The Link Between The JNF And Tisha B’Av And Other Miscellaneous Tisha B’Av Items

Photo Credit: Saul Jay Singer

The Jewish National Fund would often use “national days” such as Chanukah and Tu B’Shvat as “Ribbon Days” for fundraising purposes that successfully generated significant income for the nascent Zionist movement. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, the JNF undertook a significant program to turn Tisha B’Av, a day of suffering and anguish, into a day of optimism, rejuvenation and redemption by making it a major fundraising day and soliciting contributions from around the world to support the renewal of Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael. From the very founding of the JNF by Herzl himself in 1901, the organization marked Tisha B’Av with campaigns employing a clever mixture of Biblical inspiration and Jewish guilt designed to encourage Jews worldwide to help rebuild the common ancestral land of their fathers.

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Exhibited here is a 1909 JNF circular (in German) linking JNF to Tisha B’Av, one of the earliest known examples extant. The contrast underscoring the monumental losses on this saddest of all historical days on the Jewish calendar and the luminous hope for a Zionist future is both stark and highly emotional:

With the 9^th of Av, the loss of our national independence, the fall of our temple, a new period of our history begins, the history of the Jewish people in exile.

We already count 1,839 years of exile. They should be sufficient to at least make us aware of our fate.

The Roman band of mercenaries invaded Judah’s region with brutal force, destroyed the Holy City, the heart of the world, with a sacrilegious hand, stormed the proud castle of Zion, and flames consumed G-d’s magnificent Temple.

Jerusalem fell. The empire was in ruins, Israel’s sanctuary desecrated and its priests defiled – so the glorious people began their journey [into exile].

It wandered from country to country, from people to people, restless and fleeting, without rest or respite. The Jew pitched his tents everywhere, but nowhere could he find his lost homeland again.

The Jews were driven back and forth like a ball being thrown from hand to hand. At the time of the Crusades, they emigrated en masse from Germany to Poland and Lithuania, driven away by the most cruel persecutions, and today their descendants have moved from there to countries overseas.

The ninth of Av should also be immortalized in our history by a second momentous event.

On this day in 1492, we see the Jews, after they had already endured the most painful tribulations for centuries, driven out in their hundreds of thousands from the entire area of the Pyrenees Peninsula, exposed to all the horrors of no protection and homelessness. Tens of thousands of the best sons of the people lost their lives because of this unprecedently cruel expulsion, others fell prey to North African pirates and slave traders, and only a fraction of the Spanish Jewry found hospitable reception in Turkey and in the Netherlands.

We have entrusted ourselves to the progress of humanity and placed our hopes in it. We have fought for it, and our best forces were used in this fight. However, he [the world] has only meagerly rewarded us for our sacrifices and cheated us out of our best hopes.

Today, we are in the twentieth century. But every year inflicts new wounds on us, brings us new horrors and new sufferings.

A stream of unfortunate wanderers is pouring out across the whole world and flooding the countries that have not yet closed their borders to it. Only a few peoples still grant asylum to our brothers, and with each passing year the number of these places of refuge decreases.

The anxious question of fate still stands before us:

WHERE?

and awaits a solution.

So the 9^th of Av, this sad date in our history of exile, is a serious warning to us. This admonition is expressed in the first sentence of the Basel program: “Zionism strives to create a homeland in Palestine that is secured by public law for the Jewish people.”

REMEMBER THE LESSONS OF OUR HISTORY

Distraction is the root of our misery. Only the ingathering in the land of our fathers can bring a solution to the Jewish question. However, this ingathering requires ownership of the land, and this is created by the Jewish National Fund.

THE JEWISH NATIONAL FUND

Is collecting funds to acquire land in Palestine, the land of our glorious past, which will belong to the Jewish people in its entirety as permanent property.

That is why every Jew who has a heart for his people should think of his people’s treasure, the Jewish National Fund.

Every contribution increases our national wealth, increases our national wealth.

So let the Ninth of Av not only be an occasion for lamentation and prayer, but also a time of hope for a happy future!

The Central Office of the Jewish National Fund

Dr. M[ax] J. Bodenheimer

Chairman of the Board of Directors

Lawyer Max Bodenheimer (1865-1940), one of the main figures in German Zionism and a close associate Herzl, served as the first president of the Zionist Federation of Germany and as one of the founders of the JNF. After his flight in 1933 from Nazi Germany and a short residence in Holland, he made aliyah in 1935.

