On 2 April 1917, the justices of the Supreme Court filed in to the House of Representatives to hear the president of the United States ask a joint session of Congress to declare war against Germany. American entry into World War I meant that at some point Brandeis and the rest of the Court would have to pass on the constitutionality of several measures enacted to further the war program. For the Zionists the world turned upside down and gave the movement a chance to secure Theodor Herzl’s dream—international sanction of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Brandeis played a key role in securing that charter and, had he wanted, could have become head of the World Zionist Organization. Instead, within two years of the Zionists’ securing their great victory at the Paris Peace Conference, he resigned his leadership of American Zionism.
AMERICAN NEUTRALITY had made it possible for the Provisional Executive Committee to raise and transmit hundreds of thousands of dollars in relief funds, and to send food and medical supplies to Palestine. But Brandeis and his colleagues could not ignore the fact that Turkey, which controlled Palestine, was a belligerent and that any missteps on their part could doom the colonies. The PEC, therefore, declared its neutrality and asked the American ambassador Henry Morgenthau to reassure the Turkish government of its desire for the Palestinian colonies to thrive peacefully under Turkish rule. Brandeis tried to make the committee’s position as clear as possible: “Zionism is not a movement to wrest from the Turks the sovereignty of Palestine. Zionism seeks merely to establish for such Jews as choose to go and remain there, a legally secured home.”
The mass of America’s Jews initially sympathized with the Central powers, not because they loved Germany, but because they hated czarist Russia, from which so many of them had fled. “The Jews support Germany,” ran one editorial in the Jewish Daily News, “because Russia bathes in Jewish blood.” On the other hand, Brandeis and many of the leaders of the PEC, such as Wise and Mack, had always privately favored the Allies. The situation changed dramatically when in February 1917 the Kerensky revolution in Russia overthrew the czarist regime and replaced it with a government pledged to democracy, and less than two months later the United States entered the war on the Allied side. American Zionist leaders received an added impetus to support the Allied cause after they learned that in England, Chaim Weizmann had been secretly negotiating with His Majesty’s Government to declare Palestine a Jewish homeland once the British army had conquered the land.
Chaim Weizmann, head of the English Zionist Federation
Weizmann, of course, had not been under the constraints of neutrality as had Brandeis and the Americans, but aware of the American need to maintain neutrality, he had chosen not to inform them of his work. Initially, Weizmann had run up against a wall of indifference, but by early 1916 the idea of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine had begun appealing to the British for a variety of reasons, not the least of which would be their greater influence in the Middle East. After the United States entered the war, however, any British statement on the future of Palestine would have to be acceptable to its new ally.
Brandeis had received intimations about Weizmann’s work as early as December 1915, when he met Alfred Zimmern, then a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin, who also participated in conversations between the British Zionists and His Majesty’s Government. Not until January 1917, however, did American leaders first begin to discuss a British declaration with Colonel Edward M. House, and this set a pattern for future contacts with the administration. Wilson considered the creation of foreign policy a presidential prerogative, with the secretary of state and his department responsible for gathering information and implementing his decisions. This attitude, of course, upset the professionals in the State Department, especially those on the Middle Eastern desks, nearly all of whom were pro-Arabic and anti-Zionist, if not outrightly anti-Semitic.
Less than a week after the United States entered the war, Weizmann wrote to Brandeis on the status of the proposed declaration, stating, “An expression of an opinion coming from yourself and perhaps from other gentlemen connected with the government in favor of a Jewish Palestine under a British protectorate would greatly strengthen our hands.” Weizmann put the Americans in an awkward position. It was one thing to talk to House or even Wilson, and in fact even as Weizmann’s letter crossed the Atlantic, Stephen Wise reported that House believed the Jews would get Palestine after the war. Brandeis, however, could not publicly approve the activities of a foreign country, even an ally, since such a statement would embarrass not only the American government but the Zionists as well. Moreover, Weizmann wanted him to endorse not only a Jewish Palestine but one under a British protectorate, and Brandeis, well aware of Anglo-French tensions in the Middle East, had no intention of stepping into that quagmire.
To cement relations with their new ally, the British sent a high-level delegation to the United States a few weeks after Congress approved the war declaration. The foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, sought out Brandeis almost immediately upon his arrival in Washington, and the two men took an immediate liking to each other. At a White House reception on 23 April, and in several private interviews, they explored the problems of a declaration, the need for an American endorsement of it, and the intricacies of Anglo-French rivalry. When Balfour suggested that perhaps the United States would assume a protectorate over the Holy Land, Brandeis quickly told him that it was out of the question. The justice knew that the Wilson administration had no interest in expansion on the other side of the globe; American Zionists wanted British control. Balfour had been hoping to hear this, since a British protectorate over Palestine would make England the dominant colonial power in the region, and he urged the justice to secure American approval of a declaration. At about the same time the Foreign Office encouraged Weizmann and Baron James de Rothschild, the head of British Jewry, to press Brandeis for a speedy American endorsement.
Brandeis held off responding until he had a copy of the draft declaration in hand, and then on 6 May went to the White House and spent nearly an hour with Wilson discussing Anglo-French friction in the Middle East and the desire of the Jews to reestablish a homeland in Palestine. The president gave his approval not only to a British protectorate over the Holy Land but also to the British formula of “a publicly assured, legally secured homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine.” Wilson, however, could not publicly affirm his backing until he could calm the French. That same day Brandeis cabled Weizmann: “We approve your program and will do all we can to advance it. Not prudent for me to say anything for publication now. Keep us advised.” Over the next few weeks the justice met with Balfour again and sent encouraging notes to the British Zionists. By 20 May, Weizmann felt so confident that he openly informed the English Zionist Federation that a British decision on Palestine would soon be announced.
There has been criticism of American Zionists in general and of Brandeis in particular for failing to take a more aggressive role at this point, for not speaking out and forcing the Wilson administration to endorse what has become known as the Balfour Declaration. Much of this censure assumes that Brandeis, despite his position on the Court, could act as a free agent. It also implies that the reason for the delay in announcing the Balfour Declaration rested on British perceptions that neither American Zionists nor the Wilson administration cared.
In fact, this friction arose from the same set of differences that would drive a wedge through the Zionist movement in 1921. Whatever their passports read, people like Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow saw themselves as citizens of a future Jewish state, a sort of Zionist government in exile, and ready to act as such no matter their private or professional positions. Moreover, Weizmann could wheedle and cajole His Majesty’s Government not because Prime Minister David Lloyd George personally favored Zionism but because Zionism benefited imperial designs. Had the British not wanted Palestine for their own purposes, all of Weizmann’s efforts would have been in vain.
