Constructing Identity: The Legacy of Early Israeli Housing Projects
A Story Unfolding Across Timelines
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Constructing Identity: The Legacy of Early Israeli Housing Projects
A Quick Recap
In this series, I am sharing my conversations with my father and inviting you to be part of them. This new installment will focus on the pre-state period and the early days of Israel when the country faced the challenge of housing almost a million immigrants who arrived with nothing but the clothes they wore.
In this installment, we'll focus on the development of large-scale residential projects. We will look at how they were built, what made them possible, and how they shaped the lives of the people who lived in them.
This is a bonus episode. Let’s dive in.
Nissim: Did you know that almost every city in Israel has a neighborhood called Rassco? Who is, was, or were Rassco? Any idea?
Liat: Was I supposed to know that?
Nissim: If you had come to the school of the future, you probably would have known that. Curious people tend to know pieces of knowledge that most people don’t.
Liat: So what is it?
Nissim: For your information and the readers' information, Rassco is not a personality. Rassco was a construction company that stands for the acronym in English: Rural And Suburban Settlements Company, RASSCO.
In 1934, during the Fifth Aliyah, middle-class German Jews who were characterized by their bourgeois background and education immigrated to Israel. The Jewish Agency wanted to encourage them to engage in agriculture, so they assigned Dr. Ruppin, David Werner Senator, and Georg Landauer from the German Department to establish a new housing company, Rassco.
At the beginning of its existence, the company made an agreement with the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in which the JNF would provide land, and they would build the farms and housing. Their progress was impressive, and by 1939, Rassco had established four new agricultural settlements: Sde Warburg, Shavei Tzion, Beit Yitzhak, and Kfar Shmaryahu.
During World War II and until the establishment of the State of Israel, Rassco worked determinedly to establish additional Jewish settlements. Among them were Batzra and Bnei Tzion. It also established agricultural neighborhoods within existing moshavot, such as Tel Aviv, Yokneam, Nahariya, Haifa, and others. These neighborhoods were characterized by large agricultural areas, most of which were given to German immigrants.
Winds of Change
Things began to change with the establishment of the state. During the War of Independence, the agricultural settlements of Rassco stood on the front lines of the war and served as a de facto border. Following the war, additional areas were annexed to the settlements. After the establishment of the state, the company changed direction and began to deal with the new needs of the state, which included housing for workers and housing for immigrants, most of whom were refugees. In total, Rassco established 40 settlements.
In the Davar newspaper in 1961, the settlements were described as follows:
"Rassco Company did much in absorbing immigrants from Germany, Hitler’s refugees, and members of the middle class. It established a series of model villages for them and transformed officials and merchants, doctors and lawyers who had never known the taste of manual labor into successful farmers."
Rassco built residential neighborhoods in existing cities, some for the middle class and some for new immigrants, as well as the Maabarot. By 1961, Rassco had built 30,000 housing units. In addition, it constructed many public buildings and institutions. Gradually, Rassco expanded its scope of activities, beginning to build office buildings such as the Shalom Tower and even entering the hospitality industry.
Over the years, Rassco accumulated many debts, and time after time the State of Israel rescued it by purchasing the apartments and properties it built. For example, in the 1970s, to prevent the company from collapsing, the Jewish Agency converted the loans it had given Rassco into grants totaling over 50 million liras. At the same time, there was no real streamlining, only expansion of construction, and Rassco went on to establish additional neighborhoods in Nahariya, Haifa, Akko, Kiryat Motzkin, Ashdod, Jerusalem, Rishon Lezion, Omer, and Beersheba.
Rassco is remembered in the history of Israel as one of the companies that practically founded the state. This company was a product of money, land, and true Zionism. However, not enough is said about the distribution of land and wealth that this company provided for certain populations compared to others.
This gap became evident after the establishment of the state when Amidar, another housing company, was founded. The new immigrants from Muslim countries were housed by Amidar, which built housing for Mizrahi Jews, while Rassco continued building for Ashkenazi Jews.
The disparity in wealth distribution is visible to this day. Rassco neighborhoods were built alongside Amidar neighborhoods or other housing projects. One group received plots of land, while the other was placed in public housing.
This event continues to affect the distribution of wealth in the country to this day. Rassco, Amidar, and other housing companies had an enormous impact on the Israeli urban landscape. The push to build quickly and in large quantities led to many problems that we still experience today.
Liat: Wow. So the housing allocation was not random.
Nissim: At the high level of housing companies, it wasn’t random. After they learned to classify between the Ashkenazi and Mizrahi groups, the internal distribution was either random or based on needs.
Liat: This affects people’s lives to this day and their ability to rise from poverty or bridge the education gap.
Nissim: True. Rising from poverty is difficult and sometimes almost even impossible in many other countries, not just in Israel. Let’s take a short break, and tomorrow we will look at what happened in the United States at that time.
Thank you. I have lived in Jerusalem for 50 years and much of this is new to me.