"Israel A History Of The Jewish People" Part 2 of 2

"Israel A History Of The Jewish People" Part 2 of 2

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE 

In Czarist Russia 



VIEWED against the somber back-drop of eighteen centuries 
of scorn and proscription, the middle decades of the nine- 
teenth century, the decades of emancipation, were like the 
dawn of a new day for the ghetto prisoners of western and central 
Europe. The ghetto walls had come down and the prisoners were 
stepping out to share in ever-growing measure in the life of the 



IN CZARIST RUSSIA 451 

nations. The current of hope ran high and strong: words like 
"culture," "enlightenment," "progress," and "humanity" were ut- 
tered with conviction; and the long centuries of the past were like 
a black night which made the approaching day appear all the 
brighter. For such is the way of men: past woes they quickly for- 
get, and they paint the future in the hues of their hopes and desires. 
But the new dawn, true or false, was for the Jews of western and 
central Europe only, with the largest aggregation still in eastern 
Europe, where the waves of revolution rolling out of France broke 
without effect, and repression and persecution continued to flourish. 

By far the greater part of the million Jews that made up the 
Polish community found itself, after the final partition of Poland 
in 1795, under the scepter of Czarina Catherine II. It was an ironic 
trick of fate for Russia to be endowed with so many Jews. For 
centuries, that country had denied them the right of domicile 
within its borders, although in practice the policy was not always 
completely enforced: the general economic welfare, especially in 
Little Russia, depended too much upon the Jewish merchant. 
Those rulers who, like Peter the Great (1682-1725), might have 
followed a more liberal policy, were not disposed to antagonize 
the clergy, who harked back with dread to a period in the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries when nobles and even priests of the Ortho- 
dox church were powerfully attracted toward Judaism. The official 
policy was epitomized in the reply of Catherine's predecessor, Em- 
press Elizabeth (1741-1762), daughter of Peter the Great, to a 
petition to permit Jews to settle in Russia for the wealth they 
would add to the country. "From the enemies of Christ," said the 
pious Elizabeth, "I desire neither gain nor profit." 

Saddled now with hundreds of thousands of these "enemies of 
Christ" and with millions of hardly more welcome Polish Catho- 
lics, Empress Catherine II, who liked to mouth liberal phrases, 
promised religious liberty to all her new subjects "and certainly to 
the Jews also." But Catherine's religious liberty did not include the 
right to settle in "Holy Russia," or to trade on equal terms with 
Christians. Jewish merchants were taxed twice as much as others, 
and in 1791, even before the second partition of Poland, the first 
of a series of edicts was enacted which established the infamous 
"Pale of Settlement," restricting die Jews to certain provinces of 



45* EMANCIPATION 

the enlarged empire, most of them carved out of former Poland, 
and setting up a wall of police vigilance which barred all of them 
except a privileged few from the rest of it. 

But even in the Pale the Jews were not permitted full freedom 
of domicile. As early as 1808, it became the policy of the govern- 
ment to exclude them from the villages and herd them into the 
congested cities, where they were forced into competition with 
Christian merchants and artisans and with each other. For a century 
thereafter, the periodic expulsions from the villages, to which the 
czars and their minions resorted, brought misery and ruin to 
numberless Jewish families and only added to the hardships of the 
peasants in whose interest the policy was professedly applied. Very 
early, also, the government promulgated laws which reduced the 
powers of the local kahals: they were saved from total extinction 
only because they were found useful as tax-collecting and recruit- 
ing agencies. 



THERE were three czars in Russia during the first half of 
the nineteenth century. In 1796 Catherine was followed by her 
unbeloved son Paul I, whom, five years later his officers murdered. 
Then came Alexander I, whose reign, which lasted till 1825, cov- 
ered the Napoleonic period. Alexander's ambition was to be known 
as "the first gentleman of Europe." He loved to pose as a liberal 
and utter pious sentiments which Metternich knew how to utilize 
to promote his reactionary system. The third was Alexander's 
brother Nicholas I (1825-1855), whose reign of three decades was 
a Thirty Years' War against his Jewish subjects. 

Under Paul I, the Jews became the objects of official solicitude, 
which they had good reason to suspect and fear. A number of 
investigations into their condition were conducted by Derzhavin, 
a statesman and pious poet, whose general attitude is expressed in 
the following sentence which occurs in his report: "Inasmuch as 
Providence, to attain its unknown ends, leaves this people, despite 
its dangerous characteristics, on the face of the earrfi, and refrains 
from destroying it, the government under which it takes refuge 
must also suffer it to live.'* The Polish nobles, asked by Derzhavin 
to state their views, shifted the responsibility for die misery of 



IN CZARIST RUSSIA 453 

their serfs from themselves, where it belonged, to the Jewish 
innkeepers. 

The accession of the "liberal" Alexander I aroused great hopes, 
and in 1804 he approved a far-reaching statute which aimed at 
nothing less than a metamorphosis of his Jewish subjects. It set out 
to change overnight, as it were, their occupations, language, habits, 
and even their garb. The statute, which became known as the 
"Jewish Constitution," desired above all to make farmers of them, 
and to this end, Astrakhan and the Caucasus were added to the 
eleven provinces which constituted the Pale of Settlement. Public 
schools and universities were opened to them, they were permitted 
to establish secular schools'of their own, and were required to use 
Russian, Polish, or German in the conduct of their business or in 
communicating with the authorities. But the law further curtailed 
the powers of the kabals and, worst blow of all, it provided that 
by January 1808, the villages of the Pale must be cleared of all 
Jewish inhabitants. Czar Alexander was highly pleased with the 
statute: the Jews, he felt, owed hirtl a debt of gratitude which he 
hoped they would repay by producing at least one Russian 
Mendelssohn. 

As the day set for the expulsion from the villages approached, 
the alarm among the Jews increased. The government gave the 
victims a short reprieve: it feared they would welcome the armies 
of Napoleon who were already marching through the Polish 
provinces of Prussia. But in the Treaty of Tilsit of July 1808 
Napoleon and Alexander came to terms, and shortly afterwards 
the expulsions began. They were an impressive demonstration of 
the brutality and stupidity which even a well-meaning Czarist gov- 
ernment could display. The victims, it is reported, "were driven 
like cattle into the towns and cities and left there in public squares 
in the open air." There being too many of them to maintain them- 
selves in the cities, they would, it was expected, turn to farming. But 
there was no land for them, not even means of transportation. 
Several small agricultural settlements had, it is true, been estab- 
lished in the south, but the government would provide no funds 
for additional ones. From every standpoint, including that of 
improving the lot of the peasants, the expulsions were a dismal 
failure and were so branded by an official committee which put a 



454 EMANCIPATION 

stop to them. "It is not true," the committee reported, "that the 
village Jew enriches himself at the expense of the peasants." 

But a more compelling reason arose for ending the expulsions. 
The Treaty of Tilsit proved to be a short and uneasy truce, and 
in 1812 Napoleon's "Grand Army" was on the march, sweeping 
across Lithuania and White Russia, both regions thickly inhabited 
by Jews. But if Napoleon expected them to flock to his standard 
as he did when he invaded Palestine thirteen years earlier, he was 
again mistaken. The prospect of emancipation, which the triumph 
of his arms held out, failed to attract them. For with all their dif- 
ferences, Chassidim and Misnagdim were agreed that emancipation, 
which would open the door of European secularism to their chil- 
dren, would undermine the Jewish faith. Instead, Jews fought in 
the Russian armies and served them as purveyors and intelligence 
agents. In government circles a more favorable attitude came into 
evidence, and representatives of the kahah were able to secure cer- 
tain concessions, including the suspension of some of the drastic 
measures prescribed in the "Jewish Constitution" of 1804. But 
the better day which seemed to be dawning for the Jews of Russia 
was blotted out by the black reaction that followed the Congress 
of Vienna. That Congress, moreover, ceded to Russia the greater 
part of the former duchy of Warsaw, delivering new masses of 
Jews to the tender mercies of the czars. 

3 

IN THE last decade of his reign, Alexander's liberalism was 
overshadowed by a religious mysticism out of which grew the Holy 
Alliance of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. The monarchs of those 
three lands bound themselves to be guided by "Christian principles" 
and to govern their subjects in a spirit of love, even as a father 
governs his children. In practice, however, the Holy Alliance 
became a powerful instrument of oppression. The same mystic 
trend led the czar to conceive an ardent desire to bring about the 
conversion of his Jewish subjects. He became the patron of a 
"Society of Israelite Christians" which was founded in 1817, and 
the following year, at the conference of the European powers 
which was held in Aachen, he laid before the diplomats a plan for 
the emancipation and conversion of the Jews which had been pre- 



IN CZARJST RUSSIA 455 

pared for him by the English missionary Lewis Way. The con- 
ference did not reject Way's plan. It even adopted a resolution 
recognizing "the justice of its general tendency" and recommend- 
ing the problem as "one which must claim the attention equally 
of the statesman and humanitarian." The diplomats knew how to 
honor the czar's mood with well-sounding but meaningless phrases. 
In the meantime, strangely enough, the czar was compelled to 
take note of the fact that many of his subjects were moving in the 
opposite direction and adopting some of the rites of Judaism. They 
were the Subbotniki, "Sabbatarians," who practised circumcision 
and observed as their -sabbath the seventh day of the week instead 
of the first. The sect had long been in existence, and in 1812 was 
even recognized by the government. Toward the end of his reign, 
however, Alexander made a determined attempt to suppress it. 
Thousands of Subbotniki were exiled to Siberia and the Caucasus. 
Jews were forbidden to employ Christian domestics lest they should 
become "Judaisers," and those living in districts where the sect 
flourished were banished. The old poKcy of herding them into the 
towns was also revived; in 1824 thousands were brutally expelled 
from the villages of the provinces of Moghilev and Vitebsk. A 
government report on the effects of this expulsion, issued ten 
years later, contained the following statement: "While it has 
ruined the Jews, it does not in the least seem to have improved the 
condition of the villagers." 

4 

WITH all these barbarities, Alexander's reign left a good 
memory, for the reign that followed was a veritable nightmare for 
the Jews of Russia. Nicholas began by suppressing a military 
revolt, and for thirty years held Russia in a vise of steel. What he 
meant for his Jewish subjects is indicated by the fact that, of the 
600 laws bearing on Jews enacted in Russia between 1640 and 
1 88 1, more than half were decreed during his reign. 

In foreign policy the "iron czar," as Nicholas I was called, was 
an ardent collaborator of Count Metternich, and his domestic 
policy was controlled by the ultimate aim of Russianizing all his 
subjects and gathering them under the wings of the Greek Ortho- 
dox Church. All changes were to be imposed by the autocrat and 



456 EMANCIPATION 

accepted without question, and it goes without saying that the 
more "different" any group of his subjects might be, the harder 
would this policy bear down upon them. 

The most "different" were undoubtedly the Jews. Not only 
was their religion different, but also their language and even their 
garb, of which the long coat or caftan was the principal feature. 
The economic pattern of their life was different, lacking as it did 
a basis in agriculture and largely restricted to trade and handicrafts 
in the cities, and innkeeping in the villages. With a way of life 
rooted in a remote past and minutely regulated by the sacred code 
of the Shulcbm Aruch, innovation would be tantamount to sacri- 
lege and compliance to apostasy. In other lands of the Diaspora the 
"peculiar" character of this people was usually taken for granted: 
whether tolerated or resented it was regarded as immutable. Now, 
however, a powerful government proposed to change it: Nicholas I 
of Russia set himself the same goal which two thousand years 
earlier had been essayed by Antiochus IV of Syria, 

5 

THE first and most direct measure for the attainment or the 
goal was a decree issued in 1827 imposing a drastic system of mili- 
tary service upon the Jews. It was the infamous "cantonist" system, 
by which Jewish boys under eighteen, many of them not yet in 
their teens, were drafted into the army and exiled for twenty-five 
years or more from their homes, to which most of them never 
returned. The system was really a variant of the simpler method 
discovered by the Pharaoh of the Exodus, who ordered that "every 
son that is born ye shall cast into the river." 

Not until a century later, when the Germans displayed their 
skill in the arts of torture and mass murder, was there a more 
fiendish contrivance inflicted upon the Jewish people. Legally a 
cantonist was the son of a soldier, the property of the state, who was 
trained from boyhood for the army; but any Jewish boy was liable 
to conscription as a cantonist. Upon each community a definite 
quota of conscripts was imposed, for which the local kahal was held 
strictly accountable and, in case of default, the officers of the kahal 
were themselves often conscripted. 

But the real purpose of the system, in spite of the flowery 



IN CZARIST RUSSIA 457 

phrases with which the decree attempted to cover it, was plain 
enough. The youths and small children, torn from their homes, 
were to be compelled to renounce their faith, and the means to be 
employed to that end could be easily imagined. Throughout the 
Pale, the helpless communities were thrown into panic. Mothers 
hid their little sons wherever they could, and youths fled into the 
forests where they were hunted like animals. A rumor shortly arose 
that early marriages were about to be prohibited by government 
decree, for this custom, which was prevalent among the Jews, 
made many youths heads of families and conscription more diffi- 
cult. Thereupon, fathers and mothers made frantic haste to marry 
off their children. The behala, or panic, continued to grow. 

Despite the terrible pressure to which they were subjected, the 
kahals were unable to deliver their quota of conscripts and, as in 
every social upheaval, a class of debased creatures came forward 
to feed on the suffering of their fellows. They were the professional 
chappers, or "captors," who went about kidnapping youths and 
little boys in order to fill the quotas. Nor did the chappers confine 
themselves to boys of twelve and over, as the law required. They 
tore little ones as young as eight from the arms of their parents, 
and delivered them to be sent away as cantonists. 

The victims were dispatched to distant provinces of the empire, 
far from the Pale of Settlement; but large numbers, probably more 
than half of them, never reached their destination. They succumbed 
to disease, to the hardships of the journey, to the brutality of their 
conductors. Those who reached the camps were put in charge of 
trainers, whose principal function was to make them consent to 
baptism. It was no easy task, so they starved and flogged the little 
conscripts, kept them endlessly awake, let them suffer thirst after 
feeding them with salted fish, compelled them to eat pork, and 
practiced other tortures upon them. Communication with their 
parents was banned, and the baptized and unbaptized were kept 
strictly apart. Naturally, very few of those who held out against 
baptism survived. 

6 

THE war against the Jews on the economic front was in no 
way relaxed. Early in the reign of the "iron czaf*," thousands of 



EMANCIPATION 

them were expelled from the villages in the provinces of Grodno 
and Kiev, from the city of Kiev proper, and from the fortified 
cities on the Black Sea. The "Statute Concerning the Jews," enacted 
in 1835, in which the existing laws were assembled and new ones 
added, narrowed the Pale of Settlement, limited the right of Jewish 
merchants to sojourn in cities outside the Pale, and restricted stil) 
further their right to employ Christian domestics. Hebrew books 
were subjected to censorship, and later in his reign Nicholas even 
prohibited his Jewish subjects from letting their earlocks grow or 
wearing the caftan. The autonomy of the kahals was abolished, 
although the officials were allowed to remain in order to collect 
taxes and furnish conscripts. 

The climax of humiliation and injury came in 1852 when the 
Jews of the empire were divided into "harmful" and "harmless," 
the former to become the objects of new persecutions. They were 
saved in a measure by the outbreak of the Crimean War. In that 
war, thousands of Jewish soldiers died for a ruler who was their 
enemy in a much truer sense than the French and British soldiers 
whose cannon they faced. 

Some of the laws, like those aiming to abolish the cherished tra- 
ditional garb or limiting sojourn in cities outside the Pale, were 
easier to enact than to enforce. They only furnished a corrupt 
bureaucracy with additional opportunities for blackmail, and the 
total effect of the expulsions, restrictions, and extortions was to 
drive the Jewish masses in the towns and cities of the Pale from 
i condition of poverty to one of destitution. 

7 

IN THE former grand duchy of Warsaw, the lot of the 
Jews was, prior to 1831, better on the whole than that of their 
brothers in Russia. The duchy had been transformed by Alex- 
ander I into the Kingdom of Poland, with himself as king but with 
a large measure of autonomous rule. 

Many of the Jews in the kingdom looked forward to speedy 
emancipation and, in emulation of their brothers in western Europe, 
not a few of them sought to "deserve" the boon by shedding their 
Jewish "peculiarities." They called themselves "Poles of the Mo- 
saic Persuasion" or "Old Testament Believers." David Friedlaender 



IN CZARIST RUSSIA 459 

of Berlin, who was looked upon as wearing the mantle of Moses 
Mendelssohn, was even officially asked to submit his views on 
emancipation: he remained true to his zeal for Reform by recom- 
mending that the Jews surrender their traditional way of life before 
being granted civil equality. The recommendation was entirely to 
the government's taste, and instead of granting emancipation, the 
restrictions to which the Jews were subjected were tightened. 
Nor could the "Old Testament Believers," with all their servility, 
gain the exceptional status for themselves which they sought. 

When in 1831 the Poles took up arms for their independence, 
the aristocratic leaders of the revolt rejected a plan to organize a 
Jewish regiment, for which a call had been issued by Joseph 
Berkovich, son of Berek Yoselovitch, the man who raised the 
Jewish regiment which fought for Poland in 1794. Nor were they 
admitted into the regular army; and in the militia, -which many of 
them joined, they had to operate as separate units. 

With the suppression of the revolt, the kingdom, though not yet 
formally abolished, became virtually a Russian province, and the 
policy of oppression and Russianization was gradually extended 
over it. In 1843, the twenty-five year term of military service was 
imposed upon the Polish Jews, though they were spared the 
atrocious cantonist system, and two years later the tax on the 
traditional garb was also levied upon them. 

8 

IN THE meantime, the blood libel had made its way into 
"Holy Russia," where it found congenial soil. The cantonist system 
had, in addition to the "captors," produced a crop of depraved 
renegades and informers who joined forces with local demagogues 
to fasten the libel on individuals and entire communities. A hideous 
case which dragged on from 1823 to 1835 was fabricated in the 
town of Velizh, province of Vitebsk. On the instigation of the 
governor-general of White Russia, and with the aid of "testimony" 
furnished by prostitutes and apostates, a fantastic web of false- 
hoods was prepared, in which the leading families of the com- 
munity were enmeshed. In 1826 Nicholas ordered the synagogues 
of the town closed and all religious services suspended. It was only 
after the case was reviewed by the Council of State, the highest 



460 EMANCIPATION 

court of the empire, that the prisoners who had survived the ordeals 
to which they were subjected were released, and the synagogues, 
which had been closed for nine years, reopened. In 1853, the city 
of Saratov in central Russia was the scene of another blood accusa- 
tion, bringing torture and penal servitude to a number of inno- 
cents, of whom the last survivor was only pardoned in 1867 in 
response to an appeal made by Adolphe Cremieux to Nicholas" suc- 
cessor. 

9 

SERGIUS UVAROV, the czar's Minister of Public Instruction, 
satisfied himself that the cantonist system and the other coercive 
measures of the government were not sufficient to bring about the 
"radical transformation" of the Jewish people which he and his 
master desired. The root of the evil, he found, was the Jewish 
educational system, with its emphasis on the Talmud, which pre- 
served their separateness. Uvarov had heard of the "enlighten- 
ment" and the reform which flourished in the West, of the secular 
schools for Jewish children in Prussia and Austria. He became 
convinced that the transformation policy would succeed only if 
the cheder and yeshivah were abolished and replaced by a system 
of government schools, where the children would be alienated 
from the influence of the Talmud and from all that made the Jews 
a separate people. With one hand the autocrat was to swing the 
knout of persecution, and with the other hold out the gift of 
"enlightenment." In 1 840, therefore, a decree was issued ordering 
the establishment of a system of crown elementary and secondary 
schools for the Jews of Russia. 

For the success of his "benevolent" project, Uvarov depended 
to a large extent on the handful of "enlightened" Jewish intellec- 
tuals who were already to be found in Russia; but for his principal 
adjutant he chose Max Lilienthal, a native of Bavaria and a gradu- 
ate of a German university. Lilienthal, still in his twenties, had 
already proved his ability as head of a modern Jewish school in 
Riga. In 1841, and again the following year, Lilienthal, at Uvarov's 
behest, visited the leading communities of the Pale in an effort to 
persuade them that the government meant well by them. He was 
eminently unsuccessful. He himself had been beguiled into accept- 



IN CZARIST RUSSIA 461 

ing Uvarov's professions of good faith, but the Jewish masses and 
their leaders knew what to think of favors that were being offered 
to them by the same hand that was snatching away their children. 
"You are a stranger/' the leaders of the Vilna community told 
Lilienthal in 1842. "Do you know what you are doing? The 
government intends to have only one religion in the empire." In 
Minsk it was pointed out to him that without equal rights, general 
culture would only add to the woes of the Jewish youth. They 
would balk at the inferior positions which alone were open to them 
and finding no solace in their religion, many of them would seek 
a solution in baptism. 

That such was the real aim of the government eventually became 
clear to Lilienthal also. In 1845 he turned his back on the Russian 
officials and their favors, and migrated to America. In the meantime, 
however, the system of crown schools had been set up, as well as 
two seminaries to train "modern" rabbis and teachers. The cost 
of maintaining the schools was passed on to the Jews in the form 
of special taxes on kosher meat and sabbath candles. The tradi- 
tional schools and academies, though not immediately abolished, 
were marked for extinction, and inducements were offered to 
parents to send their children to the new schools, one form of bait 
being a reduction in the length of military service for their gradu- 
ates. 

The great majority of parents, however, saw in the crown schools 
a Trojan horse, loaded with enemies who were bent on destroying 
the only thing that gave their martyred life meaning and consola- 
tion their faith. Against the passive resistance of the masses the 
schools were helpless, and before the reign of the "iron czar's" 
successor ended they were all abolished. 

10 

IN GERMANY, France, and England, Jewish leaders had, like 
Lilienthal, begun by assuming that Uvarov's educational projects 
were conceived in good faith. Some even hailed them as marking 
the advent of a new era for the Jews in Russia, and the famous 
artist Moritz Oppenheim was commissioned to paint a picture, 
symbolizing the dawn of the new day, for presentation to the czar. 
The picture was never finished. The new wave of persecutions, 



462 EMANCIPATION 

which included expulsions not only from the villages but also from 
the towns and cities of the western frontier zone, abrogation of the 
powers of the kahals, and imposition of new taxes on a people 
already pauperized, spoke louder than pious phrases. But might not 
the martyred Jews of Russia be helped by the intercession of their 
influential coreligionists of the West? In London the attempt was 
considered worth making, and in 1846, Sir Moses Montefiore, 
whom the Damascus Affair had already made famous, traveled to 
Russia with a personal letter from Queen Victoria to Nicholas. 
The czar received Sir Moses in audience, and his journey through 
the cities of the Pale was a triumphal progress, with official recep- 
tions by the local authorities and enthusiastic demonstrations by 
the Jews, who were thrilled by the visit of the world-famous 
philanthropist. When it was all over, Sir Moses submitted a number 
of proposals for the relief of his persecuted people, but the czar 
and his ministers left things as they were. The same year Isaac 
Altaras, a wealthy merchant from Marseille, sought permission 
for large numbers of Jews to leave Russia and settle in Algiers, 
where the French government was prepared to welcome them, but 
this effort also bore no results. From the "decadent" West, Holy 
Russia listened to advice with official courtesy, but with secret 
resentment and scorn. 



CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR 

Russianization and "Enlightenment" 



THE reign of Nicholas I was no exception to the rule that 
aggression and war go hand in hand with tyranny. His 
decisive help in crushing the Hungarian revolt of 1849 
had already earned him the designation of "gendarme of Europe," 
and to this distinction he was anxious to add the title of "protector 
of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire." The occasion tor assert- 
ing his protective urge was a series of quarrels between Greek 
Orthodox and Roman Catholic monks over holy places in Palestine. 



RUSSIANIZATION AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 463 

But neither France nor England, not to speak of Turkey, were 
convinced that the czar's intentions were purely benevolent, and 
in the Crimean War (1854-56) which followed, Russia was hum- 
bled and the corruption of the czar's autocracy exposed. 

To secure more Jewish conscripts for that war, a new fiendish 
contrivance was devised. It extended immunity from conscription 
in return for seizing Jews without passports, of whom there were 
many, and dragging them to the recruiting stations. The abuses to 
which the regulation lent itself, and the temptations it roused, had 
the hideous effect of making Jews prey upon each other. 

The death of Nicholas I, which occurred while the war was still 
in progress, made his son Alexander II (1856-1881) the "Autocrat 
of all the Russias." The youthful Alexander, however, seemed to 
be made of more humane stuff than his "iron" father; besides, the 
humiliations the war inflicted on Russia had a chastening effect on 
the government. The first ten years of the new reign, therefore, 
were marked by a policy of liberal reform from which the Jews 
also benefited. The emancipation of the Russian peasants from the 
medieval serfdom in which they were still held, the introduction 
of zemstvos or provincial assemblies, with power to share in local 
government, and a radical revision of the worm-eaten and chaotic 
judicial system of the country, were the three principal reforms 
during that period. 

For the Jews, the first year of the new reign saw the abolition 
of the atrocious cantonist system, together with most of the other 
special conscription regulations from which they suffered, includ- 
ing the one which permitted the seizure and summary conscription 
of those without passports; but children who had already been 
forced into baptism were not permitted to return to their parents' 
faith. The classification of the Jews into "harmless" and "harmful" 
was suspended, and the Pale of Settlement was gradually extended. 

Members of certain occupational categories were even permitted 
to settle in cities outside the Pale. The privilege was first granted 
to leading merchants and their families, and extended in time to 
university graduates, artisans, distillers, apothecaries, and dentists. 
In 1870 the privilege was further extended to include those who 
had performed military service. However, complete equality was 
ruled out; in granting the concessions, the controlling motive was 



464 EMANCIPATION 

not so much to benefit the Jews as to meet the demand in the 
interior of Russia for capital and men of enterprise, as well as for 
mechanics and members of certain professions. 



GRATEFUL as the Jews were, these measures brought relief 
to only a tiny fraction of the masses who were still permitted no 
escape from the congestion and poverty of the Pale. Their numbers 
moreover, largely as a result of early marriages, continued to grow, 
and by 1860 probably four million of them were living under the 
scepter of Alexander II in the Russian provinces and in Poland. 
The futility of attempting, by force or guile, to wean them away 
from their faith was now apparent to the czar and his ministers. 
Nevertheless the government clung to the crown schools of the 
previous reign, not so much as a means of conversion as of cultural 
assimilation, and the attempts to suppress the cheder were contin- 
ued. In time, however, the ministers realized that they were en- 
gaged in a losing fight, and by 1873 the crown schools were all 
closed. 

Nor did the Jewish masses receive with any more eagerness the 
"enlightenment" which some of their own people urged upon them. 
For the government policy of Russianization found zealous sup- 
porters among those who, by wealth or education, had won the 
right of residence outside the Pale and were striving to adapt the 
teachings of Mendelssohn to their people in Russia. Among them 
were some who scorned and ridiculed Talmudic as well as Chas- 
sidic Judaism, urging a complete break with the Jewish way of 
life in return for the small favors they already received and the 
bigger ones they expected. In St. Petersburg, as Leningrad was 
then called, a number of them organized in 1863 a "Society for 
the Diffusion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia," which 
soon had branches in Riga, Kiev, Odessa, and other cities. Among 
its founders were the banker and philanthropist Joseph Ginsburg 
and his son Baron Horace Ginsburg, the "Rothschilds of Russia," 
who gave liberally to promote its program of making Russian 
the language of the Jewish masses, helping them to become farmers 
and artisans, and modernizing the education of the Jewish young. 
The Society included the promotion of Hebrew literature among 



RUSSIANIZATION AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 465 

its aims but its basic purpose, as explained by Leon Rosenthal, 
another one of its founders, was to eradicate certain "peculiarities" 
of the Jewish masses, in particular their "separateness and fanati- 
cism" which, he declared, were responsible for the disabilities from 
which they suffered. 

The Society was only one of many manifestations of the trend 
toward secular culture and away from those "peculiarities," a 
trend which gained ground especially during the first, or liberal, 
period of the reign of Alexander II. In increasing numbers, the 
youth flocked to the high schools and universities where they 
quickly absorbed the literary and scientific culture of Europe and 
even more quickly renounced the traditional learning and mode of 
life which had kept their people alive through the ages. The govern- 
ment did not yet set limits on the admission of Jews to the higher 
institutions of learning: it counted, and not in vain, on their grati- 
tude to further its policy of Russianization. But if the government 
was pleased with their enthusiasm for Russian culture, it found 
cause for alarm in their equal enthusiasm for the social and political 
doctrines which were seeping into Russia out of the West. In their 
youthful and heady fervor, they saw the Messiah of socialism and 
universal brotherhood coming up on the horizon, and they treated 
the Messiah of their fathers with scorn and ridicule. 

And among them were not a few who proceeded to hasten the 
advent of the new Messiah or the Revolution. They joined the 
movement of the radical Russian youth which, taking for its watch- 
word "To the people!" went to live among the peasants in order 
to prepare them for the great day; nor were they absent from the 
bolder revolutionary circles and ventures which attracted the 
watchful attention of the police. Their world outlook was universal, 
and with regard to their own people they were fully persuaded 
that the over-all salvation of Russia would not pass them by. In 
later decades, some of them even advanced the slogan that "the 
wheels of the revolution must be lubricated with Jewish blood." 

3 

THE same forces which lured the generation in western 
Europe, now operated on many of the young in Russia: the gravi- 



466 EMANCIPATION 

tational pull which a dominant majority exerts upon a suppressed 
minority; the fascination of the new learning and the hope it held 
out to the disfranchised; the influence of catchwords like "en- 
lightenment and progress" versus "obscurantism and superstition"; 
the tendency to accept uncritically whatever enjoys the approval 
of the privileged. In Russia, however, the multitudes stood like a 
wall against the innovations, clinging to their "peculiarities" as 
their most precious possessions, and in their distrust df the inno- 
vators, rejecting their counsel out of hand, without regard to the 
merits of whatever they proposed. The purveyors of "enlighten- 
ment" forfeited the confidence of the masses by flouting their 
religious sentiments, nor did they scruple at times to invoke the aid 
of the government in their war against the "obscurantists," espe- 
cially against the Chassidic rabbis and their "courts." The rift was 
even more conspicuous in Poland. In Warsaw the wealthy and 
educated few curried favor with the Poles not only by asserting 
their Polish patriotism on every appropriate and inappropriate 
occasion, but by rejecting their Jewish nationality. They preached 
Polonization to the Chassidic masses who, of course, turned a deaf 
ear to all their advice and admonitions. 

4- 

AMONG the different brands of "enlightenment" with which 
the millions of Jews in the Pale were wooed or menaced, from the 
Russianization and Utopianism of the revolutionaries, to the Poloni- 
zation of the "Old Testament Believers," the most effective was 
the one which adopted the Hebrew language as its vehicle of ex- 
pression and the rebirth of Hebrew literature as its principal goal. 
The movement is known as haskdah, the Hebrew for "enlighten- 
ment," and its practitioners as maskilim. The maskilim were anx- 
ious to modernize Jewish life without, however, entirely breaking 
with the past. They protested against soulless and excessive cere- 
monialism, exposed the misdeeds of those who controlled the 
kabd5 y and sought to open the minds of the young to the beauties 
of nature and die wonders of European culture. But it cannot be 
said that they were always careful of the religious sensibilities of 
their people, or that they fully understood die powers of self- 



RUSSIANIZATION AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 467 

regeneration that lay inherent in the ancient faith. The ntaskilim 
failed to win the confidence of the masses, for very much like the 
measfim of Mendelssohn's time, they exerted an influence which 
by and large tended toward assimilation; and if the movement as 
a whole was saved from following that road to the end, it was 
due not so much to a lack of direction and momentum as to the 
shock of the bloody events that occurred on the accession of Alex- 
ander III. It was the pogrom wave of 1881 which diverted the path 
0f haskalah from assimilation to Jewish national regeneration. 

Already in the reign of Nicholas I the herald of haskalah had 
made his appearance in the person of Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788- 
1860). Like Max Lilienthal, Levinsohn was beguiled into accepting 
the crown schools in good faith, and as early as 1828, he published 
a Hebrew work in which he urged his people to add secular studies 
to their educational program. He wrote a vigorous refutation of 
the blood libel and a defense of the Talmud, but his relations with 
government functionaries, whose financial aid he often solicited, 
were not dignified. Levinsohn has sometimes been called the Men- 
delssohn of Russia and credited with being the founder of the 
"Science of Judaism" in that land. But he lacked the intellectual 
force and literary grace of the Berlin sage, nor could he compare 
in erudition with Leopold Zunz. 

Vilna in the north and Odessa in the south became the leading 
centers of haskalah Vilna, the "Jerusalem of Lithuania" and the 
intellectual power-house of east European Jewry, Odessa, the 
cosmopolitan seaport and the most civilized metropolis in Russia. 
In Vilna, the two leading pioneers of the Hebrew literary revival, 
Mordecai Aaron Ginsburg and Abraham Dov Lebensohn, flour- 
ished in the first stage of the movement, which coincided with the 
reign of Nicholas I. Both of them, the first in prose, the second in 
poetry, labored to bend the sacred language to secular uses, an 
effort which the pious masses apd their leaders regarded with pro- 
found suspicion. They were a small and friendless circle, these early 
maskilim, disposed in their isolation to credit the czar and his offi- 
cials with good intentions, and their tragedy became deeper when 
events demonstrated that the instincts of the masses were surer than 
their own wishful thinking. 



468 EMANCIPATION 

5 

BUT the tender shoot of the new Hebrew literature, and the 
appeal for modernism which it bore, continued to grow in spite of 
the uncongenial soil in which it was planted. It bore blossoms of 
rare charm in the lyric poetry of Micah Joseph Lebensohn, son of 
the poet Abraham Dov. Micah Joseph's life was cut short by 
tuberculosis in 1852, when he was only twenty-four, but in the 
few years of his creative life he awakened the lyre of Yehudah 
Halevi and Moses Chayim Luzzatto, adding a new and poignant 
strain which flowed from the sorrows and tensions in his own soul 
and in the life of his people. The man who spanned the first and 
second periods of haskalah was Abraham Mapu (1808-1867), 
whose novel Ahabath Zion (Love of Zion) had an extraordinary 
influence on the youth of his generation. Written in the pure style 
of the Bible, it painted a glowing picture of the life of Judah in the 
days of Isaiah, opening a world of wonder and beauty to the youth 
of the Yeshivoth who, of course, had to read it clandestinely. What 
a contrast it held up between the free and heroic past and the 
dismal present! 

In the second period of haskalah, the leading poet was Judah 
Leib Gordon (1830-1892), who trained his muse to the arduous 
task of "enlightenment" and the correction of abuses which he 
found in the inner life of the communities. Awake, My People, 
the title of one of his first songs, became the battle-cry of the 
movement, and his epigram "Be a man in the street and a Jew at 
home," epitomized the policy of Russianization which he advo- 
cated. Gordon fought savagely against the Orthodox, who never 
forgot that he began his career as a teacher in a crown school. For 
seven years, until he was banished from St. Petersburg on the 
suspicion of being a revolutionary, he was secretary of the "So- 
ciety for the Diffusion of Enlightenment." In the last decade of his 
life, however, his general outlook underwent a change. A great 
deal had occurred to disillusion him and make him a penitent. He 
abandoned his crusade for "enlightenment," championed the move- 
ment for the colonization of Palestine, and from having been the 
castigator of his people, he now became their defender. 

But of all the standard-bearers of haskalah, the most influential 



RUSSIANIZATION AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 469 

was Shalom Jacob Abramovitch (1836-1917), better known by 
his pen name Mendele Mocher Seforim (Mendele the Bookseller), 
who spent the last thirty-six years of his long life in Odessa. Men- 
dele, or "the grandfather," as he is endearingly called by his 
numerous disciples, blazed new trails both as maskil and writer. 
Not content to be read only by the educated minority who under- 
stood Hebrew, he chose as his principal medium the Yiddish of 
the masses, although he began and ended his literary career in the 
sacred tongue and himself translated into Hebrew most of his 
Yiddish writings. He is thus the acknowledged creator of a new 
Jewish literature, the Yiddish which has, since his day, won for it- 
self an honored place among the literatures of the world. But by 
reason of his genius, and the flexibility which the ancient tongue 
acquired in his hands, he is looked upon by many as the founder 
of modern Hebrew literature also. 

As advocate of "enlightenment," Mendele's instinctive love for 
his people saved him from the assimilationist vagaries and super- 
cilious attitudes of his predecessors and contemporaries. Not that 
he spared the faults and follies which he had ample opportunity to 
observe in the teeming towns of the Pale. In fact, though his writ- 
ings embrace numerous genres, his best remembered works, like 
Fisbke the Cripple, The Old Mare, and The Puny Little Men, are 
satirical novels, dealing with vagrant beggars and paupers and the 
"respectable" community leaders who prey on them. Mendele 
ridicules and exposes, but there is no mistaking the tenderness in 
which his irony is steeped, nor the artistry of the literary master. 

6 

IN THE early sixties, the reign of Alexander II which began 
so auspiciously with the emancipation of the serfs and other re- 
forms, entered upon a new and reactionary phase from which, 
until his assassination in 1881, the czar rarely departed. His youth- 
ful subjects were not satisfied with those reforms; the university 
students, who were aware of the political changes in western 
Europe, demanded a democratic constitution, and some of them 
even went so far as to dream of a socialist republic. Secret revolu- 
tionary societies arose whose members, as if to flaunt their reck- 
lessness, called themselves Nihilists; and to counter the merciless 



47O EMANCIPATION 

policy of suppression to which they were subjected, they adopted 
terror, or assassination, as their principal political weapon. 

It was the Polish revolt of 1861-63 which, more than anything 
else, produced the somber change that came over the czar and his 
officials. In the course of that uprising, both sides, the Polish 
rebels and the czar's officials, sought the support of the Jews. Jewish 
lives were lost in the clash between the populace and the Cossacks 
in Warsaw in February 1861, and the Orthodox rabbi, Berush 
Meisels, as well as the young preacher Marcus Jastrow, joined 
with the Polish ecclesiastics at the funeral of the victims. For a 
moment it appeared as if the fond dream of the "Old Testament 
Believers" was to come true: Poles called themselves and the Jews 
"children of the same mother," demanded Jewish emancipation, 
and the concessions the Russian government offered the Poles 
actually included the removal of many of the disabilities against the 
Jews. The rebels, of course, wanted much more than the czar 
offered. They kept up the revolt, but with some exceptions, the 
Jewish masses, especially in Lithuania, held aloof, displaying an 
instinctive and healthy distrust of the new-found love of their 
Polish compatriots. The revolt, which was quickly crushed, was 
followed by brutal reprisals. The deep-rooted hostility of the Poles 
for the Jews came to life again and, in the hands of the publicists 
and politicians, it took the form of a full-fledged economic and 
political program of discrimination and repression. 

7 

AS FOR the czar and his ministers, they seemed to be never 
free from anxiety over Jewish "separatism" and "exploitation." 
The policy of Russianization, except for the few intellectuals who 
made a big noise about it, was a failure: the masses continued to 
send their children to their own schools, to speak their own lan- 
guage, to wear their earlocks and caftans, to live in accordance 
with the Shulchan Aruch. And as if to confirm the anxiety and 
resentment of the Russian statesmen, a new Pfefferkorn appeared 
on the scene, an apostate and informer named Jacob Brafman who 
claimed to have proof that the kabal organizations, which had by 
now been reduced to a mere shadow of what they had once been, 
continued to wield their former powers in secret, nullifying all the 



RUSSIANIZATION AND "ENLIGHTENMENT" 47! 

efforts of the government to bring about a fusion of the Jews with 
the rest of the population. Brafman went further. In a series of 
articles which appeared in the official organ of the province 
of Vilna and were later reprinted by the government under the 
title of the Book of the Kahal, the renegade charged that the 
Jews of the world had a secret international kahal, of which 
the Russian was a part, with the French Alliance Israelite Uni- 
verselle, organized in 1860 for the protection of Jewish rights, also 
a member. The czar's officials found in Brafman's book everything 
they desired and, as is always the case, no refutations of the calumny 
made any impression upon those who were eager to believe it. 

The remedy proposed by the renegade the immediate aboli- 
tion of the educational, social, and charitable institutions of the 
Jewish communities was found to be too drastic, but about 1870, 
new restrictions were decreed against the Jews to "break down 
their separatism." Their right to participate in municipal govern- 
ment was curtailed, and they were singled out for special conscrip- 
tion regulations. For the population at large, those who were the 
only sons of families, for example, were exempted from military 
service, but if they were Jews they were subject to conscription. 
It was obvious that the new decrees were punitive in character 
and sprang not, as professed, from a desire for amelioration, but 
from prejudice and malice. 

The charge of "exploitation" was naturally seized upon by all 
those who were irked by Jewish competition. Among them were 
the Greek food merchants in Odessa, who in March 1871, with 
the connivance of the authorities, went over to direct action. For 
three days, they and their Russian coreligionists conducted an 
Easter pogrom against the Jews of the most civilized city in Russia. 
For three days Jewish homes and shops were looted and wrecked. 
Jews were beaten and synagogues defiled, and it was only when 
the rioting threatened to get out of hand and become a massacre 
that the authorities acted, and the outbreak was easily suppressed. 
The Odessa pogrom gave a rude shock to the "Russianized" Jew- 
ish intellectuals: for a time the local branch of the "Society for 
the Diffusion of Enlightenment" kept its doors closed. 

The general trend toward reaction, and the warm welcome 
which the czar's officials extended to the "revelations" of Jacob 



47^ EMANCIPATION 

Brafman, encouraged other blackguards to go into the profitable 
business of defaming the Jews. Hippolyte Lutostanski, a defrocked 
Catholic priest who became a Greek Orthodox monk, tried with- 
out success to blackmail the Jews of Moscow by threatening to 
publish a lurid pamphlet he had written on the blood accusation. 
In 1876 the pamphlet appeared; it won favor in official circles and 
was distributed among the secret police. Two years later, a -charge 
of ritual murder was lodged against the handful of Jews who were 
living in the province of Kutais in the Caucasus, and although the 
accused were all acquitted, the poison in the atmosphere became 
thicker. The alliance between official authority and the criminal 
dregs of society was preparing czarist Russia for a wider and blood- 
ier outbreak of violence against the Jews. 



CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE 

Pogroms and Self-Help 



NEITHER the policy of brutal suppression which the police 
of Alexander II pursued against the Nihilists, nor the 
patriotic fervor which swept the country in 1877 during 
the war against Turkey, could stem the growth of the underground 
revolutionary movement. Finally the czar determined to try a 
different course: he would make away with the discontent by 
removing the causes on which it fed. On March 13, 1881, he 
signed a decree ordering substantial reforms in the government, but 
the same day, as he was driving near his winter palace in St. 
Petersburg, the Nihilists assassinated him. 

The following day his son succeeded him as Alexander III, and 
the first act of the new "Czar of all the Russias" was to suppress his 
father's decree of the day before. Soon enough it became clear 
that, in its basic objectives, the new reign meant a reversion to the 
reactionary regime of Nicholas I. The teacher and mentor of the 
new autocrat Was the gloomy fanatic Constantine Pobyedonostzev, 
official head of the Holy Synod of the Greek Catholic Church, 



POGROMS AND SELF-HELP 473 

whose three-point program, which Alexander III approved, called 
for absolute autocracy, supremacy of the official religion, and 
compulsory Russianization. The ultimate aim of the policy was a 
Russia of one nationality, one language, and one religion. 

The peril of the Jews under a regime dominated by such an 
aim may be easily divined, but their plight was further aggravated 
by the menace which the autocracy faced in the revolutionary 
movement. The reactionary press promptly and falsely accused 
them of taking a leading part in the movement and of being chiefly 
responsible for the death of Alexander II. Not that Jews were 
absent from the circles of the Nihilists. It would have been strange 
indeed if the children of the most oppressed nationality in Russia 
in whose veins ran the blood of the Hebrew prophets, had not 
been stirred by the vision of universal freedom and brotherhood 
which inspired the revolutionaries. But the young Jewish intellec- 
tuals who managed to separate themselves from the masses of their 
people in the Pale and join the underground movement were of 
small account in number and influence. For the czar and his mentor, 
however, they were an important asset. They and their people 
could be used as a lightning rod to ward off the wrath of the 
Russian people from the heads of their real oppressors, as an outlet 
for those passions which might otherwise turn into revolutionary 
channels. The scapegoat was right there, ready to hand. 

The procurator of the Holy Synod, moreover, had no illusions 
about his ability to fit the Jews into his three-point program for 
Russia. For them his solution had the merit of great simplicity; he 
expressed it on one occasion in a simple arithmetic formula: one- 
third of the Jews would be forced to emigrate, another third 
would accept baptism, and the remaining third would be starved 
to death. In the last thin) he might have included those who would 
perish by the more direct method of the pogrom. 

2 

ALMOST immediately, in fact, the pogrom was adopted by 
the new regime as a definite instrument of policy for the suppres- 
sion of the revolutionary movement and the "solution" of the 
Jewish question. Only six weeks after the beginning of the new 
reign came the first of a series of outbreaks which startled the 



474 EMANCIPATION 

civilized world and reduced the Jews of Russia to terror and 
despair. But even those weeks, it is now certain, were not wasted: 
they were spent in preparation, for there can be no doubt that the 
pogroms were organized and directed by a central agency. They 
could not otherwise have occurred at practically the same time, 
nor carried through with the same pattern. For two days, in ac- 
cordance with this "technique," the military and the police per- 
mitted the work of destruction to go on unchecked, and on the 
third day they suppressed it. 

The pogrom wave of 1881 was initiated by an outbreak in the 
city of Elizabethgrad in south Russia where for two days, on 
April 27 and 28, the mob was given a free hand to wreck and loot 
Jewish homes and shops. The riffraff of the city, as well as peasants 
who came in from adjacent villages, were given reason to believe 
that their work had the approval of the authorities. Soon after- 
wards, there were outbreaks in a large number of neighboring 
villages and towns; and early the following month, on May 8 and 9, 
the rabble attacked the Jewish quarter of Kiev, metropolis of the 
Ukraine, demolished a thousand houses, wrecked the synagogue, 
killed and maimed and raped, with no real interference on the part 
of the civil and military authorities. On the third day the bloody 
orgy was suppressed. 

From Kiev, the contagion spread to the provinces of Volhynia 
and Podolia, and there were pogroms in scores of places. In some 
of the villages the simple peasants were afraid not to destroy the 
homes of their Jewish neighbors, lest they should be punished for 
disobeying the czar's "orders." In Berdichev the police commis- 
sioner, for a handsome consideration, of course, permitted the Jews 
to defend themselves, and the outbreak was nipped in the bud. 
Odessa, where the authorities were afraid to give the teeming 
rabble of the dock district a free hand, also diverged from the 
official pattern. The rioters were attacked and generally driven off 
by the soldiers and police, and in a number of instances by a Jewish 
self-defense. In July 1881, a second wave of pogroms began in 
Pereiaslav east of the Dnieper, and by the last month of that fateful 
year it had rolled west as far as the capital of Poland, where the 
Jews were attacked and pillaged in accordance with die standard 
"technique/ 9 Finally, on April 10, 1882, the bloodiest and most 



POGROMS AND SELF-HELP 475 

destructive outbreak of all occurred in Balta, province of Podolia, 
where the mayor, the police commissioner, the commander of the 
garrison, and the other local authorities openly worked hand in 
hand with the mob. 

3 

IT is doubtful if this carnival of violence, in which the 
riffraff of south Russia was permitted to indulge for over a year, 
proved the existence of a deep-rooted animosity against the Jews 
on the part of the Russian people. There was no lack of evidence 
against such a conclusion. The normal relations between the two 
peoples were not unfriendly, and there were Russians, among 
them a good number of priests, who stood up to the rioters at the 
risk of their lives. The rabble, it must be recalled, was persuaded 
that the czar desired the Jews to be punished, and no sizable 
human aggregation would fail to furnish enough miscreants for a 
criminal enterprise if they were assured of official protection. 

Nevertheless, the government of Alexander III had the effrontery 
to seek exoneration for its deliberate failure to suppress the mob 
by declaring that the pogroms were due to "the harmful conse- 
quences of the economic activity of the Jews for the Christian 
population." This statement came from Count Nicholas Ignatiev, 
the czar's Minister of the Interior; and at some of the trials which 
followed, the public prosecutor, instead of accusing the criminals 
at the dock, took his cue from the minister and denounced the 
victims. It was the public opinion of the world that forced the czar's 
government to make these hypocritical and clumsy attempts at 
self -exculpation. In London, a meeting of protest had been held at 
the Mansion House with the Lord Mayor as chairman; in Paris 
there was a similar demonstration under the chairmanship of Victor 
Hugo; and in the United States there were impressive gatherings 
in New York and Philadelphia. The American minister to Russia 
was even notified by Secretary of State Frederick T. Frelinghuysen 
that the government of the United States hoped "that the Imperial 
Government will find means to cause the persecution of these un- 
fortunate beings to cease," and a resolution in much stronger 
terms was adopted by the House of Representatives. 

If, however, the czar's government was perturbed by these pro- 



470 EMANCIPATION 

tests, it showed soon enough that it had no intention of relieving 
the plight of the Russian Jews. True, its pogrom policy was, after 
the outbreak in Balta, abandoned, and the few eruptions that fol- 
lowed in 1883 and 1884 were effectively suppressed; but on the 
same day May 15, 1882 that the government published its re- 
solve to proceed against "any attempt at violence on the person and 
property of the Jews," the czar sanctioned the so-called "Tempo- 
rary Rules," or "May Laws," an emanation from the malevolent 
brain of Count Ignatiev. The "Temporary Rules," which became 
permanent, prohibited the Jews from settling or acquiring property 
in the villages of the Pale, thus increasing the congestion in the 
towns where, moreover, Jewish traders were dealt a staggering 
blow by being forbidden to keep their shops open on Sundays 
and Christian holidays. Very soon afterwards, the rascally Ignariev 
was charged with fraud and dismissed from office; but his successor, 
Dmitri Tolstoi, was a reactionary of the same stamp and the May 
laws were ruthlessly enforced. The methods of the mob were too 
crude: the government took over the task and sought to accom- 
plish the same result by the "civilized" method of the "cold 
pogrom." 

4 

IF THE pogroms and the May Laws were designed to im- 
plement the formula of the procurator of the Holy Synod for the 
solution of the Jewish problem, they were indeed accomplishing 
their object. Jews in great numbers began streaming toward the 
borders of Russia, looking frantically for an escape. "The western 
frontier," declared the suave Ignatiev, "is 6pen for the Jews." The 
government of Spain, regretting the expulsion of 1492, declared 
its willingness to receive the fugitives who, however, were not 
attracted by the offer. The great majority looked longingly toward 
the fabled land across the Atlantic where so many of their people 
from other lands had already found refuge. They were helped on 
their journey by the Alliance Israelite Universelle and, on their ar- 
rival in America, by those who had preceded them. Most of their 
leaders in Russia, however, fearful of being charged with encourag- 
ing Jews to "desert the fatherland," refrained from taking steps to 
organize and regulate the swelling scream of immigrants. Had the 



POGROMS AND SELF-HELP 477 

leaders been more courageous and realistic, the fugitives would 
have been spared a great deal of the suffering they endured. 

5 

THROUGH the rest of his reign, the "cold pogroms" devised 
by the ministers of Alexander III continued, one of the vilest of 
them being the numerus clausus, the "closed number" or school 
quota, which was imposed in 1887. By this decree, the number of 
Jewish students in high schools and universities located in the 
cities of the Pale, where the Jewish population ranged from 30 to 
80 per cent, was restricted to 10 per cent of the total number of 
students. Outside the Pale, the proportion was limited to 5 per 
cent, and in the two capitals St. Petersburg and Moscow to 3 
per cent. 

The numerus clausus drove large numbers of young men and 
women to the universities of western Europe. There, in spite of 
the privations they suffered, they were able to quench their thirst 
for knowledge; but when they returned to their native land, they 
found their chance for earning a livelihood balked by the wall of 
legal restrictions, of which the denial of the right to freedom of 
domicile and movement was the most disastrous. The right to live 
in cities outside the Pale, which had in the previous reign been 
extended to first-grade merchants, artisans, and university gradu- 
ates, was now restricted, and police raids, followed by summary 
expulsions, were carried out almost daily in St. Petersburg, Kiev, 
and other forbidden cities. The ]yiay Laws continued in force, 
with police officials straining their ingenuity to devise all sorts of 
rigors in their enforcement, if for no other reason than to create 
additional opportunities for blackmailing the victims. 

In 1889 an imperial decree deprived Jewish graduates of law 
schools of the right to practice their profession, and even the policy 
of promoting handicrafts among the Jews was now abandoned. In 
1884 a Jewish school for handicrafts, which had existed in Zhitomir 
for twenty-three years, was ordered closed on the ground that the 
Jews formed the majority of artisans in that region and thereby 
hampered "the development of handicrafts among the original 
population." 

Together with the disabilities which the government inflicted 



EMANCIPATION 

upon them, the Jews of the Pale, as a result of special conscription 
regulations, were made to contribute a larger proportion of recruits 
than the Christians. And to justify the harsh and humiliating dis- 
criminations, they were constantly charged with evading military 
service, while the doors leading to promotion in the army were 
shut tight against them. 



AS THE reign of Alexander III wore on, the official mood, 
which of course took its cue from the ruler, became more and 
more reactionary, venting its savagery primarily upon the Jews. In 
1890 Dournovo was Minister of the Interior, with von Plehve, 
who was destined to out-Haman all the previous Russian Hamans, 
as his assistant. Rumors arose which soon reached England and 
America that those two functionaries were preparing new blows 
against their pet victims. On December 10, 1890, an imposing 
meeting of protest was held in London, with the Lord Mayor 
presiding. It adopted a resolution deploring "the severe and excep- 
tional edicts and disabilities against the Jews in Russia," and 
declaring that "religious liberty is a principle which should be 
recognized by every Christian community as among the natural 
human rights." In addition, the Lord Mayor, in the name of the 
citizens of London, forwarded a memorial to the czar, imploring 
him to "annul those special laws and disabilities that crush and cow 
your Hebrew subjects." In the United States, a resolution of 
protest was introduced in Congress, and Secretary of State James 
G. Elaine instructed the American Minister to Russia to exert his 
influence to avert the threatened measures? against the Jews. 

But the only effect of the London petition and the diplomatic 
exertions of the United States was to evoke an elaborate display of 
the hypocrisy and duplicity at which the czar's ministers were 
past masters. In the spring of 1891 the new blows fell, taking the 
form of large-scale and ruthless expulsions of Jewish residents 
from St. Petersburg, Kiev, Moscow, and other cities, the victims 
being the merchants, artisans, and intellectuals who had been 
permitted to settle outside the Pale by Alexander II. In Moscow 
especially, the expulsion of twenty thousand persons who had lived 
in the city for decades was carried out with revolting brutality. 



POGROMS AND SELF-HELP 479 

The same year the czar and his ministers welcomed a proposal 
from Baron Maurice de Hirsch, the great captain of industry and 
even greater philanthropist, to transplant over a period of twenty- 
five years some 3,000,000 Russian Jews to Argentina and other 
regions in the Americas. The Baron had founded in London the 
Jewish Colonization Association, commonly known as the ICA, 
with a capital of fifty million francs. To negotiate with the czar's 
government, as well as to determine the fitness of the Russian Jews 
for agricultural colonization, Hirsch sent Arnold White, a member 
of the British Parliament, to Russia as his personal representative. 
The officials in St. Petersburg assured White that the Jews were 
hopeless "usurers and parasites," but contact with the Jewish 
masses convinced him that the ogre which the czar's statesmen 
conjured up "has no existence in fact." White advised Hirsch to 
proceed with his project. "If," he reported, "courage moral 
courage hope, patience, temperance are fine qualities, then the 
Jews are a fine people." 

It was a noble and imposing project, but it failed. In the first 
ten years, instead of the contemplated million, only ten thousand 
Jews were settled in Argentina. The problem of the Jewish people 
in Russia, it was clear, was not to be solved by philanthropy. 

7 

IF THE problem was too vast for philanthropy, even the 
princely philanthropy of a Baron de Hirsch, was it possible to find 
some other solution for it? With the wounds of the pogroms still 
unhealed, and hosts of refugees in flight from Russia, an answer 
to this question was offered by Leon Pinsker, a Jewish physician 
in Odessa. Pinsker, who was born in 1821, had been one of the 
founders of the "Society for the Diffusion of Culture among the 
Jews of Russia," and over many years had labored zealously for 
the cause of Russianization and emancipation. Now he rejected 
those nostrums. In September 1882 he published a pamphlet with 
the significant title Auto-Emancipation, in which he advocated a 
heroic and radical solution: his scattered people, he declared, must 
become a nation again in a territory of their own. 

Pinsker's pamphlet created a great stir not only for die boldness 
of his remedy, but for the fearlessness of his diagnosis. His was a 



480 EMANCIPATION 

physician's approach to the problem. Anti-Semitism, or Judeo- 
phobia, he found to be a "psychic aberration," hereditary and 
incurable, induced by the "ghostlike apparition of a people without 
. . . land or other bond of union, no longer alive and yet moving 
about among the living." All attempts at reasoning with it he 
dismissed as futile. "Prejudice, or instinctive ill-will, can be satis- 
fied by no reasoning, however forceful and clear." He deprecated 
the idea that "humanity and enlightenment" will ever solve the 
problem, and called for "the creation of a Jewish nationality . . . 
living upon its own soil." Nor must that soil, he contended, 
necessarily be Palestine; but wherever it is, such a refuge "cannot 
come about without the support of the governments": it -would 
have to be "politically assured." Eighteen months after the appear- 
ance of Auto-Emancipation, its author, having by closer contact 
looked deeper into the hearts of his people in Russia, wrote in their 
name: "Let us obtain dry bread by the sweat of our brow on the 
sacred soil of our ancestors! " 

Leon Pinsker stands out as the Jewish intellectual of his day 
who expressed most boldly and clearly the conclusions to which 
many others had been driven by the wave of pogroms which ush- 
ered in the reign of Alexander III and the ministerial blows that 
followed. The first of these conclusions was that the policy of 
Russianization was bankrupt. Neither the mob nor the ministers 
distinguished between the "enlightened" and "unenlightened," be- 
tween the assimilated and unassimilated. They, the Russianizers, 
whether they preached the gospel in Hebrew or in Russian, now 
beat their breasts in repentance and took the road back to their 
own people. Among the most prominent of these repentant apostles 
of "enlightenment" was Lev Levanda (1835-1887), who achieved 
popularity and influence with his novels and stories of Jewish life. 
He wrote in Russian, and until 1881 looked upon the acquisition 
of Russian culture as the only way out for his persecuted people. 
The events of that year laid all his idols in ruins, and before he 
died he took his stand with Pinsker in the movement for self-help. 

This cycle of spiritual struggle and change, through which 
standard-bearers of haskalah like Judah Leib Gordon and Lev 
Levanda passed, is illustrated best by the career of Moses Leib 
Lillienblum (1843-1910). In his twenties, Lillienblum entered the 
lists against the Shulchan Aruch, pouring all his wrath and scorn 



POGROMS AND SELF-HELP 481 

upon the "obscurantists" who controlled the kahals. In his thirties, 
he lost his way completely in the frivolous and nihilistic atmosphere 
of Odessa. In his forties, after the savage waves of pogroms had 
swept away the fatuities of haskalah and the illusions of Russianiza- 
tion, Lillienblum saw no other way for his people but a return to 
Palestine. 

Among the few intellectuals who never cherished the illusions 
of the Russianizers was Perez Smolenskin (1842-1885), a rare and 
exalted spirit who spent the last seventeen years of his life in Vienna, 
where he founded and edited the Hebrew periodical Ha-$hachar, 
"The Dawn." He fought valiantly against assimilation and for 
national conservation. He considered the Hebrew language and, 
later, the colonization of Palestine the most important instruments 
of Jewish survival, and in 1882 he inspired the organization in 
Vienna of the first society of Jewish students dedicated to national 
revival. For its name, the society took the Hebrew word Kadimah, 
which means both "forward" and "eastward." 

8 

KADIMAH expressed a spirit and a goal which were not con- 
fined to the students in Vienna who chose the word as the name 
for their society. The hope of restoration to the land of their 
glorious past had sustained the exiled people in all their wanderings 
across the centuries. It was the recurring theme of all their prayers, 
the inspiration of their mystic lore. It had given rise to widespread 
messianic ferments, and impelled numerous saints and poets to 
defy hardships and perils in order to breathe the air of the holy 
land and be laid in its soil. Now, amid the rubble of the recent 
hopes which lay strewn around them, the ancient hope took on 
fresh strength and found new forms of expression. 

Even before 1882, when Pinsker issued his stirring call for auto- 
emancipation, something which may well be called a movement had 
already been launched in Russia. It named itself Chibath Tziyon, 
"Love of Zion," and it gave rise to numerous societies of "Lovers 
of Zion" (Chovevei Tziyon) in Russia, Rumania, Galicia, and as 
far west as die United States. In November 1884, delegates from 
most of these societies, meeting in Kattowitz, Silesia, united into 
a federation, making Leon Pinsker their president and Moses Leib 
Lillienblum their secretary. 



482 EMANCIPATION 

The principal task which the united societies assumed was to 
find support for those whom the new movement had already sent 
forth to Palestine. For while the great current of migration which 
the persecutions set into motion was flowing westward, chiefly 
toward America, a small stream was moving toward the ancient 
homeland. In 1882, its first pioneers, hailing from Rumania as well 
as Russia, had already planted three agricultural settlements. Among 
these pioneers were students belonging to the movement known as 
BILU, young men and women who renounced their careers in order 
to pave the way for the restoration of their people. The name they 
adopted is compounded of the initials of the Hebrew words mean- 
ing "House of Jacob, come and let us go!"* Those who went were 
armed with faith and enthusiasm only, and were thrown into a life 
of privation, toil, and danger. They were unprepared for the 
enormous difficulties involved in colonizing a soil which had stood 
waste, neglected, and disease-ridden for centuries. Many of them 
succumbed, but with the help of the "Lovers of Zion" societies in 
Russia and, even more, with the lavish generosity and unflagging 
personal devotion of Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris, the 
first settlements, and others which followed, emerged from their 
precarious condition and became self-supporting. They have been 
called the "Jewish Pilgrim Fathers," these BILU pioneers who 
served as the vanguard of an army of reclamation and restoration 
in the decades that followed. 



CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX 

America, City of Refuge 



IN A STEADY stream the victims of czarist terror, especially 
after the pogroms of 1881, sought and found refuge in the 
great republic of the New World. There the Jewish com- 
munity, during die century preceding this influx, had grown and 
prospered, for during that interval the original Sephardim had 
Isaiah II, 5- 



AMERICA, CITY OF REFUGE 483 

been reinforced by Ashkenazim who came from the Germanics. 
The reactionary wave that followed the Congress of Vienna sent 
large numbers of German Jews to America, and with the extinc- 
tion of the hopes which the revolutions of 1848 had kindled, still 
more of them flocked to the distant land of liberty and opportunity. 
At the outbreak of the Civil War a dozen years later, the com* 
munity in the United States is believed to have already numbered 
approximately 150,000. 

For nearly two decades before the Congress of Vienna, immigra- 
tion was halted by the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. Nevertheless, 
the tiny community contributed a goodly number of officers and 
men to the War of 1812. In the annals of that war we come upon 
the names of Colonel Nathan Moses, Major Abraham Massias, who 
foiled British attempts to invade Georgia, Captain Mayer Moses, 
Captain David Warfield and Captain Mordecai Myers, the last 
distinguished for many heroic deeds. Judah Touro, son of a New- 
port rabbi, who was to become an outstanding merchant and 
philanthropist, served as a private arid during the siege of New 
Orleans was wounded in a daring exploit. Another Jewish soldier 
in the War of 1812 was the grandfather of the famous American 
novelist, Bret Harte. Uriah P. Levy, who in the course of a stormy 
career fought successfully for the abolition of corporal punish- 
ment in the United States Navy and eventually attained the rank 
of commodore, was one of the naval heroes of the war; another 
was Captain John Ordroneaux, a Jewish privateer of French origin, 
small in stature but great in skill and daring. 

These soldiers and sailors were nearly all Sephardim whose 
fathers, in the case of many of them, had served in the Revolution. 
In the Mexican War (1846-48), the Sephardim were still con- 
spicuous, but Ashkenazim now began to play a part, with one 
company of militia recruited in Baltimore consisting mostly of 
Jewish immigrants from Germany. 

2 

THE most colorful figure in the decades after the War of 
1812 was Mordecai Manuel Noah (1785-1851), journalist and 
dramatist, diplomat and politician, orator and jurist. Noah served 
as American consul in Tunis, where he carried out an important 



484 EMANCIPATION 

and difficult diplomatic assignment; he also served as High Sheriff 
of New York, as Surveyor of the Port of New York, and as Judge 
of the New York Court of Sessions. He edited many newspapers, 
fought a number of duels, and wrote successful plays. He climaxed 
his kaleidoscopic career with a spectacular attempt to restore his 
people to nationhood. 

Noah, who seemed to thrive on opposition and trouble, made 
his mark in all his enterprises, but closest to his heart was the plight 
of his persecuted people in Europe, whose sorrows he had occasion 
to witness in the course of his travels. In 1825, with the help of 
friends, he purchased Grand Island in the Niagara River near 
Buffalo, and issued a manifesto to the Jews of the world to come 
and settle there. In memory of the place where his namesake of 
the Bible had found a resting-place, Noah called his island "Ararat, 
a City of Refuge for the Jews." In September of the same year he 
was the central figure of an imposing dedication ceremony in Buf- 
falo which, however, marked the end as well as the beginning of 
the romantic undertaking. 

But it must not be supposed that Noah was content to find in 
"Ararat" only an outlet for his dramatic flair. In the first place, he 
was persuaded that Grand Island, lying near the Great Lakes and 
the Erie Canal, might be developed into an important commercial 
center. Second, he looked upon this "city of refuge" as only a tem- 
porary asylum and a proving ground for the eventual restoration 
of a Jewish nation in Palestine. The Grand Island project died at 
birth, but his faith in Palestine survived. In 1844 he delivered a 
great oration in Philadelphia, published later under the tide 
of Discourse on the Restoration of the Jews, which entitles the 
quixotic Mordecai Manuel Noah to a place as one of the precursors 
of the Zionist movement. 

3 

FOUR years later the whole country became a city of refuge 
for the proscribed and disinherited of the Old World, with many 
Jews among them, most of whom hailed from Germany. Unlike 
their Sephardic predecessors whom, before long, they surpassed 
in number, they brought with them neither wealth nor commercial 



AMERICA, CITY OF REFUGE 485 

connections. But they quickly fell in step with the pioneering 
surge of the striding young republic. Many of them pushed beyond 
the Alleghenies into the valleys of the great rivers. They made 
their way southwest into Louisiana and Texas. They joined the 
gold rush to California, and on the Day of Atonement of 1849 
they worshipped together for the first rime in a tent in San Fran- 
cisco. Many who began as pack-peddlers among the Indians or in 
the sparse and scattered settlements of the Middle West and 
South, rose to be merchant princes and industrial magnates. 

Nor did they lose time in organizing their congregational life. 
They built houses of worship and schools for the children, and set 
aside plots of ground to bury their dead. There was room in the 
great land of "the vanishing frontier" for all men who were ready 
to toil and venture, and in short order the descendants of those 
who had cut through the deserts in the footsteps of Moses cast off 
the yoke which the ghettos of Europe had laid upon them, and 
became pioneers of the wilderness and prairies of the New World. 
They were often a curiosity to their neighbors, many of whom 
had never before seen a descendant of the people of the Bible. 
Joseph Jonas was the first Jew to settle in Cincinnati, where he 
arrived in 1817, and of him it is told that among those who came 
to look at him was a Quaker woman, eager to examine "one of 
God's chosen people." She walked around him a few times, and 
finally told him with evident disappointment: "Thee art no dif- 
ferent to other people." 

By 1856, there were five synagogues in Cincinnati, and among 
the rabbis were Max Lilienthal, whom the officials of Nicholas I 
had once duped into supporting their crown schools, and Isaac 
M. Wise, the foremost champion of Reform Judaism in America. 
In Cleveland, Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, and other cities of 
the Middle West and South, there was a rapid development of 
congregational life. But there was division among them as well as 
integration; some groups, finding the main body too Orthodox or 
too Reform, broke away to set up their own houses of worship. 

