The kvutza began in the area of an Arab village called Umm Juni, the land having been bought by the Jewish National Fund. (A kvutza is a settlement that was intended to remain small in size and to engage in agriculture, as distinct from a kibbutz which was larger and which engaged in agriculture and other ventures). Two years later they moved from their mud huts and shacks to a permanent location by the mouth of the Jordan River. Well-known figures who worked here included Israel’s national poetess Rachel Bluwstein, A.D. Gordon who was a well-known philosopher who held that only physical labor could connect Jews with their homeland, the paramilitiary commander Joseph Trumpeldor, and David Ben-Gurion who would later become Israel’s prime minister. Moshe Dayan was the second child to be born here, although the family did not remain in the kvutza.

 

 This was a place imbued with socialist thinking, as was predominant during the period of the Second Aliya. The kibbutz split into Alef, Bet and Gimel in 1920 over the issue of whether children should stay with their parents or move to dorms before age 10. Two new kibbutzim were established south of Degania Alef. The kibbutz underwent privatization in 2007.

 

These kibbutzim, together with a small number of military personnel, repelled a Syrian attack in one of the first battles of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and thereby prevented a Syrian advance into the Jordan Valley. Degania Alef was destroyed in the battle, but it was rapidly rebuilt. At the gates of the kibbutz one can see an original Syrian tank that was stopped with a Molotov cocktail.