The United States, however, had no territorial ambitions in the Middle East, a fact Brandeis understood; had American Zionists employed the same tactics as Weizmann, it would have done no good at all. Wilson had given Brandeis all the assurances he could; he sympathized with Zionist aims, but his responsibilities required him to serve American interests first. The United States had never declared war on the Ottoman Empire, and although the Turks had severed diplomatic relations, Wilson and House for a long time hoped that Turkey might be wooed away from the Central Powers to negotiate a separate peace with the Allies. For the United States to openly approve a plan to dismember Turkey would have doomed any chance of such an arrangement. Brandeis understood the man and the situation—Wilson had made a promise, and he would keep it in due time. Brandeis’s well-known ties to Wilson, as well as his position on the Court, precluded him from saying anything, since Turkish officials might interpret his views as those of the president. Given this situation, Brandeis left Weizmann to pressure the British, while he urged American Zionists to build up organization and resources so that at the proper time they could back their colleagues overseas.
The British government hoped to secure American endorsement through private contacts such as Balfour’s conversations with Brandeis. The State Department did not even see a draft copy of the declaration until June 1917, submitted not by the Foreign Office but by Justice Brandeis. Only in September, after the British government had thrashed out a number of internal issues, did Whitehall submit a proposed declaration to Wilson. Secretary of State Robert Lansing immediately objected, noting that the United States had not gone to war against Turkey. Even though he had promised to act when necessary, Wilson for the moment acceded to Lansing’s request that he do and say nothing. Then, when the British did ask for his views, Wilson sent a message through Colonel House that he considered the timing inopportune, throwing both the British government and the English Zionists into confusion. Two weeks later, Brandeis cabled Weizmann to inform him of a complete reversal of the administration’s view.
From the sequence of messages, it is possible to reconstruct what happened. Wilson, preoccupied with problems of faltering war production, did not realize from the almost casual tone of Lord Robert Cecil’s inquiry that the British considered the American president’s response critical to their going forward. Certainly Wilson did not discuss the matter with either Brandeis or Stephen Wise, and there is some evidence that House may have made Wilson’s message seem more negative than the president had intended. Upon receiving panic-stricken cables from Weizmann, Brandeis arranged to see Colonel House on 23 September and at the meeting convinced him that the American government should endorse the proposal. Soon after, he sent a wire to Weizmann: “From talks I have had with President and from expressions of opinion given to closest advisers I feel I can answer you that [Wilson] is in entire sympathy with declaration.”
Balfour now sent a formal request for approval along with a final draft of the declaration through the State Department. The president passed it on to Brandeis, who, after consulting with Stephen Wise, suggested a minor change in wording. Wilson informed the British of his consent, and with the dam now broken, Balfour sent his famous letter to Lord Rothschild on 2 November 1917: “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best efforts to facilitate the achievement of this object.”
The Balfour Declaration lacked one thing to make Jewish delirium complete—actual possession of the Holy Land. As Jacob de Haas noted amid the great outpouring of Jewish emotion, at least some people felt that “the bear’s skin was being divided before the bear was caught.” Then, just a few weeks later, General Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem and occupied all of Palestine. Regina Goldmark, Brandeis’s mother-in-law, sent him a note to congratulate him on these great happenings, and in a rare moment of introspection he responded, “The work for Zionism has seemed to me, on the whole, the most worthwhile of all I have attempted, and it is a great satisfaction to see the world gradually acquiescing in its realization.” To his immediate associates, he was far less sentimental. “I note your telegram, fall of Jerusalem creating ‘Big Sensation,’” he wrote to Jacob de Haas. “Is it creating big ‘Money & Members’?”
Brandeis understood the Balfour Declaration, and even the capture of Palestine, to be no more than promissory notes. Wilson, under pressure from Lansing and House, did not announce his endorsement of the declaration until September 1918, and Brandeis had to fight off Weizmann’s repeated demands that the American government proclaim its support publicly. Brandeis also understood that Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech, delivered in January 1918, complicated matters further by its renunciation of imperial designs when it came time to redraw the maps of Europe and the Middle East. The Zionists would have to wait until after the war and then see if in fact the victorious Allies would redeem their promises at the peace conference.
AS ALLENBY’S FORCES swept into the Holy Land, they found a country exhausted by war, with both Arab and Jewish settlements facing dire poverty. Weizmann, taking the British declaration at face value, offered to form a Zionism commission to go to Palestine, assess the problems, and begin the rebuilding with Zionist funds, most of which would come from the United States. He wanted strong American representation, either Felix Frankfurter or Brandeis himself. Here once again Weizmann failed to understand the American government, its policies, and how Louis Brandeis saw himself. The justice recognized that the State Department would not give its approval, because to do so would give tacit endorsement to Britain’s postwar aspirations in the region and might involve the United States in some joint occupation with the English. Brandeis had turned down Wilson’s request to serve on the Mexican commission; how could he now accept a position on the Zionist delegation? Instead, Brandeis urged the PEC to raise more money and, without seeking explicit State Department permission, dispatched the New York lawyer Walter Meyer to accompany Weizmann.
Brandeis’s response to Weizmann is the first time that he shared his hopes for the development of Palestine with the British leader. It not only rebuts later charges made against him that he wanted the country developed with private capital but also perfectly expresses his idealism. “The utmost vigilance should be exercised to prevent the acquisition by private persons of land, water rights, or other natural resources or any concessions for public utilities.” Such resources, he declared, “must be secured for the whole Jewish people. In other ways, as well as this, the possibility of capitalistic exploitation must be guarded against.” While room existed for growth in many areas, “our pursuit must be primarily agriculture in all its branches. The industries and commerce must be incidental merely, and such as may be required to ensure independence and national development.”
Brandeis hoped that Palestine might develop as a primarily agricultural country with minimal industry. No large cities then existed, nor evidence of large mineral deposits that could serve as an industrial base. Brandeis might later be described as a prophet, but he most certainly could not see into a future in which a small Jewish state would have to fight for its survival against its Arab neighbors, or that Israelis would prove quite adept at creating large industries based on electronics. In 1918 he and most Zionists assumed that Palestine would remain a British protectorate for decades to come and, by focusing all of its energies inward, would be able to develop the just and humane society that Herzl had depicted. As for the Arabs in Palestine, practically none of the Zionist leaders paid any attention to them. In the Zionist slogan, Palestine was a land without people for the people without a land.
Weizmann and his commission did not expect the levels of destruction and poverty they witnessed upon their arrival. Daunted by the magnitude of the problems facing them, they again appealed to the Americans not just for money but for immediate participation in the work, and pleaded in vain for Brandeis to get the American government to change its mind. Given the devastation of Jewish communities in Europe, Weizmann said that for the foreseeable future, “We shall all turn to you and to your great country for help, advice and guidance—help in men and money.” At the annual meeting of the American Zionists later that year, the delegates heard a letter from Weizmann asking for, at the very least, a loan of several million dollars. A frustrated Weizmann sent Aaron Aaronsohn to the United States to explain in person to the justice the full dimensions of the dangers facing the Zionists in Palestine and the need for American participation.
