Nahum Goldmann: Statesman Without a State (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

This page intentionally left blank. Nahum Goldmann SUNY series in Israeli Studies Russell Stone, editor Nahum Gol...

Author: Mark A. Raider

116 downloads 1299 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

This page intentionally left blank.

Nahum Goldmann

SUNY series in Israeli Studies Russell Stone, editor

Nahum Goldmann StatesmanWithout a State

Edited by Mark A. Raider

and

B C

THE CHAIM ROSENBERG SCHOOL OF JEWISH STUDIES THE CHAIM WEIZMANN INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF ZIONISM AND ISRAEL

This book is published as a joint venture of the State University of New York Press and the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel at Tel Aviv University.

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2009 State University of New York All rights reserved Cover photo from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; courtesy of Herbert Friedman. Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu

Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Michael Campochiaro

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nahum Goldmann : statesman without a state / edited by Mark A. Raider. p. cm — (SUNY series in Israeli studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384–2499-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Goldmann, Nahum, 1895–1982. 2. Zionists—Biography. I. Raider, Mark A. DS151.G585N34 2009 320.54095694092—dc22 [B] 2008028297 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

(

Preface Mark A. Raider

vii

Part I. Statesman 1. Nahum Goldmann: Jewish and Zionist Statesman—An Overview Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel

3

Part II. Thinker 2. Nahum Goldmann as Zionist Thinker Gideon Shimoni 3. Negation of the Galut and the Centrality of Israel: Nahum Goldmann and David Ben-Gurion Yosef Gorny

63 75

Part III. Maverick 4. The German Years: Early Chapters in the Biography of a Jewish Statesman Michael Brenner

95

5. Nahum Goldmann and the First Two Decades of the World Jewish Congress Zohar Segev

107

6. Nahum Goldmann and Chaim Weizmann: An Ambivalent “Relationship” Jehuda Reinharz

125

v

vi

Contents

7. Idealism, Vision, and Pragmatism: Stephen S. Wise, Nahum Goldmann, and Abba Hillel Silver in the United States Mark A. Raider

139

8. Toward the Partition of Palestine: The Goldmann Mission in Washington, August 1946 Evyatar Friesel

169

Part IV. Leader 9. Nahum Goldmann and Germany after World War II Shlomo Shafir

207

10. “Reparations Made Me”: Nahum Goldmann, German Reparations, and the Jewish World Ronald W. Zweig

233

11. Nahum Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum Dina Porat

255

12. Leadership of Accommodation or Protest?: Nahum Goldmann and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry Suzanne D. Rutland

273

13. Goldmann’s Initiative to Meet with Nasser in 1970 Meir Chazan

297

List of Contributors

325

Index

329

Preface

(

Nahum Goldmann’s life and career illustrate the complexity of the Jewish experience in the twentieth century. Born in 1895, Goldmann’s meteoric trajectory carried him from the isolation of the East European shtetl, to the acculturated German Jewish milieu of central Europe, and next, as a mature adult, into the international public arena as a premier advocate for Jewish life and the Zionist enterprise in western Europe, the United States, and Palestine (later the state of Israel). Goldmann was neither a Zionist ideologue nor a Jewish public intellectual. He was, however, a deeply intelligent and thoughtful man, capable of producing significant Jewish scholarship and Zionist works. He also proved to be highly influential as a Jewish and Zionist statesman at several critical historical junctures—on the eve of the creation of the Jewish state and thereafter with respect to Israel’s relations with diaspora Jewry, postwar Germany, and the Arab world. That he relished his position as a Zionist gadfly, an independent cultural and political critic, and a man beholden to neither political parties nor ideological movements is beyond doubt. Indeed, Goldmann was a profoundly idiosyncratic and iconoclastic character. He was also a master of political theatre. He proved adept in a variety of social and cultural settings. From early on, he held forth at meetings of rank-and-file Yiddish-speaking activists, Zionist political groups, and elite Jewish figures with the same ease and self-confidence that he later displayed in high stakes discussions and negotiations with American and European leaders, including the German chancellor and even Soviet officials. To this diverse array of activity he added a special flare as a shrewd judge of character while deploying the considerable personal charm and wit of a consummate raconteur. To date, no first-rate, comprehensive scholarly biography of Goldmann exists. This is, arguably, not surprising because Goldmann defies simple categorization as a Jewish and Zionist leader. What was the source of his authority? What role did he play in the Jewish public arena? Why have scholars of Jewish history largely neglected him? Answers to these and related questions frame the chapters in this volume. Here, I will offer merely a brief overview—one that builds on the work of the volume’s contributors, but which does not claim to be

vii

viii

Preface

comprehensive. In a word, although Goldmann was a significant public figure for many decades and played an instrumental role in building up the Zionist movement, the World Jewish Congress, and other leading Jewish cultural and political institutions of the twentieth century, he resisted the seduction of becoming a party loyalist and he rejected the role of protégé so eagerly sought by many of his contemporaries. Nor did he possess what might be called “value added”—those extra and intangible personal, intellectual, and political qualities that elevated Theodor Herzl, Chaim Weizmann, and David Ben-Gurion to the first tier of Jewish and Zionist leadership. That he has faded from public memory is also due, in part, to an unusual confluence of historic circumstances and personal proclivities, a combination that in his lifetime drove a wedge between him and the dominant Zionist leadership. The key ideational rift in this regard stemmed from Goldmann’s unabashed insistence on the desirability of Judaism’s survival in all its forms, including the vitality of diaspora Jewish life—even as he asserted the primacy of the Zionist cause and the centrality of Israel. Another was his commitment to political reconciliation—initially, with postwar Germany, and subsequently with Israel’s Arab neighbors. The divide was further exacerbated by Goldmann’s confirmed habit of opposing mainstream positions, frequently subverting them, and even acting independently—a predilection that generated some admiration but, more often than not, aroused the ire and consternation of the Jewish, Zionist, and Israeli establishments. Thus, notwithstanding the astonishing and meteoric success of the projects for which he labored so assiduously—some of which became synonymous with modern Jewish life itself—Goldmann never entered Jewish public consciousness as a heroic figure. This volume offers a new and critical perspective for assessing Goldmann’s impact as a key Jewish and Zionist political leader in the twentieth century. Maverick, thinker, and statesman, Goldmann responded with alacrity to the cataclysmic shifts of world history in the 1930s and 1940s and the concomitant sea change in Jewish life for which there was, quite literally, no precedent. Against this backdrop, as the chapters here demonstrate, Goldmann’s philosophical worldview, cultural work, and political and diplomatic orientation proved to be vital and, in some instances, critical to the success of the Zionist enterprise. In other areas of Jewish life, especially as an elder statesman in the 1960s and 1970s, he was often ahead of his time. When he died in 1982, the orbit of Goldmann’s cultural, political, and diplomatic activity, in contrast to that of many contemporaries, had become ever more expansive; his commitment to a range of Jewish, Zionist, and Israel-related concerns had grown and deepened rather than been reduced to a singular cause or issue. In keeping with his variegated legacy, this volume explores and emphasizes the broad context of Goldmann’s multifaceted life and career. The chapters grew out of a 2003 international scholarly conference, “Nahum Goldmann: Statesman without a State,” cosponsored by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Claims Conference, and Tel Aviv and Brandeis Universities.

Preface

ix

Professor Anita Shapira, director of Tel Aviv University’s Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel, chaired the conference and assembled a distinguished group of junior and senior scholars. With expertise ranging across a variety of disciplines and subspecialties, the chapters bring together many generative models for assessing previously unexamined dimensions of Goldmann’s profile. It is hoped the volume will inform and guide other researchers whose work promises to enrich the emerging genre of Jewish and Zionist biography. This book owes its success to many partners. I am grateful to Professor Anita Shapira for inviting me to edit the volume and for her unflagging commitment to the project’s realization. I frequently turned to President Jehuda Reinharz of Brandeis University for advice and guidance. Professor Evyatar Friesel graciously offered critical expertise and key editorial suggestions. Tel Aviv University’s Weizmann Institute provided crucial support and helped to underwrite the book’s production costs. Special thanks are also due to the volume’s contributors for their patience and good humor. What promised to be a straightforward undertaking proved far more complicated and protracted than originally anticipated. I cannot stress enough the importance of their friendship and understanding in this regard. Here, at last, I wish to offer my heartfelt thanks to all of them. I am also grateful to Dr. Michael Rinella, my editor at the State University of New York Press, who remained a steadfast friend of this project. Mr. Yoel Hirschfeld, formerly assistant director of the University at Albany’s Center for Jewish Studies, and Dr. Meir Chazan of the Weizmann Institute provided important technical support in the book’s early stages. Finally, I want to thank my children, Jonah, Emma, and Talia, and my wife, Dr. Miriam B. Raider-Roth, who are a constant source of inspiration and equilibrium. This volume is dedicated to the memory of the late Professor Ben Halpern of Brandeis University, a pioneer of modern Jewish history and founder of Zionism and Israel studies.

M.A.R. Cincinnati, OH August 2008


Part I

(

Statesman


1

( Nahum Goldmann Jewish and Zionist Statesman—An Overview Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel

any of the chapters included in this volume share a propensity to comment on the diverse and frequently clashing characteristics of Nahum Goldmann: on the one hand, the charming diplomat and the bon vivant who enjoyed the pleasures of life; on the other, the political loner, acerbic, sharp, and unpredictable. Goldmann himself, in his various autobiographical writings1 indulged in rosy descriptions about his life and lighthearted comments on his activities and style: the game of tennis he played on that night in August 1931, after he colluded to bring down Chaim Weizmann from the presidency of the World Zionist Organization (WZO); or his extensive vacations (“Every fourteen days Goldmann takes two weeks vacations”); his many citizenships; his readiness to jump from Europe to the United States (or the other way around) for a romantic tryst.2 “Es ging ihm immer gut” (approximately, “he always had a good time”), so he described himself in his last memoir, by then well over eighty. “His life seems to have developed without too great commotions or difficulties.”3 Indeed? Or perhaps Goldmann was obfuscating and some scholars were taken in? If so, they are not alone: Goldmann’s contemporaries in the Zionist movement, and later in Israel, never really knew what to make of the man. They were in awe not only of his style but also, and very much so, of the substance: Goldmann’s uncanny ability to read a political reality still in flux and to recognize the necessary steps demanded (which were not always the conventional ones),

M

3

4

Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel

surprised and bewildered his colleagues. The more famous instances remained engraved in the collective memory of his peers, such as the partition proposal of Palestine of August 1946 or the negotiations with the Germans in 1950 through 1952. Or Goldmann’s last, longest lasting, and ultimately unsuccessful crusade: his efforts to convince the Israeli government to adopt what he considered a more realistic attitude toward Israel’s Arab neighbors. Goldmann impressed his interlocutors as too clever, apt to suggest one thing while keeping a second option (so they suspected) up his sleeve. He seemed logical to a fault on the one hand, impossible to track on the other. In the spring of 1970 he approached Prime Minister Golda Meir and proposed to meet Egypt’s President Nasser, for, well, not exactly negotiations, but at least an exchange of views that might lead to a better understanding between the sides. (“Look, Golda, what is so wrong with having a candid conversation with Nasser?”—Goldmann must have said, exuding plain good sense.) Meir, who probably saw the whole idea as a hopeless and potentially harmful ego trip, found ways to thwart the initiative—now, could it be that this is what Goldmann had been counting on all along? Goldmann was not considered entirely reliable. “I am somewhat worried about the negotiations which our friend Goldmann is carrying out in London,” wrote Weizmann in 1948, even though he himself introduced Goldmann to the British.4 Goldmann tended to be exceedingly optimistic, thought Weizmann, and many shared that view. Goldmann, an optimist? Weizmann, apparently, no longer remembered Goldmann’s words at the Biltmore Conference in May 1942. Speculating about the dimensions of the ongoing troubles Eastern European Jewry faced (at that point, nobody in the West knew about the exact dimensions of the cataclysm happening in the Germanconquered countries), Goldmann stressed that the reality might be much worse than suspected, and that after the war the survivors would be unable to rebuild their lives and their communities. “We should not fool ourselves into escaping from the results of these facts,” he warned. On that occasion, Weizmann had been the more optimistic one. Although he feared that up to 25 percent of all Jews might perish, he drew a parallel from the experiences of World War I and had expressed the hope that Eastern European Jewry would arise again after the war stronger than before.5 Or in the late 1960s, when Israel, after the astonishing victory in the Six-Day War stood tall and proud as the undisputed military power of the Middle East, there was Goldmann fretting like a disturbing Cassandra amidst the general feeling of strength.6 And then again we see the other Goldmann, humane, tolerant, generous. His humor was famous, and some of his witticisms are still current in Israel, such as “a specialist is a person who knows everything, but nothing beyond.” He radiated an immense charm, and few of his interlocutors (especially gentiles, apparently also many women) were able to resist him. Goldmann had a knack in finding the right approach to each interlocutor, perhaps because he was always able to see the point of view of the other side. Last but not least, he abhorred

Nahum Goldmann: An Overview

5

extremisms, especially political ones. Writing about himself (an occupation he enjoyed very much, especially in his later years), he stated: “In the political life of the Jewish people, a people of dogmas and absolute truths, of passions and fanaticism, he [Goldmann] is an odd, almost un-Jewish phenomenon.”7 Unable to maintain a grudge, this was the closest he ever came to reproaching his opponents and tormentors, and during his Israeli years they were legion. Which Goldmann, then? Behind the surrealistic image that has become fixed in contemporary Jewish and Israeli consciousness (resolutely fostered by Goldmann himself) there was, apparently, another Goldmann, of more plausible dimensions and understandable limits, but still a remarkable phenomenon both as a public figure and a private individual. This book explores the life and times of that more human Goldmann.

