KIBBUTZ DALIA

Kibbutz Dalia, courtesy, Marc's Words

Dalia is a very small kibbutz in northern Israel. Located approximately 18 ½ miles southeast of Haifa, it falls under the jurisdiction of Megiddo Regional Council. Dalia is one of those few places in Israel that does not seem to be mentioned in the Bible as a place (will someone correct me if I’m wrong). It is, however, mentioned four times as a given name, and as “Delaiah”. These are:

1. A son of Elioenai in the Davidic genealogy (I Chron. iii. 24). The sons of Delaiah are mentioned in the long post-exilic list of those who returned from captivity under Zerubbabel (Ezra ii. 60; Neh. vii. 62). They were, however, unable to trace their descent.

·         2. Son of Mehetabeel and father of Shemaiah, who tried to persuade Nehemiah to seek refuge at night in the Temple, which caused Nehemiah to suspect him of spreading false alarms at the instigation of Sanballat (Neh. vi. 10).

·         3. Son of Shemaiah, a prince during the régime of Jehoiakim; one of those to whom Micaiah related the reading of the prophecy of Jeremiah by the prophet's scribe Baruch (Jer. xxxvi. 12).

·         4. A priest who headed the twenty-third of the twenty-four priestly divisions in the reign of David (I Chron. xxiv. 18).

The modern Kibbutz Dalia was founded by members of two Jewish groups affiliated with the socialist Hashomer Hatzair movement who moved to Mandatory Palestine in 1933. The first group was called "Ba-Ma'ale" and was composed of Romanian Jews. The other group was called "Ba-Mifneh" and was composed of German Jews. The Kibbutz Artzi network of Hashomer Hatzair decided to unite the groups and the two were symbolically united on May 1^st – May Day. That same day 50 members, 25 from each group, arrived at a parcel of land owned by the Jewish National Fund, next to the Arab village of Daliat-El-Ruha (from where Dalia took its name) and established a kibbutz and Tower and Stockade settlement for the protection of the Jewish inhabitants on that site and in the surrounding area. The first permanent building was a nursery day care center and the first industry was a small soap factory.

The 1940s saw major developments in the kibbutz. Between 1940 and 1943 a stable, cowshed, pen, cheese factory, textile factory, chicken coop and beehive were built. The kibbutz also showed its cruel side by establishing a rabbit farm, which was the main source of meat during the austerity period of World War II. A road was paved by the members from nearby kibbutz Ein HaShofet, connecting it to the rest of the country's transportation system.

Cultural and communal activities flourished in the kibbutz. A folk-dancing festival organized by Gurit Kadman in 1944 was held at the "Khan" on the kibbutz during the festival of Shavuot. The Book of Ruth was the theme of the festival, and residents of the various settlements in this region took part. Among the participants was Sara Levi-Tanai, who founded the Inbal Dance Theater company in 1949. The festival lasted for two days, with 200 dancers and 3,000 viewers. Three years later, in 1947, a second dance festival was held in the natural amphitheater beside the kibbutz. At this festival, several hundred dancers participated, watched by some ten thousand people from all over the country. Kibbutz theatre director Shulamit Bat-Dori directed the last two dance festivals held at Kibbutz Dalia, in 1958 and 1968. The 1958 production spotlighted 1,500 dancers, while the 1968 festival featured 3,000 dancers and attracted 60,000 audience members.

In 1944, youth from Dalia organized a group, which later joined the Palmach militia. In 1947, the kibbutz housed a nationwide squad leader course for the Palmach. During the War of Independence, Dalia helped the war effort by donating its only truck, and also put at the disposal, the local facilities, to help Israel's military industries. In a separate incident, an Egyptian plane was shot down nearby, its pilot caught and put in the kibbutz cowshed, which drew children's attention.

Other kibbutz sites include: the Community Garden in the heart of the kibbutz. The kibbutz terraces. The Chess Club.

