Agricultural Settlement [antikvár]

SETTLEMENT Modern Jewish agricultural settlement in the territory which now constitutes the State of Israel dates back to the year 1870 when the French Jewish philanthropic organization, Alliance Israélite Universelle, established at Mikve Israel the first agricultural school for Jewish boys. It was hoped that this would lead, in the course of time, to the creation of Jewish villages on the part of the existing Jewish population of Palestine which, at that time, was located almost exclusively in the holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safad and Tiberias, with a small community in the seaport of JaflFa. The agricultural traditions of the Jewish people are very ancient. The Jews emerged into history as a nomadic people pasturing their sheep and goats, much as the Bedouin do to this day. They quickly adjusted themselves to the requirements of a settled life in their own land, and the Bible writes of them as a people of peasants, cultivators and fishermen. Indeed, the Bible's description of the idyllic life is that each man should live under his own vine and fig tree. The Roman conquest destroyed Jewish independence and Jews were scattered throughout the world. Regarded in most countries' as a race apart and subjected, as they were, to periodic persecution and even to organized expulsion, the Jewish wanderers tended, in their new lands of sojourn, to seek out means of livelihood outside agriculture. The essence of agriculture as a way of life is being rooted in the place in which you live. If you must reckon with the prospect that some time, without