KIBBUTZ RAMAT RACHEL — Looking at the peaceful resort’s sprawling pool complex and expansive orchards, it’s hard to imagine this was once a battle-scarred frontier outpost.

But when Kibbutz Ramat Rachel’s early founders began building a settlement on Jerusalem’s outskirts in 1926, they were surrounded by hostile Arab villages. As they sought to create a new type of socialist agricultural society, they first engaged in a stark battle for survival.

As the kibbutz celebrated its 100th anniversary in August, members reflected on its challenges as it evolved from a frontier community under fire during Israel’s battle for independence to a real estate powerhouse controlling — and then selling the rights to — some of the most valuable land in the country.

“The founders of Ramat Rachel didn’t know about agriculture. They didn’t know how to raise cows. They didn’t know how to bake bread. They didn’t know how to grow vegetables,” said David Drumlevich, a veteran member of the kibbutz who acts as one of its unofficial historians.

“They had to learn everything from scratch when they came to the desert as pioneers, committed to building a new type of equal and fair society in Israel,” said Drumlevich.

With its location on the outskirts of the Holy City, its real estate dealings, alongside its tourism and agriculture businesses, have made Ramat Rachel “not one of the wealthiest kibbutzim in Israel, but somewhere around the middle.” Members enjoy a high quality of life and clash over the collective’s future, according to kibbutz economic coordinator Ofer Cohen.

“It’s nice to be marking a century of accomplishment here, but it’s hard to think about the next hundred years,” Cohen said. “We’re just trying to figure out the next decade.”

Fighting for its borders

To understand Ramat Rachel today, “you can’t jump straight to the buildings on our orchards,” Drumlevich said. “You have to start with the pioneers who created this community over the dark hills past Jerusalem’s edge.”

When the idealistic members of the Gdud HaAvodah (Labor Battalion) began working to settle Jerusalem in the 1920s, they first lived in a temporary work camp, hewing stones and hauling sacks of potash at the city’s old train station, Drumlevich said.

In 1926, through the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, the group acquired a stony hill from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate and named it after the biblical matriarch Rachel, who is traditionally believed to be buried in nearby Bethlehem. The fledgling kibbutz was destroyed during the 1929 riots, when Arab looters attacked the community, but members returned in the following years to resuscitate its homes, bakery and agricultural fields.

During the 1948 War of Independence, Ramat Rachel’s strategic position overlooking Hebron Road made it a key defensive position on Jerusalem’s southern edge.

“Arab forces coming northward went through Hebron to occupy Jerusalem,” Drumlevich said. “After Gush Etzion fell, Ramat Rachel was the last point defending Jerusalem.”

Kibbutz members and other Israeli fighting groups were able to hold back Egyptian and Jordanian forces during some of the war’s fiercest battles. When the armistice agreements were signed in........

© The Times of Israel