The majority of the new arrivals remained, of course, in the 
large centers of the East, where the original Sephardim, who in 
the main held fast to their Orthodox tradition, maintained an aristo- 



486 EMANCIPATION 

cratic aloofness from the newcomers. For a long time, the latter 
clung to their German speech; and they also brought with them 
the doctrines and ritual of the Hamburg Temple and of the Reform 
fraternities of Berlin and Frankfort. Not that Reform was a thing 
unknown among the Sephardim. As early as 1824, in fact, a small 
group seceded from the Sephardic congregation in Charleston, 
South Carolina, to institute services along Reform lines. And in 
1834, at the dedication of a new synagogue of the Shearith Israel 
congregation in New York, a plea for Reform was made by none 
other than Mordecai Manuel Noah. Nor were the immigrants from 
Germany uniformly devoted to Reform, for the middle-of-the- 
road position represented by Zechariah Frankel of Breslau and 
Michael Sachs of Berlin was not absent among them, its principal 
exponent in America being Isaac Leeser (1806-1868), who in 1829 
was chosen preacher of the Mikveh Israel congregation in Phila- 
delphia. 

4 

LEESER laid the foundation of what is today designated as 
Conservative Judaism. He combined enthusiasm for the traditional 
sanctities with an unusual capacity for work and ability as an 
organizer. He produced textbooks and prayer books, and for 
twenty-five years published and edited The Occident, in its day 
the leading Jewish periodical in the English language. In his hands 
The Occident became a formidable weapon against the rising tide 
of Reform in the New World, and in the midst of all his other 
labors he found time to produce a translation of the Hebrew 
Scriptures, which for a long time served as the standard Jewish 
version in English. Leeser also knew how to communicate his zeal 
to others. He stimulated the creation of philanthropic and educa- 
tional institutions, including the Jewish Hospital of Philadelphia 
and Maimonides College. It was under his inspiration that, in 1838, 
the first Sunday School for Jewish children in America was estab- 
lished by Rebecca Gratz, a member of his congregation who, 
however, enjoys greater fame from the fact that Sir Walter Scott 
is believed to have taken her as the model for Rebecca, daughter 
of Isaac of York, in his Ivanhoe. 



AMERICA, CITY OF REFUGE 487 

Conservative Judaism had many other learned exponents and 
doughty champions: Sabato Morals, the successor of Leeser in 
Mikveh Israel, founder and first president of the Jewish Theo- 
logical Seminary of America; Benjamin Szold, who led his congre- 
gation in Baltimore back to the traditional ritual from which it 
had departed; Marcus Jastrow, who after long years of courageous 
leadership in Warsaw and Germany was, in 1866, elected rabbi of 
Rodeph Sholem in Philadelphia, where he collaborated with Leeser; 
Alexander Kohut, who came from Hungary in 1885 and joined 
Morals in the Jewish Theological Seminary; and many others. 

5 

NEVERTHELESS, the most striking religious trend of the so- 
called German period in the story of American Jewry, beginning 
in the forties and lasting until the eighties, was in the direction of 
Reform. The movement, in fact, made more progress in America 
than in the land of its birth, and in Isaac Mayer Wise it found a 
peerless leader. Wise landed in New York in 1846 at the age of 
twenty-seven, and after a number of years as rabbi in Albany, he 
was called to Cincinnati, which he and Lilienthal made the Reform 
center of America. Before he died in 1900, he had brought into 
existence the three principal institutions of Reform: the Union 
of American Hebrew Congregations, the Hebrew Union College 
for the training of Reform rabbis, and the Central Conference of 
American Rabbis, where, at annual sessions, basic principles and 
issues are discussed and determined. 

In the ideology of American Reform, one of the leading doc- 
trines is the "Mission of Israel," which asserts that the Jewish 
people had been scattered among the nations not, as the Orthodox 
believe, in punishment for its sins, but in order to teach mankind 
the unity of God and serve as an example of righteous living. 
Naturally this doctrine has for its corollary the denial of a national 
destiny for Israel and the rejection of the expectation of national 
restoration. The changes in ritual were the same as those which the 
reformers had introduced in Germany. The prayers were consid- 
erably abridged, with most of them in English instead of Hebrew. 
The organ was introduced, as well as mixed choirs; men and 



488 EMANCIPATION 

women were seated together, the men with heads uncovered. 
Sunday services were instituted and the second days of the festivals 
abolished. There were, of course, varying degrees of Reform, just 
as there were gradations in the concessions which Conservative 
congregations were prepared to make to "the environment." On the 
whole, the Reform leaders of the East, men like David Einhorn of 
Baltimore, Samuel Hirsch of Philadelphia, and Samuel Adler, rabbi 
of Temple Emanu-El, the first Reform congregation in New York, 
were inclined to go further than their colleagues in the Middle 
West. 

In the New World, however, religious division was not accom- 
panied by the bitterness and conflict which disturbed the Jewish 
communities in Germany. There were, of course, occasional blasts 
and counterblasts between the different groupings, but there was 
something in the general atmosphere of America that took the 
wind out of the sails of religious controversy. The right of men 
to differ in the matter of religion was taken for granted, and there 
was no tradition of a coercive authority in the realm of religion 
such as existed in Europe. Nor did the great influx of Orthodox 
Jews from eastern Europe affect the general serenity of the reli- 
gious atmosphere. If, in later decades, the air resounded with de- 
nunciation of Reform, it came less from the orthodox than 
from the advocates of Zionism which Reform began by denouncing 
and rejecting. 

6 

LIKE the people of America as a whole, the Jews were 
divided by the overshadowing slavery issue and the Civil War to 
which it gave rise. But most of them by far, true to their imme- 
morial aversion to human bondage, and fresh from the libertarian 
struggles in Europe, stood with the abolitionists, and in 1 860 flocked 
to join the newly-formed anti-slavery Republican party. They 
were among those who, with pen and tongue, and not seldom at 
the risk of their lives, denounced the spreading evil, and the fiery 
John Brown numbered three of them in his small band of desperate 
zealots. Again, as in the War for Independence, the cause of free- 
dom found wings in biblical ideals. The passions and the imagery 



AMERICA, CITY OF REFUGE 489 

of the Bible abound in Julia Ward Howe's stirring Battle Hymn 
of the Republic and The Reveille of Bret Harte, both of which 
captured the imagination of those who fought to save the Union 
and put an end to slavery. The wealthy and aristocratic Sephardim 
of the South, however, even as their Christian neighbors, looked 
upon slavery as a natural institution, and upheld the right of seces- 
sion, although there were not a few among them who, like the 
renowned merchant and philanthropist Judah Touro, liberated the 
slaves they owned. 

There is considerable divergence in the estimates of the number 
of Jews who fought on both sides in the Civil War. There is gen- 
eral agreement, however, that their proportion in the armed forces 
exceeded their ratio to the general population. The number of 
officers among them, on the general staff as well as in the field, was 
strikingly high, especially in the South where the Jews who took 
up arms generally belonged to the wealthy. But most of the Jews 
under arms were, of course, in the anpies of the North. The names 
of nearly 700 Jewish officers have been found in the records, among 
them 8 generals, 2 1 colonels, 9 lieutenant colonels, 40 majors, and 
205 captains. The northern general officers were Major General 
Frederick Knefler, General Leopold Blumenberg and Brigadier 
General Philip J. Joachimsen. Seven Jewish soldiers who fought 
for the Union were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, 
the highest decoration for valor. Max Frauenthal, who fought for 
the Confederacy and whose name was corrupted to "Fronthall," 
became a legend a man who displayed unusual bravery was de- 
scribed as "a regular Fronthall." 

There were Jews who rose to distinction in civil and political 
affairs also. Among them were Moritz Pinner of Missouri, an ardent 
abolitionist, and Lewis N. Dembitz of Kentucky, lawyer, author, 
and a leader in the affairs of Conservative Judaism. Both of them 
were members of the Republican Convention of 1860 which 
nominated Lincoln for the Presidency. Sigismund Kaufman of 
New York, also an active abolitionist, was a member of the Elec- 
toral Cbllege. 

But the most important post during this period was held by 
Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State in the cabinet of Jefferson 



49 EMANCIPATION 

Davis, who has been called "the brains of the Confederacy." Ben- 
jamin's sense of affiliation with his faith and people was, throughout 
his career in America and later in England, practically dormant, 
although from time to time it was awakened by his political enemies 
when they reminded him of his origin* All accounts agree that he 
was a man of amazing intellectual power and resourcefulness; 
nevertheless he failed to appreciate the moral advantage which 
the North possessed in the struggle against slavery, a fault of vision 
serious enough in any statesman but doubly reprehensible in a 
Jew. Benjamin was surprised when British workmen, their factories 
deprived of cotton by the northern blockade, proved willing to 
suffer hardships for the triumph of freedom. When the cause for 
which he labored was lost, Benjamin escaped to England where, 
as a top-ranking barrister, he quickly repaired his fortunes and 
rose to fresh fame and honors. 

7 

AS TIME went on the Jewish community in America, grow- 
ing in numbers and influence, came naturally to be looked upon 
by less fortunate Jewries in other lands as a "big brother." The 
role was just as naturally accepted, and it was performed with 
credit on practically all occasions, including those when it became 
necessary to obtain government intercession for victims of perse- 
cution and wrong. Nor was that role a wholly altruistic one. For 
there were times when calumnies which brought suffering on 
their people in other lands involved their own good name which 
had to be protected. 

The Damascus Affair of 1840 was such an occasion, and we 
have seen how it roused the Jews of America as well as those of 
England and France. It was also the first occasion on which the 
government of the United States interceded with a foreign govern- 
ment against anti-Jewish oppression, and the action came even 
before die meetings of protest were held in New York and Phila- 
delphia. 

A decade later, the Jews of the United States became involved 
in a long series of efforts for the protection of their own rights as 
American citizens. These rights were being denied them by the' 
Swiss Confederation, where their coreligionists were still un- 



AMERICA, CITY OF REFUGE 491 

emancipated. Under a treaty ratified by the Senate in 1855, Ameri- 
can Jews wishing to reside in Switzerland would be subject to 
the disabilities from which the Swiss Jews suffered. Five years 
earlier, that treaty, with a different version of the discriminatory 
provision, had been laid before the Senate and rejected. President 
Millard Fillmore condemned it as "hostile to the institutions of the 
United States and inconsistent with the Constitution and laws." 
Now, under President Franklin Pierce, the government of the 
United States had assented to acts of discrimination against its 
citizens on purely religious grounds. Clearly, the Jews of America 
could not remain silent. 

In 1857 President James Buchanan promised a Jewish delegation 
that the wrong would be righted, and long and weary exchanges 
between the two governments ensued, leading to no results. The 
Swiss constitution itself would have had to be changed before 
American Jews could expect the same treatment in Switzerland as 
other Americans. But that was something the canton of Basel, in 
particular, would not hear of. Its contention was that in that case 
it would have to open its doors to the "usurious Israelitish popula- 
tion of the French province of Alsace." Thereupon the American 
ambassador to Switzerland, Theodore S. Fay, set out to learn the 
truth about the "Israelitish population" of Alsace, and in Novem- 
ber 1858 he informed Secretary of State Lewis Cass that, as a result 
of the information he had gathered, "no Swiss authority will ever 
dare to advance that objection against us as an argument." 

The matter dragged on. In the meantime, Swiss cantons were 
individually granting Jews civil rights, and President Lincoln made 
his stand plain by appointing a Jew as American consul to Zurich. 
Even Basel relented, though it was not until 1872 that it extended 
complete equality. The dispute was not liquidated until 1874 when 
the Swiss Confederation adopted a new constitution, placing the 
rights of aliens under federal instead of cantonal jurisdiction, and 
abolishing all distinctions based on religion. It was not a glorious 
victory. It took twenty-five years before Americans of Jewish faith 
could enjoy the same rights in a foreign land as Americans of other 
faiths, and it was through the work of time rather than the exer- 
tions of the American government that the wrong was erased. 



49 2 EMANCIPATION 

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN 

The City Expands 



THE giant Statue of Liberty, standing in the gateway to 
America and symbolizing the spirit which presided at her 
birth, has a bronze tablet inside its pedestal on which are 
engraved the lines of a sonnet concluding as follows: 

Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! 

This summons, addressed to the lands of the Old World, was 
penned by Emma Lazarus, a gifted poetess who died in her prime 
in 1887. She had forsaken her ivory tower of classic poetry to 
sing of the glory and woes and hopes of her people, and joined the 
many others who gave help and welcome to the fugitives on their 
arrival in America. 

Public opinion in America had been outraged by the brutal 
pogroms. The meetings of protest and sympathy held in New 
York and Philadelphia in February 1882, were imposing demon- 
strations in which all creeds participated, and Sephardim and 
Ashkenazim united to provide temporary shelter and other aid 
to the refugees, a large sum for the purpose having been raised 
by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Among those who took 
a leading part in this labor of duty and love was Michael Heilprin, 
himself a Russian Jew who had come to America in 1856. Thus, 
in an atmosphere of sympathy and helpfulness, was ushered in the 
third stage in the history of the Jewish people in America, the 
so-called "Russian" period. 

It was a period marked by the greatest, in point of numbers, of 



THE CITY EXPANDS 493 

all the migrations in the four millennia of the wandering nation 
in the story that began with Abraham's arrival in Canaan and 
included the Exodus from Egypt, the evictions from the mother- 
land, the expulsions from Spain and other lands. From its start 
in 1 88 1 until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, a 
period of one generation, the tide carried to the United States some 
two million of these refugees from the lands ruled by the czars. 
There was a large contingent from Rumania, where the govern- 
ment kept its quarter-million Jews in a state of vassalage as aliens, 
and another large contingent from the impoverished Jewish masses 
of Galicia, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This huge 
migration, however, must be set against the background of the 
still greater influx of many other nationalities and creeds from the 
congested and impoverished lands of the Old World, of people 
"yearning to breathe free" in the land of freedom and opportunity. 
For, in the same period, the total number of immigrants who were 
admitted into the United States was over twenty-two million. 



ONLY a small proportion of the Jewish immigrants no 
more, perhaps, than one in twenty had to be assisted by the 
social agencies. The country was in an era of expansion, labor was 
in demand, and the problem of earning a livelihood, the first prob- 
lem that faced the immigrants on their arrival, was speedily solved. 
Most of them settled in the large cities of the East, particularly in 
New York, where they went into the needle trades as wage earners, 
many of them rising rapidly to become contractors and manufac- 
turers. They congregated in special quarters, "ghettos," as these 
sections came to be called, showing the same proclivity in this 
respect as immigrants of other stock, all of whom sought aid, 
understanding, and human warmth among their own. Nor did 
the garment industries alone attract them. They became shoe- 
makers, carpenters, plumbers, cigarmakers, printers, and jewelers: 
there was hardly a handicraft, in fact, into which they did not 
penetrate. And many who began as peddlers and small shopkeepers 
came to be numbered among the leading merchants of their com- 
munities. 



494 EMANCIPATION 

The ancestral urge to return to the soil, reinforced by the 
romanticized doctrines and appeals of the maskilim and other 
idealists, asserted itself very early among the new arrivals. It was 
indeed the cardinal motive with the members of the society Am 
Olam, "Eternal People," who arrived as early as July 1881; and 
it permeated the hopes and dreams of the multitudes who followed 
them. The songs of a people, divorced for many centuries from 
the soil, exalted the farmer's lot, and tailors in the sweatshops 
hummed, as they stitched, the popular ditty: 

Of plow and soil 
God speeds the toil. 

As early as 1882, groups of these idealistic newcomers, equipped 
with little else but enthusiasm, made brave but ill-starred attempts 
to plant agricultural settlements in Louisiana, Kansas, Colorado, 
the Dakotas, Oregon, Virginia, and other states. They were more 
successful in New Jersey, especially in Carmel and in Woodbine, 
where in 1895 the Baron de Hirsch Agricultural and Industrial 
School was established. Since the general trend for the country 
at large was away from the farms and toward the cities, it was 
too much to expect that a people which had for centuries been 
forced to dwell in cities would move in the opposite direction. 
Nevertheless, the Jewish farming population of America slowly 
increased and in 1945, by the records of the Jewish Agricultural 
Society, it numbered 100,000. 

A striking feature of the shifting economic landscape of the new 
immigrants was the fact that the sons rarely followed the occu- 
pations of the fathers. A better life for their children was the 
goal of all parents; few sacrifices were considered too great to 
attain it. And this ambition, joining hands with the traditional 
respect for learning, sent the boys and girls flocking to the high 
schools, colleges, and professional schools. In time, this eager 
quest gave birth to new problems. It threw the economic structure 
of American Jewry out of balance, with too many in the profes- 
sions and commerce competing in the main against each other, 
and made it particularly vulnerable in times of economic crisis 
or recession. In native quarters, moreover, resentment arose against 
recent arrivals who were reaching out successfully for the higher 



THE CITY EXPANDS 495 

economic and social levels. They, the less recent arrivals, felt that 
those positions belonged to them. The result has been the imposi- 
tion of unofficial quotas against Jewish students, especially in medi- 
cal and engineering schools. 

3 

THE tide of refugees, fleeing from the pogroms and perse- 
cutions of Alexander III and his successor, continued to mount. 
From 1887 the annual number of new arrivals ranged from 30,000 
to 35,000, rising sharply in years like 1891 when czarist brutality 
rose to new levels. In the pogrom years of 1905, 1906, and 1907, 
the annual influx rose to well over 100,000. To the superficial 
observer, the congested "ghettos" of New York, Philadelphia, 
Chicago, and other large cities, continued to harbor the same mass 
of "crude and clannish" aggregations; in reality there was a con- 
tinuous exodus from the "ghettos" of those who had acquired 
the language and ways of the new land, who had passed through 
the relentless wringer of Americanization. But as long as new 
arrivals came and took their places, the optical illusion persisted. 
Indeed, only the observer who was equipped with the insight that 
comes from sympathy and detachment was able to apprehend the 
true character of the period the epic swell of its swarming masses, 
the visions, old and new, that inspired them, the pitfalls they 
encountered, their tragedies and triumphs. 

America set them on the path of freedom and new life, but it 
was not a path strewn with roses. Life in the tenements was harsh 
and unlovely, representing as it did a transition stage in many 
respects not unlike that of the mining towns of the West. The 
sudden shift from one physical and cultural environment to 
another engendered a host of problems, not the least of them 
being the intensity of the conflict, to which, for that matter, there 
is never and nowhere a pause, between the old generation and 
the new. The normal causes of dissension were reinforced by the 
enormous difference in tempo in the Americanization of the two 
generations. For the old, the process was naturally slow and labori- 
ous; for the young it was pleasant and swift, speeded as' it was by 
a highly efficient system of free secular education. Nor could 
the rifts that ensued be healed by an inadequate system, if system 



496 EMANCIPATION 

it could be called, of Jewish education. In these tensions, and in 
the temptations of a quasi-frontier life, the ancient virtues were 
sometimes undermined, Jewish names began to appear in the roster 
of crime, and anti-Semites as well as the sworn enemies of the 
immigrant were quick to seize upon these lapses, exaggerating them 
and exploiting them for their purposes. 

With all the opportunities which the new land afforded, the 
task of earning a livelihood demanded grinding toil and self-denial. 
In the needle industries, which absorbed most of the newcomers, 
the "sweating system" arose, with numerous little shops in unsani- 
tary quarters where men and women toiled long hours and were 
miserably underpaid. The system is now practically a thing of the 
past: its destruction was the work of the Jewish labor movement. 

That movement, crystallized today in a group of powerful 
organizations, including the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of 
America, the International Ladies Garment Workers' Union, and 
others, had its beginnings in small, pathetic efforts in the eighties 
and early nineties, efforts which were bedeviled by two basic 
impediments. The first was a lack of conviction and stability on 
the part of the workers which led them to rally to the union 
when strikes were declared and to abandon it after they were 
won or lost. The second arose from the attitude of the leaders, 
practically all of whom brought to their task the revolutionary 
social philosophies which they had imbibed in the Old World, 
and for which many of them had suffered in Russia. To these early 
leaders of the Jewish labor movement, a trade union was not 
primarily an instrument for achieving higher wages, shorter hours, 
and better working conditions for its members through collective 
bargaining or, if necessary, by striking; it was primarily an instru- 
ment for revolutionary education and action. And their futility, 
not to speak of the din they created, was aggravated by the fact 
that they were at odds among themselves with regard to objectives 
and methods. 

The early leaders, with a few exceptions like Abraham Cahan, 
editor of the Yiddish daily Forward, and Joseph Barondess, leader 
of the first successful strike of the cloakmakers in 1890, never 
became fully aware of the new world to which they had been 
transplanted; but their followers did. In the new climate of 



THE CITY EXPANDS 497 

opportunity and success, the millenarian doctrines which many of 
the immigrants brought in their baggage, and which anti-Semites 
seized upon and denounced for their purposes, withered and died; 
and if the din of clashing social theories and rival revolutionary 
slogans continued to resound on the East Side of New York, it 
was again because the steady stream of immigration brought con- 
tingents of newcomers who began where their predecessors had left 
off. Nearly all the Jewish unions, notwithstanding the fact that 
the Socialist party exercised a sort of tutelage over them, became 
affiliated with the conservative American Federation of Labor 
whose leader, it may be noted, was a Jewish cigarmaker named 
Samuel Gompers. In 1863, at the age of thirteen, Gompers migrated 
to America from England, became president of the organization 
in 1882 and, except for one term, was re-elected to that office year 
after year until his death in 1924. 

The tutelage which the Socialists, through press and party, were 
able to exercise over the Jewish labor movement sprang chiefly 
from the zeal they alone displayed for the welfare of the immigrant 
workers. The latter were grateful; and when they acquired citizen- 
ship they often voted as the Socialist union leaders and journalists 
advised them. Nevertheless, socialism failed to hold them: much 
sooner than later they began to cast their vote for one or the other 
of the two parties which still dominate the American political 
scene. 

4 

AN AVIDITY for the things of the mind and spirit asserted 
itself promptly among the new immigrants. It found its primary 
nutriment, of course, in the synagogues, which increased and 
multiplied; but it led also to a rapid development of a Yiddish 
press, stage, and literature. Even ^tfore the large influx from 
Russia, as far back as 1870, the first newspaper in Yiddish had 
begun a brief existence. Four years later, Kasriel H. Sarasohn 
established the weekly Jewish Gazette, and in 1886 he launched 
the conservative Jewish Daily News. In 1897 came the Socialist 
Forward; four years later the Orthodox Morning Journal; and in 
1914 The Day. Still more daily newspapers were launched in New 



498 EMANCIPATION 

York, as well as in Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and other 
large centers. 

The opinion which is sometimes heard, that the Yiddish press 
retarded the Americanization of the immigrants, is a profound 
error. The contrary, indeed, is the truth: it initiated its readers 
into the history and institutions of their adopted land in the only 
language they understood. In addition, these journals provided a 
medium for talented essayists, poets, and novelists whose labors 
brought an efflorescence of Yiddish literature in America. Abraham 
Goldfaden, the creator of the Yiddish theatre, and the incom- 
parable humorist Sholom Aleichem ended their careers in America; 
and among the others who belong to both the Old World and 
the New are the essayist Reuben Brainin, the poet Morris Win- 
chevsky, the novelist Sholem Asch, and the dramatist David 
Pinski. The outstanding poets of the earlier period were Morris 
Rosenfeld, the "proletarian" poet who sang of the sorrows and 
aspirations of the humble and exploited; and the more profound 
and versatile Solomon Bloomgarden, better known by his pen 
name Yehoash and famous also for his translation of the Hebrew 
Scriptures into Yiddish. The later period has seen the rise of a 
large number of gifted poets and novelists, whose work would 
shed luster on any literature, some of whom write in Hebrew as 
well as Yiddish. 

The Yiddish theatre at its best attained a degree of excellence 
not surpassed by any other stage. Its first actors Jacob Adler, 
Sigmund Mogulesco, Kennie Lipzin, Rudolph Schildkraut, and 
others had their schooling in the Old World; and a number of 
those who, like Paul Muni, Bertha Kalisch, and Jacob Ben-ami, 
rose to fame on the American stage and in Hollywood, began their 
careers playing in Yiddish to "ghetto" audiences. Among the 
dramatists of the earlier period, the most prolific as well as the 
most serious, whose plays betray the influence of Ibsen and other 
Europeans, was Jacob Gordin, while the outstanding dramatists of 
the current period are Peretz Hirschbein, at his best in the folk 
drama, Ossip Dymov, and H. Leivick, distinguished also as a poet. 

5 

LIFE in the teeming "ghettos" of New York and other 
large cities had that hectic quality which adheres to all novel and 



THE CITY EXPANDS 499 

transitional stages. Within the general aggregation smaller ones 
appeared, made up of newcomers hailing from the same region or 
town of the Old World, and clinging to each other for aid and 
comfort. Organization sprang up and multiplied profusely: 
societies for mutual aid, for the propagation of social panaceas, for 
education, and charity. The life-span of most of them was short, 
but they served as a proving ground for the larger and more stable 
communal life that followed. For mutual help, nation-wide fra- 
ternal federations came early into existence. The largest of them, 
the Independent Order Brith Abraham, was launched in 1887. 
Philanthropy, for which the Jewish community as a whole stands 
in highest repute, and in which the lead was taken by the older 
and wealthier immigrants from Germany, grew and developed into 
huge and integrated networks of institutions throughout the land. 
And even the promotion of the religious education of the young 
has become the object of collective effort. 

But the basic institution around which the immigrants gathered 
was, of course, the synagogue. Radicals and "intellectuals" might 
keep ever so disdainfully aloof; the masses of the new arrivals 
lost no time in setting up the worship they brought with them on 
their journey, and which had gone with their fathers on number- 
less journeys in the past. Thousands of synagogues over the coun- 
try, most of them in poor and ill-furnished quarters, sprang into 
existence. In nearly every case the membership consisted at first 
of landsleit, men who hailed from the same Old World community 
a bond of peculiar strength in a new and strange environment 
made doubly strong by the force of nostalgia. Their faith, of course, 
was Orthodox and in time, as the members grew in numbers and 
economic strength, the worship was moved into handsome syna- 
gogue structures, around which, as in all lands and generations, 
other communal activities educational, social, and charitable 
clustered. , 

Thus, with the influx from Russia which began in the eighties, 
Orthodox Judaism in America acquired fresh strength and, in point 
of numbers if not in influence, took the lead over the Reform 
and Conservative groups. Its failure to achieve greater influence 
stems from a number of causes, chief of which, until at least the 
most recent times, has been the refusal of the separate synagogues 
to acknowledge a central authority. The first attempt to establish 



5OO EMANCIPATION 

such an authority was made in 1888 when Rabbi Jacob Joseph 
of Vilna accepted the invitation of a group of some fifteen Ortho- 
dox congregations in New York to become their chief rabbi. The 
attempt failed, chiefly as a result of the unwillingness of other 
rabbis to recognize his leadership. Similar efforts made later in 
Chicago and in Boston were equally unsuccessful, although certain 
outstanding rabbinical leaders like Moses Margolies in New York 
and Bernard Levinthal in Philadelphia, were, by tacit consent, 
accorded special recognition. In the first decade of the new cen- 
tury, however, Orthodoxy in the New World began slowly to 
emerge from its disorganized state. In 1902 the Union of Orthodox 
Rabbis of the United States and Canada was brought into existence, 
and somewhat later came a union of the Orthodox congregations. 
The Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and Yeshiva 
University has, since 1896, been transformed from an Old World 
Talmudic Academy to the rank of a higher institution of learning, 
combining the humanities and modern science with the ancient 
lore and faith. 



STRANGELY enough, the persecution mania of czarist Russia 
came to plague the Jews of free America. Since 1832 a commercial 
treaty had been in force between the United States and Russia, 
under which the czar's government claimed and exercised the 
right of discriminating between American citizens of Jewish faith 
and those of other faiths. It went even further. Denying the right 
of the czar's subjects to become citizens of another country, it 
claimed jurisdiction over Russian Jews who had become naturalized 
in the United States and were visiting their native land. Until the 
large influx from Russia began, the issue was more or less academic, 
but as early as 1879 a resolution was passed by the House of 
Representatives calling for amendment of the treaty in order 
"that the rights of the citizens of the United States should not be 
impaired at home or abroad because of religious belief." 

For more than thirty years thereafter the discriminatory treat- 
ment of American-Jewish citizens by Russia under the Treaty of 
1832 was a constantly growing irritation with Russian consulates 
in the United States refusing visas to American Jews desiring to 



THE CITY EXPANDS 5OI 

visit Russia, with earnest but futile representations by the American 
State Department to the wily and hypocritical ministers of the 
czar, and with sporadic resolutions in Congress, some of which 
were buried in committee. One such resolution was introduced 
in 1894 by the Jewish congressman Isidor Raynor of Maryland, 
who later represented his state in the Senate. In 1902 Henry M. 
Goldfogle of New York, also a Jewish congressman and chosen 
by a Jewish constituency, submitted a resolution which the House 
duly passed without, however, affecting the situation. In 1905 
President Theodore Roosevelt made a personal but fruitless appeal 
to the czar through Count Serge de Witte, then in America to 
represent his sovereign in the negotiations that ended the Russo- 
Japanese War. 

Shortly afterwards, the struggle against the Treaty of 1832 
was taken up by the American Jewish Committee, a body formed 
in 1906 which included the most distinguished Jews of America. 
The Committee aimed and claimed to be representative without, 
however, exposing itself to the hazards of democratic elections. 
Since it was frankly an assembly of Jewish notables, self -selected 
and self -perpetuating, the Committee did not escape criticism and 
challenge, but because of the character and prestige of its leader- 
ship, it established before long an impressive record of achievement 
in the defense of Jewish rights and the promotion of Jewish 
interests. Chiefly instrumental in its creation was Mayer Sulzberger 
of Philadelphia, eminent jurist and profound Jewish scholar who 
became its first president; and among his associates were the bril- 
liant lawyer Louis Marshall who succeeded him to the leadership 
in 1912; the versatile Cyrus Adler who became the Committee's 
president on the death of Marshall in 1929; Jacob H. Schiff, out- 
standing banker and princely philanthropist; and Oscar S. Straus, 
statesman and scholar, who served his country as Ambassador to 
Turkey and as Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the cabinet 
of Theodore Roosevelt. One of the first tasks of the Committee, 
in which it rendered effective service, was to combat the mounting 
agitation for the restriction of immigration, an agitation aimed 
principally against the Jews of eastern Europe, for whom America 
was the only haven of escape from their tormentors. 

In February 1911, President William Howard Taft received a 



5O2 EMANCIPATION 

delegation consisting of representatives of the American Jewish 
Committee, the Order B'nai B'rith, and the Union of American 
Hebrew Congregations, to discuss the long-standing "Russian pass- 
port question," as the issues arising from the Treaty of 1832 came 
to be called. The President's attitude proved gravely disappointing: 
he appeared to be deeply concerned over the possible risks which 
any drastic action might impose on American investments in 
Russia. Thereupon the "undemocratic" leaders decided to resort 
to the thoroughly democratic method of rousing the public opinion 
of the country against the injustice. Numerous mass meetings were 
held, the support of the press was enlisted, state legislatures adopted 
resolutions, and again resolutions were introduced into the houses 
of Congress. It became an American and not merely a Jewish 
issue, the most impressive meetings being staged by a non-sectarian 
body of which the chairman was Andrew White, a former United 
States ambassador to Russia. 

The democratic process was completely vindicated. In December 
1911 President Taft who, it is thought, was not averse to having 
this wide public pressure for a step he really favored, formally 
denounced the Treaty of 1832, and a year later, in accordance 
with its provisions, the abrogation of the treaty was an accom- 
plished fact. 



CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT 

Anti-Semitism and the Dreyfus Affair 



AFRICA and Czarist Russia what a contrast these two broad 
lands presented in the fortunes of the Jewish people, with 
freedom and security in the one, and oppression and terror 
in the other! But what were the fortunes of the Jews in the other 
lands of Europe, in those where emancipation had at long last 
been attained: in Austria-Hungary where the Ausgleich of 1867 
had terminated all legal disabilities; in Germany, where the "blood 
and iron" unification of 1871 brought similar constitutional guaran- 



ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 503 

tecs; in Italy where, in the same year, the triumphant Risorgimento 
ended the temporal power of the papacy and swept away the foul 
Roman ghetto; in England where in 1858 Jews could sit in Parlia- 
ment without forswearing their souls; and in France, "the cradle 
of liberty," where the Great Revolution emancipated them as 
early as 1791. Did the great prize for which they strove so hard 
bring them the dignity and security they hoped for? Did it solve 
the Jewish question in Europe? 

There were many Jews who thought it did, and they lost no 
time in taking advantage of the opportunities their new-won free- 
dom held out to them. In industry and commerce, in the legal, 
medical and other professions, in science, literature, and art, in 
journalism and even in politics, they quickly moved forward into 
the front ranks. The much decried "peculiarities" which centuries 
of ghetto life had stamped upon them seemed to fall away over- 
night. The European Jew became a thorough European, his beard 
trimmed or shaved, his clothes cut to fashion, the language of the 
land perfect on his tongue and pen. And if occasionally he appeared 
to be a little unpoised and ill at ease, by turns too shy and too 
bold, would not his good neighbors understand and overlook these 
small vestiges of oppression and segregation? 

His good neighbors, alas, understood and overlooked nothing. 
They saw in him the same phantoms and terrors that haunted them 
in the Middle Ages, and they added new ones. Anti-Semitism was 
the new monster that rose up to plague the Jew in the modern 
world. The monster was not really new, but he came decked out 
in new trappings, and neither emancipation nor assimilation could 
slay him. The Jewish question in Europe was not solved; the Jews 
were not to be left in peace. 

2 

MODERN anti-Semitism was made in Germany, whence it 
spread rapidly throughout Europe and invaded other continents. 
The soil of Germany after the Franco-Prussian War was peculiarly 
suited for the rank growth. The swift triumphs achieved by the 
Prussian army and the "blood and iron" statesmanship of Otto 
von Bismarck intensified the morbid race consciousness of die 
Germans, the solemn conviction that they were the world's master 



504 EMANCIPATION 

race. The Jew, they were taught to believe, was an inferior alien 
among them, congenitally incapable of absorbing the "authentic 
German spirit," and therefore a stumbling block in the path of 
their destiny. This solemn twaddle was taught in the schools and 
universities; it was disseminated in numerous books, pamphlets, 
and periodicals; it was preached from the pulpits; it impregnated 
the intellectual atmosphere of Germany like a miasma. 

By pulpit spellbinders like the court preacher Adolf Stoecker, 
anti-Semitism was exalted for the greater glory of Christianity: 
he it was who in 1879 inspired the organization of the League of 
Anti-Semites, and in 1882 presided over the first International 
Anti-Semitic Congress which was held in Dresden. On the other 
hand, with philosophers like Eugen Duehring, a progenitor of 
the Nazi ideology, anti-Semitism went hand in hand with hatred 
of Christianity as a product of the Jewish spirit; and the ponderous 
historian Heinrich von Treitschke, who even figured as a liberal, 
proclaimed and popularized the slogan: "the Jews are our misfor- 
tune." But the writer who did most to poison the intellectual 
atmosphere of Germany was, curiously enough, an Englishman. 
He was Houston Stewart Chamberlain, whose Foundations of the 
Nineteenth Century ', first published in 1899, became the bible of 
German "scientific" anti-Semitism and the Pan-Germanic move- 
ment. Chamberlain married a daughter of the German composer 
Richard Wagner, himself a venomous anti-Semite, and at the out- 
break of the First World War in 1914 turned traitor to the land 
of his birth. 

Chamberlain gathered the threads of anti-Semitic doctrine 
already spun by his predecessors and elaborated them into a fan- 
tastic web. History, according to Chamberlain, reveals only one 
gifted race: the Germans, who created all things great and good. 
The Jews, on the other hand, represent a direct antithesis, and 
their continued existence is an historic crime. For the great men 
who throng the pages of Jewish history, Chamberlain found a 
singular explanation. Those men, like David, and Solomon, and 
the Hebrew prophets, were of Germanic descent! One of the 
nations in Canaan whom the Jews conquered, the Amorites, was 
conveniently discovered to be a Germanic tribe, and it was they 
who sired all the great of ancient Israel. As for Jesus of Nazareth 



ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 505 

and the apostles, the explanation was even more simple and 
startling: Palestine was garrisoned at that time by Roman soldiers 
among whom there were already many Teutons. Nor did the 
explanation, so blasphemous to the Christian consciousness, disturb 
the teacher and his numerous "Christian" disciples. Such was the 
"science" that gained the widest currency among the German 
intellectuals, with Emperor Wilhelm II himself one of its ardent 
admirers. Franz Oppenheimer, the brilliant Jewish socialist, found 
a word for Chamberlain: he called him "the court-fool of abso- 
lutism." 

3 

BUT the Germans are not a nation of intellectuals only. 
For the majority of them the peasants and artisans, the shop- 
keepers and civil employees a simpler brand of anti-Semitism 
was available. The stock market crash of 1873 and the economic 
depression which followed were, of course, the result of a Jewish 
conspiracy, in which the Alliance Israelite Universelle, the head 
and front of the "Jewish International," played the leading part. 
The German Catholics charged the Jews with responsibility for 
the bitter Kulturkampf which, from 1872 to 1879, Bismarck 
waged against their church. To make any cause or policy odious, 
the surest way was to identify the Jews with it, and anti-clericalism, 
the policy of Bismarck and the National Liberal Party, was no 
exception. The embittered and frustrated Pius IX, who still sat 
on the papal throne, himself led the anti-Semitic campaign. 

By 1880, however, Bismarck himself made common cause with 
the anti-Semites. He found the alliance useful first in his struggle 
with the fast-growing Social Democratic party. That party came 
into existence in 1875 when the followers of Karl Marx united 
with those of the brilliant orator and labor leader, Ferdinand 
Lassalle, both of Jewish origin. What then could be more natural 
than to brand socialism and all its works as another Jewish con- 
spiracy? In 1879, moreover, Bismarck embarked on a policy of 
reaction and broke with the National Liberal party, finding sup- 
port from the anti-Semites to whom liberalism was also a Semitic 
fabrication. Were not the two Jews, Eduard Lasker and Ludwig 
Bamberger, who had given him invaluable aid in the creation of 



506 EMANCIPATION 

the Reich, the most relentless opponents of his new course? The 
advantages of enlisting anti-Semitism for the promotion of any 
political program were much too tempting. 

Not that Bismarck and his Junkers were prepared to countenance 
the so-to-speak "uncivilized" forms of anti-Semitism. Germany 
must not sink to the level of Russia. Germany was a "cultured" 
nation and could not tolerate civil disturbances. Besides, violence 
had a way of spreading into unexpected quarters. The government 
policy, therefore, was to encourage anti-Semitism without per- 
mitting it to get out of hand. Unfortunately, however, this attempt 
to feed the tiger and keep the lamb whole proved a failure: the 
beast was much too ravenous. Not only were Jews in practice 
despoiled of their civil rights, but they were assaulted in the streets 
of Berlin and other cities. In Neustettin a synagogue was burned 
and in 1891 a charge of ritual murder was trumped up in Xanten, 
near the lower Rhine. At the trial, the prosecuting attorney him- 
self called for the acquittal of the accused, but public passion had 
been whipped up to so dangerous a pitch that the city became 
unsafe for its Jewish inhabitants. In 1900 a similar accusation was 
attempted in the West Prussian town of Konitz; it failed to stand 
up, but the town had to be placed under martial law. 

Indeed, the alarming fact soon became apparent alarming not 
only to the Jews, but to decent Christians and even to some 
"scientific" anti-Semites that the agitation had become the 
stamping ground of distinctly criminal types: blackmailers, forgers, 
incendiaries, perjurers, and even psychopaths. Stoecker himself was 
found guilty of political intrigue involving moral turpitude. 
Herman Ahlwardt, his successor as German anti-Semite Number 
One, a member of the Reichstag from 1893 to 1898, was imprisoned 
for libel and extortion, and the rabble-rouser Count Pueckler, his 
collaborator, wound up in an insane asylum. Dr. August Roehling, 
author of a scurrilous work entitled The Talmud Jetv 9 was exposed 
as a forger and perjurer, and other anti-Semitic leaders, both in and 
out of the Reichstag, were convicted of embezzlement, falsification, 
and perjury! The movement attracted so many shady characters 
and public morality became so debased by it that in 1891, the year 
of the Xanten affair, hundreds of prominent Germans organized a 
Society to Combat Anti-Semitism, and a "respectable" anti-Semite 



ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 507 

like Wilhelm Marr, one of the "philosophers" of the movement, 
turned with "loathing amounting to nausea" from the noisome 
brood he had helped to engender. 

4 

NOT less unsavory was the anti-Semitic movement in the 
Austrian dominions, where the plight of the victims was aggravated 
by the chronic strife between the nationalities in the crazy-quilt 
empire of Francis Joseph. In the endless conflicts between Czechs 
and Germans in Bohemia, Poles and Ruthenians in Galicia, and 
Magyars, Slovaks, and Rumanians in Hungary, the Jews found 
themselves between the upper and nether millstones. When, as 
they usually felt compelled to do, they took sides in the electoral 
feuds, they incurred the bitter hostility of the party they opposed 
without necessarily earning the gratitude of the one they espoused. 
The least grateful were the Germans, particularly the Pan-Ger- 
mans, who took their cue from the Treitschkes and Stoeckers in 
Berlin. In German Austria, where Roehling's screed against the 
Talmud found a wide circulation, the Berlin brand of anti-Semitism 
became, in the early eighties, the program of a political party. It 
was led by the Pan-German Georg von Schoenerer whose criminal 
violence brought him, in 1888, a term in prison. But the most 
unscrupulous anti-Semitic demagogue was the Viennese lawyer 
Dr. Karl Lueger, founder of the Christian Socialist party. In 1897, 
with the support of the Clericals and Pan-Germans, he became 
mayor of Vienna. Lueger, who numbered among his followers a 
large assortment of criminal types, became the inspiration and 
model of anti-Semitic demagogues who, a generation later, im- 
proved on his methods and applied them to Germany and the 
whole world. 

German Austria, and particularly Vienna, became worm-eaten 
with anti-Semitism. Jews were forced out of municipal posts and 
denied other economic opportunities. The virus was particularly 
active in the secondary schools and universities, but the noble 
Teuton students had no stomach for meeting the victims of their 
malice on "the field of honor," where students normally settled their 
quarrels. When Jewish students began to exhibit a disturbing skill 
with foil and pistol, a congress of German students which met in 



508 EMANCIPATION 

Waidhofen in 1897, solemnly resolved that the Jews were not 
entitled to "honorable satisfaction." However, in the Austrian army 
and navy which of course were under direct imperial control 
the monster was held in check, and Jews even rose to the rank 
of general and admiral. The emperor himself detested anti-Semitism 
and its practitioners: it was only after the voters of Vienna had 
given Lueger a majority three times in succession that Francis 
Joseph felt constrained to confirm his election. 

5 

IN HUNGARY, where the Magyars needed the Jews to retain 
their hegemony over the other nationalities, anti-Semitism, though 
not absent, was held in leash. But in 1882 it broke out in all its 
ugliness in the form of a fantastic blood libel in Tisza-Eslar, a village 
on the River Theiss. The anti-Semites knew how to exploit the lie 
to inflame the populace. There were serious riots in Pressburg and 
other places, and for two years the hideous affair dragged on with 
the usual apparatus of perjury, torture, intimidation, and terror 
before the accused, on tie recommendation of the state's attorney 
himself, were acquitted. In Bohemia and Moravia, where Czechs 
and Germans were in a state of chronic hostility, the Czechs were 
bitter against the Jews for supporting their opponents, while the 
Germans were anti-Semitic as a matter of patriotic duty. There too 
the tension reached its climax in a blood libel which led to riots 
against the Jews. In 1899, in the town of Polna, a cobbler named 
Leopold Hilsner was condemned to death on a murder charge in 
which the medieval legend played a part. The trial was denounced 
by Thomas Masaryk, later the first president of the Czechoslovak 
republic, but all efforts to obtain a new trial were in vain. The 
sentence, however, was commuted to life imprisonment, and in 
1916 Hilsner was pardoned. 

6 

IN GALICIA, the Polish province of the Austrian empire, there 
were nearly a million Jews who found themselves caught between 
the Poles and Ruthenians in their unceasing struggle for supremacy. 
Normally, the Jews supported the Poles, without, however, appeas- 
ing either the Polish shlakhta and clergy, who were still in political 



ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 509 

control, or the rising Polish middle class in the cities, bent on sup- 
pressing its Jewish competitors. The weapon the Poles found most 
effective was the economic boycott. The destitution among the 
Jews mounted to a degree which neither the tens of thousands who 
migrated to America and other lands, nor the efforts of Baron 
de Hirsch to divert them to new sources of livelihood, could miti- 
gate. In 1 898 the suffrage was extended, the Poles split into a num- 
ber of parties, and when the Jews cast their votes for the Social 
Democrats as being the least anti-Semitic, the other parties un- 
leashed a wave of pogroms against them which claimed thousands 
of victims. The disorders were suppressed only after the inflamed 
peasants began to attack the estates of the nobility also. 

In eastern Galicia, the policy of supporting the Poles, into which 
the Jews found themselves dragooned, brought them the hostility 
of the Ruthenians, who were in the majority. In 1907, led by the 
Zionists, the Jews concluded a pact with the Ruthenians which 
allayed their resentment, but it naturally called down upon them 
the wrath of the Poles. Anti-Semitism became a major plank in the 
program of the Polish National Democrats whose party embraced 
Russian Poland also. The Endeks, as its members were called, in- 
tensified the economic boycott and had no hesitation about resort- 
ing to violence. 

7 

THUS from Germany eastward, into all the lands where 
emancipation had brought the promise of a new era to the Jewish 
people, came this new version of the ancient enmity to harass and 
torment them. But in all those lands the centuries had piled up heaps 
of inflammable material which the baleful sparks from Germany 
could easily ignite. Would the evil flames spread westward also? 
Would they find fuel in glorious France, the cradle of liberty and 
the native home of European civilization? The answer came in 
1894 when an anti-Semitic conspiracy convicted an innocent Jew- 
ish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, of high treason, and the Third 
French Republic was brought to the brink of civil war and down- 
fall. 

Never, in point of fact, did "scientific" anti-Semitism capture 
the imagination and passions of Frenchmen as it did of Germans. 



5 1 EMANCIPATION 

Strangely enough, however, it made its appearance in France even 
before it did in Germany. In 1855, more than a generation before 
the renegade Englishman, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, popu- 
larized it in Germany, the French diplomat and writer Count 
Joseph Arthur Gobineau published his Essay on the Inequalities of 
Human Races. In this four-volume work the count propounded 
the major doctrines of "scientific" anti-Semitism, including the 
congenital superiority of the Germanic race and the intellectual 
and spiritual sterility of the Semites, especially the Jews. Nor did 
he fail to give credit to the intervention of Teutons for the birth 
of such Jews as David and Solomon, the Hebrew prophets, Jesus 
of Nazareth, and Paul of Tarsus. Gobineau's influence, however, 
was restricted, and it was probably greater in Germany than in 
France. 

The flaming apostle of anti-Semitism who achieved popularity 
in France, was Edouard Drumont, whose La France juive ( Judaized 
France) appeared in 1886. The atmosphere at the time was charged 
with partisan hatreds, and the reactionary anti-republican forces 
found it profitable to make the Jews responsible for the rise of the 
Third Republic in 1871, and for all the other ills, political and eco- 
nomic, with which France was afflicted. Drumont's chef-d'oeuvre 
became one of the best sellers of the century, diligently promoted 
by the clericals and royalists who were eager to see the downfall 
of the republic. In 1892, Drumont began publishing the anti- 
Semitic newspaper La libre Parole, which specialized in making 
aspersions on the patriotism of Jewish officers, of whom there were 
about five hundred in the French army, and the stage was set for 
the momentous Dreyfus Affair. 

8 

ALFRED DREYFUS, a captain of artillery attached to the gen- 
eral staff, was born in Alsace in 1859, and when, after the Franco- 
Prussian War, France was compelled to cede that province to 
Germany, Alfred's family chose to remain French and settled in 
Paris. There was nothing in the captain's personal circumstances 
to drive. him to criminal conduct. He was happily married, he was 
wealthy, he was an able officer, and he seemed assured of a brilliant 
career in the army. In 1894 that career was abruptly terminated 



ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 51 I 

by a charge of high treason. A document, which became famous as 
the bordereau (memorandum), had come to light revealing that 
French military secrets had been communicated to agents of the 
German government. The handwriting of the bordereau was de- 
clared to be that of Captain Dreyfus, who was duly court-martialed 
and sentenced to life imprisonment after being publicly degraded. 

On January 5, 1895, in the presence of his fellow officers and a 
crowd gathered in and around the Champ de Mars, the degradation 
of Captain Dreyfus was solemnly carried out. His insignia were 
ripped off, and his sword broken. "Death to the traitor! Death to 
the Jews!" the mobs shouted. "You are degrading an innocent 
man!" Dreyfus cried. He was then transported to the pestilential 
little Devil's Island off the coast of French Guiana where, his 
enemies were sure, he would spend the rest of his life. 

But the Dreyfus family refused to let the matter rest, and they 
were ably assisted by the writer Bernard Lazare, champion of his 
people and implacable enemy of injustice. A year after the con- 
viction, Colonel Picquart, the new head of the Intelligence Service, 
discovered to his amazement and dismay that the bordereau was not 
in the handwriting of Dreyfus but of a Major Esterhazy, an officer 
who was well-known as a dissolute scamp. But the Minister of 
War and the generals were adamant against reopening the case, 
and the reactionary press, of course, supported them. "What dif- 
ference does it make to you whether this Jew remains on Devil's 
Island or not?" Picquart was asked by his superior; and when 
Picquart insisted, he was removed and his place taken by Colonel 
Henry, who could be relied upon to shield the real traitor. In the 
hope of silencing the Dreyfus family and others who made a fuss 
about justice, the generals staged a secret court-martial for Ester- 
hazy which, of course, acquitted him. 

But now a new champion entered the arena whose leonine voice 
could not be stilled. He was the outstanding French novelist Emile 
Zola, who on January 13, 1898, published his shattering f accuse! 
In this open letter to Felix Faure, President of the French Re- 
public, Zola charged the generals with the crime of "high treason 
against humanity." But Zola was himself arrested and convicted 
of libel All France was now in a state of feverish excitement, the 
great majority joining in the hue and cry against Dreyfus. There 



512 EMANCIPATION 

were rumors of an imminent coup <Ttat to overthrow the repub- 
lic, the judges feared to impose any but the severest sentence, and 
Zola fled to England. Anti-Semitic riots flared up in many cities 
of France, in Paris, Marseille, Bordeaux, Lyon, and others. The 
agitation spread to the French colony of Algeria, where it led to 
bloody pogroms. 

But the demand for a new trial for Dreyfus could not be stifled: 
it persisted not only in France but throughout the world. New 
champions arose who took up his cause: Jean Jaures, leader of the 
Socialists who were perturbed by the triumph of the reactionary 
coalition of clericals and royalists; Georges Clemenceau, the in- 
trepid Radical statesman whose newspaper, Uaurore, was the first 
to publish Zola's Y accuse; Anatole France, the foremost man of 
letters in France, who was partly of Jewish descent; Aristide Briand, 
the statesman who was later the author of the law for the separation 
of church and state; Scheurer-Kestner, the vice-president of the 
French Senate, and others. But now events took a startling turn 
which made a new trial inevitable. On August 31, 1898, Colonel 
Henry, caught in the meshes of the forgeries he committed to 
shield Esterhazy, cut his throat with a razor, and the man he 
shielded fled to England. Now the reactionaries redoubled their 
agitation; Deroulede, one of their leaders, made an attempt to 
overthrow the Republic, and popular passion continued to rise. 
In February 1899, France voted for a new president with the 
Dreyfus Affair the burning issue, and the excitement reached its 
climax. But the successful candidate was mile Loubet, who stood 
for a new trial for Dreyfus: the heart and intelligence of France 
were still sound. 

From August 7 to September 9, 1899, Dreyfus faced an open 
court-martial at Rennes, and was again found guilty "with ex- 
tenuating circumstances"! The verdict, it was clear, was another 
attempt to feed the tiger of reaction and keep the lamb of justice 
whole. The trial, as the London Times expressed it, was "foul with 
forgeries, lies, contradictions, and puerilities." Ten days after the 
trial, Dreyfus, sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, was pardoned 
by President Loubet. 

The Rennes trial was followed by another desperate attempt by 
the reactionaries against the republic. The plot was discovered 



ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE DREYFUS AFFAIR 513 

and its leader, Jules Guerin, secretary of the anti-Semitic League, 
together with a group of followers, entrenched himself in his head- 
quarters and defied the government. It took more than a month and 
5000 troops to rout them out! Now the government struck at the 
root of the evil the preponderant influence which the religious 
bodies of the Catholic church, like the Jesuits, the Dominicans, and 
others, exercised on the royalists and the army. In 1901 the Asso- 
ciations Act was passed which broke the power of these orders 
over the education of the young. In 1905 the anti-clerical bloc in 
the Chamber of Deputies, which the Dreyfus Affair had welded 
together, went further. The Separation Law of that year abolished 
the connection of church and state which, under the Concordat 
between Napoleon I and the papacy, had existed in France for 
over a century. 

The final act of the Dreyfus drama took place on July 12, 1906, 
when the Cour de Cassation, the Supreme Court of France, over- 
threw the verdict of the court-martial of Rennes and unanimously 
found Dreyfus innocent. The captain was promoted to the rank of 
major and awarded the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. Colonel 
Picquart was made a brigadier general and three months later en- 
tered the first cabinet of Clemenceau as Minister of War. The 
remains of Emile Zola, who did not live to see the triumph for 
which he had fought so valiantly, were laid to rest in the Pantheon. 
French anti-Semitism received a blow from which it never quite 
recovered. 

9 

THE anti-Semitism which sprang from the "blood and soil" 
of Germany, with its pompous parade of "science," its metaphysical 
and mystical twaddle, its hierarchy ranging from Fichte and Hegel 
down to the village schoolmasters, found no response from the 
realistic and hardheaded people across the North Sea. England, 
in fact, had permitted its native Jews to rise to a height which can 
only be compared with that attained during the golden era by 
their coreligionists in Spain. Wherever Jews were oppressed they 
sought and obtained help from the influential community in Eng- 
land, where men of all religious and political faiths often united 
to denounce bigotry and persecution. 



514 EMANCIPATION 

Nevertheless, England did not remain immune to the more popu- 
lar brand of the anti-Semitic virus. In their flight from eastern 
Europe, too many of the fugitives, it seemed, settled in England, 
and agitation to restrict the admission of aliens arose and became 
particularly clamorous in 1902 when, after the Boer War, unem- 
ployment became a serious problem. The "aliens" and it was an 
open secret that the word stood for immigrant Jews were accused 
of depriving Englishmen of their jobs. Naturally, the agitation was 
embellished with charges of a more distinctly anti-Semitic charac- 
ter. The "aliens" were accused, for example, of engaging in un- 
productive occupations. But the great majority about 85 per cent 
of them were artisans: tailors, shoemakers, cigarmakers, cabinet- 
makers, and others. Only about 7 per cent were traders. There 
were a number of parliamentary commissions whose investigations 
failed to substantiate any of the serious charges; and in 1905 one 
of these commissions, which specialized in the statistical aspects of 
the problem, exposed the exaggerations of the alarmists by revealing 
the fact that of the 300,000 Jewish immigrants who had been 
admitted since 1891, only 105,000 were still in England, the others 
having moved on westward to the Americas. But the clamor per- 
sisted, and Parliament finally passed the Aliens Bill which went 
into effect in 1906, with restrictions that reduced the number of 
Jews admitted that year to a third of the number admitted the year 
before. 

The Aliens Bill did not have easy sailing in Parliament or in the 
country at large. Englishmen who cherished their reputation for 
fair play were disturbed by the false and bigoted claims which 
were advanced on behalf of the measure, let alone the comfort it 
provided for the persecutors in Russia and Rumania. Nor did the 
deeper social and moral implications of anti-Semitism escape them. 
"The amount of anti-Semitism in a country has generally been 
proportionate to the amount of bigotry, mental depravity, and 
moral callousness it contained," was the verdict of G. F. Abbott, 
author of a volume entitled Israel in Europe. 

As for the Jews, the specious assurance that the bill was not 
aimed at them in particular failed to reassure them. It so happened 
that in 1904, in the midst of the agitation, a small group of Jews 
who had settled in the town of Limerick in Ireland became the 



THEODOR HERZL 515 

target of a vicious propaganda launched against them by a monk 
of the Redemptorist Order named Father Creagh, to which the 
townsfolk and the peasants round about responded only too readily. 
Even in Britain a feeling of uneasiness descended on the Jews. 
England, said the novelist Israel Zangwill, "was catching the epi- 
demic which rages everywhere against the Jew." 



CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE 

Theodor Herzl 



THERE was at least one witness of that gruesome spectacle 
on January 5, 1895, when Captain Alfred Dreyfus was 
publicly degraded, who realized its full significance and 
on whom it made a shattering impression. He was an Austrian 
journalist named Theodor Herzl, living in Paris as correspondent 
of the influential Vienna newspaper Neue Freie Presse. He was 
thirty-five, tall, strikingly handsome, of grave and noble bearing, 
with the full black beard and regal port of an Assyrian monarch 
endowments which played their part in perhaps the most singular 
career of modern times, bold, brilliant, and creative. 

Theodor Herzl was already launched on a career of another 
sort when the glowing coal was pressed to his lips. He was making 
his mark in journalism and literature, nor did his racial origin 
impede or oppress him very seriously. True, both in Budapest 
where he was born and in Vienna where his family went to live 
when he was eighteen, this origin had, on a number of occasions, 
been unpleasantly brought home to him by teachers and school- 
mates; and when, after getting his doctorate in jurisprudence in 
the University of Vienna, he began practicing law in Salzburg, 
he soon realized that the same origin made the prospects of a suc- 
cessful career in that profession rather dubious. But he possessed 
a native dignity and pride that enabled him to meet aspersions with 
healthy disdain and, as for a career, he preferred literature to law 
in any case. He wrote plays, essays, and critical studies. Some of 



516 EMANCIPATION 

his plays had already met with success on the stage, and he was 
well established as a journalist, being particularly adept with the 
short, sparkling, little essay called the feuilleton. Apparently, Herzl 
was one of the young Jews whom emancipation seemed to have 
really emancipated. He was at home in the intellectual and artistic 
life of Europe; the threads that connected him to his people and its 
past were so tenuous that he could relish the glitter and superficial- 
ity of that life without distaste or misgivings. By every indication, 
Theodor Herzl was marked for a serene and "successful" life. 

But the Power which guides the destiny of men and nations ruled 
otherwise. Theodor Herzl came away from that lamentable scene 
on the Champ de Mars a changed man. What hideous thing was 
this which had come over France? he asked himself the France 
he so loved and admired, the land of the Great Revolution, the 
cradle of liberty and human brotherhood. It was not just Dreyfus 
for whose blood he heard the mob clamor; it was for the blood of 
all his people! Herzl was shaken to his soul's depths, and out of these 
depths there rose to the surface a store of vision and prophetic 
passion, the existence of which neither he nor his friends seem to 
have suspected. 

The way for his imperiled people seemed to him perfectly 
clear. That way was a return to nationhood indeed, to statehood. 
But Herzl felt neither inclined nor competent to become the 
leader of a great historic enterprise: there were others he thought 
more qualified by wealth and station. There were the English 
Rothschilds, for example; and there was Baron Maurice de Hirsch, 
a man not only of great wealth, but beyond question of great heart 
also. 

Early in June 1895, Herzl was received by Baron de Hirsch in 
Paris and spent an hour with him. The Baron was intrigued and 
disturbed by this enthusiast with the magnetic eyes and regal bear- 
ing. A Jewish state? An international political movement? An- 
other Messianic agitation? It was fantastic, dangerous! Who was 
this young journalist come to tell the great philanthropist that the 
Jewish tragedy was too immense and, yes, too sacred to be solved 
by charity? 

Disappointed but not discouraged, Theodor Herzl, first a writer, 
sat down and wrote. And there was born a one-hundred-page 



THEODOR HERZL 517 

pamphlet to which he gave the provocative title A Jewish State. 
It appeared the following year and it led some of Herd's friends 
to fear for his sanity. The little book had the precision of an 
architect's blueprint, but through it all ran a fervor and pathos that 
were profoundly moving. "We are a people one people," was its 
basic idea and point of departure. From it proceeded the proposi- 
tions, first, that the Jewish problem could only be solved through 
the collective effort of the Jews themselves, operating as a political 
entity; and second, that the goal of this effort must be the estab- 
lishment of a Jewish state. Nor would the nations withhold their 
approval from the undertaking, for such a state, by absorbing a 
host of formidable competitors, would benefit them also. For his 
own people, whose infiltration into European society since the 
emancipation had spawned the new anti-Semitism, there was no 
other way; this monster, under certain conditions of tension and 
conflict which might well arise, would, in its blind fury, attempt 
the total destruction of its victim. 

Like the prophet Ezekiel who, while an exile in Babylonia, drew 
a complete plan for a new Temple, Herzl proceeded to describe 
the process of creating the new state. A "Society of Jews" was to 
be the recognized political agency of the Jewish people, and a 
"Jewish Company" its financial and executive arm. Territorial 
rights were to be secured by a charter with the approval of the 
European governments. Colonization was to proceed by organized 
groups and to be carefully controlled. To win economic and 
spiritual freedom, the Jewish masses would flock to the new land; 
and the intellectuals and many of the wealthy would also come. 
"A generation of wonderful Jews will spring from the earth. The 
Maccabees will rise again! Let the opening words be repeated: the 
Jews who will it shall have a state of their own." 

"As I wrote, I seemed to hear the rushing of eagles' wings above 
my head," Herd set down in his diary. 

2 

BUT the idea of restoring the Jewish people to nationhood, 
which came to Herzl like a revelation, was, as we have already 
seen, not a new thing. It was born with the destruction of their state 
at the hands of the Romans; it was enshrined in their prayers; it 



5 I 8 EMANCIPATION 

became linked with the advent of the Messiah. The constant theme 
of the singers of the Exile was the land of Israel's former greatness, 
and around it the cabalists wove the glowing web of their mystic 
fancies. How they loved that land, how they yearned to breathe 
its air, "which makes men wise," to kiss its bare stones, and weep 
upon its ruins! 

O 'who ivill give me imngs that 1 may fly away, 
My broken heart upon thy ruined stones to lay! 

Thus sang Yehudah Halevi, the greatest poet of the Exile, who 
himself made the pilgrimage. And all through the centuries, singly 
and in bands, the exiles continued to brave the perils of the journey 
in order to satisfy their longing. They came as pilgrims, they came 
as settlers, and many came in their old age to be buried in the sacred 
soil. 

But even the notion of a restoration through systematic coloniza- 
tion and political action was not a new thing when Herzl received 
his great illumination. As early as 1825, the same light had dawned 
on the quixotic Mordecai Manuel Noah in America, and in the 
early eighties it had come to Perez Smolenskin, Moses Leib Lillien- 
blum, Leon Pinsker, and a host of others in eastern Europe where 
a serious attempt was already under way by the BILU groups and 
the Chovevei Tziyon societies to translate the idea into agricultural 
settlements in Palestine. 

Of Pinsker's Auto-Emancipation and the ferment it had stirred 
in eastern Europe, Herzl had no knowledge. Nor was he aware that 
in the six decades between Noah and Pinsker there had been still 
others, Christians as well as Jews, who spoke out and who labored 
for the national redemption of the Jewish people. In 1842, with the 
eastern question in the forefront of international affairs, Charles 
Henry Churchill, of the same clan which in 1940 was to give 
Britain its greatest war leader, wrote to Moses Montefiore: "I 
cannot conceal from you my most anxious desire to see your coun- 
trymen endeavor once more to resume their existence as a people." 
Ten years later an English theologian named Hollingsworth wrote 
an eloquent plea for the establishment under British protection of 
a Jewish state in Palestine where "the Jew can feel the deathless 



THEODOR HERZL 519 

energies of his race and the high destinies of his future." An equally 
ardent but more influential champion was the eminent philan- 
thropist and social reformer Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of 
Shaftesbury. In 1876, speaking of the "crowning bond of union" 
between the Jewish people and Palestine, he declared: "This 
is not an artificial experiment: it is nature, it is history!" The 
same year George Eliot's great novel Daniel Deronda appeared, 
perhaps the most powerful plea that has ever been made for "the 
revival of the organic center" of the Jewish people. 

Some of the Christian supporters of the national revival of the 
Jewish people were animated by theologic considerations: it must 
come to pass in fulfillment of prophecy, and be followed by 
the conversion of the Jews. The most active of these advocates 
was Laurence Oliphant, traveler, author, and mystic, who in 
1879 vainly sought permission from the Sultan of Turkey to 
establish a large Jewish settlement in Palestine. He was encour- 
aged by Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli as well as by the 
Foreign Minister, Lord Salisbury. In fact, many years earlier, 
when Disraeli was only an aspiring young novelist, his enthusiasm 
for the redemption of the people from whom he sprang and whom 
he never hesitated to champion, found expression in his romances 
of the East. Nor should any roster of the early Christian cham- 
pions of Jewish restoration, however incomplete, omit the name of 
Jean Henri Dunant, the great Swiss humanitarian, founder of the 
Red Cross, who from 1863 to 1876 labored to arouse an interest 
among the Jews of western Europe for the colonization of Palestine. 
And in 1891, only five years before Herd published his Jewish 
State, the Reverend William E. Blackstone of Chicago circulated a 
petition addressed to President Benjamin Harrison and Secretary of 
State James G. Elaine, praying them "to secure the holding at an 
early date of an international conference to consider the condition 
of the Israelites and their claim to Palestine as their ancient home." 
The petition bore the signatures of scores of leaders in the spiritual, 
intellectual, political, and economic life of America. From America, 
also, there had even proceeded by 1870 three separate attempts by 
Christians to plant agricultural settlements in Palestine; of these at 
least two, one established in 1852 by Warder Cresson of Philadel- 



52O EMANCIPATION 

phia, the other a year later by Mrs. Clorinda S. Minor, also of that 
city, were linked with the larger purpose of speeding the restora- 
tion of Israel. 

3 

BUT of these Christian champions Herzl had no more knowl- 
edge than he had of the Chibath Tziyon movement in eastern 
Europe. Nor had he any knowledge of the Jewish advocates of 
national revival who had preceded him with vain attempts to pierce 
the indifference of their people in western Europe. Among them 
were the historian Joseph Salvador in France, the scholar and poet 
Samuel David Luzzatto in Italy, and the rabbi and philosopher 
Isaac Ruelf in Prussia. The Orthodox rabbi, Zevi Hirsch Kalischer, 
also in Prussia, not only wrote and preached but even took a hand 
in a colonizing experiment in Palestine. The profoundest of these 
western exponents of Jewish national rebirth was Moses Hess 
(1812-1875), Socialist leader and collaborator of Karl Marx and 
Ferdinand Lassalle, whose Rome and Jerusalem, published in 1862, 
Herzl did not read until 1901. "I was delighted and uplifted by 
him," Herzl records in his diary. "What a lofty and noble spirit! 
All I have aimed at is already to be found in him . . . Since Spinoza 
the Jewish people has produced no greater spirit than this dimmed- 
out and forgotten Moses Hess!" 

4 

IT MAY have been an advantage rather than a handicap to 
Herzl, this ignorance on his part of what others had said and tried 
to do for the goal he urged: it enabled him to proclaim that goal 
with a simplicity and directness his Je'wish State might otherwise 
have lacked. In the last analysis, however, Herzl's importance lay 
not in what he wrote, but in what he was. In every way physi- 
cally, intellectually, and morally Herzl was superbly gifted, and 
he proved to be a great leader and practical man of affairs as well 
as a prophet. He has been hailed as the first creative statesman of 
the Jewish people since the Dispersion. Reluctant as he was to take 
the lead, Herzl had "put his hand to the plow," and he could not 
look backward. In the eight years that followed, until his untimely 



THEODOR HERZL 521 

death in July 1904, he spent himself in the service of Zionism, as 
the movement he launched came to be called. 

The simple plan of action set forth in the Jewish State was, in 
essence, actually followed. The "Society of Jews," which was to 
enlist public sentiment, negotiate with governments, and represent 
the Jewish people politically, became the World Zionist Organiza- 
tion. The "Jewish Company," which was to finance and administer 
the work of colonization, became the Jewish Colonial Trust, to 
which in time were added the Jewish National Fund and the 
Palestine Foundation Fund. The "Company," in Herzl's plan, was 
not to begin operations before the "Society" had obtained from 
the Sultan of Turkey or some other sovereign a public grant or 
charter over a definite territory. A tract in Argentina, Herzl was 
at first inclined to think, might also serve the purpose; it was only 
after he came to know the Jewish masses of eastern Europe that 
he realized the land must be Palestine and no other. 

