When Bloom takes up a page while waiting in line, he reads
about "the model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of
Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium."
Tiberias is a small city on the western shore of the Sea of
Galilee, in the northeast corner of what is now Israel. Part
of the Turkish empire in 1904, it was one of the centers of
Jewish life in Ottoman Palestine. Modern Jews have long
regarded it as one of four Holy Cities, along with Jerusalem
and Hebron (both holy in biblical times), and Safed (a site of
kabbalistic scholarship after the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain in the 15th century). Many rabbis moved to Tiberias in
the 18th and 19th centuries, making it a vital spot for Jewish
learning and earning it the reputation for holiness. Kinnereth
is another name for Galilee (it means "harp" in Hebrew,
referring to the shape of the lake), as well as a hill on the
western shore of the lake that was the site of an ancient
fortified city.
The ad that Bloom reads describes a farm intended as a
"model" for future settlement of the region, though it would
also make an "ideal winter sanatorium" for infirm Europeans
seeking the benefits of a warm dry climate. It is accompanied
by a photograph very likely identical to the one reproduced
here from the letterhead of the Palestine Land Development
Company, showing a "Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred
cattle cropping. He held the page from him:
interesting: read it nearer, the title, the blurred cropping
cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer." The same
photograph was displayed on stock certificates of the PLDC, as
shown in the second image here. Joyce's paragraph does not
make clear whether the ad is soliciting investments in the
corporation or in the Palestinian properties that it manages.
The ad evidently concerns a business proposition, but it is
also part of a Zionist program to promote more Jewish
settlement of the holy land. The PLDC, founded in 1908-9 (if
Joyce was relying on their photo he was guilty of some
anachronism), was an organization devoted to purchasing
Palestinian land and training Jewish settlers to become
successful farmers. Before the outbreak of war in 1914 it had
purchased about 50,000 dunams and had plans to acquire far
more. (The dunam is a Turkish measure of land equal to
approximately one fourth of an acre.)
Some paragraphs later, as Bloom walks home "reading gravely"
(probably from another spot on the same sheet), the subject is
"Agendath Netaim: planters' company. To purchase waste
sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with
eucalyptus trees." The announcement concerns some
land "north of Jaffa" on the Mediterranean
coast, west of Tiberias and considerably farther south. (The
ancient port of Jaffa is now part of Tel Aviv.) This ad from a
German company (it mentions payment in marks, and the address
is in Berlin) proposes a more complicated economic
transaction. A "planters' company" proposes
to purchase undeveloped land from the Turkish government and
plant it with your choice of agricultural crops: eucalyptus
trees, melon fields, orchards producing oranges, almonds,
olives, or citrons. "You pay eighty marks and they
plant a dunam of land for you . . . Every year you get a
sending of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in
the book of the union. Can pay ten down and the balance in
yearly instalments."
This fictional solicitation to invest in a collectively owned
agricultural project was inspired by actual initiatives. In The
Jews of Ireland, Louis Hyman quotes details from
Marcia Gitlin's The Vision Amazing: The Story of South
African Zionism (Johannesburg, 1950) of a "contract
signed in 1913 between 'Agudath Netayim' (a
variant transliteration) of Palestine, represented by Arnold
Kretchmar-Israeli, and the South African Zionist Federation
for the establishment of a farm on about 600 dunams near
Hadera, which would be planted with almonds and olives."
Investors could pay in installments for their portion (one of
150, four dunams of land each), and in six years the crops
would generate revenue for them (Hyman 188n, citing Gitlin
158-59). Bloom is not about to risk his hard-earned capital in
such speculative (and, perhaps, fraudulent or overpriced?)
ventures, but he is intrigued: "Nothing doing. Still
an idea behind it." The larger idea, behind the
idea for making money, is Zionism.
The mention of "Montefiore" in one of the
ads lends credence to the promoters' claims. Sir Moses Haim
Montefiore (1784-1885) was a wealthy London financier who
retired from business in 1820 and turned his attention to
philanthrophic causes. Using his money and influence to
liberate Jews from political oppression in various parts of
Europe, the Near East, and north Africa, he became an
international hero. Starting in the 1850s he promoted Jewish
settlement in the Holy Land, buying an orchard outside Jaffa
where Jews could learn farming skills, building a settlement
near Jerusalem, and contributing in various ways to the
economic development and wellbeing of existing Jewish
communities in the area. As one of the earliest advocates for
what would become known as Zionism, and a revered model of
sanctity (he became strictly observant after the first of his
many trips to Palestine in 1827), his presence on an ad would
have imparted an air of high moral purpose to the proposed
economic transactions.
