קהילת יהודי האג

Henricus Jacobus Kann (1872-1945), banker, founder of Zionist movement in Holland and in 1909 original purchaser of the land on which Tel Aviv was founded. Kann, a direct descendant of Rabbi Moses Kann, head of the Frankfurt on Main yeshiva in the 18th century, was born in The Hague, Netherlands, to a wealthy assimilated Jewish family. The family mingled freely with non-Jews, among whom were also members of the Dutch Parliament and government ministers. His personal views were progressive in terms of equality and human rights.

Kann was the owner of Lissa & Kann, an important private bank which served, among others, the Dutch Royal family. Zionism probably saved them from further assimilation. It offered them a positive Jewish identity in a highly idealistic setting that was very similar to their other fields of activity. He came to devote most of his time to Zionist affairs, to board memberships in the Jewish community and educational matters in The Hague.

Kann, along with his brother Eduard, attended the first Zionist congress in 1897, and he became the driving force behind the foundation of the Dutch Zionist Federation in 1899. Kann visited Eretz‫ ‬Israel for the first time in 1907, while it was still part of the Ottoman Empire. Kann documented his journey in his book “Eretz Israel, the Jewish Land”, which was published in 1908. Included in the book was a proposal to establish “Jewish autonomous home rule” in Eretz Israel, an unprecedented and daring political plan that even caused some unrest in the Zionist Movement itself.

When Kann heard that Theodor Herzl was planning to set up a Zionist bank, he offered his professional skills, and Herzl came in person to meet with him in The Hague. Kann became a main player in the foundation of the Jewish Colonial Trust (1899) and served on its board until 1929. When the Anglo-Palestine Company (APC) – the banking subsidiary of the Jewish Colonial Trust – was incorporated, Kann was involved in the launching of its first branch in Yafo (Jaffa), in 1903. He also served on the Anglo-Palestine Company’s Board of Directors. Kann, together with David Wolffsohn and Otto Warburg, constituted the Inner Action Committee that ruled over the Zionist Movement after Herzl’s death. He held that position from 1905 till 1911, and it is during this period that Kann purchased the ‘Kerem Jabali’, north of Yafo. The purchased land stayed in Kann’s possession until he sold it to the members of the ‘Ahuzat Bayit’ association.In 1909, he met a young accountant, Eliezer Siegfried Hoofien, who had only just established himself in Amsterdam. Hoofien was to became vice-director of the Anglo-Palestine Company in Yafo, under Zalman Levontin and eventually became Director of the Bank Leumi, as the APC was now known, until 1957. In 1910, Kann founded the first hachshara organization in the Netherlands. That same year he also engaged the services of a civil engineer of the Dutch government, A.A. Meijers, who was engaged to design an irrigation project for the development of the Audja plain, situated along the banks of the Yarkon river between Yafo and Petah Tikva. The area’s proximity to Yafo made it ideal for orange plantations for export purposes. Betzalel Yaffe, one of the members of ‘Ahuzat Bayit’, was involved through his activities with an irrigation company. Kann further instructed Meijers to design development plans for Jerusalem, not only in connection with its water supply, but also with electrical street lighting and an electrical tramway. Kann estimated that millions of Jews would eventually immigrate to Palestine. This, he felt, could only be realized by providing the scarcely populated and undeveloped Holy Land with viable workplaces and an appropriate western-style infrastructure.

A typical practical Dutchman, Kann disapproved of wastage and he expected projects to become self-sufficient and profitable as soon as possible. He therefore strongly criticized the idealistic development projects in Kineret, Merhavia, Degania and other places. But his strong involvement also took a heavy toll on his health. In 1911 Kann suffered a heart attack and left the Inner Action Committee together.

Kann became once again very active during the First World War, when the Jewish National Fund was relocated to neutral The Hague. With the help of Dutch diplomatic channels, rescue money for the suffering Jews in Palestine was transferred to the Yafo branch of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, whose manager, Hoofien, had been appointed Dutch Consul. After the war, from 1918 until 1922, Kann served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Anglo-Palestine Bank. It was then that he paid his second visit to Palestine, in 1919. During this second journey to Palestine, Kann attended several sessions of the Zionist Commission. On one occasion, he tried to convince Dr. Chaim Weizmann of the need to change the Zionist Movement’s approach towards the Arabs. Arabs, he believed, would form an integrated minority with full civil rights in a Homeland, in which the Jews would achieve an overall majority by mass immigration. Kann expressed his views on the Zionist Commission’s tasks in particular in the area of education. Kann advised the Commission to start a public school system in which Jews and Arabs, the Jewish Homeland’s future inhabitants, would learn together in both Hebrew and Arabic. He opposed the development of two separate nationalistic educational systems.

Kann arrived to Israel for a third time in 1924 to live there. He had been looking for a suitable way to make aliya, and was nominated by the Dutch authorities as Consul of the Netherlands in Jerusalem. However, in 1927, after spending three years in Palestine, the Kanns were forced to return to the Netherlands due to serious health problems. After the bloody Arab riots of 1929, Kann fiercely criticized the British administration for building up an exclusively Arab police force, while leaving the Jews unprotected and even disarming them. But at the same time he once again condemned the “chauvinistic elements in Zionism”, and he voiced his endorsement of the ideas of Judah Magnes, the first president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who was a follower of Ahad Ha’Am and an ardent pacifist. Kann continued to strive for peaceful Jewish-Arab coexistence in a bi-national state.