DAMASCUS

Cathedral of St.George, Damascus, courtesy, Wikipedia

Damascus is one of the oldest cities in the world with a history going back thousands of years. Today, it serves as the capital of the Arab-occupied country of Syria with an estimated population of 1.7 million – 15-20% of whom are Christian, and many of them, Syriac Christians, the indigenous inhabitants. Geographically, the city sits on either side of the Barada River and is embedded on the eastern foothills of the Anti-Lebanon mountain range 50 miles inland from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean on a plateau over 2,200 feet above sea level. Mount Qasioun overlooks the city from the north.

There is archaeological evidence that the Damascus area was settled as early as 9000 BCE around the Barada River. According to ancient Jewish tradition, it was founded by Uz, son of Aram, grandson of Noah. It was a major settlement in the days of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, located in the country of Aram from where the Aramaic language was formulated. Eliezer, the trusted steward of Abraham, was referred to in the Biblical texts as “Eliezer of Damascus”. The name of the city was referred to, by the Aramaic-speaking people, as “Darmsuq” meaning “a well-watered land”. (The name was later Grecized/Latinized to “Damascus”.)

Years later, the city would gain pre-eminence when Ezron, the claimant to the royal throne of Aram Zobah, centered on the Beqaa Valley, was denied the kingship, fled Beqaa and captured Damascus by force in 965 BCE, overthrowing its king Rezin. In so doing, he founded the independent kingdom of Aram Damascus. Under his rule, a water distribution system was established which maximized the efficiency of the Barada. This system was later improved by the Romans and the Arab Umayyads, and still forms the basis of the water system of the old part of the city today.

As Aram Damascus expanded south, it prevented the Kingdom of Israel from spreading north and the two kingdoms soon clashed as they both sought to dominate trading hegemony in the east. Under Ezron's grandson, Ben-Hadad I (880–841 BCE), Damascus annexed Bashan (the modern-day Hauran region), and went on the offensive with Israel. This conflict continued until the early 8th century BCE when Ben-Hadad II was captured by Israel after unsuccessfully besieging Samaria. As a result, he granted Israel trading rights in Damascus. Shortly thereafter, however, the Assyrian Empire began to encroach on the territory of Aram Damascus. Aramean forces were ordered to retreat to the walled part of the city while the Assyrians plundered the remainder of the kingdom. Soon, the city was ruled in its entirety by Assyria which ushered in a Dark Age.

In 332 BCE, Damascus was conquered by Alexander the Great. After the death of Alexander in 323 BCE, Damascus became the site of a struggle between the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. In 64 BCE, the Romans occupied Damascus and subsequently incorporated it into the league of ten cities known as the Decapolis which themselves were incorporated into the province of Syria and granted autonomy.

Damascus was one of the first sites to receive Christianity during the ministry of St. Peter. As a result there were more Christians in the city than anywhere else and the inhabitants would soon form their own unique form of Syriac Christianity. But other forms of Christianity also sprang up around them. As the spread of the new religion progressed locally, by the end of the Roman/Byzantine era, the local Eastern Orthodox Christians developed the neighborhood of Bab Tuma. According to the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Paul and Saint Thomas both lived there. Roman Catholic historians also consider Bab Tuma to be the birthplace of several Popes such as John V and Gregory III.

In 125, the Roman emperor Hadrian promoted the city to "Metropolis of Coele-Syria". In 222, it was upgraded to a colonia by the Emperor Septimius Severus. During this period, Damascus and the Roman province of Syria in general began to prosper. Its importance as a caravan city was evident with the trade routes from southern Arabia, Palmyra, Petra, and the silk routes from China all converging on it.  

In 636, the same year the Arabs conquered Israel, they also conquered Syria, and like Israel, Syria was thereafter made an Arab country at the expense of the indigenous Syriac Christian inhabitants, in which state it remains to this day, unlike Israel. From 661 to 750, Damascus was made the capital of the Arab Umayyad Caliphate. While the Muslims administered the city, its population remained mostly Christian with a growing community of Muslims from Mecca, Medina, and the Syrian Desert. Aramaic was superseded by Arabic which was established as the official language, giving the local Muslim minority an advantage over the Aramaic-speaking Christians in administrative affairs. In 706, the Caliph al-Walid initiated construction of the Grand Mosque of Damascus (known as the Umayyad Mosque). The site originally had been the Christian Cathedral of St. John, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist. The Muslims maintained the building's dedication. By 715, the mosque was complete.

