NE'OT MORDEKHAI

NE'OT MORDEKHAI (Heb. נְאוֹת מָרְדְּכַי; "Pastures of Mordecai"), kibbutz in northern Israel, 5 mi. (8 km.) S.E. of kiryat shemonah . When the village was founded in 1946, Arabs launched an attack and two of the volunteers who were helping set up the first huts were killed. The founding members were from Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany. In 1970 the kibbutz had 625 inhabitants, dropping to 489 in 2002. Originally affiliated with Ha-Kibbutz ha-Me'uḥad, Ne'ot Mordekhai decided, after the 1951 split in the movement, to remain outside any kibbutz federation, thus becoming the only unaffiliated kibbutz in the country. Kibbutz farming included field crops, fruit orchards, turkeys, and beehives; it also operated the Naot shoe factory, Naot Toys, and Palrig, manufacturing, marketing, and exporting polyethylene and polypropylene. The kibbutz is named after the Argentinian Zionist Mordecai Rozovsky. (Efraim Orni / Shaked Gilboa (2nd ed.)