Politics—Foreign and Domestic

In the Spring of 1946, it became clear that the United States at last had a foreign policy that was definite in at least one respect: it was against Russian expansionism. The United States would no longer mediate between the Soviet Union and Great Britain. It was not simply supporting Britain. It was now taking the lead. The struggle for power was now fairly obviously one between the Soviet Union and the United States, with Great Britain as the junior English-speaking partner.

At the moment when the sharpest skirmish in this struggle was taking place in the Near East, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry arrived in that part of the world. The Committee was charged only with suggesting a solution to the problems of Jewish refugees. It could hardly be expected that Palestine’s contribution to this solution would be determined purely on its merits or that the impassioned pleas of Jews and Arabs would be considered without reference to their effect on the larger struggle.

With the Committee winding up its hearings and starting actual preparation of its report, a hiatus seemed to descend on Jewish political life. The Committee’s recommendations, which would undoubtedly become the official policy of the English-speaking powers, would have a profound effect on Jewish organizational life everywhere. Its effect in Palestine was obvious. But it would also be felt in all countries because everywhere relations among politically conscious Jews had been deeply affected by the controversy over an immediate commonwealth in Palestine.

In the United States Jewish life had been wracked by unprecedented bitterness. A “Jewish commonwealth” in Palestine had become the official Zionist platform on May 17, 1942. Opposition to this position from other Jews came to be considered by Zionists not simply a difference of opinion, but an act of treason.

Dr. Julius Morganstern, president of the Hebrew Union College of Cincinnati, opened the academic year in the fall of 1945 with the comment that insistence on a Jewish commonwealth had resulted in “a division in American Israel more pronounced and intolerant, and with issues and antagonism more clearly and aggressively defined than ever before”.

On November 8, 1945, the executive committee of the American Jewish Conference, to which a large number of Jewish organizations belonged, referred to the activities of the American Jewish Committee and the American Council for Judaism as “sabotage of the aims and hopes of the Jewish people.”

In an article in the November 1945 issue of Jewish Frontier, highly regarded publication of the American Labor Zionists, dealing with opponents of the current Zionist line and entitled “The Little Foxes,” Ben Halpern, managing editor, concluded melodramatically: “History will know how to judge those who, wittingly or unwittingly, stabbed them [the Jewish people] in the back. Jews today also know.”

Representative Emanuel Celler of Brooklyn on the floor of the House on December 19 said: “A commonwealth does not mean all Jews must go to Palestine. That is absurd. Some of our smug, self-satisfied economic Bourbon Jews say that. They speak falsely.”

At the convention of the Zionist Organization of America, Dr. Israel Goldstein, retiring president, referring to the American Council for Judaism, said that “nothing will convince that handful of obdurate, phobia-ridden creatures of the baselessness of their phobias save the actuality of the Jewish commonwealth itself.”

Such talk reflected the feeling of some Jews toward other Jews after the end of World War II brought an intensified campaign for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine.

_____________

The Drive for Unity

During this period Zionists engaged in the most vigorous effort ever seen in American Jewish life to marshal every Jewish group into unity behind their aims.

But unity, in an organizational sense, was something American Jews could hardly achieve. Being of necessity voluntary associations, Jewish organizations could not be joined under one slogan or formula. Furthermore, there were groups who in principle believed that it was only on a religious basis that Jewish life should be organized, and who vigorously opposed Jewish organization on any other basis. And there were others who thought of themselves as “pro-Palestine” or even “pro-Zionist” but for one reason or another opposed the immediate demand for a Jewish state.

When Hitler came to power, however, most Jewish organizations began to feel that there was urgent need for unified action against anti-Semitism at home and, if possible, for the protection of Jews abroad. Out of this feeling came a federated organization including nearly all shades of Jewish opinion and calling itself the American Jewish Conference. A tenuous unity was maintained until the Conference took a position in favor of an immediate Jewish commonwealth. At that point, the American Jewish Committee felt it it had to leave.

