Yael: From Unpacked, this is Jewish History Nerds, the podcast where we nerd out on awesome stories in Jewish history. I’m Yael Steiner.
Schwab: And I’m Jonathan Schwab. And for the last time this season, we’re going to be talking about an object or a symbol, your last story to tell me. Yael, what a fun adventure this has been.
Yael: I have to say, I wasn’t sure how the season was going to go with each individual episode focusing on an object, but I’m, I’m very happy with what we’ve done and I learned a lot and hopefully you did too and hopefully our listeners did too.
Schwab: And there is a survey coming out. So definitely keep an eye out or keep an ear out
for a link to a survey to tell us more about yourselves, what you like about the show, what you’re looking for.
Yael: And don’t be afraid to tell us what didn’t work for you.And yes, season five is forthcoming, hopefully sooner rather than later. So please keep an eye out for that as well.
Schwab: But before we get to season five, tell me what we’re talking about to cap off this season long discussion on objects and symbols.
Yael: We are going to be talking about something that’s known as the blue box.And I have a lot of nostalgia associated with this item.
And what I did not realize at all is that it is tied to some highly controversial policies and it is not just the heartwarming relic of my childhood that I thought it was. It is definitely a truly important object in the history of modern Jewish life.
Schwab: man.
Schwab: Blue box. What are we talking about?
Yael: Okay, so I actually have props and for those of you who are able to catch this on video, The blue box is a colloquial way of referring to the official collection box. Pushka is the word that we use in Yiddish, or tzedakah box. Tzedakah is the Hebrew word for charity.
Yael: of the Jewish National Fund, which is more commonly known as JNF, or the Keren Kayemet LeYisrael KKL. Does that mean anything to you?
Schwab: Yes, the JNF, KKL, I want to say broadly, right, there are a lot of projects in Israel, but my general assumption is trees in Israel. And I don’t know if this is this is a deep cut reference, but there’s an old Israeli movie called Salah Shabbati
Yael: Yes, watched it in 10th grade, obviously.
Schwab: So there’s a scene in that movie where he he’s he’s a new immigrant to Israel from I believe a Middle Eastern or North African country And sort of like it’s a fish out of water story as he adjusts to Israel, but there’s a scene Where he’s he’s working on some some place with with trees and these I think American donors like come in on a bus and there’s a plaque showing like, these are the trees you donated. And then they leave on a bus and he digs up the plaque and puts in a new plaque for like the next group of things. And that scene stays with me for like, for so long, I’ve thought about it because it’s so funny.I’m just like, is that what’s going on when American Jews give money to Israel.
Yael: As with most things, there’s a small kernel of truth. Before I get into my whole spiel, do you want to explain why you associate the JNF with trees?
Schwab: I feel like there’s a tree in their logo. Is that correct?
Yael: They have several emblems and several logos.
But what they are known for among diaspora Jews is raising money for the planting of trees in Israel. The afforestation of Israel. Exactly. They have planted more than 240 million trees.
Schwab: As opposed to deforestation. Aforestation. Cool. Put it on the word list.
Oh, wow.
When you said 240, I thought you were going to say 240,000. And I was like, oh, that seems a little low. I would thought it’s higher. But 240 million is an extremely high number of trees. Is that I want to say like vaguely aware of some sort of thing there
Yael: In my Jewish day school growing up every year around Tu bishvat , which is the holiday for the trees. It’s
Yael: really the new year for the trees on the Jewish calendar. in order to celebrate trees in general, but particularly trees in the land of Israel, we would raise money for the JNF. We would be encouraged to each bring in a dollar multiple times, in one dollar increments because one dollar would buy you a tree.
And when it buys you a tree, it means that someone somewhere in Israel is planting a tree in your name that you have sponsored and you are helping with the afforestation of the land of Israel by bringing in this dollar. And at least in my elementary school and from my research on this topic, I found out that this is common in Hebrew schools and community centers all over the world.
Yael: We had a sort of construction paper tree trunk on the wall in the lobby of the school. And if you brought in a dollar, you got a little green construction paper leaf that you could write your name on and you’d be able to stick your leaf on the tree that the school was symbolically building over the season of Tu Bishvat.
It’s very possible that I like always forgot to bring in the dollar. I’ll say that I remember a lot of like these JNF pushat the counter in every like kosher pizza store I went to growing up, I was like, you know, whatever your leftover change for the dollar, probably.
Schwab: or 75 cents at a slice of pizza cost back in the day, you could put your quarter. See, for our younger listeners, there was once something called cash and you would pay for an item, but sometimes you paid more than you needed and they would give you back some of the remaining, it’s a very strange concept. You can listen to our episode on Judea Capta coins to learn more about.
