EIN ZEITIM

EIN ZEITIM (Heb. עֵין זֵיתִים), place in northern Israel, north of Safed. Jews resided in Ein Zeitim (in Arabic ʿAyn Zaytūn) from the 11th century C.E. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, 40 families of Moriscos (Arabic-speaking Jews) lived there and it was the site of a yeshivah, headed by R. Moses b. Makhir. After the 1837 earthquake in Safed, many Safed Jews fled to Ein Zeitim. A modern settlement was founded in 1891 by a Zionist group from Minsk, Russia, which planted olive groves and fruit orchards there. It was abandoned, however, before World War I. After 1918 Ein Zeitim was resettled but was again abandoned and destroyed in the 1929 Arab riots. A few families subsequently returned but were forced to leave again in the 1936 riots. A further attempt was made on January 17, 1946, when members of Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me'uḥad settled there, but it dispersed after the establishment of the State of Israel. A training farm was set up in its stead, but lacked adequate farming land and dissolved. In the 1950s a forest was planted in the Ein Zeitim area, forming part of the large biriyyah forest. The Ein Zeitim section has a large variety of trees, such as pine, cypress, eucalyptus, acacia, etc., as well as recreational facilities. (Efraim Orni / Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)