Part XII

“The great miracle has taken place,” asserted David Ben-Gurion, who would become Israel’s first prime minister. On November 14, 1917, in Der Yiddish Kampfe, the organ of Poale Zion movement in America, he proclaimed, “England has done a great thing: it has recognized our existence as a political entity and acknowledged our right to the land. But the Hebrew people itself must transform this into a living fact. Through its own efforts of body, soul and material assets, Israel must set up its National home and complete its national redemption. Now we stand at the threshold of the moment.”

The Balfour Declaration, which was drafted in collaboration with the American government, bestowed legitimacy to the Jews quest to “return to Zion,” where they could reestablish their national life in their ancestral homeland. This ancient aspiration is an integral part of Jewish religious creed.

American Jewish Response

Initially, the declaration created relatively little excitement among American Jews, especially in view of its importance, observes Emanuel Neuman, who served as director of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and as vice chairman of the American Zionist Emergency Council. Either people did not appreciate its historic significance or questioned the British government’s motives and intentions, he said.

Historian Melvin I. Urofsky found that most American Jews were shocked when they first heard about the declaration, since they had little knowledge about it in advance. They found the report difficult to believe, which followed the news of British General Edmund Allenby’s capturing Jerusalem on December 11, 1917.

Once they internalized the meaning, the Jewish press responded enthusiastically Urofsky said: “The daily prayers of Israel for the restoration of Zion have at last been answered.” “The greatest occurrence in modern Jewish history.” “There is joy this day in Israel. Shout it in the ear of every Jew.” Among the Yiddish-language newspapers, the politically conservative and religiously Orthodox Morgen Journal voiced reservations.

The Balfour Declaration meant the British were supporting the Jewish people’s dream of reestablishing a Jewish home in their ancestral homeland. The proclamation also made Zionism even more “respectable” among the American Jewish community, asserts political scientist Samuel Halperin, and generated much enthusiasm.

Zionist Rally in Carnegie Hall

To ensure American Jews appreciated the magnitude of what had occurred and its meaning to the Jewish people, a campaign was launched to enlighten them.

On December 23, 1917, the Zionists held a rally in Carnegie Hall, where approximately 15,000 people came to express their appreciation to the British. Ten thousand people had to be turned away because of lack of room in the auditorium. They listened to the speeches and songs on loudspeakers outside.

Stephen S. Wise, a leading Reform rabbi, who also served as vice president of the Zionist Organization of America, reminded the crowd that in1914, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, the German chancellor, had scorned the nonaggression treaty with Belgium as a “scrap of paper.” Holding up a copy of the Balfour Declaration, Wise asserted it also was just a scrap of paper, “but it is written in English. It is signed by the British government and therefore is inviolable…. It is true in the finest traditions of the British people, and is a symbol of the will of the Allies to right the wrongs, however ancient, to undo injustice…”

The American Jewish Committee

The majority of the leaders of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the oldest Jewish defense organization in the U.S., rejected the idea of Jewish statehood, adhering to the anti-Zionist view espoused by Reform Judaism, historian Naomi W. Cohen explained. “America is our Palestine, Washington our Jerusalem,” they declared. Though acknowledging that Palestine was different from other places because of its historical connection to the Jewish people, they were concerned that by conceding that Jews are a separate nationality, this would endanger the rights Jews had acquired throughout the liberated world.

The secular nature of Zionism also disturbed the leaders of the AJC, Cohen said. If Judaism involved a belief in the God of Israel and His Law, how could one identify with Zionism, which replaced nationhood for God and a “state for the kingdom of heaven?” Despite their disapproval of Zionism, the AJC leadership did not debate or criticize Zionists in public. Overtly expressing their opposition would simply have provided ammunition to the antisemites.

Aside from the differences in philosophy and personalities, Cohen said, the AJC understood that if Palestine could be developed into a haven for the oppressed Jews of Eastern Europe, then Zionism had some value. But why, they asked, estrange the Turks with an audacious proclamation of independence or alert the Western world to be vigilant about quixotic and visionary programs and declarations? A more practical approach would be to develop the Holy Land to where it was physically appealing to the Jews of Eastern Europe and exploit the desire to live there.

Cohen explained in her own words what the AJC wanted: “Without fanfare or flags, Jews could settle there in moderate numbers, enjoy the traditional tolerance of a Muslim government and provide a ray of hope to Jews in Russia and Romania.” AJC leaders considered themselves greater allies of Zionism than the Zionist activists, since they only alarmed the Turks and endangered the security of the Jews in Palestine.

The AJC viewed Theodore Herzl’s project as completely impractical. They favored supporting territorial proposals instead of financing attempts to reclaim arid land that was avowed to belong to Christians, Muslims as well as Jews.

Ambassador Henry Morgenthau

Henry Morgenthau, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I, was one of the more vociferous opponents of the Zionist movement. In an Oct. 30, 1921 article in the Melbourne Australian Signs of the Times, he said, “Zionism is the stupendous fallacy in Jewish history. I assert that it is wrong in principle, and impossible of realization; that it is unsound in its economics, fantastical in its politics, and sterile in its spiritual ideals.”

Furthermore, “Zionism is a surrender, not a solution. It is a retrogression into the blackest error and not progress toward the light. I will go further, and say that it is a betrayal; it is an Eastern European proposal, fathered in this country by American Jews, which, if it were to succeed, would cost the Jews of America most that they have gained of liberty, equality, and fraternity.

“Neither I nor the humblest worshipper in the most orthodox congregation can hope for anything from Zionism that is not already ours in virtue of our participation in the freedom of America….

“The Jews of France have found France to be their Zion. The Jews of England have found England to be their Zion. We Jews of America have found America to be our Zion. Therefore, I refuse to allow myself to be called a Zionist. I am an American.”

Urofsky notes that Morgenthau advised Wise that many of his speeches assessing the opportunities for Palestine might prove to be disastrous. As ambassador, he said he spent many hours attempting to allay the concerns among Turkish officials that the Zionists who backed the Allies were doing so in order to obtain the Holy Land after the war.

Anti-Zionist Resolution of the 1918 CCAR Convention

This negative attitude about the Jewish homeland by elements in the Reform movement was reflected in the anti-Zionist resolution of the 1918 Central Conference of Reform Rabbis convention (CCAR): “The ideal of the Jew is not the establishment of a Jewish state—not the reassertion of Jewish nationality which has long been outgrown… our survival as a people is [not] dependent upon the acceptance of Palestine as a homeland of the Jewish people.”

In the autumn of 1918, Reform Rabbi Ephraim Frisch sent a telegram to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson opposing a Jewish homeland. He founded the National Committee of Rabbis Opposed to Zionism with rabbis Schulman, Philipson, and Berkowitz to block U.S. approval of the Balfour Declaration.

“The effects of World War I, the Balfour Declaration, immigration restriction, and Henry Ford’s antisemitism added new converts to Reform Zionism’s ranks,” asserts historian Jonathan Sarna. “These converts remained in the minority; well into the 1930s the majority of Reform Jews, and certainly their rabbis, preferred to associate themselves with an ambivalent non-Zionism.

“But whatever their numbers, Reform Zionists had helped to bring about a major ideological revolution. The new religious synthesis that they formulated, yoking together the mission of Israel, cultural Zionism, and Americanism, became, in time, the dominant faith of twentieth-century
American Jews.”

Dr. Alex Grobman, a Hebrew University-trained historian, is senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.