Early history

　　JNF logoThe JNF was founded at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901 with Theodor Herzl's support based on the proposal of a German Jewish mathematician, Zvi Hermann Schapira.Early land purchases were completed in Judea and the Lower Galilee. In 1909, wine ice buckets the JNF played a central role in the founding of Tel Aviv. Gift Tins The establishment of the “Olive Tree Fund” marked the beginning of Diaspora support of afforestation efforts. Tin Money Box The Blue Box (known in Yiddish as a pushke) has been part of the JNF since its inception, symbolizing the partnership between Israel and the Diaspora. In the period between the two world wars, about one million of these blue and white tin collection boxes could be found in Jewish homes throughout the world. From 1902 until the late 1940s, the JNF sold JNF stamps to raise money. For a brief period in May 1948, JNF stamps were used as postage stamps during the transition from Palestine to Israel.

　　The first parcel of land, 200 dunams (18 hectares) east of Hadera, was received as a gift from the Russian Zionist leader Isaac Leib Goldberg of Vilnius, in 1903. It became an olive grove.In 1904 and 1905, the JNF purchased land plots near the Sea of Galilee and at Ben Shemen. In 1921, JNF land holdings reached 25,000 acres (100 km?), rising to 50,000 acres (200 km?) by 1927. At the end of 1935, JNF held 89,500 acres (362 km?) of land housing 108 Jewish communities. In 1939, 10% of the Jewish population of the British Mandate of Palestine lived on JNF land. JNF holdings by the end of the British Mandate period amounted to 936 km?.By 1948, the JNF owned 54% of the land held by Jews in the region,or a bit less than 4% of the land in what was then known as Palestine.

　　From the beginning, JNF's policy was to lease land long-term rather than sell it. In its charter, the JNF states: "Since the first land purchase in Eretz Israel in the early 1900s for and on behalf of the Jewish People, JNF has served as the Jewish People's trustee of the land, initiating and charting development work to enable Jewish settlement from the border in the north to the edge of the desert and Arava in the south."

　　Blue box

　　JNF collection box The blue charity collection boxes have been distributed by the JNF almost from its beginning. Once found in many Jewish homes, the boxes became one of the most familiar symbols of Zionism. A children's song about the boxes, written by Dr. Yehoshua Frizman, Headmaster of the Real Gymnasium for Girls in Kovno, ran

　　The box is hanging on the wall

　　The blue box

　　Each penny put inside

　　Redeems the land.

　　The box was invented when a bank clerk named Haim Kleinman in Nadvorna, Galicia placed a blue box labeled "Keren Le'umit" in his office, and suggested that similar boxes be distributed by the Fund. The first mass-produced boxes were distributed in 1904.Kleinman visited Mandate Palestine in the 1930s and planned to make aliyah, but was murdered in the Holocaust.Menahem Ussishkin wrote that "The coin the child contributes or collects for the redemption of the land is not important in itself; it is not the child that gives to the Keren Kayemeth, but rather the Fund that gives to the child, a foothold and lofty ideal for all the days of his life."

　　The boxes could take a variety of shapes and sizes. Some were paper made to fold flat like envelopes and able to contain only a small number of coins, some early American boxes were cylindrical, some German boxes were made of tin stamped into the shape of bound books.

　　Israel issued postage stamps bearing the image of the blue box in 1983, 1991, and 1993 for the JNF's 90th anniversary.

　　After statehood

　　After Israel's establishment in 1948, there was a debate concerning the future of the JNF. Initially the government wanted to dismantle it, but after the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 194 calling for Arab refugees to be allowed back into their homes, the JNF was seen as mechanism by which land which was previously owned by Arabs could be legally purchased by Jews. Accordingly, the government began to sell absentee lands to the JNF, left behind by former Arab owners. On January 27, 1949, 1,000 km? of this land (from a total of about 3,500 km?) was sold to the JNF for the price of I?11 million. Another 1,000 km? of seized land was sold to the JNF in October, 1950. Over the years questions about the legitimacy of these transactions have been raised repeatedly; Israeli legislation has generally supported the JNF's land claims.In 1953, the JNF was dissolved and re-organized as an Israeli company. In 1960, administration of the land held by the JNF, apart from forested areas, was transferred to a newly formed government agency, the Israel Land Administration, the government agency responsible for managing 93% of the land of Israel. The JNF received the right to nominate 10 of the 22 directors of the ILA, lending it significant leverage within that state body.

　　In 1996, the American JNF was accused of mismanaging funds. According to the charges, only 21% of US donations reached Israel, and money was being diverted to Latin American JNF offices. In the wake of this scandal, the North American management was forced to resign.