By Mordechai Shenkman
I was born in Ukraine in a small town. During the pogroms, when I was a teenager, my family was saved by a local farmer. It was harvest season at the time, and I worked in the fields. I envied the farmer and his family, living peacefully on their land. I decided that this, too, would be my goal - to live on my own land and work it.
I joined a Zionist organization, and at the age of 20, in 1926, I immigrated to the Land of Israel. The Histadrut sent me to Gedera, where I worked in the grape harvest, and from there I moved to Magdiel. In Magdiel, I met some friends who told me about the “Tel Aviv Agricultural Organization” that was preparing for settlement, and I signed up. At that point, we still didn’t know where we would settle. There were over ten of us in the organization, including Averbuch, Olenik, Bohak, and Berdichev.
In 1930, I received a notice to move to the settlement site and work in the citrus groves of Tel Mond. I was very happy. The wages were 20–30 grush per day, and we pooled our earnings. There were four or five of us pioneers out in the fields. On a plot on a hill (later known as the Astrakhan plot), we set up a kitchen shack and a few residential huts. That’s where we lived.
The first major task was digging a well, to make it possible to bring in more settlers and build farms. The well was dug on the western side of the land, and water was found. The entire area was divided into plots, and a lottery was held: each member received a residential plot and a citrus grove parcel. We began planting - seedlings brought from the nursery prepared by Motshen in Herzliya. At the time, citrus farming was thriving in the country, so we planted and helped one another establish our groves. A year or two later, each of us received 200 chicks, so we also had small chicken coops and some vegetables, in addition to the orchards.
The moshav’s land was bordered on all sides by Arab lands. For example, the fence of the kindergarten was a boundary. From time to time, there were incidents with the Arabs. Once, they came right up to the border fence carrying sticks. We stood facing them and talked until they calmed down. One day in the summer of 1938, four members of Ein Vered went to work in the orchards north of the moshav. They were ambushed and murdered by Arabs.
What kept us in the area? The knowledge that we had come to this land to build it, despite the difficulties. We didn’t know what the future held - we only knew that we had to stay here and build our lives here. And that’s what we did. We raised a family and built a farm. We had a citrus orchard, a dairy barn, and a chicken coop. We worked hard, and the children also helped with the farm.
Today, things are very different. There are plots for construction - it’s no longer just a moshav. Agriculture isn’t what it used to be, but in our family, we are still farmers to this day.
From: Bilha Nachman, 2000, Stories of Ein Vered – Seventy Years of the Moshav, 1930–2000, Moshav Ein Vered Publications.