Roman period According to the 1881
Survey of Western Palestine, Umm Junieh was possibly the place called Union, or Homonœa, by
Josephus (
Vita, 54).
Ottoman period Umm Junieh village The
Muslim village called
Umm Junieh is mentioned during the Late
Ottoman period (late 19th century) at the site from which the first Jewish settlers would start establishing their community in 1909–1910. A map from
Napoleon's invasion of 1799 by
Pierre Jacotin showed the place as ruined.
Umm Junieh was just by the ancient bridge known in Arabic as
Jisr es-Sidd, which was also noted as ruined by Jacotin. In 1881, the
PEF's
Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described the place, cited as
Umm Junieh, as a stone and
adobe village, on the east side of the river Jordan, on the top of the eastern bank of the river. It contained about 250 Muslim inhabitants. All the plain around was arable soil; no trees. A mill was worked at the village. A population list from about 1887 showed that
Umm Juny had about 330 inhabitants, all
Muslim.
Beginnings At Umm Juni Degania (later Degania Alef) was the first
kvutza-type agricultural settlement established by
Zionist pioneers of the New
Yishuv under
Ottoman rule. The location was south-west of the
Sea of Galilee, at a place known in Arabic as
Umm Junieh or Umm Juni, within the administrative Ottoman area of
Acre Sanjak. It was founded in 1910 by a group of eight men and one woman, the "Hebrew labor|[labour] conquest group", followed at the end of the same year by what would become the permanent settlers group (ten men and two women).
At permanent location In June 1912, the group moved from the mud huts and wooden shack of Umm Juni to the new stone-built compound at its permanent location. That is at the place where the
Jordan River emerges from the Sea of Galilee and therefore had the Arabic name Bab al-Tumm, "Gate of the Mouth".
Prominent early members The poet
Rachel Bluwstein, the "prophet of labor"
A. D. Gordon, and paramilitary commander and leading Zionist
Joseph Trumpeldor all worked at Degania Alef. Zionist pioneer and future Israeli politician
Yosef Baratz was among the founders of Degania Alef. On June 5, 1912, he married and started the first family. His first child, Gideon Baratz (1913–1988), who was born in Degania Alef, was the first child born in a Jewish collective community in
Palestine. The second child to be born in Degania Alef was the prominent Israeli general and politician
Moshe Dayan. Dayan was named after
Moshe Barsky, a member of Degania Alef who was the first kibbutz member killed in an Arab attack. Barsky was killed in November 1913. He was alone in the
kibbutz fields when he was shot in the back and left for dead by Arab marauders.
British Mandate In 1920 two new kibbutzim,
Degania Bet and
Degania Gimel, were established to the south of what consequently became Degania Alef or Aleph. According to a 1949 book by the
Jewish National Fund, the village was destroyed following attacks on the neighboring kibbutzim of
Sha'ar HaGolan and
Masada. The settlers resisted, however, and launched a counter-attack which helped to recover the neighboring settlements. Reconstruction started almost immediately. ==Economy==