JNF ‘Blue Box’ erases Green Line

One theme on the site is the erasure of the green line in Jewish life – both in Israel and the U.S. The green line demarcates Israel’s internationally recognized border at the 1949 armistice line, and its absence on Israeli and American Jewish maps alludes to a broader Jewish claim over Greater Israel.

As I searched for an image today for Allison’s post on the new $1 billion Jewish National Fund fundraising push, I was somewhat surprised to find that most of the iconic JNF blue boxes fail to show the green line. For those not familiar, the JNF blue box is a ubiquitous grassroots donation collection box found in almost any communal mainstream Jewish space, including many homes. The boxes are a bedrock symbol of the Zionist movement, the JNF even claims the first collection box was Theodor Herzl’s hat.

Here’s what the blue box looks like today:

It even makes its way into JNF educational efforts:

Strangly enough, this box below does include the green line. It is vaguely what I remember the box looking like when I was a kid (in the early 1980s):

The Jewish National Fund’s Israeli website has a photo gallery of blue boxes through the years. This box isn’t there, I wonder when, or where, it’s from?