Contact with reality compelled still other modifications in his 
basic plan. The "Company," Herzl proposed, should be launched 
with a capital of $250,000,000. Why not? The rich as well as the 
poor, the influential as well as the lowly, would flock to the cause 
and insure its speedy realization. But his efforts to enlist the rich 
and the exalted brought little response. Other philanthropists be- 
sides Baron de Hirsch, who were spending large sums to relieve 
Jewish distress, turned a deaf ear to the proposals of the "dangerous 
visionary." Of the many Jews whose words carried weight in 
Europe, only Max Nordau, the brilliant French critic and social 
philosopher, and Israel Zangwill, the English novelist, placed them- 
selves unreservedly at his side. The important Jewish organizations 
of western Europe the French Alliance Israelite Universelle, its 
Austrian counterpart, the Israelitische Allianz, the Jewish Coloniza- 
tion Association in London came out in opposition. Even the 
Chovevei Tziyon in Russia began by holding aloof. The Macca- 
beans, a society of Jewish intellectuals in London, listened to 
Herzl politely but coldly, and there were Orthodox rabbis who 
proclaimed that not in Herzl's way, but through God's anointed 
Messiah, would the great deliverance come about. The most bitter 
opponents of all were the Reform rabbis. The Jews, they asserted, 



522 EMANCIPATION 

were not a nation and must not seek to become one. Their mission 
was to be scattered among the nations of the earth to serve the 
cause of truth, justice, and universal peace. Zionism would only 
strengthen anti-Semitism. Besides, was it patriotic for Jews to talk 
of setting up a state of their own? What of the states which had 
emancipated them and to which they owed allegiance? Thus 
spoke the Reform rabbis of Germany and America. 

So Herzl found himself left with the poor and the lowly. They 
were, for the most part, the suffering masses of eastern Europe, 
those who knew they were a people and should be a nation, who 
saw in Zionism a movement which ran true to their character and 
destiny. 

5 

rr WAS a staggering flood of opposition that Herzl encoun- 
tered, but he was not dismayed. Very soon he saw enough to con- 
vince him that, notwithstanding the upraised brows and frigid 
smiles that greeted him in the salons of the mighty, he had touched 
the vital nerve of his people. He saw it in the response of the Jewish 
students of Austria and Germany: they sent him an address with 
thousands of signatures, and the Kadimah society in the University 
of Vienna, led by Nathan Birnbaum, was particularly enthusiastic. 
He saw it among the Jews of Sofia when, in the spring of 1896, he 
passed through that city on his way from Constantinople; and he 
saw it among the Jews in the East End of London. From Russia, 
Galicia, Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria he received expressions 
of adherence and demands for action. So Herzl went forward from 
words to deeds and his deeds were marked by the same largeness 
of vision that illumined his first conception. 

He began by calling a representative Jewish congress which be- 
came the basic instrument of the movement. "The direction of 
Jewish affairs," said he in the call to the congress which went out 
in the name of a commission created for the purpose, "must not 
be left to the will of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned 
they may be. A forum must be created before which each one 
may be called to account for what he does or fails to do in Jewry." 
The time set for the first congress was August 1897; t ^ ie place, 



THEODOR HERZL 523 

Munich. At once there arose a storm of objections. There was alarm 
in the western countries, where Jews still trembled for their new- 
won emancipation. They were afraid of an open discussion of 
Jewish affairs in a democratic body; they wanted no such symbol 
of Jewish unity, publicly displayed and with political implications. 
The leaders in the Jewish community in Munich protested against 
the holding of the congress in their city, and a group of German 
rabbis, the Protest Rabbiner, as Herzl designated them, published 
a denunciation of the proposed assembly as an aspersion upon their 
loyalty to the fatherland. 

But the congress was duly held, not in Munich, but in the Swiss 
city of Basel. It brought together 197 delegates from almost every 
land of the earth, chosen by the vote of all those who, having paid 
the shekel, had demonstrated their adherence to the Zionist goal. 
For the first time in eighteen centuries, the Jewish people, or at 
least a considerable part of it, assembled to take its destiny into its 
own hands. "Zionism," said Herzl, "is the Jewish people on the 
march." The aim of the movement was defined by this First Zionist 
Congress in a statement, since then known as the Basel Platform, 
as the creation of "a publicly-assured, legally-secured home for 
the Jewish people in Palestine." 

Now the movement was definitely launched, and the Congress 
became its instrument of organization and political action, the 
brain and arm of the "Society of Jews" called the World Zionist 
Organization. One by one, it brought to life all those institutions, 
like the Jewish Colonial Trust and the Jewish National Fund, 
which corresponded to the "Jewish Company." As emissary of the 
Congress, Herzl was soon to appear before the Sultan of Turkey 
and other monarchs in his tireless efforts to obtain the charter 
which would make possible the large-scale colonization of Palestine. 

But the Zionist Congress was not only the head and arm of the 
movement; it was also its voice. From the platforms of the Congress 
and in the hearing of the world, that voice rang out boldly, de- 
nouncing the oppressors of the Jewish people, demanding its rights 
and proclaiming its hopes. Usually it was Max Nordau, he of the 
great heart and withering word who, with magnificent eloquence, 
reviewed the situation of his people at the opening session of each 



EMANCIPATION 

Congress. And when Nordau spoke the world listened. And domi- 
nating the proceedings with the magic of his personality was The- 
odor Herzl, who stood before the delegates like some fabled mon- 
arch of the past, a living demonstration of the forces still latent in 
his persecuted people. In truth, after centuries of martyrdom, an 
heroic chapter was begun in the story of this people. Poets lifted 
up their voices and sang. One of them, Naphtali Herz Imber, wrote 
Hatikvah, "The Hope,*' which became the anthem of the move- 
ment. Another, Chaim Nachman Bialik, then in his twenty-fourth 
year and destined to become the foremost Hebrew poet of modern 
times, voiced the sorrow and longing of his people in a poem ad- 
dressed to the delegates and concluding with the lines: 

Your memory like a quenchless sun imll light 
The heavy darkness of your people's night. 



IN ALL parts of the world, men and women flocked to join 
the movement, and in the lands of oppression the masses were 
stirred in a manner reminiscent of the messianic ferments of past 
centuries. But the differences were even more striking than the 
resemblances. Herzl may have had the magnetic attraction of a 
messiah, and undoubtedly the mainspring of the new surge lay deep 
in the same immemorial longings and expectations; but the move- 
ment he launched operated not with mystic charms and incantations 
but with political and financial realities. At the Third Congress, 
Herzl reported the founding of the Jewish Colonial Trust with 
headquarters in London, but with a capital of only 250,000. The 
Fifth Congress, held at Basel in 1901, saw the establishment of the 
Jewish National Fund for the purchase of land in Palestine, the 
land to be leased to colonists, but to remain a possession of the 
people forever. The Fourth Congress had been held in London and 
made a profound impression in the press and government circles. 
British statesmen began to take the movement seriously. 

In the meantime, Herzl labored incessantly to win die support 
of other governments also, particularly that of Turkey. In the fall 
of 1898 he had two audiences with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, 



THEODOR HERZL 525 

the first in Constantinople, the second outside Jerusalem. The 
Kaiser was visiting the Near East and was known to have great 
influence with the Sultan Abdul-Hamid. In May 1902 he was re- 
ceived in audience by Abdul-Hamid himself. The sultan was vague 
about a charter for Palestine, and Herzl lacked the large sums which 
might have made him more specific: the Jewish bankers were in- 
different or cautious and the masses desperately poor. In the sum- 
mer of 1903, he visited the Russian capital on the invitation of 
Minister of the Interior von Plehve, and the same year he had 
audiences with Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and the pope. He 
stood before the crowned heads of Europe like a monarch, this 
king of dreams and hopes which had survived so many crowns and 
dynasties. And amid all his labors, Herzl found rime to write his 
Altneuland (Old-new-land), a novel in which he anticipates the 
reality for which he strove. In this Utopia, he sees Palestine covered 
with modern cities and villages and a new society of proud men 
and women devoted to social justice and the universal welfare 
of humanity. 

7 

BUT all this time the distress of his people in eastern Europe 
kept mounting and, while the flood of refugees grew in volume, 
the opportunities for*asylum were shrinking a fact which Herzl 
saw plainly enough when, in July 1902, he testified as an expert 
on Jewish conditions before the British Aliens Commission. In 
April 1903, the frightful pogrom took place in Kishinev, and when 
in the summer of that year Herzl traveled through Russia, he was 
appalled by the misery of his people. In Vilna, the streets were 
dense with the throngs who came out to greet him, and in the 
community house, when the rabbi gave him the priestly benedic- 
tion, the people burst into loud weeping. In the small hours of the 
following morning, an immense crowd gathered at the railroad 
station to bid him farewell, and the czar's police, always suspicious 
and fearful, dispersed the people with swinging knouts. Herzl was 
terribly shaken: he had entered the Inferno and seen with his own 
eyes. 
But he did not abandon hope. 



526 EMANCIPATION 

8 

ON AUGUST 23, 1903, the Sixth Zionist Congress assembled 
in Basel, and in his opening address Herzl announced the receipt 
of an offer from the British government of a large tract in Uganda, 
in Africa, for colonization by Jews with guarantees of self-govern- 
ment. That, in fact, was the second British offer; the first, made 
earlier that year, proposed the region south of Palestine called 
El-Arish, but it had been found unsuitable because it lacked water. 
"Of course," Herzl said to the delegates, "Africa is not Zion and 
can never become Zion"; and Nordau called it a Nachtasyl, a "shel- 
ter for the night," a temporary haven for those fleeing from the 
knout and the pogroms. The ultimate aim of the Jewish people 
Herzl declared to be no other land than Palestine, and he ended 
his closing address with the immemorial oath: "If I forget thee, 
O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning." 

But most of the delegates, and especially those who represented 
the Zionists of Russia, were profoundly disturbed. They, who suf- 
fered most, clung to Palestine with the greatest tenacity and looked 
upon the Nachtasyl with the deepest suspicion. The Congress was 
torn with strife and bitter recrimination. Nevertheless, the proposal 
to send a commission to investigate the territory offered by Britain 
received a majority of those who voted, but it was clear that the 
movement faced an irreparable schism. In October of the same 
year, the leaders of the movement in Russia met in a secret con- 
ference in the city of Charkov and sent a deputation to present a 
set of ultimatums to Herzl. With infinite patience Herzl answered 
his opponents and repeated his assurances: the deputation, having 
come as accusers, went away as the accused. In April 1904, there 
was a meeting of the Greater Actions Committee, the body that 
exercised authority in the interval between congresses, and the 
leader received a vote of confidence. The breach seemed to be 
healed. 

Herd continued his endless labors, but for a long time now his 
heart had been unable to keep pace with his will. He went to the 
little mountain town of Edlach near Vienna in the hope of finding 
rest and cure. Early in July, he was forced to bed, and on the 
afternoon of July 3, 1904, after keeping death at bay by sheer 



THE LAST OF THE CZARS 527 

power of will until he could see his mothei and children again, 
Theodor Herzl, at the age of forty-four, breathed his last. 

9 

ON FEBRUARY 8, 1898, when the movement he launched was 
only six months old, Theodor Herzl, addressing an audience in 
Berlin, had said: "I believe I may say to you that we have given 
something to the Jewish people: to the young a vision; to the old 
a dream; to all men something beautiful." He was paraphrasing the 
ancient Hebrew prophet Joel,* this modern Hebrew prophet of 
the winged word and shining deed. 



CHAPTER SIXTY 

The Last of the Czars 



IN AUGUST 1897, when the First Zionist Congress assembled, 
Nicholas II had been czar of Russia for nearly three years. He 
was to hold the imperial throne for twenty more and to part 
with it, together with his life, in the revolutionary storm which 
burst over him in 1917. The fates were in a particularly ironic 
mood when they decreed that this dull mediocrity, devoid of 
courage or imagination and clinging with superstitious tenacity to 
the trappings of a dead past, should find himself called upon to 
rule the waves of war and revolution. And it was he in whose pal- 
sied hands lay the weal or woe of the largest Jewish aggregation 
in the world nearly six million of them, four in Russia proper 
and two in the former provinces of Poland. 

Very soon after his accession, and in a manner that left no room 
for illusions, the new czar took occasion to crush the timid hopes 
which had a way of sprouting up with every new reign. "Let 

And it shall come to pass afterward, 
That I will pour out My spirit upon all flesh; 
And your sons and daughters shall prophesy, 
Your old men shall dream dreams, 
Your young men shall see visions. Joel 3; i. 



528 EMANCIPATION 

everybody know," he declared in January 1895, "that I shall guard 
the principle of autocracy as firmly and uncompromisingly as it 
was guarded by my late and unforgettable father." And as an 
earnest of this resolve, he retained his father's reactionary ministers, 
including that reincarnation of Torquemada and Philip II of Spain, 
the gloomy fanatic Pobyedonostzev. 

It was clear to the Jews that the removal of the long-standing 
restrictions, like the suffocating Pale of Settlement, was an empty 
dream, and it was not long before new persecutions came to plague 
them. An imperial decree issued in January 1899 imposed fresh 
curbs on the first-guild merchants in Moscow who, after the brutal 
expulsions of the Jewish artisans in 1891, had still managed to 
maintain themselves in the "holy" metropolis. The walls of the 
Pale were even more heavily guarded, health resorts were brutally 
barred to Jewish patients, and the process of expelling Jewish inn- 
keepers from the villages was accelerated by a variety of admin- 
istrative decrees. In Kiev, the oblavas, or police raids, in which Jews 
were rounded up and driven from the city, became notorious for 
their frequency and brutal efficiency. 

This rigid enforcement of the old curbs and the imposition of 
new ones had a catastrophic effect on the already precarious eco- 
nomic plight of Russian Jewry. Early in the new reign, the liquor 
trade was made a government monopoly. The Jews in the villages 
and towns who found themselves driven to pursue the dangerous 
traffic would have gladly changed it for another occupation, but 
the monopoly deprived thousands of them of this source of liveli- 
hood without permitting them access to others. The new paupers 
flocked to die cities, where the destitution of the Jewish proletarians 
became more appalling. Agriculture was closed to them by the 
"temporary rules" of 1882, which were still in force; even attempts 
to promote handicrafts among them were officially discouraged, 
and entry into the liberal professions was heavily restricted. In the 
legal profession it was made practically impossible, and the 
numerus clausus in all types of educational institutions was pulled 
tighter and more rigorously enforced. Apparently the government 
followed the deliberate aim of decimating the population of the 
Pale by the method of starvation. 
Nor was the policy of adding terror to economic strangulation 



THE LAST OF THE CZARS 529 

neglected. As early as February 1897, the thriving town of Shpola 
in the province of Kiev was the scene of a well-prepared orgy of 
destruction and plunder, in the course of which Jewish homes, 
shops, and warehouses were completely wrecked. Two years later a 
similar outbreak took place in Nikolaev. When, however, in August 
1902, thousands of Poles in the Catholic shrine city of Czestochowa 
massed to attack the Jews,, the authorities found no difficulty in 
dispersing them: apparently, the czar's officials were not prepared 
to let the Poles share the privilege with the Russians. 

The ignorant town rabble and peasantry of both nationalities 
interpreted the official persecutions and humiliations of their Jewish 
neighbors in only one way: that it was lawful and pleasing to the 
czar to attack them. One Russian peasant, arrested for his part in 
the Shpola pogrom, is reported to have voiced the following griev- 
ance: "They told us," he protested, "that we had permission to beat 
the Jews, and now it appears it is all a lie!" The real culprits, of 
course, were the czar, his ministers, $nd the anti-Semitic agitators 
led by the semi-official newspaper Novoye Vrerma (New Times). 
It was an agitation which the leading Russian men of letters, includ- 
ing such outstanding figures as Vladimir Solovyov, Leo Tolstoy, 
Maxim Gorky, and Vladimir Korolenko, could, with all their 
efforts, do little to stem. 



UNTIL the spring of 1903, die world at large knew little and 
cared less about the sufferings of the Jews under Nicholas II. The 
governments were not, of course, uninformed, but the official atti- 
tude had to be diplomatically "correct." Thirteen years earlier, on 
the eve of the brutal expulsions of 1 89 1 , that attitude had been stated 
in super-correct phrases in Parliament by spokesmen of Her Britan- 
nic Majesty's Government. Replying to interpellations with regard 
to the impending persecutions, knowledge of which had seeped 
into western Europe, those spokesmen declared that "these pro- 
ceedings, which, if rightly reported to us, are deeply to be re- 
gretted, concern the internal affairs of the Russian Empire, and do 
not admit of any interference on the part of Her Majesty's Govern- 
ment." Some fifty years later, it may be noted, the same "correct* 
attitude was observed whep even more "deeply regrettable pro- 



53 EMANCIPATION 

ceedings" against the Jews occurred, which concerned the internal 
affairs of the German Reich and served as one of the preludes to 
the Second World War. 

To the man on the street in the cities of the liberal West, Nicholas 
II even figured as an idealist and 'humanitarian! Was it not he at 
whose call the International Hague Conference had been called in 
May 1899 for the purpose of promoting peace and disarmament? 
Only the thoughtful minority found it incongruous that a call for 
international peace should be issued by an autocrat who was ruth- 
lessly stifling every free impulse of his own people; and a touch of 
lighter irony was provided by the fact that in the same call the 
czar leaned heavily on the ideas of one Ivan Bloch, a distinguished 
political economist and writer who was of Jewish origin. 

In April 1903, however, the civilized world received a rude 
shock. On Easter Sunday and the day following, a pogrom of un- 
precedented frightfulness was enacted in Kishinev, the capital of 
the province of Bessarabia, where for centuries the large Jewish 
community had been living at peace with its Christian neighbors. 
There could be no doubt that die bloody carnival had been care- 
fully planned and organized by the authorities, its inspiration having 
been traced to the Ministry of the Interior headed by the notorious 
Vyatcheslav von Plehve. The outbreak was preceded by a period 
of intensive incitation, from which a charge of ritual murder was 
not omitted, and the only action taken by the police throughout the 
bloody proceedings was to step in and disarm a group of Jews who 
were trying to defend themselves. The drunken mobsters were not 
interfered with; they plundered to their hearts' content and then 
went over to murder, rape, and other bestialities too hideous to 
record. On the morning of the second day, the governor of the 
province informed a Jewish deputation that, having received no 
instructions from the capital, he could do nothing to stop the 
carnage. Toward evening, a telegram arrived from the Minister 
of the Interior and the pogrom was promptly brought to an end. 
Forty-five Jews had been slain, hundreds wounded, and fifteen 
hundred houses and shops had been plundered and wrecked. 

As knowledge of the full extent of the official crime filtered out 
of Russia, die civilized world, not yet inured to large-scale honors, 
was profoundly shocked. Pulpits and platforms resounded with 



THE LAST OF THE CZARS 531 

protests, and in England, France, Germany, and America, as well 
as in Russia itself, relief measures were launched for the wounded 
and plundered. The reaction was strongest in the United States, 
where scores of public meetings were held throughout the land, 
the one in New York under die chairmanship of Seth Low, die 
mayor of the city, with ex-President Grover Cleveland as principal 
speaker. In Russia the Jews were filled with shame as well as wrath. 
Too many of the victims had failed to exact a price for their lives. 
In his City of Slaughter) the poet Bialik expressed these feelings 
with shattering effect; and in cities and towns throughout the Pale, 
young men and women, Socialists and Zionists alike, came secredy 
together, organized for self-defense, and swore that never again 
would their people be slaughtered like sheep. 

Von Plehve became aware of this movement for self-defense and 
issued orders to his minions to suppress it without mercy. Later 
that year, however, in September 1903, the Jewish self-defense 
proved its metde in a bloody affray wfyich broke out in the White 
Russian city of Homel. The rabble was easily dispersed and re- 
turned only after it was shielded by a cordon of troops, who fired 
on the defenders. But in spite of the protective screen, the fury 
of the inflamed mob was held in check, and the casualties on both 
sides were almost equal. 

3 

IT WAS apparent to all observers, including the great moralist 
and writer Leo Tolstoy, diat the czar's government, in fomenting 
and preparing the anti-Jewish outbreaks, was pursuing a policy 
which it believed would result in neutralizing the revolutionary 
ferment which was rising throughout the land. In his moving pro- 
test against the Kishinev horror, a protest which von Plehve's 
censors suppressed, Tolstoy declared that the attitude of the gov- 
ernment was proof that it "stops at no cruelty whenever it finds it 
necessary to check movements that are deemed dangerous by it." 
The policy was embodied in the simple formula: "Drown the 
revolution in Jewish blood!" No doubt there were Jews in the 
revolutionary movement, and it would have been strange if the 
people who suffered most from czarist oppression had not been 
among the most eager to overthrow it. Most of the Jewish radicals 



53* EMANCIPATION 

belonged to the Socialist Bimd y as the "General Jewish Workers' 
Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia/' organized in 1897, was 
briefly designated. But the efforts of the Bund were directed more 
against the Jewish employers of Jewish labor in the Pale than 
against the czarist regime. The Bund opposed Zionism, espoused 
Yiddish as against Hebrew, advocated national-cultural rights in 
Russia, and as far as the general revolutionary movement was con- 
cerned, took its stand with the Social Democrats, who discounte- 
nanced terrorism as a weapon against the autocracy. In the ranks of 
the Social Revolutionary party, who did advocate terrorism, the 
number of Jews was insignificant. 

If von Plehve needed evidence that the revolutionary movement 
was not the inspiration of Jewish malcontents, but an authentic 
Russian product, he had it on July 28, 1904 although he was left 
in no condition to draw the necessary deductions. On that day, in 
St. Petersburg, he was assassinated. A bomb was thrown at him by 
a Social Revolutionary terrorist, a "genuine" Russian by the name 
of Sasanov. Seven months later, Grand Duke Sergius, governor- 
general of Moscow, the man who carried out the expulsions of 1 89 1 
and who vied with von Plehve as the best-hated minion of the 
autocracy, met the same fate at the hands of another "genuine" 
Russian, the Social Revolutionary Kalayev. 

4 

EARLIER that year, on February 8, 1904, began the disastrous 
war with Japan, in which some 30,000 Jewish soldiers, a number 
greater than the ratio of Jews to the general population called for, 
fought for a government that treated them as enemies. The pogrom 
policy was for the moment abandoned in the hope that the patriotic 
fervor which the war was expected to unleash would be a more 
effective counterrevolutionary specific. But either the new policy 
was not effectively enforced, or the government had raised a 
Frankenstein which it was no longer able to control. Toward the 
end of the year, there were outbreaks in a number of places in 
South Russia, of which the bloodiest occurred on Yom Kippur Day 
in Kherson; and in different parts of the land, "mobilization 
pogroms" were carried out, in the course of which disgruntled 
Russian reservists, on the way to the front, gave vent to their 



THE LAST OF THE CZARS 533 

mingled feelings of resentment and patriotism by looting and 
wrecking Jewish homes and shops. 

As the czar's forces on land and sea in the Far East suffered one 
humiliating defeat after another, the revolutionary temper in 
Russia continued to rise. The autocratic regime blew hot and cold. 
Von Plehve's successor toyed with a policy of concession and paci- 
fication, but on January 22, 1905, a day which has come to be 
known as "bloody Sunday," a procession of workers in the capital, 
bearing a petition to the czar, was met with a hail of bullets. The 
revolutionists responded with a wave of demonstrations, strikes, and 
acts of terror throughout the land. Dozens of Jewish communities 
submitted petitions, asking and sometimes -demanding immediate 
emancipation; and in April 1905, a League for the Attainment of 
Equal Rights for the Jewish People in Russia was formed in Vilna. 
The general unrest continued to mount and the czar's government 
became jittery. It proposed some vague, but obviously double- 
faced concessions "relating to the perfection of the well-being of 
the state," which the revolutionists rejected, demanding a Con- 
stitution and a democratically elected Parliament. 

5 

BUT the autocracy was not yet at the end of its resources, 
and for its main expedient it reverted to the old policy of "drown- 
ing the revolution in Jewish blood." Now the policy was imple- 
mented on a larger and more elaborate scale, and the dregs of 
Russian society were organized into the infamous Black Hundreds 
to carry it into effect. The underworld was brought to the surface 
and paraded as the "genuine Russians," faithful to their "little 
father," hating the revolution and all its works, and determined to 
destroy its instigators who were, first and last, the Jews. In the 
spring and summer of 1905, the Black Hundreds began rehearsing 
for their task. In the spring, peasants made sporadic attacks on 
Jews in a number of widely separated localities, but were generally 
beaten back by the self-defense. The most serious affray occurred 
in the city of Zhitomir, capital of Volhynia, where in spite of die 
assistance the rabble had from the police and military, the gallant 
defenders rendered a good account of themselves. In the summer 
the propaganda machine ?f the Black Hundreds reached new 



534 EMANCIPATION 

heights, charging the Jews with responsibility for the Russian de- 
feats in the Far East, whereupon soldiers and Cossacks attacked 
the Jews in a number of localities, including the industrial cities of 
Lodz and Bialystok. 



IN THE meantime, the revolution was taking its thunderous 
course. The bogus parliament which the government thought 
would allay the storm was indignantly rejected and, with the coun- 
try in the throes of demonstrations, strikes by students and workers, 
and a general strike in preparation, the czar proclaimed civil, re- 
ligious, and political liberty for the Russian people, with provision 
for a representative parliament, or Duma, vested with legislative 
power. 

Great was the rejoicing in Russia among all lovers of liberty and 
especially among the Jews. Great but short-lived, for it lasted ex- 
actly one day. Beginning October 31, 1905, the day after the im- 
perial manifesto, and lasting for a week, Jews in hundreds of cities 
and towns throughout the land were attacked by the Black Hun- 
dreds. Everywhere the underworld "patriots" were shielded by 
police and soldiery, against whom the self-defense was almost 
powerless. Hundreds were killed in Odessa alone there were 
three hundred dead thousands were maimed, and scores of thou- 
sands made destitute. In a number of places non-Jewish revolu- 
tionists were also attacked, for the widespread disturbance was 
intended to have the appearance of a spontaneous patriotic upris- 
ing. But there was nothing spontaneous about it. The "uprising" 
had been conceived, organized, and financed by agencies of the 
central government with the knowledge of the czar himself, and 
the Jews, regardless of political affiliation, were marked as the 
principal victims. 

The "uprising" threw the revolution into chaos: before long 
the Black Hundreds, now parading as the "League of the Russian 
People," were to become the second government of Russia. But 
neither the open threats of the Russian pogromists, nor the snarlings 
of the anti-Semites in the Polish provinces, intimidated the Jews 
from voting for their own candidates to the First Duma. That 
body, which began its turbulent career of less than three months 



THE LAST OF THE CZARS 535 

on May 10, 1906, contained twelve Jewish deputies, among them 
the brilliant Zionist orator Shmaryah Levin and die eminent lawyer 
Maxim Vinaver. 

On June 14, while this Duma, dominated by the liberal Con- 
stitutional Democrats, was struggling with the reactionary govern- 
ment, a second pogrom, more sanguinary than the first, occurred 
in the large industrial city of Bialystok. The technique of pogrom- 
making had undergone improvement: the outbreak, in which the 
police and garrison took the leading part, was set off by a shot 
fired on a religious procession by an agent provocateur. The Duma 
appointed a special commission which, after investigating the po- 
grom on the spot, fastened the guilt on the military and civil au- 
thorities, branded the official reports as "contrary to the truth," and 
found that "there was no race hatred, either religious or economic, 
between the Christian and Jewish populations of the town." The 
Duma demanded the immediate resignation of the Government, 
but two days later, on July 22, an imperial order put an end to that 
body. The opposition, defying the government, issued the famous 
Viborg Manifesto, with all the Jewish deputies among the signers, 
but the counterrevolution triumphed, its principal weapon being 
always the pogrom. In September 1906 the place chosen by the 
Black Hundreds for the use of this weapon was the city of Siedlitz, 
where again the fuse was set off by an agent provocateur. In the 
trials that followed these orgies of looting and murder, punish- 
ment was reserved for the Jewish defenders, while the guilty gen- 
erally obtained acquittal or pardon* 

7 

"HOW do you bear it?" was the question Theodor Herzl 
repeatedly asked when, in August 1903, he traveled in Russia and 
for the first time came into contact with Jewish misery in die 
towns and cities of the Pale. How did these huddled masses the 
tailors, shoemakers, and weavers, the shopkeepers and petty traders 
bear up under the knout of persecution and terror? Multitudes, 
of course, sought escape by emigration: in 1905 and 1906 nearly 
230,000 of them left for America. But the millions who remained 
bore up remarkably well. It would be a distortion to picture die 
life of those millions as an endless round of gloom and sorrow. Hie 



53 6 EMANCIPATION 

ancient spiritual font remained unexhausted, and the years of 
pogroms and revolution even brought a new surge of spiritual and 
intellectual energy. 

Into the life of these millions two new currents had been in- 
jected socialism and Zionism and, curiously enough, both were 
able to find sanction in the ancient heritage, particularly in the 
teachings of the prophets. In the main, however, the two were 
rivals, although in at least one party, the Poale Zion (Workers 
of Zion), they converged and flowed together. On the "Jewish 
street," as the social and intellectual milieu was designated, the 
turbulent times, reinforced by an ingrained penchant for dialec- 
tics, spawned numerous other parties which, in spite of the futilities 
they at times indulged in, bore testimony to mental vigor and high 
morale. 

There were, of course, a goodly number of the young -who 
turned their backs on the "Jewish street," who threw in their lot 
with the Russian youth struggling to break the czarist yoke, and 
who, if they thought of their people at all, consoled themselves with 
the belief that the liberation of Russia would "automatically" solve 
the Jewish problem. But the great-majority held fast to their own, 
and even with the radicals among them, there was a marked con- 
centration around Jewish cultural values, a will to preserve their 
people's distinctive character, different as the roads might be by 
which they sought to attain that goal. The Zionists, without 
renouncing interest in the Diaspora, looked forward to the restora- 
tion of Jewish nationhood in Palestine. Proletarian parties like the 
Bund, as well as the bourgeois groups who rallied around the 
League for the Attainment of Equal Rights, thought it possible for 
their people to preserve themselves permanently as a distinct na- 
tionality among the Russians and Poles: their program called for 
cultural autonomy to be /guaranteed by certain group rights which, 
after the First World War, came to be called minority rights. 

The din of contending political-and cultural programs resounded 
loud in the "Jewish street." The Zionists were devoted to the 
Hebrew language and literature, their opponents to the Yiddish, 
but the sharp, contest between them stimulated the efflorescence of 
both. Some of the foremost men of letters, including the novelist 
Mendele Mocher Seforim, the incomparable humorist Sholem 



THE LAST OF THE CZARS 537 

Rabinowitz (1859-1916), who wrote under the pen name of 
"Sholom Aleichem," and the poet and folklorist Isaac Leib Perez 
(1851-1915), wrote in both languages. Hebrew was the vehicle 
of Bialik and other distinguished poets, among them Zalman 
Shneour, Saul Tchernikovsky and Jacob Cohen, and of essayists 
and publicists like Achad Ha' am and Joseph Klausner. The poet 
Simon Frug (1860-1916) wrote in Russian as well as Yiddish; the 
latter was also the language of many other gifted novelists, drama- 
tists, and poets. In Warsaw and Vilna, Hebrew and Yiddish dailies 
were published whose readers ran into the hundreds of thousands. 
Simon Dubnow (1860-1943) was first among the historians; he 
took a leading part in die struggle for cultural autonomy and 
minority rights. 

8 

FOR the vast majority of those millions, however, the par- 
ties and programs were like the waves of a sea swept by storm. 
Underneath were the calm spiritual depths out of which they, like 
their ancestors before them, continued to draw strength and solace. 
Life was hard and insecure, there was no freedom from want or 
freedom from fear, but the ancient faith, with its Sabbaths and 
festivals, its sanctified learning and institutions, its cherished rites 
and customs, was like the tree which Moses cast into the bitter 
waters of Marah, making them sweet. 

Zionism came as an additional source of moral strength to the 
Orthodox masses, for though some of their leaders, especially 
among the Chassidim, rejected the movement, others like Samuel 
Mohliver (1824-1898) of Bialystok, Isaac Jacob Reines (1839- 
1915) of Lida, and Meyer Berlin, son of Naphtali Judah Berlin, the 
illustrious head of the great Yeshivah of Volozhin, joined the new 
cause and attained distinction in its leadership. The line of great 
spiritual leaders, men like the inspired moralist Israel Salanter and 
the monumental scholar Isaac Elchanan of the previous generation, 
was not broken. In the Lithuanian town of Radun, for example, 
lived the saintly Israel Meir Cahan (1833-1933), better known as 
the Chofetz Chaim, whose great influence was enhanced by the 
Yeshivah which he founded and directed. 

Throughout the Pale, Talmudic academies continued to flourish. 



53 8 EMANCIPATION 

First in renown was the Yeshivah of Volozhin, founded in 1803; in 
a checkered existence of more than a century, it produced nearly 
all of the most illustrious rabbis of Russia and Poland. In Lubavitch 
and other places, Sholem Baer Schneerson, leader of the Chabad 
school of Chassidism, established Yeshivoth where the Talmud and 
the legacy of the Baal-Sbem-Tov went together. And other acad- 
emies, whose teachers attracted students from near and far, many 
of whom ate the bitter bread of charity and spent all their waking 
hours in the study of Torah, were located in Telz, Grodno, Slo- 
bodka, Mir, Lida and many other places. In calm and storm, the 
cultural level of the Jewish masses of eastern Europe was high, 
incomparably higher than that of their neighbors to whose tender 
mercies they were so mercilessly exposed. 

9 

THE Russian Revolution of 1905, which gave rise to such 
glowing hopes of freedom, especially among the six million pris- 
oners of the Pale, was smothered in a welter of pogroms, executions, 
banishments, and other acts of government terror. The Second 
Duma, which met early in 1907 and in which, as the result of jug- 
gling with the electoral law, the Black Hundreds were well repre- 
sented, was still not to the czar's taste, and early in the summer of 
the same year it suffered the fate of its predecessor. New changes 
in the electoral law finally brought the government the Duma it 
wanted the Third or Black Duma which, completely dominated 
by reactionaries and anti-Semites, convened in the fall. It was an 
assembly of the ungodly which took delight not only in contriving 
new injuries upon its principal victim, but in publicly making merry 
at his expense. There were new expulsions from cities outside the 
Pale and from villages inside of it. The numerus clausus in the 
schools and gymnasia was enforced with new refinements of 
cruelty. The Black Duma lived long and happily: its successor was 
not chosen until the spring of 1912. 

In the Polish provinces, especially in Warsaw, the election con- 
test of 1912 produced a new high in the anti-Semitism of the Poles 
which, to a great extent, was nourished by a morbid chauvinism. 
The Poles had become accustomed to vent their just grievances 
against die czar upon a people that suffered much more than they 



THE LAST OF THE CZARS 539 

did at the hands of the same despot. For several years before the 
election campaign, the Polish economic boycott against the Jews 
had been in full swing, and during the campaign the Polish chau- 
vinists in Warsaw demanded, under threat of drastic reprisals, 
nothing less than that the Jews should vote for their anti-Semitic 
candidate! When the Jews of Warsaw, who could have elected 
their own deputy, helped instead to elect a Polish Socialist, the 
boycott against them was prosecuted with even greater bitterness. 
The atmosphere of Poland, whose cities and fields were shortly 
to become an immense battlefield, became charged with poisons 
which added immeasurably to the havoc wrought by the enemy 
upon the Jewish communities. 

And while Warsaw in the west was the scene of this anti-Semitic 
rampage, the holy city of Kiev in the east offered the world the 
spectacle of a blood libel unsurpassed by anything the Middle Ages 
had produced. This was the fantastic Beilis Case, which dragged 
on from 1911 to 1913, furnishing the czar and his henchmen with 
an enormous supply of anti-Semitic fuel. The murdered body of 
a Russian lad had been found not far from a brick kiln, and Mendel 
Beilis, employed as a watchman in the brickyard, was arrested on 
the charge of ritual murder. The hand of the Black Hundreds was 
visible from the very start of the case and when, in September 1911, 
the czar's prime minister Peter Stolypin was assassinated by a ter- 
rorist whose grandfather was a baptized Jew, the government 
itself entered the arena. An elaborate structure of distortion and 
perjury was built up to convict the entire Jewish people of the 
crime charged against Beilis. The judges were carefully chosen, 
the jury was made up of credulous peasants and townsmen. But 
Beilis was acquitted, although the ignorant jurors were inveigled 
into declaring that a ritual murder had been committed! 

The case had roused the decent humanity of the entire world, 
including that of Russia. Twenty-five members of the St. Peters- 
burg bar, having protested against the manner in which the Min- 
ister of Justice was handling the case, were convicted of agitating 
against the government. But only a month after this fresh assault 
on justice, the autocratic regime entered upon its final test: the 
nations were in the throes of the First World War. 



54O EMANCIPATION 



CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE 

Survey, 1914: The East 



SOUTHWEST of Russia lies Rumania, northernmost country of 
the Balkan Peninsula, in ancient times called Dacia, where 
long before its conquest by the Romans in 107 C.E., Jewish 
settlements were already established. Politically Rumania began as 
two separate principalities, Moldavia in the north and Wallachia 
in the south, both of which, early in the sixteenth century, were 
subjugated by the Turks. But the provinces continued to be ruled 
by Christian princes; they paid tribute to the conquerors but were 
otherwise allowed a free hand. 

Notwithstanding the harsh treatment the Jews suffered at the 
hands of most of these princes, their numbers continued to grow. 
A few Sephardim from Turkey had come in with the conquerors; 
in times of persecution, particularly during the Black Decade of 
1648 to 1658, many fugitives streamed in from Poland; during the 
cruel reign of Nicholas I, Jews from Russia fled to Moldavia. It 
was not a safe asylum that they found in the Rumanian principali- 
ties. In the sporadic wars between Russia and Turkey, especially 
during the war of 1769-1774, Cossacks and Turkish irregulars 
fought back and forth across the provinces, and were at one only 
in plundering and massacring the Jews. In 1710 the blood accusa- 
tion made its appearance for the first time in Moldavia and claimed 
many victims. It reappeared in 1714 in the city of Roman, where 
at the last moment die Jews were saved by the discovery of the 
real criminals. The Greek Orthodox clergy became the spearhead 
of die animosity against them, and again and again the blood accusa- 
tion came to plague them. The climax occurred in 1797 in the city 
of Galatz, where the mob wiped out practically the entire com- 
munity. 

Early in the nineteenth century the legal precedents were cstab- 



SURVEY, 1914: THE EAST 541 

lished under which the Jews of Rumania, whether native or foreign- 
born, were given the status of aliens. A special poll tax was levied 
upon them and a commission set up to expel those not engaged 
in certain specified occupations, or not in possession of a certain 
minimum capital, all of whom were classified as "vagabonds." Now 
and then a prince came to power who abolished die persecutions 
and even accorded the Jews special privileges; but under the 
influence of the clergy the hostility of the populace continued 
dormant, if not active. In Bucharest, Galatz, and other cities, there 
were a few rich Jews engaged in international commerce and 
banking, but the great majority lived in die villages and small towns 
as petty traders and artisans. Chassidism made rapid progress among 
them, as it did in the neighboring Polish provinces. 



IT WAS a great event in the history of Rumania when in 
1 859 Alexander Cuza became the ruler of both principalities which, 
though still subject to Turkey, were now united. The unification 
inspired the Jews of Rumania with hopes of emancipation, and 
their coreligionists of western Europe, with Adolphe Cremieux in 
the lead, endeavored to help them. But all their hopes were doomed 
to frustration. Cuza's constitution deprived them of the suffrage, 
and in 1866, that of his successor Girol, a scion of the Hohen- 
zollerns, provided that "only such aliens as are of Christian faith 
may obtain citizenship." That was the infamous Article 7, and it 
was substituted for another which had declared that "religion is 
no obstacle to citizenship." The substitution was made after a series 
of street riots against the Jews which were staged in Bucharest 
while the National Assembly was framing the constitution, and in 
the course of which the principal synagogue of the capital was 
destroyed. 

Under the policy of keeping the Jews in the legal status of aliens, 
their position became tragically grotesque. They were compelled 
to fulfill all duties, including service in the army, but when it came 
to rights, they could be treated like pariahs or vagrants. They 
were denied all political rights, and even their civil rights, includ- 
ing those of residence and occupation, could be curtailed or abol- 



542 EMANCIPATION 

ished at will. The Jews of Rumania, moreover, were not only 
aliens but stateless: they were not citizens of the land in which 
they lived and in which their ancestors had lived for centuries, nor 
were they citizens of any other land. This singular situation ex- 
posed them to all manner of outrages of which the most infamous, 
which stirred the indignation of the civilized world, occurred in 
July 1867. 

The Minister of the Interior was John Bratianu, a hard-bitten 
anti-Semite of the modern variety representing the Liberals, a party 
well known for belying its label. It comprised the merchants, bank- 
ers, lawyers, and others of the rising middle class, who were 
opposed to the boyars, the big landed proprietors, on the one hand, 
and to the peasants on the other. The deepest animosity of these 
"liberals," however, was reserved for their immediate competitors, 
the Jews, against whom the minister launched a veritable reign of 
terror. He resurrected the old laws against them, and under a new 
decree against "vagabond foreigners" many Jews were arrested 
and expelled. In July 1867, a number of these victims were taken 
across the Danube to be dumped on the other side which belonged 
to Turkey, and when the Turkish officials refused to receive them, 
some of them were forced at bayonet point into the river, where 
they perished. There was an outcry in France and Great Britain, 
and Bratianu had to step out of the cabinet. The Conservatives 
came into power, but the expulsions continued, and Jews were 
attacked by mobs whom the government was not disposed to 
punish. 

The plight of the Jews in Rumania stirred sympathy and in- 
dignation in America also, and in 1 870 President Ulysses S. Grant 
appointed as consul-general for Bucharest the Grand Master of the 
Order B'nai B'rith, Benjamin F. Peixotto, with the understanding 
that he would endeavor to protect his coreligionists. With all his 
exertions, however, Peixotto could accomplish very little. In 1872, 
leading Jews from England, France, Germany, and the United 
States assembled in Brussels at the call of the Alliance Israelite and 
the Anglo-Jewish Association, but their efforts to bring pressure 
on Rumania to relax its persecutions brought no results, and shortly 
afterwards the smooth and venomous Bratianu returned to power 
as prime minister. 



SURVEY, 1914: THE EAST 543 

3 

AN OPPORTUNITY, which appeared providential, for putting 
an end to the martyrdom of the Rumanian Jews arose in 1878. 
The year before, Turkey had been thoroughly beaten in a war 
with Russia, and Rumania, which had taken up arms on the side of 
Russia, demanded complete independence. The European statesmen 
considered it most urgent to settle the entire Eastern question, 
and in June 1878 they came together in the Congress of Berlin to 
accomplish nothing less. Prince Bismarck presided, Benjamin Dis- 
raeli, already Lord Beaconsfield, represented the British Empire, 
and both supported a proposal that the independence of Rumania 
should be recognized, but only on condition that it grant equal 
political and civil rights to all inhabitants regardless of religious 
beliefs. The principle was embodied in Article 44 of the Treaty of 
Berlin, which Rumania accepted. 

That Article became famous because of the success Rumania 
achieved in making a complete mockery of it. It was violated with 
a maximum of chicanery and cynicism, and the European powers, 
who began by insisting on its observance, ended by sacrificing the 
Jews to their political and economic interests in Rumania. For two 
years the powers withheld their recognition of Rumania's inde- 
pendence, and her demagogues, again headed by the notorious 
Bratianu, utilized the time to play the double game of making 
hypocritical gestures toward complying with the Article, and of 
inciting mob outbreaks against the Jews to lend plausibility to the 
claim that it was unenforceable. The Rumanian constitution was, 
of course, amended to comply with the treaty, and 883 Jews who 
had fought in the war against Turkey were naturalized. But the 
government clung to the convenient doctrine that the Jews were 
aliens, and under the amendment, applications for naturalization 
must "in every individual case be decided by the Parliament." The 
latter played its part well. From 1880 to 1900 it approved only 
85 applications. 

As aliens, the 250,000 Rumanian Jews were completely at the 
mercy of a vicious and deep-seated anti-Semitism. The large land- 
owners, as in the agrarian disturbances of 1907, found them an 
invaluable outlet for the wretchedness of their peasants, while the 



544 EMANCIPATION 

professional and commercial classes, in mortal dread of Jewish 
competitors, were never loath to rouse the students and town rabble 
against them. They were legislated out of the villages and small 
towns* deprived of numerous sources of livelihood, and barred from 
the schools and universities. Until 1908, the shameful oath more 
Judaico was exacted from them in court proceedings, and promi- 
nent Jews who incurred the government's displeasure, like the 
rabbi and scholar Moses Caster, later the head of the Sephardic 
community in London, were summarily exiled. They were without 
any rights, but the duties of citizenship, including military service, 
continued to be required of them. 

In 1902, John Hay, Secretary of State in the cabinet of Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, denounced Rumania in a note addressed to the 
signatory powers of the Treaty of Berlin, calling Rumania's treat- 
ment of the Jews an "international wrong." But the protest had no 
practical effect. Nor was the attempt made in 1913, at the end of 
the Second Balkan War, by American and British Jewish leaders 
to relieve the lot of their Rumanian coreligionists any more suc- 
cessful. Even the promise to naturalize the Jews who fought for 
Rumania in that war was broken. Emigration alone could bring 
them relief, and thousands of them flocked to America, England, 
and Palestine. 

Such was the plight of the Jewish masses in Rumania when in 
August 1916 that country, bursting with rapacious ambition, leaped 
into the flames of the First World War. 

4 

IN BULGARIA, legend traces the presence of Jews as far back 
as biblical rimes, but it can be safely assumed that in the eighth 
century hard-pressed Khazars found refuge in that land, where 
they mingled with their coreligionists. About the middle of the 
fourteenth century a queen named Theodora, whose real name was 
Sara, sat on the Bulgarian throne, and the favor she showed her 
people is reported to have stirred up resentment against them. By 
1450, the Turks were masters of the Balkan Peninsula and Jews, 
persecuted in France and Bavaria, fled to Bulgaria, establishing 
Ashkcnazic communities. These, however, were overshadowed 



SURVEY, 1914: THE EAST 545 

and gradually absorbed by the large influx of Sephardim who 
arrived not long afterwards as exiles from Spain and Portugal. In 
1666 these communities fell an easy prey to the messianic frenzy 
set off by Sabbatai Zevi. 

In 1878 the Congress of Berlin made Bulgaria an autonomous 
principality, still under Turkish suzerainty. It became an inde- 
pendent kingdom in 1908, but the equal rights which its constitu- 
tion promised were largely nullified by the inroads of anti-Semi- 
tism, which became especially malignant after 1890. There were 
some 40,000 Jews in Bulgaria, about half of them in Sofia, the 
capital, when the ruler, King Ferdinand, eager to avenge himself 
on Serbia for the humiliations he had suffered after the Balkan 
War of 1913 and hoping to dominate the Peninsula, took his coun- 
try into the First World War. In October 1915 he threw in his 
lot with the Central Powers against the Allies. 

5 

IN SERBIA which, after the war, was united with Croatia 
and Slovenia to form the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, there were 
sizable Jewish communities in Belgrade, Monastir, Sarajevo, and 
other cities. Their members were recruited largely from the Spanish 
and Portuguese exiles of the early sixteenth century. By grace of 
the Congress of Berlin, Serbia, like Rumania, had become an in- 
dependent kingdom in 1878, but unlike Rumania, Serbia honored 
the undertaking it assumed to establish full equality for the Jews 
within its borders. Both in Serbia and Bulgaria, Zionism was em- 
braced with enthusiasm, giving Jewish life in those countries a 
new surge. At the outbreak of the War of 1914, kindled by that 
fatal shot in Sarajevo on June 28, the Jews in Serbia and the other 
provinces of present-day Yugoslavia numbered some 50,000. 

6 

THE story of the Jews in Greece, particularly after the 
country won its independence from Turkey in the third decade 
of the nineteenth century, is not a happy one. The most somber 
incident occurred in 1891 on the Island of Corfu where, as the 
result of a blood libel, the Jewish quarter was besieged and reduced 



546 EMANCIPATION 

to starvation, and 1,500 of its inhabitants fled to Italy, Turkey, and 
Egypt 

After 1912 when, as a result of the First Balkan War, Greece 
acquired Salonika, that flourishing seaport, for centuries the home 
of a vigorous Jewish community, became the scene of violence 
and persecution. Those were the methods by which the govern- 
ment hoped to Hellenize the city, where the Jews formed the 
majority of the population and the Jewish Sabbath was a general 
day of rest. In the First World War, Greece delayed throwing in 
its lot with the Allies until June 1917, but in September of the 
following year Salonika became the starting point of the victorious 
campaign which forced Bulgaria to surrender. The Jewish popula- 
tion of Greece was approximately 100,000, most of them in Sa- 
lonika, and they were well represented in the Greek contingents 
that fought with the Allies. 

7 

WHEN Turkey, in October 1914, joined the Central Powers, 
it harbored some 75,000 Jews, besides those in Palestine. The 
largest communities were in Constantinople and Adrianople; most 
of their members were Sephardim. That golden period in the six- 
teenth century when Joseph Nassi was Duke of Naxos, and Safed 
was the city of the great codifier Joseph Karo, was now only a 
memory. The communities languished in poverty and cultural de- 
pression, a condition from which the Alliance Israelite did much to 
lift them through a network of elementary and trade schools. 
Legally the Jews in Turkey were fully emancipated, and the Young 
Turks, when they dethroned Abdul-Hamid in 1908, confirmed 
their equal status. In practice, however, their rights were not always 
respected. 

8 

A GLANCE at a few clusters of this world people that stood 
away from its main currents, light up its varied destiny and strange 
powers of survival. 

In very early times Jews from Babylonia spread abroad into 
Persia, or Iran, where there are now approximately 60,000 of them, 



SURVEY, 1914: THE EAST 547 

their largest community in Teheran. For some five centuries after 
the Abassid caliphate (750-1040), their story is shrouded in ob- 
scurity. In 1 155, and for years afterwards, they were agitated by a 
formidable messianic movement led by David or Menachem Alroy, 
a movement which young Benjamin Disraeli made the theme of one 
of his romances. From the sixteenth century they were sorely 
afflicted by persecutions instigated by the Shiite Moslem clergy 
persecutions which were not abolished until a revolution in 1920 
placed the crown on the head of a new shah. 

Farther east and, it is believed, in even earlier times, the tides 
of Jewish history deposited communities as far as India and China. 
In Bombay, there are some 15,000 "brown" Jews who call them- 
selves "Beni-Israel," and proudly preserve the memory of their 
origin as well as many of the ancient rites, including circumcision 
and the Sabbath. They are keen and industrious, they make good 
soldiers, and the British found them excellent officer material. In 
Calcutta also, there are small communities, but these trace their 
origin to much later immigrants from Iraq and Arabia. Among 
them the Sassoons, the "Rothschilds of the East," are renowned 
alike for their wealth and benefactions. 

In China, Jews from Europe have in recent times established 
themselves in Shanghai and a few other cities, and developed an 
active community life; but remains of very ancient Jewish life, 
now almost vanished, have been discovered in China, the oldest in 
Kai-fong-fu, some 500 miles south of Peiping. 

But of these isolated lagoons, the most interesting is the group 
of approximately 50,000 black Jews in Ethiopia or Abyssinia 
known as Falashas, the word in Abyssinian meaning "immigrants." 
Their origin is in dispute, but at one time they ruled the country. 
The first Jewish king, according to legend, was a son of King Solo- 
mon and the Queen of Sheba, whom she bore on her return from 
her celebrated visit to David's son in Jerusalem. The Falashas have 
retained a large part of their faith, including the Sabbath and the 
biblical festivals. In 1911, due largely to the efforts of the Orien- 
talist Jacques Faitlovitch, who made three extended journeys among 
them, pro-Falasha committees were formed in Italy and other 
countries and a teacher's seminary for youthful Falashas was estab- 
lished in Eritrea. 



54-8 EMANCIPATION 

Across the Red Sea from Abyssinia and Eritrea lies Teman or 
Yemen, the "Happy Arabia" of the ancient Romans, where legend 
places Jews as early as the reign of Solomon. Maimonides, it will 
be recalled, addressed a famous letter, the Iggeret Teman, to his 
brethren of that land, urging them to remain steadfast to their faith 
in spite of persecutions. They did so, and even developed a signifi- 
cant scholarly and literary activity in Hebrew. They also won 
high standing as skilled artisans, but their lot has been a checkered 
one. In 1910 their number was estimated at some 15,000 and their 
condition was deplorable, their status under the Imam, or ruler, 
being that of pariahs and virtual slaves. The same year many of 
them managed to escape to Palestine, where they found a new and 
happier life. 

A vivid demonstration of the power of the ancient faith ap- 
peared several years after the First World War, when Samuel 
Schwam, an Austrian mining engineer, discovered sizable groups 
of Marranos in Portugal who, four centuries after their ancestors 
had been forcibly converted, still adhered to the Jewish Sabbath 
and observed the Passover festival and the Day of Atonement. On 
the initiative of the Alliance, an international committee was set up 
to assist these "underground" Jews to return openly and fully to 
their faith. They are believed to number some 10,000 families, and 
under the gallant leadership of one of their own, Anton Carlos de 
Barros Bastos, they have developed a communal life in Oporto, 
Braganza, and other cities of northern Portugal. 

9 

CULTURALLY, the Arabic-speaking coast lands of North 
Africa, the Berber states of Morocco, Algeria, and Tripolitania, 
also belong to the East. In Fez, Tangier, Kairwan, Tunis, Tripoli, 
and many other towns and villages of those lands, there are Jewish 
communities harking back to medieval and ancient times. In the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they were augmented by Mar- 
ranos and fugitives from Spain and Portugal; in more recent times 
by refugees from other lands. From time to time they knew perse- 
cution and even pogroms, but French annexation brought them 
relief, and the schools established by the French Alliance further 



SURVEY, 1914: THE EAST 549 

improved their condition. Their total number in 1914 was approxi- 
mately 250,000. 

In Egypt too, the land that played so important a role in the 
dawn of Israel, there were substantial Jewish communities in Alex- 
andria and Cairo, with some of their members prominent in the 
industry, commerce, and finance of the country. 

10 

FROM Cairo it is an overnight journey by train to Palestine, 
the ancient motherland, whose fortunes were now linked with the 
world-wide movement launched by Theodor Herzl in 1897. 

In spite of obstacles and setbacks, the movement continued to 
gather strength. At the Seventh Congress in 1905, the threatening 
schism over the Uganda offer, now that Herzl's strong hand was 
absent, actually occurred. The report of the survey commission 
was unfavorable, and when a resolution was adopted to exclude 
from consideration all territories except Palestine and countries 
adjacent to it, Israel Zangwill, followed by a group of dissidents, 
bolted the Congress and formed the Jewish Territorial Organiza- 
tion. Until 1918, when Zangwill disbanded it, this body looked 
in vain for a region other than Palestine "for Jews who cannot or 
will not remain in the lands in which they at present live." 

But the movement as a whole sustained the death of the leader 
and the defection of the Territorialists in a manner that bore 
testimony to its inherent vitality. True, the imposing sums which 
would have procured the longed-for charter were not forthcom- 
ing, nor did the Colonial Trust obtain the capital it called for; 
but before long the Anglo-Palestine Bank, a subsidiary of the Trust, 
began operations in Palestine, and in 1908 the organization opened 
its Palestine Office in Jaffa. The Office was placed under the direc- 
tion of Arthur Ruppin, a scholar and colonization expert who 
identified himself wholly with the aims and spirit of the movement, 
and served it until his death in 1943. The Keren Kayemeth, or 
"Permanent Fund," as the Jewish National Fund was designated in 
Hebrew, captured the imagination of the masses and its income 
steadily increased. 

The establishment of the Palestine Office for the promotion of 



55 EMANCIPATION 

urban and rural colonization marked the end of an intense struggle 
within the movement, which began with the liquidation of the 
Uganda controversy. It divided those who believed that all efforts 
at colonization must await the attainment of the charter, and those 
who were opposed to delay in expanding Jewish holdings in Pales- 
tine in every sphere, cultural as well as economic. The first, led by 
Max Nordau, were the political Zionists par excellence, those who 
clung to what they considered the legacy of Theodor Herzl. The 
second, whose leader was Menahem Mendel Ussischkin (1863- 
1943), an engineer from Russia and the dominant figure in the 
group that hailed from the Chovevei Tziyon, saw immediate work 
in Palestine not only as good in itself, but also as an important 
political asset, capable at the right moment of tipping the scales in 
favor of the Basel Platform. 

The decision to establish the Palestine Office meant, of course, 
a victory for the second policy. The decision came while the 
organization was still headed by David Wolffsohn (1856-1914), 
Herzl's friend and successor, who tried to steer a middle course 
between the two standpoints, and the policy became fixed in 191 1 
when Wolffsohn was succeeded by the eminent scientist Otto 
Warburg. 

II 

AS EARLY as 1901, the Congress no longer presented the 
ideological uniformity with which the movement had begun. The 
Basel Platform was the broad common ground on which all its 
adherents stood, but room was found on it for a variety of outlooks 
whose followers drew together to form separate parties. Like other 
European legislative bodies, the Congress came to have a Right, 
a Left, and a Center. The Right consisted of the Mizrachi (literally, 
"Easterners") who took for their watchword "the land of Israel 
for the people of Israel, in conformity with the Torah of Israel." 
The Mizrachi, who became a separate federation within the 
movement, were led by Rabbi Isaac Jacob Reines (1839-1915) of 
Lida, and stood for the recognition of traditional Judaism in the 
affairs and institutions of the movement. The Left, which also 
became a separate world-wide federation within the movement, was 



SURVEY, 1914: THE EAST 551 

the party of Poale Zion, who called for the application of col- 
lectivist principles in the upbuilding of Palestine which, they hoped, 
would eventually develop into a cooperative socialist common- 
wealth. The Center consisted of the so-called General Zionists, 
who were unwilling to predetermine the social constitution of the 
national home for which they labored, desiring only that the Basel 
Platform should be realized as speedily as possible. 

Running through the whole movement like a separate current 
and exerting considerable influence, though not formally organized, 
was the brand known as Cultural Zionism. It laid its emphasis on 
a "spiritual center" in Palestine rather than a state, a center which 
would function as a power-house to quicken and preserve Jewish 
communities throughout the world. Its outstanding champion and 
exponent was Asher Ginsburg (1856-1927), better known by his 
pen name Achad Ha'am (One of the People), a dominating figure 
in the revival of Hebrew literature. He was the leading essayist 
and prose writer, as Bialik was the leading poet, a stylist who fash- 
ioned the Hebrew language into an instrument of cameo precision 
and elegance. 

12 

IN THE meantime the Second Aliyah, or migration wave into 
Palestine, had begun, the first having been that of the BILU students 
and others which began in 1882. The new arrivals were better 
prepared, physically and psychologically, than their predecessors. 
Most of them came from Russia after the abortive revolution of 
1905, and they brought an amazing baggage of ideas and idealisms 
for their own and their people's regeneration. Palestine, they were 
resolved, was to be Socialist as well as Jewish, and by a remarkable 
alchemy they fused their passion for social justice with their con- 
ception of die realities of the national restoration problem: the 
Socialist way, in other words, was not a luxury for them, but a stern 
necessity. They were the pioneers who set up at least three stand- 
ards that have exercised a controlling influence on the colonization 
program as a whole. The first was the principle of self-labor, which 
demanded that the Jewish colonist live by the work of his own 
hands, and not by employing hired labor. The second was die 



55* EMANCIPATION 

principle of cooperation, which found its fullest expression in the 
collectivist type of farm settlement known as the kvutzab; the 
first of its kind, Dagania, was planted in the upper Jordan valley in 
1909. The third standard was the principle of self-defense for the 
protection of Jewish life and property and the vindication of 
Jewish honor. 

In 1907 that principle found its embodiment in Hashomer (The 
Watchman), an organization of mounted guards who took over 
the dangerous task of protecting Jewish settlements against brigands 
who prowled in the night; and in the same year, this first contingent 
of armed Jews to make its appearance in Palestine in modern times 
received its baptism of fire. Hashomer aimed to resurrect the 
ancient Zealot spirit, and its members, rigidly selected, became 
feared and famous for their hard riding and straight shooting. 
Hashomer furnished the vanguard for every post of danger, and 
by 1914 nearly all the colonies had placed themselves under its 
protection. Among its founders were the modest but iron-willed 
Israel Giladi, in whose memory stands the village of Kfar Giladi 
in Upper Galilee, and Isaac Ben Zevi and David Ben Gurion, both 
of whom have played an important and prominent part in the 
growth of the Yishuv, or settlement, as the Jewish community in 
Palestine is briefly designated. 

13 

THERE was another standard, the revival of the Hebrew 
language, to which the entire Yishuv became passionately attached. 
It was set up by no party or group; the chief credit was due, 
rather, to a single individual, Eliezer Ben Yehudah (1858-1922), 
whose scholarship, toil, and tenacity produced the astounding 
result of restoring the tongue of the ancient farmers, priests, and 
prophets of Israel to the lips of their modern descendants. 

Shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, this revival 
was considerably advanced as the result of a language conflict in 
connection with a Technical Institute which was about to be 
opened in Haifa. On the board of this Institute, which had received 
the support of the Hitfsverein der deutschen Juden, a body organ- 
ized in Berlin in 1901 with aims similar to those of the French 



SURVEY, 1914: THE EAST 553 

Alliance, were some who insisted that its language of instruction 
should be German. A bitter controversy ensued which found 
echoes throughout the world. The Zionist members of the board 
resigned, teachers and pupils of other Hilfsverein schools in Pales- 
tine went out on strike, and new schools came promptly into ex- 
istence. They became the foundation for a Hebrew educational 
network ranging from kindergarten through elementary and sec- 
ondary schools, and including teachers' seminaries and the Bezalel 
School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem; the whole crowned later 
by a university which is one of the glories of the Yishuv. 

14 

BY 1914 there were some 50 Jewish agricultural settlements 
in Palestine with a population of 15,000 and covering an area of 
somewhat more than 100,000 acres. In size, they ranged from mere 
outposts like Metullah, far up in Galilee, to compact little towns 
like Petach Tikvah (Gate of Hope) in Judea. In social organization, 
they included collectivist kvutzoth, cooperative villages of small 
separate homesteads known as moshrwm, and individualist settle- 
ments of the original type. But there was also progress in urban 
colonization and in other fields. The city of Tel Aviv, which had 
its beginnings in 1909 on the sand dunes north of Jaffa, had already 
grown into a large and thriving suburb. Several years later, the first 
steps toward solving the health problem of the country were taken 
by the American philanthropist Nathan Straus and by Hadassah, 
the Women's Zionist Organization of America, which owed its 
origin and program to the inspiration of Henrietta Szold. In 1913, 
Hadassah initiated its present large network of health institutions 
with a system of district nursing and anti-trachoma education. 

From 1896 when Herzl's Judenstaat appeared, to 1914 when the 
lights of Europe went -out, the Jewish population of Palestine had 
risen from less than 45,000 to over 100,000. It had grown by the 
much decried process of "infiltration," the method which Max 
Nordau and his followers condemned as being woefully inadequate 
for the solution of the Jewish problem. That problem had certainly 
not been solved, but a light had been kindled in the East, and it 
shone with promise, if not with fulfillment. 



554 EMANCIPATION 





CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO 

Survey, 1914: The West 



EXCEPT in Palestine, where the small Yishuv already presented 
an intriguing combination of East and West an "ingather- 
ing of the exile," as it was often called the lot of the larger 
or smaller Jewish communities in the lands of the East was repres- 
sion or stagnation or both. But westward from czarist Russia, across 
Europe and on into the New World, the picture brightens. Not 
that there was a lack of hostility, of dark glances and ominous 
rumblings; and there were disturbing inner problems to which the 
new horizons opened by emancipation gave birth. But at least the 
formal guarantees of emancipation were secure or so they ap- 
peared and the inner problems were a challenge to the vitality 
of a people already tested and tempered by four millennia of his- 
tory. Survival or dissolution depended on the path they chose, and 
the choice lay largely in their own hands. 

2 

AS WE leave czarist Russia and "liberal" Rumania, we come 
upon the congeries of lands and races that made up the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire. Galicia, the Polish province of that empire, 
contained in 1910 nearly 900,000 Jews. Their economic situation 
was deplorable, nor could it be relieved by philanthropy or the 
sizable emigration which flowed to America during the decade 
between 1900 and 1910. Politically, the Jewish minority, with its 
hosts of Chassidim indifferent to politics, with its party divisions, 
and its uneasy position between the mutually hostile Poles and 
Ruthenians, was ineffective. The "Jewish dub" in the imperial 
Reichsrath, formed in 1907 and consisting of four deputies led by 
Benno Straucher, lasted only four years. The other ten Jewish 
deputies in die parliament of the empire refused to join it, pre- 



SURVEY, 1914: THE WEST 555 

ferring to identify themselves with German or Polish blocs. It was 
a division that played into the hands of the rabid Polish National 
Democrats, enabling them to intensify their policy of economic 
extrusion and cultural suppression. 

Somewhat more than 10 per cent of the Jews of Galicia lived 
on the soil, but among the remainder an abnormally high propor- 
tion was engaged in petty trade and petty industry. The number 
of artisans among them was especially small, a condition that 
sprang in large measure from official restrictions and chicanery. 
Nearly all the large Jewish philanthropic bodies in Europe labored 
to improve their economic lot, and shortly before the First World 
War an organized attempt was launched at self-help. 

In its inner life, Galician Jewry, throughout the nineteenth 
century and into the twentieth, was an ideological battleground. 
Chassidim and Misnagdim fought for control of the communities, 
and both fought the maskilim or "enlighteners." Zionism won 
numerous adherents, nor were the "Poles of the Mosaic persuasion" 
absent from the arena, and the diff erem*groups brought their con- 
flicts to the polls, which sometimes became scenes of violence. 

3 

IN HUNGARY the emancipation won in 1867 had been seri- 
ously threatened by a rising tide of anti-Semitism of which, as we 
saw, the Tisza-Eslar blood libel of 1882 was the climax. By 1895, 
however, the tide had receded, the position of the Jews was 
legally secured and, particularly in the cultural and professional 
spheres, they rose to a height probably unsurpassed in any other 
country in the world. In Budapest, the capital, where they made 
up a quarter of the population, more than half the physicians and 
nearly half the lawyers and journalists were Jews, and they were 
prominent in the government service and in the municipal admin- 
istrations. One reason for their rapid rise was the fact that in the 
struggle of the dominant Magyars against the other nationalities 
in Hungary, the Jews, for better or worse, supported the Magyars. 
The outbreak of war in 1914 found them eager to shed their blood 
for the Magyar fatherland. They numbered nearly a million, and 
in their internal affairs there had been since 1871 a sharp division 



556 EMANCIPATION 

between the Orthodox and their opponents, with separate com- 
munal organizations, including educational and charitable institu- 
tions for each. 

In Austria proper there were approximately 175,000 Jews, nearly 
all of them in Vienna. They were the cultural leaven of the land, 
with men of letters like Arthur Schnitzler, Richard Beer-Hoffman, 
Felix Salten and the brothers Stefan and Arnold Zweig; with 
composers like Gustav Mahler and Arthur Schoenberg; with scien- 
tists like Sigmund Freud. Nor were they absent in the financial, 
industrial, and political life of Vienna, although since the advent 
of the anti-Semitic Christian Socialist party and the triumph of its 
leader Karl Lueger in 1897, they were compelled to devote much 
of their strength to the struggle against anti-Semitism. The leading 
champion in the struggle was Joseph Samuel Bloch (1850-1923), 
rabbi, scholar, and three times elected to the Reichsratb, whose vic- 
tory in a lawsuit against the anti-Semite August Roehling attracted 
world-wide attention. 

The internal affairs of Vienna Jewry were regulated by an all- 
inclusive community organization, the hraelitische Kultusgemeinde, 
established in 1890 with power to levy taxes for communal pur- 
poses. Three years later a rabbinical seminary was opened and a 
network of communal institutions came into existence. In 1914, the 
chief rabbi was Moritz Guedemann (1835-1918), who won dis- 
tinction as an educator and historian. Toward Herzl and Zionism, 
Guedemann blew hot and cold, but the movement found numerous 
adherents and was chiefly responsible for the rapid development 
of athletic societies among the Jewish youth, for which Vienna 
became famous. 

