During the late 1960s, many young adults from around the world, came to volunteer in Kibbutzim in the land of Israel. They worked primarily in agriculture, in orange groves, on dairy farms, and lived together with Israelis, eating in the communal dining rooms and exploring the land. Their purpose was to take part in helping the returning Jewish people from around the world build up their recently reestablished land.
A small group of Finnish volunteers, felt called to establish a Kibbutz of their own in Israel. In 1971 the cooperative was created with the purpose of being a living example of God’s love to His people and their land.
Under miraculous circumstances, and against all odds, they received personal permission from Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel to establish their own community in a small, abandoned military outpost in the Judean hills. In 1974, the group finally settled at the location after 3 difficult years obtaining all the required permits needed to establish the community.
With no external resources, they began to build the place. They sold all their possessions in Finland and brought the money to be used in the funding of building the new community. It was established as a “Moshav Shitufi” (communal village), rather than a Kibbutz, because the Kibbutz organization of Israel did not know what to do with this “strange non Israeli foreign group” who wanted to join them.
Soon after, the first Israelis joined the group. They were young Jewish families of believers in Yeshua, native speakers of Hebrew, with the vision to settle the land, and with faith that God would do something special through this place.
Together, this small group of bachelors and families began building the community with no financial support from the government or any settling organization as is common for new communities in Israel. They built homes, a guest house, a residential area, volunteers quarters, and set up the infrastructure of the new village. Yad Hashmona started as a communal community, meaning that just like Kibbutzim in the land; it was based on communal ownership and equal budgets rather than salaries. Changes of the last decade in the Kibbutzim and Moshavim in Israel brought about a change in the communal attitude, to the privatization of salaries.
Through the years many hundreds of visitors have come through this unique place and were blessed by it. Today the village is facing yet another exciting growth with 36 new families who are building their homes at Yad Hashmona and will soon start the next chapter in the life of this unique community.
