It is interesting to note that at various stages R’ Baruch Meir joined groups or societies with the aim of buying land or settling in Eretz Israel. The names of the groups/societies were in themselves indicators of the goal of settling in the land.
In his own book, Nakhshoney Hakhula [in Hebrew], Charizman writes that R’ Baruch Meir was among the first enlightened people drawn to the idea of Khibat Zion and
...already in [5679] 1879 R’ Baruch Meir Rozenblum met with friends to found a group for settling in Eretz-Israel named; Nakhalat Sade VaKerem [=The Estate of Field and Vineyard] . In [5683] 1883 the group was founded and was composed of Jews from Miezritch and Brisk D’Lita.
During the 1882 pogroms Baruch Meir wrote:
Many left only to Eretz Israel to till the land and also here in Mezritch 10 people from here joined people from Brisk...
A year later, an emissary is sent by the group to Eretz Israel:
The 1st of Nissan, [8th of April 1883] R'Leib Rabin [Rubin] left here as our emissary, with money, to buy fields for us... [the rest is undecipherable]
Baruch Meir decides to go to Eretz Israel on his own:
On 2nd of Nisan 5644 [28th of March 1884] I arrived here [Eretz Israel] … and rode for the first time to our estate in our Holy land and saw that it was good and blessed…
on Thursday 19 of Sivan 5644 [1884] everybody came to our estate: R' Avraham, R' Shabtai HaCohen with his family and we settled in our house in the moshava Yisud HaMa'ala, may we all be blessed…
Pressed to return to Mezritch he notes the last days of his stay in Eretz Israel, before leaving, recorded on Shvat 5645 [February 1885]
...until now there were reasons I could not sail from here [Jaffa] and the storms in the sea. On Wednesday 19th of the month I was in Yahud and in the colony of Petakh Tikvah . On Thursday [5.2.1885] I boarded the boat to travel abroad, and may the sailing on the sea be blessed..
In May 1890,
people from here [Mezritch] formed a group to buy lands in Eretz Israel, and 7 people, and I among them, were chosen for the committee.
In 1919 he joined the Nakhala uMenukha [= Estate and Rest] group to buy lands in Eretz Israel:
The end of June [1919] I became a delegate of the society Nakhala uMmenukha founded in Miezritch with the intention to settle and till the land of Israel, and I attended the meeting in Warsaw at the Eretz-Israeli Office.
The name of the Mezritch colony in Eretz Israel was Yissud HaMa’a’la. The source of the name is from Ezra 7:9:
כי באחד לחדש הראשון הוא יסד המעלה מבבל
for on the first of the first month was the commencement of the ascent from Babylon. The second part of the verse is: and on the first of the fifth month, he arrived to Jerusalem according to the good hand of his God upon him.
The colonists did not pick this name. The name was “inherited” from a prior group that attempted to purchase a land for themselves but failed.
Land Acquisition Difficulties
Charizman quotes from a letter Baruch Meir wrote to Dr. Hugo Bergman, the administrator of the National Library in Jerusalem:
22 Mezritch members sent two messengers to the Land of Israel to buy land but they did not succeed. The members convinced Baruch Meir to go and he left for the Land of Israel on the month of Kislev 1884.
Charizman describes R’ Baruch Meir’s stay in Eretz Israel and his being forced to return to Mezritch: Besides trying to get a kushan [a bill of ownership, i.e., the title] for his own land purchase --which was very difficult then-- he tried to buy additional plots for the general good.