In those provinces which, after the First World War, were 
united to constitute the republic of Czechoslovakia, there were in 
1910 approximately 360,000 Jews, of whom 140,000 lived in 
Slovakia, then part of Hungary. Bruenn in Moravia, Prague in 
Bohemia, and Pressburg in Slovakia contained the most important 
communities. In Bohemia, there was continuous conflict between 
Czechs and Germans, and for the most part the Jewish orientation 
before the war was toward the Germans. Prague was a city teeming 
with Jewish tradition, and like Vienna, it contributed many Jewish 



SURVEY, 1914: THE WEST 557 

artists and literary figures who enriched the intellectual life of 
Europe, men like Franz Kafka, Max Brod, Franz Werf el and others. 

4 

IN GERMANY the turn of the century brought a change in 
the mood and methodology of anti-Semitism. Germany, aspiring 
to lead the world in the arts of civilization, could not afford to be 
bracketed with czarist Russia. German anti-Semitism eschewed 
the tactics of Stoecker and Ahlwardt and became "refined." But 
there was no shrinking of its dimensions, no abatement of its neu- 
rotic obsessions, no relaxation of its purpose. Its victims were still 
subjected to a variety of discriminations. They had small prospect 
of attaining officer's rank in the army, of sitting as judges in the 
courts, of holding positions in the schools and universities. Immi- 
grant Jews from the East, the so-called Ostjuden, became the 
targets of a special hue and cry in which some of the highly Teu- 
tonized native Jews did not scruple to Join. 

Nevertheless, at the outbreak of war in 1914, the Jews of Ger- 
many were not wanting in a sense of security. There were only 
some 500,000 of them, or less than i per cent, in a population of 
over 60,000,000; the largest communities were in Berlin, Frankfort 
on the Main, Breslau, Hamburg, Cologne, Leipzig, and Munich. 
The economy of the country was on the upsurge, and they played 
an important role in its progress. Their occupational distribution 
which, of course, had been determined by their history, was neither 
balanced nor wholesome. There were too few fanners and artisans 
among them and too many in commerce, industry, and the pro- 
fessions. But they held leading positions in commerce, industry, 
and finance, and added substantially to the power and glory of 
the fatherland. 

They did this, moreover, not only by their economic activity, 
but even more by their contributions to German literature, science, 
and art. The number of Jews in Germany who achieved distinc- 
tion in those fields would fill a sizable "Who's Who," and names 
like Jakob Wassermann, Lion Feuchtwanger, Joseph Popper- 
Lynkeus, Maximilian Harden, and Ludwig Fulda in literature; 
Hermann Cohen, Georg Simmel, and Ernst Casarer in philosophy; 



558 EMANCIPATION 

Hermann Minkowski and Albert Einstein in pure science; August 
von Wassermann, Paul Ehrlich, and Otto Meyerhof in medicine; 
Otto Wallach and Fritz Haber in chemistry; Max Liebermann 
in painting; Erich Mendelsohn in architecture; Benno Elkan in 
sculpture, and Max Reinhardt in the theater, belong more to a 
history of Germany or of European culture than of the Jewish 
people. 

In the internal affairs of German Jewry, the strife between 
Orthodoxy on the one hand and the different grades of Reform 
on the other, continued to dominate the scene until the advent of 
Zionism at the turn of the century brought about a new alignment. 
Both camps greeted the newcomer with hostility. The Orthodox 
saw in the Zionist cultural program an attempt to secularize Jewish 
life, while the Reformed, as well as those who were indifferent to 
religion, saw in the movement a reflection on their German pa- 
triotism and a peril to their civil status. The new movement was 
undoubtedly calculated to stem, or at least retard, the process of 
total assimilation which was moving forward, not so much now by 
the road of baptism as by that of intermarriage. 

The center of German Orthodoxy was Frankfort on the Main, 
where the legacy of Samson Raphael Hirsch was zealously guarded. 
Under the direction of Jacob Rosenheim, that city became the 
headquarters of Agudas Israel, the world organization of Ortho- 
dox Jewry founded in 1912. Berlin, which had a Jewish population 
of over 100,000, was the center and hub of many Jewish activities 
and agencies, including the Union of German Jews organized in 
1904 for the protection of Jewish rights, the Hilfsverein der 
deutschen Juden, and the World Zionist Organization, which had 
its central office in the German capital. A disturbing symptom of 
the period was the rivalry between the German Hilfsverein and 
the French Alliance, both of which, in the schools they founded and 
conducted in North Africa and the Levant, appeared to be as much 
interested in extending the cultural influence of Germany and 
France respectively as in improving the lot of their coreligionists. 

This rivalry, as well as the dissensions among the Jews of Ger- 
many and other lands, should have served as an effective refutation 
of one of the favorite myths of the anti-Semites, the bogy of an 



SURVEY, 1914: THE WEST 559 

international Jewish conspiracy. It failed to do so: the legend 
continued to gestate, and when the war was over it flourished again 
and bore new and bitter fruit. 

5 

BY 1914, the passions which the Dreyfus Affair had stirred 
up in the French Republic were only a bad memory. French 
anti-Semitism, to be sure, was not dead: its embers were still nursed 
by the beaten and disaffected clericals, and a lively, though not very 
formidable, flame was kept burning by the monarchists, the 
Camelots du Roi, "the king's newsboys," as they called themselves, 
who rallied around L6on Daudet and his vituperative Action 
Franfaise. But the French Jews were not much disturbed by it. 
They entered into the life of the Republic, making notable con- 
tributions to every phase of it, including the political, with Leon 
Blum, leader of the Socialists; Louis Klotz, Minister of Finance, 
and Maurice Bokanowski, son of an immigrant from Russia, who 
in 1926 was to become Minister of Commerce and Industry. They 
are estimated to have numbered no more than 1 30,000, with about 
100,000 in Paris, but they had an honored place among French 
writers, scientists, musicians, journalists, dramatists, and actors. 
Sarah Bernhardt, hailed as the greatest actress of the period, was 
holding audiences all over the world in her spell, and Henri 
Bergson, who in 1928 was to receive the Nobel prize for literature, 
was already winning his place as the most important thinker of his 
generation. In 1912 there were 8 Jewish generals in the French 
army, in addition to 14 colonels and hundreds of other officers. 

The separation of church and state in 1905 had required a re- 
organization of the Jewish consistory on a voluntary and self- 
supporting basis: Zadoc Kahn, distinguished preacher and scholar, 
who died the same year, was the last official Grand Rabbi of 
France. In Jewish learning, French Jewry could point to an im- 
pressive number of eminent scholars, including the brothers Salo- 
mon and Theodore Reinach, Arsine and James Darmesteter, Joseph 
Hatevy, Moise Schwab, and others. Beginning in 1903, the pogroms 
in Russia sent a small stream of refugees into France who before 
very long introduced fresh vigor into the life of the community. 



560 EMANCIPATION 



ITALY was one of the few lands where anti-Semitism found 
no welcome, and Jews rose to the highest positions in all spheres 
of Italian life. In 1902 General Giuseppe Ottolenghi was Minister 
of War; in 1907 Ernesto Nathan was Mayor of Rome; in 1910 
Luigi Luzzatti was Prime Minister. They contributed high-ranking 
officers to the army and navy and numerous professors to the 
universities. In 1899 a seminary was established in Florence which 
provided most of the rabbis for the communities of Italy, but not- 
withstanding the splendid synagogues that were erected in Flor- 
ence, Rome, Milan, and other cities, it cannot be affirmed that for 
creative Jewish learning this Italy could compare with that of the 
Middle Ages or of Samuel David Luzzatto. 

In May 1915, Italy joined the Allies against the Central Powers, 
and no one greeted the prospect of Italian aggrandizement with 
more enthusiasm than the 40,000 Italian Jews. 



7 

IN THE smaller lands of western Europe: Belgium, the 
Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, there 
were in 1914 Jewish communities of varying size, subject in the 
main to the same centrifugal and centripetal forces as in the larger 
countries. In Switzerland, where they numbered approximately 
20,000, with the principal communities in Zurich, Basel, and 
Geneva, they were an important factor in the textile and lace in- 
dustries. The law prohibiting the ritual method of slaughter, 
adopted under anti-Semitic pressure in 1894, was still in force. 

In Belgium, where equality came after the revolution of 1830, 
there were some 60,000 of them, with the largest concentration in 
Antwerp, where they dominated the diamond industry. Belgium 
was on the whole successful in immunizing herself against the anti- 
Semitic virus; and this may also be said of The Netherlands, where 
the largest Jewish communities were to be found in Amsterdam, 
Rotterdam, and The Hague. They were the chief factor in the 
diamond industry and played an important part in merchandising; 
but while there were wealthy men among them, the majority, as in 



SURVEY, 1914: THE WEST 561 

all countries except Germany, were proletarians. Their contri- 
butions to Dutch political and cultural life were considerable. 
Tobias Asser, who received the Nobel peace award in 1911, was 
the foremost authority on international law; Jacques Oppenheim, 
another jurist, was a leading authority on constitutional law. Jozef 
Israels, who died in 1911, was pre-eminent among the painters, and 
Herman Heyermans and Michel van Campen stood out in an im- 
pressive list of Jewish men of letters. In the religious life of the 
community, Orthodoxy was in the ascendant, and Zionism made a 
strong appeal to the youth. 

In Norway, there was a tiny community in Oslo. In Sweden, 
where the last barriers against the equality of the Jews were re- 
moved in 1870, they numbered in 1914 only a little over 6,000, but 
they played no insignificant role in the cultural life of the country, 
with Ernst Josephson one of the foremost painters, and Oscar 
Levertin a distinguished poet. 

In Denmark, where nearly all the 5,000 Jews lived in Copen- 
hagen, their contribution to the culture' of the country was little 
short of amazing. The most famous man of letters was the critic 
Georg Morris Cohen Brandes, but he was only one of a galaxy of 
poets, scientists, artists, composers, and virtuosos. Nor were they 
absent from the political and industrial life of that great little land. 

8 

IN 1880, the number of Jews in Great Britain stood at 
60,000, but by 1914 it had risen to 250,000, with the largest com- 
munities in London, Manchester, Leeds, and Glasgow. In spite of 
occasional anti-Semitic undertones, like those which accompanied 
the agitation for the Aliens Act at the turn of the century, the 
Jews of Britain were spared the sustained hostility with which 
their fellows on the continent had to contend. No insurmountable 
barriers were raised against thpm in the economic, political, and 
cultural life of England, not even in the social sphere. They had 
long before established themselves in commerce, industry and 
finance; they now made their mark also in literature and the press, 
and r6se even higher in public service. 

As early as 1871, Sir George Jessel, acknowledged as one of 
England's foremost jurists, had been named solicitor-general, and 



562 EMANCIPATION 

ten years later he became president of the court of appeal. By 1914, 
his career was surpassed by Ruf us Isaacs, later Lord Reading, who 
rose to be Lord Chief Justice of England. Edwin S. Montagu, 
son of Lord Swaythling, was Undersecretary of State for India; 
Lord Pilbright, originally Baron Henry de Worms, was Colonial 
Undersecretary; and Sir Alfred Mond, later Lord Melchett, one 
of England's foremost industrialists and Zionist leaders, had already 
been elected to Parliament. Sir Herbert Samuel was a member of 
the Asquith cabinet; Sir Matthew Nathan, who was entrusted in 
1916 with the defense of London, had already distinguished him- 
self as soldier and colonial administrator. Numerous other Jews of 
Britain had started on careers of public service which reached 
their climax during and after the war. 

Those men were descendants of the earlier Sephardic and 
Ashkenazic immigrants, but the more recent arrivals also registered 
progress. They began by herding together in special quarters in 
London and other cities, and London's Whitechapel took on the 
appearance of a ghetto. They entered in large numbers as workers 
and entrepreneurs in the clothing and furniture industries, as well 
as in the fruit and tobacco trades. Champions of a large assortment 
of social panaceas, including philosophical anarchism and socialism, 
made Whitechapel their stamping ground, but what little influence 
they won was superficial and transitory. The process of Angliciza- 
tion went steadily forward: the children found their models in 
those coreligionists of theirs who had risen to such heights in 
British society. 

The religious organization of British Jewry had, in the course of 
the nineteenth century, made important progress. The Sephardic 
community was headed by a rabbi with the title of Chacham, 
while the leader of the Ashkenazic congregations was officially 
recognized as the chief rabbi of the empire. The best known 
Chacham was Moses Gaster, versatile and brilliant scholar and 
writer, and an ardent collaborator of Theodor HenJ. Among the 
outstanding Ashkenazic leaders were Nathan Marcus Adler and 
his son Hermann (1839-191 1), and Joseph H. Hertz, who assumed 
the post of chief rabbi in 1913. Both communities were thoroughly 
Anglicized, but Orthodox. Reform failed to make large gains in 



SURVEY, 1914: THE WEST 563 

England, although it had able leaders in Claude Goldsmid Monte- 
fiore, grandnephew of Sir Moses Montefiore and a scholar of wide 
attainments; and in Lily Montagu, daughter of the banker Samuel 
Montagu, the first Lord Swaythling, himself rigidly Orthodox. The 
most important advance achieved by Reform in England was the 
opening of the Liberal Synagogue in London in 1911. 

A seminary for the training of rabbis, cantors, and religious 
teachers, known as Jews' College, had been established in 1852. 
Notable contributions to Jewish scholarship were made under the 
influence of its rectors and by men like the genial and brilliant 
Solomon Schechter before his departure for New York in 1902; 
Israel Abrahams (1858-1925), whose works achieved wide and 
merited popularity; Joseph Jacobs, Lucien Wolf, the brothers Leon 
and Cecil Roth, and others. The most influential Jewish publication 
in the country, and perhaps in the world, was the London weekly, 
The ]e<iwsh Chronicle, which was founded in 1841. 

This publication and its editor, Leopold Greenberg, placed 
themselves at the service of Theodor Her/1 and his bold adventure. 
Despite the aloofness of many British Jews in high station and the 
downright hostility of men like Claude Montefiore and Sir Edwin 
Montagu, Zionism in England continued to make gains. In large 
measure its advance was due to the interest the movement evoked 
in British government circles, an interest which found early ex- 
pression in the El-Arish and Uganda offers, and was to reach its 
climax in the Balfour Declaration of 1917. 

9 

BRITISH dominions across the seas have also harbored numer- 
ous Jewish communities. In Canada, a Sephardic congregation was 
established in Montreal as early as 1768. Emancipation came in 
1832, and immigrants began arriving from Germany and Poland 
who moved westward with the, railroad. In 1901 the current grew 
in volume, and in two decades the Jewish population of Canada 
leaped from 16,000 to 126,000, most of them located in Montreal 
and Winnipeg. But there are also hundreds of Jewish farmers in 
Canada, many in settlements founded with the help of the Jewish 
Colonization Association. The great majority of the Canadian Jews 



564 EMANCIPATION 

arc Orthodox and support the Zionist movement; in general, their 
communal institutions are patterned after those of their coreligion- 
ists in the United States. 

After Canada, the British dominion having the largest Jewish 
settlement is the Union of South Africa. It numbers approximately 
90,000, most of them hailing from eastern Europe, particularly 
from Lithuania. The great majority arrived after 1890, but Jews 
played an important part in the pioneer days of South Africa: they 
developed some of its leading industries, including wool and hides, 
shipping, fisheries, diamonds, and sugar. They have been prominent 
in the political life of the country, and have developed religious, 
educational, and philanthropic institutions of a high order, particu- 
larly in Johannesburg and Cape Town, where the largest com- 
munities are located. Their internal affairs are controlled by their 
own Board of Deputies, and they have displayed a marked devotion 
to the Zionist cause. 

Jews made important contributions to the economic growth of 
Australia also, the brothers Jacob and Joseph Montefiore figuring 
prominently in sheep raising and commerce. The dominion has 
a Jewish population of some 25,000, the principal communities in 
Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth. 

In New Zealand the handful of Jews, some 2,500 in number, 
have played a conspicuous role in the political life of the dominion. 
Sir Julius Vogel was one of New Zealand's leading statesmen: he 
was prime minister in 1873 an ^ held other important posts. The 
largest community is located in Wellington, the capital. 

IO 

THE turn of the century saw the dramatic rise of the United 
States to the status of a world power, largely as a result of the swift 
and decisive war against Spain which began in April 1898 and was 
over in August of the same year. In that war, the Jews maintained 
the high record of service they established with the Revolution. Of 
the thousands who volunteered in the army and navy, the majority 
were recent immigrants, many of whom had had training in the 
armies of Russia and Rumania. Jewish sailors went down with the 
battleship Maine, and Jewish cavalrymen fought in Cuba in Theo- 



SURVEY, 1914: THE WEST 565 

dore Roosevelt's famous regiment of Rough Riders. Lieutenant 
Commander, later Rear Admiral, Adolph Manx, gained distinction 
in the investigation of the sinking of the Maine, as well as for 
"eminent and conspicuous conduct in battle." Lieutenant Joseph 
Strauss rose to the rank of Rear Admiral during the First World 
War, and in 1921 was Commander of the Asiatic Fleet. In 1917, 
when the entry of America on the side of the Allies made the out- 
come of the war a foregone conclusion, the Jews of the United 
States were estimated to number about 3,400,000 in a total popula- 
tion of 103,640,000. 

One of their principal concerns in the first two decades of the 
twentieth century was the rising tide of opposition to the liberal 
immigration policy which had permitted those seeking refuge from 
persecution to find it in America. It was an opposition with growing 
anti-Semitic undertones. The immigration law of 1907 imposed a 
number of restrictions which did not, however, materially affect the 
total number admitted. A literacy test was being strongly advocated 
but was not enacted until ten years later and over the veto of 
President Woodrow Wilson. 

II 

THE same decades saw impressive achievements in the cul- 
tural sphere. By 1906, the twelve volumes of the Jewish Encyclo- 
pedia, one of the boldest ventures in Jewish scholarship, had come 
off the press, and a new translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, pub- 
lished by the Jewish Publication Society of America in 1917, and 
recognized as the authentic Jewish version in English, was already 
under way. The Society, founded as early as 1888, as well as a 
number of commercial publishing houses, were producing books, 
in Yiddish as well as English, of substantial if not uniform merit. 
Since 1902, the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York had 
been rising in importance under^the presidency of Solomon Schech- 
ter who, unlike most devotees of the "Science of Judaism," attached 
as much importance to the mystical as to the rational, and ques- 
tioned the findings of the "higher critics" of the Bible. He inspired 
the organization in 1913 of the United Synagogue of America, a 
body which, aiming "to assert and establish loyalty to the Torah," 



566 EMANCIPATION 

and "to preserve in the service the reference to Israel's past and 
the hopes for Israel's restoration," represented a clear challenge to 
Reform* 

Zionism struck roots promptly in the American community. It 
was acclaimed by most of those who hailed from eastern Europe, 
among whom were not a few Chovevei Tziyon, and as early as July 
1898, the separate Zionist societies which had come into existence 
united in the Federation of American Zionists. The first president 
was the orientalist Richard J. H. Gottheil; in 1904 he was suc- 
ceeded by the eminent physician Harry Friedenwald of Baltimore. 
The movement, of course, did not go unchallenged: its chief op- 
ponents were Reform rabbis who accused it of misunderstanding 
"Israel's mission," and cosmopolitan radicals, to whom every mani- 
festation of nationalism was "reactionary." But, though slowly, it 
gathered strength, and by the outbreak of the war in 1914 was of 
sufficient stature, both in leadership and following, to meet the 
crises as well as the opportunities with which the world movement 
was confronted by the conflict. One of the most valuable assets it 
acquired was the adherence of a Boston lawyer named Louis Dem- 
bitz Brandeis, who brought to the movement a remarkable gift for 
practical idealism, clarity of vision, moral force, and skill in the 
handling of large affairs, a rare combination of qualities which made 
him also one of the greatest Americans of his generation. In his 
espousal of Zionism, Brandeis was considerably influenced by 
Jacob de Haas, a collaborator of Theodor Herzl, who became a 
leader of the movement in America. Even more prominent among 
the leaders was Stephen Samuel Wise, of untiring energy and 
sweeping oratorical power, and Louis Lipsky, who began as a 
journalist and then devoted an unusual gift for trenchant expression 
as speaker and writer to the continuous service of the movement. 

With all their cultural progress, however, the Jews of America 
were unable to achieve unity of organization and action. The 
three main divisions, to which the terms Right, Left, and Center 
might, though not without reservations, be applied, persisted; the 
Right being represented t>y the notables of the American Jewish 
Committee, the Left by the socialistic labor leaders, the Center by 
the Zionist groups and the American Jewish Congress. The latter, 
led by Stephen S. Wise, Bernard G. Richards, and the heads of the 



SURVEY, 1914: THE WEST 567 

fraternal orders whose membership consisted of the more recent 
arrivals, insisted that Jewish life in America must be "democra- 
tized," and found itself in almost continuous conflict with the Right 
and Left, who sometimes joined forces to combat the Center. 

An attempt in 1909 led by Judah L. Magnes, who both as rabbi 
and communal leader was something of a stormy petrel in Jewish 
life, to create a Kehillah, or over-all communal organization for the 
vast aggregation in the City of New York, proved a failure. The 
centrifugal forces, springing from differences in countries of origin, 
length of residence in the New World, cultural background, eco- 
nomic station, and religious outlook, proved insurmountable. At 
one extreme stood the leaders, though not the rank and file, of the 
labor movement, whose outlook was militandy radical and anti- 
religious. At the other were many of those who had achieved 
wealth and material ease and were eager to lose their Jewish identity 
in Ethical Culture, Christian Science, or in general aloofness. Be- 
tween the two stood the great amorphous majority, recognizing a 
common kinship of origin and religion, but too far apart in their 
understanding of its implications to unite on a permanent communal 
program. Occasionally differences were submerged and there was 
common action, but they were occasions of sorrow or alarm, like 
a pogrom wave in Russia, or a cataclysm like the one that shook 
the world in the summer of 1914* 



Pan She 



1914 TO 1948 



The World Wars 

Disaster and Daybreak 



CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE 

The First World War 



BY THE middle of that summer of disaster in 1914, the great 
European powers Germany and the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire on one side; Russia, France and Great Britain on the 
other were locked in the most colossal conflict that had, until then, 
scourged the human race. For more than four years, until Novem- 
ber n, 1918, the carnage continued, the vortex having in the 
meantime drawn in the other great powers of the earth Japan, 
Turkey, Italy, and finally the United States and nearly all the 
smaller ones. * 

Rivers of ink have been spilled in the controversy over the degree 
of guilt of the different belligerents, and perhaps there is not one 
among them, if sins of omission are considered as well as sins of 
commission, whose hands are spotless. Nearly all of them had their 
scores to settle and their greeds to satisfy, and against the lure of 
national ambition the ethical imperatives of Christianity, to which 
they were paying lip service, went up like a straw fire. Neverthe- 
less, a single fact stands out which fastens the immediate responsi- 
bility where it belongs: Austria would not have sent its ultimatum 
to Serbia on July 23, nor declared war on that little land five days 
later, without the assurance that Germany would support it in 
every eventuality. For Germany it was der Tag, "the day'* the 
Treitschkes and Bernhardis, who glorified war and nursed the 
prospect of German world domination, had foretold and awaited. 



FOR over three years from August 1914 to the fall of 
1917 the borderlands between Russia and the Central Powers, 
stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, made up the eastern 
front across which the embattled armies advanced and retreated. 

571 



572 THE WORLD WARS 

From East Prussia, which they invaded early in August 1914, the 
Russians were hurled back the same month in the Battle of Tannen- 
berg. In Galicia they were more successful: early in September 
they captured Lemberg and by March 1915 had driven on into the 
Carpathians. But the same spring the Germans drove them out of 
Galicia, and by the fall they were masters also of Russian Poland 
and Lithuania, having seized both Warsaw and Vilna. In that cam- 
paign the Russian losses in killed, wounded, and prisoners amounted 
to two and a half million men: the regime of Nicholas II was 
crippled and demoralized; its incompetence and corruption stood 
plainly revealed. 

The following year, while the Germans were pouring out their 
strength in the west before Verdun and on the Somme, the Russians 
had a brief illusion of recovery when they reconquered a part of 
eastern Galicia. The illusion was strong enough to tempt Rumania 
to join the Allies: in August 1916 it took the plunge, but before 
the end of the year its capital had fallen and nearly the whole of 
the country was overrun. 

Early the following year 1917 the flames of revolution which 
in 1905 the czar, with the aid of the Black Hundreds, had managed 
to smother, erupted with irresistible fury, and on March 15, 1917, 
Nicholas II was compelled to abdicate. In July the provisional gov- 
ernment under Alexander Kerensky attempted another offensive 
against the enemy. It was a forlorn hope. The Russian armies were 
completely demoralized, the Germans captured Riga, the Austrians 
recovered their losses of the previous year in Galicia. The eastern 
front was no more. The borderlands between Russia and the Central 
Powers Estonia and Lithuania, Poland, Galicia, the Ukraine, and 
Rumania appeared to be firmly in German and Austrian hands. 

3 

IN THE cities and towns of these borderlands lived the great 
majority some 75 per cent of the Jews of the world, and it was 
they who suffered most at the hands of the warring hosts. They 
suffered not only from the inescapable miseries to which all the 
inhabitants were exposed from the destruction of homes, factories, 
and crops, from famine and pestilence but they were the victims 
of special afflictions and indignities. 



THE FIRST WORLD WAR 573 

They suffered at the hands of their "friends" as well as their 
foes. The Russian High Command took for granted that a people 
whom the regime had so abused could not remain loyal to it, 
especially since the war brought them no relief from persecution 
and disabilities; and when the generals met with defeat and dis- 
grace, what more natural than to shift the guilt to the eternal 
scapegoat? So they charged the Jews with having commerce with 
the enemy, and to dramatize their attempt at self-vindication, they 
ordered the evacuation of entire communities into the interior of 
Russia. Men, women, and children were packed into box-cars in 
which many of them perished, or were driven off on foot and 
marched for hundreds of weary miles away from the war zones. 
Some of them were evacuated as far as Siberia. In addition, com- 
munity leaders were seized as hostages and a number of Jews were 
executed as spies. The policy found support in the allegations of 
Polish anti-Semites, who took advantage of the situation to settle 
old scores with Jewish competitors. 

The facts, however, bore out neither the slurs of Russian generals 
nor the slanders of Polish anti-Semites. Between six and seven 
hundred thousand Jews are estimated to have fought in the armies 
of Russia during the war. They were barred from promotion to 
officer's rank, but large numbers of them received awards for 
bravery, and scores of thousands shed their blood for a government 
that continued to treat them and their people as outcasts. 

4 

WHEN the Cossacks broke across the borders into Bukovina 
and Galicia, thousands of Jews, subjects of Austria-Hungary, fled 
westward of their own accord. Nearly half the Jews of Galicia be- 
came fugitives. They were not welcomed in cities like Vienna, the 
capital of their own country, where not even war could sterilize 
the virus of anti-Semitism, nor did their sufferings end in the camps 
which were hastily improvised for them. There were, however, 
high-ranking Jewish officers, including generals, in the armed forces 
of the Austrian Empire, where the total number of Jews in service 
is estimated to have exceeded 300,000. Many of them, particularly 
in the Hungarian contingents, were decorated for valor. 

In none of the belligerent lands did the Jews flock to the colors 



574 THE WORLD WARS 

with more alacrity than in Germany; more than 100,000 of them, 
or nearly 20 per cent of the total Jewish population, served in the 
armed forces, and the number of those who gave their lives is re- 
liably estimated to have exceeded 28,000. Both these figures repre- 
sent a larger proportion than the corresponding figures for the 
country as a whole; nevertheless, it was in Germany where the 
most elaborate and studied insult was inflicted upon the Jews during 
the war. On November i, 1916, a special census was taken of Jewish 
soldiers at the front, on garrison duty, and in other categories. The 
count had been demanded by anti-Semites in the Reichstag and 
elsewhere, and although the results gave them no comfort, the 
agitation served their purpose of humiliating the Jews and foment- 
ing hostility against them among soldiers and civilians alike. During 
the census, many Jewish soldiers were temporarily removed from 
the front in order to reduce the number in that category which the 
investigation would disclose. 

The actual figures, not only in Germany but in all the belligerent 
countries, belied the defamations of the anti-Semites. The Jews 
constituted i per cent of the total population of all those countries; 
to the armed forces, however, they contributed 1,500,000 men, or 
more than 2 per cent of the total; and the 170,000 fatal casualties 
they sustained also represented 2 per cent of those who were killed 
in action. The armies of the Allied Powers, except the Russian, 
included thousands of Jewish commissioned officers. There were 
Jewish generals in the French and Belgian armies, and one of the 
most distinguished soldiers of the war was Lieutenant General Sir 
John Monash, commander of the Australians who fought in France. 

5 

WHATEVER sympathy existed among the Jews of America 
for the Central Powers a sympathy kept alive by the hope of 
seeing the defeat of czarist Russia was swept away by the down- 
fall of Nicholas II and the legal emancipation of Russian Jewry 
that followed. And when on April 6, 1917, the United States de- 
clared war on Germany, the Jews of the United States flocked to 
the defense of their country with an eagerness exceeded by no other 
group of the population. "No class of people," wrote General John 



THE FIRST WORLD WAR 575 

J. Pershing, the commander in chief of the American Expeditionary 
Force, "served with more patriotism or with higher motives than 
the young Jews who volunteered or were drafted, and who went 
overseas with our other young Americans." 

The statistics are just as eloquent. With the Jewish community 
only 3.27 per cent of the total population, it contributed 5.73 
per cent of the Americans in uniform. There were 170,000 of them 
in the army, 24,000 in the navy, 12,000 in the marine corps, and 
a sufficient number in the other services to raise the total to nearly 
250,000. Some 20 per cent were volunteers, and in the American 
Expeditionary Force, 75 per cent of them were in the combatant 
branches, while the proportion of the entire force in those branches 
was only 60 per cent. The Jewish commissioned officers numbered 
more than 9,000. 

The "East Side Boys," as the Jewish soldiers who fought for 
America in the First World War were called, made keen and re- 
sourceful soldiers, and contributed their full quota to the roster of 
the heroes of the epic conflict. The Seventy-seventh Division, 
which penetrated farther into the German lines than any other 
unit, was 40 per cent Jewish. To that division belonged the famous 
"Lost Battalion" which was saved by Abraham Krotoshinsky, still 
a "greenhorn" in America. He succeeded in passing through the 
enemy lines in the Argonne Forest after 36 other men had been 
killed or captured in the attempt. 



BUT the call to arms was not the only one which the Ameri- 
can Jewish community heard and heeded. Another was the cry of 
distress from their brothers in the war zones of Europe. Organized 
efforts for the relief of the victims of invasions and deportations 
were initiated in European lands also in Germany, Austria, Rus- 
sia, and neutral countries but the chief burden of giving and 
dispensing fell upon the Jews of America. 

Three fund-raising agencies, each appealing to a different seg- 
ment of the community, came promptly into existence, but a rec- 
ognition of the urgency for speed and efficiency in the administra- 
tion of relief overcame internal differences and by the end of 1914, 



576 THE WORLD WARS 

the Joint Distribution Committee was set up. It gradually took ovcr f 
also, the task of raising the funds. The committee was headed by 
the noted banker and philanthropist, Felix M. Warburg of New 
York, and first among its benefactors was Julius Rosenwald of 
Chicago. 

As the war dragged on and the distress grew, the annual appeals 
brought more and more millions into the coffers of the "Joint," 
and in spite of the obstacles which multiplied after the entry of 
America into the war, a large network of relief activities was estab- 
lished in Europe. These involved constructive as well as immediate, 
or palliative, relief; nor did they exclude the religious and cultural 
needs of the war-ravaged communities of Europe. Help for the 
victims flowed also from the landsmanschtft societies and from 
individuals who sent aid to stricken relatives. 

7 

GALLS for help came not only from Europe but also from 
Palestine. For a time it appeared as if the war would scatter and 
obliterate the budding community in the motherland around which 
clustered so many old and new hopes, and which had a special place 
in the affections of all Jews, Zionist and non-Zionist alike. Not only 
did the war stem the flow of charity funds, known as the Cbdukah, 
which sustained the pious old who had come to live their last days 
in the Holy Land, but it shut off the markets for the principal 
export commodities of the country, wine and oranges. It was im- 
perative to feed the hungry and check epidemic disease. Most of the 
help came, of course, from America. It came in the form of funds, 
food, medical supplies, and medical personnel, the latter consisting 
of the American Zionist Medical Unit which was organized and 
dispatched by the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization. 

But the tribulations of the Yishuv were not only economic, but 
also political. Jemal Pasha, the Turkish military governor of Pal- 
estine, chose to look upon Zionist activity as treason, and upon the 
large numbers of the Yishuv who were subjects of the czar, with 
whom Turkey was at war, as spies and subversionists. His methods 
were ruthless: they included imprisonment, forced evacuation, 
torture, and execution. Thousands of Russian subjects were ban- 
ished, most of diem finding refuge in neighboring Egypt. 



THE FIRST WORLD WAR 577 

8 

rr SOON became apparent, moreover, that the war would 
produce far-reaching political changes; to suppressed nationalities 
like the Poles and the Czechs, it opened vistas of freedom and self- 
determination, and Zionists all over the world felt that the oppor- 
tunity which Herzl had sought in vain might now be at hand. The 
war had disrupted the apparatus of the World Zionist Organiza- 
tion, and in America a Provisional Executive Committee for Gen- 
eral Zionist Affairs, headed by Louis D. Brandeis, was created not 
only to provide the Yishuv with material help but also to promote 
the political interests of the movement. Those interests, it became 
obvious, were more likely to be served by a victory of the Allies, 
involving as it would the defeat of Turkey; and the conviction 
grew that a direct military contribution to such a victory would 
add strength to Zionist political claims. 

The conviction found expression in a determined effort which, 
before the war ended, brought the first Jewish military units in 
modern times to fight in and for the ancient motherland. The first 
attempt, launched early in 1915 among the exiles from Palestine 
who had found refuge in Egypt, led to the formation of the Zion 
Mule Corps, a body of 650 men who served in the ill-fated Galli- 
poli campaign, conveying food and ammunition, frequently under 
fire, to the soldiers in the trenches. Disbanded in the summer of 1916 
after the abandonment of the Gallipoli enterprise, the Corps became 
the nucleus of the battalions, consisting of volunteers recruited in 
England, the United States, Canada, and the Yishuv, which are 
remembered as the Jewish Legion, and in Palestine were known as 
the "Judaeans." 

Numerous obstacles, including those raised by government cir- 
cles and anti-Zionist British Jews, had to be overcome before the 
first battalion, officially known as the 38th Royal Fusiliers, became 
a reality; and the effort called for unceasing exertion by a group 
of dynamic personalities, including Vladimir Jabotinsky, brilliant 
journalist and orator; Joseph Trumpeldor, Palestinian pioneer and 
hero of the Russo-Japanese War; Pinchas Ruttenberg, engineer 
and a leader of the Russian Revolution of 1905; and the labor 
leaders of the Yishuv. It was not until June 1917 that the British 



57$ THE WORLD WARS 

Official Gazette announced the authorization of the Jewish units, 
but the first battalion, commanded by Colonel John Henry Patter- 
son, arrived in time to take part in the campaign that drove the 
Turks out of Palestine. On September 22, 1918, it stormed the ford 
at Um-esh-Shert, opening the way for the Australian and New 
Zealand cavalry to break into Transjordania. It was near the spot 
on the Jordan River where, thirty-three centuries earlier, Joshua 
had led the children of Israel across into the Promised Land. 

In the spring of the same year the second battalion, consisting of 
American and Canadian volunteers, had arrived in Palestine, com- 
manded by Colonel Eliezer Margolin, a tried and gallant soldier 
and a proud son of his people. He led his men in the capture of 
the bridge across to Es-Salt, after three attacks by other units had 
been thrown back. A third battalion, commanded by Colonel 
Frederick Samuel and consisting largely of Palestinian Jews, took 
part in the final phase of the campaign, and on Armistice Day, 
American volunteers in sufficient number to make up three more 
battalions were in training in Canada and England. The exploits 
of the Jewish battalions were cited by the commanders in the field, 
but at staff headquarters in Egypt the attitude was not friendly: in 
this, as in larger matters of policy with respect to Palestine, the 
government in London failed to secure the understanding and 
cooperation of its subordinates. 

9 

EVEN before the first Jewish battalion arrived in the Near 
East, the basic policy of the British War Cabinet with respect to 
Palestine had been formulated and published. Under date of No- 
vember 2, 1917, Lord Rothschild, as president of the English 
Zionist Federation, received a communication from Arthur James 
Balfour, die Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, which had 
been approved by the Cabinet. It declared that: 

His Majesty's Government view with favor die establish- 
ment in Palestine of a national home for die Jewish people, 
and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement 
of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall 



THE FIRST WORLD WAR 579 

be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of 
existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and 
political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. 

The Balfour Declaration, as this pronouncement came to be 
known, was hailed with solemn joy in the Jewish communities 
throughout the world. It seemed to augur the realization of the 
dream of Theodor Herzl and the hope nursed by his people through 
nearly two millennia of exile and persecution. History was found 
to repeat itself: the declaration was compared to the proclamation 
issued in 538 B.C.E. by Cyrus the Persian, which permitted the 
exiles of Babylonia to return and establish the Second Jewish 
Commonwealth. 

For Britain, the Balfour Declaration was an act of practical states- 
manship, frankly designed to enlist the good will and support of 
an influential world community in its hour of peril; nor were its 
rulers unmindful of the value a grateful and dependable Jewish 
settlement on the road to the Far East might have for the future. 
But those considerations, weighty as they were, do not exhaust 
the motives that lay behind the action. The Declaration was also 
the consummation of a deep and long-standing British sentiment, 
one which had its foundation in a widespread knowledge of biblical 
prophecy and a reverence for it. That sentiment, moreover, had 
found many previous expressions: in the brave words and deeds of 
British precursors of Zionism through the second half of the nine- 
teenth century, and in the El-Arish and Uganda offers made by the 
British government to the Zionist Organization. 

The Declaration was not an engagement into which Britain 
entered lightly. Many months of negotiation between the govern- 
ment and Zionist leaders, chief among them Chaim Weizmann and 
Nahum Sokolow in Europe and Louis D. Brandeis in America, 
preceded the adoption and publication of the final formula, not to 
speak of the influential anti-Zionist Jews who had to be appeased. 
Weizmann, who already held a prominent place in Zionist affairs, 
was teaching chemistry in the University of Manchester, and hav- 
ing rendered signal service to the British war effort through his 
scientific attainments, he came into personal contact with govern- 



580 THE WORLD WARS 

ment leaders, among them David Lloyd George, the head of the 
War Cabinet, and Balfour. Both were already in sympathy with 
Zionist aims, and he succeeded in convincing them of the practical 
and moral advantages Britain would gain by supporting those aims 
officially and publicly. The brilliant and versatile Sokolow accom- 
plished the task of winning the assent of the French and Italian 
governments, and he even succeeded in allaying the misgivings of 
the pope, Benedict XIV. 

The United States was neither at war with Turkey nor tech- 
nically one of the Allies, but its commanding power and influence 
made its support indispensable, and President Woodrow Wilson, 
convinced of the justice of the Zionist cause, required little per- 
suasion from Brandeis and his associates, among them Stephen S. 
Wise and Julian W. Mack, to extend it generously and eagerly. 
Wilson, in fact, approved the text of the Balfour Declaration before 
its promulgation. 

IO 

BUT in spite of the long time and distinguished statesman- 
ship that were devoted to its formulation, the Declaration emerged 
not without omissions and ambiguities which were destined to 
bear bitter fruit. The term "national home" found itself subjected 
to a variety of interpretations. True, both David Lloyd George, 
President Wilson, Lord Robert Cecil, Winston Churchill, Jan 
Smuts, and other British and American leaders, made it clear that 
they understood it to imply an eventual Jewish Commonwealth. 
Lloyd George, in his book The Truth about the Peace Treaties, 
says: 

There has been a good deal of discussion as to the meaning 
of the words "Jewish National Home" and whether it involved 
the setting up of a Jewish National State in Palestine ... It 
was contemplated that when the time arrived for according 
representative institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had mean- 
while responded to the opportunity afforded them by the idea 
of a National Home and had become a definite majority of 
die inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish 
Commonwealth. The notion that Jewish immigration would 



THE FIRST WORLD WAR 581 

have to be artificially restricted in order to ensure that the 
Jews should be a permanent minority never entered into the 
heads of anyone engaged in framing the policy. That would 
have been regarded as unjust and as a fraud on the people to 
whom we were appealing. 

And on February 8, 1920, Winston Churchill stated his under- 
standing of the term as follows: 

If, as may well happen, there should -be created in our own 
lifetime by the banks of the Jordan a Jewish State under the 
protection of the British Crown which might comprise three 
or four millions of Jews, an event will have occurred in the 
history of the world which would from every point of view 
be beneficial, and would be especially in harmony with the 
truest interests of the British Empire. 

Less than twenty-five years later, however, with the Jews in 
Palestine still a minority, the vagueness of the term enabled Britons 
who were anxious to evade the pledge to claim that it had already 
been fulfilled; and they were able to bolster their claim by the fact 
that the Declaration spoke not of Palestine as the Jewish national 
home, but of a national home in Palestine, that preposition being 
ruefully reminiscent of another by which the Vienna Congress of 
1815 stripped the Jews of the rights they had won in Germany. 
But perhaps the most serious deficiency of the Declaration was its 
apparent assumption that the boundaries of Palestine required no 
definition, an assumption which only five years later made it pos- 
sible for a British White Paper to exclude Trans) ordania, the large 
and fertile region east of the Jordan, from its borders. 

Nor was it realized at the time that certain commitments made 
two years earlier to Husein, Grand Sherif of Mecca and, after the 
war, King of Hejaz, would, because of their vagueness, afford 
Arab nationalists an opportunity to claim that Palestine was in- 
cluded in the regions where, as a reward for an Arab revolt against 
Turkey, Great Britain was "to recognize and support the inde- 
pendence of the Arabs." Those commitments were made by Sir 
Henry McMahon, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, and 
the Arabs have persistently repeated the claim in spite of a public 



582 THE WORLD WARS 

denial by Sir Henry himself. In a letter to the London Times of 
July 23, 1937, Sir Henry wrote: 

I feel it my duty to state, and I do so definitely and em- 
phatically, that it was not intended by me ... to include 
Palestine in the area in which Arab independence was prom- 
ised. I also had every reason to believe that the fact that 
Palestine was not included in my pledge was well understood 
by King Husein. 

II 

BUT the flaws and blemishes were either unrecognized or 
ignored. The enthusiasm which greeted the Balfour Declaration 
saw only its bright promise, which acquired added reality by the 
simultaneous progress of British arms from Egypt toward Jeru- 
salem. On December 1 1, 1917, the Holy City was entered by Gen- 
eral Allenby, who marched in bareheaded and on foot, like a 
pilgrim rather than a conqueror. Early the following year, a Zionist 
Commission, authorized by the British government and headed by 
Weizmann, arrived in Palestine to advise the military authorities in 
matters affecting "the establishment of the Jewish National Home," 
and to act as a link between them and the Yishuv. In July of the 
same year, the foundation stone of the Hebrew University was laid 
on Mount Scopus even while to the north the cannon were still 
rumbling. 

Those events were important enough in themselves, but their 
symbolic significance was even more stirring. The Zionist Commis- 
sion discovered soon enough that the military authorities were 
uninformed and obstructive, but the Jewish masses throughout the 
world went through a honeymoon of redemption. It had been even 
so with the exiles from Babylonia when they first saw the hills of 
Jerusalem. "When the Lord brought back those that returned to 
Zion," sang the Psalmist, "we were like unto them that dream. 
Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongues with 
singing." That was in 538 B.C.E., but it took many decades of toil 
and struggle before the Second Commonwealth, under the leader- 
ship of Ezra and Nehemiah, was firmly established. The road to 
the Third Commonwealth was to prove equally steep and stony. 



NEW EUROPE AND NEW RUSSIA 583 



CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR 



New Europe and New Russia 



IN THE meantime, that first attempt of the "master race" to estab- 
lish its hegemony over the nations was running to its doom: 
der Tag was sinking into twilight and night. Not even the 
Bolshevik revolution of November 1917, nor the humiliating 
treaties which Russia and Rumania were forced to accept, lifting 
the burden of the eastern front from the German High Command, 
could save the "supermen" from defeat and disgrace. 

A new combatant, the giant of the New World, had entered the 
lists. The ruthless campaign of the German submarines, by which 
England was to be starved and brought to her knees, was checked; 
a bridge of ships was built across the Atlantic; and by the summer 
of 1918, a million American soldiers had been landed in France. In 
March of that year, the Germans had begun their supreme effort 
in the west, but in July, with the Allied command unified under 
Marshal Foch and the Americans fighting in force, the Germans 
were decisively defeated in the Second Battle of the Marne and by 
November had lost nearly all their conquests in France and Bel- 
gium. In September, Bulgaria, after suffering a succession of defeats 
by the Allied army based on Salonika, had surrendered uncondi- 
tionally, and the following month Turkey and Austria-Hungary 
did likewise. The Turks had been driven not only from Arabia, 
Palestine, and Syria, but another expedition had sent them reeling 
up the Tigris River from Bagdad to Mosul. As for Austria-Hun- 
gary, its subject nationalities, spurred by the imminent debacle of 
Germany, had risen in revolt, and the patchwork empire fell in 
like a house of cards. 

Finally, on November 1 1, 1918, came the surrender of Germany 
itself. The first bid of the "master race" for world dominion, 
which had brought mankind incalculable woe, with over eight and 
a half million killed and twenty-two million wounded, had ended 



584 THE WORLD WARS 

in defeat but not, as later events were to reveal, in remorse or 
resignation. 



OVER the face of eastern and central Europe, in the lands 
where for nearly four centuries the largest and most vital Jewish 
communities had toiled and struggled, the First World War 
brought sweeping changes. Military collapse and social revolution 
put an end to czarist Russia; the uneasy empire of the Hapsburgs 
broke up and vanished; and under the aegis of national "self- 
determination," states long dead came to life and new ones were 
born. 

The three segments into which Poland had been broken by the 
partitions at the end of the eighteenth century were united to form 
a new state, with a corridor giving access to the sea at Danzig. 
North of Poland along the Baltic, the regions which Russia had 
been forced to yield became the republics of Lithuania, Latvia, 
Estonia, and Finland. To the south, the dissolution of the Austro- 
Hungarian Empire gave birth to Czechoslovakia, and brought con- 
siderable enlargement to Rumania, which was further augmented 
by the annexation of Bessarabia. Farther south in the Balkan Penin- 
sula, Serbia, where the world conflagration started, was expanded 
into Yugoslavia, and Greece was rewarded by the cession of Thrace 
with its great port of Salonika, rich with memories of Jewish 
traders, scholars, and mystics. Austria became an impoverished little 
state, and Hungary, shorn of Transylvania and Slovakia, was left 
seething with Irredentist passions. Germany, defeated and humili- 
ated, was compelled to disgorge the spoils of this and previous wars. 
Its emperor was a fugitive in Holland, its industrial regions in the 
west were occupied, and it embarked on a venture in democratic 
government for which neither the petrified Junkers, the arrogant 
and servile functionaries, the stodgy masses, nor the turgid intel- 
lectuals were prepared. 

Thus it came about that nearly nine of the fourteen million 
Jews of the world found themselves subject to new political regimes 
and, in the case of the two and a half million who remained within 
die borders of Soviet Russia, to drastically new social and economic 
conditions as well. 



NEW EUROPE AND NEW RUSSIA 585 

3 

NEVERTHELESS, except for the Soviet Union, which went 
her separate way and remained largely a sealed book, it can be 
said that the Jews in the other war-changed or war-created lands 
looked to the future with a measure of sober hopefulness. Those 
lands were, after all, the handiwork of the Versailles Peace Con- 
ference. That conference, which began in December 1918 and 
lasted till the following June, was of course dominated by the 
victorious democracies of the West; but, at least in matters not 
affected by their interests, they might be expected to honor the 
claims of justice. 

One of those matters was the problem of the minorities. In every 
state of eastern and central Europe, the boundaries of which were 
drawn or redrawn by the Conference on the principle of national 
self-determination, there still remained minorities who, in race, 
language or religion, differed from the dominant majority. There 
remained, for instance, Germans and Ruthenians in Poland, Mag- 
yars in Rumania, Germans in Czechoslovakia. And in all of them 
there were Jews, the ubiquitous minority of the ages who, in their 
status as a minority, were distinguished by the uniqueness which 
characterizes their entire career. Their differences, to begin with, 
were more conspicuous than those of the other minorities; unlike 
the others, they were not concentrated geographically but lived 
in communities scattered throughout the lands; and, most important, 
there was no political entity controlled by their own kith and kin 
which, as in the case of the other minorities, might, as the need 
arose, come forward and champion their grievances. Would the 
new states grant their minorities the right to be different, the right 
to their own way of life, their religious and social institutions, their 
language and culture? The Peace Conference was led to the con- 
clusion that they should, and not only in the interest of justice, 
but because the policy of suppressing the minorities had proved to 
be a fertile source of conflict and a menace to the general peace. 

The racial, religious, and linguistic minorities of the states in 
question won the formal recognition of their rights, both as indi- 
viduals and as groups, and the victory was due chiefly to the labors 
of the deputations whom the Jewries of those and other lands sent 



586 THE WORLD WARS 

to the conference. They formed themselves into a Committee of 
Jewish Delegations at the Peace Conference, the leadership of 
which fell to Julian W. Mack and Louis Marshall, the heads of 
the American delegation in which both the American Jewish 
Committee and the more democratic American Jewish Congress 
were represented. The struggle of the Committee of Jewish Dele- 
gations for minority rights did not go unchallenged: it was opposed 
by the representatives of French Jewry and, to a large extent, by 
those of British Jewry, who felt uneasy about a demand which, if 
granted, might expose the Jewish communities to the charge of 
forming "a state within a state." But the Peace Conference not 
only made minority rights part of the treaties which the states 
concerned, willingly or unwillingly, had to accept; they enacted 
further that those provisions "shall be recognized as fundamental 
laws . . . and shall be placed under the guarantee of the League of 
Nations." In the case of Rumania, additional safeguards were 
added to prevent that country from resorting to its time-honored 
dodge of placing its Jews in the category of aliens. 

However, neither in reborn Poland nor in aggrandized Rumania, 
the lands with nearly four and a half of the six million Jews for 
whom minority rights were enacted, did the two decades between 
the First and Second World War vindicate the enthusiasm with 
which the acquisition of those rights was greeted. In practice, 
minority rights, as well as other and more elementary human rights, 
were honored more in the breach than in the observance. Laws and 
treaties proved powerless against the ingrained animosity of the 
dominant majorities, enflamed by the fierce chauvinism that seized 
upon them in their new-found national grandeur. The position of 
the minorities was further undermined by the failure of the dream 
of which Woodrow Wilson was the inspired apostle. The "guar- 
antee of the League of Nations" lost its meaning when the defec- 
tion of the giant of the West reduced the League to a mere shadow 
of what it was intended to be. 

Minority rights were not, of course, the only victim of the 
rejection of the League by the Senate of the United States. Other 
arrangements, like the mandates system, lost their vitality, and many 
students of international affairs have attributed the final breakdown 
of world peace two decades later to die same cause. 



NEW EUROPE AND NEW RUSSIA 587 

4 

TO THE Soviet Union, the arrangements of Versailles did 
not, of course, apply. There, of the six million Jews who had lain 
under the heel of the czars, some two and a half million still re- 
mained in the caldron of revolution and civil strife which the 
country became immediately after the Bolshevist seizure of power. 
Nearly two million of them were concentrated in White Russia 
and the Ukraine, and the savage hordes which until 1922 swept back 
and forth across those lands repeated the crimes which their fore- 
bears committed under Chmelnitzki in 1648. If the counterrevolu- 
tionary chieftains Petlura, Wrangel, Denikin, Grigoriev, and the 
others had no other rewards for their motley followers, they 
could always give them a free hand to plunder and murder the 
helpless Jews, whom they, like the czar, thought it good policy to 
hold accountable for the revolution. To the ignorant and the preju- 
diced the policy appeared to be justified by the fact that there were 
Jews among the Bolshevist leaders, including Leon Trotsky, the 
creator of the Red Army, Grigoryi Zinoviev, and Leon Kamenev. 
The fact that Jews were also among the leading foes of the Bol- 
shevists, and that it was a woman named Dora Kaplan who at- 
tempted to assassinate Lenin, meant nothing to the propagators of 
the lie that the Communist Revolution was the handiwork of the 
Jews. 

The great majority of the Jewish workers, in fact, belonged to 
anti-Bolshevist parties, not to speak of the merchants, small traders, 
and independent artisans who made up an abnormally large pro- 
portion of the Jewish population. It was so large indeed that under 
the Soviet legal system, which deprived middlemen of political and 
civil rights, 35 per cent of the Jewish population found themselves 
among the lishentzi (rightless), while for the entire population, the 
ratio was only 5 per cent. In Ukrainia itself, the political alignment 
of the Jewish population was a matter of public record: in 1918, 
63 per cent of the delegates to a democratically elected Jewish 
National Assembly represented bourgeois parties, and the remain- 
der belonged to parties like the Bund, which were Socialist but 
anti-Bolshevist. 

Like the old medieval libels, the new lie furnished a welcome 



588 THE WORLD WARS 

sanction for the release of all the degenerate passions that lurk in 
the human animal. In Ukrainia, the civil war brought chaos and 
terror; the restraints which normally control human conduct dis- 
appeared; and, as always in a period of social upheaval, the first 
and most tragic victims were the Jews. For the two years beginning 
January 1919, the Ukraine was the scene of more than a thousand 
pogroms, with the dead alone, according to some estimates, running^ 
into the hundreds of thousands. In numerous places the Jews pre- 
pared themselves for defense; they could do little against the well- 
armed soldiers of Petlura and Denikin, but they gave a good 
account of themselves against the roving bands of brigands who 
infested the land. 

The arch-culprit was the Cossack hetman Petlura. In 1926 he 
was shot to death in Paris by Shalom Schwartzbard, whose father 
had been slain in one of the hetman 's pogroms; and a French jury, 
after hearing all the evidence, found the avenger not guilty. 

5 

BY 1922, the new Russia had put down the counterrevolu- 
tions and checkmated the armed interventions of the Allies whom 
it had abandoned when it accepted the shameful Treaty of Brest- 
Litovsk, imposed by Germany in March 1918. Now the country 
was ready to proceed apace with the most sweeping social trans- 
formation a nation had ever attempted, and the Jews who remained 
within its borders found themselves under a juggernaut that bore 
down upon them with devastating effect. Not that the new regime 
inherited the anti-Semitic virus of its predecessor. On the contrary, 
one of its first acts was to outlaw anti-Semitism as an instrument 
of reaction and counterrevolution, and to make its practice a grave 
crime a policy which the Soviet Union was the first state ever to 
apply. The woes which the new order brought upon the Jews of 
Russia had a different origin: they sprang first from the fact that 
nearly 900,000 of them had derived their subsistence from occu- 
pations now proscribed, and second, from the implacable anti- 
religious policy of the new regime, which played havoc with the 
basic principle of their individual and collective life. 

The economic test, which the classless society to which Russia 
was struggling to give birth now applied, rejected those who failed 



NEW EUROPE AND NEW RUSSIA 589 

to meet it with even more rigor than the religious test of the Middle 
Ages. Deprived of the right to vote for the local Soviets, the re- 
jectees were excluded from the factories as well as government 
posts; their children were not admitted to the trade schools; their 
taxes were higher; their ration allotments lower; and they were 
subject to still other discriminations. The desperate plight of the 
declassed Jews was to some extent relieved by the help of relatives 
in America and by the more systematic aid of the Joint Distribu- 
tion Committee, but in 1926, nearly half the Jews in Russia were 
estimated to require the aid of charity. 

In 1924, the government itself launched a program of reconstruc- 
tion for the declassed by allotting land in the Ukraine, where Jewish 
colonies had been established for generations, as well as in northern 
Crimea, White Russia, and in other regions of the Soviet Union, 
for Jewish agricultural settlements. To provide equipment and 
additional aid to the colonists, the Joint Distribution Committee, 
with the help of the ICA, the ORT, and Qther relief agencies, estab- 
lished the Agro-Joint; and although the ambitions of the Comzet, 
as the government commission in charge of the project was called, 
were not realized, some 3,000 families are believed to have been 
colonized every year since 1924, so that by the outbreak of the 
Second World War the population of the new settlements probably 
exceeded 200,000. In the Crimea there were 89 collective Jewish 
settlements, with a population of about 40,000. 

One of the ambitions of the Comzet was to create an autonomous 
Jewish region in southern Russia, and when that hope proved 
illusory, the Comzet transferred it in 1928 to Biro-Bidjan, an ex- 
tensive region on the Amur River in eastern Siberia. Although the 
cultural autonomy of the district was duly proclaimed, and Yiddish 
was made an official language, the great distance as well as the 
harsh climate failed to attract the requisite numbers, and of those 
who came to settle there, a considerable portion found it impossible 
to remain. Besides, the industrialization of Russia under the Five 
Year Plans enabled large numbers of Jews to find employment in 
industry, so that the impulse to colonization lost a good deal of its 
original force. Gradually, the number of the declassed diminished. 
The young managed to find their place in the new economic struc- 
ture, but die tragic plight of their elders continued. 



590 THE WORLD WARS 



RUSSIAN Jewry under the czars, despite the calamitous dis- 
criminations imposed by the regime, had nevertheless played a 
leading part in the culture and aspirations of the world-wide com- 
munity. The more recent spiritual and political currents, which 
quickened Jewish life throughout the world, expressing themselves 
in the Zionist movement and in the new Hebrew- and Yiddish 
literatures, had found their chief support in Russia. In the Soviet 
Union, however, where the Jews were on a legal footing of equality 
with all the other inhabitants, the Jewish community became a 
shadow of its former self. Russia itself lived in practical isolation 
from the rest of the world, and the Jews of Russia lost contact with 
their kin in other lands. Their inner life, moreover, was subjected to 
a series of assaults which all but destroyed it. 

In line with Communist policy, which looked upon all religions 
as instruments of class oppression, a ruthless campaign was launched 
against Judaism. Hundreds of synagogues were transformed into 
workers' clubhouses; the practice of circumcision was heavily 
penalized; and the religious education of the young practically 
barred. The Zionist movement was outlawed as "a tool of British 
imperialism and counterrevolution," and the Hebrew language 
and literature came under the same ban. Zionist leaders were 
arrested, exiled, and imprisoned. Yiddish, on the other hand, as "the 
language of the proletarian masses," was free and unfettered. Rec- 
ognized as the language of a national minority, it was encouraged 
and subsidized, although, to serve the party line, its literature, like 
its orthography, was grotesquely distorted. 

The campaign against Judaism, Zionism, and Hebrew was en- 
trusted to a group of renegades and doctrinaire fanatics who con- 
ducted it with more than ordinary zeal and malice. They made up 
the so-called Jewish Section, or Yevsektzia, who used their power 
to vent their spleen against the immemorial sanctities which had 
become hateful to them. In 1930, the Section was abolished, but 
what has remained of the ancient spiritual bulwarks of Russian 
Jewry is a question which is still unanswered. What is clear, how- 
ever, is that the substitute in the form of a Yiddish proletarian 
culture, which was to safeguard the Jewish nationality, has failed 



DISASTER MADE IN GERMANY 591 

of its purpose. The process of assimilation is unchecked, for no- 
where can the hope of Jewish survival rest upon a secular culture 
alone. 



CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE 

Disaster Made in Germany 



FOR mankind in general and the Jewish people in particular 
the two decades between the world wars the "long truce/' 
as the period has been called ended with a disaster of un- 
precedented magnitude. It was a disaster made in Germany, brewed 
in a caldron in which, by a fatal juncture of conditions and events, 
all the necessary toxic ingredients were assembled. 

The chief ingredient was a nation exhausted, humiliated, and 
demoralized a neurotic, adolescent nation which, though defeated 
and broken, clung desperately to its morbid chauvinism, seeking 
the cause of its ruin in everything except its true source: itself. The 
second ingredient was a group of "victorious" nations around 
Germany, not far behind it in demoralization, bedeviled by eco- 
nomic distress and internal division, their noblest traditions sub- 
merged by the fatigue and cynicism that follow in the wake of 
war. Into the moral vacuum that existed in Europe, there now 
entered something which had all the appearance of a nightmare: 
a monster that shrieked and bellowed for a return to the jungle, 
gloried in the chaos and bloodlust of the jungle, and trampled upon 
all the ethical norms which the human race had achieved at such 
terrible cost. The thing called National Socialism, or Nazism, ap- 
peared in Germany and began its work of pollution, spilling over 
into other lands and absorbing all things vile, including its pale 
precursor, the fascism of Italy. 

Finally, that brew of disaster found its active reagent in a group 
of leaders, all stamped with the seal of physical, mental, or moral 
degeneration. With cynical frankness, they made no secret of their 
intention to subdue die world to their purpose; and with fraud, 



59 2 THE WORLD WARS 

duplicity, and terror they openly set about to corrupt and subvert 
men and nations. By the Fuehrer, or supreme leader of the group, 
its aim was expressed in simple words. "I want to see again in the 
eyes of youth," he said, "the gleam of the beast of prey. A youth 
will grow up before which the world will shrink." Never in human 
history had sheer evil stood forth so stark and naked, and, as was 
shortly to appear, so well-geared to accomplish its aim. 

In this arch of evil, which from 1933 until the end of the Second 
World War threw its shadow over the earth, the keystone was 
anti-Semitism. Here was a passion and a program which answered 
to all the depraved instincts of the Nazi leaders and rabble, to all 
their sadistic lusts and greeds, and served to vindicate all their 
failures and frustrations. It was, moreover, peculiarly fitted to 
appeal to their counterparts in other lands, and whatever else the 
Nazi baggage contained that was vile and sinister became accept- 
able to anti-Semites the world over. 

For the Nazis and their disciples the Jewish people became 
Enemy Number One. Indeed, it was a sound intuition which led 
these men, who called for the restoration of the ruthless Teutonic 
gods and demons, to single out for their most implacable hatred 
the people who were chiefly responsible for the recognition of the 
God of justice and loving kindness. Thus it came to pass, a century 
and a half after the French Revolution and nearly two generations 
after the Jews of Germany had been admitted to civil equality, 
that they, as well as their kin in nearly all the rest of Europe, some 
eight millions of them, suffered a catastrophe which dwarfs all 
previous disasters in their four millennia of history. 



IMMEDIATELY after the First World War, Germany, de- 
feated but unchastened, became a "democratic" republic, but it 
was like a man trying to lift himself by his boot straps. The eco- 
nomic problems, such as the reparations which the conquerors 
imposed, the catastrophic inflation of 1923, and the depression that 
smote the entire world in 1929, would have staggered an old and 
stable democracy; in Germany they doomed an experiment which 
would probably have failed in any case. For the basic vice was 
psychologic rather than economic. Not only did the Germans lack 



DISASTER MADE IN GERMANY 593 

experience in self-government, but they were afflicted with an in- 
veterate aversion for it, with what amounted to an organic need for 
control and authority. This deficiency, which their philosophers of 
course exalted into a sublime virtue, was aggravated by the frustra- 
tions of defeat, and by the association which inevitably arose in 
their minds between the republic and their misfortunes. 

After a feverish career of fourteen years, marked by assassina- 
tions, bloody clashes between private armies, and revolutionary 
attempts by the Right and the Left, the Weimar Republic, so- 
called because in 1919 its constitution was drafted and signed in 
that city, came to an end, and in 1933 it was replaced by a dictator- 
ship headed by one Adolf Hitler. 

But even before the exaltation of this modern Genghis Khan 
a designation which insults the memory of the twelfth century 
super-killer his followers, actual and potential, open and hidden, 
had already found in anti-Semitism a consolation and a program. 
Those followers included the army officers, the industrialists, the 
Junker land barons, the intellectuals, the middle classes, all who had 
grown up on a diet of German superiority and invincibility. They 
had to have an explanation for their defeat and it had to be one that 
would cater to their arrogance. They found it in the fable of a 
"stab in the back" administered to the army by the Jews. The terms 
the conquerors imposed on Germany at Versailles terms which it 
became fashionable to condemn as too severe but which were mild 
compared to those which Germany imposed on Russia at Brest 
Litovsk were ascribed to Jewish influence. Every liberal and 
radical manifestation which all of those groups feared and hated, 
including the Weimar Republic itself, was, of course, denounced 
as a Jewish concoction. And, as in the case of the Russian Revolu- 
tion, ample evidence was found to convince inflamed minds. Was 
not Rosa Luxemburg a leader of the Socialist uprising in January 
1919? And the man who in November 1918 led the Communist 
revolution in Bavaria was Kurt Eisner whose enemies, before and 
after his assassination, made his Jewish origin their principal target, 
regardless of the fact that his assassin was also a non- Aryan. As for 
the Weimar Republic, the evidence was equally "convincing." The 
creator of the Weimar Constitution was the eminent political scien- 
tist Hugo Preuss, and one of its strongest champions was Hugo 



594 THE WORLD WARS 

Haase who in November 1919 was also struck down by the bullet 

of an assassin. 

But the dominating figure in the early years of die republic, the 
man whom the world regarded as most likely to restore Germany 
to a dignified place in the community of civilized nations, and who, 
for that reason, drew upon himself the fiercest hatred of the "super- 
men," was Walter Rathenau. During the war, Rathenau had served 
his country as organizer of its industrial resources, a key post 
similar to die one held by Bernard Baruch in America. As Minister 
of Reconstruction and, later, as Foreign Minister under the Weimar 
Republic, Rathenau stood for the faithful performance by Ger- 
many of its treaty obligations, and he went a long way toward 
establishing genuine cooperation with France and Russia. He was, 
besides, a man of exalted spirit, a thinker and writer, and a proud 
Jew. Those crimes the "supermen" could not forgive, and on June 
24, 1922, after a campaign of the vilest defamation, he too was 
assassinated. The civilized world was shocked, and the Republic 
gave Rathenau a state funeral; but the foul deed, for which the 
entire reactionary cabal was responsible, had removed a chief ob- 
stacle to the overthrow of the republic and the rise of the gutter 
to supreme power. 

3 

HOW it came about that a people of 65,000,000 surrendered 
voluntarily and unconditionally to that reckless and depraved group 
headed by Hider, will probably always remain a mystery. Every 
enumeration of causes, including spiritual frustration, economic 
distress, and the fears and ambitions of groups and classes, fail some- 
how to add up to the fantastic and hideous total. It is not as if the 
German people were led blindfolded into a trap; by 1933 the 
exploits of the Nazi gangsters over more than a decade had made 
the character of the movement clear, and any remaining doubts 
had been removed by the leader himself in his writings, particularly 
in M em Kampf, which he wrote after his ill-starred beer-hall putsch 
in Munich in November 1923. In this bible of nazism, which the 
Germans read with avidity and which ended by supplanting the 
Bible of their nominal faith, the nature of the enterprise, as well 
as its insane objectives, stand revealed. Throughout die world, 



DISASTER MADE IN GERMANY 595 

moreover, the progress of nazism was observed without that sense 
of dismay to which it should have given rise. All through Christen- 
dom, and in Germany in particular, that triumph represents the 
most startling collapse of the ethics of Christianity which the ages 
have witnessed. 

In this collapse the principal demoralizing factor was anti- 
Semitism and the diabolic cunning with which the Nazi hierarchy 
made use of it. From the frenzies of Adolf Hitler, the jeering of 
Josef Goebbels, the obscenities of Julius Streicher, and the distor- 
tions of the "philosopher" of nazism, Alfred Rosenberg, it is 
difficult to appraise to what extent anti-Semitism was a genuine 
passion with this hierarchy, and to what extent it was cold calcula- 
tion. But to their followers, in Germany and elsewhere, it was the 
answer to all their prayers, the panacea for all their ills. And as for 
those in and out of Germany, including statesmen and others in 
high places, who were too wise to be taken in by the tricks of 
propaganda, the wild hue and cry against the Jews appeared at best 
as only an outlet for popular unrest, and at worst as a sword that 
hung over the heads of the Jews alone. The Nazi program, which 
secretly envisaged the enslavement or destruction of many nations, 
never made a secret of its purpose to annihilate the Jews. But there 
were those in all lands who refused to believe that so monstrous a 
deed was really intended, and there were others who refused to 
be disturbed by the prospect. A strange and fatal disease had smit- 
ten the nations, its symptoms a softening of the brain, or a harden- 
ing of the heart, or both. 

