Merhavia a moshav

Moshav

Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...

 in northern Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. It falls under the jurisdiction of Jezreel Valley Regional Council

Jezreel Valley Regional Council

Jezreel Valley Regional Council is a regional council in northern Israel that encompasses most of the settlements in the Jezreel Valley. It includes 15 kibbutzim, 15 moshavim, 6 communal settlements and two Bedouin villages...

 and in 2006 had a population of 722. Founded in 1911, it was the first modern Jewish settlement in the Jezreel Valley

Jezreel Valley

-Etymology:The Jezreel Valley takes its name from the ancient city of Jezreel which was located on a low hill overlooking the southern edge of the valley, though some scholars think that the name of the city originates from the name of the clan which founded it, and whose existence is mentioned in...

.

The village was established as the Co-operative in Merhavia, a co-operative

Cooperative

A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...

 farm, at the beginning of 1911, based on the ideas of Franz Oppenheimer

Franz Oppenheimer

Franz Oppenheimer was a German-Jewish sociologist and political economist, who published also in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state.-Personal life:...

. The founders had arrived in the area in 1910 and consisted of members of Kvutza

Kvutza

Kvutza or kevutza can be used as:*A definition of an organized group of children consisting of boys and girls graded by age, as used in modern Israel.*It can also refer to any other type of group of individuals...

t Kibush and workers of the Second Aliyah

Second Aliyah

The Second Aliyah was an important and highly influential aliyah that took place between 1904 and 1914, during which approximately 40,000 Jews immigrated into Ottoman Palestine, mostly from the Russian Empire, some from Yemen....

. It was supposed to operate as a co-operative farm with differential wages, and was founded with the assistance of Arthur Ruppin

Arthur Ruppin

Arthur Ruppin was a Zionist thinker and leader. He was also one of the founders of the city of Tel Aviv, and a pioneering sociologist credited as being "The Father Of Jewish Sociology", directing Berlin's Bureau for Jewish Statistics and Demography from 1902 to 1907...

, Yehoshua Hankin

Yehoshua Hankin

Yehoshua Hankin was a Zionist activist who was responsible for most of the major land purchases of the World Zionist Organization in Ottoman Palestine....

, the Anglo-Palestine Bank and Eliyahu Blumenfeld. Alexander Baerwald

Alexander Baerwald

Alexander Baerwald was a German Jewish architect best known for his work in Haifa, Israel.Baerwald was born in Berlin, Germany on 3 March 1877. He studied at the Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg , interrupted by the summer semester 1898 at the Technische Hochschule of Munich...

 designed and built the first solid buildings and the road net with a central square in 1915. The name Merhavia is derived from the Book of Psalms

Psalms

The Book of Psalms , commonly referred to simply as Psalms, is a book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Bible...

 118:5;

Out of my straits I called upon the LORD; .. answered me with great enlargement - God.

(in the metaphorical sense: "God set me free." - The experience of the Jews immigrating to Israel and achieving a new homeland without the straits persecution.)

In 1922 it was converted to a moshav ovdim after being joined by Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 immigrants and residents of Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...

 who wanted to work in agriculture. In 1929 a kibbutz

Kibbutz

A kibbutz is a collective community in Israel that was traditionally based on agriculture. Today, farming has been partly supplanted by other economic branches, including industrial plants and high-tech enterprises. Kibbutzim began as utopian communities, a combination of socialism and Zionism...

, also by the name of Merhavia

Merhavia (kibbutz)

-External links:*...

, was established next to the moshav.