FIVE DUNAMIM IN HERZLIYA

Bernie Yenkin, American Friends of Reichman University’s founding supporter, tells his unique story in his own words.

Here we are, in a private upstairs dining room at Lindey’s Restaurant, with five other couples, at a dinner meeting Miriam and I really didn’t want to attend. But now we’re mesmerized by what we are hearing from a certain Professor Uriel Reichman whose presence in Columbus for an educational conference is the reason for this gathering.

It’s August 1999. Miriam and I are both former Board Chairs of the Columbus Jewish Federation, the central address for planning and fundraising to benefit local Jewish agencies serving social and educational needs as well as assisting endangered Jewish populations overseas. A friend, recently back home in Israel after a two-year tour of duty in Columbus as Israel’s emissary to the Federation, and now working in outreach for a college we’ve never heard of, has asked us to join some others in extending hospitality on behalf of the Federation’s leadership to his boss, the college’s founder and president, namely, said Professor Reichman. As a favor we reluctantly agreed to come to this dinner. Professor Reichman is in town to address a large group of educators who are holding their annual conference on the campus of Ohio State University. A graduate of the University of Chicago law school, and a former Dean of the law school at Tel Aviv University, he has been invited to speak at the educators’ conference about the initiative he led (unfortunately not implemented) to make needed changes in Israel’s electoral process. But tonight he is talking to us about his dream, a dream in the process of fulfillment.

Motivated by his frustration with the public universities in Israel, their bureaucratic processes, and their dependence on government funding, he had decided to try to establish a private university that would take no government funding, and thus determine its own course. So, in 1993 the Interdisciplinary Center opened on an abandoned former air base in Herzliya, an upscale community just north of Tel Aviv. Known as “IDC”, it is the first ever private university in Israel, now six years in existence, with a student population of about 3,000 and a faculty comprised of outstanding educators. Professor Reichman’s goal was to educate what would become the future leadership of Israel, and he is succeeding. (We would later hear testimony from Israeli friends and family of the high regard in which IDC is held.) And, unique among the local couples sitting around that dinner table, Miriam and I realize we might have a very personal interest in the future that Professor Reichman is so eloquently setting forth.

Let’s go back 75 years to 1924, more than two decades before the United Nations’ 1947 partition plan that established what would become the State of Israel. Palestine, as it was then known, had been taken from Turkish rule after the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, and placed under the British mandate.

It was populated by both Jews and Arabs. The Jewish population had increased in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, augmented by émigrés escaping the hardships of Czarist Russia, and others who had come from Western Europe to fulfill a dream of a Jewish homeland. They had come, purchased land, and established agricultural communes, largely transforming what had been desert into fertile lands on which they could live and raise their families.

Along with the physical migration, there grew an initiative for the purchase of land by Jews living elsewhere, including in America, who - while not planning to emigrate - also held the dream of a homeland for the Jewish people. Thus, on a July day in 1924, there arrived in Columbus, Ohio, an emissary from the American Zion Commonwealth, a company that had bought a large area of desert and was selling parcels of five dunamim to those interested in owning a bit of land where the Jewish people had its roots. Five dunamim equals about one acre and the cost was $300, payable at $100 per year over three years.

One of the purchasers was a young fellow, 20 years of age, named Abe Yenkin. My father, and indeed the entire Yenkin family, had long wished that there could be a Jewish homeland. They were known as Zionists. Buying the small piece of land in this place that the emissary called Herzliya would form, for my father, a physical attachment. And he did indeed love the idea of owning it. In the years that followed, he carefully made sure that the taxes were paid, and that all was in order in the transition from British rule to the establishment of Israel in 1948. No matter that his five dunamim parcel was not along the beautiful Mediterranean seaside, but instead next to a railroad track.

