Joffe, Eliezer Lipa

(1882–1944)

   Agriculturist and pioneer of the moshav movement. Born in Bessarabia, southern Russia, Joffe went to the United States to study agriculture in 1904 and founded an experimental farm in Palestine after settling there in 1910. During World War I an increasing number of Palestinian Jews became interested in the idea of a kind of settlement that would combine the collective features and national purpose of the kibbutz, while leaving room for individual management and initiative. It was an article by Joffe at the end of the war, ‘The Establishment of Workers’ Villages’, in which these ideas eventually crystallized. Joffe spelled out the principles of the moshav ovdim: the land to belong to the nation but be divided into plots worked by individual families; buying and marketing to be co-operative; and arrangements to be made for mutual aid between families, who remained the fundamental economic unit. In 1921 he was a founder-member of the first moshav ovdim, Nahalal, and in 1928 he was one of those who founded the countrywide marketing organization, Tnuva. Joffe wrote widely on agricultural subjects and was prominent in the Hapoel HaZair party. While in New York in 1905 he established the first branch of the Hechalutz movement in the United States.