Kefar Menaḥem

KEFAR MENAḤEM (Heb. כְּפַר מְנַחֵם), kibbutz in the southern Coastal Plain of Israel, about 9 mi. (14 km.) S.E. of Gederah, affiliated to Kibbutz Arẓi Ha-Shomer ha-Ẓa'ir. The original settlers set up a moshav on the site in 1936, but the local soil and security conditions were inimical to the smallholder type of settlement, and the moshav group moved west to found *Kefar Warburg. In 1937, the village was refounded as a kibbutz by a group composed of pioneers from North America, Germany, and Poland. The kibbutz developed intensive farming (field crops, poultry, and dairy cattle) and industrial enterprises (a quarry, ceramics plant, and metal plant). In 1968, it had 555 inhabitants, rising to 600 in the mid-1990s but then dropping to 460 in 2002. The kibbutz is named after Menaḥem Mendel *Ussishkin.

Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica. © 2007 The Gale Group. All Rights Reserved.