Yavne'el (Hebrew: יַבְנְאֵל, Arabic: يفنيئيل) is a moshava and local council in the Northern District of Israel. Founded in 1901, it is one of the oldest rural Jewish communities in the country.[2] According to the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), in 2022 it had a population of 4,542. In 2008 the population had been 3,100, with a growth rate of 1.4%.[citation needed]

Yavne'el
  • יַבְנְאֵל
  • يفنيئيل
Local council (from 1951)
Hebrew transcription(s)
 • ISO 259Yabnˀel
View of Yavne'el
View of Yavne'el
Yavne'el is located in Northeast Israel
Yavne'el
Yavne'el
Yavne'el is located in Israel
Yavne'el
Yavne'el
Coordinates: 32°42′34″N 35°29′58″E / 32.70944°N 35.49944°E / 32.70944; 35.49944
Grid position197/234 PAL
Country Israel
DistrictNorthern
Founded1901; 123 years ago (1901)
Government
 • Head of MunicipalitySnir Arish
Area
 • Total31,680 dunams (31.68 km2 or 12.23 sq mi)
Population
 (2022)[1]
 • Total4,460
 • Density140/km2 (360/sq mi)

History edit

Archaeology: Bronze Age to Mamluk period edit

Remains from the Late Bronze Age,[3][4] Iron Age I–II,[3] Persian,[3] Hellenistic,[5] Roman,[3] Late Byzantine,[3][4][6] Early Muslim[7] and Mamluk periods[4][6] have been found here.

A residential building constructed in the Umayyad period that continued to be inhabited during the Abbasid period (eighth–tenth centuries CE) has been excavated here.[7]

Ottoman period edit

Arab village edit

During the Ottoman period, the Muslim village in the area was known as Yemma.[8] The village was mentioned in the Ottoman defter for the year 1555-6, located in the Nahiya of Tabariyya of the Liwa of Safad, with its land designated as timar.[9]

A map by Pierre Jacotin from Napoleon's invasion of 1799 noted the place.[10]

In 1875, Victor Guérin visited and described the village as rather ruined and built of basaltic stone, situated in a fertile valley.[11] In 1881, the PEF's Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Yemma as having basaltic stone houses, containing 100 Muslims, on an arable plain. There were no gardens or trees, but two springs were nearby, and the village had cisterns.[12] To the south-west of this site there was a supply of water among the rocks of the valley.[13]

Jewish settlement edit

 
Yavne'el in 1910

The "Yamah" settlement was initially planned for 40 farms, each holding 300 dunams.[14] What is now Yavne'el was established on October 7, 1901, by the Jewish Colonization Association (ICA) on lands bought from the Delaike (Al-Dalaika) Bedouin tribe by Baron Rothschild.[15][16][17] The name "Yavne'el" was taken[18] from a biblical city (Joshua 19:33) in the allotment of the tribe of Naphtali, situated in this area. The first settlers came from the Hauran region (Jewish settlers of the Hauran or "Horan" as it was called, had been evicted from there in 1898 by the Ottoman authorities),[17] joined in December 1901 by villagers from Metula.[14][16] In 1914–15, immigrant families from Yemen settled in Yavne'el.[14]

The new colony of Beit Gan was founded in 1904[14] as a moshav.[19]

British Mandate edit

 
Yavne’el 1937

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Yabnieh (Yamma) had a total population of 447; 82 Muslims and 365 Jews.[20] At the time of the 1931 census, Yavneel still had exactly the same population of 447; but now it was 56 Muslims and 391 Jews, in a total of 102 houses.[21]

Hitahdut HaMoshavot BeYehuda VeShomron ('Association of moshavot in Judea and Samaria'), the oldest settlement movement for private farmers in the Land of Israel, was founded in Yavne'el in 1920.[citation needed]

When three Jewish residents were murdered by Arab rioters on the road between Yavne'el and Beit Gan in 1937 during the country-wide Arab revolt, a new settlement named in their honour, the moshav Mishmar HaShlosha (lit. 'Guard of the Three'), was established nearby.[14]

 
Yavne’el 1947

In the 1945 statistics, Yavneel was home to 590 people, all Jews.[22][23]

In 1947 an improvised landing strip in the fields of the moshava was used for landing by a transport airplane bringing Jewish refugees, twice from Baghdad and once from Italy.[24] The Galilee Squadron aerial unit was established in Yavne'el and participated in the War of Independence between April and November 1948, after which it was disbanded.