I. TheYoungerYears: Ideological Development Nahum Goldmann was born on July 10, 1895, in Visznewo, a townlet in Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. Looking back in his old age, he described his first years in the shtetl as “unclouded by a single unhappy incident, and I attribute much of my self-confidence as an adult . . . to the harmony and serenity of early childhood.”8 Shortly after his birth his parents moved to Germany and he, a precocious but sickly child, was left with his grandparents, and his aunts and elders apparently pampered him. It was not until he was six years old that he was reunited with his parents, then living in Germany. For the child it meant adjusting to a new cultural environment, and parents—a father (a gentle man) and a mother (a strong-willed woman)—who he was, in fact, meeting for the first time.9 He never again saw his family in Visznewo. His father, Solomon Goldmann, was a Hebrew educator. He had come to Germany to study at a university but it did not work out and after some tribulations he settled in Frankfurt, where he ran a boarding house for Eastern European Jewish university students, taught Hebrew, and edited a Hebrew weekly. In Frankfurt the family lived among Jewish immigrants, mostly maskilim from Eastern Europe. Typically, the home was religious and Zionist. Solomon Goldmann was active in the Mizrahi party and a disciple of the cultural Zionism of Ahad Haam. Young Nahum, the Goldmann’s only child, first went to a Jewish religious school but at age nine was enrolled in a German school and acquired a regular German education. While a teenager, Nahum turned from religious to secular Jewishness. After high school he went to the University of Heidelberg, where he studied law and philosophy. German culture became an integral part of his intellectual makeup. Like his home and milieu, Nahum was a Zionist—in his words, a “natural” Zionist, meaning a Jew of Eastern European origin whose attachment to Zionism was not the result of this or that turn or crisis in the modern Jewish condition, but an integral part of his Jewish identity.10

6


Nahum Goldmann is not considered, first and foremost, a Zionist thinker.11 Nevertheless, he had well-articulated ideological views, which clearly molded his political positions and actions. In his youth he too adopted the Zionist cultural position of Ahad Haam. In an article published in 1923, in the wake of the Thirteenth Zionist Congress, Goldmann criticized the political-oriented tendency that had come to dominate the Zionist movement after the Balfour Declaration: he thought the Zionist movement had strayed from the spiritual goal of the national renaissance of the Jewish people.12 During the 1920s he opposed the formation of the enlarged Jewish Agency that would include also non-Zionists. In his opinion, the price for the collaboration with the non-Zionists would be the dilution of the Jewish renewal that was so central to his Zionist ideology. Throughout his life Goldmann remained convinced that the inner condition of the Jewish people, “the problem of Judaism” in Ahad Haam’s formulation, was more relevant for Jewish existence than “the problem of the Jews.” That position was bound up with his views about the historical character of the Jewish people: “not better than others, or worse, but unique and different—by virtue of its structure, history, destiny, and character—from all other peoples, and paradoxical in its contradictions.”13 These specific traits of the Jews explained not only their history but also their present demands. In 1970 he declared, “Only if one understands the singularity of the Jewish people (which has nothing to do with any notion of superiority) and its tragic history can one suppose that the Jewish claim [to Palestine] is morally and historically superior.”14 A central pillar in Goldmann’s ideological position concerned the relationship between the Jewish diaspora and the independent Jewish entity the Zionist movement strove to establish in Erez Israel. Both should not be mutually exclusive but interdependent and support each other. Although his ideas about the diaspora–Erez Israel relationship were fully formulated only in later years, already in an essay published in 1919 Goldmann stressed that the reconstituted Jewish community in Palestine should be the center of Jewish life but would not lead to the disappearance of the diaspora. Therefore, one of the demands of the Jewish people was that Jews should get full national autonomy everywhere they requested such status.15 In later years Goldmann continued to hold quite similar views. “The situation of the Jews will never be normalized through a state alone, but only by creating a center in Palestine while at the same time retaining the great diaspora linked with the State in an enduring and mutually enriching relationship.”16 In his emphasis on Jewish life in the diaspora Goldmann came to differ also from Ahad Haam, who distinguished between the objective and the subjective realities of diaspora life, and was resigned regarding the first but critical of the second.17 Goldmann would explore his approach in full after the establishment of the Jewish state, when the Israel-diaspora equation became a major topic of public debate. This was to be the theme of a fierce confrontation with Ben-Gurion in 1957. Goldmann’s ideological views were related to two additional issues, both in the realm of political behavior. One had to do with the idea of the


7

modern state; the other with considerations about the democratic process and, consequently, action in the framework of political parties. In his younger years, during World War I, Goldmann had supported Germany and the German state.18 In later years he developed a critical position regarding the state as an institution, describing it as a dangerous idea rooted in German political philosophy and capable of huge destructive power. Goldmann stressed now that there was nothing permanent in the present organization of human society along the system of states.19 In any case, the state should never become an end but always remain only a tool; the real collective frame was the nation. Such a view squared well with his Zionist cultural approach. Another theme Goldmann was critical of was the democratic process. He had a poor opinion not so much of the idea of democracy but of the actual workings of the parliamentary system.20 “By nature, I am not a democrat. . . . I do not believe that parliamentary democracy as it exists today will last very much longer. The world has become too complex for its problems to be soluble by our good old democratic methods. . . .”21 In later years he remarked that his two major political achievements, the partition mission of 1946 and the reparations agreement with Germany from 1951 to 1952, would never have materialized by normal democratic means.22 Nevertheless, Goldmann was an avowed liberal, and his self-description as a person of progressive, center-leftist leanings and a supporter of the pioneer movement in Palestine is convincing. In the early 1920s he participated in the socialist Zionist Hapoel Hazair delegation to one of the Zionist Congresses, “but I resigned a couple of days later when it was explained to me that I should be subject to party discipline.”23 Later he became a member of the small Zionist Radical Party led by Yitzhak Gruenbaum, where apparently each member was entitled to follow his own ideological inclinations. Because delegates to the Zionist Congress were elected according to established party keys, when after 1933 the Radical Party was dissolved, ways had to be found to enable Goldmann to participate as a rightful representative at the Zionist Congress.24 In 1935 Goldmann became the representative of the Jewish Agency at the League of Nations, and as such also a member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. In fact he was the only person with a formal standing in the Zionist leadership who was not affiliated with any party, a situation that continued in later years. This fact would become a major problem after the establishment of Israel, when Goldmann had to decide about his political participation in the young state.

II. The 1930s: The Geneva Period In the 1920s Goldmann became involved in several Jewish and Zionist cultural enterprises in association with Jacob Klatzkin, a well-known Jewish intellectual and an important Zionist thinker, whom Goldmann had known

8


since his youth.25 The most important of their initiatives was the Encyclopaedia Judaica, which began to appear in the late 1920s. Ten volumes in German and two in Hebrew were published before the project collapsed in 1933, when the Nazis assumed power. An English edition had also been planned and would appear forty years later under new auspices in Israel.26 The Nazi ascendance to power brought the German period in Goldmann’s life to an end. In the spring of 1933 he left Berlin and settled in Geneva.27 Although it was neither his first nor his last migration, this one had a distinctive poignancy. Goldmann had considered himself as a Jew well established in Germany, well integrated into German culture, the possesser of a German law degree.28 He had planned to dedicate several more years to the publication of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, and later on probably to continue with additional works of a cultural nature. All this now came to an end. Goldmann was forced to leave, and in fact he never again struck roots anywhere. His public career now started in earnest. Goldmann’s seven years in Geneva were divided between Jewish and Zionist tasks with Jewish matters having actually a certain predominance. Toward the end of 1933 he became the head of the Comité des Delegation Juives, replacing Leo Motzkin, who had passed away. The Comité had been established in 1919 at the Peace Conference in Paris, to act for the minority rights that the Jews had attained in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.29 At the Nineteenth Zionist Congress (1935), Goldmann was chosen as representative of the Jewish Agency at the League of Nations. According to the terms of the mandate for Palestine approved by the League of Nations in 1922, the Jewish Agency was a recognized body that in collaboration with and under the supervision of the mandatory power, Great Britain, was entitled to participate in the development of a Jewish national home in Palestine. The main work of the Jewish Agency was, obviously, in London and in Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the presence of a Zionist representative at the headquarters of the League of Nations in Geneva had a certain political significance, the more so due to his semiofficial standing, which enabled Goldmann to intervene also in matters related to Jewish rights. Last, in August 1936 Goldmann participated in the foundation of a new Jewish organization, the World Jewish Congress (WJC). The WJC was very much the initiative of Stephen S. Wise, a founding father of the American Zionist movement, a prestigious liberal rabbi, and a figure well connected to the U.S. administration. The idea came from a success story, albeit a short-lived one, from the days of World War I: the first American Jewish Congress (AJC). Established in 1916, the AJC brought together under a carefully balanced platform most of the major organizations of American Jewry: Zionists, anti-Zionists, the diverse religious organizations, the large landsmanshaftn, the fraternal orders, and the Jewish labor organizations. Under the masterful leadership of one of the great figures in American Jewry, Louis Marshall, a delegation of the AJC acted successfully at the Peace


9

Conference in Paris, assuring civil and political rights for the Jews in the new countries created after World War I in Central and Eastern Europe.30 According to the terms of its charter, the first American Jewish Congress declared itself dissolved in 1920.31 The memory of the first Congress lingered on and brought about the creation of another, even broader framework, the WJC, in 1936.32 According to its statutes, the WJC acted for “representative Jewish bodies, communities and organizations” throughout the world. In other words, it was neither a democratically elected body, nor an agreed-upon umbrella organization, but a new entity aiming to express the supposedly common will of a wide range of Jewish associations of very varied scope and character. Like the AJC, the WJC was heavily influenced by Zionists, and its scope of action was Jewishgeneral. At the beginning Goldmann may have wondered if the WJC was really necessary. It may have appeared to him that the Jewish Agency and the Comité des Delegations Juives adequately represented Jewish needs. Soon, however, he undoubtedly discovered that the WJC represented a very useful Jewish platform, one that seemed to impress his non-Jewish interlocutors, not the least due to its American Jewish connections. The gradual erosion of Jewish political rights in the Central and Eastern European states and the worsening problem of Jewish refugees, especially those being forced out of Nazi Germany, were questions that occupied Goldmann very much in those years. A sobering demonstration of the helplessness of the Jewish situation, as well as an ominous sign of things to come, was the Intergovernmental Conference on Refugees that met in Evian, France, in July 1938 with the participation of representatives of twenty-one countries. Goldmann watched helplessly as almost none of the countries present indicated any inclination to accept refugees, a sizable number of whom were Jews. Worse, observers sent to the conference by numerous Jewish organizations were unable to agree on a common agenda.33 From the perspective of later years, Goldmann saw himself in Geneva, “in a sense, the official Jewish representative on all diaspora questions.”34 In fact, it did not amount to much, even if the combination of the functions in one person added a certain visibility to the Jewish presence. By 1938, none of the positions Goldmann filled in Geneva had any real importance. The League of Nations had lost most of its prestige and influence and the intervention through the League by Jewish representatives for matters relating to Jews in the European countries was by then of very limited effectiveness. With the start of World War II in September 1939, Goldmann and his colleagues of the Jewish Agency and of the WJC understood that his usefulness in Geneva had reached an end. Goldmann, now with a young family, emigrated again, this time to the United States. They arrived in New York in June 1940. New York would remain what Goldmann called, not his home, but his “home base,” until 1964 when he emigrated once again.

