page_title: Rosh Pinna
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Rosh Pinna / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Israeli postage stamp commemorating 80th anniversary of the Rosh Pina moshava עברית: בול דואר ישראל המוקדש לשנת ה-80 מהקמת המושבה ראש פינה
context_page_description: Rosh Pina or Rosh Pinna is a town and local council in the Korazim Plateau in the Upper Galilee on the eastern slopes of Mount Kna'an in the Northern District of Israel. The town with the current name was founded in 1882 by thirty families who immigrated from Romania, making it one of the oldest Zionist settlements in Israel. It was preceded at the same location by the settlement of Gei Oni, established by local Jews from Safed in 1878, which had been, however, almost fully abandoned by 1882. In 2018 it had a population of 3,120.
context_section_description: Rosh Pina was one of the first modern Jewish agricultural settlements in history of the Land of Israel, then part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Rosh Pina was established near the Arab village of al-Ja'una. In 1883, it became the first Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel to come under the patronage of the Baron Edmond James de Rothschild.
  Gei Oni was founded in 1878 by Jews from Safed, some of whom were descended from Spanish Jews exiled in 1492. However, most of the original two to three dozen families left after three years of drought, though three families remained: Keller, Friedman, and Schwartz. A year later, in 1882, a group of Romanian Jews, most of them coming from Moineşti in Moldavia, and led by Moshe David Shub, joined the three families of Gei Oni, enlarged the village, and renamed it Rosh Pina, as per Psalm 118:22: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone [lit. "head of the corner", i.e. "rosh pina" in Hebrew]."
  Moshe David Shub (born 1854 in Moineşti; died 1938 in Jerusalem) had been sent ahead to find and purchase an appropriate piece of land. Born as Moşe David Iancovici, in Palestine he became known as: שו"ב, Shub, a Hebrew abbreviation of the name of his profession, שוחט ובודק, read "shochet u-bodék", butcher and examiner [of kosher meat]; ("shuv" has also the Hebrew meaning of "once again", or "return!", an allusion to the main principle of Zionism; in Hebrew the same letter [ב] is used for "v" and "b").
  Laurence Oliphant collected funds for Rosh Pina from Christadelphians and other sympathizers in Britain. He wrote about his visit to Rosh Pina in 1886:
  "Jauna, which was the name of the village to which I was bound, was situated about three miles (5 km) from Safed, in a gorge, from which, as we descended it, a magnificent view was obtained over the Jordan valley, with the Lake of Tiberias lying three thousand feet below us on the right, and the waters of Merom, or the Lake of Huleh, on the left. The intervening plain was only waiting for development. The new colony has been established about eight months, the land having been purchased from the Moslem villagers, of whom twenty families remained, who lived on terms of perfect amity with the Jews. These consisted of twenty-three Roumanian and four Russian families, numbering in all one hundred and forty souls. The greater number were hard at work on their potato-patches when I arrived, and I was pleased to find evidences of thrift and industry. A row of sixteen neat little houses had been built, and more were in process or erection. Altogether this is the most hopeful attempt at a colony which I have seen in Palestine. The colonists own about a thousand acres of excellent land, which they were able to purchase at from three to four dollars an acre. The Russians are establishing themselves about half a mile from the Roumanians, as Jews of different nationalities easily get on well together. They call the colony Rosch Pina, or "Head of the Corner," the word occurring in the verse, "The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the comer."
  Eventually, the village had to be saved financially by Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, who then imposed his economic concept on the colonists.
  According to a census conducted in 1922 by the British Mandate authorities, Rosh Pinna had a population of 468 inhabitants, consisting of 460 Jews, 4 Muslims and 4 Christians.
caption: Israeli postal stamp, 1962
exif: {}