The Emergence of American Zionism

By Mark A. Raider

The images of Zionist pioneers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--hard working, brawny, and living off the land--sprang from the ascendent socialist Zionist movement in Palestine known as "Labor Zionism." The building of the Yishuv, a new Jewish society in Palestine, was accompanied by the rapid growth of Zionism worldwide.
How did Zionism take shape in the United States? How did Labor Zionism and the Yishuv influence American Jews? Zionism and Labor Zionism had a much more substantial impact on the American Jewish scene than has been recognized. Drawing on meticulous research, Mark A. Raider describes Labor Zionism's dramatic transformation in the American context from a marginal immigrant party into a significant political force.
The Emergence of American Zionism challenges many of the prevailing assumptions of Jewish and Zionist history that have held sway for a full generation. It shows how and why American Labor Zionism--"the voice of Labor Palestine on American soil"--played such an important role in formulating the program and outlook of American Zionism. It also examines more generally the impact of Zionism on American Jews, making the case that Zionism's cultural vitality, intellectual diversity, and unparalleled ability to rally public opinion in times of crisis were central to the American Jewish experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781479861279

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The Emergence of American Zionism

The Emergence of American Zionism

Mark A. Raider

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS

New York and London

© 1998 by New York University

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Raider, Mark A.

The emergence of American Zionism / Mark A. Raider,

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8147-7498-9 (hardcover : alk. paper).—ISBN 0-8147-7499-7

(pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Zionism—United States—History. I. Title.

DS149.5.U6R35      1998

320.54’09 5694’0973—dc21                      98-23089

CIP

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,

and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Author’s Note

Glossary of Terms

Introduction

1. The American Setting

2. From Immigrant Party to American Movement

3. The Zionist Pioneer in the Mind of American Jews

4. Pioneers and Pacesetters

5. Harbingers of American Zionism

6. Years of Crisis, 1935–1939

Conclusion: The Campaign for the Jewish State

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author

List of Illustrations

1. Cover of Poalei Zion-Zeirei Zion souvenir book, September 1932

2. Photograph of Hehaluz-Zion Circle, 1908

3. Shomer and Arab marauders, October 1912

4. Planting the Olive Tree, January 912

5. Agriculture in Old Palestine, February 1920

6. Memorial to Meir Hazanovich, 1916

7. Cover of Yizkor, 1916

8. Frontispiece of Yizkor, 1916

9. Fallen menorah, 1916

10. Cover of Kadimah, 1918

11. American contingent of the Jewish Legion, 1918

12. Cover of Shaharut (The Youth), April 1918

13. Masthead of Shaharut (The Youth), March 1920

14. Masthead of The Pioneer Woman, December 1928

15. Emblem of Zeirei Zion of America, 1922

16. Cover of Betar Monthly, January 1932

17. Cover of Betar Monthly, March 1932

18. Cover of Hadar, 1937

19. The Hora, Dance of the Haluzim, 1935

20. The Way to a New Life, 1947

21. Young Jewish Colonist in Palestine, 1938

22. Old and New Elements in Modern Palestine, 1935

23. Cover of United Palestine Appeal Yearbook, 1937

24. Cover of Palestine Book, 1939

25. National Labor Committee for Palestine, 1933

Preface

The image of Zionist pioneers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—hardworking, brawny, and living off the land—sprang from Labor Zionism, the ascendant socialist Zionist movement in Palestine. The building of the Yishuv, the new Jewish society in Palestine, was accompanied by the rapid growth of Zionism worldwide.

How did Zionism take shape in the United States? How did Labor Zionism and the Yishuv influence American Jews? This book argues that Zionism and Labor Zionism had a much greater impact on the American Jewish scene than has been recognized. It traces Labor Zionism’s dramatic transformation in the United States from a marginal immigrant party into a significant political force. It shows how and why Labor Zionism in the United States—the voice of Labor Palestine on American soil—played a role disproportionate to its size in formulating the program and outlook of American Zionism. It also examines more generally the impact of Zionism on American Jews, making the case that Zionism’s cultural vitality, intellectual diversity, and unparalleled ability to rally public opinion in times of crisis were central to the American Jewish experience.