Aaronsohn left Palestine with instructions to determine why Brandeis remained impassive in the face of the great problems confronting Zionists. He explained Weizmann’s difficulties to the Americans, and they educated him on the political realities that limited their options. The American government had different policy objectives from the British, and as American citizens they could not go any faster than the Wilson administration did. For the Zionists to try to pressure the American government as Weizmann had lobbied Great Britain would be counterproductive. Weizmann should stay in Palestine, Brandeis told Aaronsohn, and American Zionists would do everything they could, within the limits imposed on them, to supply the commission with additional technical and financial resources.
The young Palestinian, whom Brandeis greatly admired, easily healed this minor rift between the two Zionist leaders, but the incident presaged the friction between the two men, and between European and American Zionists. Weizmann had seen it as his duty to go to Palestine, to start work immediately on the Jewish homeland that would be ratified after the war. He felt abandoned by the Americans, who refused to join him in the task or to provide the large amounts of money he deemed necessary for the commission’s work. Brandeis, on the other hand, much as he believed his Zionist work important, saw himself as an American whose primary responsibility involved his role as a justice of the Supreme Court. He distrusted Weizmann’s unceasing demands for money without any specific plans for how the money should be spent.
In addition, people like Stephen Wise, Louis Lipsky, and Jacob de Haas, who had been active in American Zionism before the war, remembered all too well how they had been shut out of leadership in the movement and treated as nothing more than fund-raisers who never brought in the amounts the Europeans expected from rich American Jews. Only the American Jewish community had escaped harm during the war; it now had an effective and respected leadership; and American Jewish leaders resented the Europeans who continued to see the Americans as good for little more than money. They urged Brandeis to assert American primacy in the movement, but while he did not want to become head of the world movement, neither did he want the WZO officials to tell Americans what to do.
BRANDEIS RECOGNIZED that when the war ended, American Jewry would be the primary source of financial support for the yishuv. The old slogan of “Men! Money! Discipline!” mattered more than ever, but American Zionism could not thrive as simply a large membership organization devoted to raising funds. There had to be a common vision of what Zionism meant, one that transcended party factions and reflected American ideals. Brandeis had already explained how one could be a good American by being a good Jew and a Zionist, because Zionist ideals of democracy and social justice reflected the same values in American life. But what exactly did this mean? How did democracy manifest itself in Zionist life, and where in the enterprise did one find social justice?
The pragmatism that initially attracted the eastern European Jews to the Brandeis leadership also confused them. They were shaken by the war’s great devastation of their homelands, and the demand for action served as a tonic. They could do something, and the great respect accorded to Brandeis transformed Zionism from a marginal activity into one of influence and recognition. But they chafed at the lack of ideology and at the failure to pay attention to the importance of the cultural revival centered on the rebirth of the Hebrew language. Even though many of them had wandered away from the orthodoxy of their youth, they still expected some nod toward religion. Activism was all well and good, but at the 1915 Zionist convention in Boston some grumblings could already be heard that too little time had been devoted to theoretical review and the formulation of policy. The leadership’s uninterest in doctrinal discussion especially upset the editors of the Yiddish press, who saw it as a sign of the gulf between the immigrant membership and the Americanized leaders.
Europeans in general had always been more interested in theory than Americans, and European Zionists gloried in ideological debate. Perhaps because the movement had so little to show in terms of actual accomplishment, there had been solace in discussing how a Jewish homeland might theoretically be crafted. Brandeis and his lieutenants had little time and no patience for ideology. “We are now facing the critical period of Zionist history,” said de Haas, clearly speaking for Brandeis. “We shall be judged not by our abilities to formulate theories … but by the judgments we employ in meeting the practical features of the Zionist program.” The time for sterile ideological debate had passed; Zionists now had work to do. While always an idealist, Brandeis believed principles had to be translated into action; they had to have practical results.
Friction also developed over Brandeis’s alleged dictatorial posture; he commanded, and the troops were supposed to follow without question. Brandeis had shown himself a firm organizational disciplinarian in his earlier reforms, but a great gulf existed between the work of the Public Franchise League or the Savings Bank Insurance League and that of the Zionists. Brandeis had crafted the reform lobbies out of whole cloth; they existed for a specific practical purpose, and the members followed Brandeis because he articulated exactly what had to be done to achieve those goals. One cannot imagine a meeting of the Boston groups devoted to theoretical discussions of the role of subways in urban life or the psychology of insurance programs in labor-intensive enterprises. In Boston, Brandeis’s coolness, his aloofness, and his self-discipline did not offend his colleagues; they saw such qualities as typically Brahmin.
Many Zionists wanted a mensch, a man of the people, one who could walk and talk with them in terms familiar to their way of life, a man who had a Jewish soul, or yiddishkeit. Whatever else he may have been, Brandeis was never a man of the people. His partner George Nutter wrote that Brandeis’s “interest lies in Man and not in men. He is singularly lacking in sympathetic touch with men and never understands them.” Although Brandeis could when necessary talk to workingmen as well as merchant princes, he recognized his limits. He had refused to run for public office not just because he believed it would restrict his opportunities but because he understood quite well that he did not have the temperament for electoral politics.
By 1918, Brandeis had recognized that two things had to be done for American Zionists to act effectively after the war. First, there had to be a total reorganization of the movement so that all Zionist groups came under one umbrella, and, second, there had to be a platform upon which all American Zionists could stand.
THE FEDERATION OF AMERICAN ZIONISTS had been a loose coalition of literally dozens of groups, many of them small neighborhood clubs or local fraternal organizations, with little in common other than a general desire to rebuild a Jewish homeland. Some of these groups, such as the socialists and the religious Zionists, had commitments to specific ideological programs; others, like the Knights of Zion, were essentially social or insurance associations. The war crisis and Brandeis’s leadership had allowed them to work together in the short-term task of raising relief money, but as early as 1915 Brandeis realized that a better-developed and more hierarchical organization had to be established. He understood that these groups would never give up their independence until they could be convinced of the necessity of a unified national Zionist organization. Factional infighting at the 1917 Baltimore convention convinced some of the local chieftains of the necessity for reorganization. Then the Balfour Declaration and the capture of Jerusalem made it clear that unless the Zionists acted, they would lose their chance to influence events after the war.
In the spring of 1918, Brandeis presented a five-point plan to the PEC. First, there would be a single national organization to which every Zionist in the country would belong directly, not through membership in an affiliated society. Second, this new entity would have a new name, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), to distinguish it from other groups. Third, members would belong to local chapters that would be subservient to the national ZOA, and these districts, in the fourth point, would be grouped by regions. Finally, existing clubs and societies would retain the independence to work out their own goals and ideas, but the ZOA would hold full responsibility and authority for Zionist policy in the United States. Centering national work on the ZOA would allow Zionist groups such as Hadassah to put additional energy into their local or specialized projects.
Brandeis, it should be noted, never saw organization as anything more than a tool, a means of managing and utilizing resources more efficiently and effectively. “Organization,” he said, “is never a substitute for initiative and judgment.” But without good organization, the best initiative and judgment could go to naught.
