Ein Harod (Meuhad)

Ein Harod (Meuhad) lies in the eastern Jezreel Valley at the foot of Mount Gilboa, near Harod Spring. It is one of two neighboring kibbutzim sharing the Ein Harod name, the other being Ein Harod Ihud; both stand near the Afula–Beisan road in the area historically called the Valley of Esdraelon.[1][2]

The Harod Stream rises in the valley near the communities. In the early twentieth century, springs along the Gilboa and Harod Stream created marshes where malaria-carrying mosquitoes bred, presenting the first settlers with a severe environmental challenge.[8] Harod Spring was known in Arabic as Ain Jalut and became associated with the Mamluk defeat of the Mongols in 1260.[2]

According to the National Library of Israel's account, the Sursock family bought the land from the Ottoman government in 1872 and established a small village there. The account says Zionist activist Yehoshua Hankin acquired the land in 1920 for Jewish settlement and compensated the tenant farmers who had been living on it.[7]

The Central Zionist Archives dates Ein Harod's establishment by Gedud HaAvoda to September 22, 1921, eleven days after the founding of Nahalal.[3] The Jewish Virtual Library likewise places its establishment near Harod Spring in September 1921 and identifies it as the second Jewish settlement founded in the Jezreel Valley.[9] Ynet describes it as the first large collective established in the country, organized to sustain a communal population numbering in the hundreds.[4] The Central Zionist Archives records that five settlements were established in the valley within 100 days, compared with an average of one or two settlements annually over the preceding four decades.[3]

The settlers formed a tent encampment near Ein Jalud. They confronted severe summer heat, malaria, marshland and inadequate transportation, with only railway tracks and dirt paths that became impassable during winter.[8][10] In July 1923, the combined Tel Yosef–Ein Harod farming unit divided over demands for economic autonomy; about one-third of its members settled at Ein Harod, while the majority remained at Tel Yosef.[11]

The settlers' first major task was turning the malarial landscape into productive farmland. Jewish National Fund engineers planned the drainage of the springs, and Ein Harod members performed the physical work. With no usable winter road to the railway station, they also hand-paved a route using quarried stones. One channel of the Harod Stream served as a bathing place for the men.[8]

After the initial drainage and construction work, the kibbutz developed additional sources of employment. Members harnessed the stream to power leather-processing machinery, established a tannery and opened a shoemaking workshop. Other activities included tobacco cultivation, a plant nursery, an apiary, carpentry and a mechanized laundry.[12] A dentist and horse-drawn mobile clinic visited periodically.[12]

Members of the Labor Battalion also established a hospital near Harod Spring. It became the forerunner of HaEmek Hospital, which later moved to Afula.[12] Cultural activity developed alongside these practical institutions. On April 17, 1926, violinist Jascha Heifetz performed at a quarry near Ein Harod before members of the labor brigades.[8] During the 1930s, Ein Harod produced what the National Library of Israel describes as the first Haggadah created for the country's kibbutz movement.[7]

Ein Harod faced frequent attacks during the Arab revolt of 1936–39. Haganah night squads were established and trained there under British officer Orde Charles Wingate, making the kibbutz an important location in the development of organized Jewish self-defense during the revolt.[2]

During the 1948 War of Independence, a Palmach group from Ein Harod dislodged Arab Legion forces from positions at Zir'in, now Yizre'el, and al-Mazar on Mount Gilboa. Those positions had threatened the Harod Valley.[2]

The division that produced Ein Harod Meuhad developed from political conflict within the Kibbutz Meuhad movement. Members and constituent kibbutzim divided between camps associated with Mapai and Mapam, and Ein Harod itself contained substantial groups from both sides.[2][5] The dispute reflected broader disagreements over political allegiance and the direction of the kibbutz movement.

A decision to divide Ein Harod into Ein Harod Ihud and Ein Harod Meuhad was taken in late 1952, but negotiations over property prolonged the separation.[5] The communal dining hall became a particular focus because both factions feared that the other would take control of it. A dispute over the admission of about 40 students from a Kibbutz Meuhad seminar escalated into a physical confrontation in which plates were thrown and people on both sides were injured.[5]

During a reporter's visit in July 1954, the factions were still eating silently at separate groups of tables in the shared dining hall.[5] A later account dates the final physical division to 1956, indicating that the late-1952 decision and the completion of the separation were distinct stages.[13] Family ties, friendships and shared assets continued to connect the members even as Ein Harod Ihud and Ein Harod Meuhad became socially and economically separate communities.

