as well as trade books. The press was ...

2015 p.30. In 1937, Basta was himself murdered.

Education

In 1929, a Girls' Agricultural Training Farm was established at Nahalal by

Hana Meisel Hana Meisel (; born 25 December 1883, died 1972) was a Jewish agronomist, feminist and Zionist leader. Life Meisel was born in Grodno in the Russian Empire (today Hrodna in Belarus), and immigrated to Palestine (region), Palestine in 1909, d ...

of the

Women's International Zionist Organization The Women's International Zionist Organization (WIZO; ') is a volunteer organization dedicated to social welfare in all sectors of Israeli society, the advancement of the status of women, and Jewish education in Israel and the Diaspora. Histor ...

. In the 1940s it became a co-educational farming school of the

Youth Aliyah Youth Aliyah (Hebrew: עלית הנוער, ''Aliyat Hano'ar'', German: Jugend-Alijah, Youth Immigration) is a Jewish organization that rescued thousands of Jewish children from the Nazis during the Third Reich. Youth Aliyah arranged for their r ...

movement.

Notable residents

* Ram (Rami) Ben-Barak (born 1958), politician * Moshe "Muki" Betser (born 1945), commando officer *

Assi Dayan Assaf "Assi" Dayan (; 23 November 1945 – 1 May 2014) was an Israeli film director, actor, screenwriter, and producer. Life Dayan was the youngest son of Israeli general and defense minister Moshe Dayan and peace activist Ruth Dayan (née Sch ...

(1945–2014), film director, actor, screenwriter, and producer; son of Moshe Dayan *

Moshe Dayan Moshe Dayan (; May 20, 1915 – October 16, 1981) was an Israeli military leader and politician. As commander of the Jerusalem front in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Chief of General Staff (Israel), Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defe ...

(1915–1981), Israeli minister and military general *

Ruth Dayan Ruth Dayan (; 6 March 1917 – 5 February 2021) was an Israeli social activist who was the founder of the Maskit fashion house. She was also the first wife of Israeli Foreign Minister and General, Moshe Dayan (1915–1981). Active in many social ...

(née Schwartz, 1917-2021), social activist; first wife of Moshe Dayan *

Shmuel Dayan Shmuel Dayan (; 8 August 1891 – 11 August 1968) was a Zionist activist during the British Mandate of Palestine and an Israeli politician who served in the first three Knessets. Biography Born in the town of Zhashkiv in the Russian Empire (tod ...

(1891–1968), activist and politician; father of Moshe Dayan *

Yael Dayan Yael Dayan (; 12 February 1939 – 18 May 2024), also known as Yaël Dayan, was an Israeli politician and author. She served as a member of the Knesset between 1992 and 2003, and from 2008 to 2013 was the chair of Tel Aviv city council. Her ser ...

(born 1939), MK and daughter of Moshe Dayan *

Pnina Gary Pnina Gary (; Dromi; 24 September 1927 – 2 August 2023) was an Israeli actress and theatre director. Biography Pnina Dromi was born and raised in Nahalal, Mandatory Palestine, the daughter of Yosef Dromi (previously Kotlar) and Tzipora Ostro ...

(born 1927), actress and theatre director *

Yehonatan Geffen Yehonatan Geffen (; 22 February 1947 – 19 April 2023), also known as Yonatan Gefen, was an Israeli author, poet, songwriter, journalist, satirist and playwright. Early life and education Geffen was born in moshav Nahalal. In 1965, he serv ...

(1947–2023), musician, nephew of Moshe Dayan * Amos Hadar (1923–2014), politician, Member of the Knesset * Roy Kafri (born 1985), artist, comedian and musician *

Shaul Mofaz Shaul Mofaz (; 4 November 1948) is a retired Israeli military officer and politician. He joined the Israel Defense Forces in 1966 and served in the Paratroopers Brigade. He fought in the Six-Day War, Yom Kippur War, 1982 Lebanon War, and Operati ...

(born 1948), Israeli minister and military general *

Aryeh Nehemkin Aryeh Nehemkin (; 2 November 1925 – 24 November 2021) was an Israeli politician. He served as a member of the Knesset for the Alignment from 1981 until 1988, and as Minister of Agriculture between 1984 and 1988. Biography Nehemkin was born i ...

(1925–2021), Minister of Agriculture *

Moshe Peled (soldier) Moshe "Musa" Peled (; July 31, 1925 - April 16, 2000) was an Israeli military commander, ''Aluf'' ( Major General) of the Israeli Defense Forces.Amir Pnueli Amir Pnueli (; April 22, 1941 – November 2, 2009) was an Israeli computer scientist and the 1996 Turing Award recipient. Biography Pnueli was born in Nahalal, in the British Mandate of Palestine (now in Israel) and received a Bachelor's degree ...

(1941–2009), computer scientist * Nissan Rilov (1922–2007), artist, soldier, activist *

Meir Shalev Meir Shalev (; 29 July 1948 – 11 April 2023) was an Israeli writer and newspaper columnist for the daily Yedioth Ahronoth. Shalev's books have been translated into 26 languages. Biography Shalev was born in Nahalal, Israel. Later he lived ...

(1948-2023), writer and newspaper columnist *

Hannah Szenes Hannah Szenes (often anglicized as Hannah Senesh or Chanah Senesh; ; ; 17 July 1921 – 7 November 1944) was a Hungarian-born poet, playwright, and resistance operative trained by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). In 1944, she was ...

(1921-1944), poet and paramilitary *

Ruth Westheimer Karola Ruth Westheimer (née Siegel; June 4, 1928 – July 12, 2024), better known as Dr. Ruth, was a German and American sex therapist and talk show host. Westheimer was born in Germany to a Jewish family. As the Nazis came to power, her paren ...

(1928–2024; born Karola Siegel and known as "Dr. Ruth"), German-American sex therapist, talk show host, author, professor, Holocaust survivor, and former

Haganah Haganah ( , ) was the main Zionist political violence, Zionist paramilitary organization that operated for the Yishuv in the Mandatory Palestine, British Mandate for Palestine. It was founded in 1920 to defend the Yishuv's presence in the reg ...

sniper. Note: *

Ilan Ramon Ilan Ramon (; , born Ilan Wolfferman (); June 20, 1954 – February 1, 2003) was an Israeli fighter pilot and later the first Israeli astronaut. He served as a Space Shuttle payload specialist on STS-107, the fatal mission of '' Columbia ...

(1954–2003), Israel's first astronaut, is buried in the

Nahalal Cemetery Nahalal () is a moshav in northern Israel. Covering , it falls under the jurisdiction of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council. In it had a population of . Nahalal is best known for its general layout, as designed by Richard Kauffmann: slightly ...

, though he never lived in Nahalal.

References

External links

*
Degania & Nahalal
UNESCO

Jewish Agency for Israel
LIFE Magazin, Jul 5, 1937
"Jews made a garden" - aerial photo of Nahalal (page 55), and a girl from Girls' Agricultural Training Farm (page 54), at

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical charac ...

.
25 Mind-Blowing Aerial Photographs Around the World
at twistedsifter.com – better aerial photograph at #9, by

Yann Arthus-Bertrand Yann Arthus-Bertrand (; born 13 March 1946) is a French environmentalist, activist, journalist and photographer. He has also directed films about the impact of humans on the planet. He is especially well known for his book '' Earth from Above'' ...

. {{Authority control Levitical cities Moshavim Populated places established in 1921 Populated places in Northern District (Israel) 1921 establishments in Mandatory Palestine