Baron Edmond de Rothschild – HaNadiv HaYadu’a (the Known or Famous Benefactor)

In the early 1880s, Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934) received urgent requests from Chovevei Zion members for financial support to prevent the immanent collapse of the farming villages of Rishon LeZion, Zikhron Ya’akov and Rosh Pina. The Baron responded by underwriting all the expenses of these settlements. Thus, began for him a lifetime of enthusiastic philanthropic work in Palestine and for the Yishuv the crucial support needed for Jewish settlement in Palestine.  

The Baron was born in France, a third child to the founder of the French branch of the Rothschild banking dynasty. He was not involved in the banking business but pursued artistic and philanthropic interests, including supporting several French scientific institutes.

He and his descendants would support 44 communities in then Palestine, including kibbutzim, moshavim and moshavot (farming villages). The Baron approached his projects not as charity but as business ventures. He brought European agricultural experts to advise the settlers. His support was pivotal in planting vineyards and starting major wineries in Rishon LeZion and Zikron Ya’akov. These wineries became among the largest in the world at that time. It is from these beginnings that the wine industry developed as a major industry in Israel, the grape varieties grown in Palestine being imported from France (which is why so many of the wines made in Israel still have French names). He supported the beginning of the industrialization of the country, including a glass factory for making bottles for the wines, this being the first Jewish factory in Ottoman Palestine, although this particular venture did not succeed. He also supported the development of factories for agricultural products and the construction of power stations. It is estimated that his support came to the equivalent of over 50 million dollars in today's currency. The family’s later charitable foundation was called Yad HaNadiv.

He promoted the use of Hebrew in schools. He also encouraged members of the First Aliyah to maintain their connection to Judaism. He said: “Religious yearning is a principle among Jews …. Only a sense of religion can unite all parts of the people …. You were the first to show the way of agriculture to those who will follow you. It is your obligation to show them the way of the Jewish heart.”

He maintained excellent relationships with Arabs on his lands and this paid off during subsequent Arab disturbances. In a letter to the League of Nations in 1934 he wrote: “The struggle to put an end to the wandering Jew could not have as its result the creation of the wandering Arab.”

It so happened that his agricultural enterprises employed Arab labor, and this encouraged large scale Arab immigration into the country from surrounding countries. Some of these families would indeed become refugees when they deserted their properties during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

Twenty years after their deaths, he and his wife were re-interred from France in Ramat HaNadiv Memorial Gardens near the towns of Zichron Ya’akov and Binyamina Givat-Ada. He supported both these towns and both are named in his honor – Yaakov (James) was the name of his father and Ada (Adelaide) his wife.

At the ceremony for their reinterment, prime minister Ben Gurion said: “I doubt that, in the entire history of the Jewish people in the Diaspora, a period of 2,000 years, one could ever find a man comparable in stature to the incredible character that was Baron Edmond de Rothschild.”