English Zionists and British Jews: The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1896-1920

by Stuart Cohen

Overview

Demonstrating that the reaction of the Anglo-Jewish community to modern Jewish nationalism was far more complex than conventionally thought, Stuart A. Cohen argues that the conflict between Zionists and anti-Zionists, although often stated in strictly ideological terms, was also an aspect of a larger contest for community control.

Originally published in 1982.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691614113
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/14/2014
Series:	Princeton Legacy Library , #852
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

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English Zionists and British Jews

The Communal Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1896-1920

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By Stuart A. Cohen

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1982 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-05361-5

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CHAPTER 1

The Foundation of the English Zionist Federation, 1895-1899

The initial reception which the Anglo-Jewish community accorded to Herzl provided little inkling of the storm of opposition that the man and his ideas were later to arouse. During his first visit to the country in November 1895 he was neither shunned nor silenced; rather, he was received with courtesy and his proposals given an attentive hearing. For that, much of the credit must go to Israel Zangwill, the Anglo-Jewish author to whom he came armed only with a brief letter of introduction from their mutual friend in Paris, Max Nordau. Considering their differences, Herzl and Zangwill got off to a remarkably good start. Impressively handsome, Herzl generated an aura of refined civility and intense seriousness. That was not at all Zangwill's manner. Physically ungainly, he affected a witty rather than a profound style, his contrived idiosyncracy contrasting markedly with Herzl's cultivated Central European charm. But Zangwill did possess one crucial attribute. Whereas Herzl was a newcomer to the stratified labyrinth of intra-Jewish politics, Zangwill knew the territory intimately. He had written on the subject extensively, and had taken advantage of his resultant fame to widen the arc of his acquaintances within Anglo-Jewry. His contacts were immediately placed at Herzl's disposal. After hearing one brief summary of the idea of a Jews' state, Zangwill initiated a chain of interviews that introduced his unexpected visitor to some of the most eminent men in the community.

Despite the inadequacies of Herzl's English (much of the conversation with Zangwill was conducted in pidgin French), little more was needed. His urbanity and elegance, together with his status as a leading journalist on the Viennese Neue Freie Presse, eased his passage through the most exclusive of social circles. In quick succession he conferred with Rev. Simeon Singer, Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, Asher Myers (the highly influential editor of the Jewish Chronicle) and Lt. (soon to be Col.) Albert Goldsmid. Meanwhile, and again through Zangwill's good offices, Herzl was also invited to lay his views before the prestigious Maccabean Club, whose members included many of Anglo-Jewry's leading artists, intellectuals, and professional men. Thereafter, as Herzl himself had envisaged, one thing led to another. The Maccabeans conferred upon him honorary membership of their society ; Adler sent him to the House of Commons to meet Sir Samuel Montagu, and Myers commissioned a synopsis of Herzl's scheme for publication in his newspaper. Altogether, as Herzl recorded in his diary, it was not an unsatisfactory return for a trip that had lasted just one week.

What is more, these bridgeheads were consolidated and expanded during Herzl's second visit to London the following July. By then, he had already begun to envision a possible community of interest between World Jewry and Great Britain; he had also made the first of his journeys to Constantinople and felt that he had some progress to report. Furthermore, he had begun to draft an agenda for an elitist "Society of Jews," whose task would be to draw up detailed plans for the Jews' state. Herzl was sure that in Anglo-Jewry he could identify men with the necessary talent for that purpose; all he had to do was approach them and enlist their support. Once again, therefore, he had an after-dinner session with the Maccabeans and what he considered to be "serious discussions" with Singer and Goldsmid. He also widened the circle of his personal acquaintances. He was introduced to Frederic Mocatta, a bullion merchant and one of the most generous and cultured philanthropists in the community; he strolled along Park Lane with Claude Moritefiore, Anglo-Jewry's most venerated theologian. He was also interviewed for the Daily Graphic by Lucien Wolf, the journalist and historian, who was generally regarded as the community's oracle on diplomatic affairs. Furthermore, before his brief visit was over (this, too, lasted only ten days), Herzl had approached two sets of wider audiences. One was the immigrant community, several thousand of whose members crowded into the Jewish Working Men's Club to hear him speak on the afternoon of Sunday, 13 July 1896. The other was the Headquarters Tent of the Chovevei Zion Association, whose meeting he attended on the evening of the 14th. At the former he was demonstratively joined by Hakham Moses Gaster; after the latter he was contacted, more furtively, by Ephraim Ish-Kishor and Jacob de Haas, both members of the militant B'nei Zion group in the East End.

