Talk:Ein Zeitim

Misleading text
"Ein Zeitim was originally built on the site of an old Arab village which had a Jewish community in the Middle Ages." - This is misleading. Until the establishment of the kibbutz, there was only one village and it is not where the kibbutz was founded. It had been in the same place for many centuries. It was called Ein ez-Zeitun in Arabic and Ein Zeitim in Hebrew. During the Middle Ages it had a substantial Jewish community (for a time even more important than the one at Safad). In the modern period the village was entirely Arab. The kibbutz was founded about 800m to the north of the village and they coexisted until 1948. In 1948 the Arab village was depopulated and destroyed. There are books that describe all known Jewish settlements in Palestine since Byzantine times and in this area there was just Ein Zeitim, as it was called in Hebrew. (One such is Alex Carmel, Peter Schafer, Yossi Ben-Artzi, "The Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 634-1881", which I just checked.) Of course that is why the kibbutz was named Ein Zeitim and not after some other village it was built on. The JNF book is confused or confusing, since it also refers to an Arab village called Ein Zeitim (which is missing altogether from this article). Zerotalk 04:52, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

later period needed
I removed some 1948-ish text taken from a JNF publication because it obviously fails to distinguish this place from the nearby Arab village Ein al-Zeitun. This type of game was actually quite common: Ein al-Zeitun had once (in the middle ages) been an important Jewish center that was called Ein Zeitim in Jewish sources and now that Ein al-Zeitun was depopulated, modern Ein Zeitim could be presented as the continuation of the old Ein Zeitim. This leaves the article without any post-1947 text. It won't be a problem since lots of good sources and newspapers refer to the 1948 experiences of Ein Zeitim. Information from later periods still needs to be found. Zerotalk 04:17, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Incidentally I have several newspaper references from the 1930s and 1940s referring to Ein Zeitim as abandoned. Also the 1945 population survey recorded no population there. I could add these, but I'm not sure it would be useful. Zerotalk 04:24, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

The Hebrew wiki entry says that the place was finally abandoned in 1955. I don't see a source, in any language. Please help. Zerotalk 04:33, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

Established WHEN?
The first 2 "History" paragraphs contain no years or even easy-to-decipher time hints. From the 3rd paragraph onwards it's all chronological and the years are stated. Are events from the first 2 paragraphs really pre-1891, or were they just cautiously parked there because nobody knows when they took place and it felt wrong to give up on them? Logic would say that first the land had to be bought (1891, 3rd par.), and only then could the Minsk group settle, so par. 1 & 2 belong inside par. 3, but land can change hands, so not a must. All 3 sources not accessible online, one not for free (€40, no thanks). Big mess.

The first photo (lead) is also undated. The file mentions "Palmach archive Yiftach 3rd Battalion Hachsharot 1 album". There was an Yiftach Brigade, est. during 1948 war or maybe before that (enWiki article is not clear) and taking in 3 Palmach battalions; if file text is meant to mean "3rd Battalion of the Yiftach Brigade during Hachsharot" (see hakhshara, vocational training; unexpected for soldiers!), then it's post-1948. The truck looks 40s-50s too. But still, guesswork, not good. Brought it up at Talk: Yiftach Brigade as well. Arminden (talk) 01:09, 9 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Repeated abandonments and reestablishments make it complex. If you have Encyclopedia Judaica, the article on Ein Zeitim (Vol 6, p264) has dates but it confuses locations with the Arab village—see the discussion above on this page. The medieval mixed village was on the site of the Arab village, but the 1891 foundation and all later pre-1948 foundations were at the site 800m north of the Arab village. Zerotalk 02:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)