Despite B’nai B’rith’s interest in the Holy Land, it took time for the organization to take root in Ottoman Palestine. B’nai B’rith America’s first project in Eretz Yisrael was fundraising for victims of a cholera epidemic in 1865. Efforts to establish a strong B’nai B’rith presence in the Holy Land began in earnest only some two decades later, however, and they were led by Zigmund Semmel, a B’nai B’rith leader in Germany. Inspired by both his 1887 visit to Jerusalem and the inauguration of the Ben Maimon Lodge in Cairo, Semmel planted the seeds in a conversation with author, educator, and anti-assimilationist Wilhelm Herzberg from Berlin. Herzberg had been invited to replace Charles Netter as head of the Mikveh Israel agricultural training school in 1876. Three years hence, in 1879, Herzberg moved to Jerusalem, where he founded the first Jewish orphanage, also known as the Berlin Orphanage.
Almost a decade later, in 1888, Herzberg invited nine of Jerusalem’s leading Jewish national revivalists to his home. Among them were Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, lexicographer of the first Hebrew dictionary; Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn, a Talmud teacher at the German-speaking Lemel School; and David Yellin, who opened the city’s first Hebrew college for teachers. Together they established the Jerusalem Lodge of B’nai B’rith, with Herzberg as president.
B’nai B’rith Jerusalem was the first organization in the Yishuv to conduct its meetings in Hebrew. In addition, members had to be able to support themselves, and their children were not allowed to attend schools run by Christian missionaries (then the sole source of free secular education). B’nai B’rith of America recognized the Jerusalem branch as lodge 376 – the numerical value of the Hebrew letters of the word shalom.
B’nai B’rith’s Jerusalem Lodge focused on providing alternatives to the education and medical care offered by missionaries. It campaigned for a Hebrew-speaking kindergarten and Jewish vocational training, and in 1892 it opened the Midrash Abarbanel Library, which later led to the establishment of the Israel’s National Library. Motza, a new neighborhood west of the city, was also a Jerusalem B’nai B’rith initiative. The Lodge also established other lodges in the region: Sha’ar Zion in Jaffa, the Galilee Lodge in Tzfat, and Cedars of Lebanon in Beirut. A branch later opened in Haifa; Aaron Aaronsohn, world-famous botanist and founder of the Nili spy ring, founded another in Zikhron Yaakov, his hometown.
A women’s lodge, named for the founder of Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization of America Henrietta Szold, opened in Tel Aviv in 1937. It was one of several women-only lodges, and its members included prominent women such as Manya Bialik, wife of poet laureate Hayim Nahman Bialik. Among their short-term aims was the construction of a youth clubhouse in Jaffa’s Neve Golan neighborhood, funded by B’nai B’rith chapters all over Europe. The structure, now a thriving community center providing Jaffa with cultural, educational, and sporting activities, is still called B’nai B’rith House. A few descendants of the original members of the Henrietta Szold Lodge still meet there weekly, though the Lodge itself no longer exists. .
By Ilan Schori