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Shown here is Seder Kinot Le’Tish’a B’Av (“Reading Order of Lamentations on Tisha B’Av”), an original sketch in ink and pencil by Ze’ev Raban for a book title-page illustration. Written in pencil atop the drawing of the Sefer Kinot is the verse from Eichah (Lamentations) 3:1, Ani hagever ra’ah oni (“I am the man who has seen affliction”). And written at the bottom right of the sketch, also in pencil, is part of the famous verse from Jeremiah 31:14: Kol b’ramah nishma… Rachel mevakah al baneiha (“A voice is heard upon high… Rachel weeps for her children”). The piece bears the stamp (in Hebrew) of the atelier “Ze’ev Raban, Workshop for Industrial Art (formerly Gur-Arie and Raban), Bezalel, Jerusalem.”

Raban (1890-1970), who acquired his reputation through the designs he made for Bezalel, was undoubtedly one of the most important artists in pre-State Eretz Yisrael. Recognizing that the traditional European style did not fit the style of the newly-emerging Jewish arts, he synthesized European techniques with authentic Jewish art based on specifically Jewish motifs. He developed a visual lexicon of Jewish themes with decorative calligraphic script and other decorative devices which came to be characterized as the “Bezalel style” and, in doing so, he drew freely from Persian, Oriental, Classical, and Art Nouveau elements.

Raban’s work, which closely follows the historical events of the building of the Jewish State, reflected his desire to strengthen the identity of the emerging Medinat Yisrael through the revival and artistic expression of Jewish symbolism, and he was actively involved in the ethos of the emerging nation, encouraging tourism through posters, illustrating primers for teaching Hebrew, and designing decorative functional objects to imbue the Jewish home with Jewish content. He was renowned for his original depictions of beautiful Israeli landscapes, holy places, Biblical tales, and people (he adopted the Yemenite as a model for the Biblical figure).

Shown here is Tisha B’Av, an illustrated plate inscribed in the plate by Zev Raban from his famous Chagenu (“Our Holidays,” 1925) series, a handsome collection of illustrations of the Jewish holidays. Rendered in the gorgeous color that characterizes much of his work, his central focus here is a variety of Jews from different backgrounds reciting kinot at the Kotel.

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Exhibited here is a printed circular, in German, issued by the Society for Eretz Israel (Der Vorstand des Vereins für Palästinensische Angelegenheiten), Berlin, in which Rav Azriel Hildesheimer organizes a fundraising campaign in the synagogues during Tisha B’Av for maintaining tombstones and monuments, particularly the graves of Zechariah and Avshalom on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem:

From the Holy Land, to which the deep longing of our hearts is still consecrated after thousands of years, from Jerusalem, the cradle of civilization and uniform worship of G-d, hair-raising reports have long been coming to us, which were also currently being communicated in various Jewish organs. It is nothing less than the desecration of old Jewish graves, which is an ancient tradition from our prophets, Tanaaim [sages of the Mishnah] and others shining on the horizon of Jewish history and piety. On his journey to Jerusalem, a local community member himself was an eyewitness to how the Tomb of the Prophet Zechariah, which was built on deep ground, was blown up in brutal vandalism, and the corpses next to it were thrown out and desecrated. Similarly, the graves of our great ancestors, the Sanhedrin, were made into herding places.

Dear Brothers and sisters! Whose heart does not tremble in its innermost depths at such sad news? The holy graves of our ancestors, the monuments of our great past and cultural history of all humanity desecrated, desecrated!

Only by properly enclosing each of these graves can the desecration of them be permanently remedied and, as the consulate there assured us, this will be granted to us.

Well then, brothers and sisters! Even if Israel does not, like other nations, build monuments and magnificent monuments to its great ancestors, so let us protect these holy places of world historical memory from gross desecration and destruction.

This holy matter, like no other, is a completely Jewish-national one, which affects all Kolelim [various Jewish communities of Jerusalem] in the same way; that is why we can also hope that German, Russian, Hungarian-Austrian, Dutch, English, French, etc. Israelites and communities in Europe will also contribute to this.

We do not hide from ourselves the fact that large amounts of money and repeated effort are required to achieve our major goal; but confidence in the unparalleled greatness of the hearts of our brothers and sisters, especially in relation to all that concerns Palestine, dispels all fear that by united forces this pious monument will not be duly erected for all time. But time is running out, danger is imminent, and every day can add a new, crude desecration to the previous ones.

So get to work quickly; let’s not lose a day!

We are again in the days that are more than usual dedicated to the memory of Jerusalem; we will soon commemorate the day Ninth of Av, on which everyone who still retains any feeling for the past will remember Jerusalem and its experiences.