This book, which originally was my doctoral dissertation at Brandeis University, would not have been possible without the steadfast support of my mentors: Jehuda Reinharz, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Stephen J. Whitfield. Since I began my graduate studies, they have persistently challenged and inspired me, leaving an indelible impression on my work as a modern Jewish historian. It is my hope that this book justifies their extraordinary investment in time and energy on my behalf.

In the course of my research, I also benefited from the reservoir of human talent associated with the Brandeis community. A special word of thanks must go to Sylvia Fuks Fried, who labored through multiple drafts of the manuscript and made numerous valuable suggestions for its revision and improvement. For their scholarly expertise, I am grateful to Joyce Antler, Sylvia Barack Fishman, Michael Brenner, Marc Brettler, the late Marvin Fox, Antony Polonsky, Benjamin C. I. Ravid, Shulamit Reinharz, Bernard Reisman, the late Marshall Sklare, Daniel J. Tichenor, and Bernard Wasserstein. Lawrence H. Fuchs and Leon A. Jick were particularly gracious, generous, and inspiring tutors. Joanna Gould went out of her way to offer much needed computer assistance. Janet Webber of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry was exceptionally helpful. In the Judaica Division of the University Libraries, Jim Rosenbloom, Charles Cutter, and Nancy Zibman were an unflagging source of research support. Julian Brown provided expert photographic assistance.

Over the years, several other people have guided and encouraged my research efforts. I am deeply grateful to Aharon Appelfeld, Murray Baumgarten, Michael Brown, Mitchell Cohen, the late Moshe Davis, Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Leonard Fein, Henry Feingold, Evyatar Friesel, Allon Gal, Lloyd P. Gartner, Aryeh Goren, Gerd Korman, Eli Lederhendler, Paul Mendes-Flohr, Derek J. Penslar, Robert M. Seltzer, Anita Shapira, Gideon Shimoni, Shelly Tenenbaum, Melvin I. Urofsky, Chaim Waxman, and Robert Wistrich. At the University at Albany, State University of New York, where I completed this book, I have enjoyed the collegiality of Judith R. Baskin, Jerome Eckstein, Daniel Grossberg, and Stanley Isser. Special thanks are also due Muki Tsur of Kibbutz Ein Gev, Israel, who nurtured my interest in the cultural history of the Yishuv. Mishael M. Caspi, currently of Bates College, is a devoted teacher and friend. He and his wife Gila have played an inestimable role in my personal and professional growth.

A remarkable group of Zionist movement veterans shared their oral histories with me. I am grateful to David Breslau, Abe Cohen, Saadia Gelb, Nahum and Miriam Guttman, Haim Gvati, Gertrude Halpern, the late Jacob Katzman, and the late Kieve Skidell. Thanks are also due Ben Barlas for alerting me to several useful historical documents.

For archival assistance, I wish to thank the staffs of the American Jewish Archives, the Central Zionist Archives, the Lavon Institute for Labor Research, the National Center for Jewish Film, the Yad Tabenkin—United Kibbutz Movement Archives (especially Roni Azati), and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Furthermore, I have been privileged to enjoy the warm support of friends and colleagues at the American Jewish Historical Society. Michael Feldberg, the society’s executive director, has been an unwavering source of encouragement. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ellen Smith, the society’s curator, who read and commented on the manuscript and offered expert assistance concerning the illustrations. At each of the foregoing institutions, I was extended every possible courtesy.

Generous financial support of my work was provided by the American Jewish Historical Society; the National Foundation for Jewish Culture; the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis University; and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. I also thank the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation for generously underwriting the publication costs associated with this book.

Portions of chapters 2 and 3 previously appeared in, respectively, From Immigrant Party to American Movement: American Labor Zionism in the Pre-State Period, American Jewish History 82 (1994): 159–194; and in Pioneers and Pacesetters: Boston Jews and American Zionism, The Jews of Boston, ed. Jonathan D. Sarna and Ellen Smith (Boston: Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston and Northeastern University Press, 1995): 241–275.

