Moses Nowomeisky

Moses Nowomeisky

Mose Nowomeisky, founder of the Dead Sea industry

Kalija

Bet Haarava

Bet Haarava

Mose Abramowitsch Nowomeisky ( Hebrew משה אברמוביץ 'נוֹבוֹמֶיְיסקי, Russian Моисей Абрамович Новомейский , born November 25, 1873 in Barguzin ; † March 27, 1961 in Israel ) was an Israeli scientist and industrialist, pioneer in industrial salt mining on the Dead Sea .

He graduated from the Irkutsk University of Technology , and studied mining technology at the Kgl. Prussian Albertus University in Königsberg , graduated in 1897 and returned to Bargusin. In Israel he founded the Palestine Potash Company, the predecessor of the Dead Sea Works .

In contrast to most other mining engineers, Nowomeisky viewed Lake Baikal as a raw material source for minerals and researched methods of extracting them from the lake. He is one of the pioneers of mining in Siberia. Around 1900 he built a chemical factory that supplied the local glassworks with refined salts.

Nowomeisky's interest in the Dead Sea was aroused at a meeting with Otto Warburg in 1906, when Warburg presented him with a report by the German geologist Blankenhorn about the Dead Sea. He recognized parallels between the Dead Sea and the Siberian lakes in terms of their chemical composition. In 1907 he asked the Ottoman authorities for permission to extract salts from the Dead Sea. In 1911 he visited the Dead Sea for the first time. He examined the specific gravity, water and air temperatures of the Dead Sea. He examined the possibility of building evaporation pans. He then returned to Siberia.

In 1920 he immigrated to Palestine, using his Hebrew name, Moshe. He settled his family in Gedera, near Tel Aviv, and acquired a piece of land on the northern coast of the Dead Sea near Jericho.

At the end of 1922 he acquired the salt mining rights on Mount Sodom. He then founded the company "Jordan" to search for oil. In 1924 he founded the Mining Syndicate of Palestine and carried out geological surveys on the Dead Sea together with the British geologist George Stanfield Blake. In 1925 the High Commissioner for Palestine approved him to continue geological surveys. In April, he instructed the superintendent of his in Hadera located plant, Moshe Langutzky to continue studies on the northern coast.

British authorities published a tender for salt extraction in the Dead Sea area. There were a number of companies that made offers. The contract was awarded to the Novomeysky consortium by High Commissioner Herbert Plumer in 1927. This sparked a debate in the British Parliament that exposed the anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist sentiments of some MPs. Among other things, the Speaker of the House of Lords , Islington , described Zionism as an "unfortunate experiment".

Nowomeisky garnered support from well-known Londoners and received a seventy-five year concession for his Palestine Potash Company in August 1929 after funding was secured and the company accepted a British executive director.

The company's board of directors and sales department were located in London. The management and research laboratories were located in Jerusalem. The main production facility was on the northern coast of the Dead Sea and the pilot processing facility was on Mount Sodom.

Most of the workers were employed on the northern coastal strip and commuted from Jerusalem as British authorities did not allow Jews to build villages on nearby government land, but Novomeysky eventually got permission to settle workers in the neighborhood. The marshland near the potash plant was drained and the workers' village of Kalia was established in 1934. Kalia ( Hebrew קַלְיָה) is derived from the word potassium , which was found in the region. Kalia is also a Hebrew acronym for Kam Litchija Jam HaMawet ( Hebrew קָם לִתְחִיָּה יַם הַמָּוֶתlit. The Dead Sea begins to live again ). The British now recognized the potential of the Dead Sea as a vacation spot and built a golf course in Kalija, which they named "Sodom and Gomorrah" .

Potash production required extremely large evaporation ponds, but the northern coastal strip was too small for that. Nowomeisky realized this in 1933 when he went to Kibbutz Ramat Rachel to organize a work group there to work on the most profitable side of Mount Sodom. While the northern coast of the Dead Sea already had difficult conditions for potash extraction, the conditions on the southern side of the Dead Sea were far more difficult due to its isolated position in the middle of the Judean Desert.

Ramat Rachel then got in touch with the kibbutz movement , which organized a group of 20 people. In 1934 she traveled with Kali workers from Palestine to Mount Sodom to establish a labor camp there. Materials were delivered from Jerusalem and water was provided by King Abdullah .

The group then found a good place to found a settlement in the nearby valley of Zoar . Soon a group of workers from Ra'anana joined them. However, the area was assigned to the emirate of King Abdullah of Transjordan. The group protested but were then evacuated. Nevertheless, on October 8, 1939, at the beginning of the Second World War, the group was able to set up a kibbutz near Kalia, called Beit HaArava, where they successfully grew grain on very salty soil. Contrary to the regulations of the White Paper of 1939 , Novomeysky received the approval for the kibbutz Beit HaArawa in 1939 because the kibbutz was a settlement of his workers. Before 1943, 100 Jewish families lived in Beit HaArava, which was known for its fish ponds, eucalyptus, cypress, pine and flowers.

A good relationship with the local Arab population was important for Nowomeisky. He learned the Arabic language and was known to locals as "the doctor". Nowomeisky also had good connections with King Abdullah I of Jordan, whose emirate was across the Jordan River . Because of Nowomeisky's reputation, the kibbutzim were spared from Arab uprising . Many of his Arab workers commuted from nearby Jericho to the Novomeisky workers' settlements.

After April 18, 1948, the British ceased escorting convoys from Jerusalem to the northern shores of the Dead Sea. As the likelihood of war between the Arabs and the Zionists increased at the end of the British mandate, Novomeysky sought to promote peace with Abdullah. This was done by proposing a deal that would spare potash mining because of its value to both sides as well as to the British. He flew twice to Amman for negotiations on May 13, 1948. In an agreement with the delegation from Transjordan, a neutral zone was created to protect the mining industry. He traveled to Tel Aviv on May 14th to share these results with David Ben-Gurion. However, this could not approve this agreement. Novomeisky had an accident in a car. On May 17, representatives of the Palestine Potash Company and the Haganah signed an agreement that mining in both the northern and southern parts of the Dead Sea would be placed under the supervision of Transjordanian. This was in contradiction to the previous agreements. However, the Haganah High Command rejected the new deal. Because of his hospital stay, Novomeysky was unable to use his contacts in Transjordan to clarify the differences between the contracting parties.

literature

• "The Dead Sea" by Barbara Kreiger pp. 141-165
• chemistry.org.il (PDF; 215 kB) Weintraub, B. (2004). Moshe A. Novomeysky: Founder of the Dead Sea Industries; Chemistry in Israel, Bull. Isr. Chem. Soc., Issue, August 16, 2004, pp. 37-40.
• http://poli.haifa.ac.il/~levi/abstract1.html

Individual evidence

1. ^ The Building of the Israeli State Sector, Case Study: The Palestine Potash Ltd. ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.