The first moshav
ovedim (workers' settlement) in Erez Israel.
It was founded in 1921 in the western Jezreel Valley by
veteran pioneers of the Second Aliyah, some of whom had been members of
the first kibbutz, Deganyah. The 80 settling families each received 25
acres (100 dunams) of land, and then proceeded to drain the
malaria-infested swamps, which had prevented two previous attempts at
settlement.
The village layout in Nahalal, devised by architect
Richard Kauffmann, became the pattern for many of the moshavim established
before 1948; it is based on concentric circles, with the public buildings
(school, administrative and cultural offices, cooperative shops and
warehouses) in the center, the homesteads in the innermost circle, the
farm buildings in the next, and beyond those, ever-widening circles of
gardens and fields.
In 1929 a Girls' Agricultural Training Farm was
established at Nahalal by WIZO (Women's International Zionist
Organization), and in the 1940s it became a coeducational farming school
of the Youth Aliyah movement. Nahalal is now one of the principal centers
of the moshav movement, with a population of about 1,300. In biblical
times, Nahalal was a town in the territory of the tribe of Zebulun, the
exact site of which is still in dispute
