[ZIONISM]; Zipporah DAVID (photographer). Von der neuen jüdischen Arbeit in der Jesreel-Ebene. Bericht aus Nuris. [Wrapper:] Nuris. Eine neue jüdische Arbeiter-Siedlung in Palästina.

Constructing a Kibbutz

[ZIONISM]; Zipporah DAVID (photographer). Von der neuen jüdischen Arbeit in der Jesreel-Ebene. Bericht aus Nuris. [Wrapper:] Nuris. Eine neue jüdische Arbeiter-Siedlung in Palästina. Berlin: [Siegfried Scholem for] Keren Hajessod (Jüdisches Palästinawerk), [1923].

Small 8vo. Publisher’s printed wrappers with pocket to rear wrapper, front cover with map of Jezreel Valley; loosely inserted 8-pp. pamphlet and 16 loosely inserted photographic plates by Zipporah David; crude tape repair to interior spine of wrappers, a few chips to extremities of wrappers not affecting text; light toning to pamphlet; else very well preserved.

A rare and very early ephemeral publication documenting the progress of Kibbutz Ein Harod – the first large Kibbutz to be established in Mandatory Palestine – produced two years after the acquisition of the land as part of the Sursock Purchase.

Ein Harod was founded near the village of Nuris in 1921 by members of the Third Aliyah, largely Eastern European Jews. The pamphlet describes Jewish labourers arriving in the previously ‘uncultivated and swampy’ area (trans.) and reproduces a letter from workers in the nearby kibbutz of Heftziba, founded in 1922 by Jewish migrants from Germany and Czechoslovakia. The development of the kibbutz described here was ‘made possible largely by means of machinery, equipment, and workshops procured with funds from the German branch of Keren Hayesod’ (trans.).

The pamphlet describes budgetary constraints, economic and sanitary concerns, the draining of the swampland (including the construction of a water pipeline following the closure of the Arab irrigation canal), the creation of a vegetable garden, a list of newly erected buildings with their dimensions, and inventory of machinery and vehicles.

This report was produced for Keren Hayesod, the fundraising organisation for the State of Israel founded in 1920 at the World Zionist Congress in London. Keren Hayesod was headquartered in London until 1926, when it relocated to Jerusalem; among its supporters were Chaim Weizmann and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, as well as Albert Einstein, who travelled to the United States with Weizmann in 1921 to raise funds to establish the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with the support of Keren Hayesod. The photographs are by Zipporah David (1882–1936), who in April 1926 would photograph the famous open-air fundraising concert by violinist Jascha Heifetz, held in a stone quarry at Ein Harod.

OCLC locates only two copies in the US, at Harvard and Yeshiva University; not on Library Hub.

SKU: 2093331