Yael: Yeah.back in the olden times.
What I will say is that I learned this week from visiting the JNF website that there is now a virtual blue box and you can donate money to the JNF online, you no longer need this blue box that I’m showing Schwab.
Schwab: Really? Wow.
You have
one, yeah.
Yael: I have two actually. I have one that I ordered by mail recently from the Jewish National Fund and that they sent me for free. And I have one that I found in my parents’ house, I think it belonged to my great-grandmother, Pepe Braun, wonderful, wonderful woman.
Schwab: Nice.
Yael: Very, very Zionistic and very involved in a lot of Zionist causes. And I do think that this somewhat rusty Jewish National Fund box, while you’re doing props, do you have a coin? Because they probably make the most incredibly satisfying sound when you put something in them.
Yael: I have a lot of coins.
As we talked about on the Judea Capta episode, I literally have a giant bag of coins next to me.
Yael: I have a dime and four pennies. I don’t know if it’s enough to buy a tree, but we’re gonna go for it.
Ta-da!
Schwab: Nice.
The JNF is a great organization and has funded a lot of really important projects in the land of Israel. Butthere is controversy in the year 2025 about what it does and how it does it.
Schwab: Okay,
I’m really curious.
Yael: So the reason why we’re focusing actually on the box itself, which has come to colloquially be known as the blue box, is because in 20th century, certainly in the United States, but really everywhere in the diaspora where there was an active Jewish community, these JNF tin boxes were ubiquitous in the homes of Zionist Jews.
Yael: it was almost every Jewish home had one of these boxes. They were mostly tin for the vast majority of the century, though there were some that were cardboard. You would receive them in the mail, flattened out, and then you would sort of fold them up and turn them into a box. Some of them were cylindrical, most of them were rectangular, but they were
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: Almost exclusively blue, blue and white, and they took different shapes and had different graphics on them over the course of time.
Schwab: I’m pretty sure I know exactly where, like the tzedakah boxes sit and where this one, which I think like in my head as you’re describing it,. Yeah.
So I actually, even before we thought about doing an episode on this, the JNF pushka was sort of re-brought into my mind by my friend Jessica, who had her grandmother’s blue box in her apartment And I thought, that’s, that’s so nice and heartwarming. And I should really find one that belonged to someone in my family and bring it to my apartment. So I did that. And that is why I have the one that I showed you that is light blue and rusty. And I keep it next to my Shabbos candles. And I find it to be something that ties me to prior generations.
Schwab: But it’s purely decorative at this point. Like this object, which is designed for a very clear, specific purpose now has, I don’t know, like we’ve discussed many times, has evolved into a symbol and is no longer about the purpose that it was used for.
Yael: So I’m gonna take a step back and give you a little bit of a sense of how this started, how the JNF started, and then we’ll move forward. Also how it ties to the trees, which is that the money that was raised from these boxes was used for the Aforestation of the Land of Israel. So
The Jewish National Fund,
Schwab: Yeah, yeah, so when did, yeah, when did this?
Yael: was founded in 1901 at the fifth Zionist Congress. It was given the Hebrew name Keren Kayemet LeYisrael, which is a biblical reference to the everlasting nature of the land of Israel. So it’s not a direct translation., it means the eternal foundation for Israel, which I find interesting when you think about how the official name it’s given, not in Hebrew, is Jewish National Fund, which specifically mentions Judaism and not Israel. So already in its founding, there’s this inextricable link between the Jewish nation and the land of Israel. And this title, if it’s 1901, like Israel as a state doesn’t exist. Like Israel is like, you know, a stand-in for the Jewish people, but not yet clear that there would be like a Jewish national home.
Yael: Exactly. Right,Israel as a state was not something that was close to being a reality at that point in time. So the person who founded the Jewish National Fund, Herman Shapira, he claims to have had a tin box in his home from sometime in the 1890s.
that he used to collect loose change to donate to Zionist causes. So the JNF sort of says that’s one of the origin myths of the blue box. But in 1902, a bank manager from Glycja in Poland wrote a letter to the editor of the Zionist newspaper, Die Welt, which was the Zionist newspaper founded by Herzl. And he wrote a letter to the editor suggesting that every Jewish home should have a charity box in it hanging on the wall.
Yael: that is used to collect funds for the founding of a Jewish state. And again with my prop.
Schwab: My only criticism of that is hanging on the wall. A lot of people put it next to Shabbat candles, right?. Right, it has a hole. That’s so, yeah. That’s so interesting because my like association with that Tzedakah box is like, you wouldn’t put it on a wall.
Yael: If you look at my prop, it has a hole in it that you can use to hang on a nail in the wall.
