Mikve Israel was an agricultural school in Palestine founded in 1870 by the Alliance Israélite Universelle. It was the brainchild of Charles Netter (1826–1882), an Alsatian-Jewish merchant, who believed that an agricultural school would promote the economic and moral regeneration of Jewish youth in Palestine, and eventually throughout the Middle East, in anticipation of eventual large-scale Jewish migration to Palestine. The school, built on 243 hectares (600 acres) of land southeast of Jaffa (Yafo), was financed largely by Netter until 1873, when Baron Maurice de Hirsch (1…