From then on, recrimination became uninhibited. Extreme points of view gained. Jews who had been simply vaguely pro-Zionist became partisans of the most militant Zionist positions and reacted with emotional violence to all opponents of Zionism—Jewish, Arab or Christian. At the same time, some Jews who had simply been passively anti-Zionist decided it was time for a formal organized assault on Jewish nationalism.

About this time the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism was founded under the presidency of Lessing J. Rosenwald, eldest son of Julius Rosenwald, the late head of Sears Roebuck. The American Jewish Committee, trying to keep its mind on the job of protecting Jewish rights everywhere, found itself caught between the two extremes. The Committee had lost its most active anti-Zionist members to the Rosenwald organization. The American Jewish Committee’s position emerged more clearly as middle-of-the-road: it was for large-scale immigration into Palestine and implementation of the Balfour Declaration, but it was not for an immediate Jewish commonwealth in Palestine, though it did not actively oppose it.

_____________

Jewish Civil War in the Press

In New York City, with the largest Jewish population in the world, efforts to rally the Jews for Zionism were the most vigorous. Internecine struggles among Jews were carried on in the press. It was to be seen almost daily in the pages of the New York Post, published by Mrs. Dorothy Thackrey, granddaughter of the late Jacob H. Schiff. During the six months preceding April 1, 1946, the Post printed twenty-five full-page advertisements dealing with some aspect of Jewish politics. Anybody with 500 dollars could take a full-page ad in the Post and seek supporters and contributions for a scheme that would solve all the problems of the Jews.

To both Jews and non-Jews unfamiliar with Jewish organizational life, the picture became confusing. Organizations with the most ambitious advertising programs and the most ingenious publicity men tried to achieve an importance in the public mind that they did not have in actual fact.

The most persistent and resourceful of these promoters was Peter H. Bergson, chairman of the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation. Mr. Bergson regarded himself as the head of a “Hebrew” nation in exile. His group, at this juncture trying to carry water on both shoulders, evolved a distinction between “Hebrews” as “nationals” of a Hebrew nation in Palestine and Jews as adherents of a religious faith who could live in any part of the world including Hebrew Palestine. Mr. Bergson, former member of a Palestinian terrorist group, enjoyed little support among Jews. But, through the promotional activities of his Committee and of his American League for a Free Palestine, of which former Senator Guy M. Gillette of Iowa was chairman, he was able to command attention.

_____________

Recrimination

The bitterest Zionist denunciations were reserved for the American Council for Judaism. A much discussed example came after the Council published its program in a full-page advertisement in the New York Post on November 20, 1945. The statement was a serious presentation of the Council’s position free from abuse and personalities. The Zionists replied officially a week later in a full-page advertisement taken by the American Zionist Emergency Council, over-all organization of the four largest Zionist groups. The ad contained a brief statement from Albert Einstein in which he accused the Council of trying “to obtain favor and toleration from our enemies by betraying true Jewish ideals,” and compared the Council with the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith which, according to Einstein, “in the days of our crucial need showed itself utterly impotent and corroded the Jewish group by undermining that inner certitude by which our Jewish people could have overcome’ the trials of this difficult age.

The ad then sought to brush off the Council because Lessing J. Rosenwald had been a member of the America First Committee. It failed to point out that Einstein was against the official Zionist position for a Jewish state, and that a number of supporters of Zionism, such as Senator Robert Taft, co-author of the resolution supported by the Zionists and adopted by the Senate in December, remained supporters of the America First Committee long after Rosenwald resigned.

The Zionists took the position that the American Council for Judaism was of no importance, but at the same time they never lost an opportunity to attack it. One of the sharpest exchanges came on the matter of whether Zionists owed a dual national allegiance. In his testimony before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, Rosenwald raised the point that if all Jews were entitled to immigration into Palestine “as of right,” they had a privilege that no other American citizens enjoyed. Rosenwald’s statement brought Rabbi Stephen S. Wise to his feet to insist on the unusual privilege of an immediate reply. He read a statement made by the late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis denying that Zionism involved double allegiance. Rabbi Wise concluded by saying: “Your charity, Mr. Chairman, your kindness, to the witness of a moment ago does not cover up or cancel the defamation of the dead involving his basic utterance that Justice Brandeis and Justice Cardozo, were among the dead, and I and Justice Frankfurter, among the living, and my associates, that we are guilty of double allegiance. In the name of 5,000,000 American Jews I resent that defamation of the dead and the living alike.”