Schwab: portable, especially because in a synagogue environment, you want to carry it around, right? Right, that is true.
Yael: but you also don’t want people to be able to walk off with it.
so yeah, I could see both sides of the coin. No pun intended. So they were mailing these tin boxes out to like every Jew they could find.
Yael: Yes, every Jewish home. So after that letter to the editor, the JNF decided, this is a good idea. We should brand this, so to speak, and we should encourage this. And so it is encouraged in the first few decades of the century. And then starting really in the twenties, these were sort of universalized where
Hmm.
Yael: A large number were produced in Germany and they were sent all over the world, as opposed to prior to the 1920s where each community would design its own.
Yael: It was designed to instill into the community this notion that we can build a Jewish state dime by dime. That was the ethos, dime by dime
is very,
I think, like appealing. And there is something to that of just like, this is a monumental national project. But in your home, little by little, it’s something that even kids can contribute to. like everyone is part of it, you know, no matter where you are in the world
you are hitting on something really important, which is that it is designed to appeal to everyone regardless of their economic status, regardless of their age. These were pushed very heavily towards children.
Schwab: Right. it’s like, like everyone can participate. The barrier to entry is incredibly low. It doesn’t involve any prior knowledge. It doesn’t involve education. There’s very, very few ways to get this ritual wrong. You know?Yael (25:28)
correct.
Well, a British child who grew up mid-century recalls that it was instilled into him in Hebrew school that for just six pence, he could be the sponsor of a tree being planted in Israel. And
not only were you contributing to the growth of the nation, you were contributing on a physical level. You were planting actual roots in the ground of the Holy Land. And what’s so important about that is that the Jewish National Fund really exists at the nexus of real estate.
Yael: And spirit.
Schwab: Hmm. Ooh. Is that their tagline?
Yael: That is very much not their tagline, but everything that they have tried to accomplish up until this point is inextricably tied to physical land. They have planted hundreds of millions of trees. They have sponsored over a thousand parks. They participate in the upkeep of certain land in Israel from an environmental perspective.
This particular organization within the larger Zionist organization is the real estate arm of the future Jewish state. And one thing I think it’s important to understand,
Schwab: And it sounds like they should be very uncontroversial, right?
Yael: I don’t know, have you heard about this concept of land being controversial in Israel?
Schwab: Yeah. But like the environmentalism, I don’t know, it sounds like it should have like an easily broad appeal as opposed to there’s no like militant aspect to it. It’s not tied to a like religious character of the land of Israel.
Yael: That is…
The non-militaristic aspect is what I was about to get to, which is that the first mandate of the Jewish National Fund, which started under the Ottomans, not under the British mandate, was to purchase land in Palestine. At that time, Ottoman…
Schwab: Right, this is 1901.
Yael: Palestine. And what they were trying to do by purchasing land was actually nation-build, acre or dunam at a time.
Yael: The money that was raised for JNF, whether it was by representatives of the Zionist organization going out into the world and asking people for money, or it was…
Yael: Poor families or rich families, adults or children putting money into these pushkas and then actually going through the steps of returning that money to the Jewish National Fund. That money was being used to buy real estate in the Holy Land. And the goal of the Jewish National Fund was to have this real estate be quote unquote, nationally owned.
Yael: or community owned. What the Zionist organization was doing, was it was kind of creating a government in exile, a national infrastructure in exile that they could then import to the land once they owned it. In addition to the Jewish National Fund, there was the founding of the Jewish Agency. which and the Karen Hyasod, which was the foundational, the foundational foundation, that was in charge of immigration. And with each additional year that the Zionist Congress took place, more and more organizations were being founded to create an infrastructure. And what was happening was nation building and the JNF is nation building through land acquisition and land cultivation.
Schwab: Literally, yeah.
Yael: And like you said before, it’s not mil-
Schwab: the land
that they’re buying is owned. I’m curious from whom they’re purchasing it, right? Like individual owners they’re purchasing the land from, but then it’s owned by this nonprofit foundation and they’re just…
Yael; Yes.
Right that’s their goal because the more of it, the more of it that’s owned by this foundation, the more of the power the foundation has, but their goal is for there to be Jewish land ownership in Palestine. So to the extent that rich Jews from around the world were going on their own to buy land in Palestine, they liked that because it meant that more of the Holy land was Jewish owned.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: But ultimately their goal was to convince these Jewish landowners to essentially donate their land to the Jewish National Fund by saying, hey, we are buying land here to build a state. The more land we acquire and legally acquire, they are buying this land sometimes at well above market prices, which on the one hand sounds very fair or more than fair. And on the other hand, there are people who now a century later will say, well,
It was essentially duress that you were offering them so much money. How could they not take it?They were buying it from a whole host of different sources. A lot of the people they were buying the land from were quote unquote, absentee landowners, people who lived in Syria and other parts of the Middle East who on paper were the owners of this land, but who were not dwelling in it.
