Printed Receipt from the Va’ad Kollelot HaSephardim.

(JERUSALEM).

26th Shevat

Jerusalem

1899

Signed in autograph by the leading Sephardic rabbis of Jerusalem: Chief Rabbi Ya’akov Shaul Eliyashar (1817-1906), Rabbi Yosef Nissim Burla (1828-1903); and lay leaders of the Va’ad (also known as the Comite Central des Israelites Sepharadim): Yitzhak Aryeh, Moshe Navon, and Haim Nissim Barukh. A receipt for a donation of £26.66 by Haim Guedella of London.

A scion of prominent Sephardic families, Haim Guedalla (1815-1904) was an Anglo-Jewish philanthropist whose maternal uncle was Sir Moses Montefiore. An enthusiast of Jewish settlement of Eretz Israel, in the late 1870’s Guedalla proposed that the land be purchased from the Ottomans in exchange for its £250,000,000 debt. Although nothing came of the idea, it followed Guedalla’s earlier success in adventurous foreign policy: In 1869, he persuaded the Spanish government to officially permit the return of Jews.