MIKVEH YISRAEL

administration building, Mikveh Yisrael agricultural school,
courtesy, Times of Israel

Mikveh Yisrael is a youth village and boarding school in the Tel Aviv District of central Israel, established in 1870. It was Israel’s first Jewish agricultural school and indeed the first modern Jewish settlement in Palestine outside of Jerusalem, heralding a new era in the history of the region.

In Biblical times, the site of present-day Mikveh Yisrael was allotted to the tribe of Dan. It was in close proximity to Jaffa, the port city of ancient Israel. In the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, this area would see intense Jewish activity. About 1860, several orthodox rabbis, among whom were Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and Elijah Gutmacher, developed a plan for the colonization of Palestine with Russian and Rumanian Jews. This plan was soon after supported by the Maskilim (Progressists). The latter induced the Alliance Israélite Universelle, of Paris, to interest themselves in the matter, notwithstanding the circumstance that many members of the Alliance doubted the adaptability of the Jews to agricultural work. When Charles Netter, emissary of the Alliance, visited Israel in 1868, he visualized an agricultural school surrounded by a settlement as the beginning of a future network of Jewish villages. And in April 1870, Mikveh Yisrael was founded on a tract of land southeast of Jaffa leased from the Ottoman Sultan, who allocated 750 acres to the project. The name was taken from two passages in the Book of Jeremiah, 14:8 and 17:13, and was proposed by Wolf Grinstein, one of the school's first students, who later taught there. Netter was the first director of the school and it aimed to be an educational institution where young Jews could learn agriculture, learn new methods, and thus giving them the means to establish villages and settlements all over the country and to make the desert blossom. Mikveh Yisrael was credited with introducing the eucalyptus tree from Australia for the purpose of draining the swamps. It soon gained the support of the Anglo-Jewish Association. In 1882 the first *Bilu pioneers found work and were trained there immediately upon arrival in the country. Baron Edmond James de Rothschild contributed to the upkeep of the school.

Netter was succeeded by Joseph *Niego who directed the school from 1891 to 1914. In 1898, Theodor Herzl met the German Emperor Wilhelm II at the settlement’s main entrance. 

From 1914 to 1955, the school was under the direction of Eliyahu Krause. During his tenure, Mikveh Yisrael became a pioneering ground for the introduction and improvement of new farm branches. Hebrew became the language of instruction soon after Krause had taken over. For many decades the school served as the research center for the country. Their teachers wrote the first study books about agriculture and served as field advisors. Most of the agricultural know-how of the first 50 years was collected and published by Mikve Yisrael. After finishing their studies, the thousands of graduates left Mikve Yisrael to start agricultural settlements of all kinds, villages and kibbutzim, moshavim, farms and agricultural schools; or serving in management positions; or continued their agricultural studies in institutions of higher learning and filling positions in research and development, the export branches, marketing and agricultural management.

The botanical garden was established in 1930 in order to adapt and acclimate trees and species to the Israeli climate. Plants were imported from all over the world. It now covers now 70 dunams.

Since the 1930s Mikveh Yisrael has become an important education center for *Youth Aliyah. In 1938–1939, at the request of the Youth Aliyah, a section for religious youth was built to house the religious and traditional youngsters who fled western Europe just before the start of the Holocaust. It occupied 1.2 sq. mi. and included a cultural center, a library named after Krause, experiment stations, and a botanical garden featuring over 1,000 species. Agriculture included field crops, fruit orchards, citrus groves, greenhouse crops, sheep, poultry, and bees.

In the Israel *War of Independence (1948), the school was attacked several times. In 2007 Mikve Yisrael and the Alliance Israélite Universelle inaugurated an experimental bilateral Israel-France high school, the Collège-Lycée franco-israélien Raymond Leven, with half of its pupils studying for the French Baccalauréat and half for the Israeli Bagrut. 

The agricultural grounds of Mikve Yisrael cover over 2,200 dunams (out of a general area of 3,300 dunams). Most of the fields are irrigated using wells and include field crops, industrial crops, vegetables, fruit trees, orange groves and greenhouses. The school also raises animals including milk cows, chickens and honey bees, as well as having auxiliary branches including computerized agriculture.

One dunam is covered by greenhouses. The aim of the greenhouse production branch is to allow students to research greenhouse issues and technologies. A rainwater harvesting system allows efficient re-use of water collected from the roof for growing of vegetables in greenhouses.

Also on the premises, a stable was established having the following breeds of riding horses: Hanoverian, Holland and quarter-horse breeds suited to all types of horseback riding: western, sports, and therapeutic riding.

Mikveh Yisrael has been instrumental in developing novel techniques in citrus and other farm branches, introducing avocado cultivation and the acclimatization of many livestock strains, and while it operated the Mikveh Yisrael wine cellars, select wines and liqueurs were produced.