Although the plan demonstrated Brandeis’s awareness of and sensitivity to the needs of the small local societies, they saw it as an attack on their independence and the enlargement of power in the hands of a few people who, unlike them, did not share the culture of the immigrant Jewish community. In Europe every ideological group, no matter how small its constituency or narrow its base, had its own party within the World Zionist Organization, a condition that satisfied local Zionists but hamstrung the WZO. In the United States political parties have traditionally sought to blur ideological lines in order to appeal to a wider constituency, basing their power on broad consensus rather than on narrow principle. The plan Brandeis presented reflected progressive American thought on popular organization and assumed general agreement on important policies. To those who already complained that the Brandeis group dismissed ideological considerations, the plan seemed like little more than a power grab.
At the 1918 convention in Pittsburgh, one group after another got up to denounce the plan in whole or in part and tried to introduce amendments that would have exempted them from subordination to the new national body. Rather than address the individual complaints, the Brandeis group hammered away at the benefits of the new organization and reminded the delegates that if they wanted to have a say in the postwar planning, American Zionists had to speak with one voice. One after another, first Hadassah, then the Knights of Zion, and then others agreed, and when the final vote came, the proposal carried easily, although many who voted “yes” did so resentfully and with misgivings.
As the clerk read the results, one of the delegates on the convention floor spied Louis Brandeis sitting alone in the gallery and, jumping to his feet, began to cheer and wave frantically in his direction. Soon the entire convention joined in the spontaneous demonstration, with delegates standing on their chairs shouting, “Hadad! Hadad!” They may not have liked his plan, but American Zionists still revered their leader.
A more muted resentment greeted the statement of principles proposed in response to those who wanted a clarification of exactly what the American Zionist movement stood for. While raising money had been and would remain a priority, for what purposes did they raise these funds? What should Zionists do other than write checks? The Pittsburgh meeting marked the first gathering of Zionists after the Balfour Declaration and the capture of Jerusalem, and Brandeis believed it important to set forth a policy statement that would not only guide American Zionists but also represent their views in the debates that would take place over the development of Palestine. Although he consulted with his colleagues, Brandeis essentially wrote the “Pittsburgh Platform” by himself, and it reveals, as do few other documents, how he hoped to merge the progressive goal of social justice into Zionism. On 25 June 1918, the convention unanimously approved a resolution that, after acknowledging Herzl’s dream and how recent events had brought it closer to fruition, declared:
Therefore, we desire to affirm anew the principles which have guided the Zionist Movement since its inception and which were the foundation of the ancient Jewish State and of the living Jewish law embodied in the traditions of two thousand years of exile.
First, We declare for political and civil equality irrespective of race, sex or faith of all the inhabitants of the land.
Second, To insure in the Jewish national home in Palestine equality of opportunity, we favor a policy which, with due regard to existing rights, shall tend to establish the ownership and control by the whole people of the land, of all natural resources and of all public utilities.
Third, All land, owned or controlled by the whole people, should be leased on such conditions as will ensure the fullest opportunity for development and continuity of possession.
Fourth, The co-operative principle should be applied so far as feasible in the organization of agriculture, industrial, commercial and financial undertakings.
Fifth, The system of free public instruction, which is to be established, should embrace all grades and departments of education.
Sixth, Hebrew, the national language of the Jewish people, shall be the medium of public instruction.
Although nearly all the tenets of the Pittsburgh Platform eventually became accepted policy in Palestinian development, it is clear they reflected the social concerns of the American leadership. The Mizrachi, the religious Zionists, felt religion had been ignored, while the Hebraicists believed the last item failed to emphasize sufficiently the importance of the Hebrew language in a cultural renascence. The masses of immigrant Jews could not understand it and could not find reference to ideas familiar to them, such as the mysticism associated with nationalist redemption. Only the moderate socialist Poale Zion embraced it warmly, while old-line socialists condemned it as vapid. The Yiddish press ignored it.
Emanuel Neuman, then a delegate and a future ZOA president, concluded that despite the bitterness at the beginning, “there has hardly been a convention that adjourned with such a feeling of solidarity, with such unanimity, and with such a common, all-embracing enthusiasm as this one.” By bringing out some of the tensions over organization and purpose, Brandeis succeeded in calming the waters for a while. It is doubtful he understood the depth of feeling in the immigrant community, which reluctantly swallowed the reorganization plan and statement of principles. Brandeis remained their leader, and they took much of what he proposed on faith. But just as he failed to discern the extent of nationalist feeling among rank-and-file Zionists, they could not understand his failure to give them what they sought in Zionism—a feeling for Jewishness and national rebirth.
BY THE TIME THE PEACEMAKERS met in Paris in 1919, the United States, France, Italy, China, and Japan had endorsed the Balfour Declaration, and from their comments it seems clear that David Lloyd George, Arthur Balfour, and other top British officials all interpreted it to mean that there would be a future Jewish state in Palestine. Career officers in the army and in the Foreign Office, however, studiously ignored the statement, and when Weizmann arrived in Palestine he had quickly discovered the rampant anti-Semitism among Allenby’s officers. In Whitehall the career Arabists promoted a Pan-Arab union under British sponsorship that would exclude both the French and the Zionists from the Middle East. Only if the Paris conference endorsed the Balfour Declaration and gave the mandate over Palestine to Great Britain would there be a chance for the Zionist dream to come true. Before going overseas, Woodrow Wilson had told Stephen Wise that the Zionists could count on his full support, and after returning from his first trip abroad met with the delegation from the American Jewish Congress. As the meeting broke up, the president called Wise to a corner, reaffirmed his support, and, as they shook hands, said: “Don’t worry, Dr. Wise, Palestine is yours.”
Wilson, however, had the whole world to save, and despite his best intentions Palestine occupied only a small corner of it. The American commissioners quickly agreed with the experts from the State Department and the Foreign Office that the Balfour Declaration had been a bad idea and should be ignored. Anti-Zionists as well as Christian missionary groups in the United States and Great Britain inundated the delegates with petitions against creating a Jewish homeland. Wilson’s Fourteen Points also worked against Zionist aspirations; if self-determination were to be taken seriously in deciding what to do in Palestine, then Arab interests should prevail. It would take months of difficult negotiations until the peace conference endorsed the Balfour Declaration, and the mandate over Palestine would not be awarded to Great Britain until the San Remo Conference in 1920. Throughout these trying months the Zionists kept up their pressure on different governments.
In February 1920, when the commissioners seemed to be wavering about Palestine, Brandeis contacted Wilson directly, reminding him that the United States had endorsed the Balfour Declaration. Wilson, who more and more had come to see it as his Christian duty to ensure the return of Jews to Palestine, sent a copy of the letter to Secretary of State Lansing, directing him to instruct the American representatives in Paris that under no circumstances could the Balfour promise be abandoned. “All the great powers are committed to the Balfour declaration,” said the president, “and I agree with Mr. Justice Brandeis regarding it as a solemn promise which we can in no circumstances afford to break or alter.”
