If a Jew in the time of Titus had the foresight to put aside five cents in the name of the Jewish people, there would be no necessity for Jewish National Fund collections, Zionist drives and other Jewish fund gathering activities. Had that been done the Jews today would be the richest people in the world, a mathematician, Prof. Hermann Schapira, has calculated.
Prof. Schapira’s calculation served as the basis, thirty-two years ago, for his founding of the Jewish National Fund for the redemption of land in Palestine.
And as the Jewish National Fund sponsors the annual Zion Flag Day collections that will begin tomorrow after sundown and continue until Sunday at sundown, the celebration is also directly responsible for the 15,000 volunteers who will be seeking your nickels, dimes and larger coins for the purpose of redeeming Palestine land for Jewish settlement.
POOR RICH IN MASS
Prof. Schapira believed that “the poor in mass are rich.” And that is the fundamental of the Jewish National Fund. Organized thirty-two years ago when such wealthy Jews as the late Baron de Rothschild and the late Baron de Hirsch declined to aid the Zionist cause in its development of Palestine, the Jewish National Fund was formed as a protest of the masses. Jewry, through the Fund, even before Communism dramatized the power of the masses, believed in this power.
The entire philosophy of the Jewish National Fund is incorporated in the belief that since the land is to be as the inalienable right of the Jewish people, as a nationality, not as individuals, it is proper and fitting that Jews as a mass, not as a rich few, should support the development of Palestine.
Zion Flag Day, together with Palestine Flower Day, held annually in the Spring, is a manifestation of this mass contribution. It is America’s contribution to the Jewish National Fund technique of fund raising. Today Flag Day is celebrated throughout the world. In this country, collections will be made in some 200 cities and towns.
FUND STATISTICS
The Jewish National Fund, since its inception, has collected seventeen millions of dollars throughout the world for Palestine. It owns 360,000 dunams (one quarter of an acre each) of land of the 1,300,000 dunams in Palestine owned by Jews. This land includes the three famous valleys of Palestine: Jezrael (the wheat belt,) Sharon, (the orange belt), and Zebulon (the Haifa Bay section which is fast becoming the industrial center of Palestine).
The National Fund maintains 100 agricultural settlements on its land and gives a population of 20000 soil to till. And all this comes from the nickels and dimes which bulk large in the money collected by the Jewish National Fund.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
