Number of words: 134

If convinced of the dignity of labour, the newcomers were not always convinced that there was any dignity in the role of the hired labourer and friction developed between them and their overseers. In 1909 a handful of them undertook the cultivation of a 75 acre area near Tiberias, without overseers, and did so efficiently and profitably. They had undertaken the work only as a gesture and after proving their point they moved elsewhere. They were replaced by a group of 10 men and 2 women, who remained on the site permanently and called it Degania. They had started with no set plan to conduct a social experiment, but out of their experience grew the situation which was to form the backbone of the Jewish state – the Kibbutz.

Excerpted  from Israel by Chaim Bermant