10

Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel III. The 1940s: The American Period

Life in the United States and the American scene, both Jewish and general, were for Goldmann a new experience that, in the conditions of the war, had to be absorbed as quickly as possible.35 Goldmann knew that in the conditions of war the United States represented the last option to aid the beleaguered Jews of Europe. Appearing in the name of the WJC, Goldmann and Stephen S. Wise—the relations between both became very close in those years—sought contacts with different figures in the American administration in order to help Jewish refugees or Jews trapped in Europe. The results, Goldmann later sadly admitted, were mostly disappointing. It was the experience of Evian repeating itself, this time in the United States. Neither the Jews nor the gentiles in the United States were able to cope with the dimensions of the tragedy that befell European Jewry.36 As was later the case in Israel, Goldmann never became fully acclimated in the United States. Although he soon acquired U.S. citizenship, he remained the essential European.37 Nevertheless, Goldmann became increasingly involved in Zionist work in the United States, always in coordination with Wise. The broadening of Zionist activity in the United States in the 1940s was rooted in a strategy of Zionist foreign policy: political connection to a great power.38 Considering the international scene, the turn to the United States was almost natural, although the efforts to reach an understanding with the different American administrations would prove a difficult and torturous enterprise. In the 1940s, the bearers of that political work were the American Zionist movement and to a lesser degree, members of the Executive of the Jewish Agency that came to the United States. Goldmann was living now in the United States, and David BenGurion and Chaim Weizmann were, since 1940, frequent visitors. Guided by Wise, Goldmann soon found his way in the American political establishment, as well as among the leading Zionist figures and in the Jewish community. He took part in the organization of the Extraordinary Zionist Conference in New York City in May 1942, in which Weizmann and BenGurion also participated. The Biltmore Conference (so called after the hotel where the meetings took place) approved a resolution calling for the establishment of a “Jewish Commonwealth” in Palestine after the war—the first authoritative Zionist demand for Jewish statehood. Soon Goldmann became involved in the organization of the American Jewish Conference, which met in New York in August 1943. Its central aim was to unite American Jewry around an agreed policy for European Jewry and for the Jewish state platform approved a year earlier.39 In the 1940s, a new body emerged, the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), representing the main American Zionist organizations.40 Its goal was to centralize Zionist political activity during and after the war. Wise and Abba Hillel Silver jointly chaired the AZEC.41 Silver was a forceful personality, a spellbinding orator, proud, independent, and difficult to work with. He soon pushed Wise aside. Goldmann proved harder for Silver to marginalize.


11

Weizmann, the WZO president, who considered the American movement hopelessly disorganized (an assumption Silver would soon prove wrong), decided in June 1943 to establish a political bureau of the Jewish Agency in Washington, under the joint direction of Goldmann and Louis Lipsky, a veteran American Zionist leader.42 Since the Jewish Agency representatives and the AZEC concentrated on the same issues, clashes soon erupted between Goldmann and Silver, who considered the political activity in Washington as the prerogative of the AZEC.43 In fact, the influence and importance of the AZEC, which counted on the support of a large and engaged nationwide network of Zionist branches, was undoubtedly greater, especially after 1944, when Silver became the dominant AZEC figure. Goldmann’s name was known in the Zionist establishment, but he could hardly be considered a leading figure in the movement. He did not represent a well-defined ideological position nor did he belong to one of the large political groupings of the Zionist movement. A member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, he was not linked to the London group close to Weizmann (whose power, in any case, was waning) nor to the Erez Israeli faction led by BenGurion. Although the virtual head of the American bureau of the Jewish Agency, Goldmann had practically no influence on the Silver-dominated AZEC. He had established contacts in the United States, but control over the swelling Jewish and Zionist rank and file, with the corresponding capability to influence broader American political circles, remained firmly in the hands of the AZEC.44 Thus far, Goldmann had not been associated with any major political initiative in Zionist life. All this changed in August 1946, when Goldmann scored the first great political and diplomatic breakthrough of his career.

IV. The Partition Proposal of 1946 For the present-day student of Zionist history familiar with the achievements of Zionist policy in 1947 and 1948, it is difficult to imagine that only a year before, in the summer of 1946, the Zionist enterprise was faced with one of the most serious crises in its history. Toward the end of World War II it became clear that most of European Jewry, the human reservoir of the Zionist enterprise, had perished. In Palestine, relations with the British were at a breaking point. The British elections in mid-1945 propelled the Labor Party into power. Notwithstanding repeated past declarations of support for Zionist aspirations in Palestine, the new British government decided to uphold the 1939 White Paper. Such a policy was totally opposed by the Zionists because it relegated the Jews to minority status in a future Arab-dominated Palestinian state. The British were moved by unabashed Realpolitik logic: the future of the Middle East rested, in their view, with the emerging and increasingly assertive Arab countries. The Arabs, since 1945 represented by the Arab League, rejected any political concessions to the Zionists and demanded

12


independence in Palestine. Faced with an uncompromising confrontation between Jews and Arabs, the British had decided to side with the Arabs, calculating that it would better serve the interests of Great Britain in the Middle East, although it meant sacrificing Jewish aspirations in Palestine.45 In the fall of 1945 the Executive of the Jewish Agency decided to turn against the White Paper policy through so-called “activist” means.46 In practice it meant, at that point, forcing the entry of Jewish immigrants into the country by violent means if necessary. The Zionists intended, in the long run, to compel the British government to reconsider its Palestinian policy. However, the actual results were quite different from what the Zionists hoped for. Jewish violence led to British counterviolence, and by the summer of 1946 the Jewish community in Palestine and the British authorities were set on a course of confrontation that did not bode well for the Zionists. On Black Sabbath ( June 29, 1946) destructive searches were conducted in dozens of cities and settlements and hundreds of Jews were imprisoned, including Zionist leaders. A month later the Jewish underground organization Ezel planted a bomb in a section of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which housed offices of the British administration. Close to 100 people were killed or wounded in the explosion. A harsh British reaction appeared imminent. In hindsight, the factor that may have prevented a strong British reaction was concern over possible U.S. reaction. With the end of World War II, the United States had become a central, albeit reluctant, participant in the international policy regarding the Middle East. The realities of the postwar situation, such as the growing importance of the oil resources of the region and the ambitious expansion plans of the Soviet Union forced the Americans toward an increased concern over the Middle East. Zionist agitation in the United States played a certain role in that process. In response to demands of American Jewish organizations, President Harry Truman took an interest in the future of the Jewish refugees in Europe. In August 1945 the White House approached the British with the suggestion that 100,000 European Jewish refugees be allowed to enter Palestine. Toward the end of 1945, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was created to study the problem of the Jewish refugees in Europe and its relationship to Palestine. The recommendations of the commission, published in April 1946, endorsed again the absorption of 100,000 Jewish refugees in Palestine, but the British once more rejected such a solution.47 Instead, yet another BritishAmerican commission, the Morrison-Grady Commission, presented in June 1946 a plan for the division of Palestine into semiautonomous Jewish and Arab cantons. The Jews would have some say in their sectors, but British dominance in the country would continue. The Zionists vehemently rejected the plan. They saw it as a continuation of the White Paper regime under a different name: no transfer of European Jewish refugees to Palestine and essential matters such as immigration and land transfers remaining beyond Jewish control.48 It appeared, however, that the U.S. government might endorse the plan.


13

Against the background of such a bleak political situation, the Executive of the Jewish Agency met in Paris to consider its options. Goldmann traveled from New York to participate in the meeting.49 A general tenor of disorientation hung over the deliberations. The main figures in the Zionist leadership— Weizmann in London, Silver in New York, and Ben-Gurion (who had escaped imprisonment by the British because he was not in Palestine during Black Sabbath) in Paris—were of one mind about the major goals of the Zionist movement: termination of the British mandate, establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Beyond that, little agreement was found between them on how to achieve those goals, and the obstacles seemed insurmountable. The British had not budged politically and the “activist” line in Palestine had brought trouble and sorrow to the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. The Zionists seemed unable to thwart the very objectionable Morrison-Grady Plan, and in general, their influence in London and in Washington appeared negligible. All together, the Zionists were caught in political disarray, faced with vital problems, insufficient understanding among the diverse sectors of the movement, and few realistic options pointing a way out of their predicament. That was Goldmann’s cue. Grasping more accurately than his associates in the Zionist leadership the broader contours of the political situation of the movement, he proposed now to the Executive of the Jewish Agency a new course of action. Information had reached him from Washington, Goldmann told the meeting, that the Americans would decide in the next days regarding the Morrison-Grady Plan. “Friends of ours, close to the administration,” he said, “have indicated that it would be very advisable for a member of the Executive to go to Washington for a few days, that is, a member who would have the authority to speak on behalf of the Executive [Goldmann had himself in mind] and bring to the Government the minimum demands of the Agency with regard to the new British proposals.”50 What demands? Goldmann stressed that the current Zionist strategy in Palestine had not only been without positive results, but was outright dangerous for the future of the Jewish national home. A chance had now arisen for an alternative course, due to the political circumstances in Washington, and the fact that the British were interested in good relations with the Americans. Through the good offices of the U.S. government, Goldmann said, changes might be introduced into the Morrison-Grady Plan that would refocus the plan toward the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. “All this presupposes one decision,” Goldmann emphasized, getting to the main point of his proposal: that we are ready to accept partition. For years we have postponed discussion of this issue. We were afraid of internal differences of opinion. We are afraid to play out the cards and to take positions. I have always warned that the time will come when we shall have to decide without notice, and this is the moment. Unless we are ready to

14

Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel tell the President that we are ready to accept the Jewish State in an adequate part of Palestine, it is no use going to Washington and trying to obtain these improvements. I felt for years that partition of Palestine is the only way out. Biltmore [the Biltmore Program] is no realistic policy of the movement, because we have no Jewish majority, and we cannot wait until we have the majority to get the State. I know it is a tragic decision, but we have only the choice between two things, British rule with the White Paper policy, or a Jewish State in part of Palestine. For the reasons I have given, I choose the Jewish State in a part of Palestine today. If the Executive agrees and assumes the responsibility, as we cannot wait for the [Zionist] Congress, we must send a representative to Washington to advise the President along these lines.51

