Jewish National Fund

The Jewish National Fund, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael, was founded on 29 December 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel, carrying out a proposal first made by Professor Hermann Schapira in 1897. Its purpose was to buy land in the Land of Israel as the permanent property of the Jewish people, to be leased, never sold, to those who worked it. Its Hebrew name comes from the Mishnah (Peah 1:1), where the "principal" of good deeds "remains" for the world to come. In 1904 Haim Kleinman, a bank clerk in Nadwórna in Galicia, suggested in the Zionist paper Die Welt a collection box in every Jewish home, and the blue box became a symbol of Zionism in millions of homes.

The Fund bought land for Degania, lent money for Ahuzat Bayit, the start of Tel Aviv, and planted forests from 1908. It moved its head office to Jerusalem in 1922. Much of the land on which the Yishuv grew was bought with its coins, and the JNF still manages forests and land in Israel.