4 

QUICKLY the Nazis, summoned to power in January 1933 
by Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, the senile president of the 
German Republic, replaced it with a dictatorship, and they lost 
no time in launching a campaign of terror against the Jews. It rose 
steadily until, by the outbreak of the Second World War less than 
seven years later, the German Jewish community was virtually 
obliterated. That community had been small in numbers its 550,- 
ooo members representing less than i per cent of the country's 
population but great in achievement. Among the 38 German 
Nobel prize winners, n, or nearly 30 per cent, had been Jews, 



596 THE WORLD WARS 

and not only the science, but the literature, the music, the art, and 
the drama of Germany had been enormously enriched by them. 
There had been tensions and defections in the inner life of the 
community, the urge toward self-effacement and total assimilation 
gaining steadily in force; but other tendencies had also asserted 
themselves, tendencies represented by men like Leo Baeck, the 
courageous communal leader, rabbi, and scholar; Martin Buber, 
the religious philosopher who revealed anew the spiritual treasures 
of Chassidism; and his collaborator Franz Rosenzweig, a spirit of 
heroic mold, for the last seven years of his life totally paralyzed, 
but producing works of rare depth and beauty. Nor had Zionism 
failed to attract large numbers of the youth, and in every city and 
town the ancient faith had been still zealously guarded and con- 
tinued to dominate the communal life. And now a seven-year storm 
of hate swept over this community and destroyed it. 

In those years of mounting savagery, certain events stand out. 
On May 10, 1933, books by Jewish authors Mendelssohn, Heine, 
Auerbach, Wassermann, Feuchtwanger, Zweig and numerous 
others, as well as the Bible, were publicly burned, and the youth of 
the new Germany, party members, storm troopers, students, and 
teachers, danced and shouted around the bonfires. On September 
15, 1935, at one of those monolithic rallies of the party robots in 
their shrine city of Nuremberg, the sweeping Nuremberg Law's 
were enacted which deprived all Jews of their citizenship, thus 
nullifying emancipation with a single stroke. But their civil status 
before the emancipation was incomparably higher than that which 
the Nuremberg Laws permitted them. For not only did the Nurem- 
berg Laws restore the ghetto, but Jews were subjected to forced 
labor, deprived of their property and professions, and placed under 
the direct jurisdiction of die Sicherheitsdienst (SD), a department 
of the Schuteftaffeln (SS) later combined with the dread Gestapo, 
the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Secret State Police. 

Less than a year later, a Race Bureau was established, which had 
no difficulty in persuading the scientists of Germany to prostitute 
their brains and pens in order to falsify history and sociology and 
diffuse their venomous lies through Germany and the entire world. 
Nor were the scientists alone in their infamy: the liberal profes- 
sions and the arts were equally zealous. They expelled their Jewish 



DISASTER MADE IN GERMANY 597 

members, and in the schools teachers inflicted torture on little chil- 
dren, holding them up to the ridicule and hatred of their class- 
mates. In other lands, the sensitive few heard of those doings and 
were deeply disturbed. How, they asked, was it possible for a 
whole nation to sink so low? But the majority, including the gov- 
ernments, dismissed them as matters of internal policy with which 
other nations could not interfere. 

5 

FINALLY came November 10, 1938, when an orgy of vio- 
lence, carefully prepared and thoroughly executed, swept through 
the Reich, which startled even the callous. Nazi Germany was al- 
ready on the loose. In March of the same year, Austria had been 
overrun and annexed with all the techniques of fraud, subversion, 
and terror. In September had come the ignominious pact of 
Munich and the betrayal by England and France of Czechoslo- 
vakia, and, on the first of October, the dismemberment of this last 
refuge of democracy and decency in central Europe had begun. 
Then, on November 7, good Germans were enraged, and the Nazi 
hierarchs were no doubt delighted, to learn that in Paris a seventeen- 
year-old Jewish boy named Herschel Greenspan, driven frantic 
by news of the sufferings endured by his parents and thousands of 
other Polish Jews in the Reich who had been suddenly and brutally 
dumped across the Polish border, had shot and mortally wounded 
a minor official of the German embassy. 

The official died on November 9, and before the dawn of the 
following day, the Reich "avenged itself with an organized po- 
grom of unparalleled extent and ferocity. In hundreds of cities and 
towns throughout the land Jewish shops and homes were systemati- 
cally looted and wrecked, five hundred synagogues were destroyed 
by fire, thousands of men, women, and children were beaten and 
maimed, scores, perhaps hundreds, were murdered, and thirty thou- 
sand of the more well-to-do were thrown into concentration camps 
and their property confiscated. This rime there was a genuine feel- 
ing of uneasiness in the western democracies: apparently civilization 
was confronted with something new. But the huge pogrom was still 
a matter of German "internal policy" and not subject to the inter- 
vention of other governments. Besides, the beast would probably 



THE WORLD WARS 



gorge itself on the Jews and become sated and tame, and the peace 
of Europe would not be broken. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Presi- 
dent of the United States, recalled his ambassador from Berlin: 
he alone of the leading statesmen of the world seemed to realize 
the enormity of the new thing the world was facing. 



THE beast was not sated. In March of the following year, 
he devoured Bohemia and Moravia; in May, Germany and Italy 
concluded a formal military alliance; in August came a mutual 
non-aggression pact between Germany and Russia, giving the Nazis 
a free hand in eastern Europe; and on September i, the mechanized 
Nazi hordes were streaming across the Polish borders. The "in- 
ternal" war against the Jews had become the Second World War. 

What in the meantime had been the fate of the German Jews 
whom the Gestapo torturers, the concentration camps, and the 
suicide waves had spared? By 1938 approximately 150,000 of them, 
the younger and more fortunate, had managed to escape by emigra- 
tion, of whom some 35,000 found a haven in Palestine. November 
10 was followed by intensified persecutions: a fine of a billion 
marks was imposed upon the victims; Jewish children who still 
attended the public schools were expelled; Jewish community life 
was hamstrung by decrees as well as by the arrest and incarceration 
of leaders and functionaries; and numerous other devices, damaging 
or only humiliating, were invented. Some refugees managed to find 
asylum in other lands on the continent, in England, and across the 
ocean in the United States, Canada, and Latin America. By the 
outbreak of the new war, those who remained in Germany were 
nearly all in concentration camps, in hiding, or were too old and 
feeble to merit the attention of the Gestapo. 

In July 1938, on the invitation of the President of the United 
States, delegates from thirty-two countries met at Evian in France 
to devise measures, within the limitations imposed by their immi- 
gration laws, for speeding the rescue of the victims of the Nazi 
terror. There were noble speeches, but very little action. Many 
thousands of unfortunates found themselves caught between those 
immigration laws and the Nazis, and perished. It was a strange 
phenomenon. A new horror was on the rampage, and even the few 



DISASTER MADE IN GERMANY 599 

among the nations who had eyes to see, stood paralyzed by their 
self-imposed limitations. 

7 

WAS nazism an offspring of Italian fascism? They had a 
great deal in common: a contempt for democracy, a delirious 
nationalism, terrorism as a state policy, an incurable compulsion 
toward aggression, the glorification of war. But unlike nazism, 
Italian fascism clashed with the temperament of the people it ruled, 
and it was only in 1938, under pressure from Berlin, that it adopted 
the credo of anti-Semitism. Fascism took possession of the Italian 
government in 1922, more than a decade before the triumph of the 
Nazis in Germany. The heroics of that "march on Rome" by 
Benito Mussolini and his Blackshirts, which made il duce dictator 
of Italy, have been exposed as a fraud, and to the movement as a 
whole there clung a suggestion of opera bouffe which the grandiose 
postures of the dictator did nothing to dispel. 

But the original brand did not adopt the doctrines of racism. 
Until 1938, the 50,000 Jews in Italy, scattered in a population of 
40,000,000, were on a par with their fellow citizens of other faiths, 
and even under fascism they continued to figure in the political, 
cultural, and military affairs of the kingdom. Jewish refugees from 
Germany found asylum in Italy; the universities kept their doors 
open to Jewish students from other lands; laws were enacted to 
protect the religious integrity of Jewish children in the public 
schools; and there were Jewish officials in the fascist government, 
some of diem in high places, like Guido Jung who was Minister 
of Finance and Ludovico Mortara who was Chief Justice. 

8 

BUT apparently fascism and anti-Semitism cannot be sepa- 
rated, and it could not be otherwise even in Italy. The change 
began in 1935 with Mussolini's onslaught on Ethiopia, and it 
ripened in 1938 when, to all intents and purposes, Italy became a 
vassal of Germany. England's antagonism to his imperial' progress, 
together with his desire to pose as the protector of Islam, ltd il duce 
to adopt a hostile attitude toward Zionism and to the people it 
represented. When, however, Italy entered into a military alliance 



6OO THE WORLD WARS 

with Germany, it seemed a foregone conclusion that the Nazi 
brand of anti-Semitism would be adopted by the junior partner. 
In the summer of 1938 the blow fell. It was preceded by a vicious 
newspaper barrage as in Germany, nor did it fail to enlist its retinue 
of "scientific" camp-followers anthropologists, sociologists, and 
historians to establish the superiority of the Italian "race" and 
the dangers that threatened it from the Jews! Laws were now 
decreed ordering the expulsion of all refugees and other Jews who 
had come in after January i, 1919, and the schools and universities 
were "purged" of Jewish teachers and students. Nor would the 
policy stop there: its German sponsorship made that perfectly 
plain. 

Thousands of Jews, in an environment where the ancient faith 
lay lightly on many of them, thought to save themselves by 
baptism. They relied on the help of the Vatican, for did not Pius 
XI, denouncing the new policy, declare that "spiritually we are 
all Semites"? But more effective help flowed from the Italian 
people, who were amazed and repelled by the new departure, 
seeing in it another act of subservience to the German master 
whom they hated. They continued to esteem and, whenever pos- 
sible, to protect their Jewish friends and neighbors. 



CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX 

The "Long Truce" in Eastern Europe 

KSURRECTED Poland required no pressure from Berlin to 
make anti-Semitism a national policy. The triumphant 
march of Nazism only added fuel to a long-standing pas- 
sion which the heady nationalism that now swept over Poland had 
already inflamed. The new Polish chauvinism revealed its temper 
even before die sessions afc Versailles were concluded. Disdaining to 
let the conference determine its boundaries, the new Poland took 
die matter into its own hands, attacked its neighbors north, east, 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN EASTERN EUROPE 60 1 

and south, and in every case its ebullience ran over into "excesses/* 
as the assaults were politely called, against the Jews. 

Only ten days after the armistice, the Poles captured the 
Ukrainian city of Lemberg where they staged a pogrom with all 
the accompaniments of looting, arson, and murder. Not long after- 
wards, they seized the White Russian city of Pinsk where, without 
trial, they shot fifty of the leading men of the Jewish community 
and committed other outrages. Early in the spring of 1919, the 
Poles set out to "rectify" their northern boundary at the expense 
of Lithuania: they seized the cities of Lida and Vilna, where the 
soldiery disported themselves against the Jews in the same manner. 
Nor were the cities of the interior neglected: there were "excesses" 
in scores of places, in which all classes of the population took part. 
Beating Jews on the street, cutting off their beards, and throwing 
them from moving trains became favorite Polish pastimes. The 
American and British governments sent commissions of investiga- 
tion to Poland, the American headed by Henry Morgenthau, 
former ambassador to Turkey, the British by Sir Stuart Samuel. 
The Polish ministers regretted and deplored and gave assurances, 
but nothing effective was done to curb the violence. 

This mood of arrogant expansionism in which Poland began its 
new career could be sustained neither by its geography, nor social 
structure, nor economic resources. With no natural and defensible 
boundaries, Poland nevertheless chose to badger and attack its 
neighbors, instead of courting their good will. Instead of depend- 
ing, like other minor powers, upon a strong League of Nations, 
Poland chose to swagger as a great power, and contributed to the 
humiliation of the League by flouting the obligations which it had 
assumed toward its minorities and which the League had guar- 
anteed. With its peasantry pauperized by the land-owning pans, 
with the textile and leather industries, which the Jews had built 
up, all but ruined by the closure of the Russian market, with its 
mineral resources lying fallow, this beggar on horseback neverthe- 
less chose to maintain a huge military establishment by which its 
gentry the "colonels," as they have been designated hoped to 
hold and augment their country's power. 

The ideal Poland, as envisioned by its new chauvinists, was very 
much like die Russia for which Nicholas I had striven in his day: 



6O2 THE WORLD WARS 

it was to be a Poland of one nationality, one language, and one 
religion. This aim, however, did not deter the "colonels" from 
pursuing a policy of aggression which brought additional millions 
of different nationality and religion within Poland's boundaries. 
The biggest adventure of the sort occurred in the spring of 1920, 
when Soviet Russia, paralyzed by civil war, was invaded by the 
Poles under the leadership of the glamorous Jozef Pilsudski. The 
invasion ravaged the border regions, and again the principal suf- 
ferers were the Jews. In the summer, Russia found the strength to 
drive the Poles back, and Warsaw was only saved when the French 
came to its rescue. Nevertheless, Poland achieved an eastern 
boundary far beyond the so-called Curzon Line, and hosts of 
Ukrainians, White Russians, and Jews were added to its unhappy 
minorities. 



ALL the minorities in Poland were oppressed, but the most 
vicious and sustained assaults were directed against the minority 
which lacked what the others had: the protection of a land and 
government of their own kith and kin. As the uneasy truce between 
the two world wars continued and, in the late thirties, reached 
the breaking point, the fury of the Poles went crescendo. The 
security of the sprawling Polish domains, hemmed in between 
Germany and Russia, both of whom nursed Irredentist resentments 
against die upstart, became more precarious; the economic plight 
of the impoverished land, weighed down by its top-heavy military 
establishment, became catastrophic; and the "colonels," aided and 
abetted by the clergy, found it convenient and easy to direct the 
mounting anxiety and distress against the eternal scapegoat. 

The primary aim of the government was to dislodge the Jews 
from the middle-class positions they had occupied for centuries, 
and transfer them to the growing number of Poles who were flock- 
ing from the impoverished farms to the cities and towns. To 
attain that goal die weapon employed by the National Democrats, 
or Endeks, and other anti-Semitic parties, was the economic boy- 
cott, seasoned with terror, while the role of the government was 
to enact legislation designed to deprive the Jews of their liveli- 
hoods. Thousands of small enterprisesclothing factories, shoe 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN EASTERN EUROPE 603 

factories, food and dry goods shops, and others were boycotted 
or taxed out of existence. Large-scale enterprises, like the salt, 
liquor, and tobacco industries, sources of livelihood for thousands 
of Jewish families, were transformed into state monopolies, which, 
like the public utilities and the civil services, denied employment 
to Jews. Suddenly the government discovered that the ritual 
method of slaughtering cattle was inhumane, and the law which 
was passed prohibiting it drove more thousands to destitution. 

The Polish Jews were reduced to an appalling state of poverty. 
The revolving Loan Funds, or kassas, to enable artisans to pur- 
chase tools and raw materials which, with die help of the Joint 
Distribution Committee, were established in hundreds of towns 
and cities, did something to mitigate their plight; but the number 
of families who at one time or another were compelled to resort 
to charity was staggering. Polish leaders brazenly declared that the 
Jews, whose forebears had lived in the land for nearly a thousand 
years, were a "superfluous" element of the population. 

The ruin of the Jews, however, clid not, as these leaders had 
promised, bring prosperity to the Poles. On the contrary, Poland's 
economic fortunes sank lower and lower, with a disastrous infla- 
tion which paved the way for the bloody coup in May 1926 by 
which Pilsudski established a military dictatorship over the country. 

3 

AS IN previous periods of its long career, so in the two 
dismal decades between the world wars the great Jewish com- 
munity of Poland defied the "economic interpretation of history.'* 
That ancient source of consolation, their faith, with the hallowed 
institutions that were part and parcel of it, maintained its vigor. 
In Yeshivoth, synagogues, and homes, Talmudic learning contin- 
ued to flourish, and Chassidic communities gathered around their 
revered leaders and cultivated their intense religious life from 
which gloom was banished as sin. To this enduring font, a new 
spring of hope and pride was added, especially for die young: die 
growing Yishuv in Palestine widi its promise of national and per- 
sonal redemption. For many of them between 1920 and 1939, it 
was more than a promise: during those years, 125,000 Polish Jews 
escaped into Palestine, and under the banner of organizations like 



604 THE WORLD WARS 

Hechalutz (The Pioneer), Poland became the principal source and 
training ground for the young men and women who drained the 
marshes, cleared the rocks, built the roads, and restored the waste 
places of the ancient motherland. 

All groupings of Polish Jewry and there were many culti- 
vated the things of the mind*and spirit, applying themselves espe- 
cially to the education of the young. To the traditional cbeder, 
where most of the boys were still taught, were added the schools 
of Tarbtft (Culture), supported chiefly by the Zionists, with em- 
phasis on Hebrew, and Yiddish schools which were identified with 
the Socialist Bund. Both Zionists and Bundists found themselves 
challenged by the ultra-Orthodox Agudas Israel, which sponsored 
the Beth Jacob schools for girls, an educational enterprise that 
had its inspiration in the zeal of Sarah Shenirer, one of the re- 
markable women of the generation. There was a flourishing press 
in Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew: in 1930 it included 1 30 newspapers 
and other periodicals, with a circulation of well over half a million. 
There was also a large and steady flow of books, both secular and 
religious, the combined annual editions running into the millions; 
and the theater stood on a high artistic level and was greatly prized. 

The different groups and parries were eager to play their part 
in politics also. The "Poles of the Mosaic Persuasion," who, of 
course, refused to identify themselves with the Jewish minority, 
had lost their influence; the Zionists were now the dominant force, 
as was demonstrated in the general election of 1922 when 34 
Jewish deputies and 12 senators who formed a bloc or "club" of 
their own, were returned to the parliament. The club was headed 
by Isaac Gruenbaum, Zionist leader and intrepid champion of 
minority rights. These rights, however, remained practically a 
dead letter, although the decree of 1927, issued by the more 
friendly Pilsudski government to regulate the inner organization 
of Polish Jewry, represented a more liberal tendency. 

4 

THE triumph of Nazism in Germany in 1933 inspired the 
Polish anti-Semites across the border with fresh boldness and a new 
vision. With fatuous blindness they ignored the handwriting on 
the wall announcing the doom of their own country, and rejoiced 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN EASTERN EUROPE 605 

instead at the sanction they obtained from a nation which, unlike 
their own, ranked among the leaders of world culture. They 
dreamed of the elimination of the three and a half million Jews of 
Poland, and they saw it accomplished not by the slow method of 
legislation, but by the swifter courses advocated by the Nazis. 
The Polish disciples of Nazism grew more violent; riots and 
pogroms became almost daily occurrences. Poles discovered that 
they too were "Aryans," and proceeded to expel "non-Aryans" 
from professional and trade organizations. 

The most violent manifestations developed in the universities. 
The faculties had already been "Aryanized," and now the students, 
encouraged by their teachers, launched a campaign of violence 
designed to drive the Jewish students from the classrooms. The 
Jewish students struck back at their attackers, and the universities 
resounded with riots and brawls which often compelled the authori- 
ties to close them. The "Aryans" came forward with a new device, 
which also hailed from Germany: tljiey demanded that in every 
classroom the Jewish students should be segregated: the humilia- 
tion, they hoped, would be more effective than brass knuckles and 
less risky. In 1937 the government acceded to the demand, and 
ghetto-benches were legalized throughout Poland. The Jewish 
students refused to occupy them. They were supported by a few 
professors; the more radical trade unions also protested; and there 
were repercussions in academic circles in other countries, including 
America. The same year, the Camp for National Unity was or- 
ganized as a single party on the Nazi model, with an elaborate anti- 
Jewish program. The anti-Semitic clamor in Poland became louder: 
it was only in September 1939 that it was stilled by the roar of 
Nazi cannon and the shrieking of Nazi bombs. 

5 

THE seizure of Vilna by the Poles dealt a staggering blow 
to the Republic of Lithuania, another offspring of the First World 
War, and to the 150,000 Jews who were left within its borders. 
Lithuania had begun by honoring the treaty provisions with re- 
spect to minority rights. It recognized a Jewish National Council 
with power to levy taxes for community needs; Jewish schools 
were subsidized by the state; and there was even a minister for 



606 THE WORLD WARS 

Jewish affairs in the cabinet. But year after year, as the chauvinism 
of the Lithuanians, embittered by Polish aggression, became more 
intense and economic distress deepened, these rights were whittled 
away or altogether abolished. Instead, the usual methods for purg- 
ing the Jews from their middle-class positions, like their exclusion 
from government services, the nationalization of certain industries, 
the promotion of cooperatives, the enactment of Sunday closing 
laws, and the imposition of heavy taxes, were vigorously pursued 
until the majority of the Jewish population was reduced to pau- 
perism. 

In 1938, the Nazis, flushed with their triumph in Austria and 
Czechoslovakia, seized the Lithuanian port of Memel together 
with a large strip of adjacent territory, most of the Jews escaping 
with their bare lives. In spite of their destitute state, however, 
which only relief from abroad' made supportable, the Jews of 
Lithuania remained true to their high tradition of scholarship and 
learning: they continued, at immense sacrifices, to maintain their 
schools and academies. 



OVER half a million Jews were added to the subjects of 
King Ferdinand of Rumania as a result of the First World War, 
bringing the total to nearly 900,000, and all of them, during the 
interval between the two wars, learned what it meant to be at the 
mercy of cynical and corrupt politicians with experience and skill 
in violating treaty obligations. The ministers outdid themselves in 
chicanery to- nullify not only the cultural rights which the peace 
treaty conferred upon the minorities, who made up nearly 30 per 
cent of Rumania's 18,000,000 inhabitants, but also the more basic 
rights of equal citizenship. A law of 1924 required applicants for 
citizenship to produce documents proving ten years' residence 
prior to 1918; the papers were in numerous cases unobtainable, and 
well over 100,000 Jews were left in the tragic category of people 
without a country. 

The economic pattern of Rumania was very much like that of 
Poland, with a small class of boyars, or landowning gentry, ex- 
ploiting millions of impoverished peasants whose sons and daughters 
were eager for the middle-class positions in the cities and towns. 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN EASTERN EUROPE 607 

Since those positions were in large measure held by the Jews, die 
gentry saw in anti-Semitism a convenient lightning rod for de- 
flecting the bolts from their own heads. The youth of the land, 
especially the student youth, found in it a focus not only for 
their personal grievances and ambitions, but for their inflamed 
chauvinism as well. Under the inspiration of the venomous and 
veteran anti-Semite, Alexander Cuza, the few and overcrowded 
universities became the scenes of violent manifestations. There 
were numerous bloody brawls, and frequently the universities had 
to be closed. There were also two deliberate murders, one in 1921 
by Cornelius Codreanu, leader of the Fascist Iron Guard, who in 
open court shot to death a police officer who had had the courage 
to arrest a number of student rioters; the other, three years later 
by a student "patriot" who, also in open court, killed a Jewish 
student who had dared protest against his exclusion. Both mur- 
derers were acquitted and the acquittals were hailed with frenzied 
demonstrations which boiled over into attacks on Jews. In 1926, 
the students held a Congress in Jassy, the following year in Oradea 
Mare; on both occasions they gave vent to their exuberance by 
attacking Jews and wrecking, burning, and looting their possessions. 
The government made no serious efforts to discourage these 
outbursts; in 1926 Judah Loeb Zirelsohn, Chief Rabbi of Kishinev 
and a member of the Rumanian Senate, resigned from that body 
when a speech he delivered in protest against the official tolerance 
of pogroms was excluded from the record. 

7 

RUMANIAN anti-Semitism, fanned by the green-shirted dema- 
gogues of the Iron Guard, openly encouraged by leading prelates 
like Miron Christea, the Grand Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox 
Church, and abetted by government and big business, continued to 
mount. It was a perfect outlet for all woes and frustrations* a 
simple and safe expedient for achieving the status of a "hero/* 
a tempting target for every sadistic urge. Not even Julius Maniu, 
leader of the National Peasant party, who realized that anti- 
Semitism was a device for diverting attention from the real authors 
of his country's woes, and who in 1928 became head of the gov- 
ernment, could stem the turbulent flood. In 1930, the agitation 



608 THE WORLD WARS 

gained fresh fuel when King Carol returned to Bucharest from 
his self-imposed exile to the delights of Paris, and assumed pos- 
session of the throne, bringing with him his mistress Magda 
Lupescu, the daughter of a Jewish apothecary. Was it not the final 
proof that the country was completely in the hands of the Jews? 

But the most powerful stimulus to the ambitions of the anti- 
Semites came, of course, in 1933 when the Nazis took possession 
of Germany. Now the Cuzas, the Codreanus, and the Christeas 
knew where to turn for inspiration and direction. They began by 
attempting to bring an end to Rumania's alliance with France and 
to hitch their country to the chariot of Nazi Germany. They 
proceeded to purge Jews from the arts, the professions, and even 
from commerce and the trades. In December 1937, an inconclusive 
election brought the Fascist Octavian Goga into the post of prime 
minister for a period of seven weeks. His wild measures brought 
the country to the brink of ruin, but a law was framed and adopted 
under his successor, Christea, by which Rumania, in violation of 
its treaty obligations, deprived over 300,000 Jews of their citizen- 
ship and with it of the right to earn a livelihood. 

But Codreanu and his Iron Guard, still unsatisfied, prepared to 
seize the government; whereupon a typically Balkan political 
maneuver followed: Codreanu and his principal aides were first 
jailed, then liquidated. Nazi agents, in the meantime, were busy in 
Rumania, corrupting and intimidating, always fanning the fires 
of anti-Semitism, their principal device for confusing and subvert- 
ing men and nations. As the Nazi monster, coiling eastward across 
Czechoslovakia, revealed his true visage, Rumania recovered some- 
what from its blind obsession. It was too late: in helpless dismay it 
waited for its doom. 

8 

IN NO country of Europe was the status of a large and 
noble Jewish community altered so promptly and tragically by the 
aftermath of the First World War as in Hungary. Here was a 
land of which, twenty-five years earlier, Baron de Hirsch had 
ventured to prophesy that it would never know the bane of anti- 
Semitism, a land to which the Jews were proudly and passionately 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN EASTERN EUROPE 609 

attached, where they played a heroic part in war and a creative 
role in peace and where, besides, they were free and unafraid to 
lead their own inner life. Only a year after the armistice, all of that 
was changed; and by the end of the interval that separates the two 
wars, more than half of the 700,000 members of the community 
had been legislated out of their livelihoods and all of them reduced 
by law to the status of outcasts. Two major causes operated to 
produce the tragedy. The first was the abortive social revolution in 
the spring and summer of 1919 and the rampage which the re- 
action unloosed against the Jews; the second was the triumph of 
nazism in Germany in 1933 and the ferocious anti-Semitic pas- 
sions it aroused in Hungary, as it did everywhere else. 

The Treaty of Trianon, which the victorious Allies imposed on 
Hungary, reduced that country to less than a third of its former 
size. It dealt the proud Magyars a demoralizing blow, and the 
moment seemed auspicious for an attempt to change the economic 
order after the manner of the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia. The 
attempt, led by Bela Kun, the son of a Jewish peddler, was smoth- 
ered in a welter of blood and chaos. The Allies tightened the block- 
ade around the destitute country. The Rumanians seized and looted 
Budapest in an orgy of terrorism. They were followed by a gov- 
ernment of the feudal barons, headed by Admiral Horthy, who 
proceeded to erase every vestige of the revolution, particularly 
the agrarian reforms. 

Naturally the full fury of the White Terror fell upon the Jews. 
It would no doubt have fallen upon them in any case, notwith- 
standing that, as members of the middle class, they were the first 
victims of Bela Kun and his Bolshevism; but the fact that die 
revolutionary leader was a Jew inflamed the lust of the Awakening 
Magyars, the Hungarian counterpart of the Rumanian Iron Guard. 
The terror raged practically unchecked by the authorities. Com- 
munities were devastated, thousands of Jews were murdered, other 
thousands were blackmailed and plundered. Not even the baptized 
found safety from the greed which paraded as patriotism, and 
which the barons found an effective outlet for the discontent of 
the wretched peasants who coveted their land. Nor did the 
Awakening Magyars neglect to "provide" for their middle classes 



6lO THE WORLD WARS 

also. The entire apparatus of boycott against Jewish trade was im- 
ported from Poland, and the terror was extended to the universities 
where, in 1922, a numerus clausus was instituted by law. After a 
struggle of more than five years, waged by Jewish bodies outside 
Hungary through the League of Nations, the law was "changed": 
Jews were not explicitly named, but the effect of the new pro- 
visions was exactly the same. 

After a reign of terror which lasted nearly two years, a better 
day dawned for Hungary and its Jewish community under the 
government headed by Stephen Bethlen. In the elections of 1922, 
the anti-Semites were defeated and the country seemed disposed 
to return to its pre-war tradition of decency when the march of 
nazism in Germany, combined with the world-wide economic 
depression, restored the anti-Semitic specter in a form even more 
menacing. Two methods of "solving" the Jewish problem in 
Hungary began a struggle for mastery. The first, advocated by 
groups of stalwarts like the Awakening Magyars and by politicians 
like Julius Gombos, who were prepared to deliver their country, 
lock, stock and barrel, to Germany, was the gangster method of the 
Nazis as legalized in the Nuremberg Laws. The second was the 
"civilized" method of the government, by which as many Jews 
as possible were to be deprived of their livelihood as quickly as 
possible. Under the premiership of Bela Imredy, the second pre- 
vailed. In May 1939, a law was passed with stringent quotas for 
Jews in industry, commerce, finance, and the arts and professions, 
and more than half of them were brought face to face with the 
immediate prospect of destitution and, eventually, with extinction. 

A note of grim comedy was added to the situation when Imredy 
was compelled to resign because the Hungarian Nazis, in their rage 
against the "civilized" method of the government, searched and 
found that the prime minister was himself descended from a Jewish 
great-grandmother. A more somber note was injected when his 
successor, Count Paul Telecki, who had engineered the law through 
the parliament, committed suicide when he saw his country fall 
into the grip of Germany. But there was small consolation in those 
events for die proud Jews of Hungary, who had given so much to 
the civilization and defense of their country. Some seventy years 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN EASTERN EUROPE 611 



had passed since their emancipation in 1867, ^d the hopes which 
that event aroused now lay in ruins around them. 

9 

THE Treaty of Saint-Germain, with which the victors of 
the First World War snuffed out the once proud and mighty 
Austrian Empire, left Austria proper an impoverished little re- 
public, with a population of somewhat more than six million, of 
whom a disproportionate number, amounting to more than two 
million, lived in Vienna. That gay and elegant metropolis was now 
a queen of rags and tatters, but still a queen. In it too there lived 
nearly 90 per cent of the 200,000 Jews in the country, and they 
fell victim to all the economic ills with which the stripped and 
exhausted state was afflicted and, in addition, to the relentless 
hostility nourished by the church, the Pan-Germanic movement, 
and the reactionaries. As the star of the Nazis mounted, this hos- 
tility of course received new stimulation from the more virulent 
brand that flourished in Germany. 

The old animosity found numerous ways to express itself. In 
1919, it pounced upon the hundreds of thousands of refugees from 
Galicia and other provinces, and succeeded in expelling the great 
majority of them. From Poland and Rumania, it imported the 
boycott and the "crusade" against Jewish students in the universi- 
ties. It had its armies and shirted rowdies who paraded and shouted 
and rioted. 

In Vienna the Jewish youth, particularly in the university, ex- 
acted a price from the anti-Semites for their exuberance. In Vienna, 
the Jews were not unbefriended, for while the federal government 
of the Republic was clerical, the municipal administration of 
Vienna was Socialist. Under its bold and liberal government, in 
which a number of Jews, including Otto Bauer, Julius Deutsch, 
and Hugo Breitner, played a distinguished part, the metropolis, 
after 1923, began to make remarkable progress, particularly in 
public health and housing for workers. The workers of Vienna 
were not slow to see the enemy of their best interests in anti- 
Semitism; every project for their welfare was denounced by the 
reactionaries as "Jewish" and "Bolshevist." 



6l2 THE WORLD WARS 

The ten years that followed were marked by a struggle between 
the clerical Federal Diet and the Socialist municipality of Vienna. 
The depression which began in 1929, highlighted in 1931 by the 
failure of the Credit Anstalt, had a crippling effect on the municipal 
government; and early in 1934, the struggle ended disastrously for 
Vienna when Engelbert Dolf uss, the clerical chancellor of the Re- 
public, turned the guns of his Heimwehr on the workers' apart- 
ments, killing hundreds of the occupants, men, women, and chil- 
dren, and afterwards liquidating the Socialist leaders. 

But the victory did not put an end to the internecine strife. 
Now it became a tug of war between the clerical Fascists led by 
Dolfuss, who stood for the independence of Austria, and the Pan- 
German Nazis who yearned for Austria's absorption into the Third 
Reich. Both, of course, were wedded to anti-Semitism, but the 
Dolfuss brand was less virulent, and the Jews were reduced to 
hoping and praying that the chancellor would prevail. They hoped 
and prayed in vain. On July 25, 1934, Dolfuss was assassinated 
by the Nazis, and his successor Kurt Schuschnigg, after resisting the 
tightening ring of provocation, threats, and terror for nearly four 
years, yielded to an ultimatum from the German fuehrer. He re- 
signed his office to a Nazi who, on March 13, 1938, proclaimed 
the union of Austria and Germany. 

The invasion and seizure of the helpless little state, which had 
occurred the day before, unleashed a flood of Nazi savagery against 
the Jews that was so far without parallel. The Nuremberg Laws 
and all the techniques of Gestapo sadism, which in Germany had 
taken five years to perfect, were applied overnight in Austria. 
The criminal dregs of society were invited to give free play to 
their lusts, and they were joined by large numbers of the average 
and "respectable," in whom the same appetites are normally held 
in leash. Unspeakable humiliations were inflicted on rabbis and 
other leaders of the community; men who stood in the vanguard 
of European culture were hounded, beaten, and exiled; many thou- 
sands were herded into old and new concentration camps; Jewish 
establishments and homes became the prey of official and unofficial 
looters; and the number of suicides is estimated to have reached two 
thousand. 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN EASTERN EUROPE 613 

It was twilight and night for the Jewish community in Austria. 
It was the doom of Austria also, and especially of Vienna the 
Vienna of civilized and decent human beings, of sparkling music 
and books and drama, of elegant art and solid science, the Vienna 
that owed so much to Jewish writers, musicians, artists, and sci- 
entists. In place of all that now lowered like a vulture the vast, 
formless, and obscene shadow of Nazism. 

IO 

PERHAPS the only European creation of the Peace Confer- 
ence that answered to President Wilson's plea "to make the world 
safe for democracy," was the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Here 
was a new state wedged into central Europe, surrounded by neigh- 
bors who eyed it with no good will and saddled with disgruntled 
minorities, which, nevertheless, stood as a bulwark and beacon of 
democracy and decency. Prague, its capital, became a center of 
European culture, more vigorous if less mellow than Vienna, and 
without the economic and racial tensions that disturbed the Aus- 
trian metropolis. 

The new republic was exceptionally fortunate in its statesmen. 
Thomas Masaryk, who was chosen to be its first president in 1918 
at an assembly in the United States, when Czechoslovakia was only 
a dream, was a distinguished scholar and an experienced political 
leader. He was, above all, an ardent champion of justice: in 1899 
Leopold Hilsner, accused of ritual murder, had found in him a 
fearless and powerful defender. And Eduard Benes, Masaryk's 
pupil and foreign minister who in 1936 succeeded him to the presi- 
dency, displayed the same qualities as his master. The Czecho- 
slovak republic accepted the principle of minority rights willingly, 
and applied it with sincere good will, the only state in Europe to 
do so. The 350,000 Jews who lived within its borders were equal 
citizens, their rights as a religious and cultural group respected, and 
they were free from the bane of official and unofficial anti-Semitism. 

But after 1933 the shadow of Nazi Germany began to darken 
its eastern neighbor. The technique of subversion and disintegration 
was simple enough: its principal weapon was die lie, shouted from 
Berlin and echoed by Konrad Henlein's Nazi party across the 



6 14 THE WORLD WARS 

border, that the German minority in the Sudetenland was being 
oppressed and tortured by the Czechs. At the other end of the Re- 
public, the same technique was adopted by the Slovak separa- 
tionists, led by the priest Andreas Hlinka. Both Germans and 
Slovaks, it goes without saying, added anti-Semitism to their 
arsenal, the Hlinka Guards in Slovakia vying with the Iron Guard 
of Rumania in the criminal depravity of its followers and in terror 
against the Jews. 

In its mortal peril, the Czechoslovak republic relied on its creators 
and guarantors, primarily on England and France. It was a vain 
trust. In September 1938, the abject surrender in Munich of Neville 
Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, the prime ministers of Britain 
and France respectively, gave the signal not only to Germany but 
to Poland and Hungary also to violate their neighbor's frontiers 
and seize its territory. For another half-year, the mangled republic 
preserved a nominal independence; then, in March 1939, the 
Nazi mechanized hordes overran the provinces of Bohemia and 
Moravia. Slovakia, now a puppet of Hitler, declared its inde- 
pendence, and the last flickering light of freedom in central Europe 
was extinguished. 

Now the Jews of Prague and the rest of the murdered republic, 
all except the small number who managed to escape, became the 
victims of the bestiality that had overwhelmed the Jews of Austria 
a year earlier; and among them were many who had fled to Czecho- 
slovakia from Austria and Germany. The Nuremberg Laws were 
promptly introduced, and the Gestapo machinery of plunder, 
torture, and concentration camps, which practice had made per- 
fect, was brought to bear against helpless men, women, and chil- 
dren. The Hlinka Guards in Slovakia deserve a special citation for 
infamy and depravity. 

In one respect, however, the Nazis failed: their confidence that 
the Czechs would be pleased by the spectacle of the spoliation and 
torture of their Jewish neighbors, an expectation which figured in 
the blueprint of all their aggressions, proved false. The Czechs 
refused to be placated: for their conquerors they nursed in their 
hearts nothing but contempt and hatred, a hatred wary and 
patient, but implacable. 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 615 









CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN 

The "Long Truce" in the West 



By THE end of the two decades between the wars, the coun- 
tries of central and eastern Europe, with the exception of 
the Soviet Union, had been forced into the orbit of Nazi 
Germany. It was done by violence, by fraud, by economic pres- 
sure, by fifth columns, by intimidation, by invasion. In most of 
those countries the democratic tradition was neither old enough 
nor strong enough to withstand the aggressor's ideology; and it 
is significant that even in attempting to resist him some of them 
were driven to adopt his political system. Thus, in 1934 King 
Boris of Bulgaria established a dictatorship; the same year the 
assassination of Alexander of Yugoslavia hardened the dictatorship 
which he had set up five years earlier; and in 1936 Greece found 
her dictator in General Metaxas. In all three, the Jewish communi- 
ties 50,000 in Bulgaria, 70,000 in Yugoslavia, 100,000 in Greece 
watched this rise of totalitarianism with deep foreboding, accom- 
panied as it was, especially in Greece and Bulgaria, by anti-Semitic 
rumblings. In the west, however, the Nazi octopus met with a 
resistance that lay deeper and in the end, after the most titanic 
struggle in history, destroyed him. The west included Germany's 
immediate neighbors; it included Great Britain; it included finally 
the United States and the entire Western Hemisphere. 

2 

FRANCE, living in the shadow of the monster and exposed 
to all his corrosive arts, nevertheless remained true to its liberal 
and democratic tradition. For the Jewish community, which by 
1939 after an influx of one hundred thousand refugees from Gei> 
many and Poland, numbered a quarter of a million souls, France 
stood firm as a symbol of equality and decency, and the Jews 
maintained their high place in the life of the nation. They raised it* 



6l6 THE WORLD WARS 

in fact, when on June 4, 1936, Leon Blum, leader of the Front 
Populaire, and embodying in himself an integration of French and 
Jewish loyalty, became the head of the first French Socialist gov- 
ernment. 

Not that France was immune to anti-Semitism. Leon Daudet 
and his Camelots du Roi still fanned the smoking embers of the 
Dreyfus Affair. There were French admirers of nazism, like 
Frangois Coty, a manufacturer of cosmetics, who specialized in 
disseminating that malodorous forgery, the Protocols of the Elders 
of Zion. There were Fascist writers like Charles Maurras. There 
were the Cagoulards, a secret society which borrowed the trappings 
of the American Ku Klux Klan, receiving its inspiration and 
maintenance from Germany. There was even an anti-Semitic flurry 
against Blum in the Chamber of Deputies when he first appeared 
as premier. But the nation as a whole, and the governments which 
succeeded each other all too often, had no illusions about the aims 
of the movement or the source from which it was fed. In 1939, the 
government even adopted curbs against anti-Semitism, making race 
defamation a criminal offense. 

But the Third Republic, particularly after the world depression 
which began in 1929, floundered in a sea of troubles that threatened 
to overwhelm it. The antagonism of parties and classes grew more 
bitter, bringing armed clashes in the principal cities at a time when 
the position of France as the leading continental power was being 
undermined by the growing strength of Nazi Germany and the 
mounting bluster of Fascist Italy. Both of them, moreover, with 
cynical frankness, aided and abetted the rise of a Nazi-Fascist Spain 
on its southern border. Turn where it would, France found no aid 
or comfort. The League of Nations had been reduced to impotence; 
the policy of collective security, of which the Soviet Foreign 
Minister, Maxim Litvinov, was the leading advocate, foundered 
on the rock of suspicion against Communist Russia; while Britain, 
upon whom France was compelled to lean more and more heavily, 
embarked upon the policy dear to the heart of the reactionary 
Cliveden Set, the policy of appeasing the Nazis and Fascists of 
which the surrender at Munich was the high water mark and 
symbol. 

In the main, Frenchmen thought they were safe behind their 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 617 

Maginot Line; but the Jews of France, those whose past was rooted 
in the country and, even more so, the recent refugees, watched with 
growing dismay the Fascist encirclement of the land they loved 
and the progressive decay of its domestic peace. Their alarm was 
shared by men throughout the world for whom France was still 
the bright symbol of democracy and European culture. This 
France, the France of decent and civilized men, the France that the 
corruptionists of Berlin called decadent, appeared to be ripe for the 
black reaper. 

3 

THE machinery of corruption and disintegration set up by 
the Nazi regime was, of course, directed against the smaller coun- 
tries of western Europe also. In Belgium it produced Leon De- 
grelle and his Rexists, who entered the political arena in 1936. 
In Holland the fuehrer was Alfred von Mussert, who by 1935 had 
built up a not inconsiderable following. In Switzerland it was 
Wilhelm Gustloff, whose career of subversion and terror was ended 
abruptly early in 1936 by the revolver of a Jewish student named 
David Frankfurter. There were Nazi cells in Denmark and 
Sweden, while in Norway, Vidkun Quisling achieved the distinc- 
tion of giving all languages a new word connoting treason, strata- 
gem, and spoils. It goes without saying that the principal weapon 
employed everywhere was anti-Semitism, the bait with which the 
demagogues won their following. 

But in all those countries the democratic tradition was old and 
strong, and the pollution that flowed from Berlin and Nuremberg 
was only a froth on the surface of their national life. The Jews, 
however, were deeply disturbed by it. In 1934, the leaders of the 
Swiss community won a libel suit against a Nazi editor who was 
promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the plaintiffs had 
no great difficulty in proving the screed a forgery. In Holland, 
racial defamation was made a criminal offense, and in all those 
lands governments and public opinion, moved by a sense of justice 
as well as by the realization that anti-Semitism was clearing the 
roads for German invasion, held the agitation in check. But with 
all this sympathy and good will, the Jews lived with a feeling of 
insecurity, mounting at rimes to a sense of impending disaster which 



6l8 THE WORLD WARS 

the hardships and tensions produced by the world depression did 
nothing to allay, 

4 

BRITAIN too held fast to its democratic heritage; even its ap- 
peasers justified the succulent repasts which Prime Minister Neville 
Chamberlain was allowing the ravenous monster on the ground 
that the country was woefully unprepared for war, psychologically 
as well as militarily. Thousands of fugitives from the furnace of 
Nazi terror were admitted into England. The persecutions, and 
especially the huge pogrom of November 10, 1938, evoked a storm 
of protest from the leaders of British public opinion, and former 
prime minister Stanley Baldwin headed a campaign which raised 
a considerable fund for the relief of the victims. The British gov- 
ernment, as well as the French, explored though without success 
the possibilities of settling large numbers of Jewish refugees in some 
of their colonial possessions. Nevertheless a curious lack of under- 
standing of the character of nazism persisted in large and influential 
British circles. There were high-placed Britons, like Nevile Hender- 
son, the ambassador to Germany himself, who stood before the 
sinister apparition with helpless incredulity. 

But the Jews, in England as everywhere else, understood it only 
too well: for, in the words of the Psalmist they could say: "the 
plowers plowed upon my back, they made long their furrows." 
Small wonder, therefore, that manifestations of anti-Semitism in 
England disturbed them profoundly. In the first decade of the 
"long truce," those manifestations bore a surface respectability: 
they cropped up in the ultraconservative press like the London 
Morning Post, where the Bolshevist bogey was furnished with 
Jewish features, and they appeared in the polished writings of Gil- 
bert Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. It was, however, another matter 
when in the early thirties a fuehrer arose in England. He was the 
wealthy and socially prominent Sir Oswald Mosley, who became 
the head of a Union of British Fascists, drawing their inspiration, 
as well as their trappings and methods, from Rome and Berlin. 
When, as was inevitable, anti-Semitism became their staple and 
rowdyism their pastime, the -Jewish youth of London reacted 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 619 

vigorously. Late in 1936 they broke up a mass demonstration of 
the Union, and shortly afterwards its semi-military formations, 
modeled on the Nazi storm troopers, were outlawed. 

In Britain, the Jewish community numbered about 300,000, and 
in the British dominions there was an equal number, of whom 
175,000 were in Canada and 95,000 in South Africa. But, as the 
mandatory for Palestine, Britain stood in a special relationship to 
the entire Jewish people. It was natural, therefore, that Jewish 
communities the world over should be keenly interested in social 
and political currents in England. They rejoiced when the British 
social fabric proved itself capable of repelling the incursions of the 
Nazi ideology. They were not so happy with the appeasement 
policy of the British statesmen who seemed to hope they could 
feed the Nazi-Fascist tiger and keep the lamb of democracy whole. 
They were embittered and amazed by the British course in Pales- 
tine, a course of vacillation and concession to violence, of retreat 
from solemn pledges and legal obligations, the course which had 
its climax in the White Paper of May 1939, issued by the same 
cabinet which had approved the Munich surrender eight months 
earlier. It was a curiously paradoxical attitude which the Jews of 
the world held toward England: an attitude of admiration and 
gratitude, but one also of bitter resentment and distrust. 

5 

THOUSANDS of f ugitives from Nazi terror found asylum in 
Canada and in the countries of Central and South America. In 
Canada, fascism exerted a strong lure on the French Catholics in 
the province of Quebec, where there were marked anti-Semitic 
manifestations. With the exception of Argentina, the republics of 
Central and South America, held by the gravitational force of the 
economic power and the good neighbor diplomacy of the United 
States, hewed in the main to the democratic line, although the 
Falange, inspired and nourished by Fascist Spain, continued its 
subversive efforts in all of them. Argentina fell into the hands of a 
Fascist military dictatorship, and that country, harboring the 
largest Jewish community on the continent, became the base of 
Nazi intrigue in the Western Hemisphere. 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 621 

In the annals of the Jewish people Argentina figures as the one 
land other than Palestine where the most determined effort was 
made to bring them back to their earliest calling, the cultivation 
of the soil. In 1930, the results of that effort, promoted by the 
lavish philanthropy of Baron de Hirsch, were approximately 40,000 
Jews still living in agricultural settlements. In Buenos Aires and 
other urban centers there was a vigorous Jewish communal life, 
expressing itself in religious, charitable, and cultural institutions, 
with newspapers, daily and weekly, in Yiddish and Spanish. 

There were sizable communities also in Brazil and Uruguay. In 
the latter, where some of the Jews are farmers and professional 
soldiers, the largest group is in Montevideo. In Brazil, where their 
story goes back to the discovery of the land, and whence sailed 
the first group to settle in what became the United States, they 
numbered in 1930 about 30,000, half of them in Rio de Janeiro. To 
all those lands, t|ie refugees, many of whom were equipped with 
capital and industrial skill, have brought economic benefit, and 
to the existing Jewish communities they have added fresh vitality. 



FOR the Jewish community of the United States, the "long 
truce" was a period of impressive growth. In numbers it rose from 
three and a half million to nearly five. It extended its role in every 
sphere of the nation's life, and in growing measure it drew on its 
resources for the alleviation of Jewish distress abroad, the defense 
of Jewish rights everywhere, and the upbuilding of the national 
home in Palestine. In the religious and cultural sphere also, the two 
decades witnessed an intensification of effort on the part of every 
group, especially the Orthodox, although the centrifugal forces, 
reflected in the general tendency toward secularization and in 
the urge to total assimilation, took a heavy toll, especially in the 
smaller communities of the land. 

There was a quickening also of the sense of cohesion, or at least 
of the desire for it, with no leveling, however, of the ideological 
barriers separating the various groups, and with only occasional 
union for common action. In general American Jewry was far 
from constituting that compact and purposeful organism which 



622 THE WORLD WARS 

the sworn anti-Semites professed to see in it. It did not think alike, 
or vote alike, or act together. Often enough, its inner tensions 
presented a spectacle that was far from edifying, and only common 
danger at home or distress abroad proved capable of uniting them 
for limited objectives. American Jewry, however, was now the 
largest aggregation under a single political jurisdiction in the world, 
and its numbers, wealth, and influence, if not its spiritual eminence 
and cohesion, gave it that hegemony over the world community 
which before the First World War had been held by the Jewry 
of Russia. 

In the early twenties, moreover, the Jews of America were faced 
with the realization that the period of large-scale immigration, 
which brought them a constant stream of replenishment from the 
Old World, was over, and that they now had to look to their own 
spiritual fences. The period came to a definite halt with the John- 
son Immigration Act of 1924, which rested on a nwnerus clausus 
or quota system. It provided that the annual quota to be admitted 
from any country was not to exceed 2 per cent of the number of 
foreign-born hailing from that country who resided in the United 
States in 1 890. The aim of the formula was to discriminate between 
nationalities, to reduce drastically the number of immigrants from 
eastern and southern Europe, in particular Jews and Italians, and 
to encourage immigration from northern and western Europe. 
The act accomplished its purpose. It reduced the admission of 
Jews to a tenth of its pre-war volume, deflecting large numbers to 
Canada, South America, and Palestine, but dooming much larger 
numbers to the blind alleys in Europe in which they were suffocat- 
ing. 

The passage of the Johnson Bill was preceded by years of racist 
propaganda. The "chosen" stock in those days was not the "Aryan" 
but the "Nordic," and rivers of ink and gales of breath were spent 
in extolling the noble Nordic and bemoaning his imminent sub- 
mergence by the "inferior hordes" from eastern Europe. The 
Nordics were found to possess every virtue, the others every vice, 
including the gravest of all, a penchant for social radicalism. Little 
did those eulogists and lamenters dream that in less than two 
decades their sons would again be streaming across the Atlantic to 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 623 

fight and die on a hundred battlefields against a "Nordic" nation 
which took those encomiums too seriously. 

7 

THE prejudices that culminated in the Johnson Act were 
more or less veiled: the law embraced others besides Jews, and 
many of its advocates denied being swayed by racial bias, maintain- 
ing their stand solely on the ground of economic necessity. How- 
ever, the years under review witnessed a series of manifestations 
that were much more outspoken. During the first decade the stage 
was held by a resurrected Ku Klux Klan and by no less a personage 
than Henry Ford, the leading and most admired industrial magnate 
of America. 

Over the postwar atmosphere of the land hung a miasma of 
fear of an imminent Bolshevist revolution, heightened by the de- 
flation and labor unrest of the early twenties. It was an ideal 
atmosphere for bigots, demagogues, and adventurers, and the 
Ku Klux Klan, which had flourished in the South after the Qvil 
War, rose from its grave garbed in its ancient cerements. It burned 
fiery crosses and rode again in the night; but this time it rode not 
only against Catholics and Negroes, but also against Jews. It 
gathered millions of members under its banner of hate, and it 
sputtered out again largely as the result of a rise in the economic 
barometer of the country and, to no small extent, because of the 
exposure of the frauds and crimes of not a few of its leaders. 

The anti-Semitic career of Henry Ford was even more sinister 
and grotesque. Duped by an unscrupulous coterie of subordinates, 
the motor magnate lent his name and his wealth to a vast network 
of vicious propaganda, spearheaded by his Dearborn Independent 
and whipped up by a world-wide distribution of the Protocols. 
Then, in 1927, after blowing hard for six or seven years, the storm 
was suddenly stilled. Henry Ford saw the light. It flashed on him 
in the course of a libel suit brought against him by a lawyer named 
Aaron Sapiro, and it led the penitent tycoon to address a humble 
letter of apology to Louis Marshall, the head of the American 
Jewish Committee, in which he asked the forgiveness of the Jews 
"as fellow men and brothers," assuring them that "henceforth they 



624 THE WORLD WARS 

may look to me for friendship and good will." It was a notable 
victory, although the ground swell of the hate waves launched by 
the motor magnate continued, and shadows of doubt were thrown 
over his change of heart by persistent rumors of his sympathy with 
Fascist movements. Particularly disturbing was his association with 
Charles Lindbergh who, until the attack on Pearl Harbor, was the 
darling of the American Fascists and the apparent answer to their 
prayer for a "man on horseback." 

8 

THE economic disaster that smote the country in the fall of 
1929 and continued its ravages through the early thirties, would 
alone have sufficed to bring an upsurge of anti-Semitism; but now, 
in line with its world strategy, nazism crossed the Atlantic and 
became the instigator and model of a swarm of Fascist movements 
and organizations the Silver Shirts, the Christian Front, the 
Knights of the Camelia, and numerous others. Whatever differences 
existed among their fuehrers and followers, anti-Semitism was the 
thing they all had in common. The boldest of them was the 
German- American Bund, the transmission belt between Nazi agents 
from Germany and native Fascists, whose members, until their 
leader Fritz Kuhn was convicted of embezzlement and sent to 
prison, dreamed of a Nazified America, and prepared for "the day" 
by drilling in storm troop uniforms and training their boys and 
girls in a network of camps in imitation of the Hitler Youth in the 
fatherland. 

But the prophet who commanded the admiration and affection 
of all these sowers of hate and discord was the priest, Charles 
Coughlin. Here was a voice of sanctimonious venom that out- 
Goebbeled Goebbels. From his "shrine" in Detroit, he disseminated 
his slanderous Social Justice , and addressed his unctuous defama- 
tions to a radio audience that ran into the millions. His basic line 
was made in Germany. It consisted, on the one hand, of identifying 
Jews with communism and communism with Jews, and, on the 
other, of charging all the economic ills of the world to the "inter- 
national bankers," a term which became a synonym for Jews. 
Both communism and capitalism were part of an Elders of Zion 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 625 

plot to subvert and destroy the nations. The contradiction involved 
in the two credos gave the priest and his disciples no qualms. In 
the heat of passion, and with the aid of a little pious casuistry, it 
melted like snow in a summer sun. 

Naturally, this fungus growth, fertilized as it was by the pollu- 
tion that flowed from Berlin, Nuremberg, and Munich, alarmed the 
Jews of America, and they took measures to defend themselves. 
They were in the lead of the boycott that was launched against 
German goods and services, although they were not of one mind 
as to its wisdom, some of the leaders being fearful that it would 
only add to the afflictions of their people in Germany. Bodies like 
the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, 
the Anti-Defamation League of the Order B'nai Brith, the Non- 
Sectarian Anti-Nazi League headed by the distinguished attorney, 
Samuel Untermyer, worked hard to sterilize the poisons dis- 
seminated by the Fascist groups, and the Jews took a prominent 
part in projects like the National Conference of Christians and 
Jews for the promotion of understanding and good will among the 
different faiths. But the surest bulwark of defense for the Jews of 
America lay in the traditions of the American people. With all 
their clamor, the Fascist eruptions represented only the "lunatic 
fringe" of America. The great body of the American people, their 
government, their press and pulpit, their leaders of thought and 
action, by and large despised the bigots and demagogues, and to 
their contempt was added a feeling of anxiety as they saw Nazi 
Germany, the fountainhead of the agitation, with fifth columns 
planted in the bosom of every country, moving forward on its 
career of aggression and world menace. 

9 

NOR did the raucous clamor of the lunatic fringe succeed 
in curbing to any great extent the progress of American Jews in 
the life of the nation. They were now in nearly every branch of 
industry and commerce, particularly in large and small-scale mer- 
chandising, in the manufacture of wearing apparel, in building 
construction, and in motion picture production. They achieved 
eminence in science and the professions, with men like Albert A. 



626 THE WORLD WARS 

Michelson, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Albert Einstein, now also 
an American, in physics; Simon Flexner, Joseph Goldberger, and 
a host of others in medicine; Edwin R. A. Seligman, Franz Boas, 
Mordecai Ezekiel, and Isadore Lubin in the social sciences. They 
made distinguished contributions to journalism, belles-lettres, and 
scholarship, with some of the writers Ludwig Lewisohn, Maurice 
Samuel, Waldo Frank and others devoting their talents largely 
to Jewish themes. 

They won even greater prominence in the arts: in music with 
composers like Ernest Bloch and George Gershwin; virtuosos like 
Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin, Mischa Elman and numerous 
others, and popular song writers like Irving Berlin and Jerome 
Kern; in painting and sculpture with artists like Jo Davidson, 
Jacob Epstein, and Jules Butensky; and in architecture and bridge- 
building. Finally, in the art of entertainment the names of Jewish 
comedians, playwrights, actors, and producers had become Ameri- 
can household words. 

Equally impressive has been their contribution to public service 
and statesmanship. They have sat as judges in the federal courts, 
including the Supreme Court, and in state, county, and municipal 
courts throughout the land. They have been elected in substantial 
numbers to the legislative branches of the state and federal gov- 
ernments, and as governors in Idaho, Utah, Oregon, New Mexico, 
Illinois, Florida, and New York. They have served in presidential 
cabinets, held important posts in executive and administrative 
agencies, and gone to foreign countries as envoys and ambassadors. 

Their number is legion, but if a few names should be selected 
they might, in addition to those of Louis D. Brandeis, Benjamin 
N. Cardozo, and Felix Frankfurter, who have sat on the bench 
of the United States Supreme Court, be those of Bernard Baruch, 
who achieved a position of extraordinary influence as the "elder 
statesman 1 ' of America; Herbert H. Lehman, elected three times as 
governor of the State of New York and later named General Direc- 
tor of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration 
(UNRRA); Henry Morgenthau, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury 
during die critical years of depression and war; and David E. Lilien- 
thal f for thirteen years director of the Tennessee Valley Authority 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 627 

and, in 1947, first chairman of the United States Atomic Energy 
Commission. There was a bitter struggle before the appointment 
of Lilienthal to the Commission was ratified by the Senate, a battle 
strongly reminiscent of the one that raged in 1916 over the appoint- 
ment of Brandeis to the Supreme Court. 

There were men in the American Jewish community, some of 
them influential, who followed the achievements of their coreli- 
gionists with pride, no doubt, but not without anxiety. They would 
have preferred to see them advance less rapidly and less conspicu- 
ously, and they even attempted on occasion to apply the brakes to 
their progress. Their counterparts, for that matter, existed in other 
countries also: in France, for example, they attempted in 1936 to 
dissuade Leon Blum from accepting the post of premier. In the 
hectic atmosphere of a world that was constantly growing smaller, 
and surrounded by the savage propaganda manufactured or in- 
spired by Germany, it was not unnatural that a haunting sense of 
insecurity should beget a desire for self-effacement. 

IO 

THE six or seven boom years preceding the collapse of 1929 
saw a marked expansion of the institutional life of American Jewry, 
with handsome centers springing up in large communities and small, 
with philanthropic agencies gaining in strength and coordinated 
control, and with increasing support for relief and reconstruction 
abroad and for the rebuilding of the national home. Although the 
sums raised for those purposes by voluntary contributions com- 
pared well with similar efforts on the part of other religious com- 
munities, they did not, in the opinion of many, represent what 
those who were appealed to could and should have given. Nor can 
it be said that, in general, a deepening of the content of Jewish life 
went hand in hand with the material expansion. Perhaps the most 
serious dereliction lay in the failure to make adequate provision for 
the religious education of the young, although a few brave efforts 
to face the problem were not wanting, the most notable being the 
Jewish Education Association of New York, inspired and led by 
Bernard Semel, and the work conducted for Jewish students on 
college campuses by the Menorah Association and the Hillel 



628 THE WORLD WARS 

Foundation of the Order B'nai B'rith. In the larger communities, 
notably in New York under the leadership of Samson Benderly, 
central educational agencies were established for the improvement 
of educational standards and techniques. The most recent develop- 
ment has been a marked growth of the so-called small Yeshivoth. 
These orthodox all-day elementary schools, where the religious and 
secular subjects are taught under the same roof, are expected to 
produce the future communal and religious leaders. 

A new movement, which took the name of Reconstructionism, 
made its appearance in the realm of religion. Like the champions of 
Reform in Germany a century earlier, its proponents, led by Mor- 
decai M. Kaplan, a teacher in the Jewish Theological Seminary of 
America, called for changes in doctrine and liturgy which, they 
asserted, the science and social progress of the times demanded. 
Unlike the earlier Reform advocates, however, the Reconstruc- 
tionists held fast to Jewish national values and championed the 
revival of Jewish nationhood in Palestine. The Orthodox and 
many of the Conservatives denounced the proposed changes, par- 
ticularly the denial of the selection of the Jewish people and of the 
revelation at Mount Sinai. Reconstructionism, they affirmed, was 
guilty of attenuating the concept of God and of divesting religious 
observances of their original and divine sanction. The movement, 
in their view was, to all intents and purposes, secular rather than 
religious in character. 

At the other end of the religious gamut, Chassidism became a 
factor in the larger communities of the country. From the Old 
World came a number of Chassidic leaders, scions of illustrious 
"dynasties," who attracted groups of zealous adherents. Distin- 
guished among them was Joseph Isaac Schneerson, the "Lubavitcher 
Rebbe," a direct descendant of Shneur Zalman of Liady (1748- 
1812), the founder of the intellectual or Chabad branch of the 
movement. In New York and other communities, the "Luba- 
vitcher's" devotees established elementary and higher schools for 
the teaching of Torah iq the spirit of Chassidism. 

The Yiddish press, embracing dailies, weeklies, and at least one 
literary monthly, Die Zuhmft (The Future), continued to pros- 
per, and new Yiddish writers of talent made their appearance, 



THE "LONG TRUCE" IN THE WEST 629 

although the market for their books failed to expand or even to 
hold its own. Books of Jewish content in English did, however, 
find a larger public, and periodicals in English multiplied. Books 
and periodicals made their appearance in still a third language, 
Hebrew. The weekly Hadoar (The Post) began publication in 
1921, the monthly Bitzaron (Citadel) in 1939, and, with the arrival 
in America of Abraham Joseph Stiebel, the foremost patron of mod- 
ern Hebrew literature, the quarterly Hatekufah (The Era) also 
began to appear in the New World. Hebrew literature in America 
derived its inspiration, first, from the Zionist movement and the 
astounding literary productivity of Palestine, and, second, from 
the Federation for Hebrew Culture (Histadrutb Ivrith), organized 
by a group of enthusiasts in 1916, 

II 

IN THE Zionist movement, the early years of the third 
decade produced a schism when in 192 1 Louis D. Brandeis and his 
adherents withdrew from the general organization and established 
instruments of their own for the economic development of Pales- 
tine. The break was ascribed to a clash between "east and west," 
between the temperament and methods of Weizmann and his fol- 
lowers, and those of Brandeis and his. In the course of the next 
decade, however, the breach was healed: the gulf was found to be 
not so deep after all. By 1930, Julian W. Mack and Robert Szold, 
leading members of the "Brandeis group," were back in the ad- 
ministration of the Zionist Organization of America. 

Brandeis himself continued to be a dominating influence in the 
movement, as, indeed, he was in American life generally. His home 
in Washington was a shrine to which Zionists of all affiliations re- 
paired for counsel and inspiration. Powerful impetus came also 
from the world leaders of Zionism who from time to time came 
to labor for the cause in the American community. Among them 
were Chaim Weizmann, the world head of the movement; Nahum 
Sokolow, its scholarly and persuasive "diplomat"; Menahem Us- 
sischkin, the "iron" man of Zionism; the matchless orator Shmaryah 
Levin, and the Hebrew poet-laureate, Chaim Nachman Bialik. 

In the meantime, Weizmann devoted his diplomatic skill to the 



630 THE WORLD WARS 

task of drawing into the Jewish Agency the wealthy and influen- 
tial non-Zionists of every land, particularly of America, the Agency 
being the body recognized in the Palestine Mandate as representing 
the entire Jewish people in matters affecting the National Home. 
Outstanding among American non-Zionists who were enlisted in 
the Agency were Louis Marshall, ardent champion of his people 
and a distinguished figure on the American as well as the Jewish 
scene; Felix M. Warburg, banker, philanthropist, and communal 
leader, head of the house of Kuhn, Loeb and Company; and the 
versatile Cyrus Adler, president of the Jewish Theological Semi- 
nary of America, of Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate 
Learning, and also of the American Jewish Committee. At the 
Sixteenth Zionist Congress, held in Zurich in 1929, the extension 
of the Jewish Agency was, formally at least, accomplished. 

Nor did the movement fail to impress the public opinion of the 
country at large. In 1922, the terms of the Balfour Declaration 
were endorsed in a joint resolution adopted unanimously by both 
houses of Congress and signed by President Warren G. Harding. 
Two years later, the Mandate, which is based on the Declaration, 
was embodied in a Palestine Convention or treaty between Great 
Britain and the United States. 

With the outbreak of the Second World War, the principal 
Zionist organizations in America the Zionist Organization of 
America, the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization, the Poale 
Zion, and the Mizrachi joined hands in an Emergency Council to 
safeguard and promote Zionist interests. New men and women 
became prominent in the leadership of the various groupings, 
among them Abba Hillel Silver, Emanuel Neumann, Morris Roth- 
enberg, Louis Levinthal, Israel Goldstein and Bernard A. Rosen- 
blatt among the General Zionists; Hayim Greenberg in the labor 
wing of the movement; Rose Jacobs, Judith Epstein, Tamar de Sola 
Pool and Rose L. Halprin in Hadassah; and Gedaliah Bublick and 
Leon Gellman in the Mizrachi. In addition, an array of Christian 
leaders in every walk of American life, including men like 
Robert F. Wagner, the senior senator from the State of New York, 
and Henry A. Atkinson, director of the Church Peace Union, 
organized to give moral and political support to the cause. 



PALESTINE RESURGENT 631 



CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT 

Palestine Resurgent 



BLJT the most important development of Jewish life between 
the wars did not take place in eastern Europe, where the 
communities were like frail barks in the raging floods of 
anti-Semitism. Nor did it take place in western Europe, where the 
shadow of Nazi Germany was growing steadily longer; nor even 
in America, where the most absorbing concerns of the community 
were the raising of funds for relief abroad and philanthropy at 
home and the struggle against the rising menace of anti-Semitism. 
It took place in the litde land called holy, where, some 4,000 years 
earlier, the career of the Jewish people began and where it reached 
the zenith of its ancient glory. 

By a concatenation of forces, immemorial as well as immediate, 
the ancient motherland emerged from the shadows of the centuries 
and began to resume her central place in Jewish destiny. Poets and 
pietists found their faith confirmed, nor could even the casual ob- 
server fail to be inspired with a sense of direction and purpose in 
the long and bitter journey of the Jewish people. For the resurgence 
of Palestine had import not only for the Yishuv; it lifted all the 
scattered communities to new dignity, revealing as it did die cre- 
ative strength of a people which, for nearly two millennia, had 
been living on the margin of the world's economy and toleration. 