Goldmann’s was certainly one of the strongest pleas for a partition solution ever uttered in the Zionist leadership. He was treading on very sensitive ground, and we may well suppose that he, as well as the other members of the Executive present at the meeting, were aware of it. The idea that the Land of Israel might be partitioned between Jews and Arabs was (and has remained) one of the most divisive issues—indeed, one of the most explosive ones—in Zionist and later in Israeli history. Since 1937, when the British first put forth the proposal, then adopted ever so reluctantly by the Zionists, and finally rejected by all—British, Zionists, and Arabs, each for their own reasons—the idea of partition had not disappeared. The possibility was occasionally raised both in internal Zionist discussions as well as in conversations with British officials and others. In the Zionist movement some rejected partition out of principle. Others adopted what they considered a tactically astute position: that the Zionists should never suggest partition of their own volition, but if the idea were to be brought up by an external party, such as the British or the Americans, it should be considered. Supposedly, this tactic had two advantages: it avoided, at least at the outset, a difficult internal debate in the movement and the Zionists, reacting to an outside proposal, were in a better position to negotiate.52 Abba Hillel Silver (who in any case disliked the idea of partition) and his AZEC associates favored such a tactical approach.53 Goldmann was strongly opposed to the tactical option, which in his view did not lead anywhere. In 1945–1946 he spoke about and for partition openly and frequently.54 In his memoirs he poured scorn on the Zionists who had opposed partition. It was a sign of political immaturity, of “inability to compromise . . . the obstinacy and fanaticism of a persecuted people that for two thousand years had set beliefs and ideals above reality and practical necessity. . . .”55 Now, in mid1946, his emphasis was on the necessity of Jewish statehood, and partition was for him a means to Jewish statehood. Goldmann’s position was bolstered by his understanding of the new international reality that resulted from the establishment


15

in 1945 of the Organization of the United Nations. The growing influence of the Arab states and their allies at the U.N. made the Zionist efforts for Jewish statehood all the more urgent.56 Last, and diverging from many opponents of partition, Goldmann stressed the tactical advantages of his proposal, considering the political realities the Zionists faced at that moment: instead of concentrating on negative solutions—against the 1939 White Paper, against the British mandate, against the Morrison-Grady Plan—the Zionists would come up with a positive proposal, one that pointed toward new solutions and new hopes for the Palestinian problem. The Executive of the Jewish Agency debated Goldmann’s proposal for two days—in fact, almost up to the moment he had to board the airplane to New York. Although the mission was endorsed and a set of resolutions was approved, the preceding discussions had a strange character: they were unfocused, repetitive, small matters mixing with big questions, and above all, the sessions were poorly managed by the chairman, David Ben-Gurion. What exactly Ben-Gurion’s position was is difficult to understand from the minutes. About two weeks earlier, he had himself written to diverse people supporting partition.57 Now, at the meeting, he did not speak clearly in favor of Goldmann’s suggested mission, but neither did he oppose it, which would have aborted the initiative. Ben-Gurion may well have abstained when the final vote was taken. Goldmann himself proposed the resolutions approved at the meeting. The first stated that the Morrison-Grady Plan was regarded “as unacceptable as a basis of discussion.” The second resolution, which was the main one, declared, “The Executive [of the Jewish Agency] is prepared to discuss a proposal for the establishment of a viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine.”58 Goldmann arrived in New York on August 6, 1946. He spent four and a half very busy days in New York and in Washington. He conferred with Silver and the AZEC activists, with members of the American cabinet and officials of the U.S. State Department, and with the British ambassador. His most consequential conversations were with Dean Acheson, the Acting Secretary of State, to whom he presented and justified the resolutions of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. The two men met twice and seem to have found a common language. Acheson, who considered the Middle East and Palestine exclusively from the angle of American interests, apparently saw in the partition proposal a way that would facilitate U.S.-British relations, alleviate the political pressure the AZEC exerted in Washington, and perhaps be accepted by the Arabs.59 Goldmann would have liked to meet President Truman but this was not feasible. Nevertheless, the president was informed about the proposals and responded in a positive albeit general way, leaving the exact phrasing of the U.S. position to the State Department. Goldmann returned to Paris on August 11, sure that the Americans had endorsed the partition plan.60 It proved an overly optimistic evaluation. The State Department, in its formulation of the American position, did not endorse

16


the proposal but only transmitted the Zionist resolutions, albeit in a fairly positive tone, to the British.61 The message mentioned again the refutation of the Morrison-Grady Plan. This, however, was not Goldmann’s doing, but Silver’s, who had cleverly orchestrated the AZEC activities in Washington against the recommendations. In fact, the Morrison-Grady Plan was already dead before Goldmann arrived in the United States.62 Now a convenient opportunity had arisen to bury it once and for all. Once again Goldmann ran into trouble with Silver and his associates. Goldmann had managed to meet Acheson without taking Silver with him. “I could not be sure that he [Silver] would sincerely uphold the partition plan he privately rejected,” he explained later in his memoirs. “Besides, I knew that Acheson preferred to confer with me alone, having had an embarrassing clash with Dr. Silver a few months earlier.”63 When Silver learned about the exact results of Goldmann’s negotiations in Washington, namely, that the American administration had not endorsed the partition plan of Palestine as its policy but only taken notice of it, the information seemed to confirm his worst scenario. On August 14 he announced to Ben-Gurion his resignation from the Executive of the Jewish Agency. In his view, Goldmann’s mission had been a failure and caused great harm to the Zionist political work in the United States.64 At the first opportunity—the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress in December 1946— Silver and his allies made Goldmann pay a heavy price for his American mission. Silver saw to it that Goldmann was severely restricted in his independent diplomatic action. Although elected as member of the Zionist Executive, he was relegated to act in London, where there was by then little to do. In 1947, during that fateful year in Zionist politics and diplomacy, Goldmann was brought back to New York as member of the Zionist delegation at the U.N., but kept under the strict control of Silver, virtually unable to act on his own.

( Hindsight has recognized the direct and indirect impact of the Goldmann mission. At the time, however, the results of his demarches in Washington failed to impress his peers and were even rejected by many. This is hardly surprising considering how contentious the partition idea was for many Zionists. In the personal sense, the Washington mission had all the characteristics of the “Goldmann style,” the combination of cold calculation with daring that would become legendary in later years. He had elaborated a political proposal where the rejection of the Morrison-Grady Plan, the drive for Jewish statehood, and partition fitted harmoniously together. He recognized the opportunity that arose in the summer of 1946 to translate his views into a plan of action and seized his chance with both hands. In fact, Goldmann acted quite alone. Although he cajoled the Executive of the Jewish Agency to endorse partition and to agree to his journey to Washington, his colleagues were not fully convinced. True, in the short term Goldmann’s mission fell short of what he had hoped for. The British Foreign Ministry, on receiving the Zionist proposal


17

from the Americans, considered it as a possibility among others, but in fact rejected the plan and neither then nor in the coming months adopted it as a policy. And from a Zionist perspective, the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress in December 1946 actually rejected the partition of Palestine and reaffirmed the demand for Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth (and not a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine). Goldmann fought spiritedly at the Congress for his views, but he was powerless against the coalition of the Silver-dominated American delegates, allied with the Revisionists and other parties—and unsupported by Ben-Gurion, whose priorities at this conjuncture were different. Nevertheless, the Zionist proposals, and the debate related to them, had an indirect result that was extremely important: it bought time for both the British and the Zionists. It allowed a slowing down in the spiral of growing confrontation between both sides. It made possible a return to negotiations, which even if proved futile, opened the way to the next political step in the Palestinian drama, when in the spring of 1947 the British presented the question of Palestine before the U.N. General Assembly. Suddenly the whole Zionist movement found itself energetically engaged in the political work for partition, the idea supported also by the deniers-in-principle, hand in hand with the tactical opponents, as if all of them had never dreamed about anything else than the partition of Palestine! A change in circumstances and a general sense that there were no better alternatives brought the Zionists around. Proving the ruthlessness of political life, at that very hour the initiator of the latest thrust toward partition, Nahum Goldmann, the man who had foreseen all this, was relegated by his associates in the Zionist leadership to a secondary position. During the next crucial months Goldmann’s great diplomatic talents were hardly put to use. Establishing Goldmann’s undisputed place as a Jewish leader would take three more years and one more great political achievement.

V. The Founding of Israel Inevitably, the creation of the Jewish state was for Goldmann, as for all other figures in the leadership of the Zionist movement, a time of personal realignment. The senior figures of the political parties, or of the executive organs of the Zionist movement and the Jewish Agency now became the natural candidates to head government offices, high administrative positions, or become members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset. According to his memoirs, Goldmann was repeatedly asked to participate in the government and in the political life of the young state, and that after careful reflection he turned the offers down.65 In fact, in 1948 Goldmann was certainly known in Israel, but he had yet to acquire the public stature he would several years later after the Reparations Agreement with Germany. The Israeli government was a coalition of parties, and in the first cabinets the center-left Mapai occupied the main ministries, the other partners usually

18


being the religious parties (Mizrahi and Agudat Israel), the center parties (General Zionists and Progressives), and occasionally also the left-wing Mapam. The control of ministries was hard fought and coalitions came about or fell apart depending on agreements or disagreements regarding which party got what offices. Goldmann had some connection to one of the General Zionist parties (the A group, of a moderate center-left orientation), which in 1948 joined with others to form the new (and small) Progressive Party. Goldmann was not an active or long-established member. In fact, almost all the ministers in the first Israeli governments had been living and were publicly active in the Yishuv for years. Goldmann was still living in the United States (he formally emigrated to Israel only in 1964) and had little chance to achieve ministerial status. Besides, the position that would have suited Goldmann best, the Foreign Ministry, was securely in the hands of the capable Moshe Sharett, a central figure in Mapai. In the end, Goldmann’s decision not to integrate into the normal political life of Israel barred his way from attaining a role in the political leadership of the young state. Most of Goldmann’s subsequent attempts to explain why he did not participate in politics in Israel are unconvincing: to accept an official position in Israel, he would have had to resign from all his positions in the worldwide Jewish organizations; as a representative of a small party (such as the Progressives) he would have had only limited political influence; a half-hearted attempt in a 1961 campaign and an address to groups of citizens had shown him that he failed to impress his listeners; and so on.66 In fact, from the mid-1950s to the 1970s, an open field in the center of the Israeli political scene, between the socialist left and the nationalist right, lacked what Goldmann might have provided: a recognized and savvy leader. Therefore, one is left with a feeling that some other personal motives steered his decisions in that matter. Of course, he had his doubts about the democratic system in general, which surfaced already in the 1920s. But could Goldmann, well attuned as he was to his peers, fail to observe how many authoritarian persons were in the higher echelons of Zionist politics, most of them well-known to him, who hardly could be considered as “natural” democrats? Not only David Ben-Gurion, but also men such as Vladimir Jabotinsky, Menahem Ussishkin, Louis D. Brandeis, Abba Hillel Silver, and many more. Goldmann must have understood that they, and many others, bowed to the demands of the democratic way not necessarily out of conviction of the supposed advantages of the parliamentary system. The contingencies of political life in the Zionist movement (and later in Israel) were certainly as important, and perhaps even more so: political power depended on the voluntary support of the Zionist membership (and later the Israeli citizenry); nobody could be coerced, and only the democratic system established a formal ground for concerted and accepted action. For reasons that remain difficult to explain, Goldmann refused to comply with these imperatives of Zionist and Israeli politics. He had a visceral lack of empathy, perhaps not with democracy in its ideal sense, but with its practical obligations. A shadow of doubt accompanied him in his later years, whether his decision had


19

been the right one.67 But he had opted out, and his choice shaped his public way in his later years.