When Rabbi Wise sat down, Justice Joseph C. Hutcheson, American co-chairman of the Committee, quietly remarked: “I knew Mr. Justice Brandeis. He was a temperate man and a man who had the utmost respect for the views of others. I had the pleasure of calling him my friend. I think his outstanding characteristic was that he respected the opinions of others though they differed with us.”

Later, a group of Jewish chaplains denounced the Council for insinuating that “Zionism tends to diminish the full measure of devotion” of chaplains who supported Zionism. “Such an accusation,” their statement said, “comes with particularly bad grace from an organization which numbered amongst its leadership men who did not respond to the call of the responsible Jewish commission to serve in the chaplaincy.”

The remark was intended to impugn the patriotism of Rabbi Elmer Berger, executive director of the Council, for his failure to become a chaplain—an accusation which when made had touched off a fierce controversy in the Anglo-Jewish press. He had volunteered but been medically rejected.

_____________

Pioneers

The principal contribution of American Jews to Palestine had been financial’. Since the establishment of the mandate, they had made available a total of $155,000,000. Of this amount more than $110,000,000 went as gifts through major Jewish organizations in the United States; about $45,000,000 were private Jewish investments. The total accounted for more than a quarter of the foreign capital invested in Palestine.

On the other hand, Jews from the United States provided only a tiny fraction of the immigrants to Palestine. During the years 1922-44, 8,507 Jews from the United States entered Palestine out of a total immigration of 347,500.

Though the urgent plea for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine was based on the homelessness of European Jews, Zionist spokesmen during the winter of 1945-46 began trying to recruit young pioneers from America “to help build and defend” Palestine. To a farewell celebration in New York’s Carnegie Hall for twenty young men and women who were leaving the United States to become Palestine pioneers, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, president of the Zionist Organization of America, sent this message:

The hour demands more than financial aid for the upbuilding of Palestine. The Yishuv now looks to us for some of the strong hands, stout hearts and alert minds needed for the continued progress of the Jewish National Home. We are being called upon to bring to the Yishuv some of that pioneering spirit which is so uniquely characteristic of America and its people. I am confident that many of our young men and women will hasten to answer this call.

David Ben Gurion, chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, appealed to American Zionists to organize a movement for large-scale emigration of Jews from the United States to Palestine “in order to fill the gap caused by the destruction of European Jewry.”

Junior Hadassah, the Young Women’s Zionist Organization of America, decided to contribute actively to an “influx of healthy American youth to Palestine by organizing a special organization to nurture the pioneering spirit among its members, to advise them and train them in preparation for going to Palestine as pioneers.”

Through the efforts of the Hechalutz Organization of America, a group that trained American pioneers for Palestine, American veterans were enabled under the GI Bill of Rights to study in Palestine at the Haifa Technion or the Hebrew University.

And in a Harlem gymnasium in New York City, young Zionist Revisionists, militant advocates of a Jewish state on both sides of the Jordan River, were trained in drill, jiu jitsu, map-reading, Palestine geography and topography, radio communications, Jewish history, Hebrew, Arabic, wrestling and hand-to-hand fighting. Their open objective was to get to Palestine by legal or illegal methods. Pictures of these young American men and women in foreign-looking uniforms were given large display in the New York press. By any standard they were news. Almost all sectors of Jewish life were disturbed by these pictures and by what they seemed to reveal about the ultimate logic of the extreme Zionist position.

This activity was not allowed to pass without protest. The American Jewish Committee, in a statement of “profound dissent,” said: “The Jews of the United States are an integral part of America and cannot countenance the idea of emigration of Jews of America to any other country in the world.” The American Council for Judaism, pointing out that Americans had contributed money for the resettlement of displaced Jews, opposed depriving any of them of immigration certificates to Palestine in order to make it possible to resettle American Jewish youth in Palestine.

_____________

The Apostate

Along with the growth of Zionist sentiment as a reaction to the decimation of European Jews, there was among American Jews an intensification of Jewish self-consciousness and national feeling, sometimes tinged with chauvinism and isolationism.