2 

AS A WORK of economic^reconstruction, few if any accom- 
plishments during the period have been found to surpass it. From 
the end of the First World War to the outbreak of the Second, 
the population of the Yishuv had risen from some fifty thousand to 
nearly half a million, and the total in 1947 was estimated at seven 
hundred thousand. In 1943, the number established on the soil in 



PALESTINE 

RESURGENT 



JEWISH SETTLEMENTS 

(not alt of -them included) 
ARAB -JEWISH CITIES 
O ARAB CITIES 
RAILROADS 



BcthAlphfl* 

Beth-shcan 



RamoihGan 

PefochTikvoh 
TelUfvinsky 




PALESTINE RESURGENT 633 

some three hundred agricultural settlements amounted to 25 per 
cent of the total, a proportion that compares well with that of 
rural populations in other lands. Large stretches of swampland, for 
centuries the breeding ground of the malarial mosquito, the most 
important area of the sort being the storied Valley of Jezreel, had 
been drained and put to the plow. Other areas, parched and stony 
wastes, after being cleared and watered, had become forests, grain 
fields, and gardens. Along the coastal belt, sand dunes were irri- 
gated and transformed into orange groves, and deep boring brought 
water to land in the Negeb and elsewhere, which had been arid 
and sterile for centuries. Scientific methods and modern machinery 
revolutionized the country's agriculture; among the innovations 
were soil conservation, intensive farming, crop rotation, the intro- 
duction of new breeds of cattle and poultry as well as new crops 
like bananas and tobacco. 

In urban and industrial development the progress was equally 
marked. Around the ancient somnolent cities of Jerusalem and 
Haifa modern suburbs had sprung up; some of the older colonies 
like Petach Tikvah and Rehobot, had grown into compact little 
towns; and the queenly city of Tel Aviv (Hill of Spring) had risen 
up from the sand dunes on the coast and now had its own harbor 
installations. In 1943, nearly 70,000 workers in 2,000 factories and 
twice as many small workshops were employed in these urban 
centers, most of them working for the armies operating in the 
Middle East, producing some 200 military items. The power that 
drove the wheels came from the Jordan River which had been 
harnessed by the Palestine Electric Corporation, the creation of 
that soft-spoken revolutionary and dreamer, Pinchas Ruttenberg. 
In the Dead Sea, vast stores of potash and other chemicals had 
been discovered and were being extracted. Fishing villages were 
springing up along the coast of Lake Tiberias and the Mediter- 
ranean, and a modest shipping industry had come to birth. The 
fugitives from the terror in Poland and Germany had given indus- 
try a fresh spurt: refugees from Lodz, for example, developed the 
manufacture of textiles, those from the west established factories 
for making optical instruments and cutting diamonds. The country 
was buoyant with initiative and enterprise; its exhibits became a 



634 THE WORLD WARS 

new Mecca for the neighboring lands; Palestine had become die 
industrial and commercial enzyme of the Middle East. 

But any account of the Yishuv would be incomplete if it failed 
to stress die spirit of social idealism that brooded over it, especially 
in the agricultural setdements. That spirit asserted itself as early 
as 1901 in the statutes of the Jewish National Fund, stipulating that 
the land it purchases must forever remain the inalienable possession 
of the whole people. The same spirit animated the pioneers of the 
Second Aliyah in the first decade of the twentieth century, who 
in 1909 established the first kvutzah, or collectivist farm settle- 
ment, at Dagania, the model of many other kvutzoth, dedicated to 
the principle of "no exploiters and no exploited." The same spirit 
animates also the moshaurm or small-holders villages, where the 
cooperative principle is applied in the purchase and use of farm 
machinery and in the marketing of the crops; in the large network 
of producers and consumers cooperatives in the cities; in the system 
of health services established by the Histadrut, the General Federa- 
tion of Jewish Labor, and in other institutions. 

The Histadrut is like no other labor organization in die world. 
With a membership in 1947 of 170,000, it regards itself not pri- 
marily as a vehicle for promoting the interests of its members, but 
as the vanguard of Jewish national redemption, charged with the 
task of preparing a home for the homeless of their people; a home, 
moreover, which is to rest on the principles of social justice as 
proclaimed by the lawgivers and prophets of Israel and elaborated 
by the experience and stnaggles of modern societies. 

3 

IN THE matter of public health and education, two criteria 
by which the level of any society may be gauged, the Yishuv has 
had to face problems no less formidable than in the economic 
sphere, and its progress has been no less impressive. A Health 
Council, Vaad Habriuth, coordinates the work of a number of 
health agencies, the most important being the Kupat Cholim, or 
Sick Fund of the Histadrut, and the Hadassah Medical Organiza- 
tion. The latter, maintained by the Hadassah Women's Zionist 
Organization of America, conducts hospitals, clinics, health and 
diagnostic centers, hygienic services for school children, as well as 



PALESTINE RESURGENT 635 

a nurses' training school. The Kupat Cholim provides similar serv- 
ices for its members. The zeal of the Yishuv for the health of its 
people has been rewarded by a sharp reduction in infant mortality 
and in the diseases that once ravaged the country, particularly 
malaria and trachoma, a reduction from which the Arabs have also 
benefited. The national home has produced a new physical type: 
the muscular Jew, robust, bold, and self-reliant. 

The educational pyramid of the Yishuv has for its base the 
hundreds of elementary schools in towns and colonies with a school 
population of nearly 100,000. The system also includes secondary 
schools, trade schools, seminaries for teachers, agricultural schools, 
and the Haifa Technical Institute, an engineering college to which 
a Nautical School has been added. The apex of the pyramid is the 
Hebrew University on Mount Scopus opposite Jerusalem. On 
April i, 1925, before a distinguished gathering representing leading 
institutions of learning throughout the world, the University was 
formally dedicated by Arthur James Balfour. Its faculties of 
the humanities and science, as well as its medical center, include 
illustrious savants, many of them refugees from Nazi terror, and 
the University has already made important contributions in a 
number of fields including medicine, agriculture, archaeology, and 
Arab lore. Vigorous action was begun in America in 1 946 to pro- 
vide the University with a medical school. And to the higher in- 
stitutions of learning in the Yishuv should be added the Weizmann 
Institute at Rehobot, dedicated to scientific research, especially in 
chemistry. 

The zest for education has created problems, not all of them 
financial, the most serious being the lack of unity in the school 
system, with secular Labor schools, religious Mizrachi schools, and 
middle-of-the-road "general" schools. Talmudic education is, of 
course, also well represented, some of the renowned Yeshivoth of 
eastern Europe having established themselves in the national home. 
Outstanding among the religious leaders of the Yishuv was the 
wise, profound, and saintly Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), 
who was Chief Rabbi of the Ashkenazic community from 1919 
until his death. 

But apart from the formal school system, the cultural efflores- 
cence of the Yishuv is probably the most luxuriant in the world. 



636 THE WORLD WARS 

It publishes more books, newspapers, and other periodicals, for 
its size, than any other community in the world. Nowhere else 
are the talented men and women the poets, novelists, and essay- 
ists, the scholars and scientists, the artists, musicians, and dram- 
atists relatively so numerous and held in such high esteem. The 
Hebrew language, responsive to all demands, technical as well as 
belletristic, is of course their medium; and they have brought to 
their audiences not only original works but also, in glowing trans- 
lations, those of the monarchs of world literature, ancient as well 
as modern. 

Though resting on a common national purpose, the Yishuv, 
constituting as it does a miniature ingathering of the Diaspora, 
presents a highly diversified social landscape. East and West are 
mingled but not yet fused, the East represented by Jews from 
Yemen and other lands of the Orient, the West by Europeans and 
Americans. Religious conformity ranges all the way from rigid 
Orthodoxy, sometimes, as in the case of the Agudas Israel, militant 
in character, to a disregard of ritual forms. But in all cities and 
colonies the day of rest is the Seventh Day, and the holidays are 
universal festive occasions. Some of them, like Shabuoth, Purim, 
Hanukkah and the New Year of the Trees (on the fifteenth day 
of the month of Shebat), have acquired forms of observance 
springing from the new life in the homeland and unknown in the 
Diaspora. 

Politically also, the Yishuv presents a wide diversity. Its internal 
affairs are governed by an elected assembly of 171 members who 
choose a small executive body, the Vaad Leum (National Coun- 
cil). In both are represented parties of the Left, the Right, and 
the Center, who divide on questions of political orientation, 
as well as on economic and religious grounds. Those divisions, 
social, religious, and political, add to the problems of the Yishuv, 
but they do not annul its basic unity of purpose, its calm and 
relentless determination to recreate at long last the national home 
of the Jewish people. 

4 

Tins keen and vibrant human society, this miniature Com- 
monwealth brought to life in two brief decades, would have been 



PALESTINE RESURGENT 637 

miracle enough had it been forced to contend with the obstacles of 
nature only eroded and denuded hillsides, swampy and malarious 
valleys, sandy wastes, tropical heat, drought, and disease. But in 
addition, it has had to contend with even more serious obstacles: 
the hostility and malevolence of man. 

That this daring enterprise, this sudden injection of a new 
dynamic into the stagnant Near East, would alarm those Arabs 
who preferred the stagnation and profited from it, was, of course, 
to have been expected. What effect, the Arab landlords wondered, 
would the example of the sturdy, progressive Jewish farmers have 
upon the Arab peasants who furnished their revenues? It was also 
to have been expected that the heady postwar nationalism which 
ran riot in Europe would spill over into the Near East and leave 
Arab politicos dissatisfied with the enormous gains in freedom and 
independence the First World War had brought them, and at such 
little cost; that they would not willingly consent to the restoration 
of Palestine, that 'little notch" in their vast domains, as Balfour 
called it, to the Jews. All that was to be expected, in spite of the 
fact that the official spokesman of the Arabs at the Peace Con- 
ference, the Emir Feisal, son of "King Husein of the Hejaz, wrote to 
Felix Frankfurter (then a member of the Zionist Delegation at the 
Conference) that he regarded the proposals of the Zionist Organi- 
zation "as moderate and proper"; that the Arabs would do their 
best "to help them through"; that they "will wish the Jews a most 
hearty welcome home." What came as a shock, however, was the 
antagonism of British officials, first of the military government, 
which was not replaced until July 1920, and then of officials in 
London as well as Jerusalem. 

It was, of course, folly to assume that the ordinary colonial 
administrator, high or low, brought up in the traditions of British 
imperialism, would have the necessary understanding and imagina- 
tion to lend himself to the implementation of the Balfour Declara- 
tion and the Palestine Mandate. This undertaking to restore a 
people to nationhood on their ancestral soil was something unique 
in history, just as, for that matter, the entire career of the Jewish 
people is historically unique. It was an undertaking that cut across 
every habit and prejudice of the colonial administrator. He was 
now called upon to deal not with "natives," who were to be cajoled 



638 THE WORLD WARS 

or intimidated, but with a highly sensitive and intelligent people 
who knew their rights and had the temerity to regard themselves 
as his equals. He was above all called upon to promote a policy 
that clashed with some basic imperialist axioms, a policy that en- 
visaged the creation not only of an agricultural community as an 
outlet for British manufactures, but of a community for which 
industry was essential to its life and growth. It was a venture to 
which the time-honored axiom of "divide and rule" might prove 
fatal, for it was obvious that unless Jews and Arabs learned to live 
together in peace the project would fail. How was the run-of-the- 
mill colonial official, if left to his established habits, to adjust him- 
self, mentally and emotionally, to this new and unique undertaking? 

5 

THE proposals which the Zionist Organization made to the 
Peace Conference in February 1919, and to which Feisal referred 
in his letter to Frankfurter, called for "the fullest freedom of 
religious worship for all creeds in Palestine," and pledged "no dis- 
crimination among the inhabitants with regard to citizenship and 
civil rights on the grounds of religion or race." But the Peace 
Conference failed to make a prompt decision, and the opposition 
had time to mobilize and act. In March 1920, the Jewish outposts 
of Tel Hai and Kfar Giladi in Upper Galilee were attacked by 
Arab insurgents, and five of the heroic defenders, including their 
leader, Captain Joseph Trumpeldor, were killed. "It is good to 
have a country to die for," were the last words of Trumpeldor, one 
of the many brave and lofty spirits which the national revival has 
produced. In April of the same year, there was a mob outbreak in 
Jerusalem in which Arabs and Jews lost their lives. Those events 
did spur the Allied Supreme Council to take action, and at its 
meeting at San Remo in Italy later the same month it made the 
Balfour Declaration part of the treaty with Turkey and assigned 
the Mandate for Palestine to Great Britain. But the Mandate had 
still to be ratified by the League of Nations, and sleepless vigilance 
and effort in the face of enemies in and out of Palestine were 
required before the Council of the League, in July 1922, gave the 
Mandate its official endorsement. Then, at long last, the Jewish 



PALESTINE RESURGENT 639 

National Home became a formal part of the new international 
structure. 

The Mandate is not entirely free of ambiguities, but that its 
primary purpose is to implement the Balfour Declaration is alto- 
gether clear. Indeed the Mandate is much more explicit than the 
Declaration. It recognizes "the historical connection of the Jewish 
people with Palestine" and "the grounds for reconstituting their 
National Home in that country." It makes the Mandatory Power 
"responsible for placing the country under such political, adminis- 
trative, and economic conditions as will secure the establishment 
of the Jewish National Home." It recognizes a Jewish Agency "for 
the purpose of advising and cooperating with the Administration 
in matters affecting the Jewish National Home," and makes He- 
brew one of the official languages of the country, the others being 
English and Arabic. It requires the Administration of Palestine to 
facilitate Jewish immigration and to encourage "close settlement 
of Jews on the land, including state lands and waste lands not 
required for public purposes." The Mandate, of course, stipulates 
that "the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, 
irrespective of race and religion," be safeguarded, and finally it re- 
quires the Mandatory to submit an annual report to the Council of 
the League of Nations on what it is doing to fulfill its obligations. 



FROM July 1920 to June 1925, the Palestine Administration 
was headed by Herbert Samuel, an experienced statesman whose 
appointment as High Commissioner was hailed as the beginning 
of a new era in the history of his people. They were years of sub- 
stantial progress for the national home, although in the spring of 
1921 Arab intransigents again resorted to violence which was 
effectively suppressed, in large part by the Jewish self-defense. 
Samuel omitted no opportunity to placate the Arabs, and one upon 
whom he lavished high office and great power proved to be the 
principal thorn in the side not only of the Jews, but also of the 
British. He was Amin El Huseini, who had been given a long 
prison sentence for his part in the riots of 1920. Samuel pardoned 
him and enabled him to become the mufti, or religious head of 



640 THE WORLD WARS 

Jerusalem, and president of the Supreme Moslem Council, a body 
in control of sizable religious funds which could be diverted for 
less holy purposes. 

But until the summer of 1929, the country was at peace, and the 
work of reclamation went forward. An economic crisis which 
began late in 1925 was gradually overcome, while the new High 
Commissioner, Field Marshal Lord Plumer, a blunt soldier, hewed 
straight to the line laid down by the Mandate. Lord Plumer left 
his post in 1928 and government authority rested with a group of 
minor officials -who proved unequal to a new and graver crisis with 
which the mufti and his adherents, after careful preparation, con- 
fronted them. 

The immediate issue revolved around the Wailing Wall, the 
one relic of the ancient Temple at which Jews, from time imme- 
morial, had come to pray, but which was legally under the juris- 
diction of the Supreme Moslem Council. Now the Council de- 
clared that the Jews were exceeding their rights at the Wall. For 
months an intense religious incitement was carried on until, on 
August 23, 1929, violence broke out in the capital, whence it spread 
quickly through the rest of the country. It continued for a week 
and cost the lives of about 130 Jews and an equal number of Arabs. 
The officials had declined to suppress the agitation and failed to 
act promptly and decisively even after the outbreak. It was the 
Jewish self-defense that prevented a much heavier loss of life and 
destruction of property. 

The outbreak of 1929 was followed by a series of contortionist 
efforts on the part of the government in London to satisfy the Arab 
die-hards and make a show of honoring the Mandate. The majority 
report of a commission of inquiry headed by Sir Walter Shaw ap- 
peared to justify the claim, which, however, proved to be ground- 
less, that Arab peasants were being dispossessed by Jews; and 
another investigation, conducted by Sir John Hope Simpson, a 
colonization expert, professed to find no economic future for the 
country. Basing itself on these gloomy reports, a White Paper, 
prepared by Lord Passfield, the Colonial Secretary of the Labor 
government headed by Ramsay MacDonald, was issued in October 
1930, presaging the early liquidation of the national home. There 
was a world-wide outcry, whereupon the prime minister sent 



PALESTINE RESURGENT 641 

Weizmann a letter "interpreting" the Passfield Paper and assuring 
him that Britain intended to fulfill its obligations. But the net result 
of these maneuvers was to convince the Arab irreconcilables that 
the Mandate policy was not, as Lord Balfour once termed it, une 
chose jugee, and that Britain, under sufficient pressure, could be 
brought to abandon it. The policy was a nettle which neither the 
Colonial Office in London nor the Administration in Palestine was 
disposed to grasp. 

7 

IN SPITE of official handicaps, which the MacDonald letter 
failed to ward off, the outbreak of 1929 was followed by seven 
years of peaceful and unprecedented growth for the national home. 
Its population more than doubled; its urban centers, particularly 
Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, expanded; there was a large flow 
of public and private capital; and industry increased in size and 
variety. Existing colonies were enlarged; many new ones were 
established; and the citrus crop, the principal export commodity, 
grew by leaps and bounds. Toward this expansion, tens of thou- 
sands of refugees from Germany contributed in large measure. 
Palestine indeed had become one of the principal havens for those 
fleeing from Nazi terror. 

It was not to be expected, however, that the Arab intransigents, 
headed by the mufti, would look upon this expansion of the Yishuv 
with equanimity, nor that they would fail to take advantage of the 
opportunities which the triumph of the Nazis in 1933 and the on- 
slaught of Italy on Abyssinia in 1935 offered them. For their part, 
both nazism and fascism saw in Arab discontent a perfect instru- 
ment for undermining the British position in the highly strategic 
Middle East, while the British became more than ever disposed to 
yield to Arab pressure at the expense of the national home. 

By the beginning of 1936, Italian aggression in Abyssinia, which 
England and France tried but failed to halt, emboldened both 
Egypt and Syria to demand full and immediate sovereignty, and 
the Palestine Arab leaders felt that their big moment had arrived. 
Arms and money were no problem now: Berlin and Rome took 
care of both. In April 1936 a new wave of violence and bloodshed 
began, and it did not end until the outbreak of the Second World 



642 THE WORLD WARS 

War in 1939. Jewish settlements throughout the country in cities 
and colonies were attacked. Crops were burned, trees uprooted, 
and the roads became unsafe. The number of victims rose into the 
hundreds, and included Britons besides Jews, as well as many Arabs 
who refused to join the mufti's henchmen or pay the tribute they 
demanded. It took the British officials a long time to realize that 
they were confronted with a full scale revolt, and by the time they 
did so, large military forces were required to suppress it. After 
long and vain endeavors to appease them, the Arab leaders were 
apprehended and deported, but the mufti managed to escape, and 
throughout the Second World War served as agent and propa- 
gandist for the Axis. 

The Jewish Settlement Defense, which numbered some 25,000 
men, was from the outset faced with a problem that was moral 
rather than military. The brigand bands, most of them recruited 
in neighboring countries, operated without scruple, burning crops 
and groves, shooting down farmers in the fields, blasting vehicles 
on the highways, killing women and children as well as men. 
Should the defenders adopt a policy of reprisals in kind? Their 
answer was No. They adopted instead the principle of restraint: 
the Hebrew word for it, bawlagab, became famous. It was only 
toward the end of the period of nearly four years during which 
the terror continued, that some of the groups departed from the 
policy of non-retaliation. The outbreak brought 2,877 fatal casu- 
alties, of which 450 were Jewish, 140 British, and 2,287 Arab. 

Units of the Jewish Settlement Defense, which worked in co- 
operation with the British forces, patrolled the highways, stood 
guard over colonies, fields, and groves, and escorted laborers to 
and from their work. The Mosul pipeline, with its outlet at the 
port of Haifa, and outlying settlements were guarded by special 
Jewish night squads who were trained in commando tactics by 
Charles Orde Wingate, a brilliant soldier, a man of lofty spirit, and 
an ardent champion of the Jewish national revival. Many Jewish 
settlements were attacked but not one fell or was abandoned, not 
even those that lay in the most isolated parts of the country. But 
not only were the existing settlements retained; some fifty new 
ones were added, many of them on sites deliberately chosen be- 
cause they were exposed to maximum danger. Symbolic of the 



PALESTINE RESURGENT 643 

ordeal which the Yishuv successfully withstood is the fact that 
while 200,000 trees were uprooted, 1,000,000 new ones were 
planted. 

A special technique was developed for setting up new outposts 
overnight. The groups arrived at the chosen spots in lorries, bring- 
ing all they needed, and, in a matter of hours, outposts sprang up 
as if by magic. Around them ran a wooden stockade, reinforced 
with stone and concrete and strung with barbed wire, and in the 
center stood a watchtower with a revolving searchlight command- 
ing a broad area on every side. Soon afterwards, and usually at 
night, the new settlement might be attacked, but the assailants 
were always thrown back and rarely ventured to repeat the attempt. 

8 

WITH all its impact and all the support it had from the Axis 
powers, the Arab outbreak was unable to muster anything which 
the government, aided by the Yishuv, was unable to cope with. 
Palestine did not have to be sacrificed to the rising star of fascism. 
Nevertheless, the Jewish National Home, like Czechoslovakia, was 
sacrificed to the same futile policy of appeasement. Arab terrorism 
failed in Palestine, but it succeeded in London. 

As early as November 1936 a Royal Commission, headed by 
Lord Peel, arrived in the country and spent three months investi- 
gating the causes of the outbreak. The Commission rejected most 
of the Arab grievances, stressing the economic and hygienic bene- 
fits which Jewish enterprise had brought the Arabs, and deprecat- 
ing the extent to which "the policy of conciliation" had been 
pursued. It even recommended "the careful selection of British 
officers intended for service in Palestine and a course of special 
training.'* In the end, however, it found Arab and Jewish aspira- 
tions irreconcilable and recommended "a surgical operation": the 
partitioning of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state, with 
certain places, among them Jerusalem, to remain under permanent 
British control. 

In August 1937, the Zionist Congress, meeting in Zurich, re- 
jected the findings of the Commission, insisted that the Mandate 
was workable, and that a peaceful solution in Palestine was possible. 
The government in London had declared itself in general agree- 



644 THE WORLD "WARS 

merit with the Commission's conclusions, but in November 1938, 
with the report of still another commission before it, it found the 
partition proposal impracticable. 

In the meantime, international tension was mounting to the 
breaking point: Europe was moving relentlessly toward war. In 
September 1938 had come the Munich surrender; and in February 
1939, at the bidding of the Chamberlain government, Arab and 
Jewish representatives met separately in London, the Arabs refus- 
ing to sit with the Jews. The fact that representatives of the neigh- 
boring Arab states had also been invited showed the direction in 
which the official wind was blowing. 

In May 1939 came the Munich of the Jewish National Home. 
It took the form of another White Paper, announcing the complete 
stoppage, except with Arab consent, of Jewish immigration into 
Palestine at the end of a five-year period. It provided also for the 
independence of Palestine after ten years, with the Jews, of course, 
still a minority and destined to remain one. Land regulations, based 
on the White Paper and issued somewhat later, made it impossible 
for Jews to purchase land in 94 per cent of the country. A system 
of racial disabilities, not unlike the Nuremberg Laws, was imposed 
on them in their own national home! 

The Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations 
rejected the new British policy, and in England itself the incredible 
reversal, made in the vain hope of obtaining Arab support in the 
approaching war, did not go unchallenged. In Parliament strong 
voices rose up in denunciation of the White Paper, the strongest 
of them the voice of Winston Churchill, who called it "another 
Munich" and "a plain breach of a solemn obligation." For the 
Labor Opposition, Herbert Morrison called the White Paper "a 
cynical breach of pledges given to the Jews and the world, includ- 
ing America," and declared that "the Government must not ex- 
pect that this is going to be automatically binding upon their 
successors." The Paper was adopted in Commons by an abnormally 
small majority, with scores of members abstaining from voting. 
England appeared to be ashamed of what England was doing. 

Three months later, the world was again at war and the Jews in 
the Yishuv and throughout the world forgot their grievances against 
England and threw themselves into the struggle against the enemy 



HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE 645 

of mankind. But the White Paper was not withdrawn or suspended. 
Applied with brutal rigor, it added greatly to the woes of the Jews 
of Europe and to the number of those who perished in the im- 
measurable holocaust that now descended upon them. 



CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE 

Holocaust in Europe 



FOR nearly a thousand years, ever since the decline of the great 
community in Babylonia which created the Talmud, the 
Jewish center of gravity had lain in Europe. The period saw 
the rise and fall of the brilliant community in Spain, and the growth 
of large creative centers in eastern Europe. It saw the struggle for 
civil emancipation apparently won, and the attainment to power 
and dignity of sizable groups in England, France, Germany, and 
other European states. By the end of the period, an important 
concentration had arisen in the New World and the ancient 
motherland was being reclaimed; but in 1939, Europe was still the 
continent where lived more than 60 per cent of the sixteen million 
Jews of the world, and where Jewish life in all its multiformity 
found expression. 

The Second World War swept like a scythe over the Jewish 
communities of the European continent. The final tally has not been 
made and probably never will be, but a summary appeared in the 
text of the formal indictment lodged in October 1945 against the 
major German war criminals, the top-ranking Nazis who were 
brought to the bar of justice in the famous Nuremberg trials by the 
United States, France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. The 
men on trial included twenty-four of the heads of the German 
government, its army and navy, industry and finance, and of the 
Nazi party and its affiliates. They did not include Adolf Hitler, 
Josef Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, all 
three of whom had committed suicide. Before it was over, Robert 
Ley, head of the Labor Front, had also managed to do away with 



646 THE WORLD WARS 

himself, and Hermann Goering, the deputy fuehrer, cheated the 
gallows by taking poison on the eve of his execution. 

"Of the 9,600,000 Jews who lived in the parts of Europe under 
Nazi domination," said the indictment, "it is conservatively esti- 
mated that 5,700,000 have disappeared, most of them deliberately 
put to death . . . Only remnants of the Jewish population of 
Europe remain." Three out of every five, in other words, have 
perished. "The conspiracy ... to exterminate the Jews was so 
methodically and thoroughly pursued," said Robert H. Jackson, the 
chief American prosecutor, in his charge at the opening of the 
trials, "that despite the German defeat and the Nazi prostration, 
the Nazi aim largely has succeeded . . . History does not record 
a crime ever perpetrated against so many victims, or one ever car- 
ried out with such calculated cruelty." 

Count Three of the indictment mentions victims running into 
enormous totals and including also non-Jews; it states, for example, 
that "about 1,500,000 persons were exterminated in Maidanek, and 
about 4,000,000 persons were exterminated in Auschwitz (Os- 
wiecim)," and it names other places where the victims ran into 
the hundreds of thousands. But, says Count Four, "millions of the 
persons . . . mentioned as having been murdered and ill-treated 
were Jews." In his opening charge, the American prosecutor as- 
serted that "the most savage and numerous crimes planned and 
committed by the Nazis were those against the Jews." 

To give substance to the general accusation, the indictment 
records a few instances. "Among other mass murders of Jews," it 
states, were the following: 

At Kislovodsk all Jews were made to give up their prop- 
erty; 2,000 were shot in an anti-tank ditch at Mineraliya 
Vody; 4,300 other Jews were shot in the same ditch; 60,000 
Jews were shot on an island on the Dvina near Riga; 20,000 
Jews were shot at Lutsk; 32,000 Jews were shot at Sarny; 
60,000 Jews were shot at Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk; thousands 
of Jews were gassed weekly by means of gas-wagons which 
broke down from overwork. 

As the Germans retreated before the Soviet Army, they 
exterminated Jews rather than allow them to be liberated. 



HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE 647 

Many concentration camps and ghettos were kept up in which 
Jews were incarcerated and tortured, starved, subjected to 
merciless atrocities and finally exterminated. 

"The eastern Jew has suffered as no people ever suffered," said 
the American prosecutor. But his brother from the west suffered 
no less. "Millions of Jews from Germany and from occupied 
western countries," says the indictment, "were sent to the eastern 
countries for extermination." 



THE extent of the crime may be capable of computation: 
its dimensions may be expressed in arithmetical terms. But, is it 
possible to measure the bestiality of the criminals or the agonies of 
the victims? Words are vain and impotent; nevertheless the official 
indictment is not altogether silent on that score, and the following 
precise and legalistic description is perhaps more eloquent than a 
jeremiad: 

The murders and ill treatment were carried out by diverse 
means, including shooting, hanging, gassing, starvation, gross 
overcrowding, systematic under-nutrition, systematic imposi- 
tion of labor tasks beyond the strength of those ordered to 
carry them out, inadequate provision of surgical and medical 
services, kickings, beatings, brutality and torture of all kinds, 
including the use of hot irons and pulling out of finger nails 
and the performance of experiments by means of operations 
and otherwise on living human subjects. 

Finally, no account of this, the most stupendous crime in history, 
should quail from citing the most bestial aspect of it, the mass 
murder of children. Again we quote the restrained language of 
the indictment: 

Along with adults the Nazi conspirators mercilessly de- 
stroyed even children. They killed them with their parents in 
groups and alone. They killed them in children's homes and 
hospitals, burying the living in the graves, throwing them into 
flames, stabbing them with bayonets, poisoning them, conduct- 
ing experiments upon them, extracting their blood for the use 



648 THE WORLD WARS 

of the German Army, throwing them into prison and Gestapo 
torture chambers and concentration camps, where the children 
died from hunger, torture, and epidemic diseases. 

The following paragraph is taken from the summary of the 
verdict, delivered September 30 and October i, 1946, of the Inter- 
national Military Tribunal before which the trial of the ranking 
Nazis took place. The Einsatz Groups, mentioned in the last sen- 
tence, were special units "given the duty of exterminating the 
Jews in the east": 

The hair of the women victims was cut off before they 
were killed to be used in the production of mattresses. The 
clothes, money and valuables were sent to the appropriate 
agencies for disposition. The gold teeth and fillings were taken 
from the heads of the corpses and sent to the Reichsbank. 
After cremation the ashes -were used for fertilizer, and in some 
instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies 
of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap. Adolf 
Eichmann, who had been put in charge of the program to 
exterminate the Jews, has estimated that the policy pursued 
resulted in the killing of 6,000,000 Jews, of whom 4,000,000 
were killed in the concentration camps and 2,000,000 were 
killed by the Einsatz Groups. 

The intellectual and spiritual leaders the rabbis and scholars, 
the poets and teachers were as a matter of Nazi policy among the 
first to be liquidated. Their number was legion, among them Simon 
Dubnow, the dean of Jewish historians; Hillel Zeitlin, religious 
teacher, poet and mystic; Noah Prilutzky, folk-lorist, publicist, and 
communal leader; the historians, Emanuel Ringelblum and Ignatz 
Schipper; the scholar, Zalman Reisin; and Yitzchak Katzenelson, 
a poet who, before his final deportation to the murder-mill in 
Auschwitz, managed to give some expression to the agony of his 
people. 

3 

A LURID light on the passion that lashed the Germans to 
commit those deeds is thrown by their leader's Political Testament, 



HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE 649 

prepared by him shortly before his suicide in April 1945. The 
document reveals the inner decay of the Nazi regime, the "night- 
mare of treason," as Hitler's fellow-suicide, Josef Goebbels, called 
it, highlighted by the treachery of Himmler and Goering. But, in 
the main, the Testament is a fantastic tirade against "international 
Jewry," reeking with maniac hate, yet shrewdly designed to 
perpetuate the fury and the Nazi creed which fed upon it. 

Robert Ley, another Nazi in the top layer of the brown hierarchy 
and, of course, a ferocious anti-Semite, also gave the world a last 
testament, written just before he too ended his life. Like his 
master's, its principal theme was the jews. But Ley proclaimed 
himself an abject penitent. Anti-Semitism, he declared, had been 
Germany's fatal mistake, the source of all its woes, and he implored 
the German people to renounce it. But his "repentance" is curiously 
unrelated to any moral consideration. Anti-Semitism was a mistaken 
policy: it failed to produce the expected results. And by all ac- 
counts, the same moral blackout envelops the German people as a 
whole, not only with respect to anti-Semitism and its crimes, but 
with respect to the unparalleled disaster which they brought upon 
all mankind. 

4 

REPORTS of the murder mills at Auschwitz, Birkenau, Tre- 
blinka, Maidanek, Sobibor, Dachau, Muthausen, Buchenwald, Bel- 
sen, and numerous other places, built and operated by the Germans 
with all their vaunted scientific thoroughness, were in circulation 
during the first year of the war, but it took the world a long time 
to take note of them and a still longer time to believe them. It was 
only on December 17, 1942, when the policy of mass murder had 
been in operation for at least two years, that Anthony Eden, Brit- 
ish Foreign Secretary, informed the House of Commons that the 
Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews was in full swing. In America, 
as well as in Britain and its dominions, official and unofficial voices 
were raised in horror and action was demanded to rescue as many 
of the doomed as possible. In the United States, Congress and 
state legislatures adopted resolutions; there were petitions and 
memoranda, public demonstrations and days of prayer and fasting, 
and compassion. 



650 THE WORLD WARS 

Finally, in April 1943, delegates representing the governments 
of the United States and Britain met in Bermuda to consider meas- 
ures of relief and rescue. Like the conference which took place five 
years earlier at Evian, it gave rise to many hopes, but, like its prede- 
cessor, it resulted only in lofty sentiments, vague assurances, and 
expressions of profound regrets. There were "technical" difficul- 
ties which the conferees found insurmountable: the British White 
Paper of 1939, which prevented the admission of the victims into 
Palestine; the immigration laws and lack of shipping, which pre- 
vented their admission into the United States. One Jewish body, 
more outspoken than the others, publicly branded the Bermuda 
Conference as "a cruel mockery ." 

In January 1944, President Roosevelt, yielding to continued 
pressure from Christian as well as Jewish sources, took more effec- 
tive action. He set up a War Refugee Board, consisting of his 
Secretary of State, Secretary of War, and Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, "to forestall the plan of the Nazis to exterminate all the Jews 
and other persecuted minorities in Europe." In the summer the 
Board, with the help of a number of Jewish organizations, among 
them the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Joint Distribution 
Committee, set up a rescue unit in Turkey which assisted in saving 
hundreds of Jewish lives. But there was a bitter tang in the accom- 
plishments of the War Refugee Board; they indicated what might 
have been achieved by the democracies toward the rescue, not of 
hundreds, but of thousands if the effort had not been so little and 
so late. 

5 

OTHER efforts conducted by Jewish groups and individuals, 
some of them, like the Vaad Hatzala (Rescue Commission), set up 
in America, but stemming mainly from the Yishuv, had been in 
progress which accomplished more. In fact, whatever was achieved 
by the War Refugee Board in Turkey was largely the result of the 
superb courage and resourcefulness of the couriers from the Yishuv. 
Soldiers from the Yishuv, fighting in North Africa, the Balkans, 
and Italy, lost no opportunity to bring succor to their people, as 
did Jewish partisan groups in France, Yugoslavia, Poland, and 
Russia. Men and women from the Yishuv managed to reach ghettos 



HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE 6$1 

and concentration camps, some by parachute, to rescue or to 
organize resistance. 

The time is not yet for a full account of the epic deeds that were 
performed, of the heroes and heroines who survived and of those 
who perished. But not even this incomplete account can omit the 
name of Enzo Sereni, scion of a distinguished Italian-Jewish family, 
a bold and luminous spirit, who had become a humble pioneer in 
Palestine. Chosen leader of a group of Jewish parachutists, Sereni 
insisted on sharing the perils of his followers. He parachuted be- 
hind the German lines in Italy, fell into the hands of the Nazis, and 
was done to death in the hideous murder mill at Dachau. Nor can 
this account omit the name of Hannah Senesch, a member of the 
same Palestine group, young, ardent, and, like Sereni, remarkably 
gifted, who performed a similar feat and met a similar fate in a 
prison in Hungary. Five others of the same group Zvi ben Yaakov, 
Abba Berditchev, Perez Goldstein, Raphael Reiss, and Habiba 
Reich-Martinovitch are also known to have perished while on 
rescue missions in Europe. The four lines of Hannah's last poem 
became part of her legacy to the youth of 'Palestine and of the 
whole world: 

Happy the match consumed igniting the -flame; 
Happy the flame ablaze in secret hearts; 
Happy the hearts in honor beating their last: 
Happy the match consumed that lighted the flame. 

An outstanding rescue undertaking was the Youth Aliyah, in- 
spired and led by Henrietta Szold, which up to the end of 1945 
succeeded in saving over 17,000 Jewish children and bringing 
them to Palestine. The effort, begun in 1933 with the rescue of 
children from Germany, came to embrace other lands where the 
German murder machine was planted, and reached out also into 
the concentration camps. 

Throughout Europe, particularly in France, Belgium, and the 
Netherlands, thousands of Jews, especially children, were kept 
from the bloody toils of the Gestapo by Christian neighbors and 
friends, many of whom, however, weaned the children away from 
their faith and insisted on retaining them. Switzerland became a 
city of refuge for thousands who escaped from France; and gen- 



652 THE WORLD WARS 

erous asylum was provided by Sweden to large numbers who fled 
across the channels from Denmark. Some 900 were received by the 
United States and lodged in a camp near Oswego, New York, under 
a plan to set up temporary havens for refugees in various lands 
"free ports," some advocates called them. It was a brave plan, de- 
signed to save lives without offending the immigration laws, but it 
fell pitifully short of the hopes it awakened. 



IN THE summer of 1943 came reports which the world 
found even more incredible than the first stories of the mass mur- 
ders. The surviving Jews of Poland, penned in their walled ghettos 
and extermination centers, had thrown down the gauntlet to their 
executioners! The first rumors, which by the fall of that year had 
been fully substantiated, were of a revolt in the ghetto of Warsaw. 
They were followed by accounts of uprisings in the ghettos of 
Bialystok, Bendin, Vilna, Cracow, Tarnopol, Stryj, Czestochowa, 
and other cities. Finally, it was learned that outbreaks had occurred 
in extermination centers also, in Treblinka, Sobibor, Trawniki, 
Poniatowka, and others. 

Jews were also playing an important part in the underground 
resistance of the occupied countries, particularly in Russia, France, 
Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. There were Jewish officers among 
the Maquis, men like Captain Robert Gamzon, and Captain Yechiel 
Ashkenazi-Bader. Moreover, partisan bands consisting entirely of 
Jews were operating in Poland, France, Greece and Russia, cutting 
the enemy's communications, killing murderers, rescuing victims 
and protecting them in hiding places in the forests. 

The spirit of the men and women who fought the enemy in the 
ghettos and forests of Poland is preserved in songs, some of which 
reached the ears of their brothers in other lands after the liberation. 
The following is a translation from the Yiddish of some of the 
lines of the Partisan Song of the Vilna Ghetto: 

Never say: "Alas, this journey is my last." 
Golden days are near though skies are overcast. 
The hour for which we long is not too far: 
Like a drum our tread will echo: "Here we are!" 



HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE 653 

This song was 'written do*wn 'with blood and lead; 
No song is this of birds from bondage fled. 
'Mid crashing 'walls a people sang this song: 
Revolvers clasped, they sang it bold and strong. 

7 

THE first steps in the uprising in Warsaw were taken in 
March 1942 on the initiative of Hechalutz, the Zionist pioneer 
organization. Fortified bunkers were prepared at various locations 
in the ghetto, other points were mined, and twenty-two combatant 
units were organized, eighteen consisting of Zionist groups and 
four affiliated with the Socialist Bund. Rifles, revolvers, hand 
grenades, and a few machine guns were obtained from friendly 
groups of the Polish underground, or purchased from Nazi soldiers 
and their Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and Latvian auxiliaries. Mordecai 
Anilevitch, leader of Hashomer Hatzair (The Young Watchman), 
one of the Hechalutz affiliates, was in general command. He was 
one of a number who left the comparative safety of the forests, 
where they operated as a guerrilla band, to provide leadership for 
the uprising. 

They and many of their comrades in Warsaw and elsewhere, 
nearly all of whom perished in the struggle, have already become 
legendary figures: Abraham Diamant, "the Corporal"; Abraham 
Eiger, who, though mortally wounded, shouted defiance to the 
attacking Nazis from a balcony, predicting their doom; Lutek 
Rothblatt, commander of the Akiba unit; Isaac Zuckerman, one of 
the few survivors; and numerous others. The units commanded by 
Zechariah Artzstein and Joseph Farber were the last to continue 
the struggle inside the Warsaw ghetto. In the Bialystok ghetto the 
leader of the uprising was Mordecai Tenenbaum-Tamarov, and 
the hero of Czestochowa was Mark Fallman. 

The names of many women should be included in the heroic 
roster: they were not behind the men in daring and endurance, 
and they were especially adept in the procurement of arms and as 
couriers between the ghettos and the partisan units in the forests. 
In Cracow ninety-three Orthodox girls, students of a Beth Jacob 
seminary, took their own lives so as not to fall into the hands of the 
foid enemy. Among the organizers and combatants in Warsaw and 



654 THE WORLD WARS 

elsewhere were the indomitable and ubiquitous Tosha Altman; 
Tzivya Lubetkin, "the mother of the ghetto," who survived the 
holocaust; the heroic sisters Frumka and Chantcha Plotnitzky, and 
many others. Tzivya was one of forty surviving Jewish fighters 
who, after crawling for twenty hours, without food or water, 
through the sewers of Warsaw, emerged on the "Aryan" side, and 
on May 12, 1943, escaped in a commandeered truck to a forest 
outside the city. 

Chaya Grossman was in the forefront of the uprising in Bialystok, 
and she too was of the few who survived. She attended the first 
postwar international Zionist conference, held in London in Sep- 
tember 1945, and addressing the delegates, she said: 

Battle was the thing for which we strove. The moment of 
battle was the moment for which we hoped and waited . . . 
Our movement was great and strong, and it was glorious also 
in defeat. To live is no great matter. One must know how 
to live and still more important how to die. We knew that 
with our death all would not be lost, that our death would be 
transformed into an uplifting force, into a Torah for the edu- 
cation of our young . . . And one thing more I would say to 
you, although I find it hard to bring to my feeble lips: the 
heroes of our people are not exactly its famous leaders; they 
are the common men and women, the humble and the silent 
. . . For us the war is not over. 

8 

ACTIVE resistance in Warsaw began January 18, 1943. The 
inmates of the ghetto thousands of them every day had been 
evacuated to the gas chambers and crematoriums of Treblinka, the 
victims being assured they were being taken to the Ukraine for 
farm labor. The deportations had begun in the summer of 1942, and 
by the spring of the following year, only some 40,000 were left of 
the 450,000 whom the Germans had impounded in the small en- 
closure. But those who remained had learned the truth, and they 
had organized to exact a price for their lives. 

On April 1 8, 1943, a pitched battle broke out between Jewish 
units and Nazi battalions equipped with artillery, tanks, bombing 



HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE 655 

planes, machine guns, and flame throwers. After more than a week 
of furious fighting at close quarters, the Nazis, finding the cost too 
high, withdrew and bombarded the ghetto with ground batteries 
and bombed it from the air. They set fire to the ghetto and on 
April 28, launched a force of 6,000 heavily armed men against the 
survivors. But it was not until two months later that the last flickers 
of resistance were extinguished. 

The following is one of the final paragraphs in a report of the 
uprising issued by the Jewish Fighting Organization of Warsaw 
and published by the World Jewish Congress in November 1944: 

With special equipment and bloodhounds the Germans pro- 
ceeded to locate the Jewish underground bunkers. On May 8 
they surrounded the main bunker of the Jewish Fighting Or- 
ganization and cut off all five of the entrances leading to it. 
In view of the hopelessness of the situation, and in order not 
to be taken alive by the Germans, Aryeh Wilner called upon 
his comrades to take their own lives. Lutek Rothblatt first shot 
his own mother then himself. In that bunker most of the 
members of the Organization perished, including Mordecai 
Anilevitch, the commander in chief. 

Strangely reminiscent of the last desperate resistance in Jerusalem 
against the legions of Titus nineteen centuries earlier, are these 
uprisings in the ghettos and extermination camps of Poland. In 
Jerusalem, after the Temple had been taken and burned, the Jews 
also fought in ruined buildings and streets and in the underground 
passages of the Upper City. There too a band of starved and ill- 
armed defenders defied the mightiest conquerors of the age, the 
Romans who, in the arts of torture and mass murder, however, 
were but tyros compared to the Germans of today. 

9 

THREE areas of this shrunken planet: Europe, America, and 
Palestine, may endure as centers of a creative Jewish life into the 
indefinite future, but the least likely to do so is Europe. Outside 
the Soviet Union, where all that is certain is that since the Com- 
munist Revolution, Jewish life has gone glimmering, only about 
1,250,000 Jews are thought to have been left alive on the continent, 



The Remnants of 
EUROPEAN JEWRY 

IN 1946 




SOVIET UNION 



BuchenwaL 
Theresie?ista^t 

' C2ECHO>< 



Lublin Sobifaor 
Maidonek 





Sfryj 



FRANCE 




HOLOCAUST IN EUROPE 657 

and their future has been a grave concern not only to themselves 
but to the governments of the world. The last months of the "war 
in Europe unlocked to the gaze of the Allied armies sweeping across 
Poland, Germany, and Austria the Gargantuan horrors of the con- 
centration camps and murder mills, and the civilian populations of 
the world were permitted to view a moderate sampling of those 
horrors in the cinemas. But in the various occupation zones of 
Germany and Austria hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors 
were, in 1947, still subsisting in displaced persons camps. They 
could not be repatriated to countries like Poland, which had be- 
come vast graveyards haunted by the ghosts of their kin and all 
their past, and where, moreover, the old animosity, far from having 
dissolved in the crucible of common suffering, emerged stronger 
and more malignant than ever. 

In Poland the fact that out of the pre-war community of more 
than three million Jews, only some thousands remained alive in 
the country, failed to slake the savage hostility with which the 
entire population seemed to be infected. Thousands of Jews -who 
managed to survive in Poland or returned from other lands, in- 
cluding the Soviet Union, where about 250,000 of them found 
refuge during the war, fled for their lives from a wave of violence 
which the government, itself menaced by the same fury, confessed 
itself unable to stem. Nor, apparently, were the religious leaders of 
the Polish people, men like Cardinal Hlond, able or even willing 
to stem it. After the liberation, hundreds of Jews, some of them 
men and women who had fought in the Polish underground, were 
murdered in Poland, the most sanguinary incident being the pogrom 
in Kielce in July 1946, which took the lives of more than forty of 
them. Nor were conditions in Hungary and Rumania, with their 
larger Jewish communities, much better, although in those countries 
the more violent forms of hostility were not so prevalent. 

Alas for the logic of those who reasoned that the Nazi doctrines 
would be buried in the ruins of vanquished Germany, and that the 
common struggle would erase old rancors and prejudices! Instead, 
fresh motives arose to sustain them: the Jewish possessions, for 
instance, which the Nazis had "Aryanized" and which the new 
owners were determined to hold, not to speak of the appalling 
misery that stalked the continent, making nren bitter and callous 



658 THE WORLD WARS 

and keen to find a pretext for denying to others a share of the little 
that was left. 

10 

BY ALL accounts, the majority of the Jewish survivors in 
Europe stood loins girded and staff in hand, eager to wander forth, 
and the land toward which their faces were turned was Palestine. 
With regard to the "displaced" Jews still languishing in the camps 
of Germany and Austria, the predominant urge toward Palestine 
was confirmed by many reports, official and unofficial. In August 
1945, three months after Germany's surrender, Earl G. Harrison, 
a member of the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, after 
a personal investigation at the behest of President Harry S. Tru- 
man, reported that the desire of the displaced Jews to leave 
Germany "is an urgent one . . . They want to be evacuated to 
Palestine now, just as other national groups are being repatriated to 
their homes." Very few Polish and Baltic Jews, he reported, wished 
to return to their countries, and for them and others who did not 
wish to return, "Palestine is definitely and pre-eminently the first 
choice." Nor was there any reason to believe that the great ma- 
jority of the other remnants in central and eastern Europe, with the 
exception of the Soviet Union, saw their future linked with that 
continent. 

The situation of those in the displaced persons camps in Ger- 
many, Austria, and Italy continued to deteriorate. They made 
brave efforts to organize their lives, though necessarily on a pro- 
visional basis, their principal sources of aid being the Joint Distribu- 
tion Committee, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Ad- 
ministration (UNRRA), and the American military authorities. 
The most buoyant groups consisted of those who were preparing 
themselves for life in Palestine. But the congestion and privations 
from which they still suffered, and, even more, the anguish of 
hopes so often betrayed or deferred, were not conducive to the 
building or preservation of morale. The heaviest blow sustained by 
them was the rejection by "the British government of the unanimous 
recommendation of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on 
Palestine, repeatedly urged by President Truman, to admit 100,000 
of them without delay into Palestine. Moreover, the population of 



CRIMSON DAWN 659 

the camps, as a result of the flight of Jews from the postwar terror 
in Poland and other countries, had greatly increased. In January 
1946, it was 80,000; by January 1947, it had risen to 256,000, 





CHAPTER SEVENTY 

Crimson Dawn 



UNIQUE among all the aggregates of the sorely stricken Jew- 
ish people was the Yishuv in Palestine: outwardly unique 
in possessing all the basic economic and cultural assets of 
a national commonwealth; inwardly unique in its freedom from 
the peculiar social malaise with which minorities are afflicted. Nu- 
merically the Yishuv, in 1947, was still a minority, constituting 
less than 40 per cent of the population. But it led in enterprise and 
achievement and, even more important, its spirit was dominated by 
the sense of being "at home.'* This profound and almost mystical 
feeling of "at homeness," the fine distillation of four millennia of 
physical and spiritual association, is the very soul of the Yishuv. 
It explains the absence among its members of that sense of sub- 
ordination and uneasiness which usually oppresses minorities, and 
it provides the key to their aspirations and reactions as a com- 
munity. 

The part which the Yishuv played in the war greatly enhanced 
its proud uniqueness and self-confidence. To all intents and pur- 
poses the Yishuv was one of the United Nations, its character as 
such underscored by the fact that in its devotion to the Allied cause 
it stood alone in an Arab world of aloofness or hostility, veiled and 
open. On the outbreak of war, a registration in the Yishuv for 
national service brought out 136,000 volunteers, 50,000 of them 
women. Its farm settlements, of which some forty new ones were 
established during the war years, increased their output, producing 
new crops to provide a substantial part of the food required by the 
armies based in Palestine. Its industrial facilities were expanded and 
geared to the manufacture of war materials, including cement, tex- 



660 THE WORLD WARS 

tiles, electrical appliances, leather and metal goods, chemicals and 
other items. Its considerable scientific resources were mobilized for 
war service in tropical medicine, surgery, meteorology, and the 
production of optical instruments and synthetic drugs and serums. 
Its efficient labor force built roads and camps, as well as fortifica- 
tions like those near the Syrian border, erected at top speed by 
10,000 Jewish workers toiling day and night. 

But it was the Yishuv's military contribution which, more than 
anything else, emphasized its distinctiveness among the Jewish 
communities of the world. All of these communities gave their full 
share of fighting men to the armed forces of the United Nations, 
their total numbering a million men and women, but only those 
from the Yishuv were able to serve in units of their own with their 
own insignia and under their own flag. The right to do so did not 
come easily or quickly, and the reason was political rather than 
military: die British government was too careful of Arab sensi- 
bilities. Jewish volunteers were at first received in auxiliary or 
service units only. Gradually, however, the combatant ranks were 
opened to them, and the principle of "parity," under which an 
equal number of Jewish and Arab units were to be formed, had to 
be abandoned because Arabs were not eager to enlist. 

By the winter of 1944 the number of Palestinian Jews in the 
British forces, among them 2,000 women in the Auxiliary Terri- 
torial Service, had grown to 33,000, and they had seen service in 
France, in Greece and Crete, in Cyprus and Malta, in North Africa 
from Egypt to Tunisia, in Abyssinia and Eritrea where their com- 
mandos gained special distinction. Their language was Hebrew and 
their non-commissioned officers, as well as many of their commis- 
sioned officers, were Jews. There were other Allied contingents in 
the British forces of the Middle East: Czech, Greek, Polish, and 
the British information service made the world aware of them. 
The Jewish contingent was as large or larger than the others, with 
a long and heroic record of service, but it took several years before 
the British ventured to call them Palestinian Jews rather than just 
Palestinians. 

In Britain and America an unremitting agitation was conducted 
to authorize the formation of a large Jewish fighting force, but it 
met with even greater resistance than the similar demands that had 



CRIMSON DAWN 66 1 

been made during the First World War. Finally, however, in 
September 1944, the British government announced the formation 
of a Jewish Brigade "to take part in active operations," its flag to 
be the blue and white banner of Zion, and its shoulder insignia of 
the same distinctive design. The Brigade, commanded by Brigadier 
Ernest F. Benjamin, went into action against the Nazis in Italy in 
March 1945, took part in the Allied sweep into Austria and Ger- 
many and, before its demobilization, was garrisoned in Belgium 
and Holland. "The Jewish Brigade," said Prime Minister Churchill 
to the House of Commons on May 2, 1945, when he announced the 
surrender of all German troops in Italy, "fought in the front line 
with courage, and gave an excellent account of themselves." 

There were indeed no keener soldiers than the fighting men 
from the Yishuv. Some of their individual and group exploits have 
been recognized and recorded, but many more will remain un- 
known. Only a f ew can be recorded in this chronicle. David Raziel, 
of rare courage and resourcefulness, lost his life in Iraq where he 
headed a group on a secret mission for the British during the pro- 
Axis revolt of that country in 1941. Twenty-three young men of 
the Yishuv, led by a British officer, all perished in a sabotage mis- 
sion in Syria. The British and Free French invasion of Syria was 
vanguarded by a group of fifty scouts from Jewish outposts in 
Upper Galilee who, with supreme courage, prevented Vichy troops 
from blowing up two bridges that were vital to the advance of the 
invaders. That feat was equaled by other exploits in Syria, Greece, 
and especially Eritrea and Abyssinia, where Jewish commandos, 
operating in suicide squads, played an important part in the capture 
of Keren, Amba Alagi, and Gondar. 

Jewish combat and auxiliary units played an important part also 
in the seesaw battles of the North African deserts, including the 
long siege of Tobruk, the initial deadlock at El Alamein, and the 
sweep of the Eighth Army westward which destroyed the redoubt- 
able Nazi Afrika Korps and saved the Allied cause from disaster. 
In these operations Jewish commandos performed exploits unsur- 
passed by any others. From Tobruk to Tripoli the- supply and 
transport companies, to which General Montgomery paid a glow- 
ing tribute, were mainly Jewish; and roads and railroads were 
repaired and superintended by Jewish units working under a con- 



662 THE WORLD WARS 

stant haft of bombs. Their senior officer, who was killed in the line 
of duty, was Brigadier Frederick Kisch, Chief Engineer of the 
Eighth Army, a gallant soldier and veteran Zionist leader. 



THROUGH all the -war years, however, the Yishuv lay under 
an incubus even more galling than the sorrows, toils, and anxieties 
which the war imposed. It was the White Paper of May 1939. That 
instrument had no legal validity, having been rejected by the Man- 
dates Commission of the League of Nations, but the government 
chose to adhere to it with a rigor which took no account of the 
catastrophe that befell the Jews of Europe. Thousands of fugitives 
fleeing from the most fiendish barbarism ever visited on human 
beings were denied admittance to the land where, they had once 
been assured, they could live "as of right and not on sufferance," 
their National Home. The result was that large numbers of them 
perished who might have been saved. An explanation of this cruel 
course has been offered that would sound cynical, were it not so 
plausible: Britain, fighting the Nazis, took the loyalty of the Jews 
for granted; it was the Arabs it had to appease, their leaders always 
hovering on the threshold of betrayal and sometimes, as in the pro- 
Axis revolt of Iraq in 1941, stepping over it. 

A series of tragedies resulted, some of which even touched the 
heart of a world grown callous to human suffering. They will be 
remembered in association with the names of ships, the Darien, 
the Salvador, the Pacific, the Milos, the Patria, the Atlantic, the 
Strumct, most of them small, unseaworthy craft, overcrowded with 
fugitives fleeing from torture and death. The Salvador foundered 
in the Sea of Marmara, 200 of her passengers going down with her. 
Some 1600 refugees who arrived on the Atlantic were interned 
upon landing, then exiled to the Island of Mauritius in the Indian 
Ocean. The Patria, crowded with 1900 refugees slated for deporta- 
tion, blew up in the harbor of Haifa with a loss of more than 250 
lives. Even more grim was the tragedy of the Struma. That small 
vessel, bearing 769 fugitives who were denied admittance to Pales- 
tine, was ordered away from Turkey, and in February 1942 she 
went down in the Black Sea. Only one of her passengers survived. 

In the world at large, with nations going down and cities crum- 



CRIMSON DAWN 663 

bling to rubble, those tragedies, which one touch of humanity or 
justice would have averted, produced only passing tremors. But 
the Yishuv was shocked and outraged. The victims were its own 
kith and kin, shut out without warrant in law or morals from their 
only place of refuge. The tension was further aggravated by ruth- 
less military and police raids in search of arms. There was bloodshed 
followed by arrests, and heavy penalties were imposed in an at- 
tempt to disarm the Jews and leave them helpless in the face of 
Arab hostility and official chicanery. 

Neither the end of the war, nor the victory of the Labor party, 
nor the pleas of the survivors of the concentration camps, nor the 
appeals of American public opinion led by President Truman him- 
self, brought any relaxation to the rigor with which the White 
Paper was enforced. And, as if to make the intentions of the Man- 
datory Power still plainer, the former mufti of Jerusalem, organizer 
of the bloody attacks against the Yishuv in 1929 and 1936, was 
permitted to escape from France and establish himself in Egypt, 
where he assumed the direction of his followers as chairman of the 
Arab Higher Committee of Palestine. During the war, the mufti 
had been a close collaborator of the Fascists and Nazis and was 
directly involved in the policy of exterminating the Jews of Europe. 
The solemn official disavowals failed to convince the Yishuv or 
the world at large that his return had not come about with the 
connivance of the authorities. In addition, a number of his lieu- 
tenants, whose record of service to the Nazi cause was not less 
unsavory, were also permitted to return and begin where they had 
left off in 1939. 

The course of the Labor government, its Foreign Office headed 
by a man who saw fit to season his declarations of policy with 
cynical anti-Semitic jibes, was particularly painful to the Yishuv, 
for the Labor Party had repeatedly repudiated the White Paper 
and demanded unhampered opportunities for the creation of a 
Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine. The Yishuv's reply to the 
policy of the Labor government, as announced on November 13,* 
1945, by Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, was firm and unequivo- 
cal. It rejected the White Paper and the concept of "illegal" Jewish 
immigration, and it would continue, it declared, to assist Jews to 
enter their national home and establish themselves in it. British 



664 THE WORLD WARS 

troops and armament were poured into the country, ostensibly to 
preserve peace between Jews and Arabs. It was charged, however, 
that Britain's real object was to safeguard its imperial interests in 
the Middle East. Observers agreed that never before had there 
existed such peaceful and cooperative relations between the two 
communities of the country. 

3- 

WITH the downfall of the Axis, three new factors came to 
the fore which bedeviled the Palestine situation. The first was the 
formation, under British tutelage, of the Arab League. The second 
was the anxiety that arose both in England and the United States 
over their vast oil interests in Arab countries, particularly in Saudi 
Arabia. The third was the growing rivalry between Britain and the 
United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other, 
a rivalry which produced tension in many areas of the globe, in- 
cluding the Middle East. 

The Arab League, contrived by the British as an instrument of 
imperial policy, is a loose association of the seven Arab states of 
the Near East Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, 
Yemen, and Trans-Jordan, the first six of whom were, in 1947, 
members of the United Nations. The states of the Arab League 
appear to be held together only by their hostility to Zionism. Their 
differences, in fact, are more pronounced than their agreements, es- 
pecially those between Saudi Arabia, ruled by King ibn-Saud, who 
in 1924 had ousted the Hashemite King Husein, and Iraq and 
Trans-Jordan, both still headed by Hashemite rulers. But the Brit- 
ish hoped that their common antagonism to Zionism would be use- 
ful as a diversion from the mounting clamor in Arab countries, in 
Egypt especially, against continued British control. The anti- 
Jewish agitation which flowed from the League led, in November 
1945, to violent demonstrations in Egypt, marked by indiscriminate 
looting, and to bloody pogroms in Tripolitania, outbreaks which, 
it was charged, were fomented for political objectives and were 
not suppressed by the British authorities as effectively as they could 
have been. 

An even more important reason for the reluctance on the part 
of Britain and America also to offend Arab sensibilities was to be 



CRIMSON DAWN 665 

found in the huge oil interests which they control in the Middle 
East. In 1947, United States interests, through the Arabian- Ameri- 
can Oil Company, owned all the oil rights in Saudi Arabia, includ- 
ing the Bahrein Islands, and a fourth of the rights in Iraq and 
Trans-Jordan, with total reserves estimated at nine to twelve billion 
barrels. Arabian oil, it was argued, was vital for the operations of 
the naval and air forces of both countries, and government officials 
and oil men professed to see the Arabs turning these resources over 
to Russia the moment Arab demands with respect to Palestine were 
rejected. 

The fear of Russian aggression dominated the international scene, 
and the Soviet Union was represented as wooing the Arabs, the 
latter ready to yield to Communist blandishments unless Britain 
and America wooed them with greater ardor. It was a fallacious 
oversimplification of a complex situation, for the feudal Arab rulers 
desired anything but Communist domination, while many of those 
familiar with the other grave problems of the Arab states, both 
internal and external, discounted their apparently overshadowing 
interest in Palestine. 

4 

BUT even before the war ended, and in growing measure 
as the months that followed rolled up into years, a new factor came 
to the fore in Palestine, a force that stirred and amazed the entire 
world. It was the underground Jewish Resistance Movement, con- 
sisting of three military organizations: the Haganah (Defense), em- 
bracing most of the able-bodied men and women of the Yishuv; 
the Irgun Zvai Leumi (National Military Organization), faithful 
to the militant spirit of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Re- 
visionism; and the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, better known 
as the Stern Group, a smaller band of avowed terrorists. "There 
exists in this country a secret armed Jewish force," says a memo- 
randum submitted March 25, 1946, by the commander in chief of 
the Haganah to the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. 

The armed Jewish forces and the spirit which created them were, 
however, not new. They harked back to the Hashomer, the corps 
of mounted guards for the protection of Jewish settlements which 
came into being in the first decade of the century, when the coun- 



666 THE WORLD WARS 

try was still under Turkish rule. They harked still further back to 
the self-defense movement in the Russian Pale after the Kishinev 
pogrom in 1903. As the national militia of the Yishuv, the Haganah 
came into existence when the Jewish Legion was disbanded after 
the First World War, its spirit and purpose stamped upon it by 
men like the daring and high-minded Eliahu Golomb ( 1 893-1945), 
one of its founders. And in 1921, 1929, and 1936, years when the 
Yishuv was the target of increasingly violent assaults usually met 
by the government with forces that were too little and too late, 
the Haganah went through ordeals of fire which left it stronger 
than before. Finally, to understand not only the antecedents of the 
Jewish resistance movement in Palestine, but also its spirit of grim 
determination, often expressing itself in desperate deeds, the latest 
and greatest catastrophe sustained by the Jewish people in its 
entire history must be kept in view. Six million martyrs in Europe 
called into action a new generation of heroes in Palestine. 

We will not permit the implementation of any solution that 
puts an end to the last hope of our people [says the memoran- 
dum] . To liquidate the Resistance Movement, it will be neces- 
sary to liquidate the entire Jewish community in the country 
and to uproot the eternal love of Zion among the Jews of the 
world . . . We are the militant Jewish people . . . We will 
confront the British government with a choice: Accept our 
vital demands or destroy us. 

The memorandum goes on to examine the threats of an Arab- 
Moslem uprising in Palestine and other countries, and declares them 
to be groundless. "We ourselves can overcome any attack or trouble 
from that quarter [the Arabs in Palestine] without assistance from 
British or American forces." And the possibility of invasion from 
the Arab countries is practically ruled out by their internal prob- 
lems and international tensions. Nor does the memorandum find 
the fear of a Soviet-Arab alliance any more real. "There is not a 
single Arab government," it states, "that draws its support from 
the masses of the people. Feudalism still thrives in Arab lands, and 
an abyss separates the enslaved and impoverished masses from the 
ruling groups. Any penetration of Soviet influence into Arab 
lands constitutes a danger to the dynasties and ruling classes." 



CRIMSON DAWN 667 

5 

IT BECAME increasingly evident that the strength, daring, 
and skill of the resistance movement would make the apparent aim 
of the British government to stifle the Zionist enterprise ex- 
tremely difficult to carry out. With the conclusion of the war, 
acts of sabotage and reprisal, most of them the work of the Irgun 
and Stern Group, and involving loss of life, multiplied. Even before 
the war was over in November 1944 Lord Moyne, who had 
been the colonial secretary when the Patria and Struma went down, 
was assassinated. There were attacks on military installations, in- 
cluding airfields; on police stations, railway lines, trains, and pipe- 
lines; and kidnapings of British officers who were held as hostages. 
On June 16, 1946, the Palmach, striking force of the Haganah, 
blew up the five bridges across the Jordan River, isolating Trans- 
Jordan which the British had transformed into a puppet kingdom. 
On July 22, 1946, came the most disastrous act of the Irgun 
the blowing up, with a loss of nearly a hundred lives, of the 
British Army Headquarters and the Secretariat of the Palestine 
Government, both located in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. 
Early in 1947 an officers' club in Jerusalem was blown up 
with sixteen dead and thirteen wounded, and on May 4, 1947, 
the Irgun blasted open the prison at Acre, liberating more than 
200 prisoners. 

The government retaliated with attacks on Jewish colonies 
and searches for arms, in the course of which property was ruth- 
lessly destroyed and lives were lost. In November 1945, British 
troops fired on colonists at Givat Hayim, Shefayim, and Rishpon, 
killing 8 of them and wounding 75. The army made wholesale 
arrests, and imposed curfews and other restrictions which weighed 
heavily on the life of the Yishuv. Palestine, to all intents and 
purposes, became a land ruled by the army and police. On a 
single day, June 29, 1946, the army arrested over 2,700 men and 
women, including officers of the Jewish Agency and other 
leaders of the Yishuv, and occupied the Agency headquarters m 
Jerusalem. The Vaad 'Leumi (National Jewish Council) responded 
with a proclamation of non-cooperation with the government. 

After the attack on the officers' club in Jerusalem, martial law 



668 THE WORLD WARS 

was imposed on Tel Aviv and other Jewish areas. It affected 
almost half the population of the Yishuv and was not lifted until 
March 17, 1947, fifteen days later. The British claimed that the 
measure had proved successful: the guilty, they announced, had 
been discovered with the aid of informers. But the Jews knew 
that the claim was an idle boast. They were not prepared to turn 
informers for a government which, by destroying the last hope 
of the remnants in Europe, was, they maintained, itself responsi- 
ble for the terror. 



BUT the Haganah, the largest and strongest of the three 
underground forces, while refusing to adopt a course which 
would have plunged the Yishuv into civil war, deplored and 
denounced the acts of terror committed by the other two, as did 
also the Zionist Congress, the responsible leaders of the Yishuv, 
and the Jewish Agency. The Haganah concentrated on a policy 
of resistance which, it claimed, was constructive rather than 
destructive. This policy consisted first of organizing and con- 
ducting the "illegal" immigration into Palestine, and second, of 
extending and protecting Jewish colonization in the country. 

The first involved the creation of a far-flung network of 
activities in Europe, in ships both in port and on the high seas, 
along the coast of Palestine, and in the settlements. It involved 
also operations of a military character, such as the destruction of 
radar stations and coast guard installations, and the mining of 
deportation ships by a squad of specially trained underwater 
swimmers who became famous as "the frog-men." Scores of 
ships, large and small, filled with refugees undeterred by peril 
or hardship, attempted to run the formidable blockade established 
by the British navy and air force. Some were successful: how 
many and how large the number of refugees they landed has of 
course remained secret. Dozens of others were intercepted, their 
passengers, usually after a violent encounter with naval boarding 
parties, taken to Haifa, and, beginning August 1946, transferred 
to detention camp^ in Cyprus. 