But the impact that Herzl thus appears to have made on the community is somewhat misleading. Impressive though the range of his initial contacts undoubtedly was, he did not take the community by storm. Posthumous panegyrics, which retrospectively spoke of Herzl's "invasion of England," must be compared with Zangwill's more immediate and more sober assessment. Herzl's ideas had initially "startled" the community, he wrote in September 1896, but it had all been something of a seven-day wonder which "has rather simmered down now." Admittedly, the Jews of Whitechapel did seem to be loudly enthusiastic, their encouragement suggesting possibilities for popular action which Herzl was quick to appreciate and tempted to exploit. Yet, as he himself realized, the sympathies of the immigrant masses were notoriously fickle and inchoate. Their support was probably less congenial to Herzl personally than that of the recognizably Anglicized leadership; in practical terms it was certainly less valuable. Herzl had initially approached the grandees of London in November 1895, and it was their response to his project that he was most anxious to test in July 1896. But it was precisely at this level that he could make least progress. The prominent clerics and laymen of late Victorian Anglo-Jewry were rarely inclined to express hasty and extreme opinions; they usually preferred circumspection and restraint. Where specifically Jewish issues were concerned, they were especially prone to pursue a moderate and tentative policy. Sensible palliatives, broached during the course of diplomatic approaches to the Government through the Anglo-Jewish Association, were considered to be the most effective and proper means of dealing with "The Jewish Question"; grandiose panaceas, proclaimed at mass meetings (particularly when they concerned the turbulent Middle East) were thought to be alien to Jewish interests in particular and to the modulated tenor of British political life in general. After 1893, the leaders of the Chovevei Zion Association had avoided flamboyant displays; even so, as they informed Herzl, they had experienced considerable difficulty in getting people "even to hear the name of Palestine."

Herzl, for all his urgency, could hardly have hoped to do much better. On the contrary, the very energy with which he attempted to communicate the magnitude of the Jewish problem — and the radical nature of his own solution — threatened to be counterproductive. It undermined his pose as a down-to-earth man of affairs and encouraged the impression that he was a romantic visionary. As late as August 1898, at least one lady of the community implored her husband: "Do not become a Herzlite. His motives may be of the best, but I fear he is not practical and is decidedly premature." First impressions had been of a similar kind. Even Goldsmid, who had as good a claim as any to be regarded as an eccentric, had wondered whether Herzl possessed "sufficient stability" to serve the Jewish cause; Zangwill, who was from the first warned by Nordau of his visitor's "somewhat en thusiastic mind," later claimed to have been always frightened by his "fanatical passions." Mocatta seems to have echoed a broadly shared feeling: Herzl, he confided to Lucien Wolf, was undoubtedly "sincere and devoted," but nevertheless "seemed rather too much in a hurry to commit us to an expression of opinion."

