| B’nai B’rith and Israel: An Unbroken Covenant of More Than 140 Years
 In its hour of crisis, B’nai B’rith stands firmly with the people of Israel. B'nai B'rith International has just launched an Israel Emergency Fund in response to events in Israel and the Gaza Strip. The goal is to raise funds to assist Israeli residents and to help meet the ongoing personal needs of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers fighting in Gaza. For more information, click here. This is the latest in more than a century of activity, assistance, and involvement, on the part of B’nai B’rith International, in the State of Israel.
It began as early as 1865, when a severe outbreak of cholera hit the small Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael and threatened to wipe it out entirely, B’nai B’rith, in what was our first short-term overseas philanthropic act, contributed $4,522 — an extremely large amount of money for its time, especially from an organization barely twenty years old. Our quick action saved the community.
Less than 25 years later, in 1888 - ten years before Theodore Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress - a group of men came together to establish B’nai B’rith’s first lodge in what was then Palestine. Known simply as Yerushalayim (Hebrew for Jerusalem), the lodge was formed by some of the top thinkers in all of Palestine; men like Eliezer Ben Yehudah, the father of modern Hebrew; David Yellin, founder of the Hebrew Teachers Seminary; and Meir Dizengoff, one of the founders and the first mayor of Tel Aviv.
Thus was laid the foundation for an unrivaled record of service and commitment to the Jewish state. It is a record that has included:
• The Midrash Abarbanel Library, the city’s first free public library. Established in 1892, this was to become the Jewish National and University Library.
• A contribution in 1934 of $100,000 to buy 1,000 acres of land. This unprecedented act by American Jewry’s largest organization gave vital concrete support to a continuing, hopefully permanent, Jewish presence in Palestine, and was followed by an additional $100,000 in 1941, a year before the State was established.
• Arranging - through the intervention of B’nai B’rith member and Truman friend Eddie Jacobson - of a clandestine meeting between World Zionist Organization President Chaim Weitzman and U.S. President Harry Truman that paved the way for U.S. de jure recognition of the State of Israel, despite powerful objections by the State Department.
• Shipment of shipload after shipload of food, clothing, medical supplies, and jeeps to the fledgling state when the Arab world declared war immediately after Israeli independence was granted.
• The sale of millions of dollars worth of Israel Bonds — more than any other Jewish organization - during the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War.
• Planting more than a-million trees to form the B’nai B’rith Martyr’s Forest, in the 1950’s, as a memorial to our members who had perished in the Holocaust.
• Establishing the B’nai B’rith World Center in 1980 as a response to the UN Security Council supported the Arab-backed resolution not to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
• A continuing presence in the United Nations and world bodies from Europe to Latin America to speak out on behalf of Israel’s right to exist in peace with the world.
• Innumerable community service projects throughout the Jewish State aimed at providing assistance to Israeli soldiers, orphans, and families.
B’nai B’rith members in more than 50 countries - including Israel - have had the Jewish State in their hearts and minds for longer than any other organization. It is a commitment to which we pledge to cling in perpetuity.
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