Years, then decades, passed. In 1961 my father, on a trip to Israel with my mother, first saw his five dunamim. Crops were growing there, tended by a farmer who lived next door. All was in order. When Abe Yenkin died in 1977, ownership of the five dunamim passed to me and my two sisters, who live in Boston. Meantime, beginning in 1968, as board members of various national organizations involved in Jewish education and philanthropy, Miriam and I were making periodic trips to Israel. On some of these, we would take a detour to see the land. There it lay, a road in the front, the railroad tracks visible in the back, crops growing, all quiet.

Occasionally I would receive a phone call from Israel. Someone at the Anglo-Saxon Real Estate agency would ask if we wanted to sell the land. It was zoned as agricultural, so one house would be allowed. I would listen, but then decline. My father had bought the land. We were not interested in selling it.

In 1994, Columbus gained a new sister city: it was Herzliya, Israel. So, on our next trip we arranged to connect with their Sister Cities Department. The representative (I’ll call her Rachel) asked us if we’d like to see the museum, historical exhibits, other venues of civic pride. (Herzliya had emerged as Israel’s high-tech center.) We demurred, asking her just to take us over to see our land. And what a surprise awaited us! The road was still in the front, the crops were growing, but in the rear, on a strip between our parcel and the railroad tracks, their walled-in gardens hiding the tracks, were three large homes.

And, now bordering our property on the south was a gated compound where lived, according to Rachel, a member of the Ofer family, owners of steamship lines and one of the wealthiest families in Israel. When the next call came from Anglo-Saxon the price quoted for our five dunamim had risen to a six-figure amount we never would have anticipated, even though its zoning would still allow only one house.

So, there we were at the August 1999 dinner, Miriam and I listening to Professor Reichman. Can you guess where this is going? Well, it’s even bigger than what you’re thinking. Just two weeks prior, I had received a call from Anglo-Saxon – but this time with some astounding news. Our land had been re-zoned. The five dunamim could accommodate not just one, but seven homes! Its value had increased seven-fold – but what should we do? It was our father’s land. Owning it had brought him much joy.

Professor Reichman was speaking. Miriam and I were looking at each other, the same thought in our heads, in our hearts. After dinner we spoke to Professor Reichman. Yes, he knew exactly where the five dunamim parcel was located; it was very valuable. Yes, it would be wonderful if we wanted to donate it to IDC. It would have a very important use. IDC was growing; it needed to expand its campus.

A large adjacent tract of land was owned by the City of Herzliya. The City would not sell it, but would trade it. Our parcel, with its now increased value, would make a perfect trade.

The next weekend Miriam and I flew up to Boston to talk with my sisters. Sandra and Linda were enthusiastic. This was a perfect way to honor our father’s memory. Abe Yenkin appreciated his Jewish heritage, Israel, and felt strongly about education. This gift would encompass all of these feelings.

But all was not done. Executing the gift had complexities. There were issues on real estate that carried over not just from the British Mandate, but even further back to the Ottoman Empire. Despite excellent legal counsel on all sides, the process dragged on for weeks. In October, Miriam and I went to Herzliya to check the progress. At lunch, Professor Reichman asked us what recognition we might want. We had not thought about that. He suggested “land for land”. So, on a sunny day in May of 2000, Miriam and I, my sisters and their spouses, our daughter Amy, numerous Israeli friends and family gathered with faculty and officials to hear Professor Reichman officially dedicate on the grounds of the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, a newly unveiled “Yenkin Campus”.

The closing of the gift had taken place as planned five months earlier on December 29, 1999, via telephone. Miriam and I were with our family in Telluride, Colorado. Our two Squire, Sanders & Dempsey lawyers were in Columbus and Cleveland. The president of the American Friends of IDC, who was himself a professor at the Wharton School at Penn called in from London where he was on winter break. Two IDC lawyers were on the phone in Tel Aviv.

Professor Reichman was in his office on the campus in Herzliya. The lawyers started the legalities of the transaction. Professor Reichman interrupted.

“Before we start I want to tell you a story – it begins in 1924 with a young man in Columbus, Ohio…”