Hesitancy, rather than opposition, was thus the dominant tone of the response that the community, at its higher levels, evinced toward political Zionism. Reserve, the reaction that Herzl found most disconcerting, was that which he most often encountered. A minor but nevertheless indicative instance was provided by his reception at the Maccabeans. His first appearance, hastily arranged two days after Herzl's first arrival in the country in November 1895, was neither well-attended nor widely noted. Goldsmid, for instance, did not turn up; the Jewish Chronicle carried no report of the meeting; and Solomon J. Solomon (the current president of the club) had to promise that his members would undoubtedly receive Herzl "more fittingly" were he to inform them "in good time" of his next visit. The second meeting, held in July 1896 in the French Room of the St. James Restaurant, Piccadilly, was indeed an altogether more august occasion. Speaking in carefully rehearsed English, Herzl delivered a well-pitched address, which contained a detailed exposition of his original plans and a suggestive hint of his interim progress in Constantinople. The subsequent debate (much of which was conducted in French and German) was, by most accounts, animated, prolonged, and wide-ranging. Admittedly, the evening was not an unqualified success. Herzl's ambitions were elegantly punctured by Zangwill's carefully constructed witticisms and somewhat trimmed by Prag's insistence on the superior merits of the old, cautious policy of gradual Jewish settlement in Palestine. On balance, the response was more critical than favorable; according to the Jewish Chronicle fifteen Maccabeans spoke from the floor, of whom only three gave Herzl's scheme their unqualified support. Nevertheless, Herzl could be excused for his subsequent sense of satisfaction. After all, the Maccabeans had accepted one suggestion, moved by Lucien Wolf, that they establish a committee of inquiry; they had also noted another, moved by Herbert Bentwich, that they organize a "Pilgrimage" in order to take a closer look at Palestine.

But Herzl had misinterpreted the mood of the Maccabeans; his hopes that the Pilgrimage would advance the cause of political Zionism in England were particularly misplaced. Despite adequate publicity, the project evoked scant response, and some ridicule. Ultimately, only twenty persons set out for Palestine in the spring of 1897, and of these only five were Maccabeans. Zangwill came (perhaps in order to visit his aged father in Jerusalem); so too did S. L. Bensusan (proprieter of the Jewish World) and Rev. George Emanuel, the minister of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation. But, despite Bentwich's personal exhortations, Lucien Wolf declined to participate, as did such other prospective candidates as Goldsmid and Gaster, and such respected Jewish academics as Solomon Schechter (reader in Rabbinics at Cambridge since 1892) and Israel Abrahams (who was to succeed Schechter when the latter departed for New York in 1902). Bentwich himself tried to put a good face on things; these prominent personalities might agree to lead subsequent pilgrimages. Meanwhile, there was something to be said for working as intensively as possible with the present band of stalwarts who could in turn exercise an influence on a larger number of the Maccabeans.

This, too, proved impossible. The Maccabeans had begun to regret their support for the Herzlian aspects of the Pilgrimage even before its departure. Their attitude had inspired Bentwich's public denial of the suggestion that the venture was in any way designed to serve the "political objectives" that Herzl had in mind. Replying to the latter's complaint, Bentwich pointed out:

You will appreciate even more the necessity of the step I took when I tell you that at the Annual General Meeting of the Maccabeans held last Sunday a very innocent reference to the introduction of your famous scheme here by the Society was compelled to be modified in deference to the views of some of the old fashioned timid members, who refused to associate the Society in any way with your designs, and my Pilgrimage was assailed because it appeared in juxtaposition to the reference.

The Maccabeans did subsequently host a dinner for the pilgrims on their return; but they did not implement the suggestion that they establish a "Maccabean Tent" of the Chovevei Zion Association. Neither did they accept the recommendation that the initiative be repeated and further trips to Palestine be organized under their auspices. Most of them seem to have found the entire idea, accompanied as it was by a fanfare of Zionist publicity, distasteful and best forgotten. They gave a far more enthusiastic and well-attended reception to Israel Abrahams when some twelve months later he returned from a journey to Palestine which, he stressed, had been "a private and personal affair." By 1902 they had virtually banned all mention of the topic at future meetings.

