Abstract:

This issue of Jewish History is dedicated to organized modern Jewish agricultural settlement. The nine essays published here originated in much earlier versions read at the international conference, "To the Land!: 200 Years of Jewish Agricultural Settlement," held in June 2005, at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Jewish Diaspora. Museum (Beth Hatefutsoth). The five organizing partners were: the Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry and the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry, both of the Hebrew University, the Yad Tebenkin Research and Documenta­ tion Center of the Kibbutz 1v1ovement, the Jewish Diaspora. ivfuseum, and the Chair for the Study of the History of the Jewish National Fund at Bar-Ilan University. The Nevzlin Center at the Hebrew University supported the preparation of these materials for press.

The goal of the conference, and now, even more, of the fully elaborated essays presented here, is to reopen academic discussion on the global dimensions of Jewish agricultural settlement.