We sincerely request all venerable rabbis and commendable leaders of larger communities, as well as the corresponding religious officials and outstanding members of smaller localities, to collect special collections in the synagogues as soon as possible on this 9^th of Av, or if this opportunity seems less opportune in your community to organize our great purpose and ask the rabbis and preachers to support and promote this collection with an appropriate speech. We ask the honored people responsible for this collection to also ask everyone who is unable to visit the synagogue to take part; in particular, we sincerely request the honored fellow believers who are currently in seaside resorts to organize an appropriate collection there, too, and let us hope to G-d that this will already be a big step toward the realization of our holy purpose.

[In Hebrew:] And in this merit may Hashem have mercy on the ruins of Jerusalem and may the redeemer come to Zion

Berlin, Av 5631

THE BOARD OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR PALESTINIAN AFFAIRS

Dr. Israel Hildesheimer, Chairman

Rav Azriel Hildesheimer (1820-1899) is regarded as an important pioneering modernizer of Orthodox Judaism in Germany and as a founder of Modern Orthodox Judaism. Living at a time of considerable acculturation and an erosion of traditional authority structures in Jewish life, his embrace of modernity as compatible with Orthodoxy – symbolized by his substantial Talmudic learning combined with a university doctorate – was institutionalized in the rabbinical seminary that he established in Berlin (1873), which provided leadership for Jews eager to participate in modern society while retaining allegiance to traditional Jewish norms. Though Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch provided an ideological approach to Torah im Derech Eretz (combining Torah with general education), it was Hildesheimer who trained such rabbis to serve in Jewish communities throughout Germany and beyond, and while Hirsch categorically rejected “Jewish Science” as having any place in Jewish study, Hildesheimer considered it imperative to train rabbis schooled in the scientific disciplines. His life was marked by a commitment to both Jewish learning and general education; a strong interest in strengthening the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael; and a commitment to meet Jewish welfare needs internationally.

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Exhibited here is a print of a brass relief plate by Boris Schatz depicting several Jews sitting on the floor of their synagogue reciting Lamentations on Tisha B’Av.

Schatz (1866-1932), “the Father of Israeli Art,” is best known as the founder of the Bezalel Academy of Arts, named after Bezalel ben Uri ben Chur, the legendary Biblical artist and creator of the Mishkan. Schatz is credited with reviving a Jewish aesthetic consciousness and planting the seeds for artistic culture in Israel, and his vision of arts as a necessary component of Zionism played an important role in Israel’s singular commitment to the arts.

Schatz’s own work, which was heavily influenced by his traditional training in Europe, reflects romanticized, sublime, and sentimental visions of Jewish personalities, religious practices, and sites in Eretz Yisrael. Jewish art at the time was essentially related to the art of the Diasporan communities where the Jews happened to live, and Schatz changed that by establishing a distinctively Jewish art that employed Jewish themes and designs. Believing that a facility in Jerusalem would serve as a center for his novel Jewish art that would gather talented Jewish art students from around the world, he founded Bezalel to develop and promote an indigenous artistic tradition for Eretz Yisrael.

Schatz sought to express the national ethos through depictions of simple Jews at work and at prayer. Bezalel artists and craftsmen under his tutelage celebrated farmers, road builders, and factory workers, and the Bezalel artists became noted for combining their deep feelings for Jewish themes and nationalism with remarkable skill and craftsmanship. He planted the seeds for artistic culture in Israel, and Israel’s extraordinary commitment to the arts is in no small part due to his vision of arts as a necessary component of Zionism.

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Exhibited here is an original miniature etching by Joseph Budko and signed by the artist at the lower right. The focus is on a lone bent over figure sitting alone in the synagogue on the night of Tisha B’Av reciting prayers. The deep darkness of the composition, characteristic of much of his work, is punctured only by the feeble light of night entering from the window to the left, which illuminates an abandoned shtender, and a barely discernable light fixture above the figure.

Budko (1888-1940) created a whole new Jewish iconography ranging from Zionist symbols to representations of the world of the shtetl of his youth. Developing a unique style which combined his personal approach with Jewish character and which synthesized Jewish tradition with a modern artistic approach, he was among an influential group of graphic Jewish artists who embraced the revival of the woodcut, a medium which lent itself perfectly to express the views of Israel and Jewish culture in various lands. He used the expressive form of the printing methods – etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs – to revive the use of graphic and book illustration in the Jewish art world.

