Zionism/The Zionist Congresses
§11. The Zionist Congresses
Public interest in the movement was also kept alive and keenly stirred by the annual meeting of Zionist Congresses during the holiday season, and generally in Switzerland. These were attended by ever-increasing numbers of Jews from all parts of the world, and flattered both participants and spectators by their resemblance to the parliament of a constitutional State.
The first, second, and third were held at Basle in August 1897, 1898, and 1899. Mr. Sokolov, a publicist of Warsaw, one of the prominent leaders of the Zionists and a member of the 'Inner Actions Committee' at the outbreak of the war, gives the following picturesque description of the Congress:
I still see that odd motley gathering—Rabbis and University professors, medical men and engineers, lawyers and littérateurs. mathematicians, chemists, bankers, merchants, tradesmen, University students, agriculturists, book-keepers, clerks—all professions and occupations. Orthodox Jews, moderate Conservatives, Chassidim, reformers, freethinkers, Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Galician Straimlech, and Parisian top-hats, German preachers, Lithuanian Rectors of Yeshiboth, Capitalists and Socialists, philanthropists and Bettelstudenten, from Polish plains and Swiss mountains, from Lithuanian Ghetti and Vienna 'Rings', speaking Russian, Polish, German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Hungarian, Arabic, Dutch, Bulgarian, Serbian, Danish, Yiddish and Hebrew, all had come there united by one will, unfurling one banner, forgetting at once all their differences, all their communities' petty questions, all their family worries, all their personal troubles, inspired by one idea, devoted to one great cause, reasoning, arguing, discussing, with a power of conviction and enthusiasm as if this question of a home for the nation were the most personal, the most vital question to every one of them.
The second Congress was notable for an eloquent address by Max Nordau. In burning words he attacked the Anti-Semitism of the Gentile, and the lukewarmness of the rich and 'cultured' Jews who remained in Babylon. The fourth Congress was held in London in 1900 at the Queen's Hall. The fifth and sixth were again held in Basle in 1901 and in July 1903. At all of these Herzl presided. In 1901 he was still hopeful of persuading the Sultan to grant a Jewish charter to Palestine, and he visited Constantinople twice in that year. The Sultan Abdul Hamid expressed his sympathy but did not grant the charter. The key-note of the Congress of that year (at which thirty English delegates attended) was the desirability of obtaining concessions in Palestine. The Jewish National Fund, of which more hereafter, was organized for the purchase of land. At the sixth Congress, in 1903, Herzl had to admit the failure of his Turkish negotiations; and the emigration of persecuted Jews to Egypt and to Uganda was suggested as a temporary measure.
Lord Cromer was most sympathetic to the former scheme, and the latter was offered to the Zionists by Joseph Chamberlain, then Colonial Secretary, who had just returned from South Africa. Chamberlain's offer was enthusiastically welcomed by a section of the Zionists and by all with gratitude. It was a beau geste on the part of the Government, and a recognition that Herzl and his following were regarded seriously in serious quarters. The Chamberlain scheme of territory within an English Colony was too tempting and too flattering to be summarily rejected; and, though Herzl said that the Jewish people could have no other ultimate goal than Palestine, and that immigration elsewhere could only be subsidiary, it was at his recommendation that the Congress resolved to send out an expedition to East Africa to investigate the Uganda proposal.
The Russian Zionists, however, regarded the scheme as treason to Zionism, and under the leadership of Ussishkin held a counter-Congress in Palestine in the Colony of Zichron Jacob and another in Charkov in November 1903, which presented an ultimatum to Herzl calling upon him to abandon the scheme.
The press throughout Europe, and especially in England, devoted much space to the subject, and the bibliography of Zionism has been rapidly increasing ever since.[1] In April 1904 a modus vivendi was found by a conference of the Greater Actions Committee, which, while taking cognizance of the Palestinian work of the Inner Actions Committee, assented to the dispatch to Uganda of a Commission of Enquiry, but left the final decision to the next Congress. It was at this juncture, when there was this cleavage in the ranks of the Zionists, that Herzl died suddenly, a comparatively young man, on July 3, 1904.