One of the extreme examples of the operation of this tendency was the excoriation by American Orthodox rabbis of the writings of Sholem Asch, the most widely known Yiddish writer of the day. Asch’s efforts to find an integral relationship between Judaism and Christianity were examined by the Beth Din of America, the tribunal of the Orthodox rabbinate. The rabbis found him to be “a renegade from the fold of Judaism” and declared:

We do hereby declare the writings and epistles of Sholem Asch as heretical and un-Jewish. We furthermore caution our brethren’ of the Household of Israel to be wary of his apostacies and shun his literary effusions.

Observers noted the growth of the number of full-time students in Jewish parochial schools.

_____________

Advisory Budgeting

The division among Jews on Zionism was reflected in Jewish welfare organizations. How this struggle affected nonpolitical Jewish life was best illustrated in the controversy over a national advisory budgeting service for local Jewish philanthropies. Money for Jewish philanthropic work was raised by local groups and the allocation of this money was also determined locally. Apart from purely local welfare work, Jewish communities also raised money for national and overseas purposes. The bulk of non-local funds was allocated to the United Jewish Appeal, the largest part of whose allocation went to two organizations: the Joint Distribution Committee, a purely relief organization operating on a worldwide scale, and the United Palestine Appeal, which in turn distributed its allocation to organizations engaged in building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A third group, the National Refugee Service, which engaged in aiding and adjusting refugees to the United States, received the smallest share of funds.

For many years the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, the central national organization of Jewish philanthropic groups, had reviewed the budgets and activities of recipient organizations and presented its findings to local federations. It had long been proposed that, in addition to factual findings, the Council also make definite recommendations to local federations concerning the allocation of funds. These recommendations would be advisory, not mandatory.

This additional step was strongly opposed by the Zionists. It was described by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver as “a serious threat to Palestine and Zionist fulfilment.”

The proposal seemed sound and progressive in 1941 and was approved in a referendum of member agencies of the Council by a vote of 135 to 119. But in view of the size of the opposition, the plan was not put into practice in full. The proposal again came before the Council at its general assembly in February 1946. Here it was defeated by a vote of 264 to 53.

The Zionists opposed the proposal because they feared that Zionist causes would not get what they might consider a fair share of the sums collected. Zionists felt that their influence was stronger in local communities than in the national organization where, they held, both non-and anti-Zionist sentiment was over-represented. Zionists were credited with organizing the successful opposition to national advisory budgeting under the slogan of a call to thrust back an invasion of local autonomy. The issue was not simple. Zionism was not the sole ground on which it was fought, and the Zionists themselves were not agreed on the basis of their opposition. But the defeat of national advisory budgeting was taken to be another indication of the rise of Zionist influence in American Jewish life.

_____________

United for Welfare

None of these controversies, however, had any effect on the vigor and growth of closely united Jewish activity in the welfare field. American Jews were contributing more money than had ever been raised before. National and overseas organizations asked for a total of $140,000,000 for 1946. The largest item was the $100,000,000 drive of the United Jewish Appeal.

Other campaigns included an effort to raise $15,000,000 in the next five years by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America for “the spiritual rehabilitation of Jewry.” Also, a $5,000,000 campaign for Yeshiva University in New York; a $5,000,000 campaign by the Vaad Haatzala, Orthodox Jewish group, for the specifically religious aspect of Jewish relief work in Europe; $4,000,000 for the American ORT Federation, to train and equip Jewish refugees with tools and machinery; $5,000,000 for the Joint Defense Appeal, to support the program of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; $3,000,000 for the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society; $1,000,000 for the Jewish National Fund; $3,000,000 for supplies and machinery to be sent to Biro-Bidjan, autonomous Jewish region in the Soviet Union; $200,000 for the Palestine Labor League.

These drives were in addition to the campaigns for purely local health and welfare needs in Jewish communities. New York’s Federation of Jewish Philanthropies led off in January with the collection of $23,500,000, the largest amount ever obtained in a single campaign for health and welfare needs by a private philanthropic organization in a single city. Of the total raised, $9,000,000 was for current maintenance expenditures of the Federation’s 116 member agencies, and the remainder was for a building fund. Other communities were making commensurate efforts.