Yael: And were not using it for any function. So that was the initial mandate of the group. And a big way that they raised money was through these blue boxes. And what these blue boxes did was they gave Jews in the diaspora a sense of ownership over the land. Like how better to cultivate a feeling of investment in something than with actual real estate investment.
Schwab: Yeah. And that actually was the case that like the a lot of the money was coming from these like small familial Tzadakah boxes. Wow.
Yael: Yes, millions of dollars, millions, millions.
Schwab: multi-million dollar gift and it so dwarfs any individual gift that like those individual gifts are more symbolic than actually very important.
Yael: That certainly ends up being true once the organization has been in being for multiple decades, but there really was a tremendous amount of money donated from these boxes. And that changed over time, both in a positive direction and negative direction.
Yael: You sort of have this interesting time in the late thirties with the German Jewish community, there certainly was an uptick in donations from German Jews in the 30s because there was this sense of foreboding of, I’m going to need to get out of here and I’m going to need somewhere to go. And then of course you have the war years when the Eastern European Jewish community was giving a lot less because they were on the run or…
enslaved or in camps and certainly not in a position to make these donations. And then the communities outside of Europe were also more motivated to more speedily develop the land of Israel. So it’s interesting to see geopolitically how the fundraising totals change over time
Schwab: You can see all of like JNF publish publishes all of this or wow cool there has been a lot of academic work done on the history of the Jewish national funds And that’s actually where I was about to turn, which is to what is considered very heavily the propaganda element.
Yael: And how it was meant to draw in the Jews very simply, right, by donating that six pence, but also instilling certain ideas in them through that charitable giving. And most of that
Yael: quote unquote, propaganda is achieved and disseminated through maps. I don’t know if you’ve thought about maps as propaganda tools in the pastAre you a West Wing watcher?
Schwab: So huge West Wing watcher t I just recently watched the episode that I assume you’re talking about.
So for those of you who aren’t reading our minds, basically what happens is there is an episode of the West Wing where members of the administration are encouraged to meet with smaller groups who otherwise might have trouble getting the ear of the White House. And one of the groups that two of the officials meet with is called Cartographers for Social Equality. And they are advocating for that the White House lobby for a change to the maps that are used presumably in public schools or just in general from this map called the Mercator map to the Phillips projection map, some other projection map that apparently is more accurate and reflects how big Africa actually is as opposed to the Mercator map, which privileges the Northern hemisphere over the Southern hemisphere. And basically,
Schwab: I think that’s right.
Yael: They’re trying to say like we should flip the map upside down. It wouldn’t make a difference.
Schwab: Right, Like that’s not, there is no up or down in space. Yeah, there is in my,
Yael: The way a globe works.
Yeah, it’s crazy.
So I’m glad you knew exactly what I was talking about with my West Wing reference, but there is actually another West Wing reference that I’m gonna bring in right now, which i Charlie, the president’s aide, goes to a flea market and he buys the president a 17th century map of the Holy Land. And a controversy,
Schwab: Yeah. Yes.
And it’s not labeled Israel, so the president can’t display it or something?
Yael: ensues in the West Wing as to whether or not the president could put it up in the office, which is what he wanted to do, because it doesn’t recognize Israel. Well, of course it doesn’t recognize Israel. Israel did not exist in the 17th century. And the president goes on to say about how could that possibly be offensive? You know, my chief of staff, Leo, has a map of the 13 colonies before the United States existed, and I’m not offended. I’m the president of the United States, and I’m not offended.
Yael: But obviously it’s just, it’s going to show you the sometimes ridiculous nature of our present political arguments.
Schwab: Yeah.
Which I think, I mean, it’s still the question of map, or if propaganda is to cut maps and the stories they tell, I think that that does come up a lot in, 2025 with like maps of Israel and how are Gaza and the West bank shown? Are they part, like, are they part of Israel? Are they shaded in different colors? There’s dotted lines, there’s straight lines, like that’s, and that’s important. And this has come up, I think, like,
Yael: Absolutely.
So the Zionist organization, which included the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund, other things, also the Haganah, which was, you know, the pre-state quote unquote defense organization. But The Jewish Agency ran education in Palestine for the Jewish population of Palestine in the 30s. And the JNF was in charge of obtaining maps. And they obtained maps for two purposes. They had what they called scientific maps and symbolic maps. The scientific maps that they used needed to be geographically accurate because they were using them for political discussions. They were using them for negotiations with the British and with other
countries to say, hey, we want a state, we want an autonomous state, let’s draw it out. And for that conversation to work, you need a scientifically accurate map. So that is one type of map that the JNF needed to obtain and was in good position to obtain because they were quote unquote, the stewards of the land and were supposed to know more about the topography and
Schwab: Yeah.
