KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
corn- manders. Palmach’s earliest recruits, 427 men and 7 women, began proactive, coordinated defense of Jewish settlements. The Palmach mounted patrols from the Lebanese border to the outskirts of Tel Aviv and conducted nighttime raids to intercept bandits. By 1943, the Palmach had 1,000 highly trained troops. Many of these soldiers had served in the British armed forces as part of the Jewish (Star of David) Brigade, active on the front in 1944 and 1945. Kibbutz Yagur Nine Russian immigrants, eight men and one woman, established Kibbutz Yagur in 1922. In Russia, they had belonged to the Rus- sian Zionist organization, Poalei Zion, and in Palestine joined Achva (Hebrew for fraternity), founded in 1910 in the first Zionist town in Palestine, Petach Tikva. Both organizations worked for a “muscular” Judaism that emphasized physical work and strength, rather than textual study and prayer. Most of the men in Achva had trained and served in the Hebrew Battalion of the British Army during World War I and believed that Diaspora Jews must learn to be self-sustaining on the land and capable of defending themselves. At that time, finding employment in Palestine was difficult for Jews because the workforce was controlled by Arabs. Nor did Jew- ish immigrants adapt readily to the climate and culture. Achva’s immediate goals were to help Jews get jobs, purchase and develop land in Palestine, and establish a utopian society based on pooled resources and cooperative living. In March 1922, the group that later founded Yagur settled briefly in the south of Palestine near Tel Arad, but difficult conditions forced them to abandon their plan of creating a kibbutz there. They toured swampland in the Zevulun Valley, near Haifa and Mount Carmel, though it was considered unsuitable for farming and dangerously isolated from other Jewish settlements. This, in fact, was the land on which they settled. The group’s leader, Yoel Bergman, looked at the lush vegetation on Mount Carmel and announced, “Don’t you commanders.
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