The fiscal period, which concluded on October 1, was a record year in the fundraising history of the Jewish National Fund of America. Within that period, American contributions for Palestine land redemption, raised through the traditional methods of the Keren Kayemeth, as well as through its participation in the current United Palestine Appeal, amounted to more than $700,000, the highest sum ever contributed within a single year. As the JNF 35th anniversary draws to a close, the total of America’s participation in the fundamental work of providing a national land foundation for the Jewish renaissance in Palestine stands at $5,700,000.
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The American branch of the Jewish National Fund is the oldest national agency of American Jewry for other than local purposes. In point of nationwide operation and contact with the basic phase of the Jewish problem, it antedates any of the other instrumentalities through which American Jewry sought in the pre-war as well as the post-war periods to discharge its responsibilities of participation and leadership. Its history is indeed the record of a popular and spontaneous response to the call of a pure idealism which is motivated by a great national vision, the compelling reality and strength of which has not always been grasped by those who had the means to make it come true but who were lacking in appreciation of history in the making.
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The graph showing the annual totals of American Jewish contributions to the Jewish National Fund over a period of 26 years, published here, tells the story of the present-day total. But beneath it spread the record of the triumphs and failures of Zionism as a movement, and of the strange paradoxes of American Jewish life. To evaluate properly this record, it is necessary to divide the 35 years into the three different periods which they embrace: (1) the premier period, when Zionism and Jewish life in America were still in their infancy, (2) the war and post-war period, when American Jewry and Zionism grew to their full stature, and (3) the era of the Jewish National Home, when the realities of Jewish life in the Diaspora and of Palestine came into bold relief.
When the first Zionist Congress in December, 1901, announced to the Jewish world its decision to establish a Jewish National Fund, the Jewish population in the United States stood at a figure of approximately 1,250,000 souls. The gates of immigration to the United States were wide open. Every month witnessed a new influx of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to these shores. The idea of the Keren Kayemeth and the devotion to its purpose came on the crest of this wave. When the Zionist Congress decided on an issue of Blue-White Stamps as a fundraising method for the Keren Kayemeth, and set the price for the various countries which were represented in the Congress, the price for the sale of these stamps in the United States was fixed at one cent per stamp. These stamps found circulation among the new arrivals to these shores. Few and far between were the native American or Americanized sympathizers. An occasional contribution to the Keren Kayemeth through the use of a Blue-White Stamp on one’s private letter or a synagogue ticket, a donation when one called to the Torah in the synagogue, was a good Zionist “deed.” An inscription, on the basis of a $50 contribution, in the Golden Book of the Keren Kayemeth was a generous bit of support for a sacred but distant ideal. Zionism in its pre-war period was a relatively calm and unruffled stream. The Federation of American Zionists in the East and the Order [of the] Knights of Zion in the mid-West were the channels through which it flowed.
It was, in the main, a spontaneous response of the poor and humble, who, having just emerged from the depths of the ghetto, carried in their hearts the vision of a new life that would come through the processes of national redemption. Herzl’s challenge rang in their ears: “We shall prove to the world that a poor people can provide greater sums for the restoration of its Homeland than the wealthiest millionaires!” Whatever the Zionist in this prehistoric era contributed himself or raised from among his intimate friends, he remitted to his Zionist society or to one of the two national federations – the Federation of American Zionists and the Order [of the] Knights of Zion.
May, 1910, was a turning point in the progress of this effort. Sensing that the growing American Jewish community was destined to play a leading part, Keren Kayemeth headquarters, then in Cologne, Germany, under the vigorous direction of Dr. Max F. Bodenheimer, undertook special efforts to organize the American branch of the Fund on a centralized basis. It was in this year that the Jewish National Fund bureau for America was established. From this point on, the history of its effort is recorded. A maintenance budget was provided by the Cologne headquarters for the American bureau. Gifted organizers and propagandists were dispatched to the American scene. The fruitful field, plowed by an unnamed legion of enthusiasts and zealots for the Keren Kayemeth idea, started to yield fruit. With the fiscal year May, 1910, to May, 1911, when the total of contributions reached $20,149.25, the upward trend began.
David H. Lieberman, a businessman and an ardent Zionist, known mainly to the small band of Zionists on Manhattan’s East Side, was chosen to the presidency of the American branch, an office which he occupied during the period 1910-1912. He was succeeded by Senior Abel, one of the early Zionists, [a] Maskil and [a] writer, who occupied the office of president from 1912-1924. What they lacked in quantity they made up in quality. To whatever extent they were deprived of worldly riches, they were compensated in ardor and idealistic devotion. Immigration to Palestine was only trickling in. Land purchase on a large scale was hardly possible and not even contemplated. But any day the great event may happen. A charter will be obtained from the Sultan of Turkey or some other miracle may come about as a result of the World War conflagration. In the meantime the national chest of redemption must be filled up. A cent must be added to a nickel and a nickel to a dime and a dime to a quarter and quarters to dollars, for soon the National Fund may have an opportunity to act, to redeem the soil of Eretz Israel!
