Tu Bishvat Special: History of Israeli Drip Irrigation

Credit: C Nanda Kishore Reddy, WikiCommons

Tu Bishvat is the new year for the trees and Israel is a pioneer in creating sustainable agriculture and water management. Meet Simcha Blass who invented modern drip irrigation and built Israel’s first pipeline to the Negev. Learn about his rabbinical family from Europe and the struggle to revive the deforested and arid land through the Netafim company, born in Kibbutz Hatzerim, an agricultural community pioneered by the Tehran Children who escaped the Holocaust via Iran.

Click here for last year’s History of Tu Bishvat podcast!

Director of Netafim Uri Verber, with drip irrigation inventor Simcha Blass, 1965. Credit: Edna Verber, WikiCommons.

Simcha Blass with American Special Representative of the President of the United States Eric Johnston in the Jordan Valley, 1962. Credit: from the book Water in Strife and Action by Simcha Blass.

NOTES:

• Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel

• Einstein Forest to Be Opened on Tu Bishvat

• “New Year of Trees”, Ancient Festival, to Be Celebrated in Palestine

• Arbor Day Proclaimed As “Afforestation Day” in Israel; to Be Dedicated to Heroes

• Thank This Jew For Inventing Drip Irrigation

• The “Tehran Children” and the Jewish Soldiers in "Anders’ Army”

• Engineer Simcha Blass- Encyclopedia of the Founders and Builders of Israel