THE BIRTH OF THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND

While Zionist lore associates JNF and forestry with Theodor Herzl's vi-sion, the minutes of the First Congress of the World Zionist Organization suggest otherwise. In fact, the charismatic chairman tried to squelch the proposal for a Jewish National Fund. Only after rival factions forced the issue did Herzl relent and bring the motion before the Congress, just prior to adjournment. Zvi Herman Schapira, a bespectacled, bearded mathemat-ics professor and opponent of Herzl's political Zionism, was the man who actually designed and presented the plan to create a Fund for “acquisition and cultivation of land in Palestine.”^[4]

Schapira was a bona fide genius. Born in Lithuania in 1840, he could read Hebrew by the age of two and a half and was already studying the in-scrutable Talmud at the age of four. By the time he was eight, his teachers accepted him as an equal, and he had mastered Maimonides' Guide for the Perplexed. While still in his early twenties, Rabbi Schapira stumbled on a book about mathematics that captured his potent intellectual curiosity. After serving for three years as a rabbi and yeshiva (religious school) director in the Lithuanian town of Birtushla to fulfill a promise to his father,^[5] he set off for a Western education in Germany at the age of twenty-eight.^[6]

It was a bold move. With no knowledge of even elementary German, Schapira endured poverty so great that he once stole a loaf of bread to avoid starvation. Once his formal studies began, though, it took him only two years to complete a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Heidelberg. Although he quickly attained the title of professor, it was not a paying position. The heavily accented lecturer was not a popular teacher and had to supplement his family's income by watchmaking.^[7]

By the time of the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Schapira had been involved in Chovevei Tzion (the Lovers of Zion network of Zionist groups) for twenty years. When he submitted his idea for a national fund to buy land in Palestine to the organization's 1884 conference in Katowice, the proposal went nowhere. But Schapira was persistent and raised the issue again thirteen years later. The presentation was brief, in deference to the unenthusiastic Herzl's request that Schapira keep his comments short.^[8]

The specifics called for the raising of ten million pounds sterling to be invested in a fund, with the interest going to Zionist settlement. Perhaps the most distinctive component of the proposal was the stipulation that “acquired territory shall be inalienable and cannot be sold even to individ-ual Jews; it can only be leased for a period of forty-nine years maximum, according to regulations yet to be devised.”^[9] This policy of long-term leas-ing remains the cornerstone of Israeli land policy to this day.

Given the diffidence of the Congress, a compromise motion was ac-cepted that set up a committee to consider the fund as well as a proposed Jewish bank. Eight months later, Schapira died of pneumonia during a visit to Cologne. It would take four more Zionist Congresses for Herzl to change his mind and throw his weight behind a scaled-down version of the proposal.

On December 29, 1901, at the end of a rousing speech, Herzl called for a revote: “Do you want us to start a Jewish National Fund immediately—yes or no?” he thundered, and the frenzied delegates responded with calls of support. “You can, if you wish to, delay its establishment for another two years or even until the coming of the Messiah.” And the obliging crowd answered: “No. No.”^[10]