In 1901, the Zionist Organization founded the Jewish National Fund to purchase lands in the Land of Israel and transfer them to the ownership of the Jewish people. The book before us examines and summarizes the JNF's land purchasing policies and endeavors, from the establishment of the Fund to the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. A major part of this essay centers on the period from 1936 to 1948, which were the most important years of the JNF's activities and during which it became almost the sole Jewish entity promoting this aspect of the building of the land of Israel. During these years, the JNF purchased about 600,000 dunams, which constitute more than 60% of its acquisitions from its establishment to the establishment of the State. The pivotal nature of the JNF during those years stems first and foremost from the recognition of its settlement endeavors by the top institutions of the Zionist Organization, in promoting the political interests of the Zionist movement in the land of Israel. The creation of actual real property owned by the Jewish people which also served as a foundation for settlement was a prerequisite for achieving a Jewish state. Under it's articles of association, the lands purchased by the JNF cannot be sold. They were leased for the purpose of establishing agricultural and urban settlements and subsequently, the State of Israel applied this principle to all its lands (about 20.5 million dunams), of which JNF lands now constitute about 13%.

The State of Israel is a unique phenomenon of a Western state where the majority of lands (more than 90 percent) are still owned by the State and by a public body related to it – The Jewish National Fund. At the root of the national ownership of land lies the divine command stating that the Land of Israel belongs to God and therefore should not be traded in perpetuity. This principle, which was anchored in the Jewish National Fund’s Articles of Association and Regulations, was also adopted by the State of Israel in the first decade after its establishment, in the framework of a Basic Law and three land laws ensuring that most of the State lands would remain in the hands of the State. The book describes and analyzes the history of the ideological, social and legal processes that took place in Israel with regard to the adoption of the national land principle, and is based wholly on primary sources, mainly government and Knesset discussions concerning the legislation process of the above mentioned laws.

In this book the author discusses the plan of the World Zionist Organisation from the 1930s to divide the land of Israel and to establish a Jewish State - a plan which never came to fruition.

Many studies have been written about the kibbutz, but only a few serious studies have been published to date on the religious kibbutz, whose members maintain an orthodox religious lifestyle in addition to living and working collectively. This book examines the ideology and pioneering efforts of the Religious Kibbutz Movement in the pre-state years, and especially its emphasis on clustered settlements, leading to the birth of ten religious kibbutzim, nine of them in three distinct clusters, between 1936 and 1948. Religious pioneers settled in the Beit She’an Valley, in the hills south of Jerusalem (Gush Etzion) and the northern Negev – all of them frontier regions that posed a formidable geographical and political challenge. The Religious Kibbutz Movement in the Land of Israel looks at how these kibbutzim fitted into their surroundings and interacted with their non-religious neighbors, and explores the religious settlement enterprise in the context of all Zionist settlement in Palestine at the time. Translated from the Hebrew Torah Ve-Avoda Be-Binyan Ha-Aretz (The Religious Kibbutz during the Mandate Period).

This work reveals the role, contribution and modus operandi of Zionist private enterprise in the Jewish rural and urban settlement of Palestine between the start of the century and the outbreak of the First World War. The book demonstrates that the role of private enterprise was extensive both in terms of land purchases and in terms of settlement activities. The author recapitulates these efforts, categorizes these activities as unique and identifies the underlying rationale of "national capitalism". The private investors and companies employed economic-commercial means to secure national-Zionist objectives. They were willing to be content with limited profits and received in compensation the emotional gains accruing from their contribution to building the Land of Israel.