ver the years thousands of JNF stamps have
been issued, bearing the portraits of famous
personalities or the pictures of projects undertaken in
Palestine and they were even used as the official
postage of the nascent State of Israel in 1948. A JNF
stamp had served as legal tender earlier still. ln
1909, the Petah Tikvah post office won the permission
of the Austrian government to issue a stamp for the Austrian
postal service. It was issued with the consent of
the JNF which benefited from half its revenue, the other half
going to Petah Tikvah's communal coffers. Its circulation
however lasted only a year - until the Turkish authorities
got wind of it, and stopped it.
The blue boxes forged a link of love
between Diaspora Jewry and the land of
Israel, and between those living there and
the idea of redeeming the land.
Kremenezky also adopted the suggestion of a small-town
Galician bank-clerk, Haim Kleinman, who had written
to the Zionist movement's newspaper "Die Welt' about
placing a collection box in every Jewish home so that
contributions could be made to the Jewish National Fund
at every opportunity.
This simple idea had it had its roots in hundreds of
years of Jewish tradition which had seen a Rabbi
Meir Ba'al Haness collection box in every home. But,
unlike the Rabbi Meir Ba'al Haness boxes, JNF's
"blue boxes" - so called because of their color -
were not meant to support the Jews living in Eretz
Yisrael, but to redeem the land itself.
Herzl took one of the first for his study, where
it can still be seen today in his room on
Jerusalem's Mount Herzl.
The money generated in this way for JNF was
always only a small part of its income, but
the real significance of the blue boxes was
in the link of love they forged between Diaspora
Jewry and the land of Israel, as well as to
those living there - especially children - and
the idea of redeeming the land. In the period
between the two world wars, about one million
blue boxes were to be found in Jewish homes
throughout the world.
|
It was Kremenezky, too, who decided that all
contributions to JNF large and small alike, be publicized
in "Die Welt'. This was largely the work of Alexander von
Eis, whom Herzl had appointed administrative head of the
JNF office in Vienna. Von Eis was a Jewish aristocrat and
major-general (the highest rank ever attained by a Jew in
the Austrian army). He had served in the army for many
years, but had resigned his commission when it was
indicated to him that he should convert to Christianity if
he wished to rise higher still.
The idea of JNF caught the imagination of tens of
thousands of people throughout the Disapora, from
the smallest East European shtetl to the largest
American metropolis.
Community functionaries, leaders and ordinary people
organized campaigns and balls, assemblies and meetings
on behalf of JNF. Menahem Ussishkin, leader of Hovevei
Zion in Ekaterinoslav, who had already made a name for
himself among the Zionists of Russia, was among the first
to enlist in JNF's ranks and achieved immediate results.
|