It has been a pleasure working with New York University Press. I am particularly thankful to my editors Jennifer Hammer and Despina Papazoglou Gimbel for seeing this project through to publication.

I conclude with heartfelt gratitude to my family. My parents, David and Elizabeth Raider, my siblings, Daniel and Elana, and my grandparents, Alfred and Estelle Raider, provided crucial moral support. My in-laws, Walter and Chaya Roth, showed keen interest in every stage of writing this book. For their warm encouragement, I thank Ari Roth, Kate Schecter, Judy Roth, and Stephen P. Zeldes as well as Isabel, Sophie, and Miko.

My children Jonah and Emma fill my days with joy and are constant reminders of life’s immeasurable blessings. I happily dedicate this study to Miriam, my best friend, partner, and beloved, who makes my path possible and rewarding.

Author’s Note

Throughout this book, I have modified somewhat the orthography and transliteration of Hebrew and Yiddish, to give English-speaking readers as clear a phonetic equivalent as possible without introducing complex diacritical marks and special linguistic values. Exceptions in this regard are terms and names for which a different usage is highly familiar (e.g., Eretz Israel, yiddishkeit, and Chaim Arlosoroff). In a few instances, the original English spelling of publications and groups has been retained (e.g., Hechalutz and Hadassah). In addition, although the glossary attempts to be fairly comprehensive, it does not include phraseology and terms that appear infrequently in the book. Rather, to assist the reader, this information has been inserted throughout the text. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own. Last, the synonymous place-names Palestine, Yishuv, and Jewish national home have been used interchangeably in accordance with the appropriate cultural-political context.

Glossary of Terms

aliyah (pi. aliyot, Hebrew for ascent): a term used to indicate immigration to the Land of Israel. The First Aliyah is usually dated 1881–1903; the Second Aliyah, 1903/4–1914; the Third Aliyah, 1919–1923; the Fourth Aliyah, 1924–1928; and the Fifth Aliyah, 1929–1939.

Aliyah Bet: the Hebrew term for the Zionist movement’s program of illegal Jewish immigration to Palestine that was conducted in defiance of the British Mandate.

Bund: a term shortened from the Yiddish Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund (General Jewish Labor Union), the American wing of the east European mother organization active in Russia, Poland, and Lithuania.

dunam: Hebrew for one thousand square meters, approximately a quarter of an acre.

Eretz Israel (in Yiddish, Eretz Yisroel): Hebrew for the Land of Israel, both a geographic and a spiritual designation.

galut: Hebrew for exile, used to describe both spiritual and geographic conditions.

Gegenwartsarbeit: a German term used to denote Zionist work in the diaspora or Zionist work in the present.

goldene medine: Yiddish for golden land, used by east European Jewish immigrants to describe the United States.

golus: Yiddish for exile (see galut).

hagshamah azmit: Hebrew for self-fulfillment.

haluz (pi. haluzim, Hebrew for pioneer): a term used to describe the Labor Zionist pioneers of Palestine.

haluzah (pi. haluzot): Hebrew for young woman worker and settler.

haluziut: Hebrew for pioneering.

Hapoel Hazair: Hebrew for The Young Worker, a non-Marxist Labor Zionist party established in Palestine in 1905 and the Palestinian sister organization of Zeirei Zion Hitahdut.

Hashomer: Hebrew for The Watchman, an organization formed in the Galilee in 1909 to guard the Jewish colonies of Palestine.

Haskalah: Hebrew for enlightenment, the Jewish enlightenment movement in Europe, particularly that using the Hebrew language.

Hibbat Zion: Hebrew for Lovers of Zion, a philanthropic, proto-Zionist organization that originated in eastern Europe; used interchangeably with the name Hovevei Zion.

Histadrut: a shortened form of Histadrut Haovdim Haivrim be-Eretz Israel, Hebrew for General Federation of Jewish Workers in the Land of Israel, the umbrella framework of the Labor Zionist movement in Palestine.