Available population figures are historical rather than current. Ein Harod Meuhad had 760 inhabitants in 1968, approximately 875 in the mid-1990s and 809 at the end of 2002.[2] These figures show growth during the later twentieth century followed by a decline by the beginning of the twenty-first century.

By the latter half of the twentieth century, Ein Harod Meuhad had developed intensive agriculture alongside substantial industrial enterprises. Agricultural activities included beekeeping, dairy cattle, poultry, fishery, field crops and orchards.[2]

Its industrial enterprises included steel works, a furniture factory and operations producing medical and industrial recording equipment and software.[2] This combination continued the community's early practice of supplementing agriculture with manufacturing and specialized services.

Ein Harod began collecting written records, photographs and newspaper material around the time of its establishment, forming the basis of the Ein Harod Meuhad Archive. The National Library of Israel's archive record credits painter Haim Atar with founding the archive and notes that the kibbutz attracted artists and public figures.[6]

The archive occupies a building constructed in 1936 for the Kibbutz Meuhad secretariat. The same building later housed Wingate's night-squad headquarters and a farm-management course that preceded the establishment of Ruppin Academic Center.[6] The archive record describes more than 530 archival containers, including over 200 containing residents' files, assembly minutes and community newsletters. Its holdings also include hundreds of photograph albums and more than 300 titles written or published by kibbutz members.[6]

The Mishkan Museum of Art is described by the National Library of Israel as Israel's first rural museum and the first museum operated by a kibbutz.[7] Founded on Haim Atar's initiative, it began as an art corner in a converted wooden hut and developed into an institution exhibiting works by Jewish artists from the Diaspora and examples of Jewish folk art.[7]

Ein Harod Meuhad retained the traditional collective kibbutz model long after most kibbutzim had begun changing their economic arrangements. A 2010 Ynet report stated that approximately 190 other kibbutzim had undergone privatization while Ein Harod Meuhad continued to operate on the basis of equal incomes and collective responsibility.[4]

Economic difficulties and members' desire for greater control over their financial affairs contributed to the change. Privatization received 66 percent support in an initial vote and 80 percent in a second vote held two months later. The decision was adopted in the summer of 2009, and implementation began on March 1, 2010.[4]

The National Library of Israel reports a final level of support of 79 percent and says the new arrangement introduced individually received incomes and greater financial autonomy while leaving some communal services in place.[7] The change belonged to the wider kibbutz-renewal movement, in which restructuring required the support of at least 75 percent of a kibbutz's members.[14]

Ein Harod occupies an important place in the history of Labor Zionism and the kibbutz movement. It was described as the country's first large collective and helped develop the large-kibbutz model from which Kibbutz Meuhad emerged.[2][4] Its role in training Haganah night squads and supplying a Palmach force during the War of Independence also connected the community to the defense institutions of the Yishuv.[2]

The archive, museum, kibbutz Haggadah and hospital that developed into HaEmek Hospital illustrate the breadth of Ein Harod's institution-building.[7][12] These projects combined agriculture and communal economics with medicine, historical preservation and artistic life.

Ein Harod's history also reflects the ideological intensity of the kibbutz movement. Its members debated economic autonomy during the 1920s, underwent a bitter political split in the 1950s and eventually accepted privatization after decades of maintaining the collective model.[4][11] Its development therefore illustrates both the ambitions of collective settlement and the political and economic pressures that transformed many Israeli kibbutzim.

The account of the area's land transfer is politically sensitive. The National Library of Israel states that the Sursock family acquired the land from the Ottoman government and that Yehoshua Hankin later bought it and compensated resident tenant farmers; it is presented here specifically as that source's account.[7]

Sources also differ on the precise founding date. The National Library of Israel's archive record gives September 21, 1921, while the Central Zionist Archives gives September 22.[6][3] A 1937 thesis instead dates the establishment of a large settlement called Ain Harod to 1923, conflicting with the 1921 chronology in the archival and contemporary reference accounts.[15]

The stages of the later split can likewise produce different dates. Ynet says the formal decision was taken in late 1952 and followed by prolonged negotiations, while a later Mako account dates the final physical division to 1956.[5][13] These dates can be reconciled as referring respectively to the decision and the completion of the separation.