Several of the illustrious ‘bricklayers’ in creating this legacy were former South Africans
Jerusalem is not short of landmarks. The Western Wall, the City of David, the Shrine of the Book and the Knesset (Parliament) are all major tourist attractions defining the lifeblood of the city. However, in the heart of the Nation’s capital there stands a three-story complex. Practically ignored by tourists it is nevertheless so steeped in history, that it symbolically dwarfs most of the city’s other attractions in having shaped the destiny of the Jewish people. Its unpretentious design belies the creative energy of those that have labored behind its austere facade.
The Jewish Agency complex on 48 King George Street, Jerusalem.
Mendel Kaplan (z”l)
The Dreamers
The Jewish Agency complex on 48 King George Street represents the foresight and fortitude of a pioneering leadership that succeeded in translating a dream into a stunning reality. One of the founders of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl wrote over a century earlier: “If you will it, it shall not remain a dream.’ Inspired by this “dream” was a South African lawyer Louis Pincus, who after a long stint running Israel’s national airline El Al (from its inception), became treasurer of the Jewish Agency and later elected its Chairman. A half-century later, Capetonian Mendel Kaplan would be the first South African to be elected as the Chairman of the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors (BOG) and today, the important position of Director General is filled by Alan Hoffman who immigrated from Johannesburg in 1967. Apart from these three, there have been many other South Africans serving as members on the BOG such as Solly Sacks, former Director General of World Mizrachi and Morris Borsuk who, like Solly, had served as Chairman of the South African Zionist Federation both in South Africa and in Israel. All were driven to serve their People and a thriving Israel, infused by Aliyah (immigration), is their legacy. Inspired by the history of their workplace, there are no shortage of employees in the Jewish Agency today who will proudly claim that their desk was at one time used by Ben Gurion or that their chair once graced the illustrious posteriors of Zionist icons like Chaim Weizmann or Nachum Goldman. The halls, corridors, offices and boardrooms all display photographs, posters, caricatures and assorted memorabilia that chronicle the remarkable achievements of well over one hundred years of Zionism. In the palm-tree square encased by the Agency complex, one is attracted first to the balcony above the main entrance. Built in a bygone age when monumental declarations were made to the public from public galleries, “you can imagine Ben Gurion standing there with the other great Zionist leaders addressing the crowd below,” relates Chief Editor of the Zionist Library Amos Yovel and the writer’s guide for the day. “Youngsters in their youth movement uniforms and holding flags would be amongst the crowd waiting to hear and sometime cheer the news.” Sadly, there were times when there was not too much to cheer about.
Former Israeli President Chaim Hertzog (z”l)
11 March 1946, a car bomb exploded beneath the Keren Hayasod wing of the Jewish Agency
Tough Times
On the 11 March 1946, a car bomb exploded beneath the Keren Hayasod wing of the Jewish Agency. The bomber, an Arab in the employ of the American Consul was a trusted person at the Agency. “He said he had stuff to deliver and needed to park as close to the building as possible. Why should they have doubted him? Only two weeks previously, he had supplied weapons to the Hagana (pre-curser to the Israeli Defence Force). What they did not know was that he was a double agent,” relates Yovel. That ignorance resulted in eleven fatalities, including the Director of Keren Hayesod, Leib Jaffe. Former Israeli President Chaim Hertzog had been the Chief Security officer of the Jewish Agency at the time of the bombing. “Luckily, he was in the toilet at the time,” says his son Isaac Hertzog, who is today the Leader of the Opposition. Not so fortunate was his mother who was buried under the rubble. “My dad had to dig her out. She was unconscious and remained in hospital for six months. After riding in the ambulance with her to the hospital, he then had to rush afterwards to an important meeting with a representative from the United Nations. He had no time to change, so his clothes were covered in my mother’s blood. The UN man took one look at my Dad and said: “If this is the way you come dressed to a meeting, no one will deter you from winning this war”.” How right this UN representative was!
The British security services raided the complex arresting members of the Jewish Agency Executive (Saturday 29th June 1946).
HISTORY LESSON
“Whereas in the first two decades of the 20th century, the center of gravity of the Zionist enterprise was in Europe, thereafter it shifted here – this building,” explains Yovel. “It was like the White House, and America’s Congress and Treasury all in one. Even more so. Most the major decisions relating to defense and security, immigration, agriculture, new settlements, fundraising and the economy of the Yishuv came from within these walls.” To my question “But why also the White House?” the guide replied: “For many years, Ben Gurion even used to live here. There was no Prime Minister’s residence in those days. There was also no country – that had still to be hard fought for. And to win that fight required cunning. But this was Jerusalem and the hands of these early visionaries were not to be forsaken of their cunning, reminiscent of the psalm of the Bible “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.”
Saturday 29th June 1946, a day that has gone down in history as Black Saturday, the British security services raided the complex arresting members of the Jewish Agency Executive. They were also searching for secrete arms caches and documents. Hidden below the floor – what is today the Gymnasium – lay hidden, arms and ammunition. Using metal detectors, it was only a question of time before they would be discovered. The two Hagana representatives who were escorting the British from room to room realised they had to act quickly. They gave orders in Hebrew for refreshments to be brought. “They served wine and cake, jokes were told and there was an atmosphere of merriment. After an hour, the British commander gave the order to resume the search.”