Hovevei Zion (see Hibbat Zion).

kibbutz (pi. kibbutzim): Hebrew term for a cooperative rural settlement in Palestine.

kvuzah (pi. kvuzot): Hebrew term for a communal rural colony in Palestine.

landsmanshaftn: Yiddish for mutual aid societies formed for the purposes of welfare, burial, and the like; composed of immigrants from the same town or area in eastern Europe.

Mapai: an acronym for the Hebrew Mifleget Poalei Eretz Israel (Workers Party of the Land of Israel), established in Palestine in 1930; the party dominated Labor Zionism in the Mandatory and early state periods.

maskil (pi. maskilim): Hebrew for enlightened Jew, referring to an adherent of the Jewish enlightenment movement (see Haskalah).

menorah: Hebrew for candelabrum.

Mizrahi: an acronym for the Hebrew phrase merkaz ruhani, spiritual center, and also eastward; the name of the religious Zionist party established in eastern Europe in 1902.

Moezet Hapoalot: Hebrew for the Working Women’s Council, established in Palestine in 1922 as part of the Histadrut, and the sister organization of Pioneer Women in the United States.

moshav ovdim: Hebrew for workers settlement, a rural Jewish colony in Palestine incorporating some cooperative principles.

Ostjuden: German for eastern Jews, used by central European Jews to describe Polish Jewish immigrants to Germany.

Poalei Zion: Hebrew for Workers of Zion, a Marxist Zionist party that originated in Russia in 1901–1903 and subsequently established branches in other countries, including Palestine and the United States.

shaliah (pi. shlihim): Hebrew term for an emissary sent from Palestine, especially by the Labor Zionist movement.

shomer (pi. shomrim): Hebrew for watchman, guard.

Talmud Torah: the Yiddish term for a traditional school, usually supported by the community, that taught boys the basics of biblical and rabbinic literature.

yahudim: pejorative Yiddish term used by east European Jews to describe Westernized German-speaking Jews.

yeshivah (pi. yeshivot): the Yiddish term for a school for advanced Talmudic study.

yidn: a pejorative Yiddish term used by German Jews to describe seemingly uncouth east European Jewish immigrants.

Yidish Nazionaler Arbeter Farband: Yiddish for the Jewish National Workers’ Alliance, also known as the Farband, the fraternal order of the Labor Zionist movement in the United States.

Yidishe Nazional Radikale Shuln: Yiddish for Jewish National Radical Schools, also known as the Folkshuln, community schools of the American Labor Zionist movement that also served as the loci of cultural and party activities.

yiddishkeit: a Yiddish term for Jewishness.

Yishuv: the Jewish community in Palestine before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

yugnt: Yiddish for youth.

Zeirei Zion Hitahdut of America: Hebrew for United Youth of Zion, established in the United States in 1920, an offshoot of the European non-Marxist Labor Zionist party and affiliated with the moderate Palestinian labor party Hapoel Hazair.

The Emergence of American Zionism

Introduction

A political movement, like a living organism, is a dynamic and complex unity, a myriad of elements that evolve, change, and adapt over time. Zionism in the United States, initially an east European transplant, was shaped not only by developments in the New World but also by the turbulent social and political forces that transformed Jewish life in Europe and Palestine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The salient factor in the emergence of American Zionism, as was true of Zionism worldwide, was the rapid development of the Yishuv. This creation of a new Jewish society in Palestine had an impact on Zionist affairs that is difficult to overestimate. It was accompanied by the concomitant rise of Labor Zionism, the colonizing movement of socialist Zionist pioneers. At the center of this pioneering enterprise stood the Histadrut, the General Federation of Jewish Workers in the Land of Israel. The Histadrut created an intricate countrywide network of social, economic, and political institutions. As a result, the Palestinian labor movement determined much of the infrastructure of the Jewish state-in-the-making.