The pattern thus set was emulated elsewhere; none of the other cultural societies of this class of Anglo-Jewry gave any sign of wishing to initiate the "earnest discussion" which Herzl had originally sought. Instead, as at the Association of Jewish Literary Societies, Zionism was considered to be a subject of "too limited interest" to warrant a lecture. In general, the upper classes of the community received Herzl's proposals in studied silence. When first published in the Jewish Chronicle in January 1896, his "Solution to the Jewish Problem" provoked only three letters to the editor (two of which were irrelevant). Sales of The Jewish State, issued in translation later that year, remained "very meager" as late as 1898. In reply to Herzl's anxious enquiries, the publisher reported that "Very few booksellers would take any copies ... the regular Jewish booksellers simply refused to have anything to do with it." Representatives of the non-Jewish press did ask Herzl for an interview; some even described the first Zionist Congress of 1897 as a "historical event." Furthermore, individual gentiles in that year expected the Jews (of Bayswater and Hampstead, no less) to be "busy winding up [their] affairs" in preparation for their departure for Palestine. The "prominent Jews" to whom some newspaper reporters turned, however, were far more hesitant. Several simply "refused to be drawn" on the entire question of Zionism; others felt that the subject had already been accorded all the attention it deserved. Asher Myers, having provided Zionism with an initial platform, soon felt that the importance of "local items" exceeded the necessity to publish Herzl's replies to his Continental critics. Even Zangwill, having laid about him with several cynical asides and mordant comments, in 1898 admitted that he really had nothing more to say on the topic.

For some years thereafter, political Zionism retained the appearance of a fringe movement of Anglo-Jewry. Eleven Jews from Britain did participate in the first Zionist Congress, but, on their own admission, they "were not truly representatives of the Community." Goldsmid and Singer, for instance, were notable by their absence (especially since they had received personal invitations from Herzl). Zangwill, who was present, no less demonstratively "sat upon the last seat in the Hall, merely an observer." Altogether, the general reaction was tepid. Those members of the community who claimed to have "read the Basle proceedings with attention," considered that the congress had been an uninspiring affair. "The papers were all of a retrospective character and not one of them gave a glimpse of what the new State is to be like." Even the fourth Congress, held in London in 1900, was admitted to be a failure; its location did little to make the movement as a whole more palatable to Anglo-Jewry. Its opponents had already reached the logical conclusion that it would soon die of neglect. Singer, whose increasingly frequent derogatory references to Herzl's "noisy" supporters themselves reflected a wider communal feeling of distaste, had at an early stage advised that the Zionists be left "to prepare their own downfall." All the community had to do was sit tight and "await events." There was certainly no reason for recognized leaders of Anglo-Jewry to grace Zionists platforms. One standard excuse for declining to do so was that the Jewish people could not afford "a luxury of sentiment." Another was the nationalists' apparently ambivalent attitude toward their own enterprise. N. S. Joseph (Chief Rabbi Adler's brother-in-law) gave voice to this particular taunt as early as 1899. "I shall believe in the sincerity of the leaders of this noisy movement when I see them leave their pleasant homes and profitable pursuits and make for themselves new homes in that Palestine which they profess to love so dearly." Meanwhile, he had decided to burn his invitation to a Zionist gathering. "It spluttered and flared and ended in smoke. So will end the Zionist movement."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from English Zionists and British Jews by Stuart A. Cohen. Copyright © 1982 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents

• FrontMatter, pg. i
• Contents, pg. vii
• Illustrations, pg. ix
• Preface, pg. xi
• Abbreviations, pg. xv
• Introduction, pg. 1
• 1. The Foundation of the English Zionist Federation, 1895-1899, pg. 25
• 2. The English Zionist Federation and Communal Strategy, 1899-1904, pg. 47
• 3. Storm over East Africa and Stress within the English Zionist Federation, 1904-1914, pg. 79
• 4. The Zionists and Communal Politics, 1904-1914, pg. 124
• 5. Versions of the Past, Visions of the Future, pg. 155
• 6. Zionists and Anti-Zionists, 1914-1917, pg. 215
• 7. Anglo-Jewry and Zionism, 1914-1917, pg. 243
• 8. English Zionists and British Jews, 1917-1920, pg. 277
• Conclusions, pg. 314
• Bibliography, pg. 325
• Index, pg. 341