After centuries of living somewhat peacefully with their neighbors, by the 19^th century, things took a turn for the worst. The massacre of Christians in 1860 occurred when fighting between Druze and Maronites in Mount Lebanon spilled over into Damascus. Several thousand Christians were killed with many more being saved through the intervention of the Algerian Arab exile Abd al-Qadir and his soldiers (three days after the massacre started), who brought them to safety in Abd al-Qadir's residence and the citadel. The Christian quarter of the old city (mostly inhabited by Catholics), including a number of churches, was burnt down. The Christian inhabitants of the notoriously poor and refractory Midan district outside the walls (mostly Syriac Orthodox) were, however, protected by their Muslim neighbors.

In 1924, the patriarchate of the Syriac Church was transferred to Homs after Kemal Atatürk expelled the Patriarch, who took the library of Deir el-Zaferan and settled in Damascus. The current headquarters of the Church has been located in the Cathedral of Saint George in Bab Tuma since 1959.

Today, Bab Tuma remains the main Christian center in the city. Bab Sharqi Street, filled with small shops, leads to Bab Tuma. At the end of this street, one reaches the House of Ananias, an underground chapel that was the cellar of Ananias's house. Other Christian districts in the city are Qassaa and Ghassani. They are home to many churches most notably the ancient Chapel of Saint Paul near the Bab Kisan where, according to tradition, is the spot Saint Paul made an escape. Between 1982 and 2004 in the suburb of Soufanieh, a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary have reportedly been observed. The Damascus Straight Street (referred to in the account of the conversion of St. Paul in Acts 9:11), also known as the Via Recta, was the decumanus (East-West main street) of Roman Damascus, and extended for almost a mile. The Cardo (north-south), of the Decumanus is about twice as long. The Romans built a monumental gate which still survives at the eastern end of Decumanus Maximus. The gate originally had three arches: the central arch was for chariots while the side arches were for pedestrians. 

A small Druze minority also inhabits the city, notably in the mixed Christian-Druze suburbs of Tadamon, Jaramana, and Sahnaya.

Other indigenous sites include:

Mariamite Cathedral of Damascus;
Cathedral of the Dormition of Our Lady;
Saint John the Damascene Church;
Saint Paul's Laura;
Ruins of the Jupiter Temple at the entrance of Al-Hamidiyah Souq;
The Happy Child House project started in 2019 which provides childcare services in Damascus.

KIBBUTZ DEGANIA

Degania, Israel, courtesy, Pinterest

On the southern shores of the Sea of Galilee in Israel is the community of Degania. Actually, there are two Deganias – A and B (Aleph and Bet in Hebrew). During the days of the Second Temple when the Land of Israel was ruled by the Roman Empire, these places possibly made up the village of Homonoea as described by Josephus. In the Talmudic period (4^th century), it was referred to as Kfar Gun. Modern Degania however, had its beginning at the start of the 20^th century. The land on which Degania is located was acquired by the Jewish National Fund as one of its first landholdings. The initiative to settle there came from a group of farmers – ten men and two women belonging to the second wave of Jewish pioneers who settled and developed the Land of Israel, known as the Second Aliyah – who were working as wage earners at the neighboring farm of Kinneret. They were Russian Jews, inspired by the socialist uprisings in Russia as well as the teachings of labor leader Aaron David Gordon (himself a Russian Jew) who advocated working the land communally in a socialist type utopia. Motivated by their ideology, they applied to Arthur Ruppin, chairman of the Palestine Office in Jaffa, which represented the World Zionist Organization based in Europe, to farm a plot of land on their own responsibility. Ruppin decided to accord them a trial period on part of the land east of the Jordan named Umm Jūnī. Surprisingly, the experiment succeeded economically and as a collective. Thus was born Degania, the first kibbutz. It was followed in 1911 by the "Haderah Commune" whose members worked out the principles of collective settlement and made Degania the "Mother of the Kevutzot." 