( As important as the question of his political role and future in the new state must have been for Goldmann, in the first years after the establishment of Israel other matters in the Jewish and Zionist realm also occupied him very much, first in the United States, soon also in Europe. In 1949, with the death of Stephen S. Wise, Goldmann became the head of the WJC, a position of limited power and great public visibility. Between 1948 and 1951, a confrontation developed between the leadership of the American Zionist movement and Israel—more exactly, between Silver and Ben-Gurion. Goldmann played an important tactical role behind the scenes and contributed to the fall of Silver.68 Once Israel was established, the question of the relationship between the Jewish state and the WZO, stood high on the agenda of both bodies.69 One major issue was the so-called hafradah [separation] between the two bodies. The matter was sharply formulated in 1948 by the president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Emanuel Neumann, the closest associate of Silver: “. . . the first principle which we must accept without reservation is that of a definitive political separation between the Jews of the world and the Republic of Israel. The separation must be clear-cut and unequivocal.”70 As a principle, there was nothing in it that Ben-Gurion would not have accepted. In fact, at a meeting of the Zionist Executive in Jerusalem in August 1948, the first after the creation of the state, he let Silver and Neumann convince him that as prime minister of the state he could no longer serve as chairman of the Zionist Executive, a body of worldwide Jewish significance.71 The 1948 deliberations in Jerusalem strengthened significantly the American section of the Zionist Executive, which Silver dominated at this point. Because the American movement was by now the largest in the diaspora, and considering its significant contribution to the creation of the Jewish state, the question now was the level of involvement it might (or should) possess in Israel. Combining principle with practical matters, one obvious instrument of influence were the fund collections of American Jewry. When Silver, back in the United States, tried to oust the chairman of the United Jewish Appeal (UJA), Henry Morgenthau Jr., and be elected instead, warning bells rang. The UJA was the main Jewish funds gathering agency in the United States, and an agreed percentage of its collections were turned over to the United Palestine Appeal (UPA). Dominating the UJA would have given Silver large control over the financial means that American Jewry brought together for Israel. Such a move was opposed by a group in the American Zionist leadership who did not belong to Silver’s camp, Goldmann included, and by the Israeli members of the Executive of the Jewish Agency.72 Goldmann was apparently the mastermind behind a sequence of tactical steps aimed at bringing Silver down. In February 1949 a meeting of Executive

20


of the Jewish Agency took place in New York, the first time that the whole Executive met in the United States. Most of the participants expressed opposition to Silver’s plans and against his leadership style in general. Chagrined by the intervention of the World Zionist leadership in what he considered an internal American Jewish issue, Silver resigned from the Executive of the Jewish Agency—which is what Goldmann had foreseen and hoped for.73 Soon afterward Goldmann got himself elected instead of Silver as chairman of the American section of the Executive. Silver tried to organize his return to the Zionist leadership at the Twenty-Third Zionist Congress (Jerusalem, August 1951). Again, the general discussion was about the terms of collaboration between the Zionist movement and the Jewish state. Goldmann played a prominent role in the debate, but essentially it was a confrontation between Silver and Ben-Gurion. Silver was defeated and afterward refused to fill leading positions in the Zionist movement. Goldmann and Berl Locker were elected joint chairmen of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Locker operating out of Jerusalem, Goldmann out of New York.74 At that point, Goldmann was already deeply involved in what became a major undertaking of his public career: the German reparations.

VI. The Reparations Agreement with Germany, 1951–1952 Goldmann’s role in the reparations agreement, signed in Luxembourg on September 10, 1952, between Germany and Israel, was one of the major accomplishments of his public life. From a Jewish point of view, the very question of relations with Germans and Germany, less than a decade after the Holocaust, was a minefield that few Jewish (and even less so, Israeli) public figures were ready to broach. Besides the emotional burden, baffling legal questions were involved. Such an accord would create new ground rules in international law and relations. “There hardly was a precedent for persuading a state to assume moral responsibility and make large-scale compensation for crimes committed against an unorganized ethnic group lacking any sovereign status,” wrote Goldmann in his memoirs. “There was no basis in international law for the collective Jewish claims; neither Israel nor the Jewish people could use power politics to force Germany to recognize them.”75 The delicate and complex negotiations required thoughtful supervision. Ideas had to be generated, juridical and practical obstacles overcome, the doubtful convinced, moments of crisis defused, and all sides involved had to be ever so carefully prodded along toward the final agreement.76 All in all a task uniquely suited to the talents of Nahum Goldmann, and the results bore many of the markings of his heterodox way of thinking and public demeanor. The treaty signed at the end of the sometimesconfounding negotiations was between two states, one of which had not been in existence when the crimes being recompensed for had been committed.


21

Germany recognized a double material obligation separately calculated, one toward the Jewish people, the other toward the Jewish state, the rationale in the second case being that Israel had rehabilitated hundreds of thousands of persecuted Jews and Holocaust survivors. Demand for material restitution and compensation for the victims of Nazi persecution had been voiced already in the mid-1940s. At an international Jewish conference in Atlantic City in November 1944, organized by Goldmann’s WJC, comprehensive resolutions were adopted regarding diverse aspects of the reparations issue.77 The very concept of “reparations” was new. The idea was not his own, Goldmann recounts in his memoirs, but had been conceived by the Robinson brothers, Nehemiah and Jacob, two talented Jewish jurists who had emigrated from Lithuania to the United States in the early 1940s and worked for the WJC.78 After the end of the war Chaim Weizmann, as head of the Jewish Agency, had addressed formally the Four Powers (United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union) with a demand for restitutions “due to the Jewish people from Germany and her allies.”79 Progress, however, was slow and the results disappointing. Only in June 1948 was a first Jewish organization recognized by the American authorities in Germany, the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO), to deal with restoration of Jewish property in the American zone.80 The recently created state of Israel constituted a new factor in the demand for restitutions, enjoying the advantages and levels of influence of a sovereign state. Israeli demands were presented in a note addressed not to Germany but to the Four Powers on March 12, 1951. It stated that the restitution and indemnification Germany owed to the Jewish people were so far unsatisfactory and more comprehensive legal and practical steps were required. The note distinguished between private compensation and collective reparation: the main bulk of material means the Nazis robbed belonged to the Jewish people as such because no individual survivors remained. The state of Israel declared its rights in the matter, as a representative of the Jewish people and as redeemer of many of the victims of Nazi persecution and survivors of the Holocaust. The total material losses of the Jews the Nazis caused were calculated at $6 billion. Israel demanded now $1.5 billion restitution from the two German states ($1 billion from West Germany and $.5 billion from East Germany) this being approximately the cost of the absorption in Palestine/Israel of half a million Jews who had been victims of Nazi persecution.81 Although not mentioned in the Israeli note, Israeli demands were well-known to be bound to stark economic realities. The young Jewish state was near financial collapse: its population had doubled in the first two years of existence, most of the newcomers arriving without material means or professional skills. The U.S., British, and French answers to the Israeli note (the Soviet Union never replied) expressed understanding for the Israeli position but declared that they could do little to force the Germans and therefore suggested that Israel should present its claims directly to the German government.82

22


That was easier said than done. As much as a direct approach seemed logical, the emotional impact of the destruction of European Jewry continued to reverberate in Jewish public opinion and strong opposition existed to any contacts with the Germans. In addition, whenever they were approached, representative German officials proved less than enthusiastic about the idea of reparations.83 In Jewish and Israeli circles there was a growing concern that Germany, which six years after the end of the war was close to acquiring full sovereignty, might sidetrack the issue of restitutions. Goldmann was convinced that the direct approach was the only way: I have always maintained that nations must not let their relations be directed by emotion. Their own interests require them to find a way to live together and not be dominated solely by feelings, however justified these may be. . . . Only groups that do not engage in foreign politics and are aware of their powerlessness can allow themselves the easy luxury of living for emotions. The Jews did this during their centuries of ghetto and diaspora life, but a people that has succeeded in establishing its own state . . . can no longer permit itself such indulgence.84 Yet, to enter in contact with the Germans was not only a matter of political logic, but also involved sheer personal daring. In 1951, only six years after the end of the war, no Israeli of political importance could have afforded to meet leading German officials. Indeed, during the critical months of the negotiations the Israeli government had to provide Goldmann with bodyguards.85 Goldmann also saw a historical and intellectual argument for a renewed contact with the Germany that was emerging after World War II. He considered the Jewish-German encounter that had gradually developed since the early Middle Ages as a major factor in Jewish history. In the past two centuries, the German cultural influence was an essential element in the modernization of the Jewish people. Consequently, “the problem of the relationship between Germans and Jews is in this way a unique one, not only from the point of view of Jewish and German history, but also from a historically universal angle,” Goldmann wrote, in one of his most thoughtful chapters in his memoirs. “Among the many contacts [of the Jews] during their millennial history there was none so influential but also almost critical for the Jewish fate as the meeting with the German people.”86 An extraordinary chapter of the German-Jewish relationship, both in the positive as in the negative sense, had begun in the nineteenth century and reached its climax in the twentieth century. No culture had shaped modern Jewry as the German one, Goldmann wrote, no other group had affected German life like the Jews, and the results of that interaction were amazingly productive: the three men who more than anyone else had shaped the conceptual structure of the modern world—Marx, Freud, and Einstein—had culturally been German Jews.87 And then, the Nazi tragedy ended all that.


23

Considering the Holocaust, Goldmann stressed that “there is no question of forgetting or forgiving. There is no people which could forget, not only in the first generation who have experienced it, but for all future generations, such a crime as cold-blooded murder of six million of its members. . . .” The crime committed against the Jewish people may “perhaps be forgiven by a boundlessly merciful God, but certainly not by human beings and peoples.”88 And yet, Goldmann stressed, Jews and Germans remained a uniquely attached, historical creation bound with hideous tragedy. The dictates of life, he believed, were “to try to come to terms with the German-Jewish relationship; to find a basis for the co-existence of both peoples, and forms in which it can be activated to overcome the many problems common to both.”89 In the summer of 1951 Goldmann began to monitor (at that point, behind the scenes) cautious meetings between Jewish representatives and high German officials close to Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The main contacts were between Noah Barou, of the European section of the WJC, and Herbert Blankenhorn, director of the Political Department of the German Foreign Ministry and a close advisor of Chancellor Adenauer. Suggestions were exchanged about the framework that would create the basis for open contact and negotiation between the Jewish/Israeli and German sides. Goldmann’s formal stature as president of the WJC and as American co-chairman of the Jewish Agency empowered him to speak both for diaspora Jewry and for Israel. In turn, Goldmann consulted regularly with Moshe Sharett, Ben-Gurion, and probably other members of the Israeli cabinet. By October 1951, the diverse contacts and deliberations had reached the point where the Jewish side had to consider its formal representation for the impending negotiations with the Germans. The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference) was founded in New York in October 1951. Goldmann played a major role in its formation and was chosen as chairman.90 As for the sensitive question regarding the synchronization between Jewish and Israeli positions and interests, it was agreed that the demands of Israel should be presented separately from those of the Jewish communities and organizations in the diaspora, but at the same time coordinated to avoid contradictions or misunderstandings. It was a typical case where the diverse presidencies of Goldmann (“Goldmann negotiating with Goldmann”) proved very helpful.91 Chancellor Adenauer took the first step toward the negotiations in a declaration before the Bundestag on September 27, 1951. The draft of his address, a careful balance between the desirable and the acceptable to all sides, was painstakingly prepared and shown in advance to Goldmann and his Jewish/Israeli associates. Adenauer stated that the German government and “the majority of the German people” were aware of the “immeasurable suffering that had been inflicted upon the Jews of Germany and the occupied territories during National-Socialism. The vast [überwiegende] majority of the German people abhorred the crimes perpetuated against the Jewish people and did not

24


take part in them. . . . However, in the name of the German people unspeakable crimes had been committed, that obligate moral and material reparations. . . .” And further on, “The German government is prepared, together with representatives of Jewry [des Judentums] and the State of Israel, who absorbed so many of the homeless Jewish refugees, to bring about a solution to the problem of material reparations. . . .”92 The text contained then a (limited) element of repentance, and distinguishing between the Jewish people and Israel, expressed a readiness to compensate both for the material harm the Nazi regime caused. The Bundestag approved Adenauer’s statement unanimously. The ground was now prepared for a personal meeting between Goldmann and Adenauer in London on December 6, 1951. “Of all the important conversations I have had in the course of my work, this was the most difficult emotionally and perhaps the most momentous politically,” wrote Goldmann in his memoirs.93 Urbane, cultivated, speaking a faultless German, and very familiar with German culture, Goldmann made a deep impression on the Chancellor and his advisors. The fact that he represented both “the great Jewish organizations” (as formulated by one of Adenauer’s advisors) and the state of Israel added effectiveness to his presentation of the Jewish case. Extremely important was the fact that Adenauer accepted the Israeli note of March 12, 1951, as a basis for the detailed negotiations that should be opened soon. The same day Adenauer confirmed the understanding reached at the meeting in a letter sent to Goldmann as chairman of the Claims Conference.94 Typically, Goldmann met the German Chancellor without informing his partners in the Claims Conference in advance, which caused some resentment.95 Equally significant, Adenauer’s letter was written without consulting either his cabinet or his economic advisors.96 At the end of January 1952, Goldmann’s associates at the Claim Conference approved with a large majority the agreement with Adenauer. Goldmann’s situation was easier than BenGurion: Early in January 1952, when the Israeli government presented the reparations issue to the Knesset, Jerusalem was rocked by tumultuous demonstrations against the government, Germany, and the negotiations. Apart from the political angle involved (the demonstrations were organized by the opposition), the massive protests were a vivid indication of the sensitivity concerning contact with Germany, regardless of the context. The situation was not made easier by the fact that Jewish observers of the German scene noted with dismay the painfully slow nature of the de-Nazification process in Germany. Indeed, at the very time of the negotiations in 1951, laws and regulations were being approved in Germany that allowed the return of former officials with a Nazi past to German public service.97 In the end, the outcome in Israel reflected a blend of practical and moral considerations. “Thou murdered and also inherited?” thundered Ben-Gurion in the Knesset and carried the day.98 There was still an arduous road to travel. The negotiations over the finer points of the agreement almost derailed the entire process. The delegations (the Israeli one, the representatives of the Claims Conference, and the