The second part of the Haganah resistance program, the pro- 
tection and extension of Jewish colonization, involved operations 



CRIMSON DAWN 669 

equally daring and spectacular. On March 5, 1946, for example, 
British troops occupied Birya, a tiny settlement and labor camp 
in Galilee, and removed and imprisoned its 24 settlers. Nine days 
later, 3,000 unarmed men and women of all ages and classes 
streamed to Birya to reclaim and rebuild it. There was tension 
and danger and more demolition, but in the end the British had 
to allow 20 occupants to remain. But even more dramatic was 
the role played by the Haganah in the establishment of new 
settlements, especially in the Negeb. On a single day, October 6, 
1946, but after months of meticulous preparations, eleven new 
points were planted in that region. Immigration and coloniza- 
tion, the primary factors in the growth and safety of the Yishuv, 
became the two major concerns of the Haganah. Nor was the 
life of the 1 Yishuv in every other sphere, industrial, commercial, 
and cultural, seriously impaired by the disturbed state of the 
country and the repressive measures of the government. 

7 

IT BECAME increasingly clear, however, that Britain's policy 
would not lead to the pacification of the country or to a solution 
of its political problem. Having repudiated the unanimous report 
and recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of In- 
quiry, the government proposed a cantonization or federalization 
plan which still denied the Jews control of immigration and col- 
onization. Even among the moderates the conviction grew that the 
Britain of Lord Balf our and Lloyd George was gone beyond recall; 
and the Twenty-second Zionist Congress, held in December 1 946 
in the Swiss city of Basel, rich with memories of Theodor Herzl 
and the early days of the movement, voted Chaim Weizmann out 
of power. For nearly thirty years he had been the world leader of 
Zionism and the persistent advocate and symbol of cooperation with 
England. The federalization plan was rejected by the Jewish 
Agency, and it was rejected also by the Arab leaders who remained 
unyielding in their demand for the immediate independence of 
Palestine and the total stoppage of Jewish immigration. 

Finally, the government confessed its helplessness, and called 
upon 'the United Nations to undertake a solution of the problem 
"of the future government of Palestine." In May 1947, after a spe- 



670 THE WORLD WARS 

cial session lasting three weeks and packed with tension and drama, 
the Assembly of the United Nations named a committee of inquiry 
of its own, with instructions to report back in time for the regular 
session of the Assembly in September of the same year. The high 
point of the special session was a declaration by Andrei Gromyko, 
the delegate from the Soviet Union, favoring either a bi-national 
state in Palestine or a Jewish state in part of the country. The 
declaration represented a complete reversal of what was believed to 
be the Russian position, and appeared to eliminate the fear which 
was so frequently voiced by British ministers, and which no doubt 
haunted also many of the officials of the State Department in 
Washington, that a pro-Jewish policy in Palestine would throw 
the Arabs into the arms of Communist Russia. 

8 

IN THE summer of 1947, while the United Nations Special 
Committee on Palestine was still conducting its inquiry, the world 
witnessed a remarkable dramatization of the tragedy and heroism 
of the homeless survivors seeking asylum in their promised home- 
land. The spectacle was provided by the Labor Government itself 
in an attempt to enforce a new policy under which the "illegals" 
were not to be taken to Cyprus, but returned to the country 
whence they had sailed. 

On July 1 1 the Exodus 1947, a former American coastal vessel 
crowded with more than 4,500 men, women, and children bound 
for Palestine, slipped out of a southern French port. Seven days 
later, the ship was intercepted by a British squadron of five de- 
stroyers and a cruiser, and, although well outside the territorial 
waters of Palestine, was rammed and boarded. A battle ensued in 
which three of those on board, including William Bernstein, an 
American crew member, were killed, and seventeen wounded. 

Three British prison ships then carried the "illegals" back to 
France, but they refused to disembark. Only in Palestine, they de- 
clared, would they land willingly, and the French government, 
while it offered them hospitality, would not permit the British to 
force them to accept it. For nearly a month the grim resolution 
of the refugees, huddled behind the barbed wire of the prison ships 
off the coast of France, stood pitted against the will of the British 



CRIMSON DAWN 671 

government. Early in September the British gave up the duel. The 
ships sailed to the British occupation zone in Germany where, after 
desperate resistance, the refugees were forced ashore and taken to 
detention camps. The heroic odyssey of the Exodus 1^47 produced 
a profound impression throughout the world. 

9 

IN THE meantime, the United Nations Special Committee 
on Palestine completed its labors and published its conclusions. It 
agreed unanimously that the British Mandate should be terminated 
at once, and the majority recommended that Palestine be parti- 
tioned into independent Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem 
and its environs internationalized and governed under the authority 
of the United Nations. The majority plan provided also that the 
economic unity of the country be recognized and safeguarded in 
respect to transit and communication facilities, currency, customs, 
and irrigation and reclamation projects. 

On September 16, 1947 the United Nations General Assembly 
opened its sessions at Flushing Meadows, and on November 29 
came the decision. With some changes, the Assembly, by a vote of 
33 to 13, adopted the majority report, the most important change 
being the removal of the Arab city of Jaffa from the Jewish state. 
The large vote in favor of an independent Jewish state 7 more 
than the necessary two-thirds was important enough, but even 
more significant was the presence among the 33 of the two leading 
world-powers, the United States and the Soviet Union. 

The ten weeks before the final vote were tense with uncertainty 
and suspense. Palestine, one of the major problems of the postwar 
world, became the touchstone of the capacity of the United Nations 
for constructive action. For the first time the United States and 
Russia stood together on an important issue, and throughout the 
world men hailed their agreement as a good augury for the peace 
of the world as a whole. The speeches delivered by the Moslem 
delegates rang with defiance and menace. The Jewish spokesmen 
Chaim Weizmann, Abba Hillel Silver, and Moshe Shertok 
urged the adoption of the majority report as a measure of com- 
pensation, incomplete though it was, for the millennial hopes and 



672 THE WORLD WARS 

sufferings of the Jewish people and their toil and sacrifice in 
Palestine. 

In Jewish communities throughout the world the decision re- 
leased a wave of joy and thanksgiving. Longstanding antagonisms 
seemed to dissolve and vanish. No event since the year 70 C.E., 
when the Romans destroyed the Jewish state, appeared so momen- 
tous. A new era had dawned in the history of the eternal people, 
the era of the Third Commonwealth. 

But a sober realization of the problems and perils that would 
have to be met went hand in hand with the jubilation. The Jewish 
people, and the Yishuv In particular, had no illusions about it. And 
not a few, particularly in the Yishuv, even took the epochal deci- 
sion with reserve, having known the fickleness of political prom- 
ises and remembering the warning of the Psalmist: "Put not your 
trust in princes." Grim days were ahead for the Third Jewish 
Commonwealth in the immediate future, and the task of establish- 
ing its firm foundations would demand a heavy price. But the hand 
of the Lord was again upon His people and there could be no 
retreat. 

ID 

THE supreme test of the Yishuv began promptly on the 
morrow of the United Nations decision. Thousands of well-armed 
and organized Arab mercenaries from the neighboring countries 
were allowed by the British to enter Palestine. Outlying Jewish 
settlements in Galilee and the Negeb were attacked, the area 
between Jaffa and Tel Aviv became a battleground, and in Jerusalem 
the Jewish quarter of the Old City found itself beleaguered. De- 
structive bombings and road attacks took a large toll, and the 
number of casualties on both sides continued to rise. The policy 
frankly pursued by the Mandatory Power was one of non-coopera- 
tion with the United Nations decision; its conduct gave aid and 
comfort to the Arab attackers and hampered the efforts of the Jews 
to defend themselves. 

As the months passed and the tempo of battle mounted in 
Palestine, the hardest blow against the Yishuv was struck in the 
Security Council of the United Nations. With startling suddenness 



CRIMSON DAWN 673 

the government of the United States reversed its stand on partition. 
By the middle of April, with the termination of the mandate set for 
May 15, the General Assembly was again in special session at Lake 
Success to consider an American proposal to place Palestine under 
UN trusteeship. But while the Assembly, with its committees, sub- 
committees, and international rivalries, was pursuing its desultory 
course, the military arm of the Yishuv took the decision out of its 
hands by making partition a reality. In a series of brilliant actions, 
the Haganah, with the Irgun now operating under its command, 
dealt the Arab bands a crippling blow at the Battle of Mishmar 
Haemek, reopened the vital road to Jerusalem, seized the cities of 
Haifa, Tiberias, Safed, and Beisan, as well as numerous strategic 
Arab villages, and compelled Jaffa to surrender. The mandatory 
regime, in the meantime, was liquidating its authority and functions, 
and doing it in a manner apparently designed to leave the country 
in a state of chaos. The Yishuv, however, had in readiness for 
May 15 a Provisional Council of Government and an administrative 
apparatus of its own. 

II 

THE Yishuv had something else in readiness: the proclama- 
tion of its independence and statehood. On May 14, 1948, David 
Ben Gurion, premier of the Provisional Government, read the 
following declaration of sovereign statehood to the members of the 
National Council meeting in Tel Aviv: 

The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. 
Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. 
Here they achieved independence and created a culture of na- 
tional and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the 
Bible to the world. 

Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful 
to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to 
pray and hope for their return and restoration of their national 
freedom. 

Impelled by this historic association, Jews strove throughout 
the centuries to go back to the land of their fathers and regain 



674 THE WORLD WARS 

statehood. In recent decades they returned in their masses. 
They reclaimed a wilderness, revived their language, built cities 
and villages, and established a vigorous and ever-growing com- 
munity, with its own economic and cultural life. They sought 
peace, yet were ever prepared to defend themselves. They 
brought blessings of progress to all inhabitants of the country. 

In the year 1897 the first Zionist Congress, inspired by 
Theodor HerzFs vision of a Jewish state, proclaimed the right 
of the Jewish people to a national revival in their own country. 

This right was acknowledged by the Balf our Declaration of 
November 2, 1917, and reaffirmed by the mandate of the 
League of Nations, which gave explicit international recogni- 
tion to the historic connection of the Jewish people with 
Palestine and their right to reconstitute their national home. 

The Nazi holocaust which engulfed millions of Jews in 
Europe proved anew the urgency of the re-establishment of 
the Jewish state, which would solve the problem of Jewish 
homelessness by opening the gates to all Jews and lifting the 
Jewish people to equality in the family of nations. 

Survivors of the European catastrophe as well as Jews from 
other lands, claiming their right to a life of dignity, freedom 
and labor, and undeterred by hazards, hardships and obstacles, 
have tried unceasingly to enter Palestine. 

In the second world war, the Jewish people in Palestine made 
a full contribution in the struggle of freedom-loving nations 
against the Nazi evil. The sacrifices of their soldiers and efforts 
of their workers gained them ride to rank with the peoples who 
founded the United Nations. 

On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly of the 
United Nations adopted a resolution for re-establishment of an 
independent Jewish State in Palestine and called upon inhab- 
itants of the country to take such steps as may be necessary on 
their part to put the plan into effect. This recognition by the 
United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish 
their independent state may not be revoked. 

It is, moreover, the self-evident right of the Jewish people 
to be a nation, as all other nations, in its own sovereign state. 



CRIMSON DAWN 675 

Accordingly we, the members of the National Council, 
representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist 
movement of the world, met together in solemn assembly by 
virtue of the natural and historic right of the Jewish people 
and the resolution of the General Assembly of the United 
Nations, hereby proclaim the establishment of the Jewish state 
in Palestine, to be called Israel. 

We hereby declare that as from the termination of the man- 
date at midnight this night of the i4th to i5th of May, 1948, 
and until the setting up of duly elected bodies of the state in 
accordance with a constitution to be drawn up by a Con- 
stituent Assembly not later than the ist day of October, 1948, 
the present National Council shall act as the Provisional State 
Council, and its executive organ, the National Administration, 
shall constitute the provisional government of the State of 
Israel. 

The State of Israel will be open to Jewish immigration and to 
the ingathering of our exiles; will promote the development of 
the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on 
precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew- 
prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of 
all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex; will 
guarantee full freedom of conscience, -worship, education and 
culture; will safeguard the sanctity and inviolability of shrines 
and holy places of all religions, and will dedicate itself to the 
principles of the Charter of the United Nations. 

We appeal to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people 
in the building of its state and to admit Israel into the family 
of nations. 

In the midst of wanton aggression we call upon the Arab 
inhabitants of the State of Israel to return to the ways of peace 
and play their part in the development of the state, with full 
and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies 
and institutions, provisional or permanent. 

We offer peace and amity to all neighboring states and their 
peoples, and invite them to cooperate with the independent 
Jewish nation for the common good of all. The State of Israel 



676 THE WORLD WARS 

is ready to contribute its full share to the peaceful progress and 
reconstruction of the Middle East. 

Our call goes out to the Jewish people all over the world to 
rally to our side in the task of immigration and development, 
and to stand by us in the great struggle for the fulfillment of 
the dream of generations the redemption of Israel. 

Testifying to our faith in the Rock of Israel, we now affix 
our signatures to this Proclamation at a meeting of the Provi- 
sional State Council held on the ancestral soil in the city of 
Tel Aviv this Eve-of-Sabbath day, the fifth of the month of 
lyyar, 5708 (Friday, May 14, 1948). 

Now the nation was reborn on its ancient soil, the first country 
to extend recognition to Israel being the United States of America. 
Before it still loomed a hard struggle, perhaps the hardest, the battle 
against the Arab states on its borders. But the issue of that contest, 
the Yishuv felt, lay chiefly in the strength of its own right arm and 
in the might of its own spirit. 

12 

IN TOE United States the great majority of the community, 
supported by the public opinion of the country as a whole, stood 
firmly behind the Yishuv, A cross section poll of American Jews, 
taken in November 1945 by the public opinion analyst, Elmo 
Roper, revealed that 80. i per cent favored a Jewish state, 9.4 per 
cent were undecided, and only 10.5 per cent were opposed. In the 
presidential campaign of 1944, the platforms of both major parties 
contained planks in support of a Jewish Commonwealth in Palestine, 
and in December 1945 a joint resolution was adopted by both 
houses of Congress urging that Palestine "be opened for free entry 
of Jews into that country . . . that they may freely proceed with 
the upbuilding of Palestine as the Jewish national home." 

Early in July 1947, the leading Zionist body in the United States, 
the Zionist Organization of America, held its jubilee convention. 
It was fifty years since Theodor Herzl stood before the first con- 
gress of the scattered people assembled in Basel to launch the move- 
ment for national restoration. For people and movement they were 



CRIMSON DAWN 677 

years of cataclysmic change and staggering disasters, but also of 
abiding hope and impressive achievement. The community in 
America had become the principal, perhaps the only, reservoir of 
strength in the Diaspora, and the Yishuv in Palestine had become 
a de facto Jewish commonwealth. 

The movement in America had made enormous strides. The 
convention was informed that the membership of the organization 
had risen to over 225,000; together with the other Zionist bodies 
the Hadassah Women's Zionist Organization, the Mizrachi, the 
Labor Wing of the movement and others the number of organ- 
ized Zionists in the country was well over half a million. As presi- 
dent of the organization, the convention elected Emanuel Neu- 
mann, for many years one of the foremost spokesmen of the 
movement and a leader in the affairs of the American and world 
organizations, as well as in the work of reclamation in Palestine. 

13 

m ITS challenge to the Axis, American Jews rallied to their 
government with an eagerness not exceeded by any other group. 
On the home front as well as in the armed services, their contribu- 
tion, in quality as well as quantity, is on the record. They served 
in the government and its war agencies, they were in the front 
ranks of the War Loan drives, they gave blood and money to the 
Red Cross, they cooperated eagerly in all civilian defense measures. 
A striking number of Jewish names are on the list of the scientists 
who contributed to the production of the atomic bomb, the weapon 
that gave Japan its coup de grdce and has since then confronted the 
world with a new and overshadowing problem. 

In the armed forces, according to the statistics of the National 
Jewish Welfare Board, American Jews, men and women, num- 
bered approximately 550,000, or slightly less than 12 per cent of 
the estimated population of the community. As in previous wars, 
that percentage was higher than the corresponding one for the 
country as a whole, the ratio of the armed forces to the general 
population having been estimated at about 10 per cent. Some 60 
per cent of Jewish physicians under forty-five years of age were 
in uniform, and a high proportion of the rabbis served as chap- 



678 THE WORLD WARS 

lains. Over 25,000 Jewish soldiers and sailors were decorated for 
valor: they were among the winners of the Congressional Medal of 
Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, and other awards. Nearly 
8,000 were killed on the field of battle, among them the gallant 
Major General Maurice Rose, Commander of the Third Armored 
Division. 

The two years following the war produced impressive evidence 
of the responsiveness of American Jews to the plight of the rem- 
nants of their people in Europe and to the need of strengthening 
and expanding the Yishuv. There was an unprecedented outpour- 
ing for relief in Europe and reclamation in Palestine. In 1946, a 
quota of $100,000,000 for those purposes was oversubscribed, and 
for 1947 the goal was fixed at $170,000,000. The funds, raised by 
the United Jewish Appeal, were allocated to the Joint Distribution 
Committee for its network of activities in Europe and North 
Africa; to the United Palestine Appeal for land purchase by the 
Jewish National Fund and for the immigration and colonization 
program of the Palestine Foundation Fund (Keren Hayesod) ; and 
to the United Service for New Americans for assistance to refugee 
immigrants in the United States. 

14 

THE Second World War has made the American Jewish 
community a dominant factor in the destiny of the Jewish people, 
just as the vital part played by America in the defeat of Germany 
and the supreme part it played in the defeat of Japan have made 
the United States the dominant force in the world. How will the 
community utilize its power and opportunity? How will it meet 
the obligations which power imposes? 

The same questions are being anxiously asked about the role of 
America in the affairs of the world, but with respect to the Jewish 
community the factors which determine the answer are even more 
complex. In both cases the material strength is visible and fairly 
measurable, but the spiritual assets, like the degree of sensitiveness 
and understanding, of unity of purpose and will, are not easily 
appraised and, besides, they fluctuate with the shifting winds of 
circumstance. With the Jewish community, moreover, these im- 



CRIMSON DAWN 679 

ponderables are dependent on the variations in the general social 
climate. No minority, least of all the Jewish, is able to act without 
anxiously glancing over its shoulder at the mood of the majority. 

For the war did not remove the uneasiness that oppressed Ameri- 
can Jewry in the years that preceded it. A survey of anti-Semitism 
in the United States during 1946, made by the Anti-Defamation 
League of the B'nai B'rith, found that the situation was in some 
respects "comforting," the American people having become "in- 
creasingly aware of the dangers inherent in group prejudice." But 
the survey also found that the native Fascist miscellany, whom the 
war had driven underground, had re-emerged, the defeat of Nazi 
Germany having failed to destroy "domestic or world-wide Fas- 
cism"; and there was even a "growth of subtle forms of anti-Semi- 
tism, manifesting themselves in social, economic and educational 
discrimination." In addition, there was always the fear that the 
postwar years might bring new economic and social tensions de- 
manding a scapegoat and, as usual, finding it in the Jew. 

Thus the inner strength of American Jewry for meeting its 
obligation to insure the creative survival of the Jewish people can- 
not be easily assessed. Large numbers have drifted away from the 
ancient moorings, hoping for a quiet life in self-denial, seeking 
escape for themselves and their children in nostrums which the 
record of the past would show them to be vain. At the same time, 
however, there are many evidences of a will to self-realization, of 
an ingathering of inner resources. 

As the record of the past shows with respect to other communi- 
ties, the future of American Jewry would seem to rest with those 
who, without being the less American for it, will cultivate those 
spiritual possessions that are authentic to themselves. They are pos- 
sessions which four millennia of history have sanctified and which, 
in the teeth of tragedy and suffering, have always brought an 
affirmation and renewal of life. They are the possessions which 
have given meaning to the long travail of the Jewish people across 
the centuries meaning for themselves and for all mankind. For 
when all the philosophies of history have been written and the 
catalogues of "civilizations" compiled, the basic historic fact is still 
the struggle in the human heart and in human society between the 



680 THE WORLD WARS 

holy and righteous God of Abraham, Moses, and Isaiah, and the 
idols of paganism. And they are essentially the same, those idol 
broods, whether they disport themselves elegantly on Mount 
Olympus or practice their savage lusts in the forests of Germany. 
It was those spiritual possessions which, in the words of the well- 
known benediction, have "kept us alive, and preserved us, and 
enabled us to reach this season." 



FOR ADDITIONAL READING 

and 
INDEX 



For Additional Reading 



GENERAL AND REFERENCE WORKS 

The Holy Scriptures, A New Translation. Philadelphia, Jewish Publi- 
cation Society, 1917. 

Jewish Encyclopedia. 12 vols., New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1906. 

Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge. One vol., New York, Behrman 
House, 1934. 

Universal Jewish Encyclopedia. 10 vols., New York, The Universal 
Jewish Encyclopedia, Inc., 1939-43. 

SALO w. BARON, A Social and Religious History of the Jews. 3 vols. 
New York, Columbia University Press, 1937. 

HEINRICH GRAETZ, History of the Jews [to 1870]. 6 vols., Philadelphia, 
Jewish Publication Society, 1895. 

JOSEPH JACOBS, Jewish Contributions to Civilization. Philadelphia, Jew- 
ish Publication Society, 1919. 

MARGOLIS AND MARX, A History of the Jewish People. Philadelphia, 
Jewish Publication Society, 1927. 

CECIL ROTH, A History of the Jews in England. Oxford University 
Press, 1941. 

CECIL ROTH, The History of the Jews in Italy. Philadelphia, Jewish Pub- 
lication Society, 1941. 

SOLOMON SCHECHTER, Studies in Judaism. 3 series, Philadelphia, Jewish 
Publication Society, 1908-1914. 



PART ONE: THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH 

Cambridge Ancient History. (Pertinent chapters in vols. i, 2, and 3) 

Cambridge University Press, 1925. 
STEPHEN L. CAIGER, Bible and Spade. London, Oxford University Press, 

1938. (An excellent survey of archaeological discoveries bearing 

on the historicity of Biblical events. Brief and comprehensive.) 
JOHN GARSTANG, The Foundations of Bible History: Joshua, Judges. 

New York, R. R. Smith, 193 1. 

683 



684 FOR ADDITIONAL READING 

ISRAEL GOLDBERG and SAMSON BENDERLY, Outline of Jewish Knowledge. 
Vol. i: Founding of the Nation. Vol. 2: The First Commonwealth. 
New York, Bureau of Jewish Education, 1929-30. 

CARLETON NOYES, The Genius of Israel: A Reading of Hebrew Scrip- 
tures Prior to the Exile. Boston, Houghton Miffiin Co., 1924. 

MAX RADIN, The Life of the People in Biblical Times. Philadelphia, 
Jewish Publication Society, 1929. 

GEORGE ADAM SMITH, The Historical Geography of the Holy Land. 
New York, R. Long and R. R. Smith, 1932. 

A. s. YAHUDA, The Accuracy of the Bible. London, Heinemann, 1932. 



PART TWO: THE SECOND COMMONWEALTH 

The First Book of the Maccabees and The Second Book of the Macca- 
bees, in the Apocrypha. London, Oxford University Press. 

NORMAN BENTWICH, Hellenism. Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Soci- 
ety, 1919. 

ISRAEL GOLDBERG and SAMSON BENDERLY, Outline of Jewish Knowledge, 
Vol. 3: The Second Commonwealth. New York, Bureau of Jewish 
Education, 1931. 

R. TRAVERS HERFORD, Judaism in the New Testament Period. London, 
The Lindsey Press, 1925. 

FLAVTUS JOSEPHUS, The Jeivish War. Translated from the original Greek 
by William Whiston. (See footnote, p. 177 of this volume.) 

MAX RADIN, The Jews Among the Greeks and Romans. Philadelphia, 
Jewish Publication Society, 1915. 

T. H. ROBINSON and w. o. E. OESTERLY, History of Israel. Vol. 2. Oxford, 
Clarendon Press, 1932. 



PART THREE: BABYLONIA AND SPAIN 
The Adishnah, Translated by Herbert Danby. London, Clarendon Press, 



The Talmudic Anthology, edited by Louis I. Newman and Samuel 

Spitz. New York, Behrman House, 1945. 
ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia, Jewish 

Publication Society, 191** 



FOR ADDITIONAL READING 685 

ABRAHAM COHEN, Everyman's Talmud. London, J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 
1932. 

SOLOMON IBN GABIROL, Selected Religious Poems. Translated by Israel 
Zangwill. Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1923. 

JEHUDAH HALEVI, Selected Poems. Translated by Nina Salaman. Phila- 
delphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1924. 

HENRY CHARLES LEA, A History of the Inqumtion in Spain. (Vol. i), 
New York, Macmillan, 1906. 

MAURICE LIBER, Rashi. Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1906. 

M. MIELZINER, Introduction to the Talmud. New York, Bloch Publish- 
ing Co., 1925. 

c. G. MONTEFIORE and H. LOEWE, A Rabbinic Anthology. New York, 
Macmillan, 1938. 

GEORGE FOOT MOORE, Judaism in the First Century of the Christian Era. 
3 vols., Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1932. 

ABRAHAM A. NEWMAN, The Je<ws in Spain. ^ vols., Philadelphia, Jewish 
Publication Society, 1942. 

CECIL ROTH, A History of the Marrcmos. Philadelphia, Jewish Publica- 
tion Society, 1932. 

DAVID YELLIN and ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Maimonides. Philadelphia, Jewish 
Publication Society, 1903. 



PART FOUR: IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE 

ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia, Jewish 
Publication Society, 1911. 

E. N. ABLER, Jewish Travelers. Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 
1905. 

MARTIN BUBER, Tales of the Hasidim: The Early Masters. New York, 
Schocken Books, 1947. 

s. M. DUBNOW, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Vol. i. Phila- 
delphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1916. 

LOUIS GINZBERG, Students, Scholars and Saints. Philadelphia, Jewish Pub- 
lication Society, 1928. 

GLUCKEL OF HAMELIN, Memoirs. Translated by Marvin LowenthaL 
New York, Behrman House, 1938. 

RUFUS LEARSI, The Wedding Song: A Book of Chassidic Ballads. New 
York, Behrman House, 1938. 

H. WALTER, Moses Mendelssohn. New York, Bloch Publishing Co., 1930. 



686 FOR ADDITIONAL READING 

PART FIVE: EMANCIPATION 

Jewish Emancipation: A Selection of Doctfments. Edited by Raphael 
Mahler. New York, American Jewish Committee, 1941. 

Publications of American Jewish Historical Society. 

ALEX BEIN, Theodor HerzL Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society, 
1940. 

s. M. DUBNOW, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. 3 vols., Phila- 
delphia, Jewish Publication Society, 1916-20. 

LEE M. FRIEDMAN, Jewish Pioneers and Patriots. Philadelphia, Jewish 
Publication Society, 1942. 

PAUL GOODMAN, Moses Montefiore. Philadelphia, Jewish Publication So- 
ciety, 1925. 

THEODOR HERZL, The Jewish State. New York, Scopus Publishing Co., 
1943. 

THEODOR HERZL, Excerpts from His Diaries. New York, Scopus Publish- 
ing Co., 1941. 

MOSES HESS, Rome and Jerusalem. Translated by Meyer Waxman. New 
York, Bloch Publishing Co., 1943. 

LEON PINSKER, Auto-Emancipation. Translated by D. S. Blondheim. 
New York, Zionist Organization of America, 1944. 

ERNST SIMMEL, Anti-Semitism: A Social Disease. New York, Interna- 
national Universities Press, 1946. 

PETER WIERNICK, History of the Jews in America. New York, Jewish 
History Publishing Co., 1931. 

PART SIX; THE WORLD WARS 

The Black Book: The Nazi Crime against the Jewish People. New York, 
The Jewish Black Book Committee, 1946. 

Palestine, a Study of Jewish, Arab and British Policies. Published for 
the Esco Foundation for Palestine, Inc. New Haven, Yale Univer- 
sity Press, 1947. 

ISRAEL COHEN, The Zionist Movement. New York, Zionist Organization 
of America, 1947. 

ROBERT R. NATHAN, OSCAR GASS and DANIEL CREAMER, Palestine: Problem 
and Promise, An Economic Study. Washington, American Coun- 
cil on Foreign Affairs, 1946. 

ABRAHAM REvusKY, Jews in Palestine. New York, Vanguard Press, 1936. 



FOR ADDITIONAL READING 687 

ABRAM L. SACHAR, Sufferance Is the Badge. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 

1939. 
B. w. SEGEL, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion The Greatest Lie in 

History. New York, Bloch Publishing Co., 1934. 
MARIE SYRKIN, Blessed is the Match: The Story of Jewish Resistance. 

New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1947. 



Index 



Aaron, brother of Moses, 17, 23. 

Aaron, Israel, 371. 

Aaron of Lincoln, 277. 

Aaron ben Meir, opponent of Saadia 

Gaon, 237. 

Aaron ben Meir, rabbi of Tulchin, 357. 
Abarbanel, Benvenida, 324. 
Abarbanel, Isaac, 3i6f., 323 f. 
Abarbanel, Joseph, 323. 
Abarbanel, Judah Leo, 323 f. 
Abarbanel, Samuel, 324. 
Abassids, 299 f., 231, 247, 547. 
Abaye, amora t 217. 
Abba Arika, see Rab. 
Abbott, G. F., 514. 
Abdul-Hamid, 525, 546. 
Abdurrahman III, 247, 250. 
Abiathar, priest, 56. 
Abimelech, Philistine king, 7. 
Abimelech, son of Gideon, 43. 
Abishai, 56. 
Abner, 49, 53. 
Abner of Burgos, 303. 
Aboab, Isaac, 363. 
Abraham, son of Xerah, patriarch, 3 ff*., 

222. 

Abrahams, Israel, 563. 
Abramovitch, Shalom Jacob, see 

Mendele Mocher Seforim. 
Absalom, 57 f. 
Abtalion, 149, 153. 
Abu Bekr, 223, 227 f. 
Abu Isa, 233 f. 
Abulafia, Abraham, 304^ 
Abulafia, Samuel, 303. 
Abydos, 365. 

Abyssinia, 224, 243, 547, 599, 641, 661. 
Acco, 148. 

Achad Ha'am, 537, 551. 
Acher, see Elisha ben Abuyah. 
Acosta, Uriel, 343 f. 
Acra, 130 f., 134, 138. 
Actium, Battle of, 150. 
Adams, James Truslow, 399. 



Adasa, Battle of, 136. 

Adiabene, 167. 

Adler, Cyrus, 501, 630, 

Adler, Hermann, 562. 

Adler, Jacob, 498. 

Adler, Nathan Marcus, 562. 

Adler, Samuel, 488. 

Adonijah, son of David, 58 f., 61. 

Adoniram, 61, 66. 

Adrianople, 330, 365. 

Adullam, 51, 54. 

Aelia Capitolina, 190, 195, 199. 

Africa, North, see North Africa. 

Africa, South, see South Africa. 

Agrippa, King, 162 f. 

Agrippa, son of King Agrippa, 168 ff. 

Agro- Joint, 589. 

Agudas Israel, 558, 604, 636. 

Aguilar, Moses Raphael d\ 363. 

Ahab, 67 ff. 

Ahasuerus, 115. 

Ahaz, 81. 

Ahaziah, 69. 

Ahijah, prophet, 65. 

Ahimaaz, son of Paltiel, 242. 

Ahlwardr, Hermann, 506. 

Ai, 39. 

Akaba, Gulf of, 30, 56. 

Akedah, 6. 

Akiba ben Joseph, 190 f., i94f., 200, 218. 

Alaric, 206. 

Albo, Joseph, 3iof. 

Alcimus, i35f. 

Alenu prayer, 22, 213, 286, 373. 

Aleppo, 362. 

Alexander I, Czar, 452 fT. 

Alexander II, Czar, 463 ff^ 469. 

Alexander III, 467, 472 fF., 495. 

Alexander Jannaeus, 140, 142 f . 

Alexander Severus, 202. 

Alexander the Great, 115; conquests of, 

121, 123, 127. 
Alexandria, 122, 126, 164, 166, 178, 200, 

207, 242, 549. 



689 



690 INDEX 

Alexius, 271. 

AlfadheL, 261. 

Alfasi, Isaac, 255 f., 259. 

Al Fayumi, 262. 

Alfonso VI, 255; VII, 259. 

Algeria, 512, 548. 

Algiers, 462. 

Al-Harizi, Judah, 254, 259. 

AH, 223, 230. 

Aliens Act, 514, 561. 

Aliyah, 551. 

Aljamas, 250. 

Alkabez, Solomon, 333. 

Allenby, General, 582. 

Alliance Israelite Universelle, 471, 

505, 521, 548, 553, 558. 
Almanzur, 251. 
Almohades, 258, 260, 298. 
Almoravides, 255 f . 
Alroy, David, 547. 
Alsace, 338, 401 ., 409, 491. 
Altaras, Isaac, 462. 
Altman, Tosha, 654. 
Altona, 367. 
Amalek, 56. 

AmaTekites, 20, 29, 43, 49 f., 52. 
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of 

America, 496. 
Amaziah, 75. 
America, Jews in discovery of, 3151.; 

Jews in, 393 ff. (See also under United 

States and other countries in North 

and South America.) 
American Jewish Committee, 501 f., 566, 

586, 623, 625, 630. 
American Jewish Congress, 566 f., 586, 

<5*5. 
American Revolution, Jews in, 3971.; 

and the Bible, 398 f. 
American Zionist Medical Unit, 576. 
Anndah, see Shemoneh-esreh. 
Ammon, 30, 56, 103. 
Ammonites, 43, 48, 50, 56, 94, 109, 134, 

198. 

Amnon, son of David, 57* 
Am Olam Society, 494. 
Amon, 90. 

Amoraim, 202, 2i7f. 
Amorites, 4, 30, 37, 41. 
Amos, the prophet, 74 ff.; and' Hosea, 

compared, 76; 159. 
Amram of Sura, 233. 
Amsterdam, 334, 339^ 343 &* 3 6 7 3^9* 



Anan ben David, 234 f . 

Anavim, oo. 

Ancona, 324, 326f. 

Andalusia, 255. 

Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 

658, 665, 669. 
Anglo-American Convention on Pales- 

tine, 630. 

Anglo-Palestine Bank, 549. 
Anilevitch, Mordecai, 653, 655. 
Anti-Defamation League, 625, 675. 
Antigonus, 147 f . 
Antioch, 122, 129, 207, 239. 
Antiochus IV, 1295.; defiles the Tem- 

ple, 131. 

Antiochus VII, 139. 
Antiochus the Great, 123, 127 ff. 
Antipater, i44f. 

Anti-Semitism, Pinsker's explanation of, 
480; in Germany, 503 ff., 557, 574; in 
Austria, 507 f., 6 1 1 ff.; in Hungary, 
508, 608 ff.; in Poland, 508 f., 538 f., 
573, 600 fF., 657; in France, 509 fL, <5i6"; 
in England, 513^., 6i8f., 619; in Ru- 
mania, 541 ff., 607 f.; in Bulgaria, 545; 
and Nazism, 592 ff.; and Fascism, 
599 f.; in U. S., 623 ff., 675; and crimi- 
nality, 506 f., 514; in Russia, see Russia. 
Antoninus Pius, 194. 
Antwerp, 330, 560. 
Aphek, 46, 52, 69. 
Apion, 164, 167. 
Apocrypha, 120, 187. 
Apollonius, 133. 
Aquila, 200. 
Arab Higher Committee of Palestine, 

663. 

Arab League, 664. 
Arabia, 178, 188, 193, 209, 221, 226 f., 

547- 

Arabian-American Oil Company, 665. 
Arabic language, 230. 
Arabs, 222 ff., 226; and Jews in Spain, 

246; and Jews in Palestine, 581, 583, 



, ., . 

Aragon, 259, 298, 3ioff.; united with 

Castile, 313. 

Aramaic language, 73, 197, 230. 
Ari, the, see Luria, Isaac. 
Arianism, Christian creed, 241, 244. 
Aram, 8, 42, 56, 71 f. 
Aramaeans, 23, 56, 69 f., 73, 81, 94. 
Arbela, Battle of, 115. 
Arch of Titus, 179. 



INDEX 



691 



Archaeology, and the Bible, 3, 18, 38 f., 
44,7of. 

Ardashir I, 216. 

Aretas, 144. 

Argentina, 479, 521, 619, 621. 

Aristobulus, son of John Hyrcanus, 140. 

Aristobulus, son of Salome Alexandra, 
143 ff., 147. 

Aristotle, 258, 263 f., 311. 

Arms, 204. 

Ark of the Covenant, 32, 38, 40, 46, 55. 

Armleder, 284. 

Arnon River, 30. 

Arnstein, Baron Nathan Adam von, 418; 
Baroness Fanny von, 418. 

Artzstein, Zechariah, 653. 

Asa, 79, 81. 

Ascarelli, Deborah, 325. 

Asch, Sholern, 498. 

Ashdod, 37, 85 f., 134, 198. 

Asher, 9; tribe of, 40. 

Asherah, 4, 37, 68. 

Asher ben Yechiel, 306. 

Ashi, 2i7f. 

Ashkelon, 37, 198. 

Ashkenazi-Bader, Captain Yechiel, 652. 

Ashkenazi, Solomon, 332. 

Asser, Tobias, 561. 

Assimilation, 415; in Soviet Union, 591-, 
in Germany, 596; in the United States, 
621. 

Assyria, 71, 76, 8 1, 85 ff., 93 f. 

Assyrians, 72 f ., 78, 87 f ., 1 10. 

Astarte, 37, 90, 125. 

Astrakhan, 453. 

Athaliah, 81. 

Athanasius, 203. 

Arias, Isaac de Costa, 403. 

Atkinson, Henry A., 630. 

Atlantic, the, 662. 

Augsburg, 268, 286, 289. 

Augsburg, Peace of, 338 f. 

Augustulus, 207. 

Augustus, see Octavian. 

Augustus II, 376 f .; Ill, 376, 379. 

Auschwitz, 646, 648 f . 

Austerlitz, Battle of, 404. 

Australia, 564. 

Austria, 282, 284; Jews expelled from, 
286, 372; 411, 424, 440 ff.; emancipa- 
tion in, 444; absorbed by Reich, 597; 
61 1 ff.; 657 f . 

Austria-Hungary, 444, 554 ff.; liquidated, 
583 f. 



Avila, 315. 

Ayllon, Solomon, 367. 

B 

Baal, 4, 37, 68, 124. 

Babylon, 4, 104, 108. 

Babylonia, 4, 34, 86, 104, 122, 166, 188, 
202, 209 ff., 220, 228, 230 ff., 236, 238 f. 
(see also Mesopotamia). 

Babylonian Exile, 101 ff., 106. 

Bacchides, i36f. 

Baden, 283, 405, 424. 

Baeck, Leo, 596. 

Bagdad, 230, 236, 238, 583. 

Bahrein Islands, 665. 

Balaam, 30 f. 

Balak, 30. 

Baldwin, Stanley, 618. 

Balfour, Arthur James, 578, 580, 635, 637, 
64*. 

Balfour Declaration, 563, 578 ff.; ambi- 
guities in, 580 ff.; endorsed by U. S. 
Congress, 630; basis of Palestine Man- 
date, 637 ff. 

Balta, 475 f . 

Baltimore, 396, 487. 

Bamberg, 412. 

Bamberger, Ludwig, 505. 

Banu Kainuka, 224ff. 

Banu Kuraiza, 2245. 

Banu Nadhir, 224ff. 

Barak, 42. 

Barcelona, 301, 308. 

Barf at, Isaac ben Sheshet, 3iof. 

Bari, 240. 

Bar Kochba, i9off. 

Barondess, Joseph, 496. 

Baron de Hirsch Agricultural School, 

494- 

Barsimson, Jacob, 395. 
Barach, Bernard, 594, 626. 
Baruch, Jacob, 419. 
Basel, 437, 491, 523, 560, 669. 
Basel Platform, 523, 550. 
Bashan, 30. 

Bastos, Anton Carlos de Barros, 548. 
Batavian Republic, 403. 
Bathsheba, 57 fL 
Batory, Stephen, 349. 
Bauer, Otto, 611. 
Bavaria, 283 f., 287, 411, 444,' 593. 
Bayazid II, 317, 329. 
Bayonne, France, 401. 



692 



INDEX 



Beaconsfield, Lord, see Disraeli, Ben- 
jamin. 

Bedouins, 224. 

Beer-Hoffman, Richard, 556. 

Beer, Jacob Herz, 423. 

Beersheba, 32. 

Beilis Case, the, 539. 

Beisan, 673. 

Belgium, 339, 560, 574, 583, 617, 651. 

Belgrade, 545. 

Belisarius, 241. 

Belloc, Hilaire, 618. 

Belshazzar, 104, 108. 

Benaiah, 61. 

Ben-ami, Jacob, 498. 

Ben-David, Lazarus, 417. 

Benderly, Samson, 628. 

Bendin, 652. 

Benedict XII, 284; XIV, 379, 580. 

Benedict XIII, anti-pope, 309 f . 

Benedict of York, 2781". 

Benet, Mordecai, 423. 

Ben Gurion, David, 552, 673* 

Ben-hadad, 71. 

Benjamin, Brigadier Ernest F., 661. 

Benjamin, Judah P., 489 f. 

Benjamin Nehawend, 235. 

Benjamin of Tiberias, 208. 

Benjamin of Tudela, 256, 259. 

Benjamin, son of Jacob, 9, 13; tribe of, 
40, 42. 

Benveniste, Abraham, 311. 

Benveniste, Chaim, 363. 

Benveniste, Vidal, 310. 

Ben Yaakov, Zvi, 651. 

Ben Yehudah, Eliezer, 552. 

Ben Zevi, Isaac, 552, 

Berab, Jacob, 332 f. 

Berbers, 246, 258. 

Berdichev, 474. 

Berditchev, Abba, 651, 

Bergson, Henri, 559. 

Berkovich, 459. 

Berlin, 372, 416, 417 f., 423, 426, 441, 557. 

Berlin, Congress of, 435, 543, 545. 

Berlin, Irving, 626. 

Berlin, Meyer, 537. 

Berlin, Naphtali Judah, 537. 

Bermuda Conference, 650. 

Bernal, Maestro, 316, 394. 

Bernardinus, 287. 

Bernays, Isaac, 424 f. 

Bernhardt, Sarah, 559. 

Bernstein, William, 670. 



Berr, Cerf, 389, 401. 

Berr, Berr Isaac, 401 f, 

Beruriah, 195 f. 

Besht, the, 382 S. 

Bethar, 192 f . 

Bethel, 5, 9, 47, 74, 

Beth-horon, 40, 133. 

Bet Hillel, 153 f. 

Beth Jacob Schools, 604, 653. 

Bethlehem, 9, 50. 

Bethlen, Stephen, 610. 

Beth-zachanas, Battle of, 135. 

Bet Shammai, 153. 

Bet-zur, Battle of, 133. 

Bevin, Ernest, 663. 

Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, 553. 

Bialik, Chaim Nachman, 524, 531, 551, 
629. 

Bialystok, 533 f., 652 ff. 

Bible, the, historicity of, 3; and archae- 
ology, 18, 38 f., 44, 70 f.; influence of, 
1 1 8 f .; the books of, 1 19 f., 187; author- 
ship of, 120; the "higher critics" and, 
12 1 ; canon, 120; translations of, 118, 
126, 200, 335, 388, 486, 565. 

BILTJ movement, 482, 518. 

Birkenau, 649. 

Birnbaum, Nathan, 522. 

Biro-Bidjan, 589. 

Birya, 669. 

BischofFsheim, Jonathan, 435; Louis, 435. 

Bismarck, Otto von, 441, 503, 505 f., 543. 

Black Death, the, 285, 288, 302. 

Black Hundreds, the, 523 if., 538, 539. 

Blackstone, Rev. William E., 519. 

Blaiae, James G., 478, 519. 

"Bleeding the host/* charge of, 284, 337. 

Bleichroeder, Gerson, 435. 

Bloch, Ernest, 626. 

Bloch, Ivan, 530. 

Bloch, Joseph Samuel, 556. 

Blood libel, 277, 280, 283, 329, 349; in 
Poland,^ 377 f.; the Damascus, 435 ff.; 
in Russia, 459 f.; in Germany, 506; in 
Hungary, 508; in Rumania, 540; in 
Greece, 545 f. 

Blum, Leon, 559, 616, 627. 

Blumenberg, General Leopold, 489. 

B'nai B'rith, 502, 625, 628. 

B'nat Nebiim, 47 f., 91. 

Boas, Franz, 626. 

Boerne, Ludwig, 419. 

Bohemia, 282, 338, 406, 507 f., 598, 614.' 

Bokanowsld, Maurice, 559. 



INDEX 



693 



Bologna, 325, 445. 

Bordeaux, 401, 512. 

Brafman, Jacob, 470 f. 

Braganza, 548. 

Brainin, Reuben, 498. 

Brandeis, Louis D., 566, 577, 579 f., 626 f. 

Brandes, Georg Morris Cohen, 561. 

Bratianu, John, 542 f . 

Brazil, 3941"., 621. 

Breitner, Hugo, 6n, 

Bremen, 405, 411, 

Breslau, 287, 414, 426 f., 557. 

Brest, in Poland, 348, 377; Treaty of, 

583, 588. 

Briand, Aristide, 512. 
Britain, see England. 
British Guiana, 395. 
Brod, Max, 557. 
Browning, Robert, 259. 
Bruenn, 556. 
Brunswick, 426. 
Brussels, 542. 
Brutus, 147. 
Buber, Martin, 596. 
Bublick, Gedaliah, 630. 
Buchanan, James, 491. 
Bucharest, 541 f. 
Buchenwald, 649. 
Budapest, 515, 609. 
Buenos Aires, 621. 
Buffalo, 484. 
Bukovina, 573. 

Bulan, king of the Khazars, 248 f . 
Bulgaria, 522, 544 f., 583, 615. 
Bund, Jewish Socialist, 532, 536, 587, 604, 

653. 

Burgos, 302. 

Bury St. Edmunds, 279. 
Bush, Colonel Solomon, 398; Major 

Lewis, 398. 
Bustani, 232. 
Butensky, Jules, 626. 
Byzantine Empire, 206, 208, 227, 239, 273, 

2 75- 
Byzantium, see Constantinople. 



Cabala, 196, 242, 304 ** 3*8; practical, 

334, 353; 38i- 
Caceres, Simon de, 341 f. 
Caesarea, 149, 170!"., 208, 228 f. 
Cahan, Abraham, 496. 
Cahan, Israel Meir, see Chofetz Chaim. 
Cairo, 361 f., 549. 



Calabria, 240. 

Calahora, Arye-Leib, 377. 

Calahora, Mattathiah, 377. 

Calcutta, 547. 

Caleb, 29 f. 

California, 485. 

Caligula, 162 ff. 

Calonymus, 268, 272. 

Calvin, John, 339. 

Campen, Michel van, 561. 

Canaan, see Palestine. 

Canaanites, 29, 37; religion of, 37, 41 f* 

Canada, 563 f., 577, 598, 619, 622. 

Cantonist System, the, 456 f . 

Cape Town, 564. 

Capistrano, John, 287, 348. 

Caracalla, 200. 

Carchemish, Battle of, 94. 

Cardoso, Abraham Michael, 366. 

Cardozo, Benjamin N., 626. 

Carentan, 274. 

Carmel, Mount, 33 f., 68. 

Carmel, N. J., 494- 

Carol, King, 608. 

Carrion, in Spain, 302. 

Carvajal, Antonio Fernandez, 341 f. 

Casimir the Great, 347; IV, 348. 

Caspian Sea, 248. 

Cass, Lewis, 491. 

Cassirer, Ernst, 557. 

Cassius, 147. 

Castile, 255, 259, 298, 302, 308, 3iof.; 

united with Aragon, 313. 
Catherine II, 379, 389, 451. 
Catholic Church, see Popes. 
Caucasus, 240. 
Cecil, Lord Robert, 580. 
Central Conference of American Rabbis, 
487. 

Cestius Gallus, 171 f. 

Chabad, 384^, 538, 628. 

Chacham Zevi, 367. 

Chaldea, 94 f ., 104. 

Chaldeans, 94 f. 

Chalukah, 576. 

Chamberlain, Houston Stewart, 504. 

Chamberlain, Neville, 614, 618, 644. 

Chanukah, see Hanukkah. 

Charity, see Philanthropy. 

Charkov, 526. 

Charlemagne, 241, 266 f. 

Charles II of England, 446. 

Charles V, Emperor, 326, 328, 337. 

Charles X of France, 419, 440. 



694 INDEX 

Charles X of Sweden, 359; XII, 376. 

Charles Martel, 266. 

Charleston, 398, 486. 

Chassidim, opponents of Hellenists, 128, 

i3of., 136; followers of the Besht, 
.3841., 406, 554 f. 
Chassidism, 380 fF.; doctrines of, 383^; 

385. 54*t 59<5> ?3* <5^8. 
Chayun, Nehemiah Chiya, 367. 
Chelevi, Raphael Joseph, 361. 
Chemosh, 70. 
Chesterton, Gilbert, 618. 
Chibath Tziyon, 481. 
Chicago, 485. 
China, 547. ^ 

Chmelnitzki, Bogdan, 3561!. 
Chofetz Chaim, 537. 
Chosru I, 221; II, 208, 221. 
Chovevei Tziyon, 481, 518, 521, 550, 566. 
Christea, Miron, 607 f . 
Christian Front, 624. 
Christianity, 185, 199 fF.; official religion 

of Rome, 204; persecutes Judaism, 

204 f.; 571, 595. 
Churchill, Charles Henry, 518. 
Churchill, Winston, 580 f., 644^ 66 1. 
Cincinnati, 485. 
Circumcision, 6; prohibited, 131, 194; 

425, 

Claudius, 168. 
Clemenceau, Georges, 512. 
Clement VII, 326*. 
Cleopatra, 147, 150. 
Clermont, 270. 
Clermont-Tonnerre, 402. 
Cleveland, 485. 
Cleveland, Grover, 531. 
Clovis, 265 f. 

Codreanu, Cornelius, 607, 608. 
Cohen, Hermann, 557. 
Cohen, Jacob, 537. 
Cohen, Joseph, historian, 330. 
Cohen, Judith, 448. 
Cohen, Nehemiah, 365, 
Cohen, Simcha, 272 f . 
Cohen-Zedek, 236. 
Cologne, Jews of, 265, 268; attacked by 

crusaders, 272; 286, 557. 
Columbus, Christopher, 31 
Commandos, Jewish, 66 1. 
Commerce, Jews in, 275 f., 289. 
Committee of Jewish Delegations at the 

Peace Conference, 585 f. 
Comzet, 589. 



Confederation of the Rhine, 405, 410. 

Constantine, 203, 206. 

Constantinople, 206, 229, 329 f., 332, 361, 

364, 522. 

Copenhagen, 561. 
Coponius, 156. 
Coprili, Ahmed, 364. 
Cordova, 246 f., 251, 257, 259 f., 308, 313. 
Corfu, 545. 
Cossacks, the, 355fL; revolt of, 356$., 

379; 573, 588. 
Coty, Francois, 616. 
Coughlin, Charles, 624 f. 
Council of the Four Lands, 351 f., 354, 

358. 

Cracow, 347 fF,, 359, 377, 652 f . 
Crassus, 145. 

Cremieux, Adolphe, 43 7 f., 460, 541. 
Cremona, 325. 
Crescas, Hasdai, 311. 
Cresques, Yehuda, 316. 
Cresson, Warder, 519. 
Crete, 45. 

Crimea, 240, 345, 589. 
Crimean War, the, 458, 462 f. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 341 f. 
Crusades, the, 270 fF.; effect of, on Jews, 

275 ff.; 278; of shepherds, 282; 289. 
Ctesiphon, 209, 228. 
Cultural Zionism, 551. 
Cumanus, 169. 
Cuza, Alexander, 541, 607 f. 
Cyprus, 142, 189, 331, 668. 
Cyril, 207. 

Cyrus, the Persian, 104, 108, no. 
Czechoslovakia, 556, 584, 597; seized by 

Germany, 598; 613 f., 652. 
Czestochowa, 529, 652 f. 



Dachau, 649, 651. 

Dagania, 552, 634. 

Daladier, Edouard, 614. 

Damascus, 33, 50, 56, 62, 73, 78, 167, 

229 f., 257, 435 fF. 
Damascus AfFair, the, 435 fF., 490. 
Dan, in Palestine, 32. 
Dan, son of Jacob, 9; tribe of, 40, 42. 
Daniel, 108, 160. 
Daniel al-Kumisi, 235. 
Dante, 322. 

Danube River, 268, 542. 
Danzig, 584. 
Darien, the, 662. 



INDEX 



Darius, 1 10. 

Darmesteter, Arsene, 559. 

Darmesteter, James, 559. 

Daudet, Leon, 559, 6r6. 

David ben Zaccai, 236 if. 

David, King, 50 ff.; his dynasty, 54, 79; 
his government, 56; his empire, 56. 

Davidson, Jo, 626, 

Day of Atonement, see Yom Kippur. 

Day, The, 497. 

Dead Sea, 32, 157, 633. 

Deborah, 42 f. 

Decalogue, 2 if., 125, 159. 

Decapolis, 152. 

Demoitz, Lewis N., 489. 

Demetrius, 135. 

Denikin, 587, 588. 

Denmark, 340, 368, 424, 561, 617, 652. 

Derzhavin, 452. 

Detroit, 624. 

Deuteronomy, Book of, 91. 

Deutsch, Julius, 611. 

Diamant, Abraham, 653. 

Diaspora, the, during Second Common- 
wealth, 165 ff.; the Mediterranean, 
243, 260. 

Dietary laws, 24 f. 

Dinah, daughter of Jacob, 9. 

Displaced Persons, 6571!. 

Disputations, 301, 309 f. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, 434, 447, 519, 543, 

547- 

Disraeli, Isaac, 447. 
Dnepropetrovsk, 646. 
Dohm, Christian Wilhelm, 389. 
Dolfuss, Engelbert, 612. 
Domitian, 200. 
Donin, Nicholas, 281. 
Donmeh, the, 366, 381. 
Don River, 248. 
Dournovo, 478. 
Dov-Baer, 384. 

Dreyfus Affair, the, 5091!., 559. 
Dropsie College, 630. 
Drumont, Edouard, 510. 
Dubnow, Simon, 537, 648. 
Duehring, Eugen, 504. 
Dunant, Jean Henri, 519. 
Dunash ben Labrat, 247 f., 252, 
Duport, 402. 
Dymov, Ossip, 498. 



Ebal, Mount, 33. 



695 



y 201. 

Ecclesiastes, 120. 

Economic conditions, in kingdom of 
Israel, 73 f.; in Second Common- 
wealth, ii6f.; in Babylonia, 211; in 
Italy, 240; during Middle Ages, 275, 
285, 288 f.; in Poland, 347, 350, 601 f.; 
in Germany, 371, 43*.5S7 5975 & 
U. S., 493 f., 623 f., 627; in post eman- 
cipation Europe, 503; in Russia, 528, 
587 f .; 606 f ., 609 f ., 61 1. 

Edels, Samuel, 354. 

Eden, Anthony, 649. 

Edom, 9, 30, 56, 62. 

Edomites, 37, 50, 81, 109, 198 (see also 
Idumaeans). 

Education, in Second Commonwealth, 
117; made compulsory, 152; 187; in 
the ghetto, 294 f.; in Poland, 352^,, 
604 ff.; the new, 389, 460; in U. S M 
495 f ., 627 f.; in the Yishuv, 553, 635. 

Edward I, 280. 

Eger, Akiba, 423. 

Egica, 245. 

Eglon, 40. 

Egypt, 4 f., 10 ff., 34, 44, 71, 76, 85*!., 
94, 103, 104, 122, 130, 189, 209^ 236, 404, 
549, 576 f., 641, 664. 

Ehrlich, Paul, 558. 

Ehud, 42. 

Eichmann, Adolf, 648. 

Eiger, Abraham, 653. 

Eighteen Benedictions, see Shemoneh- 
esreh. 

Einhorn, David, 488. 

Einsatz Groups, 648. 

Einstein, Albert, 558, 626. 

Eisenmenger, Johann Andreas, 373, 433. 

Eisner, Kurt, 593. 

Ekron, 37, 86, 198. 

El Alamein, 66 1* 

Elarn, 5. 

El-Arish, 526, 563, 579. 

Elasa, Battle of, 136. 

Elbe River, 268. 

Eldad the Danite, 243, 

Eleazar ben Hananiah, Zealot leader, 
171 f. 

Eleazar ben Jair, Zealot leader, 178. 

Eleazar ben Pedath, 202. 

Eleazer ben Simon, Zealot leader, 175 f. 

Eleazar, high priest, 40. 

Eleazar, high priest, 126. 

Eleazar, Maccabaean brother, 132, 135, 



696 INDEX 

Elephantine, 122, 

Eliezer, steward of Abraham, 7. 

Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, 186. 

Elijah ben Solomon, the Vilna Gaon, 

-Elijah, the prophet, 68. 
Eliot, George, 519. 
Elisha ben Abuyah, 195. 
Elisha, the prophet, 69. 

Elizabeth, Empress, 451. 

Elizabethgrad, 474. 

Elkan, Benno, 558. 

Elman, Mischa, 626. 

Elvira, 244; Council of, 244. 

Emancipation, 393; in France, 402; and 
the French Revolution, 409; reversed 
by Congress of Vienna, 410 ff.; and 
revolution, 432, 439ff.; in Hungary, 
444; in Austria, 444; in Prussia, 444; in 
Italy, 444 f.; in England, 446 ff.; 450 f.; 
summarized, 502 f.; in Russia, 574; an- 
nulled in Germany, 596. 

Emden, Jacob, 367. 

Emmaus, Battle of, 133. 

England, 265; Jews in, to 1290, 277 ff.; 
expelled from, 280 f.; readmitted, 
340 ff.; emancipated, 446 ff.; 561 ff., 
571, 577 ff., 586, 597 ff., 601, 614, 616, 
6i8fL; and Palestine, 636 ff., 644, 649, 
658. 

Ense, Varnhagen von, 417. 

Ephraim, tribe of, 40, 43 f., 55, 65. 

Epstein, Jacob, 626. 

Epstein, Judith, 630. 

Erasmus, 336. 

Erfurt, 283. 

Eritrea, 547, 661. 

Esar-haddon, oo. 

Esau, 8f., 30. 

Es-Salt, 578. 

Essenes, 157, 201. 

Esterhazy, Major, 511 f, 

Esther, 115; Book of, 120. 

Estonia, 572, 584. 

Ethiopia, see Abyssinia. 

Ethnarch, 167. 

Euphrates River, 4, 71, 73. 

Euric, 245. 

Europe and the Jews, 265. 

Evian Conference, 598, 650. 

Evil-merodach, 104. 

Exilarch, 166, 195, 211 f., 214, 217, 231, 
236; office of, abolished, 239. 

Exodus, the, i8f. 



Exodus 1947, the, 670 f. 

Eybeschuetz, Jonathan, 367 f. 

Ezekias, 148, 

Ezekiel, Mordecai, 626. 

Ezekiel, the prophet, ic^ff,, 160, 517. 

Ezion-Geber, 61 f. 

Ezra the Scribe, 109, inff., 159. 



Fadus, 1 68. 

Faitlovitch, Jacques, 547. 

Falange, the, 6*19. 

Falashas, 547. 

Falk, Joshua, 354. 

Fallman, Mark, 653, 

False Messiahs, 233, 304, 360 ff. 

Farber, Joseph, 653. 

Fascism, 591; and anti-Semitism, 599 f.; 

616, 6i8f. 624 f., 641, 675. 
Fatima, 229 f. 
Faure, Felix, 511. 
Fay, Theodore S., 491. 
Fayum, 242. 

Feast of Booths, see Sukkoth. 
Feast of Weeks, see Shabuoth. 
Federation of Ainerican Zionists, 566. 
Feisal, Emir, 637, 638. 
Ferdinand of Aragon, 313 ff. 
Ferrara, 324, 331. 
Ferrer, Vincent, 309 f. 
Festus, 169. 

Feuchtwanger, Lion, 557, 596. 
Feudalism, 267 f. 
Fez, 243, 260, 548. 
Fichte, 412, 513. 
Fifth Monarchy Men, 341, 361. 
Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, see 

Stern Group. 
Fillmore, Millard, 491. 
Finland, 584. 

First World War, 571 ff.; Jews in, 573 ff. 
Firuz, 218. 

Five Books of Moses, see Pentateuch. 
Flaccus, 164. 
Flagellants, 285. 
Flanders, 330. 
Flavius Clemens, 200. 
Flexner, Simon, 626. 
Florence, 560. 
Florus, 170 f. 
Flushing Meadows, 671. 
Fonseca, Isaac Aboab de, 394. 
Ford, Henry, 623 f. 
Forward) The Jewish Daily, 496 f. 



Fostat, 242. 

France, 265 nv, Jews in, to 1394, 281 f.; 
expelled from, 282; 401 nv, emanci- 
pated, 402; 406 f.; in the Damascus 
Affair, 436 ff.; 59^ 559> 57 1 
583, 586, 594, 597^ 6o2 6o8 
650 ff., 670 f. 
France, Anatole, 512. 
Francis I of Austria, 406. 
Francis Joseph, 443, 445-, 
Franconia, 287. 
Franco-Prussian War, 503. 
Frank, David, 397. 
Frank, Jacob, 381 f. 
Frank, Rebecca, 397. 
Frank, Waldo, 626. 
Frankel, Zechariah, 425 ff. 
Frankfort Assembly, 441 f . 
Frankfort on the Main, 283, 405, 41 1 f ., 

425 f ., 430, 557 f . 
Frankfurter, David, 617. 
Frankfurter, Felix, 626, 637 f . 
Franks, the, 244. 
Franks, Colonel David, 398. 
Frauenthal, Max, 489. 
Frederick II, 275, 282 f. 
Frederick the Great, 372, 387, 389. 
Frederick William, the Great Elector, 

371 f.; II, 405; III, 405; IV, 441. 
Frelmghuysen, Frederick T., 475. 
French Revolution, 386, 390, 393, 401 ft. 
Freud, Sigmund, 556. 
Friedenwald, Harry, 566. 
Friedlaender, David, 413 f. 
Frug, Simon, 537. 
Fulda, 283. 
Fulda, Ludwig, 557- 
Fulvia, 167. 
Furtado, Abraham, 401, 407. 

G 

Gabara, 173. 

Gad, 9; tribe of, 31, 40, 43. 

Gadara, 152. 

Galatz, 540 f. 

Galicia, in Poland, 350, 357, 383 f ., 400. 

428, 493, 507 ff., 5", 554 ^ 57 2f -* 6ll 
Galicia, in Spain, 255. 
Galilee, province of, 147, 156 ff., 172, 

638. 

Galilee, Sea of, 32, 633. 
Gamaliel II T i86f. t 191; HI, 202; IV, 202; 

V, 206; VI, 206. 
Gamzon, Captain Robert, 652. 



45 8f * 



INDEX 697 

Ganganelli, Cardinal, 379. 
Gans, Eduard, 413, 420. 
Gaonate, 221, 231; abolished, 239-, 263. 
Gaonim, 232 f., 234, 236. 
Gaster, Moses, 544, 562. 
Gath, 37, 51, 55, 198- 
Gaza, 37, 85, 361. 
Gedaliah, 102 f.; Fast of, 103. 
Geiger, Abraham, 425 fT. 
Gellman, Leon, 630. 
Gemara, see Talmud. 
General Zionists, 551. 
Geneva, 560. 
Georgia, 396. 
Gerasa, 152. 

Gerizim, Mount, 33, in. 
German Confederation, 410. 
Germany, 265; Jews in, during Middle 
Ages, 282 fT., 370, 404 f., 411 f., 44<> # 
557 fT., 561; in First World War, 
57 iff., 583 f.; 592 #; and Nazism, 
591 ff., 595 nv, 597*-* ? I2 614 ff., ^4* 
63 1, 644 ff.; murders six million Jews, 
645 ff; uprising of ghettos against, 
652 ff.; 657 f. 
Gerona, 299, 308. 
Gershom ben Judah, 268 f. 
Gershwin, George, 626. 
Gersonides, 304. 

Gestapo, 596, 598, 612, 614, 645, 648, 651. 

Ghettos, 286; description of, 288; in 
Italy, 326f.; restored by Nazis, 596, 
650; rise up against Nazis, 652 fT. 

Gibbethon, 67. 

Gibeah, 48 f. 

Gibeon, 39 f. 

Gibraltar, 245. 

Gideon, 43. 

Gideon, Samson, 447. 

Giladi, Israel, 552. 

Gilboa, Mount, 33, 52. 

Gilead, xof. 

Gilgal, 38, 47. 

Ginsburg, Asher, see Achad Ha'am. 

Ginsburg, Baron Horace, 464. 

Ginsburg, Joseph, 464. 

Ginsburg, Mordecai Aaron, 467. 

Giscala, 174. 

Givat Hayim, 667. 

Glasgow, 561. 

Gnostics, 199. 

Gobineau, Count Joseph Arthur, 510. 

Godfrey de Bouillon, 271. 

Goebbels, Josef, 595, 624, 645, 649. 



698 INDEX 

Goering, Hermann, 646, 649. 

Goethe, 412, 416. 

Goga, Octavian, 608. 

Goldberger, Joseph, 626. 

Golden Rule, the, Jewish and Christian 

compared, 159 f. 
Goldfaden, Abraham, 498. 
Goldfogle, Henry M., 501. 
Goldsmid, Aaron, 434; Isaac Lyon, 434; 

Francis, 434. 
Goldstein, Israel, 630. 
Goldstein, Perez, 651. 
Goliath, 50. 
Golomb, Eliahu, 666. 
Gornbos, Julius, 610. 
Gomorrah, 5 f . 
Gompers, Samuel, 497. 
Gonta, 379. 
Gordin, Jacob, 498. 
Gordon, Judah Leib, 468, 480. 
Gorky, Maxim, 529. 
Goshen, 14. 

Gottheil, Richard J. H., 566. 
Graetz, Heinrich, 431. 
Granada, 251 fi\, 298, 308; fall of, 315. 
Grant, Ulysses S., 542. 
Gratz, Rebecca, 486. 
Greco-Romans, 109. 
Greece, 199, 239, 5451*., 584, 615, 652, 

661, 

Greenberg, Hayim, 630. 
Greenberg, Leopold, 563. 
Greenspan, Herschel, 597. 
Gregoire, Abbe, 401. 
Gregory VII, 255; X, 283; XVI, 440. 
Grigoriev, 587. 
Grodno, 348, 458, 538. 
Gromyko, Andrei, 670. 
Grossman, Chaya, 654. 
Gruenbaum, Isaac, 604. 
Guedemann, Moritz, 556. 
Guianas, the, 394, 397. 
Guide to the Perplexed, 263 f., 209 f.; 

controversy over the, 2091*., 323, 353. 
Guizot, Frangois, 440. 
Gustloff, Wilhelm, 617. 

H 

Haas, Jacob de, 566. 

Haase, Hugo, 594, 

Habbus, 252. 

Haber, Fritz, 558. 

Habiru, the, 39. 

Hadassah, 553, 576, 630, 634, 673. 



Hadrian, 189 fT. 

Haftorot, 117. 

Haganah, the, 639 f., 642, 651, 665 ff.; 

policy of, 668 f. 
Haggadah, 185, 195, 218. 
Hagiz, Moses, 369. 
Hague, The, 560. 
Hai Gaon, 238, 252. 
Haifa, 34, 552, 633, 641 f n 668, 673. 
Haifa Technical Institute, 552, 635. 
Halachah, 185 f., 195, 304. 
Halevi, Yehudah, see Yehudah Halevi. 
Halevy, Joseph, 559. 
Halpnn, Rose L., 630. 
Haman, 115. 
Hamburg, 340, 363, 367, 388, 411 f., 423 f., 

557- 

Ha-meassef, 416. 
Hammurabi, 4; Code of, 4, 25 f . 
Hamon, Joseph, 329f. 
Hamon, Moses, 329^ 
Hananel ben Hushiel, 243. 
Hanover, 424. 

Hanukkah, Feast of, 134, 153, 297. 
Haran, 3. 

Harden, Maximilian, 557. 
Hardenburg, Chancellor, 406, 410. 
Harding, Warren G., 630. 
Harrison, Benjamin, 519. 
Harrison, Earl G., ^58. 
Hart, Isaac, 397. 
Harte, Bret, 483, 489. 
Harun-al-Rashid, 230, 267. 
Hashemites, 664. 
Hashomer, 552, 665. 
Hashomer Hatzair, 653. 
Haskalah, 466 if., 480 f . 
Hasmonaeans, the, 138*!., 149. 
Hay, John, 544. 
Hazor, 40. 