In the decades after World War I, Labor Zionism quickly rose to a position of political dominance in the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and the Vaad Leumi (the Yishuv’s elected assembly). Accordingly, the Labor Zionist movement, with its base in Palestine and satellite organizations in Europe and the United States, played an increasingly significant role in Zionist affairs worldwide.

The complex relationship of American Jews, Labor Zionism, and the Yishuv invites close examination. American Jewry’s rapid upward mobility and tendency toward professionalization and small entrepreneurship—a pattern that distinguished Jewish life in the United States from the austere socialist lifestyle and economic conditions of the Yishuv—would seem to have naturally militated against such a triad. After all, only a minority of American Jews officially belonged to the Zionist movement, and American Labor Zionism itself was never more than half the size of Mizrahi, the religious Zionist party.¹ Against this backdrop, Labor Zionism’s disproportionate influence raises the question why, if the movement was so institutionally and numerically weak, it was so ideologically important and influential. How did Labor Zionism transform American Zionism? Who were the leaders that galvanized American Jewish support for Zionism and the Yishuv? What kind of impact did Zionism have on American Jewish life? The answers to these questions, this book contends, stem from the fact that Labor Zionism, unlike other Zionist variants, resonated not only with the Jewish experience but also with the American ideals of democracy, pluralism, and social justice.

The American scene was temperamentally and structurally different from that of Europe or Palestine. In Germany and Poland, for example, Zionist parties were characterized by their specifically nationalist orientation and generally negative appraisal of Jewish life in Europe. They formed political blocs and, in the case of the Polish Zionists, even played a short-lived role in national politics.² In Palestine, Zionists rejected the possibility of Jewish survival outside the Land of Israel. They also dominated the social and political life of the nascent Yishuv. By contrast, Zionist groups in the United States—despite their nationalist proclivities and attachment to Palestine—did not reject the New World. Moreover, they frequently found their philosophical and cultural positions to be consonant with those of mainstream Jewish groups. This hybrid character of American Jewry was perhaps nowhere more visible than in the east European Jewish immigrant milieu of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in which there often was no apparent conflict among belonging to a trade union, sending one’s child to a Talmud Torah, and identifying as a card-carrying Zionist. In the American context, therefore, a practical alternative to the separatism of European Jewish politics was the creation of alliances that allowed numerically small groups like the Zionists to exert their influence from within.

Such was the case, for example, when Labor Zionist leaders spearheaded the campaign for the American Jewish Congress during World War I. The congress convened in December 1918 under the stewardship of Louis D. Brandeis, American Zionism’s premier leader and an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. This unprecedented representative democratic assembly brought working-class Yiddish-speaking immigrants into the mainstream of organized American Jewish life. With the support of various immigrant groups, Labor Zionists succeeded in placing the Jewish national question on the congress’s agenda. This initiative ensured that Zionist claims regarding Palestine were included in the Jewish case later presented to the postwar Paris Peace Conference.³

By staking a claim for the importance of Labor Zionism and the Yishuv in the American context, this book challenges many of the assumptions about Jewish and Zionist historiography that have prevailed for a full generation. It contests, for example, Arthur Hertzberg’s assertion that American Zionism was an emotion and not an ideology that existed to help the pioneers and to take pride in them.⁴ Likewise, it refutes Howard Sachar’s claim that American Jewry was Zionized in the wake of World War II. Sachar maintains that a survivalist threshold had been reached in the Jewish condition, and it impelled the urgency of an unconventional solution.⁵ Both approaches vastly oversimplify the American Jewish scene. They wrongly suggest that American Jews had a monolithic attitude toward Zionism and reduce the movement’s American manifestation to a vicarious or, at most, an ephemeral phenomenon. They also neglect American Jewry’s centuries-old fascination with the Holy Land and, at least implicitly, ignore Zionism’s lasting impact on American Jews in the poststate period.