The report brought back by the Commission to Uganda was not a favourable one. The seventh, or 'Sabbath', Congress was held at Hassle in July 1905 under the presidency of Max Nordau, and attended by delegates from twenty-two countries. The Jewish Territorial Organization (generally known as 'Ito') had been founded some months previously by Israel Zangwill and others, who remained members of the Zionist body; but at this Congress such of the Zionists as were 'territorialists' and favoured a colony in Africa or elsewhere were beaten hip and thigh, for the Congress voted all extra-Palestinian work as outside its programme. The proceedings were of a somewhat turbulent nature. A suggestion that the Zionists should be ruled by a triumvirate consisting of Nordau, Marmorek, and Wolffsohn was rejected, the presidency being conferred upon Wolffsohn of Cologne and the seat of administration shifted from Vienna to his city. The Inner Actions Committee, whose president was ex officio head of the Zionists, was enlarged from five to seven members resident in Cologne, Berlin. The Hague, Charkov, Paris, and London. In the Greater Actions Committee there were five English delegates, including Zangwill and Gaster.
Of 350 Russian delegates attending this Congress, 300 voted against East Africa. They were what is known as 'Zione Zion', whose one object was Palestine and who claimed that the Jews already resident there must be consulted. Zangwill and the 'Ito' formed a constitutional opposition. The 'Jewish Colonial Trust' was constituted as a financial organization for securing funds for the development of colonization and agriculture in Palestine. In England the 'London Zionist League' was started as a sort of counterpoise to the 'Ito'.
The Actions Committee endeavoured to arrange a conference with other Jewish bodies to see if they would undertake the African scheme: but the 'Ica' and the Alliance Israelite refused, on the ground that the report was unfavourable; while the members of the Anglo-Jewish Association who attended the conference objected to the alternative offered as being, in the circumstances, too speculative. And so the Uganda scheme fell to the ground.
In August 1907 the eighth Congress was held at The Hague, under the presidency of Wolffsohn. A new constitution was adopted, under which Congresses were to meet every other year, with a conference in the years intervening. The Greater Actions Committee was to consist of (a) twenty-three members elected by Congress on the nomination of standing Committees; (b) the Presidents of the Executives of the National Federation and of other Federations; (c) the Chairmen of Council and Directors of the Jewish Colonial Trust, the Anglo-Palestine Co., and the Jewish National Fund; (d) the Chairmen of the Board of Arbitration and the Congress Council. The leadership was to be with the Deputy President and three other members of the Actions Committee.
Wolffsohn's health was breaking down, and he offered to resign; but the Congress decided to make no change in the presidency till their next meeting. The Russian delegates, under Ussishkin, sought to capture the movement. They were all for political work, and wished the seat of administration to be removed from Cologne to Paris or Berlin, but did not carry their point. Wolffsohn was a practical Zionist, and belonged to the more sober section who thought that the preparation of the people and the land for colonizing was the practical work for Palestine. This mode of economic penetration was a reversion to the Palestinian activities of the 'Chovevi Zion' type.
At the biennial conference held in July 1910 a suggestion that the Administration should be strengthened by an Advisory Board consisting of Nordau, Sir Francis Montefiore and Tchlenov, a leading Russian Zionist, fell through, as each of these gentlemen declined to act. Nordau was beginning to create an opposition to the Wolffsohn leadership.
