Congressman Henry Ellenbogen, of Pittsburgh, was the chief speaker at the services held in the Adas Israel Synagogue in Washington, D. C., in celebration of the seventieth birthday anniversary of U. M. Ussishkin, international Zionist leader and one of the founders of the Jewish National Fund.
Congressman Ellenbogen, speaking on “The National Salvation of the Jewish People by Soil Redemption,” called the Jewish the National Fund “the strongest single link between the Jews of Palestine and the Jews of the Diaspora.”
“A nation is a nation in name only if it does not posess the soil,” Congressman Ellenbogen said in his address, “and the Jewish Homeland is a reality. Our people, in the two thousand years in which they have been turning their faces to the East, have always seen in their mind’s eye the soil of Palestine and the fruits of that soil.
“Settlers on Jewish National Fund land are the real Chosen People. They have wedded with the soil, and it has become theirs. In the rebuilding of Palestine, these pioneers and Chalutzim are laying down the firm foundation for the emergence of Palestine as a national home for the Jewish People.”
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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.