Sde Eliyahu

Sde Eliyahu belongs to the Religious Kibbutz Movement (Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati) and is guided by the principle of "Torah and work" (Torah va-Avodah), combining religious observance with cooperative economic life.[6] Its members are described as uniting religious practice with openness and tolerance, and economic self-sufficiency with morality and social justice.[2]

The kibbutz lies within the Beth-Shean Valley Regional Council's jurisdiction.[7] It is in a remote, very hot location close to the Jordanian border.[4] The surrounding landscape — rich in springs, agricultural fields, and the valleys between the Gilboa and Gilead mountains — gives the settlement much of its distinctive character.[1]

The founders of Sde Eliyahu arrived in Mandatory Palestine in 1934 with Youth Aliyah.[1] They were among the settlements built in May 1939, a month when roughly a quarter of the 53 settlements established during the Tower and Stockade period were founded.[8] The young pioneers were first stationed in the southern Sea of Galilee, enduring hot and marshy conditions, before eventually settling in the Beit She'an Valley; immigrants from France and Italy later joined the original German group.[8]

The kibbutz's first home was a building on a Templar farm known as Beit Kibler.[2] A 1941 Survey of Palestine map records the original site — then labeled "Aryeh Group" (קבוצת אריה) — as north of the permanent location, with "the Red House" (הבית האדום) marked to its east.[9] The community moved to its present location in 1942.[2]

A memoir by Yaakov Dov Raanan [Frisch] offers a first-hand account of conditions in the early kibbutz. Most members lived in tents inside a defensive enclosure consisting of a dirt mound about 80 centimeters high and a wall made of two layers of wooden boards filled with gravel.[3] Early labor focused on draining swamps around the camp, creating drainage and irrigation channels, and laying building foundations.[3] Raanan describes later construction work that included temporary farm buildings, a generator building, warehouses, a cowshed, and agricultural machinery; he also recalls transporting a large water container from Kibbutz Yavne and installing it on a tower at Sde Eliyahu, where it served the camp for many years.[3]

Sde Eliyahu was established as part of Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati, a union of Ha-Po'el ha-Mizrachi kibbutzim founded in 1935 by religious pioneer groups from Germany and Poland. The movement combined religious practice and labor and sought to make religious precepts part of communal daily life alongside collective production, equality, and self-labor.[6] During the War of Independence, six Ha-Kibbutz ha-Dati villages located at the edge of the Jewish area were destroyed and many adults were killed, though the movement's settlements were later reestablished; Sde Eliyahu is not identified as one of those six.[6]

The kibbutz is a multigenerational community. The National Library of Israel archive description reports approximately 150 families and 700 people in total.[2] A separate figure from the Jewish Agency lists a total population of 800, including 300 adult members, though no date is provided for those figures.[1] For comparison, a reference table records a population of 669 on 31 December 2004.[7]

Communal life centers on a kosher dining hall and an Orthodox synagogue, where lessons on Jewish tradition are offered.[1] Residents observe Shabbat and the full Jewish calendar of holidays.[1] The community's cooperative character extends to social, cultural, and economic life, with approximately 120 families conducting these activities jointly.[10]

Sde Eliyahu has absorbed many immigrants over the years. Its Hebrew-language ulpan has operated since the late 1950s — the first class graduated in 1958 — and serves young people from abroad who come to learn Hebrew and serve in the Israel Defense Forces.[4] Local families host ulpan students, giving them an opportunity to experience daily life in a religious household.[1] Educational activities including excursions, lectures, and seminars are part of the program.[1]

In approximately 2018, a new campus called Habayta was inaugurated, with capacity for 90 residents — a significant expansion from the 18 places available in the earlier facilities. Built on the old ulpan's 6.5 dunams, the campus was made possible by a donation of NIS 30 million from Michael Greenberg, a member of the program's first cohort who became the kibbutz's first lone soldier.[4] The NLI archive description refers to the campus as a "first home in Israel" for young people from abroad.[2]

A regional religious school, Shaked, is located in the settlement and serves nearby communities.[2] In 2005, the kibbutz established a beit midrash for army veterans that combines Jewish studies with agricultural work.[2]

Agriculture is the foundation of Sde Eliyahu's economy, with biological-organic farming at its core.[10] The kibbutz's agricultural branches have included orchards, organic field crops, a dairy farm, a hatchery, a poultry house, fish farming, and beekeeping.[1][2] Over time, some traditional agricultural branches were scaled back as industry and biological pest control expanded, driven by their greater profitability.[2]

