Auction 52
Lot 096:
Yesud HaMa’alah, “telling from the beginning of the Aliyah that I carried out together with 11 Jewish farmers to establish a moshav for farmers in the Holy Land and what I saw and understood in the 170 days that I resided in the Holy Land and in the moshavs already established and the cities in which Jews dwell.”
Title page lists “Part 1” but it appears that no further sections were printed. 2, 236 pages. Catalogued in the Rare Books section of four libraries.
Written by Rabbi Yehiel, known as the Bril, and even printed as his own printing press, to encourage donations to the settlement of the land. After the title page is an exciting inscription: “to my friend, over of our people and the land of our forefathers…the Nadiv HaYashar, this book of mine which I wrote in the Holy Land was born in my childhood in France…you awoke in me to write this book and I put it in front of you…this book tells of your chesed with me from when I saw you as a volunteer working for the Yishuv of the Land of Israel…”. At the beginning of the book are four questions commonly asked about the settlement of the land “asked of me by almost all Jewish writers”, the last of which is especially interesting (especially when thinking historically), as to whether the desire to move to our ancestral land only causes hatred by the non-Jews who are wont to see us as traitors(!).
New binding, title page and a number of pages are detached, overall good condition.
The author Yehiel Bril (an abbreviation of his father’s name, ben Rabbi Yehuda Leib) lived 1836-1887, was a journalist and activist. He founded the HaLevanon periodical and was a leader of Hebrew journalism in Israel. At the beginning of the 1880s he began working on behalf of the idea of establishing moshavim of Jewish farmers in Israel. Together with Rabbi Shmuel Mohaliver, he worked to establish Mazkeret Batya. He returned to Israel with 11 of the moshav’s first families. He documents his efforts in this book.
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