In June 1912, the group moved from the mud huts and wooden shack of Umm Juni to the new stone-built compound at its permanent location where the Jordan River meets the Sea of Galilee.

The poetess Rachel Bluwstein and paramilitary commander Joseph Trumpeldor were among those who worked in Degania. Zionist pioneer and future Israeli politician Yosef Baratz, among the founders of Degania, married and started the kibbutz’s first family. His first child, Gideon Baratz (1913-1988), was born there, becoming the first child born in a kibbutz. The second native-born child was the future general and politician Moshe Dayan. Dayan was named after Moshe Barsky, a member of Degania who, in 1913, was the first kibbutz member killed in an Arab attack.

After World War I, Degania's intensified farming created a need for more hands and the third wave of Jewish pioneers arriving in the country, the Third Aliyah, was a major source. But preferring to maintain the frame of the small "family" kevutzah, in 1920, the settlers ceded part of the land for a new kibbutz but as an extension of the existing one. It was founded mainly by veterans of the Second Aliyah led by kibbutz pioneer and leader Levi Brevda, later known as Levi ben Amitai, and Levi Eshkol, future prime minister of Israel. It was called “Degania Bet”, the original kibbutz being renamed “Degania Aleph”. It was the first planned kibbutz and was designed and built by the German Jewish architect Fritz Kornberg. Degania Gimel was established soon after, later becoming Kibbutz Bet Zera.

During the Arab riots of 1920, the Deganias were attacked and Degania Bet was abandoned for several months. Reconstruction was swift however and the settlements further intensified their farming techniques. In time, they recognized the need, both economic and social, to absorb more members, but even so, in 1932, they were able to give part of their land for a third settlement, Afikim. During the Arab riots of 1936–39, Degania Bet served as a base for establishing “tower and stockade” settlements as a means of protecting Jewish lives throughout the country. During the War of Independence in 1948, the kibbutz served as a training center for soldiers of the Yiftach Brigade from the Upper Galileean village of Kfar Blum. In the meantime, in a bid to conquer the Jordan Valley, the nearby villages of Shaar haGolan and Masada were attacked by the Arab army of Arab-occupied Syria and the village of Zemah, fell. On May 20, 1948, during the Battles of the Kinarot Valley, in one of the first battles of the war, the residents of Degania Alef and Bet, assisted by a small number of military personnel, repelled a Syrian Arab attack and succeeded in halting the advance of the Syrian Arabs into the Jordan Valley. After the battle, one of the Syrian tanks remained stuck in the settlement's perimeter; it remained there as a memorial and Defenders’ Park, Gan haMeginim, was established in memory of Degania’s fallen members.   

In addition to its 350 cow dairy herd, crop fields, almond orchards, banana, date and avocado plantations, Degania Bet industrialized in the 1960s with Degania Sprayers, now a green industry; in 1984 it opened the Degania Silicone factory. An additional source of income is its kibbutz cottage tourist accommodation, and it specializes in organized bicycle tours. Deganyah Alef has operated the Toolgal industrial diamond plant since the early 1970s.

In 1981, Degania Alef was awarded the Israel Prize, for its special contribution to society and the State in social pioneering.

In 2007, in a sign of the times, Degania Alef moved to undergo privatization. The local economy was now more capitalistic but still offers a form of a social "safety net" supplement for members whose livelihood is inadequate to meet their expenses.

The Bet Gordon Museum and Study Center for natural sciences and agriculture is located at Degania Alef. Arthur Ruppin, botanist Otto Warburg, journalist Leopold Greenberg, and other personalities are buried at Degania Alef, alongside Aaron David Gordon, Joseph Busel, and other founders of the labor settlement movement.