DURING THIS PERIOD Brandeis could do only so much, relying on Felix Frankfurter in Paris to keep him abreast of the situation. In the spring of 1919, however, he decided that he would personally go to Paris and Palestine. He had been under constant pressure from Weizmann and the European Zionists to attend the peace conference, although no one seemed sure exactly what he would do there. Then, after the State Department dispatched the King-Crane Commission to Palestine, Frankfurter began insisting to Brandeis that he had to go to Palestine and contain the danger. Brandeis agreed, since he also wanted to see the problems and opportunities in Palestine personally and to get a better sense of what the Zionists should do.
Brandeis sailed on board the RMS Mauretania with a small party that included Jacob de Haas and his wife and Susan Brandeis, who apparently had mixed feelings about the trip, acting, as her father put it, “comme il faut.” They arrived in London on 20 June, and as soon as he set foot on the ground, all of his old Anglophilic sentiments rose to the fore. “London is civilization,” he told Alice, and “it would be worth millions of men’s lives to preserve it. Our American cities are business machines; London is living. All the horrors of bigness are absent.” He also plunged into a series of meetings with Zionist leaders, caught up on what he needed to know about the peace conference from Felix Frankfurter, and concluded, “My coming was very much needed.” He and Chaim Weizmann finally met in person, and as Louis told Alice, “Weizmann is neither as great nor as objectionable as he was painted; but he is very much of a man & much bigger than most of his fellows.” As a diversion from Zionist business, he, Susan, and Frankfurter enjoyed a long talk with Graham Wallas, one of the early Fabians and a founder of the London School of Economics.
The party then went on for a very short stay in Paris. In the evening the justice walked along the Champs-Élysáes and the Seine, “a new world for me of beauty.” Brandeis then met with members of the American delegation and with Louis Marshall and the Congress mission. No one, he discovered, had much good to say about the pending peace treaty, and while Zionist “problems are sufficiently serious, one bears them with becoming lightness in the world of gloom.” Brandeis and Frankfurter also had a private discussion with Balfour and Lord Eustace Percy, and Balfour assured Brandeis that the British intended to fulfill their pledge. Brandeis, in turn, reiterated that the United States wanted England to have the mandate.
Alfred Zimmern, at Brandeis’s request, now joined them, and along with de Haas they took an uncomfortable train to Marseilles, where they boarded the Pacific & Orient ship Malwa to Port Said. While at sea Brandeis read a satchelful of reports and also looked into the small library that the party carried with them that included a Hebrew phrase book, a Baedeker’s guide to Palestine, and several books on the history and geography of the Holy Land. After the usual delays in port, they took a train to Cairo, where a twenty-three-member Jewish band of Maccabees and Boy Scouts greeted him by playing “Hatikvah,” the Zionist hymn that would become the Israeli national anthem. The Jews “bore their heads high and the backs were straight and they bore the blue and white [flag] like a free and independent people.”
Because he needed to speak with General Allenby before going on to Palestine, Brandeis spent nearly a week in Cairo waiting for the general’s delayed return from Syria, comfortably ensconced in one of the “luxurious” apartments of the famed Shepheard’s Hotel. Each day he went out and reported faithfully to Alice and Elizabeth back home what he saw and the people he met. Although he complained about the dreariness, he found the locals superior in “moral, mental and physical cleanliness. But why our lack of beauty and joyousness which life here is full of? And why should western women have made such a lamentable failure in utilizing the colors and flowing gowns with which man here makes every moment interesting and every scene a picture?” He found these long gowns so graceful “that I am almost reconciled to the habit of priests and acolytes, which used to fill me with unspeakable horror, and which a peep into the Roman Catholic Church (with Zimmern) has served to revive. If only dress makers and milliners and their fashions could be exterminated there would be hope.” He hoped that Susan, who waited for him in London, had grown “as enthusiastically pro-British as I am,” and felt sure she would if she saw all the “fine clean looking young officers and Tommies” that he found in Cairo.
Allenby finally returned and Brandeis dined with him and his senior officers on 5 July, doing his best to correct some of the ideas Allenby had about Zionism. The next day the party traveled to Alexandria, and arrived in Jerusalem on 8 July, and it is not too much to say that Louis Brandeis fell in love with the country immediately. He stayed at a house in which several Zionists lived, including Dr. Harry Friedenwald and Henrietta Szold, and “I am taken care of much in the manner of a Swiss landlady. Living conditions couldn’t be better.” There were indeed problems—serious and numerous—that would have to be resolved. “The way is long, the path difficult and uncertain; but the struggle is worthwhile. It is indeed a Holy Land.”
Brandeis and Jonas Friedenwald in Palestine, 1919
Altogether the Brandeis party spent seventeen days in Palestine. Dressed in a lightweight summer suit, bow tie, and pith helmet, he visited all of the cities and twenty-three of the forty-three Jewish settlements, asking questions at every stop about crops, schooling, health, and other matters. He made no speeches. As he told Alice, “The most I said on any one occasion did not exceed a few short sentences. There were few such occasions & when I spoke I said mainly sweet nothings.” Although he tried to travel as unostentatiously as possible, the colonists of the yishuv insisted on showing their gratitude to the man they believed had made their survival during the war possible. Every place he went, Jews turned out to greet him, and while the youngsters danced and sang for him, the proud settlers served him the fruits of their own fields and vineyards. Exploring the cactus-covered Temple area by moonlight moved him deeply, as did his visit to Rachel’s tomb on the Bethlehem road. There, watching the sun set over the Judaean Hills, he turned to his traveling companions and said, “I know now why all the world wanted this land and why all peoples loved it.” For the rest of his life he would refer to this trip as setting the final seal on his commitment to Zion. The trip gave Brandeis an essential experience that had been missing from his Zionism, a quality he could not get from books and reports—a love for the land and an understanding of what Palestine meant to the Jewish people.
Brandeis had not come to Palestine as a tourist, however, and while he took great pride in the accomplishments of the settlers, he also saw hundreds of adults and children suffering from the lingering effects of malaria, an illness he knew well from his youth in Kentucky. Hadassah nurses told Brandeis of a settlement near Tiberias where seventy-eight out of eighty workers fell victim to the disease in one summer, each person suffering an average of two episodes. Before the yishuv could prosper, before hundreds of thousands of immigrants could come to build the land, this danger to its health would have to be eradicated—a practical problem that practical people could solve.
Prior to leaving Palestine, Brandeis penned a letter to General Allenby: “What I have seen and heard strengthen greatly my conviction that Palestine can and must become the Jewish Homeland as promised in the Balfour declaration. The problems and the difficulties are serious and numerous, even more so than I had anticipated, but there is none which will not be solved & overcome by the indomitable spirit of the Jews here and elsewhere.”
