Donation box of the Jewish National Fund (Hebrew: Keren Kayemet LeYisrael). It is made of sheet metal painted blue and has the shape of a cuboid with rounded corners. On the front wall, in the centre, there is a raised embossing depicting a white six-pointed star (commonly known as the Star of David). At the bottom edge, there is a white band with a Hebrew inscription: “Keren Kayemet LeYisrael”. At the top edge, inscribed in a white elliptical field, there is the logo of the Fund, consisting of the three first letters of its Hebrew name. On the back wall, in the centre, there is a painted six-pointed star, and at the bottom edge, a barely legible Hebrew inscription in two lines (LeFred? Zaltzman Yerushalayim?/ Totzeret Eretz Israel – “For Fred? Zaltzman Jerusalem?/ Produced in Eretz Israel”) and an illegible English inscription below. A triangular metal hook is attached to the top edge of the back. The bottom is damaged, bent towards the inside the box (it was initially locked with a key). At the top, there is a slit for donations (cut open and bent).
The box was found in the late 1940s by a group of children playing near the ruins of Jewish tenement houses at Berka Joselewicza Street in Przemyśl. One of the boys removed it from the rubble and took it home. It stayed there forgotten for several decades, hidden deep in a nook in the basement. The finder’s son discovered the box when clearing out the basement and donated it to the Museum collection in 2019.
The Jewish National Fund (Hebrew: Keren Kayemet LeYisrael) is a Jewish financial institution founded in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel. The aim of the fund was collecting money for purchasing and settling land in Palestine. In the interwar period, operating as an official institution, the Fund largely benefited from the support of Zionist parties and youth organisations. It was revived after the war, in 1946. It also dealt with matters concerning reprivatisation and handling inheritance cases of Polish citizens of Jewish descent residing in Israel.
Blue boxes used for raising funds to purchase land in Palestine became the symbol of Keren Kayemet LeYisrael. They were produced and distributed by the Fund, placed prominently in Zionist houses and schools. Putting a coin inside the box before the Sabbath became a weekly ritual.
