Rare 1913 Video of Trumpledor at Migdal

Here’s a rare film from 1913 showing a one-armed Joseph Trumpeldor plowing a field in Migdal (at the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee) shortly after he arrived in Israel from Russia.

You can see the Arbel mountain and the Kinneret in the background.

Trumpeldor was the most highly decorated Jewish soldier in the Russian army during the Russo-Japanese War 1904-5 (where he lost his arm in action).

After that war he gathered a group of young Zionists around him and in 1911 they immigrated to Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire. At first he joined a farm at Migdal on the shore of the Sea of Galilee (where this video was made), and then worked for a time at Kibbutz Degania where our Galilee Green Olive Oil is made today.

When WWI broke out, he joined Ze’ev Jabotinsky and went to Egypt to form the famous Zion Mule Corps in 1915 to fight with the British against their common enemies in Gallipoli.

Back in Israel, in 1920 he became a national hero when he lost his life defending Tel Hai, a farming village in the upper Galilee against Arab Shiite militants from southern Lebanon.

Here’s a current picture of the valley Trumpeldor was plowing with the Arbel Mountain, Migdal, Tiberias and the Kinneret. It’s almost exactly the same angle that the film was made 100 years ago. Notice that the mountain hasn’t changed.