Pioneers. The Start of a New/Old Country - Alex Bloch

The richly woven historical novel Pioneers describes the first Jewish pioneers who settled in modern Palestine. Their vision was to restore this ancient, neglected country to its previous state, transforming it back to the condition it was in some 2,000 years before.

All the land for the settlement, and for future comers, was purchased from its Arab ruler by philanthropists or from funds collected from diaspora Jews. In olden times, Palestine was a fruitful Jewish kingdom, where its inhabitants lived well for 1,000 years. But after several wars, the Romans conquered the country and exiled most of its population.

The early success in getting modern Palestine to almost self-sufficiency in a relatively short time attracted many more pioneers, and so it grew to a prosperous city within fifty years.

Before the pioneers came, several books were published in Europe calling for the need of a Jewish state to absorb those in the diaspora. An agricultural school was established in the country two years before the coming of the pioneers. The money for that school was donated by a Jewish philanthropist, and included the purchase of the land from its Ottoman rulers.

(About the Author)

Born in Berlin, Alex Bloch escaped Germany with his family at age nine, just before the start of World War II. Emigrating to America, he studied mechanical and industrial engineering at MIT and Columbia University, working in the U.S. and then in Israel, where he emigrated in 1968. After retiring from the engineering field, the author studied history, receiving a Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 1971, where he taught for six years. "After leaving Tel Aviv University, I started to write historical fiction books, and this is my fourteenth."