Kinneret Farm (, Havat Kinneret) or Kinneret Courtyard (, Hatzer Kinneret) was an experimental training farm established in 1908 in Ottoman Palestine by the Palestine Bureau of the Zionist Organisation (ZO) led by Arthur Ruppin, at the same time as, and next to Moshavat Kinneret, a moshava-type village. The farm stood in close proximity to the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Until the early 1920s the farm was a hothouse and catalyst for social and economical innovation, which helped mold and create several essential institutions and infrastructure elements of the Yishuv, perpetuated in the State of Israel after 1948: communal settlement forms (kvutza, kibbutz, moshav), women's rights movement, cooperative enterprises (for supplies and financial aid, milk collection and dairy production, construction and public works), a workers' savings and support bank, public health care system, a national paramilitary organisation. From 1949 on, after the establishment of the State of Israel, the courtyard served different lesser military and civilian purposes, was abandoned, then restored as a heritage site, and it 2007 it was opened as a museum and educational centre.
Name
In the Hebrew Bible, the Sea of Galilee is named Yam Kinneret, the Sea of Kinneret.
History
Established in 1908, the Kinneret farm has been active for four decades in preparing Jewish Zionist farmers for settling and working the land. During this time, among other achievements, five groups from the farm have established the kibbutz settlements of Degania (1909/1910), Kinneret (1913), Afikim (1932), Ein Gev (July 1937) and Ma'agan (1949). After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, for the next 25 years the place was used as a military camp by Nahal's 902nd Battalion. After being abandoned for a decade and reaching an advanced state of decay, the farm's buildings and courtyard have been in a process of restoration and rehabilitation of another almost three decades.
Under Ottomans and Mandate (1908-1948)
The farm was created in June 1908 as an experiment by the Palestine Bureau of the Zionist Organisation, and although it shared infrastructure and some activities with the moshava (health, security, cultural life), it was separate and autonomous from it as it served different practical and sometimes ideological purposes.
The new Kinneret village and the farm standing at its southern extremity were built on site known in Arabic as Mallāha. Arthur Ruppin, the head of the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organisation and one of the leading Zionists of the time, was the initiator and man in charge. Unlike the moshava, the farm was meant as a training facility for agricultural work and became a laboratory for social and economic experiments, many of the structures and organisations on which pre-State Jewish and post-1948 Israeli society relied and still relies being initiated here. Such are the communal settlement forms of the kvutza, kibbutz and moshav, the women's rights movement—beginning with an agricultural training farm for women in 1911 and continuing with the first assembly of women farmers in 1914—, the cooperatives HaMashbir (for the sale of affordable food during World War I; est. 1916), Tnuva (milk and dairy products; est. 1926), and Batz construction company, the future Solel Boneh (est. 1921) which emerged from the Work Battalion, the Bank Hapoalim or "workers' bank", the kupat holim public health care system, and last not least the Haganah paramilitary organisation. The Farm residents also had a major role in establishing and shaping the Histadrut labor union.