That Zionism failed to create a mass movement in the United States or to generate substantial American Jewish immigration to Palestine is not a new observation. To understand American Zionism, however, we must consider both the movement’s unparalleled ability to galvanize American Jewish public opinion in times of crisis and its cultural vitality and political diversity.⁶ That is, we must examine both Zionism in the context of interwar and wartime American Jewish politics and the broad spectrum of American Jewish society, including youth, educators, women’s organizations, intellectuals, and various social and religious groups. In short, the interplay between Zionism and American Jews reveals a mélange of secularizing tendencies, language preferences, forms of religious observance, generational discord, ethnic divisions, socioeconomic distinctions, and disparate political ideologies. Such multiformity requires an integrated methodological perspective akin to the French Annales school’s notion of the history of mentalities.⁷ In this way, it is possible to evaluate the nexus between American Jews and Zionism in quantifiable objective terms and also with respect to American Jewry’s protean self-perception—a context in which Labor Zionism played a defining role.

The political transformation of American Zionism went hand in hand with the building of the Yishuv’s socioeconomic infrastructure by the Labor Zionist movement. Viewed in historical perspective, this symbiotic process sheds light on a significant watershed in Zionist and Jewish history: by the interwar period, the balance of power in Jewish life was shifting away from the diaspora and toward the ascendant Zionist leadership in Palestine. During the interwar period, Labor Zionism became the hub of the world’s Zionist social, cultural, and political activity, its authority radiating to the farthest reaches of the diaspora. By the 1940s, Labor Zionism’s pragmatic wartime strategy became the basis of American Jewry’s campaign for Jewish statehood. First at the Biltmore Conference of 1942 and then at the American Jewish Conference of 1943—both of which Labor Zionism championed, as it had the American Jewish Congress of 1918—the movement’s twin objectives of rescue and sovereignty were affirmed. This view was articulated, among others, by American Zionism’s wartime tribune Abba Hillel Silver, who declared there to be but one solution for national homelessness. That is a national home! . . . The reconstitution of the Jewish people as a nation in its homeland is not a playful political conceit of ours. . . . It is the cry of despair of a people driven to the wall, fighting for its very life.⁸

Zionism was originally imported to the United States by powerless east European Jewish immigrants. The swift acculturation and ascendance of the immigrants in the New World, however, coupled with the Yishuv’s meteoric rise, set the stage for what the founder of Reconstructionism and Labor Zionist advocate Mordecai M. Kaplan deemed a new American Zionism. Labor Zionism played a key role in defining the new Zionism of American Jews, a philosophy and program attuned to the changing reality of American Judaism and the needs of prestate Palestine. The movement served as a lens through which American Jews viewed nascent Palestinian and American society as many thought both ought to be: full of promise and opportunity, industrious and expansive, and, not least of all, capable of elevating the human condition. The dynamic tension inherent in such romantic preconceptions sparked American Jewry’s idealization of the Yishuv and the growing preoccupation with Labor Palestine as the best hope for alleviating European Jewry’s distress, a sentiment that gained widespread currency with the advent of Nazi Germany. In time, the historic encounter of American Jews, Labor Zionism, and the Yishuv gave rise to the American Zionist campaign for Jewish statehood. It also paved the way for Zionism’s trajectory from the margins to the mainstream of the American Jewish experience.

1

The American Setting

On the eve of her departure for Palestine in January 1920, Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, wrote to her friend Alice L. Seligsberg: It will take the gentleness of the dove and the wisdom of the serpent if the situation [in Palestine] is to be met in a constructive spirit.¹ Szold’s statement prefigures American Zionism’s transformation into an important political force. It also reveals a distinct American Zionist sensibility that stressed the need for consensus politics and practical schemes for the Palestine Jewish community’s development. Szold recognized that the effectiveness of American Zionist leadership, on the one hand, depended on good relations with American Jewry’s elite non-Zionist patriarchs, especially those of the American Jewish Committee, and the cooperation of the Jewish immigrant community, from traditionalists to members of the nonZionist Jewish workers’ movement. On the other hand, it required close collaboration with the leaders of the World Zionist Organization, the Yishuv, and, at a later date, the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