It is no exaggeration to say that long before the modern methods of mass action were being applied, the band of Zionist devotees who directed and were engaged in the operations of the JNF in the United States devised and applied methods which had the same purpose in mind and in the use of which they obtained a comparatively high measure of success. The “man in the street,” that unfathomed figure, whose sentiment and opinion and readiness for action are of decisive importance in all political movements, had his say in shaping the early course of the JNF. Hundreds and thousands of men and women volunteered their services several times a year for consecutive mass enterprises in behalf of the National Fund. They consecrated their leisure time to distribute boxes, to visit synagogues, to solicit donations, to sell a flower or a miniature Zion flag in a series of activities that punctuated the calendar all year round. Their ceaseless efforts were instrumental in evoking a response of scores of thousands of small-coin donors. No other American Jewish institution can boast of equally as large a number of friends and supports as can the National Fund. This assertion will be substantiated when it is realized that the bulk of the annual totals which have been contributed to the Jewish National Fund were made up of small contributions made on occasions such as Flag Day, Flower Day, box clearance, synagogue collections and appeals by mail.
If, however, the effort of this corps of JNF volunteers and Zionist propagandists were fruitful in propagating Zionism by bringing it into the homes of large numbers of American Jews, the monetary results could not, in the nature of things, measure up to the need. Other and more productive methods had to be applied to attain the larger end. In this direction the successors to Lieberman and Abel in the persons of Judge Bernard A. Rosenblatt (who occupied the office of president during 1934-36), Dr. Joseph Krimsky (who occupied the same office in 1937) and the late Joseph Barondess (who in 1938, shortly before his death, occupied the presidency of the JNF), impelled by a realization of the need for mustering from American Jewry a much greater measure of support for this vital cause, sought new ways and new methods.
The figures shown in the graph for the corresponding years give an indication of the strenuous efforts made along those lines. But to the reviewer of the record there looms here a strange paradox. During the administration of Bernard A. Rosenblatt, when the American branch was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York, the nonpartisan status of the Keren Kayemeth was acknowledged. There was then evolved an elaborate system of representation under which Jewish National Fund work in the United States was to be stimulated, supervised and directed by a union of all [the] Zionist forces. The articles of incorporation stipulated that the governing bodies of the JNF are to contain representatives of all Zionist parties and groups.
And yet the very triumph of the Zionist cause and the growing response of American Jewry to its appeal in the 1920s served to dampen zeal and obscure vision insofar as the lead problem of Palestine was concerned. The major part of Zionist energies were concentrated upon the Keren Kayemeth, which from its birth in 1920 to date raised in the United States a sum exceeding $14,000,000, out of a world total of $31,000,000. In devoting their greatest attention to the Keren Kayemeth, the Zionist leadership acted under the pressure of the tasks which fell upon the Zionist Executive in connection with the biennial budgets for immigration, education, etc., voted then by the successive Congresses. A feeling seemed to have prevailed that the task of the Keren Kayemeth was a long-range program for which there will be ample time when the other needs will be less pressing.
But the other needs of Palestine never were less pressing and the call upon American support was never less urgent. More aggressive insistence on the prior urgency of the JNF appeal was called into play through the administration which was presided over by Emanuel Neuman (1928-1931), when the then-unprecedented figure of $418,226.35 was recorded for the fiscal year 1929-1930. Similar were the plans of the administration over which Nelson Ruttenberg presided (1931-1933). But then the great economic depression descended upon the American scene. The effect of the depression was reflected in the alarming decline recorded for the fiscal year 1932-1933, when the JNF income from the United States amounted to $144,278. The urgent appeal of Menachem Ussishkin during his visit to the United States in 1931 for a $5,000,000 commitment by American Jewry for the acquisition of a specific and strategically important land tract to be accomplished over a five-year period found an echo but led to no tangible results in an America economically depressed. The five-year plan which had been inaugurated after the 1930 crash fell by the wayside.
A new surging forward made itself felt with the vigorous leadership of the cause by Dr. Israel Goldstein, who assumed the office of president of the American branch of the JNF in the winter of 1933. With the improvement of economic conditions in the United States and due to the application of an energetic system of stabilization, planning and extension, both in the traditional fundraising as well as in the special campaign, a gradual but constant growth appears on the peaks of the graph leading up to the record figure for the fiscal year which has just ended.
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