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Moshava with municipal council status in northern Israel, in the Huleh Valley. Founded in 1883 by First Aliyah pioneers from Poland, who named the place Yesud Hama'alah, after Ezra 9:7. Yesud Hama'alah was the first settlement in the area. The settlers endured grave hardship due to malaria, scarcity of food, lack of medicine, poor harvest and Bedouin raids. Yesud Hama'alah was one of the settlements, which received support from Baron Edmond de Rothschild, but its development was very slow. In the 1940's, the situation gradually improved when a group of young people joined the village. During the War of Independence, the moshava was badly hit by the Syrians. After 1948, the village absorbed a small group of immigrants. In 1990's, Rosh Pina numbered some 700 inhabitants, mostly farmers.
Dubrovin Farm and Yesud haMa'ala The story of the "Dubrovin Farm" is a part of the history of the settlement from the first Aliya "Yesud haMa'alah". Yesud haMa'alahThe first Jewish owner of the land of Yesud haMa'alah in the Upper Galilee was Jacob Hai Abu who bought rights of partnership to the ground in 1872 from the "Izbeid" Bedouin tribe. A society for acquiring lands in the land of Israel was founded in Poland by 22 members in 1879, and in 1883 it bought 2,500 dunams (250 hectares) from Abu. Together with the Mizrahi brothers they planted an olives orchard, and orchards of pomegranates, almond, fig, apricot and mulberry trees, and roses for the perfume industry. The new settlers' major problem was their complete ignorance of agriculture; they did not know how and when to sow, or to harvest. In 1887 the Baron Edmond de Rothschild visited the nearby settlement of Rosh Pinah, and also began to help and protect the settlers at Yesud haMa'alah. In 1889 the Baron purchased all the rights to the land, and in 1890 the cornerstone was laid for the first stone building in the colony. Because their ignorance of agriculture, the trees withered, the perfume industry failed and closed in 1900; while the settlers began sowing grain and corns and selling crops in Safed, Haifa and the Southern Lebanon. They produced 60 kg. grain per dunam, (today 500 kg. of grain crops is the average yield per dunam). During the early years of the 20th century, the colony suffered from attacks, robberies and murders by the Bedouins and Arab neighbors; in 1903 there was a fight with Arab workers in the colony where Yitzhak Cohen was killed. In 1905 a serious robbery took place and 86 year old Israel Jacob Solomon, one of the founders, was murdered by the intruders. Yesud haMa'alah came under the British mandate, while most of their agricultural lands remained under French control; the colony found itself in a sea of enmity between the two mandatory governments over their frontiers, in which Arab neighbors took part. During the first generation of Yesud haMa'alah settlers, their worst enemy was the malaria-bearing Anophiles mosquito.
The Dubrovin FarmThe Dubrovin family were originally Christians from the Russian nobility, living near the frontier with Iran, on the shores of the Volga river. They observed the Shabbat, as Subbotniks, and officially converted to Judaism. In the year 1903 they came to Eretz Israel. The father of this large and rich family, Yoav and his wife Rachel (Hebrew names they took on conversion), joined the settlers of Petah Tikvah. Two years later in 1905, all the 13 other members of the family arrived. They were very industrious courageous and strong and were highly esteemed by their neighbors; they moved to Beit Gan near Yavniel and worked as coachmen between Haifa and the Galilee settlements. In the land purchase contract, which the family signed with the Jewish National Fund, was a clause, stipulating that if they left because of the malaria, they would be compensated for all their investment. They did not leave, and Yoav died on the farm, aged 104 years.
Text and pictures by: Pinhas Baraq |
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