HAVING SPENT TIME in Palestine, Brandeis felt more confident about the practical work facing the Zionists. He sailed back to France and spent “busy and profitable” days in Paris, happily discovering that American and British officials now felt certain that the treaty would recognize the Balfour promise and that the proposed League of Nations would award the mandate to Great Britain. “On the whole,” he told Alice, “I think Zionist affairs about the most hopeful of all the world’s problems.”
Brandeis the idealist had seen the Palestine that he and many of the settlers believed it would become—democratic, egalitarian, and Jewish, the latter in terms of the ethical teachings of the prophets and not the ritualistic prescriptions of the rabbis. Brandeis the pragmatist saw specific problems to be solved, chief among them the eradication of malaria by draining the great Huleh swamp in the Galilee. He now had to convince the World Zionist Organization that it, too, must abandon its old policies, its fixations on ideological debate, its obsession with still more political assurances. The British had promised Palestine to the Jews, the peacemakers in Paris had ratified that pledge, and all signs pointed to the award of the mandate to England. The time had come to make the land habitable, to pour money not into the Zionist Organization but into bricks and mortar, roads and trees, schools and hospitals. The time, in short, had come to stop talking and to start doing.
This is the message Brandeis tried to drive home both in Paris and at the Actions Committee meeting in London in early August. The man who had said so little in Palestine now found himself talking nonstop, and in German. “I have labored hard,” he told Alice, “and at length. It is a wearing performance to me & doubtless to the others although I have recovered a bit of my fluency.” The message he brought and worked so hard to deliver did not, however, sit well with the European Zionist leadership. Brandeis advocated the abolition of the Zionist Commission and its replacement by moving all Zionist offices to Palestine. Funds would have to be raised, of course, and in this the Americans would do all they could. That money, however, had to be spent efficiently and effectively, and too many layers of Zionist bureaucracy stood between the donors and the recipients.
Brandeis found the Europeans fixated on political issues, and he could not get them to look at the practical problems in Palestine, such as the need to fight malaria, which they dismissed as irrelevant. The Europeans opposed dismantling the Zionist Commission, which they wanted to strengthen and put in direct charge of all work in Palestine. They even attacked the highly successful Hadassah Medical Unit for its failure to conduct its business in Hebrew or to commit to living in Palestine permanently. Dr. Isaac Max Rubinow, a noted physician and social worker, headed the unit, and he had come to Palestine to treat sickness and establish health facilities, not to make aliyah or play politics. Brandeis was appalled to learn that all of the official reports written by Rubinow to the London office had to be translated into Hebrew in Jerusalem and then translated again back into English when they arrived in London.
The two groups also fought over the question of the Jewish agency that the mandate called for to assist in Palestinian development. Everyone agreed that membership should be open to non-Zionist Jewish groups, such as the American Jewish Committee. But Weizmann and the Europeans wanted to bring in representatives of the “National Councils” that had sprung up after the war in eastern Europe to protect Jewish rights. The WZO planned to work with these councils to develop Jewish and Hebrew culture in the Diaspora. The Americans strongly opposed such an approach since it encouraged “Diaspora nationalism,” the idea that all Jews, wherever they might be, owed political and national loyalty to a Jewish peoplehood. If the National Councils wanted to work for Palestine, let them pay the shekel and join the Zionist organization. Brandeis won a temporary victory on this point, but Weizmann remained bitter over it and accused the Americans of “lacking in historic understanding of Jewish life and wanting in Jewish soul.”
Brandeis returned to the United States rapturous about what he had seen in Palestine, and greatly disturbed over his first extended contact with the European Zionist leadership. The demand for money and more money, without proper accounting practices, and too much of it diverted to support what he considered a bloated Zionist bureaucracy, upset him greatly. The failure of the Actions Committee to consider dealing with malaria led him to direct that for the immediate future, all ZOA funds should go directly to the Hadassah Medical Unit and be controlled by Dr. Rubinow. Brandeis also made a personal donation of $10,000 to Hadassah for a pilot project in the Galilee that proved remarkably successful. The same settlement near Tiberias that reported seventy-eight people ill from malaria in the summer of 1919 had only two cases the following year, and the surrounding area, with a population of over one thousand, had only five cases. Swamp drainage and the planting of eucalyptus trees proved extremely effective. The diversion of funds to Hadassah meant a corresponding sharp drop in American support of other programs and less money to the Zionist organization, a fact that increased friction between the two groups. When Brandeis sent Robert Kesselman to Palestine to help develop better administrative and accounting practices, the Europeans fought him every step of the way.
Brandeis on ship with Nathan Straus, Stephen Wise,
and James Waterman Wise, 1920
TO STRENGTHEN THEIR POSITION, the Europeans wanted to call a Jahreskonferenz in London in early 1920, a meeting of important Zionist officials but a lesser gathering than a full-fledged congress. Brandeis said he would not be able to attend until after the Court recessed for the summer, but he also wanted to replenish ZOA coffers so he would be in a better bargaining position. The severe postwar depression that afflicted the United States led not only to a sharp drop in donations but also to a decline in membership. From a high of 180,000 in the summer of 1919, Zionist rolls fell off in the next eighteen months to a little more than 25,000. At the very time that Brandeis needed more men and money, he had little of either.
Yet when Brandeis went off, accompanied by Alice, to the 1920 meeting, he actually stood in higher regard with the WZO than before. Although many of the European leaders disagreed with his emphasis on practical work, they recognized that no Jew in the world enjoyed greater prestige than he did—a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, a confidant of President Wilson’s, and a man who could converse as an equal with the heads of other countries. Some American Zionists wanted Brandeis to take over the leadership of the WZO, and had he been willing to do so, the Europeans would gladly have given him the office.
Louis Lipsky, American Zionist official
On board the Lapland on the way to London, Brandeis apparently gave the idea some thought. De Haas and Louis Lipsky urged him to do so, but Felix Frankfurter vehemently argued that he had a higher obligation to stay on the bench. Brandeis was torn between the opportunities he saw to create an ideal society in Palestine and the view he had argued for six years that one could be both a good Zionist and a good American. To leave the court that he called “the highest tribunal in the world” would give the lie to all that he had said; it would prove that Zionists pledged their primary allegiance not to the United States but to the movement.
Brandeis reached his final decision after a meeting with Bernard Rosenblatt, a young American lawyer whom Brandeis liked and had sent on a fact-finding mission to Palestine. At breakfast on 4 July, Rosenblatt told the justice (a man thirty years his senior whom he revered) that he doubted if Brandeis had the temperament to lead the movement. “As the first Jewish member of the United States Supreme Court you can be a very important figure for us,” Rosenblatt declared. “If you become the leader of Zionism, you’ll have to go to Palestine; you’ll have to meet opposition, difficulties, disputes with Ussischkin, and I don’t know whether it wouldn’t be a means of breaking you.” The Zionist methods that Rosenblatt had seen while in Palestine made no sense to the efficiency and rationality of American business and administrative practices and would prove too frustrating to Brandeis. The justice had more than a taste of that frustration at the Jahreskonferenz.