25

Germans) met in Wassenaar, near The Hague, toward the end of March 1952. Goldmann chose not to participate in the detailed negotiations but was kept informed. Because the terms of reference were different, the Germans sat separately with the delegation from the Claims Conference and with the Israelis. The Israelis sent a high-powered group, headed by Giora Josephtal, the treasurer of the Jewish Agency and an expert in immigration questions, and Eliezer Shinar, head of a special department of the Foreign Ministry, set up to deal with the reparations issue. Both were born in Germany. The delegation of the Claims Conference was headed by Moses Leavitt, the very experienced American vice president of the Joint Distribution Committee. In the last phase of the negotiations Jacob Robinson also took part. Franz Boehm and Otto Küster, jurists whom the Nazis had persecuted, represented the Geman side. The two men were sincerely interested in reaching an agreement with the Jewish side, but they came with a limited mandate. The German government was at the time engaged in financial negotiations in London with the countries Germany had fought against during World War II, which now also demanded compensation. The German Finance Ministry and especially the head of the German delegation to the London Debt Conference, the banker Herman Joseph Abs, a skillful and hard-headed negotiator (later to become Goldmann’s close friend), sought to coordinate the German financial commitments to the different sides, in London as well as in Wassenaar. The Jewish and Israeli representatives at Wassenaar opposed such an approach, stressing the unique character of the German obligation toward the Jews. The fact that Adenauer had been less than explicit in his report to the German cabinet about the exact financial significance of the promises he had given in his conversation and subsequent letter to Goldmann of December 1951 did not make matters easier.99 Early in April the negotiations between the Germans and the Jewish and Israeli delegations reached an impasse when the German offer to both Jewish sides clearly fell short of expectations. The Israelis decided to suspend the talks, and so did the delegates from the Claims Conference.100 The Jewish side tried now to exert diplomatic pressure on the Germans through the U.S. and the British governments, but as in the past, the results were disappointing. Goldmann now intervened. On April 20, 1952 he met Adenauer at the latter’s home. Goldmann expressed his and the Israelis’ disappointment with the German Finance Ministry position: I am afraid that in the recent weeks the so-called financial experts have dragged the negotiations down from the high moral level established by the chancellor during early meetings to the level of financial horsetrading. Nothing more injurious could have happened. Agreement is possible only if the German payments to Israel and the Jewish people are regarded as a debt of honor, and this cannot be settled by methods applicable to commercial debts, [he said to the Chancellor].

26


Adenauer assured him that the Germans were acting in good faith and that the obligations to the Jews were a debt of honor that would be fulfilled.101 Nevertheless, in the coming weeks little changed. The Knesset debated the negotiations impasse early in May, with the opponents to the negotiations demanding their suspension. A full crisis erupted on May 19, when the Israeli representatives met Hermann Abs. Well informed about the difficult financial situation of Israel, Abs estimated that the Jewish side could be forced to accept a proposal far below what had been asked for. He apparently overplayed his hand and his position precipitated a breakdown in the negotiations. The Israelis rejected his offer. The two German representatives at the Wassenaar deliberations, Küster and Boehm, finding themselves in what they considered an untenable position, threatened to resign. Goldmann sent an indignant letter to Adenauer, stressing that Abs’s proposal went against the letter and the spirit of their understandings. Forced to act, Adenauer called a special meeting of the German cabinet to consider the question of the Jewish/Israeli reparations. The cabinet approved better terms and Böhm was sent to meet Goldmann in Paris with the new offer. Goldmann considered the new German proposals acceptable as a basis for new negotiations, and consequently Böhm met also with the Israeli delegates. A compromise had been found that already contained the main elements of the final settlement. Germany would pay DM 3 billion Deutschmark reparations to Israel and DM 450 million to the Claims Conference, over twelve years. The larger part of the payments would be in commodities, the rest in currency.102 In a meeting in Bonn on June 10, 1952, with Goldmann and the main Israeli and German negotiators, the general lines of the agreement were settled and Adenauer subsequently approved them. The enlarged delegations now met again in Wassenaar, and working out all details and preparing the documents for signature would take two more months, from June to August. Again, Goldmann did not participate directly in those talks, but he met Adenauer in mid-August, and the details of the signing ceremony were discussed. The ceremony itself, on September 10, 1952, in Luxembourg, was short, stiff, and formal, and the leaders decided to forego speeches. Foreign Minister Sharett signed for Israel, Adenauer for Germany. Goldmann and Adenauer signed the two protocols appended to the main treaty, stipulating the German payments to the Claims Conference. A new period in the relations between Germany and the Jewish people was thus opened.

( Goldmann’s accomplishment in the reparations negotiations established his privileged status among Jews and non-Jews for the next thirty years of his life. He had fulfilled a decisive role not only in putting together the details of the accord, but also in fostering it later on, in the years the treaty was being carried out. In the later 1950s there were voices on the German side, some of them politically powerful, who questioned the Luxembourg Agreement and demanded


27

its revision. Nevertheless, the German government held fast to the accord, and the close relations between Goldmann and leading figures in Germany, which continued for the next thirty years, certainly contributed to the state of affairs.103 No less important was Goldmann’s influence on the working relations among the Jewish participants—the Israeli and the diverse Jewish organizations associated with the Claims Conference. The fact that all along Goldmann held leading positions both on the Zionist side and in the diaspora certainly helped to avoid embarrassing internal Jewish controversies about the allocation of the German money and no doubt defused many a thorny debate. Remaining aloof from the daily details, Goldmann played an important role in the harmonious interaction between the diverse Jewish offices.104 Nevertheless, Goldmann’s achievement should be seen in its correct proportion. He was indispensable, but in the end the accord reached was between two states, West Germany and Israel—although at times the agreement had to be literally forced on the political establishments of both. The reparations treaty only came about because two powerful and decisive political leaders, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion and Chancellor Adenauer (who never communicated directly during the negotiations), supported the agreement. With all the drama involved in the Israeli decision, Adenauer’s situation may have been more difficult than Ben-Gurion’s. Adenauer had to face stubborn opposition in his own cabinet.105 Finance Minister Schäffer and many of the Chancellor’s senior financial advisors were (and some of them remained) opposed to the large sums granted, whereas senior officials in the Foreign Ministry fretted over the negative impact of the agreement on the relations between West Germany and the Arab countries. In his later years, Goldmann remained well aware of a factor that most Jews and Israelis apparently preferred to forget: that the German side had taken steps to repair the shattered German-Jewish relationship on its own, that it was an act of will within the German public establishment, and that no one could have forced the Germans to do so.

VII. Personal Relationships A gregarious man who enjoyed company and excelled in personal contacts, Goldmann prided himself on his many friends. In his later years, his network of acquaintances was indeed worldwide. However, the men who had a major impact on Goldmann’s life were, perhaps not surprisingly, a rather small group, which included Jacob Klatzkin, Stephen S. Wise, Chaim Weizmann, and, especially David Ben-Gurion, with whom he had a relationship that was as significant as it was complex. Regarding Klatzkin, Goldmann’s relations had, in addition to the personal side, also an important ideological facet; with the other men Goldmann’s ties combined personal and political elements. In the case of Wise, the personal aspect was quite evident; regarding Weizmann,

28


less so. And in the case of Ben-Gurion, the personal factor was certainly there, but always subordinated to the political dimension. Furthermore, another figure deserves mention because of the confrontational background in their relations, and who for a time had an undeniable impact on Goldmann’s public activities: Abba Hillel Silver, certainly the outstanding personality in American Zionism in the 1940s. Last, the relationship between Goldmann and Konrad Adenauer, the German Chancellor, deserves attention. Many indications suggest that in addition to their political contacts the two men also developed significant personal ties—all the more surprising, considering that it is difficult to imagine two more different, indeed, diametrically opposed personalities than Goldmann and Adenauer.106 “Of all the friends I have had in my life, Klatzkin probably influenced me most profoundly.”107 Goldmann’s statement deserves careful scrutiny. Jacob Klatzkin, a family friend several years his senior, helped in the early 1920s to launch Goldmann’s career as journalist and publisher. As described earlier, until the Nazi takeover in Germany they worked together on the preparation of the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Klatzkin was foremost an intellectual, possessing a rich Jewish culture, and was one of the most original Zionist thinkers of his time. Goldmann tells in his memoirs of the long discussions he had with Klatzkin on Zionist themes. Like Goldmann, Klatzkin’s Zionism had also a cultural orientation, although of a different kind than the cultural Zionism of Ahad Haam. A central motif in Klatzkin’s position was the categorical negation of Jewish life in galut [exile]. His opposition was due not only because of what he saw as the negative significance of the galut on Jewish life, but also equally (and perhaps even more so) due to its destructive influence on the spiritual life of the other, the non-Jews in whose midst the Jews dwelled— a stance that sometimes brought Klatzkin close to anti-Semitic views.108 Significantly, not only do we find no trace of Klatzkin’s ideas in Goldmann’s ideological position, but on the contrary, the long drawn-out conversations between the two men seem to have strengthened in Goldmann the opposite view. As we have seen, the Erez Israel–diaspora equation, as organically bound and interacting entities in Jewish life, was and remained a central principle in Goldmann’s ideological conception and nourished his public activities on the Jewish and on the Zionist scene. Everything indicates that his ideas were formed during the same years when he was in almost daily contact with Klatzkin—but apparently not under the influence of the older and far better known man, but formulating his own independent views. Goldmann and Wise worked closely together in the 1930s and 1940s, first in the founding of the WJC and later on the difficult and frequently tumultuous Zionist scene in the United States.109 Both men developed a mutual liking and a personal collaboration that went far beyond the relations between Goldmann and Weizmann or Ben-Gurion. When Goldmann managed to escape from Europe in 1940 and immigrated in the United States, Wise helped him establish himself on the American Jewish scene. Wise, wrote Goldmann,