Yael: You know, features of the land than other groups within the Zionist organization. And they also had what they called symbolic maps. And these symbolic maps were drawn for a whole host of reasons. Some of them were to educate children about the state that we’re trying to build. And they, you know, the JNF wanted to use symbolic maps in the schools. And there was someone within the organization who was like,
We can’t do that. We’re trying to educate real people with real facts, and we should really use our scientific maps in the schools. But one thing that the symbolic maps were used for is fundraising. And they went out in published materials, and they also, starting in the 1930s, began to be featured on the blue boxes. Again, I’m showing you the map on this one. And you can see, actually, the map.
Schwab: Yeah.
Yael: on the new one as well, and they are different. The map changed significantly over time. before the map went on the box, the boxes mostly had Jewish stars on them. So take us back to the first episode of the season.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Jewish Star, I think we’ve mentioned
it in every episode. It was such a great way to start off, and I think we’ve mentioned it in every episode.
Yael: What’s really nice is that this one has a Jewish star on it. and it says the word Zion or Zion inside the Jewish star. And this one also has the seal of the state of Israel on it with the menorah that we talk about in our menorah episode. So we’re really, we’re getting a lot of leverage. so in the thirties, they start putting the map on the box. And the reason why they do that is because they want to instill this notion that we are.
Schwab: It’s all coming together, yeah.
Yael: Building a land. are nation building on a physical piece of land. And that’s why you should give us money to plant trees because you know, that’s what this land, you know, we are physically on the ground and there was very much a cultural push for this land of Israel to be agricultural.
Yael: Let’s take a quick break, and when we come back, I’ll share a little bit more about the symbolic meaning of the maps and the other design elements of the blue box.
Yael: So when the JNF did start buying up land, they founded kibbutzim, which are these socialist living communities where everything that’s grown or produced in the community belongs to the community as a whole.
Most kibbutzim in Israel now are capitalist, but kibbutz life and then the ideal of communal ownership was a huge thing in Zionist circles at that time. And JNF particularly pushed kibbutzim because they, again, were all about this communal ownership.
Schwab: Right.
Yael: They didn’t want the Rothschilds owning individual pieces of land. They wanted the Rothschilds to give the JNF money so the JNF could buy land.
Schwab: Right. And I see how that could be appealing also to the average Jewish family in your home like you’re part then of the community almost in some way, you have a stake in it.
Yael: Right.
And for Eastern European Jews, who up until the late 19th century often were not allowed to own land, were not allowed to live within cities, were not allowed to have certain professions,this was very attractive because they were really part and parcel of both the real property land and the actual social communal fabric of the land.
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: But in addition to Kibbutzim, because I think even the JNF was able to acknowledge that not everybody could live in a socialist utopia, they also founded these farming communities called Moshavim, which exist until this day. A Moshav is also an agricultural community, but…
Yael: There are individual farmers who own their individual farms and earn a living from the farming of their own individual pieces of land within the Moshav. So the JNF started out really building Kibbutzim and Moshavim.
So they needed the scientific maps to buy the land for these kibbutzim and to keep track of how many acres were being tilled and what was going on. And the symbolic maps, they started putting on the blue boxes as propaganda or as their critics would say, as propaganda. these maps gave donors or diaspora Jews, most of whom had these boxes, a sense of what the JNF is doing. So over the years, the maps on the boxes changed forms. During some decades and some years, they highlighted, you mentioned before shading and labeling as being an important part of maps. So the JNF very much highlighted what they were doing and the land that they owned above other things. So some would argue,
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yael: That when they did that on certain maps and they were ignoring large tracts of land that were inhabited by Arabs, that they were doing that to symbolically disenfranchise these Arabs. But what the JNF argued was that we’re just doing that because our donors in the United States don’t know about these Arabs, don’t care about what they’re doing on land that the JNF isn’t buying.
Yael: And we want to highlight as the JNF, when you give us this money, this is what we are buying. And therefore we are highlighting what we have bought so far.Again, over time, once the state was established as borders changed, you know, if you look at the new box that I received from the JNF in the mail, it does not have any indication of
different parts of the land having different political statuses. Yeah, you can’t see Gaza, you can’t see the West Bank, you can’t see Jerusalem called out.And I’m assuming that that was a very deliberate choice. The one that I have from my family actually does indicate the West Bank. I tried very hard to…
Schwab: Right. It’s all one shade of blue.
