The kibbutz was established in 1935, with its name taken from Isaiah 41:18: "God: "I will make rivers flow on barren heights."" During the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, it took in the refugees from kibbutz Beit HaArava.
In 2012 IBM acquired New York- and Shefayim-based mobile application developer Worklight Ltd., founded in 2006 by Shahar Kaminitz, formerly of Amdocs