In August 1911 the tenth or 'Jubilee' Congress was held at Basle, under the presidency of Nordau. Here the cleavage between the political Zionists and the cultural Zionists became accentuated, but, on the whole, the tendency was rather to the Palestinian ideals of the 'Chovevi Zion'. A decided movement ensued for the re-establishment of Hebrew as a living language; and some interest was shown in Jewish emigration outside Palestine to relieve the economic pressure arising out of persecution. A symptom of the cleavage in Zionist ranks was evidenced in the English law courts, where an attempt, opposed by Zangwill in person, was made to restrain the Jewish Colonial Trust from colonizing elsewhere than in Palestine, Syria, Asiatic Turkey, Sinai, and Cyprus. Four hundred delegates from 28 countries attended this Congress, which was chiefly memorable for the progress made by the 'Mizrahists', a section which insisted on the religious side of Zionism as of at least equal importance to the political.
Meantime the differences between Wolffsohn, who was the leader of the cultural Zionists, and the acting President Nordau, who was leader of the political opposition, grew more bitter. Nordau took the opportunity offered him, when he presided at a Herzl Memorial Meeting at Paris in August 1913, while pronouncing an impassioned eulogy of Herzl, to attack Wolffsohn, to defend political Zionism, and explain his own abstention from the forthcoming Congress.
In September 1913 the eleventh and latest Congress was held at Vienna, under the presidency of Wolffsohn. The proceedings at this Congress were disorganized and the Zionists as a body were disappointed and discouraged. It was a triumph of practical over political Zionism. There was a dispute between Nordau and the Executive over the choice of a leader. Tchlenov, the Russian Zionist, was unacceptable, and so was Ussishkin; finally Wolffsohn succeeded in retaining his leadership of the party for a while.
The chief practical outcome of the Congress was the emergence of a Jewish University in Jerusalem. Such a University had formed part of the original programme of 1901, but had been left in the background, as it was feared that it might divert energy from the really urgent agricultural work in Palestine. It was now argued, however, that it might prove valuable because it would bring educated people into Palestine and advance friendly relations between the Arabs and the Jews, and that the students whom it educated would go out into the world and spread Palestinian ideals among their co-religionists. Even Nordau did not deny that it was practical to make agricultural, economic, and educational experiments in the Holy Land, such as model farms, a Herzl forest, co-operative societies, and a University. But he urged that, although such practical work had so far only resulted in changing the position of 50,000 Jews out of the ten millions in dire need of immediate help, it did none the less prove a. theory, and largely and nobly benefit the whole of Jewry by its value and example.
If you go to Palestine (said Nordau) and see a house with a tidy appearance, and ask, Whose house is this? you will be answered, 'It is that of a Jew and a Zionist'. If you see people who are decently clothed, who hold their heads high, who sedulously cultivate the soil; and if, in the midst of deserts where there is no shade, you light upon a place where there are trees, and you ask who planted these trees, again you will be told 'a Jew and a Zionist did this work'. This creates an impression and is a herald of Jewish capacity and dignity.
Wolffsohn died in September 1914. During his illness the leadership of the movement was vested in the Inner Actions Committee, consisting of Warburg, Tchlenov, Sokolov, Hantke, Lewin, and Jacobson, and the administration had been shifted for a while from Cologne to Berlin under Sokolov’s management; but the outbreak of the Great War made it necessary for the Zionists to leave Berlin. The members of the Inner Actions Committee went to Copenhagen, and then to New York, where a Provisional Actions Committee, or Emergency Executive, was organized under the chairmanship of Louis D. Brandeis, now a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States. His Jewish Problem and How to Solve It[2] is one of the most striking Zionist pamphlets which have appeared. He claims that Zionism is not incompatible with patriotism, that it has brought inspiration to the Jews in the Diaspora, and that three million American Jews—a fifth of all the Jews in the world—may well insist that
Jews are a distinct nationality, of which every Jew, whatever his country, his station or shade of belief, is necessarily a member. Let us insist that the struggle for liberty shall not cease until equality of opportunity is accorded to nationalities as to individuals. Let us insist also that full equality of opportunity cannot be obtained by Jews until we, like members of other nationalities, shall have the option of living elsewhere or of returning to the land of our forefathers.