It’s deliberate. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yael: Pinpoint a year at which this box would have been manufactured. Through my detective work, I figured out it has to be post 1955 because it has the address of the Jewish National Fund on it as 42 East 69th Street. And that headquarters was opened in 1955. I watch a lot of Law and Order. But I was really curious to know
Schwab: Ooh, that’s great detective work.
Yael: post ‘55 if it’s pre 67 or post 67. And while there are dozens of these boxes for sale on eBay from every different time period, most of them just say mid century. Which is in itself
also so interesting that this is an object now that people will like read that has some value that you can buy, you know.
Yael: I saw one for sale for $297. And I’m sure that’s not the most expensive one.
Schwab: It’s not like they put out a new one every year and you got to get like the latest model. It’s not the holiday Hess truck. It’s like, what are they going to make this year? The Pushka lights up.
Yael: Right.
Exactly. Right. and it sings the Hess truck song. Actually, there have been songs written about this blue box, folk songs that children sing in school.
Schwab: Yeah.
Of course
there are.
Yael: We would say this is Americana. Like this is Judaica, but it’s not Judaica in the sense that we mean like a religious implement. Basically the maps that were chosen over time on these boxes were chosen certainly deliberately. Um, and I wish I knew if this was pre 67 or post 67, but I honestly don’t. I do know that it was made in the USA as opposed to the, this one, the new one, which was made in China. Um, so also something to note here is there is Yiddish.
But it says, make the wilderness bloom, which is a message also that.
Mm-hmm. Right. That’s a
yeah. Like I feel like that’s like a classic, know, like making the desert bloom, bringing flowers to the Negev. Yeah.
Yael: Exactly.
So when that began to happen, actually, was in the 30s, the JNF also chose where to invest its funds and where to buy land based on what was going on politically. And in 1937, the Peel Commission presented a partition plan of Palestine that was really
Yael: Very, very significantly majority Arab state and a very small Jewish state. And that partition plan didn’t go anywhere really, but what the leaders of the JNF realized was that the borders of that map were very much tied to areas where the JNF had purchased land. And they realized that if a future partition map was going to be drawn, they needed to buy land in other places if that was going to be an influential factor.
Yael: And that’s actually when they started buying up the Negev. And then they went even further south to Eilat, I think after 48. And then, you know, they started including the Golan post-67. But in the 30s, one of the maps that they had on a box did not…
Yael: Did not include trans Jordan. Previous to that, there was no border. It wasn’t clear. But the initial Zionist vision was that the Jewish state would include Transjordan. And there was a design of a…
Schwab: Which these days, for those who aren’t from it, these days is just called Jordan, or the East Bank of the Jordan River, but that’s not, you know, like we refer to the West Bank as the West Bank, but nobody ever talks about the East Bank. It’s just, yeah.
Yael: Jordan.
Exactly. East Bank, which is just Jordan.
So there was a map that sort of ran off the side of the front of the box and continued onto the side. And trans Jordan was sort of on the side and the revisionist Zionists led by Jabotinsky, also a callback to a further episode. we talked about Jabotinsky being an advocate for territorial maximalism. He thought that
Schwab: Mmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes, he wanted like
one big state for multiple ethnicities and religions.
Yael: and lots and lots of land.
So they reached out to the JNF and said, does this new map on your box mean that you have given up on trying to acquire Transjordan for the Jewish state? And a letter went back from headquarters to the revisionist Zionists in, saying, of course not, that’s not what this means, that would be silly.
Yael: But it does go to show you that even people who were significantly important in the Zionist movement looked to these maps as political indications as to what was going on.
Schwab: Which makes sense. Like if this is something that’s, that’s going out to every single Jewish home, then what’s put on it as the representation of the Jewish nation is extremely important. And like the tiny questions of where borders are or what’s highlighted is, is, is really, really important.
Yael: So I don’t want anyone to come to us and say, didn’t talk about any of the things that the JNF does wrong or that people say they do wrong. Cause so we are going to get to them, but we are extremely limited by time
Yael: And if you want to talk to me personally about the politics of the JNF, I am happy to talk to you. Please send us an em But before we talk about the trees, I want to talk about Tu Bishvat tt and that will lead us to the trees. So Tu Bishvat, as I mentioned earlier, is the Jewish New Year for the trees. It’s mentioned in the Talmud. But prior to the 1920s, it was fairly obscure and fairly non-observed.
Yael: It was actually the teachers branch of the JNF that decided we were going to make Tu Bishvat a thing and we were going to make it a thing for children. Because if we get children excited about trees and about trees in Israel, they and their parents will give us money. So they started
Yael: They made it a holiday. It actually became a national holiday in the British Mandate in the 1930s. That’s how much influence the JNF had. Really, a lot of that influence ended in 1936 when the Arab Revolt started. There was a major Arab Revolt from 1936 to 1939. And at that time, the Jewish Agency and the JNF lost a lot of their influence.
