Page 214 - ISRAEL'S CRADLE

The Tu Bishvat celebrations in Jerusalem were also related to the square in front of the National Institutions. The children of Jerusalem gathered there for a short ceremony, from which they continued to various corners of the city in order to plant saplings they brought with them.
Funerals Processions
By contrast, the passing of funeral processions of key personages through the courtyard of the National Institutions Building in Rehavia, became the custom in the Thirties. The first to receive this honor was the renowned pre-Zionist leader Yehudah Leib Pinsker, who was considered one of the fathers of the Hovevei Zion Movement. Pinsker, a physician by trade, published the "Auto- Emancipation" pamphlet in 1882, in which he first preached that the People of Israel must take control of its destiny and set out on an independent path in its own country.
He headed the "Hovevei Zion" organization when it was established, and served in this position until his death in 1891. In the summer of 1934, his remains were brought to the Land of Israel and buried in the Cave of Nicanor on Mount Scopus, but prior to that, the funeral procession passed in the streets of Jerusalem and stopped at the National Institutions' courtyard. Many hundreds of school children from Jerusalem had previously arrived at the square, and they were joined by many of the city's residents and the residents of other cities and settlements throughout the Land of Israel. "Haaretz" Newspaper wrote: "The day on which the bones of Dr. Pinsker were brought to Jerusalem became a magnificent display of admiration to first and foremost leader of the revival period." Speeches were made before the crowd surrounding the coffin by Yitzhak Gruenbaum, a member of the Jewish Agency's Executive who had recently made Aliya from Poland, and by Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the Chairman of the Jewish National Council, who said: "Pinsker, who passed away 42 years ago, is now brought to the bosom of his homeland, to the pantheon of Jerusalem, the pantheon of generations."
Ten years later, in the summer of 1944, a much larger funeral procession passed through the National Institutions' courtyard. The deceased was Berl Katznelson, of the heads of the Labor Zionism movement, Editor in Chief of the daily newspaper "Davar" and was in fact the spiritual leader of the Workers' Movement in the Land of Israel. He died suddenly during a visit to Jerusalem at the age of 57.
His funeral procession began at the workers' buildings in Rehavia, where workers stood vigil over his bed throughout the night. At 7:00 AM, the leaders of the Histadrut in Jerusalem bore his bed, over hundreds of meters, to the National Institutions Building. The bed was placed in the head office of the KKL-JNF, as the deceased had been one of its key players for many years.
Thousands of friends, admirers and "common folk" paid their respects until the noon hours. The hall in which the deceased was placed was in mourning, with all of the pictures covered in black cloth. Two flags were placed on the bed and the body – the national flag and the red flag
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