The turn toward ecological farming began in the early 1970s, led by Mario Levy, an Italian immigrant who had arrived in Israel at age 15.[10] In the late 1960s, with Agriculture Ministry support, Levy traveled to Switzerland to study techniques for managing pesticide-resistant pests without heavy chemical spraying.[8] On his return, he and others at the kibbutz began developing agricultural methods grounded in ecological understanding rather than conventional chemical approaches.[8] Levy is credited as the founder of Israel's organization for organic agriculture.[2] The kibbutz's organic farming effort was also motivated by concern — voiced by at least one founding member — about the levels of pesticide residues that family members might be ingesting from produce commonly considered healthy.[11]

Sde Eliyahu's agricultural enterprises include organic grape, pomegranate, and date cultivation; an SDA spice enterprise producing food seasonings from dried spices; a compost site; and a barn owl project.[10] The kibbutz became recognized as one of the leading organizations in Israel's organic sector.[10]

Sde Eliyahu developed an agricultural-tourism branch, Bio-Tour, as requests to visit its farming and biological-control enterprises increased. Visitor interest has focused on Mario Levy's organic vegetable garden; Bio-Bee's work with beneficial insects, pollinating bumblebees, and Bio-Fly; the SDA spice enterprise; the compost site; organic grape, pomegranate, and date cultivation; and the barn owl project.[10]

The kibbutz trained members as professional guides, with a team of about ten reported in 2008. Groups arrange visits in advance and can shape itineraries around agriculture, the history of the valley and kibbutz, cooperative religious life, or the relationship between religion and the land.[10]

Bio-Bee grew from Yaakov Nakash's insect enterprise into a biological pest-control operation with departments for beneficial insects, pollinating bumblebees, and Bio-Fly.[10] Its origins as a commercial company trace to a Dutch firm seeking a location sunny enough to raise insects; when the Netherlands proved unsuitable, the firm approached Tel Aviv University, which directed it to Sde Eliyahu.[8] The Dutch firm became Bio-Bee's first customer, and the early operation was sustained for years largely by vision rather than profit.[8]

Published accounts give slightly different founding years: Calcalist dates the establishment to 1983, while Calcalist Tech places it in 1984.[8][5] Globes describes the company as having operated at the kibbutz since the early 1980s.[12] By 2015, Bio-Bee's production site at Sde Eliyahu covered 400 dunams and contained 35 growing greenhouses, ten production or storage buildings, three research laboratories, and a dedicated performance-research unit.[8] The company conducted research and development, mass rearing, quality control, packaging, and both domestic and international sales.[8]

At the time of the 2015 profile, Bio-Bee sold 40% of its output within Israel — primarily to farmers in the Negev and Arava — while exporting its flies to farmers in 32 countries. Annual revenue was estimated at approximately $27 million, or more than NIS 100 million.[8]

One notable application involved the sterile insect technique for fruit-fly control. Male pupae were irradiated at a facility supervised by Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, then packed while unconscious and released from light aircraft over orchards on the Croatia–Bosnia border twice weekly, at a target ratio of 50 sterile flies for every wild fly. That contract was valued at approximately NIS 1 million and formed part of an international project for peaceful uses of atomic energy.[12]

In 2018, Bio-Bee began processing black soldier fly larvae into protein- and fat-rich feed for farmed fish, chickens, and pets. The larvae consume food waste and produce compost as a byproduct; processing ten tons of waste can yield two tons of mature larvae and three tons of compost within a week. The company completed a successful feeding trial with farmed trout and was expanding experiments to other farmed fish species.[5]

Several figures associated with Sde Eliyahu have made significant contributions to Israeli intellectual, political, and agricultural life. Moshe Unna, a thinker closely identified with the idea of Torah and work, served as a member of the Knesset.[2] Eliezer Goldman (1918–2002) joined the kibbutz in 1941 and remained there throughout his life, working in agriculture and other kibbutz enterprises — including high-school teaching — while completing his academic studies; he became a prominent intellectual in the Religious Kibbutz movement and a professor of Jewish philosophy.[2][13] Malka Haas, an educator and child-development researcher, also settled at Sde Eliyahu.[2] Mario Levy, the Italian-born pioneer of organic agriculture at the kibbutz, is identified as the founder of Israel's organization for organic agriculture.[2]