Brandeis accepted the chairmanship of the meeting at its opening on 7 July and in his speech enthused over the possibilities of Palestine and the great responsibility that now rested on the Zionists. Theodor Herzl had sought an international charter, and the great nations of the world had provided that through the Balfour Declaration and the mandate. “The rest lies with us. The task before us is the Jewish settlement of Palestine. It is the task of reconstruction. We must approve the plans on which the reconstruction shall proceed. We must create the executive and administrative machinery adapted to the work before us. We must select men of the training, the experience and the character fitted to conduct that work. And finally, we must devise ways and means to raise the huge sums which the undertaking demands.”
The following week must surely have been one of the most frustrating of Brandeis’s life. He saw problems waiting to be solved, and assumed that the Zionist leaders would settle down to figure out the proper solutions. That people might disagree over whether one particular plan would be more efficacious than another would not have upset him. Nor would he have objected to a debate over priorities; with limited funds, some projects would have to be delayed. Given some study, rational choices could be made. But instead of clear thought and calm rhetoric, he found a babel of voices in London, all yelling and shouting and haggling not only over minor matters but also over ones totally irrelevant to the important work at hand. He had come to London to build a Jewish homeland and wound up presiding over a “talkfest.”
For their part, the Europeans resented his insistence on parliamentary order, his emphasis on economic matters, and his lack of yiddishkeit. He unknowingly insulted them when he declared that dues money should not be used to pay the salaries of old-line Zionists (who saw their positions as rewards for service), or called veterans of the movement like Yehial Tschlenow and Leo Motzkin “pensioners.” Weizmann failed to keep promises, and even some of the British chemist’s friends charged him with not dealing honestly with the Americans. Above all the Europeans objected when Brandeis told them that the time for propaganda had ended and that for real work had begun. Propaganda, they believed, was real work and, no matter what the American said, would always be needed. Although the Europeans wanted to elect Brandeis and one other American to the Actions Committee, Brandeis refused. He recognized that he would always be outvoted, and the American presence would be interpreted as condoning a bad policy. “Things will go on in London of which I may not be aware,” he told Julius Simon. “How can I assume responsibility?” The executive, indeed the whole organization, had to be revamped.
The issue that upset Brandeis most grew out of Weizmann’s plan to launch a brand-new fund, the Keren Hayesod, which would solicit both donation and investment funds. Brandeis had no problem with a new donation fund to which contributors gave money as a gift to be used at the discretion of the WZO. Nor did he have problems with people investing in Palestinian enterprises. While he had no desire for the yishuv to become a capitalist enclave, he accepted the idea that some projects might better be conducted through private ventures. But the two types of moneys should never be intermingled. The very idea of mixing gifts and investments, with little or no auditing oversight, appalled him; the two moneys had to be handled differently and audited in different ways, and there had to be accountability for each. When Weizmann broached the idea, Brandeis lost all confidence in him and thereafter considered him little more than a trickster.
BRANDEIS LEFT THE LONDON CONFERENCE in far weaker position than when he arrived, vis-à-vis both the Europeans and his own American followers. The Americans did not object to Brandeis’s economic plans nor to his charges of inefficiency in the WZO, which were all too true; they did balk at his abdication of power and responsibility, and those with a deep commitment to cultural work resented his seeming denigration of that part of Zionist work. From this point on, Weizmann would insist that Brandeis had no right to criticize the work of the executive since he had refused to assume responsibility. The Englishman claimed he would be willing to give up his own policies and give all power to the Brandeis group, if only it would assume the work that went with it. Brandeis, he charged, had for too long been the “silent leader” of the ZOA, hidden in Washington and sending out directives through lieutenants. World Zionism did not need silent leaders; it needed people who would openly accept their responsibilities.
On the way home aboard the Zeeland, Brandeis drafted a memorandum summarizing all of his objections to the current WZO policy and what he believed should be the movement’s objectives. Above all else, there had to be immigration to Palestine, and to facilitate that, money had to be raised for economic development and health improvement. The political stage of Zionism had ended, and now the Zionists must make a reality of the opportunity at hand. From the time Brandeis landed in New York in late August, he and his followers stood on this platform—the reorganization of the movement, the phasing out of political work, an emphasis on practical projects to make Palestine fit for development, and fiscal responsibility in Zionist affairs. If these issues had been somewhat blurred at the London conference, they were crystal clear when the ZOA met in Cleveland in June 1921.
By early in the year Weizmann and his followers had gained the upper hand. The very traits that had made Brandeis such an attractive figure during the war—his decisiveness, his American values, his ability to delegate and to set a clear vision for his followers—now came back as charges of autocracy, a lack of yiddishkeit, a hidden leadership too far removed from the masses. Louis Lipsky, for decades a workhorse of American Zionism, told the National Executive Committee that he had loyally followed the Brandeis group even if he did not always agree with its policies. But Brandeis, at least, had led them; he had been out in front; he had given them the message and the inspiration. In London, however, the justice had abdicated; he had been offered full authority to direct the movement and had refused. Now he wanted to call the tune without the responsibility; he declined to lead yet refused to follow.
Lipsky’s speech cut close to the bone. Brandeis had in fact fallen victim to the delusion that he could lead in absentia. A man of reason, he naively assumed his ideas and not his personality had been the unifying force in the American Zionist movement. The masses of Jews had followed him more than they had followed his ideas, and they demanded only that those ideas point toward re-creating a Jewish homeland. Ideas did matter, but not as much as the visible participation of a charismatic leader. Brandeis failed to understand that his program to rejuvenate American Zionism could not be executed without him. If at any time before the Cleveland convention he had put the mantle of leadership back on, protests against his policies would have been immediately muted. No matter how much the immigrant Jewish community adored him—he had once been called “the greatest Jew since Jesus”—they would not accept a program handed down from Washington.
Brandeis recognized “that my so-called leadership is an anomaly, seemingly inconsistent with doctrinaire democracy.” He would not resent it, he claimed, if the Zionists “like Plato ‘declined with thanks.’” But he also resented the criticism. Part of his effectiveness lay in the fact that he did hold high government office, and to give it up would change both who he was and what he represented. The Zionists, he told de Haas, “have brains enough to understand the necessary limitations.”
Weizmann decided to push ahead with his plans for the Keren Hayesod, although Brandeis believed that they had agreed the matter would not be brought up until the following summer. The Englishman landed in New York to a great welcome in early April 1921, accompanied by none other than Albert Einstein, who came to help raise funds for the new Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Julian Mack, Stephen Wise, Felix Frankfurter, and others met with him in an effort to heal the widening breach, but the minute Weizmann showed any sign of compromising, the zealots who had come in his party, notably Shmaryahu Levin and Menachem Ussischkin, threatened to return to London and break him politically. So Weizmann toured the country, supposedly raising money for the Keren Hayesod but spending much of the time denouncing Brandeis for his lack of yiddishkeit. There could be no peace, he declared, between Pinsk and Washington.