Both Jacobus and Anna Kann were murdered by the Nazis in Theresienstadt, he in 1944 and she in early 1945. Their three children were all murdered in concentration camps.

Nehemia de Lieme (1882-1940) Economist and Zionist.

Born in The Hague he entered the banking business and in 1904 founded a workmen's insurance bank which developed into the largest of its kind in Holland. He also founded in Amsterdam the International Institute for Research on Socialism. Joining the Zionist movement in 1917, he became honorary secretary of the Dutch Zionist Federation in 1909 and from 1912 was its chairman. His major contribution to the Zionist movement was his work with the Jewish National Fund and he served as its executive director when its headquarters were moved to The Hague in 1919. From 1920 De Lieme was a member of the Zionist Executive but resigned soon after when his economic policies clashed with those of Weizmann. In 1938 he resigned his membrship of the World Zionist Organization to protest its acceptance in principal of the policy of partition.

The Israeli Kibbutz Sede Nehemia in the Hula valley, is named after Nehemia De Lieme.

Carel Asser (1780-1836), jurist, the son of Moses Salomon Asser, born in Amsterdam and died in The Hague, Holland. Asser studied law and philology at the Athenæum at Amsterdam. After obtaining his doctor's degree in 1799 Asser practiced law in Amsterdam; he was one of the first Jews to become lawyers after the establishment of the Napoleonic Batavian republic. His reputation was established when he conducted a brilliant defence of a certain Mascel of Dordrecht who had been accused of blasphemy when expressing doubts about the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity.

When he was sixteen years old he helped his father to found the Felix Libertate, a society which worked for the emancipation of the Jews of Holland and he joined his father in signing a petition on the matter which was sent to the States General in 1796. This step was vigorously opposed by Daniel Cohen d'Azevedo, rabbi of the Portuguese community of Amsterdam, and also by Jacob Moses Loewenstamm, rabbi of the Ashkenazim, who were afraid that political emancipation would result in the assimilation of the Jews. As a result of the petition the National Assembly passed a law conferring full civil rights on the Jews. Another result of the emancipation was a split between the orthodox and reformed minded Jews of the city. Carel and his father became members of the new Reform congregation, Adath Jeshurun. In 1807 Asser was one of three delegates sent by the new congregation to the Sanhedrin in Paris. On his return home he was commissioned by Napoleon to write a report of the condition and wishes of the Jews in Amsterdam, and to investigate the the possibility of the reunification of the congregations.

Asser recommended the establishment of a central consistory for the Jews in Holland. This was authorized by royal decree in 1808. He drew up the constitution of the consistory at the request of Louis Napoleon. The same year Asser was appointed director of the second division of the Ministry of Public Worship. After Holland regained its independence in 1813 he became a member of the Amsterdam consistory and he was appointed a member of the commission to draft regulations for the Jewish community. In 1828 he was appointed president of the Supreme committee of the Jewish congregations of Holland.

In 1811 Asser was made justice of the peace in the first district of Amsterdam. For twenty-one years from 1815 Asser held senior positions in the Department of Justice at The Hague and from 1831-1836 he was appointed secretary of the Department of Justice. n 1827 he wrote "Précis Historique sur l'Etat des Israélites du Royaume des Pays-Bas", a historical review of the condition of the Jews in Holland. He also wrote several books on aspects of Dutch law including a comparison of the Dutch and French civil codes.

His wife Rose Levin was the sister of well-known German -Jewish writer Rahel Varnhagen von Ense (1771–1833) who hosted one of the most prominent salons in Europe during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She is the subject of a celebrated biography, "Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess" (1958) by Hannah Arendt. Arendt cherished Varnhagen as her "closest friend, though she had been dead for some hundred years."

סם דרזדן (1881-1957) מלחין. נולד באמסטרדם, הולנד, למד בברלין והיה למנהל הקונסרבטוריון והאקדמיה המלכותית של אמסטרדם (1937-1924). לפני 1935 הלחין מוסיקה קאמרית ומוסיקה למקהלה, ובמרכזה מקהלה טרגית (1927) שנושאה חורבן ירושלים. בשנים 1950-1935 הלחין סדרה של קונצ'רטי. אחר-כך יצר עוד את הבזקים של ריקוד לתזמורת (1951) ומקהלה סימפונית לזמרים סולנים, למקהלה ולתזמורת (1955). נפטר בהאג, הולנד.

Nathan Feinberg (1895- ? ), international jurist, born in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania (then part of the Russian Empire). Feinberg studied international law in Zurich and Geneva, Switzerland. At the age of 24 he was appointed to head the legal department of the Ministry of Jewish Affairs in Lithuania. In 1922 he was secretary of the Commite des Delegations Juives in Paris. When he came to live in Eretz Israel in 1925, he opened a private law firm specializing in international law. Between 1931-1933 he lectured law at the University of Geneva.

In 1931 Feinberg was appointed lecturer in international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and from 1947 he lectured there on international law. He became professor in 1949. From 1962 he represented Israel in the International Court of Arbitration at The Hague, Netherlands. Feinberg published many works concerning the minority status of the Jews in Europe between the first and second world wars, on problems of international law arising from the British Mandate in Palestine, and on legal aspects of the Arab-Jewish conflict.