Yael: Because I think the British were very apprehensive to do anything that would further agitate the Arab populationAnd then you went straight into World War II. So you had both the element of the British being at war and the Jews being persecuted and it…
Yael: Just, don’t know that official policy was really muddled at that time. What did happen was a white paper was issued in 1939 that limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to 75,000 people over the next five years. And we look back now historically knowing that that limitation on immigration cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
Yael: And that when that five-year period ended,immigration was going to be the domain of the Arabs, and they were going to be able to tell the Jews how many Jews could come in to Palestine. So the White Paper, highly problematic, came about at a point when the JNFs and the Jewish agencies’ influence was pretty low. So Tu Bishvat became a national holiday.
Schwab: So they invent Tu Bishvat.
Yael: The teachers branch made it a huge thing. Again, branch, no pun intended.The Knesset, the parliament of the state of Israel opened officially on Tubi Shvat, 1949. That was a deliberate choice. And it opened with a tree planting ceremony with children. And this was to continue to get the children to give their spare change to the blue box.
Yael: And to basically say a child’s dime, a child’s penny is as important a foothold, both economically and politically, into the new state of Israel as anything else. So yeah, I just wanted to highlight ⁓ that the JNF made to Bishvat a thing, you know?
Schwab: Right.
It’s interesting. feel like I don’t know, on some level sort of knew that. It’s clear, whatever, whatever relevance this has to the agricultural calendar, it’s for species that are native to Israel.
And then they, as part of nationalizing Tu Bishvat as a holiday, they got someone to write the Tu Bishvat song that many children know, not, HaShkediya P’rachat, right? like, exactly. Yeah, right, exactly. And like the average, I don’t know, 10 year old Jewish child who knows that song probably cannot translate Shkediya or P’rachat. Maybe they know the word Shemesh.
Yael: Ria porach, arhashamash parzorach, hatziporin nanana.
Doesn’t know what any of it means, by the way.
It means that the almond trees bloom for,
Schwab: I think I do know that thing. You know? Yeah. Right. But then the the
Yael: For the, I know that, know, but this is for the nation. This is for nerd nation.
Schwab: Akara 2, bish vad hi giya, chag ha’i la not. Is it chag la’i la not? I trust you. I trust you much more on song lyrics.
Yael: Chagla i la no.
I have no idea. It could be ha, ilanot. I truly don’t know. We have been talking for a while and there’s so much here and we also have to wrap up because this is our season finale. There is controversy about the types of trees that JNF sometimes plants, depending on where they plant them. They plant a lot of evergreens, which are not
Schwab: Yes.
Yael: Native to the land in most places. Sometimes they have planted evergreens to supplant olive trees that maybe belonged to people who sold the land allegedly under duress. And there are also those who argue that the JNF chooses where to plant its forests in order to create de facto borders in order to make contain contiguous land areas hard to achieve for non-Jewish landowners. There is a major controversy, and this is the real, this is the hot topic of the JNF which is that the JNF has a mandate, to only lease land.
Because the JNF doesn’t sell land, it leases its land in 49-year cycles based on the biblical Shemitah and Yovel cycle, 49 years of Jubilee. The JNF can only lease land to Jews. And that is a problem.
Schwab: Yeah.
And are they are they is the Jane of still by a huge landowner and okay.
Yael: Yes. The JNF,
I think, owns 13 % of the current state of Israel, which is mostly forest and some parks.
Schwab: I do believe at one point in time in the pre-state era, the JNF owned 51 % of all Jewish owned lands in Palestine. But right now the JNF owns 13 % of the state and they don’t lease that land to people who aren’t Jewish., under Israeli law, Israel, has a complicated constitutional.
regime, but under Israeli law, that is illegal. And that has been brought to the Supreme Court of Israel and the Supreme Court basically ruled against the JNF. And they said, you cannot discriminate against people who aren’t Jewish in your business transactions, especially because, and I didn’t read the Supreme Court decision, but the JNF is a quasi governmental organization, which makes this all exactly. So they’re not the government.
Schwab: That predated the government. I could see that, I don’t know, people from the JNF being like, look, we came before you, we helped make you, you don’t tell us what to do.
Yael: Right.
They’re not the government, but they are not the private sector either at allSo they were told that they have to lease land to non-Jews and in order to achieve this equality while simultaneously not diminishing the stature, power, or market share of the JNF, every time JNF land is leased to someone who is not Jewish, the State of Israel gives the JNF an equivalent amount of state-owned land so that the JNF maintains its 13 % ownership share of state land.
