The Pittsburgh Tri-State Pinkas, 1947.
JEWISH NATIONAL FUND (English name for the Keren Kayemeth Le Israel), Palestine land-purchasing agency of the Zionist World Organization. Headquarters: Keren Kayemeth Building, Jerusalem, Palestine.
AIMS: (1) To acquire the soil of Palestine as national and inalienable property; (2) To carry on drainage work on the land it has acquired; (3) To carry on afforestation; (4) To install in the settlements modern water-supply systems; (5) To give the soil under a 49-year hereditary lease for cultivation to settlers as individuals or as collective groups.
PRINCIPLES: Underlying the work of the Jewish National Fund since its inception was the urge of the Zionist movement to reestablish the union between the People and the Land of Israel. Concepts of social justice were woven into the Jewish National Fund program. These concepts found their most tangible expression in a set of principles adopted for the development of a national land-acquisition program. The principle of the Mosaic Law (“And ye shall grant redemption to the land” – Leviticus, XXV: 24) governing the transfer of land to its original owners after each fifty-year cycle, lent a continuity and the halo of ancient tradition to the advanced doctrine. These principles were adopted not merely because it is obviously right that land bought with money raised through popular contributions should remain national property, but also because it represented the best way for preventing abuses which often arise out of private land ownership.
The national capital was employed in a manner that benefited not merely the individuals settling upon the soil, but the community. Hence the decision to apply the funds for the purchase of land that shall forever remain the inalienable property of the Jewish people. Out of these principles flow the conditions under which the Fund places its land holdings at the disposal of settlers, to wit: (1) The settler receives the land on hereditary lease only and has not, in any way, either direct or indirect, to refund the value of his holding. He is given the land in usufruct alone. (2) The settler is expected, after the expiration of the first five years from the date of his release, to pay the Fund an annual rental equivalent to 1 to 2 percent of the assessed value of the land he occupies. At the end of fifteen years, the land is reappraised and the rent adjusted to the then-current value. (3) The lessee is obliged to reside in the holding and to cultivate it regularly. (4) The lessee is obliged to execute, with Jewish labor only, all works in connection with the cultivation of the land.
ACHIEVEMENTS: Up to January 1, 1944, the Jewish National Fund acquired 670,400 dunams of land (a dunam equals one-quarter of an acre) in all parts of Palestine. Of these, 197,600 dunams were acquired during the war years (since September, 1939). Upon the Fund’s land there have been established by the Keren Hayesod, the Palestine Foundation Fund, and by individual settlers and groups, 190 agricultural settlements, comprising 68 percent (of a total of 276 Jewish agricultural settlements) of the number of Jewish villages in the country. Thirty-three settlements were founded on the land of the Jewish National Fund since the beginning of the war. The colonies established on the land of the Jewish National Fund are either (a) Kvutzoth or Kibbutzim, communal or collective villages; or (b) Moshevi Ovdim, smallholders’ settlements.
In the 42 years of its operations, the Fund has invested about LP 7,000,000 in land redemption. By draining swamps, the Fund reclaimed more than 300,000 dunams of land and transformed them into fertile areas. The Fund has reforested more than 14,000 dunams by planting thereon over 3,000,000 trees.
In the settlements established on the land of the Jewish National Fund there live and work 72,500 men, women and children. Fifty-one thousand, constituting 44 percent of the Jewish rural population and 66 percent of the actual agricultural working population of the country, live in the settlements on Jewish National Fund land. Twenty-one thousand five hundred live in urban and suburban residential quarters on the land of the Fund. Settlements on Keren Kayemeth land provide 63 percent of all the Jewish output of milk, 73 percent of poultry and eggs, 62 of cereals, 75 percent of vegetables, and 82 percent of potatoes. All the land acquired by the Jewish National Fund during the war has been put under cultivation and has thus served to increase the production of food in the country. Before the war, Jewish agriculture provided 34 percent of the Yishub’s requirements of milk; today it supplies 58 percent. Its egg production has risen from 37 percent to 64 percent, and vegetable production from 44 percent to 63 percent of consumption. Jewish production of potatoes, a crop which was introduced only on the eve of the war, now satisfies 55 percent of the Yishub’s needs.
The Fund has also installed modern water-supply systems in 57 agricultural settlements and provided the sites for the Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus, for hospitals, synagogues and schools. Fifty industrial enterprises have been founded on the land belonging to the Fund.
By reason of its land policies and achievements in the field of colonization, the Jewish National Fund is regarded as the backbone of the structure of the Jewish National Home which was reared in Palestine in the era following World War I, and on the basis of the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917 and the League of Nations Mandate of July 24, 1922.
