All in a Life-time

by Henry Morgenthau; French Strother

When this great conference was in the making, the Jews in America had decided to join the Jews of other nations in a representative commission at Paris, to make an appeal to secure in the Treaty of Peace an assurance of the religious and civil rights of the Jews, in the countries in which they resided in large numbers, particularly in Roumania, Poland, and Russia. The Jews of the United States held elections of representatives to a congress in Philadelphia, which was in turn to select their members of the Commission.

I was elected a representative from my district. When, however, I reached Philadelphia and conferred with some of the delegates, I found that the elections had, in general, been so skilfully manipulated by the Zionists that they were in complete control, although their views were shared by only a small percentage of the Jews in America.

As I immediately realized that the plans of some of the most aggressive members of this controlling minority were Nationalistic, which was absolutely contrary to the convictions of the vast majority of Jews in America, including myself, I declined to qualify as a member of the congress, and left Philadelphia without attending any of its sessions.

Subsequently, two hundred and seventy-five prominent Jews, residing in thirty-seven states of the Union, signed a statement which had been prepared by Dr. Henry Berkowitz, Rev. Dr. David Philipson, the late Professor Morris Jastrow, and Max Senior. This statement declared amongst other things that:

As a future form of government for Palestine will undoubtedly be considered by the approaching Peace Conference, we, the undersigned citizens of the United States, unite in this statement, setting forth our objections to the organization of a Jewish state in Palestine as proposed by the Zionist societies in this country and Europe, and to the segregation of the Jews as a nationalistic unit in any country.

We feel that in so doing we are voicing the opinion of the majority of American Jews born in this country and of those foreign born who have lived here long enough to thoroughly assimilate American political and social conditions. The American Zionists represent, according to the most recent statistics available, only a small proportion of the Jews living in this country, about 150,000 out of 3,500,000. (American Jewish Year Book, 1918, Philadelphia)....

We raise our voices in warning and protest against the demand of the Zionists for the reorganization of the Jews as a national unit, to whom, now or in the future, territorial sovereignty in Palestine shall be committed. This demand not only misinterprets the trend of the history of the Jews, who ceased to be a nation 2,000 years ago, but involves the limitation and possible annulment of the larger claims of Jews for full citizenship and human rights in all lands in which those rights are not yet secure. For the very reason that the new era upon which the world is entering aims to establish government everywhere on principles of true democracy, we reject the Zionistic project of a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.”

Zionism arose as the result of the intolerable conditions under which the Jews have been forced to live in Russia and Roumania. But it is evident that for the Jewish population of these countries, variously estimated at from six to ten millions, Palestine can become no home land. Even with the improvement of the neglected condition of this country, its limited area can offer no solution. The Jewish question in Russia and Roumania can be settled only within those countries by the grant of full rights of citizenship to Jews....

Against such a political segregation of the Jews in Palestine, or elsewhere, we object, because the Jews are dedicated heart and soul to the welfare of the countries in which they dwell under free conditions. All Jews repudiate every suspicion of a double allegiance, but to our minds it is necessarily implied in and cannot by any logic be eliminated from establishment of a sovereign State for the Jews in Palestine.

Of this statement I was one of the signers. Congressman Julius Kahn and I were asked to present these views to the Conference; Rabbi Isaac Landman, editor of The American Hebrew, joined us, and the original text was duly filed with the American Commission at Paris.