Mapping 50 Years of Zionist Pioneering

To mark the jubilee of the Zionist Organization, a pictorial map was published by the Jewish National Fund in 1947. It surveyed 50 years of Zionist settlement and development of the Land of Israel. Edited by Ernst Mechner, and designed by S.F. Loeb, the map was issued in three editions: Hebrew, English and Yiddish.

The Rutenberg Power Station and adjacent settlement of Tel Or, south of the Sea of Galilee, the Eran Laor Cartographic Collection

The complete map presents the development of Jewish settlement over three periods, and the green shading indicates the expansion of Jewish owned land

The Zionist Organization, established at the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, the Palestine Office and its successor the Jewish Agency, Keren Hayesod, which coordinated the collection of donations for the development of the country, and the Jewish National Fund, all assisted over the years in purchasing land and establishing Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel. In this map, summarizing the work of these bodies between 1897 and 1947, the editor chose to highlight the sites that in his view constituted milestones in the timeline of settlement of the Land of Israel.

For example, “Degania 1909 ‘The Mother of Kvuzot’” – Degania was the first Jewish communal settlement to be established in the Land of Israel.

Degania, “The Mother of Kvuzot”, was established at the initiative of the Palestine Office, which invited a group of pioneers there in 1909 to work the settlement for wages. This is the reason for the date that appears on the map, and not 1910, which is considered the official date of the founding of the Degania communal settlement.

The commune’s pioneers at Umm Juni (Degania), 1912. Photo: Leo Kahan. This image is part of Archive Network Israel, made available through the cooperation of the Ben Zvi Institute, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage and the National Library of Israel

Degania’s buildings in a German aerial photograph from 1918, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

The swampy marshlands of the Jezreel Valley which appear in the illustration above should be taken with a grain of salt. We know that swamps characterized some settlement regions, such as the area south of Zichron Yaacov (the Kabara swamps), or the area around Hadera, but in the Jezreel Valley swamplands represented only a minimal percentage of the area, as can be seen for example in the article, The Swamps of Emek Yizre’el (Jezreel Valley) – Myth and Reality, by Yoram Bar-Gal and Shmuel Shamai. The association of swampland with the Jezreel Valley reinforced the idea of the redemption of desolate land and its transformation into flourishing settlements, and it seems that in this map that message took precedence over geographical-historical accuracy.

Water sources were a necessity for settlement: special effort was invested in a water carrier system to provide water for both drinking and agriculture purposes to the Negev; to illustrate the immensity of this Zionist project, the pioneer on the map is depicted as a giant.

Laying the first water pipes to the Negev, 1946–1947

Excavations in preparation for laying the water pipes to the Negev. Nadav Mann, Bitmuna, the Hanan Bahir Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

Laying the water pipes to the Negev. Nadav Mann, Bitmuna, the Edgar Hirschbein Collection. Collection source: Tamar Levy. The Pritzker Family National Photography Collection, the National Library of Israel

The map includes eighteen figures of pioneers, three of them women.

Pioneers working with a pickaxe, fishing in the Sea of Galilee, plowing a field with a tractor and guarding on horseback.

The Rutenberg Power Station in Naharayim and the adjacent settlement Tel Or where the workers and their families lived. The power station supplied electricity to the settlements in the Land of Israel from 1928 to 1948, when the station ceased operations and the settlement was abandoned.

Construction of the power station at Naharayim, ca. 1927. The image is part of Archive Network Israel, made available through the cooperation of the Ben Zvi Institute, the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, and the National Library of Israel

In the most recent section of the map, the caption refers to the Jewish Agency’s efforts to establish settlement positions in the northern Negev in 1946.

The map shows the year of the establishment of the Tel Aviv port, the number of Jewish residents in the city, the establishment of the new workers’ settlements and more.

The bay of Haifa, with the industrial center and the petrochemical refinery cooling towers. To the north is the tower and stockade settlement of Kibbutz Hanita

Metzudoth Ussishkin (Ussishkin Strongholds), a group of settlements that Menachem Ussishkin (a Zionist leader and president of the JNF) requested be named for him, including tower and stockade settlements, such as the Kibbutzim Dafna and Dan

An epigram by Herzl is printed on the back of the map:

Besides serving as a summary and documentation of the past, the colorful, trilingual editions of this map served the Jewish National Fund as a means of fundraising for the Zionist institutions, as they continued their efforts to purchase land and develop the country.