FINANCIAL OPERATIONS: The Jewish National Fund, conceived and fashioned as one of the two (the other is the Keren Hayesod) financial instruments to translate into reality the Zionist program in Palestine, has enlisted the support of large numbers of Jews in all parts of the world. A variety of popular fundraising methods and special campaigns have been put into operation since the Fund’s inception forty years ago. Up to October 1, 1943, a total of LP 7,812,800 was contributed by the Jewish communities toward the Jewish National Fund. Before September, 1939, branches or committees, manned and directed by representatives of the public at large, were engaged in raising funds for the Jewish National Fund in fifty-two countries. Following the outbreak of World War II, the major part of the financial support became the responsibility of US Jewry, the Jewish communities in the British Empire and Palestine Jewry itself.
These funds which are raised under the slogan “Geulath Ha’aretz” (the redemption of the soil) have been and are being obtained largely through the medium of popular methods which are calculated to obtain the cooperation of all classes within Jewry. Chief among these are the widely known Jewish National Fund methods: (1) Stamps; (2) Blue-White Boxes; (3) The Golden Book; (4) Sefer Ha’Yeled; (5) Tree Planting; (6) Semi-annual street collections known as Flower Day and Flag Day; (7) Dunam Land Contributions; (8) Bequests and Living Legacies; (9) Nachloth – the acquisition of a specifically delineated tract of land for the establishment of colonies bearing the names of outstanding personalities or of geographical units.
HISTORY: The idea of a Jewish National Fund was first conceived by Dr. Herman Schapira, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. He proposed its establishment in a telegram dispatched to the first conference of Chovevei Zion which met in Kattowitz on November 6, 1884, but no action was taken. He proposed it again to the First Zionist Congress convoked by Dr. Theodor Herzl at Basle, Switzerland, in the summer of 1897. But it was not until December, 1901, when the Fifth Zionist Congress met at Basle, Switzerland, that the proposal was adopted on the recommendation of Johann Kremenezky of Vienna and Dr. Theodor Herzl, the President of the Congress. The Jewish National Fund was incorporated in England, as a Limited Liability Company under the Companies’ Act, complete and permanent control over it being vested in the World Zionist Congress. The Fund is being administered by a Board of Directors of nine members who are elected by the Actions Committee (General Council) of the Zionist Organization, which is in turn elected bi-annually by the Zionist World Congress. One-third of the Directors resign each year in rotation.
During Dr. Herzl’s presidency of the Zionist Organization, when the administration of the Zionist movement had its seat in Vienna, the head office of the Jewish National Fund was also located in that city, with Johann Kremenezky as President of its Board of Directors. In 1905, when David Wolffsohn succeeded Theodor Herzl as President of the Zionist Organization, Zionist headquarters, including the head office of the Jewish National Fund, were removed to Cologne, Germany, with Dr. Max Bodenheimer as President of the Board of Directors. Upon the outbreak of the World War in 1914, the Jewish National Fund headquarters were removed to The Hague, Holland. Nehemiah de Lieme, an outstanding Dutch Zionist, became the Fund’s President. At the close of the war, the head office was removed to London, England, which then became the headquarters of the World Zionist Organization. In 1921, at the Zionist World Conference held in London, England, a new Board of Directors was chosen with Menachem Ussishkin as President, a post he held until his death in October, 1941. In 1922, the head office of the Jewish National Fund was transferred to Jerusalem, and on May 6, 1930, it moved into its own home which is now a part of the group of Jewish Agency buildings in Jerusalem. Ussishkin’s assumption of the leadership of the Fund inaugurated a new era in the Fund’s fundraising and land-acquisition activity. Under his guidance, the Fund’s resources grew from $4,177,000 in 1921, to $29,825,000 in 1941, and from its meager land holdings of 19,000 dunams in 1921 to 550,000 dunams in 1941. Since Menachem Ussishkin’s death, the affairs of the Keren Kayemeth Le Israel have been administered by a Presidium of three, namely, Dr. A. Granovsky, Rabbi Meyer Berlin and Berl Katznelson. The world income for the last fiscal year which ended on September 30, 1943, amounted to LP 1,145,500.
A recent tabulation of disbursements shows that the Fund’s receipts were expended in the following ratios: 72 percent on land for rural settlement; 7 percent for afforestation; 7 percent on drainage of swamps; and 6 percent on water supply.
[Note: though published in 1947, this text was clearly finished in early 1944.]
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