Several hundred delegates representing many Jewish fraternal and communal organizations throughout the country, participated in the conference of the Jewish National Fund which was held at the Hias Building yesterday afternoon. The call for this conference was issued by the Jewish National Fund to plan the celebration of its 25 years of functioning as the official Jewish land purchasing agency in Palestine.
The Jewish National Fund has acquired over 62,000 acres of Palestine land and other assets with an estimated value of eight to ten million dollars. The land the Fund purchases it keeps in trust as the permanent property of the Jewish people. It has also furnished land sites for Jewish institutions in Palestine, such as the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Haifa Technical Institute. Besides purchasing the land it prepares it for colonization by Jewish settlers, improving it by draining swamps, clearing away stones and installing modern water supply systems. It also engages in afforestation to preserve the moisture and to prevent the inroad of sand dunes. Hundreds of thousands of trees have been planted by the Fund in and around Jewish settlements.
The twenty-fifth year of the Fund’s activity has been named the “Silver Jubilee Year.” The “Jubilee Year” will be inaugurated by the issuing of an American edition of the “Golden Book” in which the names of contributing Jewish institutions, organizations and individuals will be inscribed, it was announced. The original of the Golden Book is preserved in the archives of the Hebrew University Library on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem.
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.