Suddenly the Commander heard strange noises emanating from under the building, but away from where the arms lay buried. “What was that? Where is that noise coming from? What is under this bloody building?” he bellowed. When he was met by awkward expressions and explanations, he thought he was onto something. Fueling his suspicions were the Hagana men who now appeared to be very nervous. One of them even began stuttering. It was all a hurriedly orchestrated subterfuge! An instruction had been given to start pumping out the water from a reservoir beneath the building hoping that the noise of the generator might divert attention away from were the arms cache lay concealed. The plan worked. For two days, togged out in their Wellington boots, the British searched laboriously in the foul smelling dirty water. They were not rewarded and the much-needed arms were saved. However, they did make off with many important documents, including Herzl’s diaries. Fortunately, the most important material for the continuity of the struggle for statehood, they missed. And it was quite literally, staring them right in the face. In what is today the Ben Gurion Hall, behind one of the large paintings on the wall was a safe. Secreted therein, lay the Executive minutes detailing plans of the combined military operations, decisions relating to establishing settlements, the secret codes of operatives in towns, villages, kibbutzim and moshavim and vital information regarding the ships smuggling in holocaust survivors. The huge oil portraits of the early Zionist luminaries looked on. How would those faces have wanted to break into a smile as the frustrated British search party left the boardroom, empty handed!
Declaration of Independence on the 14th May 1948.
David Ben Gurion – Declaration of Independence on the 14th May 1948.
NO LAUGHING MATTER
And what became of Herzl’s priceless diaries? Scrutinized by British Intelligence at their King David Hotel headquarters, did they learn anything? An entry dated September 1, 1897 read: “At Bastle I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.” With the hindsight of nearly fifty years, British Intelligence by then must have perceived that they were the aging actors soon to take their final bow on the Middle East stage. The final act of Herzl’s vision was soon to take center stage. Miraculously, the diaries escaped the devastation of the destruction of the British Headquarters at the Kind David Hotel bombing. They had been returned to the Jewish Agency two weeks before the bombing. The Building did miss out on one momentous event – the Declaration of Independence on the 14th May 1948. That most consequential event in modern Jewish history took place on the quiet, tree-lined Rothschild Boulevard in central Tel Aviv. “Were in not for the dangerous security situation necessitating the leadership shifting operations to Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion would have stepped out onto the Agency’s balcony in Jerusalem to make the declaration. However, the first meeting of Israel’s first Knesset on the 16th March 1949 was held in this building. At that meeting, Weizmann was elected Israel’s first president.” The next day he was sworn in at a ceremony in the same hall that today bears his illustrious name. After the ceremony, Weizmann, who knew his coattails were somewhat clipped by Ben Gurion and that his position was largely ceremonial, was heard to cynically quip: “The only place they will allow me to poke my nose into, is my handkerchief.” From 1935-1948 Ben Gurion sat in the office that the present incumbent, human rights activist Natan Sharansky sits today. After 1948, the Prime minister and his Secretariat occupied a section in the Jewish Agency building until the Government Offices was built in 1962 on Givat Ram, Jerusalem.
LET MY PEOPLE Go
If Pesach (Passover) is a festival highlighting leadership in a time of adversity, then the Pesach celebrated in 1946 at the Jewish Agency played out with some resemblance to the biblical saga. As Moses asked of Pharoe, “Let my People go”, so did the Yishuv leadership ask of the British Authorities to permit1000 Holocaust survivors at the port of La Spezia in Italy, permission to set sail for Palestine. They were refused and the survivors went on a hunger strike. In solidarity, the Executive at the Jewish Agency joined in. Following the Pesach Seder, a mass demonstration, including many rabbis from all over Jerusalem was held in the square in front of the Agency. Rousing speeches were made from the balcony, where after Chief Rabbi Herzog walked to the High Commissioner and handed over a petition. The story reverberated around the world and the British finally relented. Certificates of entry to Palestine were authorized and a week later, the emerging Jewish state had one thousand new olim (immigrants).
Aba Eban (z”l)
“INGATHERING OF THE EXILES”
One might have imagined that with the establishment of the State of Israel there would no longer have been the need for a Jewish Agency. After all, from 1948, Israel had a parliament and an elected government and no longer required the services of the Agency for local governance. But what the nascent state desperately needed if it was to survive, was people. And it has been in this epic endeavor of promoting and facilitating immigration that has credited the Jewish Agency of a job unique in the annals of human history. At the time of the 1st Zionist Congress in 1897, there were 50,000 Jews living in Palestine. Today, Israel’s Jewish population stands over 6,00,000 long overtaking the United States as the home to the largest concentration of Jews. In the autumn of 1987, a South African, Mendel Kaplan, became Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency. His tenure of eight years in office was marked by several historical events that rank as salvation sagas worthy of biblical comparison – ‘Operation Solomon’ was nothing short of a miracle. For centuries, the Jewish world was not even aware of the existence of an ancient Jewish community in the northern province of Gondor. A total of 14,324 Ethiopian Jews were rescued and resettled in Israel. No less a modern-day exodus was the mass immigration from the former Soviet Union. Jewish Agency emissaries were sent to the far corners of the Commonwealth of Independent States – to communities that had been cut off from organized world Jewry for more than two generations. In a short space of a few years, Russian-speaking people in Israel rose to one fifth of the population with its two most iconic ‘Refuseniks’ from the oppressive Soviet era – Natan Sharansky, today Chairman of the Jewish Agency and Yuli Edelstein, Speaker of the Knesset. On May 8, 2008, at the Israeli government’s 60th Independence Day celebration, the Jewish Agency for Israel was awarded the Israel Prize – the country’s most prestigious civilian prize – for lifetime achievement and special contribution to society and the State of Israel. So, while the building’s façade may be unpretentious, the vitality of all those inspirational and creative people – many of them South Africans – who have worked within its walls, have left a legacy that will long survive the “bricks and mortar” and ensure in the words of Israel’s most illustrious diplomat, Abba Eban, who was born in Cape Town, South Africa: “Israel’s future will be longer than its past.”