_____________

International Agreement

It was possible to find a large measure of agreement among Jews even on many aspects of the overseas problems. Late in February, a conference of Jewish organizations met in London with fifty-seven delegates from seventeen organizations in thirteen countries. In addition to Western Europe delegates came from the United States, Argentina, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria.

One of the most interesting aspects of the conference was the fact that it was held at all. It was called by the American Jewish Committee and its non-Zionist British counterpart, the Anglo-Jewish Association. Neither of these organizations represented or claimed to represent the bulk of the Jews in their respective countries. The Jewish organizations in the nations invited had generally been considered bound to the World Jewish Congress, a strongly Zionist body. But it turned out that none of these groups considered themselves tied to the World Jewish Congress, and were quite willing to confer under other auspices.

The conference was called for a frank exchange of views and information in the hope that existing areas of agreement would be enlarged. The conference passed no resolutions and made no decisions; nothing it did was considered binding on the organizations represented.

The delegates were a highly mixed group. Their views included almost all shades of opinion on Jewish problems, and also the full spectrum of general political opinion, from Tory to Communist. Whatever seemed to be the general sentiment of this group was undoubtedly the minimum united program of most Jews throughout the world.

The reports to the conference on which there seemed to be general agreement favored large-scale immigration into Palestine and the removal of restrictions on Jewish land purchases. They also agreed that displaced persons in Germany and Austria should be evacuated immediately and resettled in countries of their choice.

_____________

The Inquiry

The hope of an immediate Jewish state in Palestine seemed to disappear completely with the testimony of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organization, before the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry in Jerusalem. Asked whether he believed that a Jewish state should be established at once, the Zionist leader, who is also an Englishman, said:

No. What I want is the abolition of the White Paper and the beginning of immigration and settlement. I want to bring in a maximum number of European Jews during a transitional period, eventually leading to a Jewish state, after a Jewish majority has been realized.

He added he was not interested in the “trappings” of a Jewish state, but wanted “state power” for Jews to develop the country.

David Ben Gurion, chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, expressed his view in these terms:

Our aim is not a majority. Our aim is a Jewish state. By a ‘Jewish state’ we mean Jewish soil, Jewish labor, a Jewish economy, Jewish schools, language and culture. We also mean Jewish security. We mean complete independence.

The Jews, Ben Gurion said, would never renounce these claims.

In Cairo a week earlier, Abdul Rahman Azzam Bey, spokesman for the Arab League, had been equally emphatic. He told the Committee of Inquiry that all the Arab states were implacably opposed to any further development of any kind toward a Jewish homeland or state in Palestine.

The Balfour Declaration, said Azzam Bey, was “merely a unilateral personal message” from Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild and was invalid because Britain did not then possess Palestine.

_____________

Familiar Routine

In Palestine, meanwhile, the war of the Jews against the British authorities settled down to a familiar routine. There would be an attack by members of the Haganah, the resistance movement which supported the Jewish Agency, on “a military objective” such as a radar depot that had been spotting ships carrying illegal immigrants. Immediately after the attack, the Voice of Israel, the secret radio transmitter of the Jewish resistance movement, would describe the attack, give the reasons for it, the results, the casualties, and other relevant information.

Then the Palestine authorities, with virtually unlimited emergency powers, would act. Police and troops would cordon off the area and throw a dragnet over it. They would impose a curfew, and check all traffic from this point to that. They would hold a large number of persons for questioning. They would conduct house-to-house searches and make an appropriate number of arrests. Then they would begin to release those held for questioning, beginning with the government officials, foreign consuls and visiting American oil men who were picked up because they were wearing European clothes. In the end a handful might remain in custody.

If the attack resulted in any Jewish deaths, there would be a huge, silent throng at a public funeral. There might also be a protest against police misconduct. Then things would quiet down. The curfew would be lifted, things would return to an appearance of normality, and everybody, Jews, Arabs and the British, would wonder what was going to happen next.

Sidney Hertzberg