29

“was to be an important force in my life, personally as well as politically. I was his pupil and friend until his last hour and felt closer to him than to any other great personality of my generation.”110 Usually they were of one mind; the only occasion that found them on opposite sides was the nerve-racking debate at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in 1937: Goldmann supported partition; Wise was strongly against. Later Wise recognized that Goldmann’s position had been the right one. In the 1940s, they stuck together during the upsetting confrontations that racked the American movement, where public issues mixed with personal ones. Goldmann and Wise quarreled with Abba Hillel Silver, and both men worried together about the struggle between BenGurion and Weizmann that unfolded in the United States in 1942–1943.111 In the early 1940s, Wise was undoubtedly much better known than Goldmann, and not only in the United States. But Wise was no longer in his prime, and in many of the steps that both men took together on the American Zionist scene Goldmann seemed to suggest the direction. When Wise passed away in 1949, Goldmann almost naturally stepped into the WJC presidency. The relations between Goldmann and Chaim Weizmann pose challenging questions.112 Although the two men were startlingly similar in their origins, personal profiles, and Zionist views, they hardly ever collaborated. Both were born in Eastern Europe and educated in Western European universities, men of great charm whose public influence was very much built on their personal impact, both affluent and men of the world. Their Zionist positions were almost identical: moderately center-left, with a strong humanistic streak, politically realistic. Both were impatient with the extremist or fanatical postures common in Zionist circles. Neither Weizmann nor Goldmann ever forged strong ties with one of the parties that came to dominate the political life of the Zionist movement. In his memoirs, Goldmann told of a close relationship with Weizmann and a high level of political cooperation.113 The description, however, is not corroborated in Weizmann’s memoirs or letters. They parted ways in the 1920s on the matter of the enlargement of the Jewish Agency. Later, in 1931, at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress, Goldmann played some part in Weizmann’s spectacular fall from the WZO presidency, but contrary to his description, Goldmann’s role was apparently only formal and not essential.114 Both men were of one mind about the partition proposal of Palestine when the Twentieth Zionist Congress debated the issue in 1937. But when Goldmann brought up his partition proposal in August 1946, and ensured the support of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for the mission in Washington, he did so without consulting Weizmann, the then-president of the Zionist movement. Nor did they really work together in the tense period before and after the establishment of the Jewish state, although at that point both men had lost influence, each for different reasons, over the policies of the Jewish Agency. The question then is, why did they not collaborate? One possible cause was personal, “Weizmann, who was basically a cautious man, distrusted the

30


flamboyant side of Goldmann, who with all his brilliance had in him a streak of recklessness, of the gambler.”115 An equally plausible explanation had to do with their lack of ties to one of the political parties active in the Zionist movement. To quote Goldmann, in a 1962 lecture on Weizmann, “He hated organically the main curse of Jewish internal politics, our party fanaticism. He never really agreed to be tied up with one or the other party, and very often his position above parties was the source of great difficulties for him at Congresses and otherwise . . . he could not bring himself to accept party programs as the full and only truth.”116 These views fit perfectly with Goldmann’s own position: . . . it was exactly the way he acted all through his political career. Nevertheless, behind the righteousness of those words looms a reality that is markedly different: the contingencies of life in the framework of a party, force political figures to overcome personal idiosyncrasies and prejudices, to put aside personal antipathies (and sometimes also sympathies), to concentrate on the political goals and to surmount the inescapable personal frictions that are one of the unavoidable realities of public life, indeed, of life in general. Considering these facts, the kind of political independence both Goldmann and Weizmann chose as their personal patterns of public behavior made them weaker, not stronger. Both men remained political individualists, who preferred to forge their own personal paths unattached to a firm political system. One is left wondering what they may have attained, in their Zionist activity and in their mutual relationship, had the positive constrains of political party life forced them to behave differently.117 At some point in the 1930s, Goldmann must have developed his first contacts with the man who in the 1940s and 1950s would become his most important correspondent in matters political, David Ben-Gurion.118 Goldmann dedicated much attention to him in his diverse autobiographical writings.119 Considering that he was usually generous in his sketches of people he had contact with, including his adversaries, the way Goldmann wrote about BenGurion is all the more noteworthy: underlying most of his descriptions there is a mildly antagonistic tone. Two reasons may explain it. One was personal: the two men were strikingly different. The worldwise and broad-minded Goldmann, connoisseur of the good life, a believer in compromises, disdainful of the political process, as against the ascetic and introverted Ben-Gurion, humorless, ferociously concentrated on the political aim at hand, a skilled manipulator of parties and party politics. The other reason was apparently the more important one: in a sense Ben-Gurion was Goldmann’s political nemesis—and Goldmann was not unaware of it. Whatever Goldmann tried with Ben-Gurion’s support, succeeded—up to the point where Ben-Gurion drew the line. Without him, Goldmann failed.


31

Goldmann’s descriptions of Ben-Gurion are a fascinating mix of deference and deprecation. On one hand, he very much admired his qualities, “His salient characteristic is his high specific gravity. Everything about him has substance and significance. . . . Strength is his outstanding trait.” And later on, “The dominant force in Ben-Gurion is his will of power, but not in the banal sense, that is, not power for personal advantage. . . . I mean power in the sense of wanting to enforce what he believes to be right, of ruthlessness in pursuing his goals.” But on the other hand: In all normal situations he is a troublemaker, because he has no balance, no sense of proportion. . . . As a result of his fanaticism he can lead and give orders, but he cannot cooperate . . . he is actually the very opposite of a democratic leader. He is organically incapable of compromise. . . . A promise from him was quite worthless. . . . He was absolutely unscrupulous. He never pursued any objective other than realizing the Zionist ideal and satiating his immense ambition.120 Ben-Gurion, who considered people in functional terms and neither understood nor cared about their psychological traits (Goldmann: “Yet I do not believe he dislikes his adversaries personally. His relationship to people is, with few exceptions, purely objective.”), was apparently intrigued by Goldmann. He must have recognized what an important, sometimes irreplaceable political tool Goldmann was. Probably he had not forgotten that occasion, early in August 1946, when he had been at a loss, his policy in tatters, and it had been Goldmann who had suggested a way out of the conundrum. In the years after the establishment of the state of Israel the two men met frequently and talked late into the night about the future of Israel, the Arab problem, other topics. Not every encounter had such a pleasant character. As we have seen, in 1957 they clashed fiercely in the debate over the Israel-diaspora relationship. Ben-Gurion urged Goldmann to settle in Israel and organize the opposition against him; typical of Ben-Gurion, thought Goldmann, to consider the opposition as a necessary component of the political process, which had to be done well.121 Was Goldmann aware of how much Ben-Gurion had used him? How much Goldmann had been the instrument of policies that Ben-Gurion knew as right and necessary but was unable, due to the contingencies of a given political situation, to present by himself? In 1946, at the crucial meeting of the Executive of the Jewish Agency chaired by Ben-Gurion, Goldmann was left to fight on his own for the partition proposal—not that Goldmann did not enjoy it that way. When in reaction to his mission in Washington Abba Hillel Silver resigned from the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Ben-Gurion did nothing to defend Goldmann; to keep Silver and the American Zionist movement in line was at that moment more important in political terms. And at the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress in December 1946, Ben-Gurion did not move a finger to help

32


Goldmann—recognized as one of the most impressive figures at the Congress— against the onslaught of the opponents to the partition idea and his relegation to the backseat of Zionist activity. But soon the unique opportunity of the German reparations would dawn on the public horizon, and who, if not Goldmann, would be sent—indeed, would literally be pushed—to deal with a matter that for an Israeli political figure was too hot to handle? Goldmann went out on a limb and again he enjoyed it. It meant to tackle an issue that many saw as hopeless, that combined political importance with historical magnitude, and that challenged his wits and his experience. For Goldmann, this was what mattered and what kept him going, regardless of who was using whom. Last, Abba Hillel Silver. “There was something of the terrorist in his manner and bearing,” Goldmann wrote in his memoirs.122 No other person, especially not a leading figure in the Zionist movement, was described in such sharp terms. Silver apparently was the exception to Goldmann’s principle that he always kept matters personal separate from matters political. Although his style was different, Silver was no less brilliant than Goldmann. His presentation of the Zionist case in May 1947 before the Political Committee of the U.N. General Assembly (Goldmann sitting quietly behind him) remains a magnificent high-point in Zionist history. His organizational skills (combined, many would say, with his ruthlessness) transformed AZEC during the critical years before the creation of the Jewish state into a welloiled and highly effective political machine.123 After a long period of lowkeyed confrontations between Goldmann and Silver on the American Zionist scene (where the imperious chairman of the AZEC held the stronger cards), it was in fact Silver who neutralized Goldmann’s August 1946 initiative, calling for the acceptance of partition as the political line of the Zionist movement. Silver was a leading participant in a broad coalition that at the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress in December 1946 reaffirmed the demand for the whole of Palestine as a Jewish commonwealth—although he reversed his position less than half a year later and pressed energetically at the U.N. General Assembly for the partition of Palestine. The conflict between the two men would continue for three more years. Goldmann’s turn came in 1949, when he engineered the conditions for Silver’s resignation as chairman of the American Section of the Jewish Agency—and took over he himself the position. In 1951, at the Twenty-Third Zionist Congress, Goldmann managed to prevent Silver’s comeback. On both occasions Goldmann acted in coordination with Ben-Gurion, who had his own reasons to push Silver aside. Proud and hurt, Silver refused afterward to consider any position in the Zionist movement or in Israel. In the end, then, was this a personal victory for Goldmann? If so, one with clear Pyrrhic dimensions that apparently escaped him. In the debate at the Zionist Congress in 1951 about the division of tasks between the state and the WZO, Goldmann and Silver basically agreed that factual, not only symbolic,


33

forms of collaboration should be created between the Jewish state and the Zionist movement. Although Silver was ousted, the Zionist goals he defended remained significant and would soon be presented, in almost the same form, by Goldmann—against the position of Ben-Gurion and many other Israelis. A not dissimilar logic can be discerned also behind the partition plan confrontation in 1946: Goldmann’s mission in Washington might have gotten better results had he and Silver managed to act together vis-à-vis the Administration, and Goldmann was told so at the very time.124 This proved impossible, due to the many differences between the two men, not least because of Goldmann’s style of acting alone. His undertaking in Washington was an outstanding example of Goldmann’s style of action, with all its strengths and weaknesses: a very persuasive political operator, indeed, a virtuoso when it came to convincingly explain a point; at the same time essentially a solo player.

VIII. Goldmann and Israel: Prestige without Power For Goldmann, 1951 was quite a challenging year. Besides the activities connected with the reparations agreement with Germany, he worked on several internal Jewish/Zionist initiatives that came before the Twenty-Third Zionist Congress (Jerusalem, August 1951). With the establishment of the Jewish state, a major issue was the redefinition of the Israel-diaspora relationship, a theme laden with ideological implications and political consequences. Goldmann was attuned to this significant issue in the Zionist movement and sought to establish an equation in which the Jewish state and the Jewish diaspora would collaborate in ways that guaranteed the WZO a privileged position in Israel. Ben-Gurion, whose views were also supported by a large camp in the Zionist movement and in Israel, opposed him. At the first meeting of the Zionist Executive after the creation of the state (in Jerusalem, August 1948), where he had agreed to relinquish his position as chairman of the Jewish Agency, BenGurion demanded a complete separation of functions. The Zionist Executive endorsed his position, “the Israelis, out of enthusiasm for statehood, and the non-Israelis out of fear of dual loyalty. . . . Soon afterwards he [BenGurion] adopted the ideological position that now that the homeland existed, Zionism no longer stood for anything but individual immigration to Israel.”125 Typically, Ben-Gurion’s thinking was a skillful combination of ideological and practical elements, together serving his political aims. Mamlakhtiut [state sovereignty], as he named his new concept, meant that Israel was a normal state, and organizations where the majority of the members were citizens of other countries could not possess rights that might infringe on the competence of the diverse branches of the Israeli government—even not a body so intrinsically bound to the state as the WZO. The WZO could and should cooperate with its offspring, the Jewish state, but not exert political

