Degania began as a group called the “Hadera” commune, whose roots were in the “Romanian” commune from Romany, Russia. The nucleus which was formed abroad grew on the ship bound for the Land of Israel, thrived and grew on its wanderings (in Petach Tikva, Ben Shemen, the Kinneret Farm and in Hadera) and established itself at Umm Juni, which is Degania ‘A’ - mother of the collectives and the kibbutzim.

The Hut at Umm Juni - 1913

At the end of the year 1910 the people of the Hadera Commune crossed the Jordan River on an assignment for the Land of Israel Office, under the direction of Dr. Arthur Ruppin, and they camped at Umm Juni, south of the Sea of Galilee.

This is what the pioneers wrote:
“On the 28th of October 1910, there arrived at Umm Juni, ten men and two women. "We came to establish an independent settlement of Hebrew laborers, on national land, a collective settlement with neither exploiters nor exploited – a commune”.

The members of the Hadera commune were: Tanchum Tanpilov, Israel Bloch, Josef Elkin, Sarah Malchin, Joseph Baratz, Miriam Ostrovski-Baratz, Josef Bussel, Tzvi Yehuda Zaltsman, Chaim Tzadikov, Yehoshua Ecker, Aharon Yosilevitch and Yerocham Klivnov. Later on they were joined by: Yitzchak Ben-Ya’akov, Abba Ben-Ya’akov, Shmuel Dayan, Avraham Greenspon, Ya’akov Berkowitz, Tzvi Lichtenstein-Tamari and Ya’akov Apter.

Crossing the jordan river - summer 1913	Joseph Baratz - Umm Juni

The will to revive the people in the Land of Israel as a working people, returning to nature and to the tilling of the land, living from the fruits of its own labor with neither exploiters nor exploited, brought them to recognize that this could only be realized through communal living.
In the year 1908, about 3,000 dunams of the Umm Juni land were purchased by the “Hachsharat Hayishuv” company for the Jewish National Fund.

The Haifa-Tzemach-Damascus railroad track crossed the edge of the area on its eastern perimeter, near the Arab village of Tzemach.

The Hadera Commune	Establishing the Pioneers Yard

On the 12th of Ab _____ Joseph Bussel, who already stood out as the eminent figure of the commune, sent:
“ To the director of the Land of Israel Office, Dr. Arthur Ruppin,
Dear Sir,
We hereby inform your honor that we have named our new settlement ‘Degania’, after the five varieties of grains growing here (wheat, barley, oats, corn and sorghum). The name was accepted and immediately became known to the entire land (Yishuv) and within a year or two the name Umm Juni was forgotten”.

On a day in Sivan, ____, June 1912, during the harvest days between Pesach and the Shavuot holidays, the group moved from the woods of Umm Juni to the area where the Jordan emerges from the Kinneret – at Bab-el-Tom – which today is Degania.
In the 1980’s the enclosure was renovated, with its two main buildings and the others as well. Today the buildings serve as a gathering place – a clubroom, a library and study room, a museum, a memorial room, the archive and the community’s administration offices.
The place was given the name: Pioneers Yard.

the following letter to Dr. Arthur Ruppin.

Naum Sneh - Yard Guard (1914)	Pioneers Yard 1912

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