Schwab: Wow.
Wow. Which is, I think that, that brief story is testament to the level of power and influence they have that the state of Israel, the government is making this deal with them.
Yael: There’s a lot there. Is making the deal with them, but at the same time honoring its legal obligations of not discriminating. It goes to the nature of what is complicated about the state of Israel. And we’re not going to solve that today. Maybe in season five.
Schwab: There is an entire podcast devoted to Israel, in the same organization that we’re a part of, unpacking Israeli history.
Yael: That’s true.
unpacking Israeli history. And you just said there’s a lot to unpack here. You used those words.
Unfortunately, because we are not going to get to the bottom of all of this, other than to say there have been protests against the JNF all over the world, in Canada significantly, there have been audits to check as to where a lot of the donation money is going. Some of it has allegedly been misappropriated at times.
Schwab: Yes.
Yael: There have been articles written called the bloated blue box, things like that. But I don’t want anyone to think that this is an organization above reproach. That being said, it is really interesting to me how much a physical object can represent.
Yael: In its small, very few inches of dimension. But it brings along with it a lot of baggage, environmental baggage, political baggage, ethno-national baggage.
Schwab: Yeah, I feel like that’s, I don’t know, if there’s a unifying theme we’ve come to this season talking about objects and symbols, it’s all of the complicated ways that they reflect and affect Jewish identity. And this is like another fantastic example of it, of just here is something that is in so many Jewish homes and tells such a story about Jewish identity. And it’s so interesting, I really thank you for bringing this because like the multiple versions of it, you can then see like, a changing story of what Jewish identity is and what its purpose is.
Yael: I didn’t even show you this very buff, this very, very buff Jewish agricultural worker on the other side of the new box because of this image of the new Jew.
Schwab: Yeah, I can’t I can’t see it so clearly. Yeah. yeah, right. that’s yes. And that’s like a
yes, that’s like such an important cultural symbol, right. Just like coming out of the Holocaust, refashioning what do Jews look like and the image of like a muscular kibbutz farming worker, you know, who is like through through the sweat of their brow making the land produce like is a is a very, prominent image.
Yael: I’m really glad I got a chance to look into this particular artifact because as I mentioned before, is nostalgic for me, but also because I think it has a unique power in that unlike many of the other things that we talked about this season, it is just a household object. It’s just a basic household object that was not created to be a symbol. It was just meant to be utilitarian.
Yael: And we got this unique artifact that has taken on a clear life of its own. d I think that’s what we’ve learned this season. And I think I want to say that I think this podcast has taken on a life of its own. I have loved.
Yael: every minute of it. I’m really excited to get into season five. We want to hear from you the stories that you want to hear. We want to hear what you’ve liked, what you haven’t liked. We want you to come back.
Schwab: and share the show with all your friends, because they’ll enjoy it too.
Yael: Be an influencer.
.
Schwab, do you have anything to add?
Schwab: Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, no, I just want to say like I again this season has been amazing. t I learn a lot. love learning about these things, learning with you, hearing from you. I’m excited when I have a story to tell to you, but like really, really love when we hear from listeners that they’re excited that they have things to say. Just yesterday we got feedback where someone like took a point that we had.
That we had sort of dangled in our previous episode and he answered a question that we had. And I love that. So cool. So we’d love that. also want to thank, in addition to thanking all of you listeners, whether you write in to us or not, it’s so great to have you and have your, yeah. I also do want to think we work with, other than the two of us, an amazing group of people. Dr. Henry Abramson, who’s our education lead, who’s fantastic.
Yael: Amazing.
We want, we love having you here.
Amazing. And also
Schwab’s life role model. Not that he’s not mine also,And also, Rivky Stern, who started this and has been our producer for a number of seasons, and Jenny Falcon, who joined the team as our producer this season and has been amazing to work with.
Yael: Rockstar. Yes. She came in, shook things up, and has made them even better. And Rob, our editor Rob. We love you, Rob.
Schwab: And to close,it’s some of our youngest and most devoted listeners.
Schwab: Jewish History Nerds is a production of Unpacked, an open-door media brand. Subscribe wherever you’re listening to this podcast and follow Unpacked on all the regular social media channels. Just search for Unpacked Media.
Schwab: And if you’re enjoying nerding out with us, please share this and other episodes with your friends and family.
Yael: Jewish History Nerds is produced by Jenny Falcon and Rivki Stern. Dr. Henry Abramson is our education lead. It’s edited by Rob Pera. I’m Yael Steiner.
Schwab: And I’m Jonathan Schwab. Thanks for listening.