Weizmann party, with Albert Einstein, arrives in America, 1921
Brandeis’s suspicions of Weizmann’s duplicity had now been confirmed. At London the justice had negotiated in good faith with the chemist, only to see him break his word almost immediately; the same thing had happened again. Brandeis, a puritan as much as a Zionist, believed the whole matter no longer represented one man’s opinion of policy against another but involved fundamental questions of principle. “Our aim is the kingdom of heaven,” he told his lieutenants, paraphrasing Cromwell. “We take Palestine by the way. But we must take it with clean hands; we must take it in such a way as to ennoble the whole Jewish people. Otherwise it will not be worth having.”
BY THE TIME THE ZIONISTS met in Cleveland on 5 June, the momentum had clearly gone over to those forces led by Louis Lipsky and committed to Chaim Weizmann. On the crucial motion to establish the Keren Hayesod in the United States, the Brandeis group lost by a lopsided vote of 153–71. At 1:30 in the morning a weary Julian Mack rose to speak. He thanked the delegates for the great honor that American Zionism had bestowed upon him by electing him president of the ZOA. He had worked faithfully, he said, to carry out the policies adopted by previous conventions, policies he fully endorsed. On principle, however, he could not go along with the decision to establish a major funding agency without proper safeguards, a move he interpreted as a repudiation of all that he and his colleagues believed.
He then submitted his resignation as president of the ZOA, as a member of the executive committee, and as a member of the Greater Actions Committee of the WZO. He reached into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a letter from Brandeis, and read it to the now-hushed throng:
With the principles and policies adopted by the National Executive Committee under your leadership I am in complete agreement. Strict adherence to those principles is demanded by the high Zionist ideals. Steadfast pursuit of those policies is essential to early and worthy development of Palestine as the Jewish Homeland. We who believe in those principles and policies cannot properly take part in any administration of Zionist affairs which repudiates them.
Upon the delegates in convention assembled rests the responsibility of deciding whether those principles and policies shall prevail in the immediate future. If their decision is adverse, you will, I assume, resign, and in that event present also my resignation as Honorary President. Our place will then be as humble soldiers in the ranks to hasten by our struggle and policies, which we believe will be recognized as the only ones through which our great ends may be achieved.
Amid stunned silence Mack went on to submit the resignations of thirty-six other members of the National Executive Committee, including Stephen Wise, Nathan Straus, Felix Frankfurter, and Horace Kallen, as well as three members of the administrative staff. The sounds of weeping could be heard in the hall as Mack concluded: “No action which you have taken, no action that you can take will ever drive me or any of the other gentlemen whose names I have mentioned from the ranks of membership … and will never lessen by the slightest degree the intensity of their Zionism, their devotion to Palestine, and their continuous zealous work.”
At a little after two in the morning the Brandeis era of American Zionism came to a close.
ALMOST FROM THE TIME that Mack read the resignations to the convention, people have been trying to explain the schism at Cleveland and how Brandeis, normally so astute, could have so badly misjudged the mood of the rank-and-file Zionists. Weizmann’s backers picked up on the theme of “Washington versus Pinsk” and saw it as a fight between an Americanized leadership and immigrants who still valued yiddishkeit, the Jewish soul. The journalist Shmuel Melamed accused Brandeis of having departed too far from his Jewish roots. “His entire conception of Zionism was goyish [gentile] and not Jewish, and this goyish conception of Zionism he wanted to impose upon American Zionism.”
Such criticism is only partially right. Brandeis indeed had no Jewish background, and he did see Zionism as an extension of the ideals he found most worthwhile in the American tradition. But if he and immigrant American Jews shared this ideal, they parted on his methods. Brandeis, contrary to some of their charges, never wanted to run Zionism as a business, nor did he want to have Palestine develop solely through private enterprise. The idealist, however, believed in more than just talking about dreams; he insisted on trying to achieve them. Herzl had dreamed, and his dream had incited a people. Brandeis also dreamed, but he saw the achievement made possible through such projects as the eradication of malaria, a proposal that could not compare to Herzl’s vision in rousing passion.
Where Weizmann and his followers saw Brandeis ignoring the greater dream for mere accounting principles, he saw the mundane as making possible the grandiose. The idea of a mixed fund struck many of the Europeans as questionable, but they accepted it because the money would support the things that did matter to them, such as the revival of Hebrew and cultural development. Brandeis wanted to change the movement since he believed the era of politics had come to an end; Zionists now had to focus on the hard practical work of building the homeland. He failed to realize the importance that many Zionists gave to cultural work, and had he understood this, it would have been so easy for him to say that practical work included not only draining swamps but reviving Hebrew; not only building roads but building schools; not only training farmers and engineers but training teachers.
Brandeis did not grow up in an atmosphere where a divide existed between the secular and the holy, and where embracing the holy could be dangerous. For Jews who still recalled the persecutions they faced in eastern Europe, the notion of a Jewish homeland meant, above all else, the freedom to be Jewish without fear. Few Americans understood how the cultural work—the idea of people living openly as Jews, conversing in Hebrew, attending schools where all subjects would be taught in Hebrew—could mean so much. For Brandeis, the cultural work mattered little, not because it was unimportant, but because he assumed others would take that burden upon themselves. He and those Zionists he led had to do the practical work, and after that others would do the cultural. But they had to do that work, as he said, with clean hands, or they would not be worthy of Palestine.
In the end, the practical policies that Brandeis championed prevailed, since he correctly analyzed the economic and fiscal needs of the movement. Within a very short time Weizmann began to downplay political work, and instead emphasized practical efforts needed to rebuild Palestine. The Palestine Development Council handled funds earmarked for investment, while the Keren Hayesod took in donations. Simple necessity required sanitary work to precede immigration. As Weizmann grew more familiar with the United States and its Jewish community, he stopped talking about Jewish nationalism and started preaching the gospel of Palestinian work. But he never understood what Brandeis had contributed to the movement.
Brandeis made Zionism acceptable to American Jewry, not only for those who had already acculturated, but for those who hoped to do so. He calmed the unwarranted fears of so-called dual loyalty and legitimized the movement in non-Jewish eyes. His emphasis on practical work gave American Jews a concrete task they needed, the only way they could transform the abstractions of Zionism into a relevant movement. He could not, however, give them that Jewish soul they so craved; Weizmann could. Neither man understood that most American Jews did not want Washington or Pinsk. They wanted both.
At the convention Brandeis had told the delegates that he and his associates would be retiring from offices in the ZOA but not from Zionism itself. Within days of the Pittsburgh meeting the Brandeis group met in New York, established the Palestine Endowment Funds to funnel money to projects in the Holy Land, and began their wait for what they recognized as their inevitable return to power.