Haifa and the Northern Coast Places

Benyamina

Picturesque Benyamina, the youngest settlement in the area, wasfounded in 1922. It was named after Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934), the head of the French branch of the famous family, who took a keen interest in the welfare of his fellow Jews in Palestine. (His Hebrew name was Benyamin.) With his prestige, vision, and financial contributions, Rothschild laid the foundations in the late 19th century for Zichron Ya'akov and Bat Shlomo, as well as other towns along the coastal plain and in the Upper Galilee.

The advice of the viniculture experts Rothschild hired in the 1880s paid off handsomely, at least in this region—the fruit of the vines flourished in the 1890s. Rothschild's paternalistic system was not without its pitfalls, however; some of his administrators ruled his colonies like petty despots, trying, for instance, to impose use of the French language on the local settlers, who wished to speak Hebrew. Language notwithstanding, the Binyamina Winery was founded in 1952; you can find it at the end of the village by following the Hebrew signs that show a bunch of grapes.