State of Israel edit

 
Moshav Yavne’el, 1948

Located southwest of Tiberias, it was declared a local council in 1951.[citation needed]

Several organisations were established in Yavne'el, including the Israeli Farmers Union and the Golani Brigade.[citation needed]

Administration edit

The local council is jointly responsible for Yavne'el, Beit Gan, Mishmar HaShlosha, and Smadar.[19] The first three were established as moshavot (early Zionist agricultural colonies) and are very close to each other, while Smadar, originally a moshav (communal village with more economic autonomy for the member families than a kibbutz), is slightly farther away.[19]

Farmer community edit

In 1991, the authors of a book on Jewish identity in contemporary Israel noticed that, although in many ways typical for the processes Israeli society underwent since its inception, Yavne'el has a core group of farmers described as "rooted yeomanry", uncommon outside the few moshavot of the first hour of Zionist settlement that retained their initial rural character - no more than a dozen in the entire country.[25] These farmers are deeply connected to the place, dedicated to working the land, and see themselves as spearheading the tremendously important task of returning the nation to a set of values long lost or ignored by Jews everywhere else, starting with different-minded neighbours from Yavne'el.[25] They are compared to wheat farmers of the American Midwest or Sweden, in the way they both sound and look.[25]

Breslov community edit

In 1986, Rabbi Eliezer Shlomo Schick founded a Breslov community largely consisting of baalei teshuvah (newly religious) adherents in Yavne'el. As of 2015 this community, which calls itself "Breslov City",[26] numbers nearly 400 families, representing 30 percent of the town's population.[27] The community has its own educational and civic organizations, including a Talmud Torah, girls' school, yeshiva ketana, yeshiva gedola, kollel,[28] beis medrash (study/prayer hall), and charity and humanitarian organizations.[27]

Notable residents edit

Twin towns – sister cities edit

See also edit

  • Saham al-Jawlan, village in the Hauran with a short-lived Jewish settlement (1895–96), some of whose colonists, evicted by Ottoman authorities, became the founders of Yavne'el

References edit

  1. ^ "Regional Statistics". Israel Central Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 2024-03-21.
  2. ^ Tradition, Innovation, Conflict: Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Israel, ed. Zvi Sobel and Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi
  3. ^ a b c d e Liebowitz 1995, cited in Hanna 2017
  4. ^ a b c van den Brink 2017.
  5. ^ Dalali-Amos 2011b.
  6. ^ a b Hanna 2009.
  7. ^ a b Hanna 2017.
  8. ^ Palmer 1881, p. 138, from a personal name.
  9. ^ Rhode 1979, p. 104.
  10. ^ Karmon 1960, p. 167.
  11. ^ Guérin 1880, p. 268.
  12. ^ Conder & Kitchener 1881, p. 362.
  13. ^ Conder & Kitchener 1881, p. 379.
  14. ^ a b c d e Leah Haber Gedalia (2018). "Yavne'el, Israel: The First Century (1901-2001). A Timeline" (PDF). JewishGen KehilaLinks. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-12-05. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  15. ^ Marom, Roy (January 2021). "The Abu Hameds of Mulabbis: An Oral History of a Palestinian Village Depopulated in the Late Ottoman Period". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. 48: 2.
  16. ^ a b Avik Kustizki; Yossi Dolah; Amit Ben Zvi (2001). "Centenary of Yavne'el, Kefar Tavor & Menahamiya". Israel Philatelic Federation. Archived from the original on 2015-11-30. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  17. ^ a b Ben-Porat, Amir (1991). "Immigration, proletarianization, and deproletarianization: A case study of the Jewish working class in Palestine, 1882-1914". Theory and Society (20): 244.
  18. ^ Carta's Official Guide to Israel and Complete Gazetteer to all Sites in the Holy Land (3rd ed.). Jerusalem: Carta. 1993. p. 476. ISBN 965-220-186-3.
  19. ^ a b c Yavneel Local Council, Lower Galilee, Galilee Development Authority website, retrieved 6 December 2019
  20. ^ Barron 1923, Table XI, Sub-District of Tiberias, p. 39.
  21. ^ Mills 1932, p. 85.
  22. ^ Department of Statistics 1945, p. 12.
  23. ^ Department of Statistics 1945. Quoted in Hadawi 1970, p. 73.
  24. ^ "Operation 'Michaelberg': a Commando transport flown by two American pilots brings illegal Jewish immigrants from Iraq into Palestine". Israeli Air Force. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  25. ^ a b c Sobel, Zvi; Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin (1991). Tradition, Innovation, Conflict: Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Israel. SUNY series in Israeli Studies. SUNY Press. ISBN 9780791405550. Retrieved 2019-12-05.
  26. ^ "יבנאל – עיר ברסלב | כל מה שאתה רוצה לדעת!!!" [Yavnal - City of Breslav | Everything you want to know!!!]. Mivnal News Breslav City (in Hebrew). May 31, 2023.
  27. ^ a b "Harav Eliezer Shlomo Shick, zt"l, of Yavne'el". Hamodia. Israel News. February 12, 2015. p. 9.
  28. ^ Tzoren, Moshe Michael (December 23, 2010). "Away From the Hustle and Bustle of the Big City: Investors from Israel and abroad are buying up large lots in Yavniel, a quiet village in the Galilee, with an eye on building hundreds of housing units for the chareidi public". Hamodia. Israel News. pp. A26–A27.
  29. ^ "Testvérvárosok - Twin Cities". embassies.gov.il. Retrieved 2023-11-17.

Bibliography edit

External links edit