Hebrew, origin of name, 4. 
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, 492. 
Hebrew language, 23, 197, 237; as a bond 

of union, 295; 322, 416, 551 f,, 590, 604; 

in U. S., 629; in Yishuv, 636, 639, 660. 
Hebrew Literature, 416, 469, 498, 

551, 629; in Yishuv, 636. 
Hebrew Scriptures, see Bible. 
Hebrew Union College, 487. 
Hebrew University, 582, 635. 
Hebron, 6, 9, 30, 33, 40, 53 f. 
Hechalutz, 604, 653. 
Hedjaz, 223 f, 
Hegel, 513. 



INDEX 



699 



Hegira, 223, 229. 

Heidelberg, 412. 

Heifetz, Jascha, 626. 

Heilprin, Michael, 492. 

Heine, Heinrich, 41 3 f., 4 J 9^- 59& 

Helen, queen of Adiabene, 167. 

Helena, 204. 

Heliodorus, 129. 

HeUenism, 123 ff.; Judaism vs., 125; in 

Judea, i2yf., 131, i66f. 
Hellenists, 1281!., 136, 140. 
Heller, Yom Tob Lipman, 354. 
Henderson, Nevile, 618. 
Henry, Colonel, 51 if. 
Henry II, king of Castile, 303, 306 f.; 

IV, 312. 

Henry IV, emperor, 273. 
Henry II of England, 277 f.; Ill, 280. 
Heraclius, 209, 227. 

Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 387. 
Hermon, Mount, 30, 32. 

Herod, King, son of Antipater, 145, 
147 ff.; his crimes, 148 f .; his buildings, 
149; his Temple, 150; his death, 154. 

Herod Antipas, son of Herod, 163. 

Herod Archelaus, son of Herod, 155 f. 

Herodium, 149, 178. 

Herrera, Abraham de, 334. 

Hertz, Joseph H., 562. 

Herz, Henrietta, 417 f. 

Herz, Marcus, 417^ 

Herzl, Theodor, 515 ftv, his Jewish State, 
517; his labors, 522 ff.; his death, 526 f.-, 
535, 549 f., 553, 562, 6 7^ 

Heshbon, 30. 

Hess, Moses, 520. 

Heyermans, Herman, 561. 

Hezeldah, 84 ff. 

Hezekiah, Gaon, 230, 252. 

Higher Criticism, 120 f., 422, 565. 

Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, 552 f ., 

558. 

Hilkiah, 91. 

Hillel, 153 f., i59> l86 ' J 95> *35- 
Hillel II, 205 f . 
Hillel Foundation, 627 f. 
Hilsner, Leopold, 508, 613. 
Himmler, Heinrich, 645, 649. 
Hindenburg, Field Marshal Paul von, 

595- 

Hinnom, Valley of, 174- 
Hirsch, Baron Maurice de, 479, 509, 516, 

608, 621. 
Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 430 f ., 558. 



Hirsch, Samuel, 488. 

Hirschbein, Peretz, 498. 

Histadrut, 634. 

Histadruth Ivrith, 629. 

Hitler, Adolf, 593 ff ., 645, 648 f. 

Hittites, 35, 41, 44- 

Hivites, 41. 

Hlinka, Andreas, 614. 

Hlond, Cardinal, 657. 

Holdheim, Samuel, 425. 

Holland, see Netherlands, The. 

Hollingsworth, 518. 

Holy Alliance, the, 454. 

Homel, 531. 

Hoogstraten, Jacob van, 336. 

Horeb, Mount, see Sinai, Mount. 

Horthy, Admiral Nicholas, 609. 

Hosea, the prophet, 76 ff.; and Amos, 
compared, 76; 159, 184, 

Hoshea, 78. 

Hugh of Lincoln, 280 f. 

Hugo, Victor, 475. 

Huleh, plain of, 32. 

Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 417; Alexan- 
der von, 417. 

Huna-Mari, 218. 

Hungary, 188, 282, 406, 442 ff., 507, 522, 
555 -, 573> 5&h 608 ff., 614, 651, 657 

Hurwitz, Isaiah, 334. 

Hurwitz, Salkind, 402. 

Husein, Bang, 581, 637, 664. 

Huseini, Amin El, 639 f n 641 f.; allowed 

to escape, 663. 
Hushiel ben Elhanan, 243. 
Huss, John, 286. 
Hutten, Ulrich von, 336. 
Hyksos, 14. 

Hyrcanus, son of Joseph, 127. 
Hyrcanus, son of Salome Alexandra, 
143 ff., 148 f. 



Ibn Adret, 305. 

Ibn Aknin, Joseph, 263. 

Ibn Albulia, Isaac, 255. 

Ibn Benveniste, Joseph, 303. 

Ibn Daud, Abraham, 254, 256, 259. 

Ibn Ezra, Abraham, 256, 259 f., 278. 

Ibn Ezra, Judah, 259. 

Ibn Ezra, Moses, 256. 

Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, 253 f. 

Ibn Habib, 333. 

Ibn Hasan, Yekutiel, 253. 

Ibn Jau, Jacob, 251. 



700 INDEX 

Ibn Mansur, Samuel, 257. 
Ibn Megas, Meir, 259. 
Ibn Nagrela, Samuel, 251 ff. 
Ibn Nunez, Jacob, 312. 
Ibn Pakuda, Bachya, 254. 
Ibn Sand, 664. 

Ibn Shaprut, Chasdai, 247 ff., 251. 
Ibn Tashufin, Yussuf, 255 f. 
Ibn Tibbons, the, 299. 
Ibn Tumart, 258. 
Ibn Wakar, 303. 

ICA, see Jewish Colonization Associa- 
tion. 

Idolatry, 21, 24, 81 f., 84, 679. 
Idumaea, 172, 175. 
Idumaeans, 134, 140, 198 (see also 

Edomites) . 

Ignatiev, Count Nicholas, 475 f* 
"Illegals," see Immigration, "Illegal." 
Imber, Naphtali Herz, 524. 
Immanuel of Rome, 322. 
Immigration to U. S., 482 ff., 492 f ., 495, 
509, 565, 622, 652; to Palestine, 580, 
598, 603 f., 633 f., 639, 644, 651, 658; 
"illegal,* 7 to Palestine, 668, 670; con- 
ferences on, 598, 650. 
Imredy, Bela, 610. 

Independent Order Brith Abraham, 499. 
India, 218, 547. 
Informers, 307. 

Innocent III, 276; IV, 283, 379. 
Inquisition, 301, 3131!., 326, 328, 331; in 

the New World, 394. 
Inter-Governmental Committee on 

Refugees, 658. 
Intermarriage, 408. 
International Ladies Garment Workers' 

Union, 496. 
Ipsus, Battle of, i22f. 
Iran, see Persia. 
Iraq, 547, 66 1 f., 664 f. 
Ireland, 514. 

Irgun Zvai Leumi, 665, 66j. 
Isaac, patriarch, 6, 9. 
Isaac Elchanan, 537. 
Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, 

500. 

Isaac Israeli, 243. 
Isaacs, Rufus, 562. 
Isabella of Castile, 313^. 
Isaiah, the prophet, 82-90; "the Second," 

105 ff,, 159, 208. 
Ishbaal, 53. 
Ishmael, son of Abraham, 7, 222. 



Ishmaelites, 10. 

Islam, 222 ff., 228; conflicts in, 229 f. 

Israel, meaning of name, 9. 

Israel Baal Shem Tov, see Besht. 

Israel, Kingdom of, 65 fL; and Judah 
compared, 66 f .; fall of, 79. 

Israel, State of, proclaimed, 673 fT.; rec- 
ognized by U. S., 676. 

Israels, Jozef, 561. 

Isaachar, 9; tribe of, 40. 

Isserlein, Israel, 287. 

Isserles, Moses, 353. 

Italy, 240 ff., 299, 322, 404, 440, 443, 560, 
580, 598 ff., 6 1 6, 650 f., 658. 

Itil, 249. 

Itzig, Daniel, 418. 

Ivan the Terrible, 346. 

Izates, 167. 



Jabbok River, 30. 

Jabesh, 48. 

Jabin, king, 42. 

Jabneh, 1845., 194. 

Jabotinsky, Vladimir, 577, 665. 

Jackson, Robert H., 646. 

Jacob, patriarch, 8 ff. (See also Israel.) 

Jacob ben Asher, 306. 

Jacob Joseph, Rabbi, 500. 

Jacob Tarn, 270, 274. 

Jacob of Orleans, 278 f. 

Jacob, Zealot leader, 169. 

Jacobs, Joseph, 563. 

Jacobs, Rose, 630. 

Jacobson, Israel, 41 3 f., 422 f. 

Jaffa, 134, 549, 553, 671, 673. 

Jaffe, Mordecai, 354. 

Jahaz, 30. 

Jamaica, 397. 

James II, 446, 

Japan, 571. 

Jarmuth, 40. 

Jason, i29f. 

Jassy, 607, 

Jastrow, Marcus, 470, 487. 

Jaures, Jean, 512. 

Jebusites, 41. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 398, 400. 

Jehoash, 72, 81. 

Jehoiachin, 94 f., 104. 

Jehoiakim, 94. 

Jehoram, 69. 

Jehu, 70 ff. 

Jemal Pasha, 576. 



Jena, Battle of, 404 f . 

Jephthah, 43. 

Jeremiah, the prophet, 92 ff., 102 f ., 159, 
166. 

Jerez, Battle of, 246. 

Jericho, 31, 38. 

Jeroboam, 65 flF. 

Jeroboam II, 72, 74, 76, 78, 81. 

Jerusalem, 33, 39 f.; captured by David, 
55, 62 f., 67, 81, 86 rL, 95 ff.; siege of, 
by Chaldeans, 96 f., 109, 123; ravaged 
by Antiochus IV, i3of., 163; siege of, 
by Romans, 1746% 193, 195, 209, 228, 
261, 271; taken by Crusaders, 273, 302, 
332 f.; taken by British, 582, 633, 638, 
640 f., 643, 667; and the United Na- 
tions, 671. 

Jeshua, high priest, no. 

Jessel, Sir George, 561 f. 

Jesus of Nazareth, 1571!., 185, 201, 

222. 

Jethro, 20. 

Jewish Agency, 630, 639, 650, 667 f., 

669. 

Jewish Agricultural Society, 494. 
Jewish Brigade, 66 1. 
Jewish Chronicle, The, 563. 
Jewish Colonial Trust, 521, 523, 549. 
Jewish Colonization Association, 479, 

521, 589. 

Jewish Daily News, 497. 
Jewish Education Association, 627. 
Jewish Encyclopedia, 565. 
Jewish Legion, 577 f ., 666. 
Jewish Morning Journal, 497. 
Jewish National Fund, 521, 523, 549, 634, 

674. 
Jewish Publication Society of America, 

565. 

Jewish Theological Seminary of Amer- 
ica, 487, 565, 628, 630. 
Jew of Malta, The, 281. 
Jews' College, 563. 
Jezebel, 68 , 71, 81. 
Jezreel, city of, 70. 
Jezreel, Valley of, 11, 33, 35, 52, 69, 94, 

633. 

Joab, 53, 56, 59, 61. 
Joachimsen, Brigadier General Philip J., 

489. 

Joel, the prophet, 527. 
Joezer, high priest, 155. 
Johanan bar Nappacha, 202. 
Johanan ben Zaccai, 1841!., 195. 



INDEX 70 I 

Johanan, Maccabaean brother, 132; 

death of, 136. 
Johannesburg, 564. 
John I, of Poland, 348. 
John II, of Castile, 311. 
John Casirnir, 358, 375. 
John Hyrcanus, son of Simon, 139, 141. 
John Sobieski, 376. 
John of Giscala, Zealot leader, 173 flf ., 

179. 

John the Baptist, 158. 
Johnson Immigration Act, 622 f. 
Joint Distribution Committee, 576, 589, 

603, 650, 658, 674. 
Jonas, Joseph, 485. 
Jonathan, high priest, 170. 
Jonathan, Maccabaean brother, 132, 



Jonathan, son of Saul, 49 f ., 52 f. 

Jordan River, 32, 158. 

Jordan Valley, 32, 35. 

Jose of Purnbeditha, amora, 218. 

Joseph II, of Austria, 406. 

Joseph ben Gorion, 172. 

Joseph ben Halafta, 106. 

Joseph ben Mattathiah, see Josephus. 

Joseph, king of Khazars, 248 f . 

Joseph, king of Yemen, 224. 

Joseph, nephew of Onias II, 127. 

Joseph, son of Jacob, 9 ff. 

Joseph, son of Shmuel ha-Nagid, 253. 

Josephson, Ernst, 561. 

Josephus, 157, i72ff.; turns traitor, 

i?4* 

Joshua ben Gamala, 152, 175. 
Joshua ben Hananiah, i86f., 190. 
Joshua ben Levi, 202. 
Joshua son of Nun, 20, 29, 31 f., 39 f. 
Josiah, 90 f ., 94. 
Jotapota, 173 f. 
Jubilee Year, 27, 74. 
Judah, son of Jacob, 9; tribe of, 40, 47, 

55, 65- 

Judah the Saint, 366f,, 381. 
Judah, Kingdom of, 66 ff., 791!.; and 

Israel compared, 79. 
Judah II, 202; III, 203; IV, 206. 
Judah ben Asher, 306. 
Judah ben Baba, 194. 
Judah ben Ilia, 196. 
Judah ben Tabbai, 143. 
Judah ha-Nasi, 197. 

Judas Maccabaeus, 132 if.; death of, 136. 
Judas son of Ezekias, Zealot leader, 156. 



INDEX 



Judea, 33, m, 115, 121 f.; independent, 

138. 

Judges, the, 42 ff.; Book of, 42, 45. 
Julian the Apostate, 205. 
Juliamis, 189. 
Julius Caesar, 145. 
Julius Severus, 192. 
Jung, Guido, 599. 
Justinian, 207?., 221, 239. 

K 

Kaaba, 223, 227. 

Kaddish, 213, 262. 

Kadesh-barnea, 28, 30. 

Kadessia, Battle of, 227. 

Kafka, Franz, 557. 

Kahn, Zadoc, 559, 

Kai-fong-fu, 547. 

Kairwan, 242 f ., 548. 

Kalisch, Bertha, 498. 

Kalischer, Zevi Hirsch, 520. 

Kalisz, 347, 359. 

Kallah, 233. 

Kalonymus, see Calonymus. 

Kamenev, Leon, 587. 

Kant, Immanuel, 387, 416!. 

Kaplan, Dora, 587. 

Kaplan, Mordecai M., 628. 

Karaism, 23418:., 236. 

Karaites, 234, 236, 242. 

Karigal, Hayim Isaac, 397. 

Karkar, 71. 

Karlsruhe, 412. 

Karo, Joseph, 333, 546. 

Kattowitz, 481. 

Katzenelson, Yitzchak, 648. 

Keneset Hagedolah, 113, 116, 120. 

Keren Hayesod, see Palestine Founda- 

tion Fund. 
Keren Kayemeth, see Jewish National 

Fund. 

Kerensky, Alexander, 572. 
Kern, Jerome, 626. 
Kfar Giladi, 552, 638. 
Khaibar, 224, 226. 
Khazars, 240, 248 f ., 345 f., 544. 
Kherson, 532. 
Kidron, Vale of, 63, 174. 
Kielce, 657. 
Kiev, 346, 458, 4<*4, 474, 477 f 5*8, 539 

646. 

Kimchi, David, 299. 
King David Hotel, 667. 
Kinnereth, Lake, see Galilee, Sea of. 



Kishinev, 525, 530 f., 607, 667. 

Kishon River, 34, 43. 

Klausner, Joseph, 537. 

Kley, Eduard, 423. 

Klotz, Louis, 559. 

Knefler, Major General Frederick, 489. 

Knights of the Camelia, 624. 

Knox, John, 339. 

Koenigsberg, 414, 417. 

Kohut, Alexander, 487. 

Konitz, 506. 

Kook, Abraham Isaac, 635. 

Korah, rebellion of, 29. 

Koran, 222, 225. 

Korolenko, Vladimir, 529. 

Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 380. 

Kossuth, Louis, 442 f. 

Kovad I, 220; II, 227. 

Kovno, 359. 

Krochmal, Nachman, 428 f. 

Krotoshinsky, Abraham, 575. 

Kuhn, Fritz, 624. 

Ku Klux Klan, 616, 623. 

Kun, Bela, 609. 

Kupat Cholim, 634. 

Kutais, 472. 

Kvutzah, 552, 634. 



Laban, 8. 

Labor Movement, Jewish, in U. S., 496 f . 
Lachish, 40. 
Ladino, 330. 

Lamentations, Book of, 120. 
Landau, Ezekiel, 388. 
Landsmannschaft Societies, 499, 576. 
Langdon, Samuel, 399. 
Lasker, Eduard, 505. 
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 505. 
Latvia, 584. 

Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 388. 
Lazare, Bernard, 511. 
Lazarus, Emma, 492. 
League of Nations, 586, 601, 610, 616; 
and the Palestine Mandate, 638 f., 644. 
Leah, wife of Jacob, 8. 
Lebanon, 664. 

Lebensohn, Abraham Dov, 467 f . 
Lebensohn, Micah Joseph, 468. 
Leeds, 561. 
Leaser, Isaac, 486 f . 
Leghorn, 325, 362. 
Lehman, Herbert H., 626. 
Leibnitz, Gottfried, 344. 



INDEX 



703 



Leibovich, Jacob, see Frank, Jacob. 

Leipzig, 424, 557. 

Leipzig, Battle of, 409. 

Leivick, H., 498. 

Lemberg, see Lwow. 

Lenin, Nicolai, 587. 

Leo III, emperor, 239. 

Leo III, Pope, 267; X, 337. 

Leon, 255. 

Leon, Moses de, 305, 

Leontin, 268. 

Leontopolis, 166. 

Leopold I, 372 f. 

Lessmg, Gotthold Ephraim, 387, 389 f . 

Levanda, Lev, 480. 

Levertin, Oscar, 561. 

Levi, son of Jacob, 9, 23; tribe of, 40. 

Levi, Nathan Benjamin, 362^, 366. 

Levi ben Gershon, see Gersonides. 

Levin, Rahel, 418. 

Levin, Shmaryah, 535, 629. 

Levinsohn, Isaac Baer, 467. 

Levinthal, Bernard, 500. 

Levinthal, Louis, 630. 

Levita, Elijah, 322. 

Levites, 113. 

Levy, Asser, 395. 

Levy, Uriah P., 483. 

Lewisohn, Ludwig, 626. 

Ley, Robert, 645, 649. 

Lida, 538, 60 1. 

Lieberniann, Max, 558. 

Liebmann, Jost, 371, 373. 

Lilienthal, David E., 626 f . 

Lilienthal, Max, 460 f., 485. 

Lillienblum, Moses Leib, 480 f., 518. 

Limerick, 514. 

Limoges, 267. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 491. 

Lindbergh, Charles, 624. 

Lipsky, Louis, 566. 

Lipzin, Kennie, 498. 

Lithuania, 348, 350, 385, 454, 5<H> 57 2 > 
584, 601, 605 f. 

Litvinov, Maxim, 616. 

Lloyd George, David, 580. 

Lodz, 534, 633. 

Lombards, 241. 

Lombards, moneylenders, 281, 291. 

London, 278 f., 363, 304, 446, 475, 478, 
561, 618. 

Longfellow, Henry W., 396. 

Lopez, Aaron, 397. 

Lost Ten Tribes, 79, 101, 34* 



Lot, 5, 30. 

Loubet, Emile, 512. 

Louis IX, 281; XIV, 401; XVI, 401; 

XVIII, 410. 

Louis Philippe, 434, 436, 438, 440. 
Louisiana, 485. 
Low, Seth, 531. 
Lubavitch, 538. 
Lubetkin, Tzivya, 654. 
Lubin, Isadore, 626. 
Lublin, 350, 358. 
Lucena, 255 f. 
Lucius Quietus, 189. 
Luebeck, 405, 411. 
Lueger, Dr. Karl, 507 f ., 556. 
Lumbrozo, Jacob, 396. 
Lunel, 299. 

Lupescu, Magda, 608. 
Luria, Isaac, 334, 353, 368. 
Luria, Solomon, 353. 
Luther, Martin, 335 ff. 
Lutostanski, Hippolite, 472. 
Lutsk, 646. 

Luxemburg, Rosa, 593. 
Luzzatti, Luigi, 560. 
Luzzatto, Moses Chaim, 368 f ., 429. 
Luzzatto, Samuel David, 429, 520, 560. 
Luzzatto, Simeone, 325. 
Lwow, 350, 358, 572, 601. 
Lydda, 189, 202, 205. 
Lydia, 104. 
Lynn, 279. 
Lyon, 512. 
Lysias, 133 if. 

M 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 448. 

Maccabaeans, the, 132 if., 139. 

MacDonald, Ramsay, 640, 641. 

Macedonia, 239. 

Machaerus, 178. 

Machpelah, 6, 9. 

Mack, Julian W., 580, 586, 629, 

Madeira, 394. 

Madison, James, 398, 400. 

Magdeburg, 268. 

Magi, 216, 221. 

Magnes, Judah L., 567. 

Magnesia, Battle of, 128. 

Magyars, 507 f ., 555, 585. 

Mahler, Gustav, 556. 

Mahoza, 210 f., 217, 221. 

Maidanek, 646, 649. 

Maimon, Solomon, 416 ft. 



704 INDEX 

Mairnonides, 242, 256, 260 frV, his works, 
262 ff., 298 f ., 428. 

Maimonides College, 486. 

Malaga, 251. 

Malak, Chaim, 366 f., 381. 

Malea, Isaac de, 302 f. 

Malesherbes, 401. 

Manasseh, king of Judah, 89!. 

Manasseh, tribe of, 31, 40. 

Manchester, 561. 

Maniu, Julius, 607. 

Mannheim, 412. 

Mannheimer, Isaac Noah, 430. 

Mantua, 323, 325. 

Mapu, Abraham, 468. 

Mar bar Ashi, amora^ 218. 

Marcius Turbo, 189. 

Marcus Aurelius, 196. 

Margolies, Moses, 500. 

Margolin, Colonel Eliezer, 578. 

Mar-huna, 214. 

Mariamne, 149 ft"., 163. 

Marix, Adolph, 565. 

Mark Antony, 147 f., 150. 

Marne, Battle of the, 583. 

Marr, 507. 

Marranos, 308 f., 312^; in Portugal, 
3i7f.; in Italy, 326 f., 330 f., 339^; in 
England, 341 f .; in the New World, 
394; in France, 401; present-day, 548. 
(See also New Christians.) 

Marseille, 289, 299, 512. 

Marshall, Louis, 501, 586, 623, 630. 

Marsus, 163. 

Martin, Raymund, 305. 

Martinez, Ferrand, 307. 

Martinez, Gonzalo, 303. 

Marx, Karl, 505. 

Maryland, 396, 400. 

Mar-Zutrah, 22of. 

Masada, 148, 150, 175, 178. 

Masaryk, Thomas, 613. 

Masorah, 231. 

Massachusetts, 396f. 

Massias, Major Abraham, 483. 

Mattathias, 132. 

Mauritius, 662. 

Maurras, Charles, 616. 

Maximilian II, 337. 

Mayence, 267 fL; attacked by crusaders, 
272. 

May Laws, 476 f . 

May, Lewis, 447. 

Mayhew, Jonathan, 399. 



Mazzini, Giuseppe, 443. 

McMahon, Sir Henry, 581 f. 

Mecca, 222 ff., 227, 229. 

Mecklenburg, 405. 

Medeba, 139. 

Medes, 104. 

Medigo, Elijah del, 322. 

Medina, 178, 222 ff., 229. 

Medina, Sir Solomon de, 446. 

Medzhibozh, 383. 

Megiddo, 33, 62, 94. 

Mehemet AH, 436 ff. 

Meiningen, 283. 

Meir, 195^, 218. 

Meir of Lublin, 354. 

Meir of Rothenburg, 283 f . 

Meisels, Berush, 470. 

Melbourne, 564. 

Melchett, Lord, see Mond, Sir Alfred. 

Memel, 606. 

Memphis, n. 

Menahem, king of Israel, 78. 

Menahem ben Saruk, 247 f . 

Menasseh ben Israel, 340 ff., 446. 

Mendele Mocher Seforim, 469, 536. 

Mendelsohn, Erich, 558. 

Mendelssohn, Abraham, 390. 

Mendelssohn, Alexander, 390. 

Mendelssohn, Dorothea, 390, 417. 

Mendelssohn, Felix, 390. 

Mendelssohn, Henrietta, 390. 

Mendelssohn, Joseph, 390. 

Mendelssohn, Moses, 386fF., 402, 413 f., 

416, 418, 596. 

Mendelssohn, Nathan, 390. 
Mendes, Gracia, 33of. 
Mendoza, Daniel, 447. 
Menelaus, high priest, 130, 
Menorah Association, 627. 
Menton, Ram, 436 f. 
Menuhin, Yehudi, 626. 
Merchant of Venice^ The, 281. 
Merneptah, 44 f. 
Merodach-baladan, 86. 
Merom, 334. 
Merom, Lake, 32, 40. 
Merseburg, 268. 
Mesha, 70. 

Mesopotamia, 4, 166. 
Messiah, the, doctrine of, 155. 
Messiahs, false, see False Messiahs. 
Messina, 304. 
Metternich, 41 1, 419, 437, 440 f . 



INDEX 



705 



Metz, 272. 
Mexico, 394. 

Meyerbeer, Giacomo, 423. 
Meyerhof, Otto, 558. 
Mezerich, 384. 

Micah, the prophet, 83 f., 159. 
Michael, king of Poland, 375. 
Michal, 50. 

Michelson, Albert A., 626. 
Michmash, 49. 
Midian, 17, 20. 
Midianites, 10, 30, 43, 198. 
Midrash, 117- 
Mikveh Israel, 396, 486. 
Milan, edict of, 203; 240, 325, 441, 560. 
Milos, the, 662. 
Minkowski, Hermann, 558. 
Minor, Mrs. Clorinda S., 520. 
Minority rights, 536, 584 f., 586; in 
Poland, 602, 604; in Lithuania, 605 f.; 
in Rumania, 606 f .; in Czechoslovakia, 
613 f. 

Minsk, 359, 385, 461. 
Mir, 538. 

Mirabeau, Count, 401, 417. 
Mirandola, Pico della, 322, 336. 
A/Ushrnar Haemek, Battle of, 673. 
Mishnah, the, 195 ff.; contents of, 197. 
Misnagdim, 385 f ., 555. 
Mizpah, 47, 102 f. 
Mizrachi, 550, 630, 635, 673. 
Moab, 30, 51, 56, 70 f. 
Moabite stone, 70. 
Moabites, 37, 4 2 5 6 7, 73 94 IO 9> X 9 8 - 

Modena, 443. 

Modena, Judah Leon, 325. 

Modin, 13 if., 136. 

Moghilev, 358, 455. 

Mogulesco, Sigmund, 498. 

Mohammed, 222 f.; attacks the Jews, 
225 f. 

Mohammed IV, 365. 

Mohammedans, see Moslems. 

Mohliver, Samuel, 537. 

Molcho, Solomon, 328. 

Moldavia, 382, 540. 

Moloch, 6, 37, 68, 90. 

Monash, Sir John, 574. 

Monastir, 545. 

Mond, Sir Alfred, 562. 

Moneylending, 276, 291. 

Monogamy, 213, 269, 295 

Monotheism, 3, 2 if,, 162. 

Montagu, Edwin S., 562 f . 



Montagu, Lily, 563. 
Montagu, Samuel, 563. 
Montefiore, Claude Goldsmid, 563. 
Montefiore, Sir Moses, 435, 438, 445, 462, 

518. 

Montevideo, 621. 
Montgomery, General, 66 1. 
Montpelier, 289, 299. 
Montreal, 563. 
Morais, Sabato, 487. 
Moravia, 282, 406, 508, 598, 614. 
Mordecai, 115. 
Mordecai of Eisenstadt, 366. 
More Judaico, the oath, 440, 544. 
Morgenthau, Henry, Jr., 626. 
Morgenthau, Henry, Sr., 60 1. 
Morocco, 548. 
Morrison, Herbert, 644. 
Mortara, Ludovico, 599. 
Mortara Affair, the, 445. 
Mosaic code, 24, 26, in, 159. 
Moscow, 346, 472, 477 f., 528. 
Moses, 15 ff., 29; death of, 31. 
Moses ben Enoch, 250 f. 
Moses ben Maimon, see Maimonides. 
Moses ben Nachman, see Nachmani. 
Moses, Colonel Nathan, 483. 
Moshav, 553, 634. 
Moslems, 2 26 if.; and Jews in Spain, 

246 ff. 

Mosley, Sir Oswald, 618. 
Mosul, 583, 642. 
Mount of Olives, 176. 
Moyne, Lord, 667. 
Mufti, the, see Huseini, Amin EL 
Muni, Paul, 498. 
Munich, 268, 523, 557. 
Munich, Pact of, 597, 614, 616, 644. 
Munk, Solomon, 438. 
Mussafia, Benjamin, 363. 
Mussert, Alfred von, 617. 
Mussolini, Benito, 599. 
Myers, Captain Mordecai, 483. 

N 

Nabataeans, 144, 150, 198. 
Nabonidus, 104. 
Naboth, 69, 71, 
Nachmani, 299 ff. 
Nahum, the prophet, 91. 
Naphtali, 9; tribe of, 40. 
Naples, 323 f. 

Napoleon Bonaparte, 380, 404 f.; and 
Palestine, 404; and the Jews, 407 f , 



706 INDEX 

Napoleon HI, 445. 
Narbonne, 2<56, 268, 299. 
Nassi, Joseph, 330 ff., 546. 
Nathan, the prophet, 55, 57 f. 
Nathan ben Isaac, 268. 
Nathan ben Jechiel, 242. 
Nathan, Ernesto, 560. 
Nathan of Babylonia, 195, 
Nathan of Gaza, see Levi, Nathan Ben- 
jamin. 

Nathan, Sir Matthew, 562. 
National Conference of Christians and 

Jews, 625. 

National Jewish Welfare Board, 673. 
Natrona, 205. 
Navarre, 259, 298. 
Nazarenes, 192 f., 201. 
Nazareth, 208. 
Nazirites, 46, 68. 
Nazism, 591 fL; and Fascism, 599 f.; 

604 f., 608, 609 f., 6i2rL, 6i6ff., 624 f.; 

refugees from, 635; 641, 645 rT., 650 ff.; 

in post-war Europe, 657. 
Nebo, Mount, 31. 
Nebuchadnezzar, 94 ft"., 103 f. 
Necho II, Pharaoh, 94. 
Negeb, 29 f., 34, 633, 669. 
Nehardea, 2iofT., 214. 
Nehemiah, r 1 2 rT. 
Nemirov, 356f. 

Neo-Persia, 205, 208, 216, 220 f., 227. 
Neo-Persians, 2091!. 
Nero, 169, 175. 
Netherlands, The, 339 ff., 394, 403, 560, 

617, 651. 

Neumann, Emanuel, 630, 673. 
Neustettin, 506. 
New Amsterdam, 395 f. 
New Christians, 308, 312, 394. (See also 

Marranos.) 

New Hampshire, 400. 
New Orleans, 485. 
Newport, 39<5f., 400. 
New Testament, 160. 
New Year, see Rosh Hashana. 
New York, 396 f ., 475, 626 ff. 
New Zealand, 564. 
Nicaea, Council of, 203 f . 
Nicanor, 136; Day of, 136. 
Nicene Creed, 204. 
Nicholas I, 440, 452, 455 ff. 
Nicholas II, 527 f. 
Njcopolis, 330. 
Nieto, David, 446. 



Niger, 201. 

Nihilists, 469, 472 f . 

Nikolaev, 529. 

Nile River, 12. 

Nineveh, 91, 94, 209. 

Nissim of Gerona, 311. 

Nissim ben Jacob, 243, 252. 

Nissim ben Reuben, 307. 

Noah, Mordecai Manuel, 483 f ., 



486. 



Nob, 51. 

Nones, Major Benjamin, 398. 

Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League, 625. 

Nordau, Max, 521, 523 f., 550, 553. 

North Africa, 178, 189, 230, 242, 66 1 f. 

North Carolina, 400. 

Norway, 561, 617. 

Norwich, 278 f. 

Notables, Assembly of, 407 f. 

Numerus Clausus, 477, 528, 538, 610, 622. 

Nuremberg, 289. 

Nuremberg Laws, 596, 6 10, 612, 614, 644. 

Nuremberg Trials, 645 ff. 

O 

Obadiah, king of the Khazars, 249. 
Occupations of Jews, see Economic con- 

ditions. 

Octavian, 147, 150, 154. 
Odenathus, 203, 216. 
Odessa, 464, 467, 471, 474, 534. 
Og, 30. 

Oil in the Middle East, 664 f. 
Oliphant, Laurence, 519. 
Omar, 226, 228. 
Omayyads, 229 f., 231, 234, 247. 
Omri, 67. 

Onias II, high priest, 127; III, 129. 
Onias, son of Onias III, 167. 
Ophir, 61. 
Oporto, 548. 
Oppenheim, David, 367. 
Oppenheim, Jacques, 561. 
Oppenheim, Moritz, 461. 
Oppenheim, Samuel, 373, 433. 
Oppenheimer, Franz, 505. 
Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 626. 
Oppenheimer, Joseph Suess, 433. 
Oradea M^re, 607. 
Order B'nai B'rith, see B'nai B'nth 
Ordination, 187, 194, 332 f. 
Ordroneaux, Captain John, 483. 
Oria, 240. 
Ormuz IV, 221. 



INDEX 



707 



ORT, 589. 

Oslo, 561. 

Ostrog, 352 f. 

Ostrogoths, 244. 

Oswego, 652. 

Oswiecim, see Auschwitz. 

Othniel, 42. 

Otranto, 240. 

Otto II, 268. 

Ottolenghi, Giuseppe, 560. 

Ottoman Empire, see Turkey. 



Pablo Christiani, 301, 309. 

Pacific, the, 662. 

Padua, 242, 323, 368. 

Pale of Settlement, 45 iff., 458, 463^ 
476 ff., 528, 535. 

Palermo, 304. 

Palestine, 3 rt.; boundaries of, 32; topog- 
raphy of, 32fL; climate of, 34 f.; 
beauty of, 35*, a Roman province, 178; 
crusaders in, 273 f.; invaded by Mon- 
gols and Tartars, 301; 436, 439; BILU 
colonies in, 482; 523, 525, 549 f.; in 
First World War, 576 f., 582!.; and 
Balfour Declaration, 578 ff.; strife in, 
638 ff,; British in, 637 ff .; and the sur- 
vivors in Europe, 658; in Second 
World War, 659ff.; and the United 
Nations, 669 if.; Partition of, 671. (See 
also Yishuv.) 

Palestine Electric Corporation, 633. 

Palestine Foundation Fund, 521, 674. 

Palestine Office, 549 f. 

Palmach, 667. 

Palmerston, Lord, 437. 

Palmyra, 202. 

Paltoi, 233. 

Panion, Battle of, 123. 

Papal States, 324, 326, 332, 340, 443. 

Pappus, 189. 

Paris, 401, 512, 559. 

Parthia, i88L, 191. 

Parthians, 148, 196. 

Partisans, Jewish, 650, 652, 657. 

Passfield, Lord, 640. 

Passover, 27 f., 118, 152, 168, 297. 

Patria, the, 662, 667. 

Patriarchate, i86ff., 198 ff.; abolished, 
206. 

Patriarchs, the Hebrew, 3 ff . 

Patterson, Colonel John Henry, 578. 

Paul I, Czar, 452. 



Paul III, Pope, 326; IV, 326. 

Paul of Burgos, 309. 

Paul of Tarsus, 162, 185, 201, 227. 

Pavia, 325. 

Peel, Lord, 643. 

Peixotto, Benjamin F., 542. 

Pekah, king of Israel, 78. 

Pella, 152. 

Pereiaslav, 474. 

Pereira, Abraham, 363. 

Pereire, Emile, 435; Isaac, 435. 

Perez, Isaac Leib, 537. 

Perizzites, 41. 

Permanent Mandates Commission, 644. 

Pershing, General John J., 574 f. 

Persia, ancient, 25, ii4f., 121; modern, 

546 f. 

Persians, 104. 
Perth, 564. 
Peru, 394. 

Petach Tikvah, 553, 633. 
Peter the Great, 451. 
Peter the Hermit, 271. 
Petiura, 587 f. 
Petra, 198. 
Petronius, 164. 
Pfefferkorn, Johann, 336. 
Pharaoh, of the Oppression, 17; of the 

Exodus, 1 8. 

Pharisees, 140 f., 155, 160, 233. 
Pharsalia, Battle of, 145. 
Philadelphia, 396 f ., 475, 486. 
Philadelphia, in Palestine, see Rabbath- 

ammon. 

Philanthropy, 293. 
Philip II, 331, 339. 
Philip, son of Herod, 163. 
Philip Augustus, 274 ff., 278. 
Philippson, Ludwig, 426. 
Philistia, Plain of, 34. 
Philistines, 19, 37, 40, 45 f., 49^ 53 ff., 

$7* 73. 109, *34> '98. 
Philo, 1645., 167. 
Phoenicians, 23, 34, 56, 61, 73, 134. 
Pichon, Joseph, 307. 
Picquart, Colonel, 511, 513. 
Piedmont, 443. 
Pierce, Franklin, 491. 
Pilgrimage festivals, 27. 
Pilsudski, Jozef, 602 ff. 
Pinkasevitch, Jacob, 377. 
Pinner, Moritz, 489. 
Pinsk, 60 1. 
Pinsker, Leon, 479 ff., 518. 



708 



INDEX 



Pinski, David, 498. 

Pintos, the, of Amsterdam, 371. 

Pintos, the, of Connecticut, 398. 

Piotrokov, 359. 

Pirke Aboth, 197. 

Pitholaus, 145. 

Pithom, 19. 

Pius V, 332; VI, 404; VH, 404; IX, 443, 
445, 505; XI, 600. 

Piyyut, 231. 

Plato, 165, 

Plehve, Vyatcheslav von, 478, 525, 530 if. 

Plotnitzky, Frumka and Chantcha, 654. 

Plumer, Field Marshal Lord, 640. 

Poale Zion, 536, 551, 630. 

Pobyedonostzev, Constantine, 472 f ., 528. 

Podolia, 350, 384, 474. f 

Pogroms, in Germany, 412, 597 f.; in 
Russia, 471 fT., 587 f.; in Poland, 601, 
605, 657; in Rumania, 607; in Hun- 
gary, 609; in Austria, 612; in Tripoli- 
tania, 664. 

Poland, 283, 347 fT.; Jewish economy in, 
350; Jewish autonomy in, 35 if-; edu- 
cation in, 352 fT.; the "Black Decade" 
in, 356 fT., 370, 374 ff.; partitioned, 
379 f., 440, 458, 466, 470, 571 fT.; re- 
stored, 584, 600 fT.; 614, 650, 652, 657. 

Polotsk, 358. 

Pompey, 144^ 147. 

Poniatowka, 652. 

Pontius Pilate, 157 fT. 

Pool, Tarnar de Sola, 630. 

Popes, attitude of, toward Jews, 241 f . 

Popper-Lynkeus, Joseph, 557. 

Portugal, 259, 298, 317^, 327, 394, 548. 

Posen, 347 f., 349, 359, 377* 3^8. 

Potiphar, 12. 

Prague, 268, 273, 286, 354, 388, 442, 556, 
613 f. 

Press, Jewish, in Yiddish, 497 f ., 604, 621, 
628 f .; in English, 629; in Hebrew, 629, 
636. 

Pressburg, 443, 508, 556. 

Preuss, Hugo, 593. 

Prilutzky, Noah, 648. 

Primo, Samuel, 363, 366. 

Printing, Hebrew, 325, 350. 

Procurators, the, 156 &., 168. 

Professions, Jews in the, 289. (See also 
Economic conditions.) 

Prophecy, nature of, 75 f., 92; universal- 
ism of, io6f. 

Prophets, major, 119; minor, 119. 



Proselytism, in Judaism, 140, 167, 200, 

224, 240, 279; in Christianity, 200 f., 

265. 
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 6i6f., 

623 f. 

Provence, 268, 299. 
Provisional Executive Committee for 

General Zionist Affairs, 577. 
Prussia, 372, 405 f., 411, 416, 441 f., 444. 
Ptolemais, 173. 

Ptolemy I, 122 f.; II, 126; III, 127. 
Pumbeditha, 210, 217, 231, 233, 236, 238. 
Purim, Feast of, 115, 153, 296. 
Puritans, 341; in New England, 399. 



Quebec, 619. 
Querido, Jacob, 366. 
Quisling, Vidkun, 617. 

Raamses, city, 19. 

Rab, 2i4f., 236. 

Raba, amora^ 217. 

Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, 402. 

Rabbah, amora, 217. 

Rabbath-ammon, 56, 152, 

Rabbenu Gershom, see Gershom ben 

Judah. 

Rabbi, see Judah ha-Nasi. 
Rabbanites, 234, 236, 242. 
Rabina, amora, 218. 
Rabinowitz, Sholem, see Sholom Alei- 

chem. 

Rab-shakeh, 87. 

Rachel, wife of Akiba ben Joseph, 191. 
Rachel, wife of Jacob, 8 f . 
Ramadan, 227. 
Ramah, 46 f. 

Rambam, the, see Maimonides; origin of 
name, 260. 
Ramoth-Gilead, 69 f. 
Ramses II, 44; III, 45. 
Rappaport, Solomon Judah Loeb, 428 f. 
Rashi, 269 f., 273. 
Rathenau, Walter, 594. 
Raynor, Isidor, 501. 
Raziel, David, 66 1. 
Reading, Lord, see Isaacs, Rufus. 
Rebekah, wife of Isaac, 7. 
Reccared I, 244. 
Rechabites, 68. 
Reconstructionism, 628. 
Red Sea, 19. 



INDEX 



709 



Reform Judaism, 42 iff.; in Germany, 
422 rT.; in U. S., 485 fT., 628; in Eng- 
land, 562 f. 

Reformation, Protestant, 335 fT., 349. 

Regensburg, 268, 273, 287, 289. 

Reggio, Samuel, 429. 

Rehoboam, 65 f ., 79. 

Rehobot, 633, 635. 

Reich-Martinovitch, Habiba, 651. 

Reinach, Salomon, 559. 

Reinach, Theodore, 559. 

Reines, Isaac Jacob, 537, 550. 

Reinhardt, Max, 558. 

Reisin, Zalman, 648. 

Reiss, Raphael, 651. 

Rembrandt, 341, 374. 

Renaissance, the, 322, 325. 

Rephidim, 20. 

Resh-galutha, see Exilarch. 

Re sp onset, 233. 

Reuben, 9; tribe of, 31, 40, 43. 

Reubeni, David, 327!". 

Reuchlin, Johann, 336. 

Revisionism, 665. 

Revolution, the American, see Ameri- 
can Revolution; the French, see 
French Revolution; the Russian, see 
Russian Revolution; of 1830, 440; of 
1848, 440 fT. 

Rhode Island, 396. 

Rhodes, 437. 

Riblah, 96. 

Ricardo, David, 447. 

Richards, Bernard G., 566. 

Richard the Lion-Hearted, 261, 274, 
277 f. 

Riesser, Gabriel, 442. 

Riga, 464, 572, 646. 

Rindfieisch, 284, 347, 

Ringelblum, Emanuel, 648. 

Rio de Janeiro, 621. 

Rishpon, 667. 

Ritual Murder, see Blood Libel. 

Robespierre, 402 f . 

Rodeph Sholem, 487. 

Roehling, August, 506 f., 556 

Roettingen, 284. 

Roman, in Rumania, 540. 

Rome, city of, Jews in, 200, 240 f., 324, 
326f., 404, 560. 

Rome, empire of, 136 f., 138; dominion 
of, 144*1, 151, 171. 

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 598, 650. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 501, 544. 



Rose, Major General Maurice, 674. 

Rosenberg, Alfred, 595. 

Rosenblatt, Bernard A., 630. 

Rosenfeld, Morris, 498. 

Rosenheim, Jacob, 558. 

Rosenthal, Leon, 465. 

Rosenwald, Julius, 576. 

Rosenzweig, Franz, 596. 

Rosheim, Joseph, 338, 433. 

Rosh Hashana, 28, 152, 297, 

Rossi, Azariah dei, 324. 

Roth, Cecil, 563. 

Roth, Leon, 563. 

Rothblatt, Lutek, 653, 655. 

Rothenberg, Morris, 630. 

Rothschild, Baron Edmond de, 482. 

Rothschild, Lord, 578. 

Rothschild, Meyer Anselm, 433 f.; An- 

selm Meyer, 434; Carl, ^34; James, 434; 

Nathan Meyer, 434, 448 f .; Lionel, 434, 

448 f. 

Rothschilds, the, 412, 433, 437, 517. 

Royal Commission, 643. 

Rubin River, 34. 

Ruelf, Isaac, 526. 

Rumania, 188, 493, 522, 540 rT., 572, 584, 
586, 606 rT., 657. 

Ruppin, Arthur, 549. 

Russia, 345, 376, 451 fT., 500 fL, 522, 527 fT., 
571 fL; revolution in, 583 rT.; Jews in, 
after revolution, 587 nv, 594, 598, 615 f., 
646, 650, 652, 657 f., 664 f., 670. 

Russian passport question, the, 500 ff . 

Russian Revolution, of 1905, 533 rT., 538; 
of 1917, 572. 

Russo-Japanese War, 501, 532. 

Ruthenians, 507 if., 585. 

Ruttenberg, Pinchas, 577, 633. 

Ruzhany, 377. 



Saadia ben Joseph, 2366?., 242 f., 263, 

429. 

Saadia Gaon, see Saadia ben Joseph. 
Sabbatai Zevi, 3606% 545. 
Sabbath, the, 26, 28, 118, 296. 
Sabbatianism, 366; in Poland, 381. 
Sabbatical year, 27. 
Sctboraim^ 220. 
Sachs, Michael, 430, 441. 
Sacrifice, human, 6, 82. 
Sadducees, 140 f. 
Safed, 34, 328, 330, 332 fT., 673. 
Saint-Germain, Treaty of, 611. 



INDEX 



St. Louis, 485. 

St. Petersburg, 464, 477 f . 

Saladin, 261, 274. 

Salanter, Israel, 537. 

Salisbury, Lord, 519. 

Salome Alexandra, queen, 143, 168. 

Salomon, Haym, 398. 

Salomons, David, 434 f ., 448 f . 

Salonika, 328 ff., 361, 363, 546, 583^ 

Salten, Felix, 556. 

Salvador, Joseph, 520, 

Salvador, the, 662. 

Salzburg, 515. 

Samaria, city of, 67, 69, 72, 78 f ., 1 10. 

Samaria, province of, 33, 140, 109. 

Samaritans, uof., 169, 191, 195* 

207. 

Samson, 46. 

Samuel, judge and prophet, 46*?. 
Samuel of Nehardea, amor a, 2i4fT. 
Samuel ben Hophni, 239. 
Samuel, Colonel Frederick, 578, 

Samuel, Maurice, 626. 

Samuel, Sir Herbert, 562, 639**. 

Samuel, Sir Stuart, 60 1. 

Sanchez, Gabriel, 316. 

Sanhedrin, 116, 126, 1411!., 147, 156, 
i6of., 168, 172 f., 185, 187, 196, 231, 
332 f., 351. 

Sanhedrin, the Grand, in France, 407 f . 

San Remo, 638. 

Sanballat, 112. 

Sandomir, 377. 

Santangel, Luis de, 316. 

Sapiro, Aaron, 623. 

Saragossa, 253 f. 

Sarah, wife of Abraham, 6. 

Sarah, wife of Sabbatai Zevi, 362. 

Sarajevo, 545. 

Sarasohn, Kasriel H., 497. 

Saratov, 460* 

Sardinia, 167. 

Sargon II, 79, 85 f . 

Sarkell, 249. 

Sarny, 646. 

Sasportas, Jacob, 343, 364. 

Sassanids, see Neo-Persians. 

Sassoons, the, 547. 

Saudi Arabia, 664 f. 

Saul, King, 48. 

Saul of Tarsus, see Paul of Tarsus. 

Savannah, 397. 

Saxony, 387, 411. 

Schechter, Solomon, 563, 565. 



Schiff, Jacob H., 501. 

Schildkraut, Rudolph, 498. 

Schiller, 416. 

Schipper, Igjnatz, 648. 

Schlegel, Friedrich von, 390, 417. 

Schleiermacher, 412, 417. 

Schneerson, Joseph Isaac, 628. 

Schneerson, Sholem Baer, 538. 

Schnitzler, Arthur, 556. 

Schoenberg, Arthur, 556. 

Schoenerer, Georg von, 507. 

Schuschnigg, Kurt, 612. 

Schwab, Moise, 559. 

Schwartz, Samuel, 548. 

Schwartzbard, Shalom, 588. 

Science of Judaism, 413, 422, 427, 429 f., 

565. 

Scopus, Mount, 176, 582, 635. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 486. 
Sebaste, see Samaria. 
Second "World War, 598, 645 ff. 
Seixas, Gershom Mendes, 397 f. 
Selection, doctrine of, 75. 
Se janus, 167. 

Seleucids, the, 122 f., 126. 
Seleucus I, 122; IV, 129. 
Seligman, Edwin R. A., 626. 
Selim II, 331 f. 
Semel, Bernard, 627, 
Semichah, see Ordination. 
Senesch, Hannah, 651. 
Senior, Abraham, 3 16 f . 
Sennacherib, 86 S. 
Sens, 267. 

Sepphoris, 173, 197, 205. 
Septimus Sevems, 201. 
Septuagint, the, 126, 167. 
Sereni, Enzo, 651. 
Serenus, 233. 

Sergius, Grand Duke, 532. 
Serkes, Joseph, 354. 
Seron, 133. 

Servia, 545; see also Yugoslavia. 
SeviUe, 254 f., 307. 
Shabuah, 85. 

Shabuoth, 27 f., 118, 152, 168, 297 
Shaftesbury, Earl of, 519. 
Shakhna, Sholom, 353. 
Shalmaneser III, 71. 
Shammai, 153 f., 186, 235. 
Shapur II, 205, 217. 
Sharon, Plain of, 34. 
Shaw, Sir Walter, 640. 
Shearith Israel, 396, 398, 486. 



INDEX 



711 



Sheba, 58. 

Sheba, Queen of, 64, 547. 

Shechem, 5, 9, 33* *39* 

Shefayim, 667. 

Sheftall, Mordecai, 398. 

Shema, the, 21, 187, 194* "Zf 357- 

Shemaya, 149, 153. 

Shemoneh-esreh, 187. 

Shenirer, Sarah, 604. 

Sherif Pasha, 436. 

Shertok, Moshe, 672. 

Sheshbazzar, 109, in. 

Shiites, 230, 236, 238, 547. 

Shiloh, 40, 46. 

Shmuel ha-Nagid, see Ibn Nagrela, 

Samuel. 

Shneour, Zalman, 537. 
Shneur Zalman of Liady, 384 f., 628. 
Sholom Aleichem, 498, 537. 
Shpola, 529. 

Shulchan Aruch, 333, 353. 
Shur, Wilderness of, 19. 
Shushan, 114. 

Siberia, 573, 589. 

Sicarii, i69f, 

Sicherheitsdienst (SD), 596. 

Sicily, 240, 242. 

Siedlitz, 535. 

Sigismund I, 349, 353; HI, 349, 354- 

Sigismund Augustus, 349, 351. 

Sihon, 30, 

Silesia, 282. 

Siloam, Pool of, 86. 

Silver, Abba Hillel, 630, 671. 

Silver Shirts, 624. 

Simeon, 9, 13; tribe of, 40. 

Simhath Torah, 296. 

Simmel, Georg, 557. 

Simon II, 195, 197. 

Simon, Maccabaean brother, 132, 136 ft.; 
death of, 139. 

Simon, Zealot leader, 169. 

Simon bar Giora, Zealot leader, 175, 179. 

Simon bar Kochba, see Bar Kochba. 

Simon ben Lakish, 202. 

Simon ben Shetach, 142 f , 

Simon ben Yochai, 196, 305, 334. 

Simon the Just, 126 f., 159. 
Simpson, Sir John Hope, 640, 
Sinai, Mount, 17; revelation on, 21 f. 
Sinai Peninsula, 17, 23, 34, 188. 
Sinzheim, David, 407. 
Sisebut, 245, 266. 
Sisera, 4?. 



Sixtus IV, 287. 

Slobodka, 538. 

Slovakia, 556, 584, 614. 

Smolensk, 258. 

Smolenskin, Perez, 481, 518. 

Smuts, Jan Christiaan, 580. 

Smyrna, 360, 362. 

Sobibor, 649, 652. 

Socialism, 536, 634. 

Sodom, 5 f . 

Sofer, Moses, 423. 

Sofia, 522, 545. 

Sokolli, Mohammed, 332. 

Sokolow, Nahum, 579 f ., 629. 

Solomon, King, 18, 58; succeeds David, 

59; his reign, 59 ff.; his wisdom, 59; 

his wealth, 61 f.; his buildings, 63, 203, 

547- 

Solomon of Montpelier, 300. 
Solovyov, Vladimir, 529. 
Sombart, Werner, 432, 
Soncino, 325. 
Song of Songs, 120. 
Sophronius, 209, 228. 
South Africa, 564, 619. 
South America, 598, 619, 621 f. 
South Carolina, 396. 
Soviet Union, see Russia. 
Spain, 228, 230, 233, 243 if,; conquered 
by Moslems, 246; Golden Period in, 
249 ff.; reconquered by Christians, 
255 ff., 298, 315; Jews in, under Chris- 
tian rule, 302 ff.; expelled from, 3i6ff.; 
394, 476, 616, 619. 

Spaniolish, see Ladino. 

Speyer, 268 f .; Jews of, attacked by cru- 
saders, 272. 

Spinoza, Benedict, 343 ff., 363, 390, 429. 

SS (Schutzstaffeln), 596. 

Stamford, 279. 

Stanislav II, 379. 

Stein, Baron von, 406. 

Stern Group, 665, 667. 

Stiebel, Abraham Joseph, 629. 

Stiles, Ezra, 397, 399. 

Stoecker, Adolf, 504, 506. 

Stolypin, Peter, 539. 

Strasbourg, 268, 338, 401. 

Straucher, Benno, 554. 

Straus, Nathan, 553. 

Straus, Oscar S., 399, 501. 

Strauss, Rear Admiral Joseph, 565. 

Streicher, Julius, 595. 

Stmrm, the, 662, 667. 



7 12 INDEX 

Stryj, 652. 

Stuyvesant, Peter, 395. 

Suasso, Isaac, 371. 

Subbotniki, 455. 

Sudetenland, 614. 

Sukkoth, 27*:., 118, 142, 152, 168, 297. 

Suleiman the Magnificent, 329fF. 

Sullam, Sarah, 325. 

Sulzberger, Mayer, 501. 

Sulzer, Solomon, 430. 

Sumerians, 3. 

Sunnites, 230, 238. 

Sura, 210, 217, 231, 233, 236, 239. 

Surinam, 395. 

Susa, 25. 

Swaythling, Lord, see Montagu, Samuel. 

Sweden, 561, 617, 652. 

Swintilla, 245. 

Switzerland, 285, 387, 402, 491, 560, 617, 

651. 

Sydney, 564. 
Synagogpue, the, origin of, 103 f., 117? 

worship in, 118; place of, in the 

ghetto, 291 f., 423. 
Syria, 122 f., 171, 196, 436, 439, 583, 641, 

661. 

Syrians, 134, 143- 
Szold, Benjamin, 487. 
Szold, Henrietta, 553, 651. 
Szold, Robert, 629. 



Tabernacle, the, 23 f., 40. 

Tabernacles, Feast of, see Sukkoth. 

Tabor, 174. 

Tadmor, see Palmyra. 

Taft, William Howard, 501 f. 

Talleyrand, 410. 

Talmud, 197, 2iofF.; influence of, 219; 
character of, 219; enemies of, 2i9f.; 
220, 231; opposition to, 233 f.; study 
of, in Spain, 2501!.; in France and 
Germany, 268 fL; publicly burnt, 281, 
300, 327, 335, 381; place of, in Polish 
Jewry, 352 ff.; and Reform, 422, 428. 

Tarn, Jacob, see Jacob Tarn. 

Tamar, 57. 

Tangier, 548. 

Tannaim, 153, 188, 195, 197, 202, 217. 

Tannenberg, Battle of, 572, 

Targum, 118. 

Tarik, 245 f. 

Tarnopol, 652, 

Tartars, 346, 356 f. 



Tchernikovsky, Saul, 537. 

Teheran, 547. 

Tel Aviv, 553, 633, 641, 667. 

Tel Hai, 638. 

Telecki, Count Paul, 610. 

Tell el-Arnarna tablets, 39. 

Telz, 538. 

Temple, the First, 63 f., 81 f., 84, 92 f.; 
destruction of, 97. 

Temple, the Second, 110, 118, 129; de- 
filed by Antiochus IV, 131; 145 f., 
152 f., 156, 168; destroyed by the 
Romans, 177, 188. 

Temporary Rules, see May Laws. 

Tenenbaum-Tarnarov, Mordecai, 653. 

Territorialists, 549. 

Texas, 485. 

Thebes, n, 17. 

Theodoric, 241. 

Theodosius the Great, 205; II, 206 f. 

Theudas, 168. 

Thiers, Adolphe, 436. 

Third Jewish Commonwealth, 672. 

Thrace, 584. 

Tiberias, 34, 163, 173 f., 193, 202, 205, 
208, 229, 231, 331, 673. 

Tiberius, 157, 162. 

Tiberius Alexander, 1671!. 

Tiktin, Solomon, 425. 

Tilgath-Pileser III, 78. 

Tinnius Rufus, 192. 

Tirado, Jacob, 339^ 

Tisha b'Ab, Fast of, 97, 120, 298. 

Tisza-Eslar, 508. 

Titus, 173, 1 75 if.; arch of, see Arch 
of Titus. 

Tobiah, 112. 

Toledo, in Spain, 255, 257, 259, 299, 302, 
308, 313. 

Tolstoi, Dimtri, 476. 

Tolstoy, Leo, 529, 531. 

Torah, meaning of word, 20; revelation 
of, 21; laws of, 24, 26 f. (see also 
Mosaic code), 115; devotion to, 152, 
194. 

Torah, Oral, 28, 115, 142, 153 f., 185, 188, 

Wi J 97 2 34- 

Torah, Written, 28, 142, 234. 
Torquemada, Thomas de, 314*?, 
Torres, Luis de, 316, 394. 
Tortosa, 310. 
Tossafot, 270. 
Touro, Isaac, 397. 
Touro, Judah, 483, 489. 



Tours, Battle of, 266. 

Trajan, i88f. 

Transjordania, 30, 38, 175, 199, 581. 

Trans-Jordan, State of, 664 f., 667. 

Transylvania, 584. 

Trawniki, 652. 

Treblinka, 649, 652, 654. 

Treitschke, Heinrich von, 504, 571. 

Trent, 287. 

Treuenburg, Jacob Bassevi von, 433. 

Treves, 272. 

Trianon, Treaty of, 609. 

Trinity, 204. 

Tripoli, in North Africa, 548. 

Tripolkania, 548, 664. 

Trotsky, Leon, 587. 

Troyes, 269 f. 

Truman, Harry S., 658, 663. 

Trumpeldor, Joseph, 577, 638. 

Tryphon, 137. 

Tudela, 259, 

Tulchin, 357. 

Tunis, 548. 

Tunisia, 242. 

Turkey, 317; Empire of, 329; Jews in, 
329 ff., 357, 370, 439, 525, 540, 543, 546, 
571, 576 ff., 580, 583, ^38, <55 662 - 

Turks, 207, 229 L, 238, 271. 

Tuscany, 443. 

Tyre, 64, 68, 130, 257. 

Tyropean Valley, 63, 

U 

Uganda, 526, 549 f ., 563, 579. 

Ukraine, the, 345, 350, 572, 587 f., 589. 

Ulm, 268. 

Uman, 379. 

Um-esh-shert, 578. 

Underground, see Partisans. 

Union of American Hebrew Congrega- 
tions, 487, 502. 

Union of British Fascists, 6i8f. 

Union of Orthodox Rabbis, 500. 

United Jewish Appeal, 674. 

United Nations, 179, 669, 671 ff. 

United Nations Relief and Rehabilita- 
tion Administration (UNRRA), 626, 
658. 

United Nations Special Committee on 
Palestine, 670 f. 

United Palestine Appeal, 674. 

United Service for New Americans, 
674. 



INDEX 7 1 3 

United States, Jews in the, in War of 
Independence, 397 f.; 475, 478, 482 ff.; 
in War of 1812, 483; in Mexican War, 
483; as pioneers, 485; in Civil War, 
488 ff.; the "Russian" period in, 492 ff ., 
531; in Spanish American War, 364 f.; 
in First World War, 574!.; and 
Balfour Declaration, 580, 630; 586, 
598, <5oi, 619, 621 ff.; Zionism among, 
629 ff., 672!, 649!, 652, 6765.; in 
Second World War, 678 f.; Ortho- 
dox, 485, 488, 499 f ., 628; Conservative, 
486 f ., 499, 565, 628; Reform, 485 f ., 

499* 

United Synagogue, 565 f . 
Untermyer, Samuel, 625. 
Ur of the Chaldees, 3. 
Urban II, 270 f. 
Uriah the Hittite, 57. 
Ursicinus, 205. 
Uruguay, 621. 
Usha, 194, 196. 

Ussischkin, Menahem, 550, 629. 
Uvarov, Sergius, 460 f. 
Uzziah, 8 1. 

V 

Vaad Arba Arazoth, see Council of the 

Four Lands. 
Vaad Habriuthy 634. 
Vaad Hatzala, 650. 
Vaad Lezimi, 636, 667. 
Valencia, 253, 308. 
Valladolid, 311. 
Van Buren, Martin, 438. 
Vandals, 206 f., 244. 
Varus, 156. 
Vatican, 600. 
Velizh, 459 f. 
Venice, 323 ff., 331 f., 363, 369, 404, 441, 

443-. 
Versailles Peace Conference, 585 f., 593, 

600, 613, 637 f. 
Vespasian, 173, 175. 
Viborg Manifesto, 535. 
Victor Emmanuel II, 525. 
Victoria, Queen, 462. 

Vienna, 406, 418, 430, 441 f,, 481, 507, 

556, 573, 6iif., 613. 
Vienna, Congress of, 409 ff. 
Vilna, 349, 359, 377, 385, 467, 525, 572, 

60 1, 605, 652. 

Vilna Gaon, the, see Elijah ben 
Solomon. 



7^4 INDEX 

Vinaver, Maxim, 535. 

Vishnevitzki, Count Jeremiah, 357f., 

375- 

Visigoths, 244. 
Vital, Chaim, 334, 353. 
Vitebsk, 358, 455. 
Vladimir, 348. 
Vladislav, 354f., 358. 
Vogel, Sir Julius, 564. 
Volga River, 248. 
Volhynia, 350, 357, 384, 474. 
Volozhin, 537 f. 

W 

Wagenseil, Johann Christopher, 373 f. 

Wagner, Richard, 504. 

Wagner, Robert F., 630. 

Wailing Wall, 640. 

Wallach, Otto, 558. 

Wallachia, 540. 

Wandsbeck, 367. 

Warburg, Felix M., 576, 630. 

Warburg, Otto, 550. 

War Refugee Board, 650. 

Warsaw, 358, 466, 470, 538 f,, 572, <5oi; 

uprising of ghetto of, 652 jff. 
Warsaw, Grand Duchy of, 380, 405, 410, 

454. 458. 

Washington, George, 400. 
Wassermann, August von, 558. 
Wassermann, Jakob, 557, 596. 
Waterloo, Battle of, 409. 
Way, Lewis, 455. 
Weimar Republic, 593 f. 
Weizmann, Chaim, 579^ 582, 629 f., 

641, 669, 671. 
Weizmann Institute, 635. 
Well poisoning, charge of, 282, 285. 
Wellington, 410. 
Wellington, New Zealand, 564. 
Werfel, Franz, 557. 
Wertheirner, Samson, 433. 
Wesley, John, 396. 
Wessely, Naphtali Herz, 388 f ., 416. 
West Indies, 394!, 397. 
Westphalia, Kingdom of, 405, 410. 
White, Andrew, 502. 
White, Arnold, 479. 
Whitechapel, 562. 
White Papers, British, on Palestine, 581, 

619, 640 f., 644 f., 650, 662. 
Wilhelm II, Emperor, 505, 524* 
William of Orange, 340. 
Williams, Roger, 396, 400. 



Wilner, Aryeh, 655. 

Wilson, Woodrow, 580, 586, 613. 

Winchevsky, Morris, 498. 

Wingate, Charles Orde, 642. 

Winnipeg, 563. 

Wise, Isaac M,, 485. 

Wise, Stephen S., 566, 580. 

Witte, Count Serge de, 501. 

Wolf, Lucieni, 563. 

Wolffsohn, David, 550. 

Woodbine, 494. 

Wordsworth, William, 374. 

World Jewish Congress, 655. 

World War I, see First World War. 

World War II, see Second World War. 

World Zionist Organization, 521, 523, 

577i 579. 629, 637, 638. 
Worms, 268 f.; attacked by crusaders, 

272. 

Worms, Baron Henry de, 562. 
Wrangel, 587. 
Wuelrer, Johann, 373. 
Wuerttemberg, 283. 
Wuerzburg, 412. 



X 



Xanten, 506. 



Yakini, Abraham, 361. 

Yarkon River, 34. 

Yarmuk River, 227. 

Yathrib, see Medina. 

Yeb, 122. 

Yechiel Michel ben Eliezer, 357. 

Yehudah Halevi, 256 fF., 369, 518. 

Yellow patch, 276 f., 306 f. 

Yemen, 221 f., 261 f., 548, 636, 664. 

Yeshiva University, 500. 

Yevsektzia, 500. 

Yiddish language, origin of, 294^ 
589 f., 261. 

Yiddish Literature, 469, 498, 536 f ., 604, 
628 f. 

Yishuv, 552 ff. ; growth of, 598, 603!., 
633 F M 641 ff., 650 if.; in rescue work, 
650 f .; in Second World War, 659 ff.; 
police raids in, 663; Resistance Move- 
ment in, 665 fF. (see also Palestine.) 

Yom Kippur, 28, 63, 153, 222, 227, 297. 

Yomtob of Joigny, 279. 

York, 279. 

Yoselovitch, Berek, 380. 



Youth Aliyah, 651. 

Yugoslavia, 545, 571, 584, 615, 650, 652, 



Zacuto, Abraham, 316. 

Zacuto, Moses, 363. 

Zadok, priest, 56. 

Zangwill, Israel, 515, 521, 549. 

Zaslav, 379. 

Zealots, 148, 154, 157 f., 169 ff,, 175. 

Zebulun, 9; tribe of, 40. 

Zedekiah, 95 f. 

Zeitlin, Hillel, 648. 

Zenobia, 203, 216. 

Zephaniah, 91 f. 

Zernbbabel, no. 

Zhitomir, 379, 477, 533. 

Ziklag, 52 f . ^ 

Zinoviev, Grigoryi, 587. 

Zion, 55, 63 f ., 1 10. 

Zion Mule Corps, 577. 

Zionism, roots of, 517^; precursors of, 

484, 518 fL; institutions of, 521, 523; 

opponents of, 52 iff., 532; in Russia, 



INDEX 715 

536 f., 590; 549; parties in, 550 f.; in 
Austria, 556-, in Germany, 558, 596; 
in U. S., 566, 621, 628 ff.; 576 ff., 580, 
599, 603 f. 

Zionist Commission, 582. 

Zionist Congress, the First, 523; the 
Third, 524; the Fourth, 524; the Fifth, 
524; the Sixth, 526; the Seventh, 549, 
the Sixteenth, 630, 643; the Twenty- 
second, 669. 

Zionist Emergency Council, 630. 

Zionist Organization of 'America, 577, 
580, 629 f., 672 f. 

Zipporah, wife of Moses, 17, 20. 

Zirelsohn, Judah Loeb, 607. 

Zohar, 304 f., 361, 368. 

Zola, Ernile, 51 if. 

Zoroastrianism, 21, 210, 216. 

Zuckerman, Isaac, 653. 

Zunz, Leopold, 413, 425, 4275., 441. 

Zurich, 491, 560, 630, 643. 

Zweig, Arnold, 556, 596. 

Zweig, Stefan, 556, 596. 

Zwingli, Ulrich, 339. 




CZ 



128887