Such a multifaceted orientation contains the seeds of collaboration and the potential for cooperation. It is germane to both American Zionism and the American Jewish experience, which, by virtue of its distinctive postfeudal and postemancipationist origin, differs fundamentally from that of European Jewish society. American society’s sheer formlessness, it has been observed, allowed Jews to live side by side with other heterogeneous groups. This unique situation gave rise to the expectation that the pattern of true American living [would be] worked out by immigrants and [native-born] Americans in a continuing process of give and take.²

European Jewry, however, was forcibly segregated from mainstream society until the eighteenth century when the movement for Jewish emancipation began. Not surprisingly, emancipation was especially strong in western and central Europe owing to the numerical insignificance of the Jews in these lands, their facility for social and economic modernization, and the relative speed of their legal amelioration.³ In contrast, the Balkan and east European Jewish communities were seemingly impenetrable to the forces of emancipation. Because of strong traditional values in these areas and the enforced separation of the Jews living under Russian and Romanian domination, a core of Jewish intellectuals emerged, arrayed against the camps of both Western assimilationism and Eastern religious orthodoxy. Neither the doctrine of emancipation nor the helpless torpor of Jewish life under the old regime offered them hope for the future.⁴

Nonetheless, in the early nineteenth century, some Jewish thinkers broke away from the traditional Jewish mainstream. These Zionist forerunners argued that the creation of Jewish settlements in the Land of Israel was a necessary prelude to the redemption of the Jewish people. In short, even before the Russian pogroms of 1881–1882 erupted following the assassination of Czar Alexander II, both Western emancipation and the east European status quo were under attack from a variety of nationalist positions.⁵

That the pogroms destroyed hopes for Jewish emancipation in Eastern Europe is well documented.⁶ Particularly striking is the fact that the liberal leadership of Russian Jewry failed to meet the challenge of Jewish selfdefense and relief. In the ensuing vacuum, the Pale of Settlement was wracked by widespread communal misery, in which the ideologies of Jewish socialism, territorialism, and nationalism rapidly took root and flourished. These new ideological camps were largely made up of young people and thus contained a strong element of generational conflict;⁷ all shared a predilection for Russian populism. The Jewish intelligentsia followed the example of social revolutionaries like the Narodnik (People’s Will) Party and sought to create a bond with the toiling masses by returning to the people.⁸ Even after the pogroms, Russian Jewish radicals continued to uphold this notion as the guiding principle of their political and cultural work. The most obvious problem they faced was that of Jewish refugees. A rivalry immediately developed between the Amerikantsy, notably the Am Olam (Eternal People) movement that advocated Jewish resettlement in the United States, and the Palestintsy, represented by the socialist Zionist Bilu pioneers who favored Jewish colonization in Palestine.⁹ Notwithstanding economic pressures, the debate among radical youth turned on the question of whether the United States or Palestine was more suitable for Jewish national renewal.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Zion and the Land of Israel always enjoyed pride of place in American consciousness. Since the days of America’s Pilgrim fathers and the early settlement of New England, the notion of rebuilding Zion had been a persistent theme in American life and letters. The leaders of colonial New England—mostly divines and scriptural authorities—strongly influenced early American society in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Their biblical perspective spawned the principle of covenant theology and gave rise to the democratic political tradition that distinguished early American life.¹⁰ This bipolar existence always was subject to the practical exigencies of the New World. Gradually, though, a highly cosmopolitan American outlook emerged, one in which the eschatological concept of the return to Zion was central but that nevertheless sought ways of making—through both voluntary and persuasive means—the emergent American society into a fully Christian nation.¹¹

From the outset, colonial America and later the United States provided fertile terrain for successive waves of incoming European immigrants, including the ideas and movements they transplanted to American soil. By the nineteenth century, the northeastern seaboard had become a center of liberal political and religious trends.¹² To this the Jewish immigrants brought their Old World mentality, a mélange of rational, spiritual, and cultural attributes.¹³ In most urban centers, the admixture of different Jewish immigrant groups led to communal friction. For example, an extraordinary instance occurred in 1882 when Boston Jewish leaders shipped back 415 Russian Jewish refugees to New York, fearing that the new immigrants would become a financial burden.¹⁴ On the whole, however, even though American Jewish life was punctuated by periods of ethnic rivalry and division between yahudim and yidn, American Jewish society generally proved to be a congenial atmosphere for newcomers from central and eastern Europe.¹⁵ As the Boston communal leader Abraham P. Spitz remarked in 1892:

We who live in this great country, God’s most favored land . . . can hardly realize the persecutions to which our coreligionists in Russia have been subjected. . . . We must and shall receive them with open arms. . . . We must teach them the manners and customs of an enlightened community . . . thus enabling them to become useful and desirable citizens."¹⁶

By the end of the nineteenth century, Jewish immigrants arriving in the United States were greeted by a relatively stable communal infrastructure, one that for the most part was prepared to care for them. They also found an environment that provided them with the scope and inducement to define their own communal needs and create mechanisms for self-support and mutual assistance.¹⁷

The rapid acculturation of Jewish immigrants in the United States led to the proliferation of local Zionist societies.¹⁸ Like other immigrant associations, the Zionist clubs were not large, and their membership rosters were far from stable. But their presence was felt in the wider community. Viewed historically, the strength of American Zionism was never contingent on its size or, at a later stage, its fund-raising ability. Instead, American Zionists were most influential as leaders who helped inculcate in American Jews a sense of kinship and responsibility for the Yishuv and who helped build bridges between the two societies.

The earliest American Hibbat Zion (Lovers of Zion) groups were east European transplants that sprang up throughout New England beginning in the 1880s.¹⁹ Initially, these groups, also known as Hovevei Zion, considered themselves part of the European mother organization, as is apparent in a special notice issued by the Lovers of Zion Society of East Boston in 1899:

Throughout America, a plethora of Hebrew-speaking clubs and fundraising associations were organized for land purchases in Palestine, and by the turn of the century, the United States was home to scores of different Zionist groups with Americanized names such as the Uptown Zionist Club, Oir Zion Lodge, Dorshei Zion, Hebrew National Association, Zion Literary League, International Order of the Knights of Zion, Flowers of Zion, Bnai Zion, Bnoth Zion, Ladies’ Zion League, Helpers of Zion, Maccabees Zion Branch, American Daughters of Zion, and Philadelphia Zionist Society.²¹ As these colorful names reveal, early American Zionists displayed a variety of cultural, religious, and political interests. This pluralistic environment also encouraged the establishment of local branches of the Mizrahi Party, a religious Zionist movement dedicated to the resettlement of the Jewish people in Eretz Israel according to the precepts of the Torah, and the Labor Zionist Poalei Zion Party, which interpreted the cause of Jewish national liberation in Marxist terms. Most urban centers even included a few Zionist synagogues with names like the Bialystocker Congregation Adath Yeshurun, Adas Zion Anshe Kowno, Ahavath Achim Anshe Usda, Poel Zedec Anshe Ilio, Tifereth Jerusholaim, and Chemdath Zion.²² This array of Zionist immigrant creations augmented the existing communal infrastructure of native-born American Jews.

The pluralistic character of the New World differed dramatically from the restrictive environment of Europe. Whereas American Zionism continued to identify with the European mother organization, American Zionists were also inclined toward a synthesis of Zionism and American ideals. This was especially true of native-born Jews sympathetic to Zionism, many of whom sought to promote Jewish national sentiment as a facet of modern American Jewish identity. In 1905, Josephine Lazarus, sister of the poet Emma Lazarus, suggested that Zionism, like Americanism, is an emancipation, a release from enforced limitation and legislation, from a narrow petty, tribal polity of life, whether social or religious, and from old-world prejudice and caste.²³

A similar sensibility prevailed in the Jewish immigrant sphere. Jews of east European extraction, however, also exhibited a marked degree of ambivalence about American society that reflected their distinct cultural orientation. As early as 1888, for example, the maskil (enlightened Jew) A. A. Rogovin observed that although American Lovers of Zion operated in a climate of unprecedented freedom, Jewish nationalism in the New