08/06/2026
Edmond de Rothschild watched helplessly as pogroms swept the Russian Empire. His spiritual beliefs, coupled with the desperate state of global Jewry, led him to pour his time and resources into Palestine, the ancestral home of his people.
By 1900, Rothschild’s network of 21 settlements comprised more than 70% of Jewish-owned land in Palestine.
He did not live long enough to see the fulfillment of the Jewish prayers he and his family had long recited anticipating a Jewish return to Zion.
But when, at 4 p.m. on May 14, 1948, David Ben Gurion declared the birth of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv, he would do so at 16 Rothschild Blvd.