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Exhibited here is an [undated] “Holy Call” by Chabad Youth for children to learn and give charity at the Kotel during the days leading up to Tisha B’Av:

In a sacred conversation on Shabbat Kodesh Chazon, the Lubavitcher Rebbe proposed that for the next few days until the 9^th of Av, the children of Israel throughout the land shall visit the Western Wall, where they will learn Torah (even if only a few words) and give charity to sustain: from the mouths of the oppressed and young children, etc. to disable an enemy and take revenge.

On Monday, the evening of the 9^th of Av at 10:30 a.m., there will be a national gathering of the children of Chabad camps throughout the land at the Western Wall for the above purposes.

Zion will be redeemed through justice and her penitents with righteousness.

While the Rebbe was well-known as a passionate proponent of Torah study at all times, he emphasized the study of laws relating to the Beit HaMikdash during the Three Weeks (before Tisha B’Av), frequently citing the verse from Isaiah 1:27 at the end of our document: “Zion will be redeemed through justice and her penitents with righteousness.”

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Exhibited here is At the Kotel On Tisha B’Av, one of Meir Gur-Arie’s works from his famous Eretz Yisrael silhouette series.

Born Meir Horodetsky, Gur-Arie (1891-1951) studied at Bezalel School of Art (1909-1911) and went on to teach painting and ivory carving there. A member of the Menorah group, he, together with Zev Raban, opened the Menora workshop (1913) and later established the Workshop for Industrial Design (1923). A participant in the famous “Tower of David” Exhibition, he was a founder of the Union for Hebrew Art (1920). Among his projects is the framework for the decorations at the YMCA building in Jerusalem and his work, which remains highly popular, is exhibited worldwide, including at the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem.

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Exhibited here is an original newspaper photograph of the First Tisha B’Av at the Kotel (August 14, 1967) – mere weeks after the liberation of Jerusalem. The legend on the verso (not shown) reads:

Thousands of Jews gathered this evening at the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem in commemoration of the holiday [sic] of Tisha B’Av which mourns the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem. The Wall is all that remains of the Second Temple.

One can only imagine what it must have been like at that time and place of Jewish history. The shacks and filth blocking access to the Kotel for two thousand years had only recently been razed, leaving a plaza of crushed gravel and white stone dust everywhere. As the sun set over Jerusalem the Golden, reunited at last, Jews of all backgrounds and ethnicities gathered at the Wall on Tisha B’Av for the first time in two millennia. Sitting on the hallowed ground holding small candles, they participated in thousands of small minyanim and prayed, read Eicha, and recited kinot in an atonal cacophony of lamentation.

I personally experienced a taste of what this must have been like a few years later in 1971. I had spent a week by myself hiking through the desert in the Negev when I suddenly realized that I had lost track of time and that the hour had grown late on erev Tisha B’Av. I rushed back to Jerusalem with barely enough time to wolf down a last-minute seuda hamafseket before sprinting to the Kotel to meet my friends, for whom I had agreed to read Eicha. Chanting the megillah that describes in detail the unthinkable tragedies that had taken place right above me and at the very site of the destruction of the First and Second Beit HaMikdash was a deeply spiritual experience, as the words came to life as never before and I sang the text with tears in my eyes.

After I completed the reading, I looked up and noticed for the first time that a large group of chassidim dressed in their traditional garb had gathered around and been listening intently to my leining. Suddenly, like the proverbial parting of the Sea of Reeds, they separated into two groups as, down the clear path at their center, a short and stooped elderly man with a long white beard and carrying an unmistakable air of authority slowly made his way toward me. Stopping only inches from my feet, he looked up at me with the clearest eyes I had ever seen and began speaking in a rapid Yiddish.

I gently said to him, first in English and then in Hebrew, “I am sorry, Rebbe, but I do not understand Yiddish,” whereupon a tall string bean of young man wearing a short and tight black beard appeared next to him and said to me, in perfect English, “The Rebbe wants to know if you understood what you were reading.” I explained to him that I was a dati (observant) Jew who had attended yeshiva and that I was a baal koreh for many years – so that, indeed, I understood the words very well. The young man translated my response into Yiddish for the Rebbe, who shook his head back and forth a few times in apparent disbelief at the sight of me in my slovenly desert clothes and rather small kippa seruga and quietly announced in awe “Der Moshiach kimt” (“the Messiah is coming”).

Oh, dear Rebbe, Oh, dear G-d,
he has not yet come.
Perhaps this year?
L’shanah Habaah B’Yerusalayim!

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