Zionists

(See front cover)

The American Zionist's convention at Cleveland this week was a Battle of Ivry. Like the French Protestants and Catholics at Ivry in 1590, two schools of economic thought were to fight for supremacy. Leader of one faction was Louis Lipsky, president of the Zionist organization of America. Leader of the other (in absentia) was Louis Dembitz Brandeis chairman of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs (1914-18), Honorary President of the L. O. A. from 1918 to 1921 (when U. S. Zionists, displeased with his principles, ousted him and his whole group from their organization). Now he wanted to oust the Lipsky group.

Zionism grew out of the Messianic hopes of oppressed Orthodox Jews in Europe With the late great Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) it became concrete (creation of a National Jewish Home in Palestine secured by public law), and economic (Jews as a group were to finance their impoverished coreligionists). The religious aspect of Zionism has become practically nil. Formerly many influential Jews opposed Zionism. Now few do.* Zionism became a political actuality during and after the World War when the Allies to gam Jewish support in Central is well as Allied countries, promised Zionists to give them political rights in Palestine. Jews expected that that would give them a Jewish Nation, of which Jews everywhere might become citizens if they wished. The League of Nations created a Palestine Mandate. Great Britain took government of the Mandate. Jewish immigrants were to be admitted as fast as Zionist organizations could provide work for them--by creating industries, by buying them farm lands from the Arabs. Arabs were not to be molested in their religious commercial or civil rights./-

The Jewish-Arab situation in Palestine was destined to cause much angry protesting oratory in Cleveland this week. Last summer discontented Arabs rioted and massacred Jews in Jerusalem at the Wailing Wall, authentic, revered remnant of Solomon's Temple, and in outlying communities (TIME, Aug. 26 et seq ). An explanation of the Arab discontent appeared last week, by Hadji Aminal Husseini, Grand Mufti and President of the Supreme Moslem Council, chief religious and temporal leader of Palestine Arabs Jews buy land, leaving Arabs homeless. Abnormal Jewish immigration forces Arabs out of work. (Great Britain recently stopped such immigration.) Arabs have no share in the government. Taxes have become unbearable. Jews have caused financial depression. Jews have no rights, only tolerance, at the Wailing Wall --it is an integral part of Al Bouraq el Shareef (built on the Temple site), most sacred mosque after Mecca and Medina; Mohammed once tied his horse to the Wailing Wail. . . . So said the Grand Mufti.

Forensics on such political troubles have continued vigorously the whole past year. They are properly an activity of World Zionism. Chaim Weizmann president of the World Zionist organization must handle them. Although they were to come before the U. S. Zionists at Cleveland, those zealots were more concerned with economics, economic leadership.

There are two schools of Zionist economics. The school led by Chaim Weizmann, 55, and Louis Lipsky, 53 would send Jews to Palestine and there create work for them. The genesis of this school is in sentiment--to help Jews escape from poverty as well as political discrimination. Louis Dembitz Brandeis, 73, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, heads the other school. He would create jobs in Palestine. Then let Jews migrate and find the jobs. This is rationalistic, the sort of plan one might expect from a Jew who is almost a Boston Brahmin.

Justice Brandeis was little interested in Jewry or Judaism until 1910. He was born in Louisville of influential Bohemian Jewish immigrants. At 20 he was graduated from Harvard Law School. He practiced in Boston from 1879 until his Supreme Court appointment. In Boston he had few Jewish clients or friends; his intimates were Back Bay Bostonians--Harvard's late President Charles William Eliot foremost among them.

In 1910 when he conciliated a strike of Jewish garment workers, the misery of many Jews first struck him strongly He read up--slowly as is his habit--on their problems, joined the Zionists in 1912. Two years later the World War threatened to disrupt the work of International Zionism. He took command and put his economic principles to work in Palestine. The War situation of Zionism was a crisis. Justice Brandeis considered it an Ivry and was proud to boast, as he (erroneously) remembered King Henry IV (Henry of Navarre) had boasted to his Captain Crillon: ''I was at Ivry, you were not there." After Justice Brandeis was ousted in 1912, the re'gime of Louis Lipsky prospered greatly. But lately it has been criticized for the Jewish-Arab troubles, the estoppage of Palestine immigration, for inefficient management. Such things it can ride down at a convention. But it cannot efface its financial troubles. Zionism needs money./- Every country, including the U. S., is in a financial depression. It now hurts Jews to give. Only way out is to have all Jews interested in Zionism cooperate. There must be no do-nothing dissidents.

So last March Louis Lipsky sent four able adherents to Justice Brandeis. In his two-room Washington office they asked him to say upon what terms he and his followers would return to Zionist activity. Justice Brandeis always writes out his important business--official or personal--in longhand. After two months pondering and writing he sent his ultimatum to the Lipsky group. He and his financial stalwarts would resume work only if and when every Lipsky man resigned from office in the Zionist Organization of America. The organization must also suspend its Democratic constitution, consent for a period to an administration oligarchy of nine men whom Justice Brandeis and friends would nominate.

That is the economic Ivry which the Zionists faced at Cleveland this week-- suspend Lipsky-ism, to get back Brandeis. Before the convention opened, Leader Lipsky buckled on a forensic armor and fortified himself with a livelihood. He resigned as the paid president of the Z. O. A., became the $10,000-a-year president of Judea Life Insurance Co. He expected, of course, to be elected the unpaid Z. O. A. president.

*Last week at Providence, R. I., the Central Conference of Rabbis (Reformed) voted to include the Zionist anthem "Hatikvah" in their union Hymnal.

/-On the religious economic and political foundations of Zionism a revival of Hebrew culture has been imposed. Except for arguments in what constitutes that culture it has little to do with Zionist conflicts.

*The correct quotation ''Hang yourself, my pood Crillon. We [the royal "we"] were at Arques, you were not there." Justice Brandeis has a prodigious memory, accurate to minute details. His error may have been one of consonant association. Ivry is pronounced almost exactly like Ivhri, Hebrew word for Hebrew,

/-Since August 1914, U. S. Jews have contributed $25,783,158.64, of which $18,380,806.42 reached Palestine. The difference went largely for collection expenses.

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