34


power there. And if it were a matter of cooperation, why, in fact, only the WZO, and not organized world Jewry in general? Ben-Gurion soon acted on these principles. He received in August 1950 in Jerusalem the president of the nonZionist American Jewish Committee, Jacob Blaustein, in a symbolic gesture aimed to establish close ties between the state of Israel and diaspora Jewry.126 Goldmann, consistent with the ideological position he had held since his youth, challenged Ben-Gurion’s position. As co-chairman of the Zionist Executive (and, after 1956, president of the WZO), president of the WJC, chairman of the Claims Conference, the successful strategist of the reparations agreements—Goldmann was by now the most influential non-Israeli Jew. At his insistence, new definitions for the aims of the Zionist movement and the relationship between the movement and the state were adopted from the 1951 Zionist Congress onward. With Goldmann’s active participation, the Congress approved a new Zionist platform (to replace the Basel Platform, approved by the First Zionist Congress in 1897), the Jerusalem Program, whose central article read: “The task of Zionism is the consolidation of the State of Israel, the ingathering of the exiles in Erez Israel, and the fostering of the unity of the Jewish people.”127 The Israeli government and the Knesset approved in November 1952 and again in July 1954 agreements with the WZO that placed the collaboration between the two bodies on a legal basis. The 1954 law, known as the amanah, was very much a product of Goldmann’s efforts. At the Twenty-Fifth Zionist Congress (1960) a new constitution for the Zionist movement was adopted that embodied principles important to Goldmann: the participation at the Zionist Congress was opened to non-Zionist Jewish organizations who subscribed to the Jerusalem Program. And the Twenty-Seventh Zionist Congress ( Jerusalem, 1968), the last with Goldmann as president of the WZO, approved the Revised Jerusalem Program, whose opening sentence summed-up Goldmann’s Zionist views: “The aims of Zionism are: the unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life.”128 The ideological dimension behind those initiatives was sharply emphasized at a famous debate in Jerusalem in 1957, where Goldmann and Ben-Gurion clashed over the question of the Israel-diaspora relationship.129 It was an extraordinary occasion: a weeklong symposium at the Hebrew University, organized by the WZO (of which Goldmann was now the president), drawing as participants, besides members of the Israeli Cabinet, many of the most distinguished Jewish intellectuals of the time, from Israel and from the diaspora.130 BenGurion’s presentation had a broad historical-spiritual character. He asserted that the future of the Jewish people should be based on a triple foundation: the Hebrew culture, the Jewish state, and the idea of messianic salvation [geulah meshihit]. Returning to ideas he had expressed in recent years, Ben-Gurion emphasized that with the establishment of Israel the task that remained for the Zionist movement was to promote aliyah, the migration of all Jews to Israel, and that Jewish life, in the physical as in the spiritual sense, should be concentrated in the Jewish state. Most of the comments of the participants concentrated on that


35

part of his views, which moved Goldmann to an articulate plea for a balanced relationship between the diaspora and Israel. Apparently stung, Ben-Gurion retorted with a spirited critique against what he called Goldmann’s “glorification” of the diaspora.131 The debate was the central part of the symposium, and the positions expressed there served as points of reference in the discussions about the Israel-diaspora relationship for years to come. In strict ideological terms Goldmann’s views, to which he had held for decades, were as firmly based as those of Ben-Gurion, and perhaps even more so. For all his extreme rhetoric Ben-Gurion had no qualms to state publicly—as he had done in August 1950, in his official meeting in Jerusalem with the president of the American Jewish Committee— that Israel recognized American (implicitly, diaspora) Jewry and its institutions, and that the Jewish state was ready to collaborate with them.132 Ben-Gurion must have known that he was not only acknowledging the legitimacy of the diaspora but also contributing to its strength. Goldmann’s comments fitted neatly with his evolving approach toward the Israel-diaspora relationship. He went now beyond the resigned (the “objective”) acceptance of the Jewish diaspora of Ahad Haam, and came close to the positive historical attitude toward Jewish life in dispersion found in the ideas of the great Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, although he did not mention him.133 Like Dubnow, Goldmann meant Jewish life in golah [diaspora] rather than galut [exile]. Interestingly, Goldmann’s concept of diaspora remained Eurocentric, although the largest and most vital centers of European Jewry had disappeared. Although he lived in the United States (until 1964), Goldmann viewed the largest Jewish diaspora community with skepticism.134 “My own view is that it is an illusion to believe that American Jewry of today, with all its financial and intellectual resources could eventually replace European Jewry,” he wrote.135 He did not accept the opinion that there was a symmetry between Israel and the American diaspora, a relationship that frequently has been compared by American Jewish thinkers to the Erez Israel–Bavel equation in the post–Second Temple period.136 In fact, Goldmann was less than enthusiastic about many facets of American Jewish life. He was convinced that American Jewry had not yet reached the maturity for the leadership tasks in Jewish life that had fallen on it in the wake of the destruction of the great European Jewish centers, an opinion he apparently held to also in later years.137 What were the results of Goldmann’s efforts to redefine the terms of reference of the Zionist movement, to establish new links between the movement and the Jewish diaspora on one hand, and, to create a balanced relationship between the Zionist movement and the Jewish state on the other? In retrospect, Goldmann drew pessimistic conclusions. The resolutions of 1960 about the participation of non-Zionists in the institutions of the Zionist movement never had the impact he had hoped for. As Goldmann saw it, the party system that dominated the movement, shaped (absurdly so, in his view) after the political system in Israel, blocked the way for a real integration of the

36


non-Zionists.138 Goldmann tried to increase the public strength of diaspora Jewry (and in doing so, his own influence) through other means. In the 1950s and 1960s he concentrated in his hands the presidencies of a long string of major diaspora-based Jewish associations: the WZO, WJC, and the Claims Conference. In 1955 he participated in the creation of a new body, the Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, and served as its first chairman. In 1958 he formed yet another organizational framework, the World Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO), which was to serve as an international umbrella for all Jewish associations. Goldmann tried to work out patterns of collaboration among all these bodies, but he was forced to recognize that there too the results fell short of expectations—which should not have surprised him.139 All these oligarchic structures with fancy titles, where the same group of Jewish notables fulfilled similar functions under diverse headings, had neither broad backing nor real influence. All too frequently collaboration was reduced to, in his words, “Goldmann negotiating with Goldmann.”140 Among the organizations, the WJC was perhaps the one best known in international political circles because it was relatively long-standing or perhaps because it conjured fantasies about Jewish world power among public figures inclined to such views.141 The alternative, as both Goldmann’s friends and opponents were wont to stress, would have been for him to settle in Israel and to integrate fully in the Israeli political system. In the realities of Jewish public life in the second half of the twentieth century, real power was vested in the hands of the Jewish state, this in spite of all the problems Israel faced. As mentioned earlier, Goldmann was repeatedly approached and asked to participate fully in the political life of the young state, but in the end decided against it.142 Goldmann’s lack of commitment (or perhaps it was his inability) to integrate in the normal partybound political system of Israel, while at the same time working and agitating for this or that aspect of the policies of the country, would soon become the source of many troubles and much mutual dissatisfaction. Goldmann’s decision not only limited his influence, but also his awareness to what was happening in the Jewish state. Goldmann cultivated little contact with the new society developing in Israel. As important as the problems were that occupied Goldmann from the 1950s onward (especially Israel-diaspora relations, Soviet Jewry, and Israel and the Arabs), they were only one aspect of the many issues occupying the new Jewish society emerging in the state. Questions such as the integration of seventy Jewish diasporas in Israel—an experience without parallel in modern social and political life—the creation of new cultural profiles, the thorny issue of religion in a democratic state whose political foundations were basically secular, the issue of state-directed versus laissez-faire economy, all those themes that would have forced themselves on Goldmann had he participated in the normal political life of the state, he more or less ignored. Goldmann thought that Orthodox Judaism was caught in a situation of spiritual stagnation, unable or unwilling to adapt itself to


37

the enormous public changes following the creation of a Jewish state, but apparently it was not a major issue for him.143 He said little about the extreme, messianic-tinged trends evolving in the religious-national sector, directed toward an aggressive expansionist policy in the western part of Palestine conquered in 1967. This in spite of the fact that such views and tendencies ran against every principle Goldmann held dear. His attention continued to be focused mainly on themes that evolved outside of Israel.

( The contact with the Jews living in the Soviet Union was a major theme in Goldmann’s public activities from the 1950s onward. He assumed that they numbered well in excess of 2 million (later research indicated about 1.5 million), in any case the largest Jewish concentration in Europe. Goldmann sought to create ties between those Jews and the Jewries in the Western world and in Israel and to help them uphold and develop their religious and ethnic identity.144 The consent of the Soviet authorities was an obvious condition for any dealings with the Russian Jews, and Goldmann had sought to establish contact with the Soviet government since the early 1950s, trying to capitalize on the measure of good will that the Soviet Union had demonstrated in the establishment of Israel. His platform for action was the WJC. Also in the 1950s, diverse American Jewish organizations started activities on behalf of the Jews in the Soviet Union, and in the 1960s they formed the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ). Last, in Israel official and public bodies were formed to deal with the same question. One was Lishkat Hakesher (Liaison Office), created in the 1950s and formally a branch of the Foreign Ministry, which kept discreet international contacts and developed background activities; the other was Maoz, established in the early 1960s, which concentrated on public activities. It was Maoz that coined what became the leading slogan of the pro-Soviet Jewry movement, “Let my people go.”145 Amongst the three entities—Goldmann’s WJC, the Americans, and the Israelis—differences emerged both regarding aims and tactics. The Israelis were aliyah-oriented, while Goldmann, although not rejecting aliyah, thought that the main goal should be to foster Jewish culture, religion and identity in the Soviet Union. “It is absurd to believe that the problem of the Jews in Russia can be settled only through emigration to Israel,” he wrote, on the supposition that the majority of the Russian Jews would remain in the Soviet Union.146 Regarding tactics, Goldmann was for quiet diplomacy, an approach supported in the early 1950s also by the Israelis, but gradually abandoned for a more active policy.147 Soon the American Jewish organizations adopted a more confrontational stance toward the Soviet government. The 1960s saw massive and increasingly strident Jewish demonstrations in major American cities demanding cultural and civil rights for the Russian Jewry, including the right to emigrate. The changing atmosphere of the Jewish efforts aiming to convince the Soviet Union to adopt a more tolerant attitude toward its Jewish population also influenced

38


Goldmann. He came to advocate “two methods at once: public political pressure on the one hand, diplomatic contacts on the other.”148 Goldmann took a leading part in an international conference on Soviet Jewry in Paris in September 1960. Most of the participants were well-known left-wing intellectuals and politicians, mostly neutral in the ideological and political conflict between West and East, and the tenor of the debates was carefully restrained to not give offense to the Soviet authorities.149 For Goldmann, this represented the right style and the limits of “public political pressure.” He opposed the extremist tone of the AJCSJ rallies organized in the United States in the mid-1960s during which the Soviet authorities were accused of anti-Semitism and oppression of the Jewish population. Goldmann caused an uproar when he expressed in the leading American press his public disagreement with those attacks against the Soviet Union.150 He was convinced that such a style of agitation was counterproductive and might even do harm to Russian Jewry. “It is time to acquire a sense of responsibility and to put a stop to the hysterical agitation practiced by Israel and still more by American Jewry,” he wrote later.151 Since the protests organized in the United States were supported by Israeli public opinion, Goldmann’s approach created one more point of friction between him, part of the American Jewish leadership, and the Israeli establishment. Nevertheless, he continued to believe that only direct negotiations with the Soviet authorities might influence Soviet policy regarding Russian Jewry, and that the avenues for such contacts should be kept open. He held to that approach, in spite of the fact that such a dialogue never took place.152 Oddly enough, Goldmann seemed unaware of the weakness of his public standing in his efforts for Russian Jewry. Even his main base of support, the WJC, proved of doubtful reliability. The Israeli section, headed by Aryeh Tartakover, was much attuned to Israeli official and public opinion. Many of the American members of the WJC lent an ear to the confrontation-bent AJCSJ, which probably was influenced by the Cold War. All of which left Goldmann, the convinced neutralist also in West-East politics, quite alone. Nevertheless, Goldmann did not alter his views, even though the events after 1968 must have served as proof that the confrontational stance bore better results than quiet diplomacy. “I do not see the slightest chance of forcing a superpower like the Soviet Union to accept our demands,” he wrote in his memoirs, referring to the more extreme forms of protest and pressure that became the norm in the struggle for Russian Jewry from the 1970s onward.153 Even Goldmann could not know that the Soviet Union was much more vulnerable than was generally believed.

( More than any other theme, the Israeli-Arab relationship caused the sharpest misunderstandings between Goldmann and the Israelis, both in the political establishment as among the public in general. The Six-Day War in June 1967


39

marked a turn—as it happened, a turn for the worse—in those relations. In retrospect, he considered the Six-Day War as “perhaps the most important political event in the history of Israel”—most important, in the negative sense.154 Goldmann was generally critical of Israel’s wars: they were nothing but dangerous illusions, he stated, every victory bearing in it the seeds of the next war.155 He had thought that the Sinai Campaign of 1956 (about which he had not been informed in advance), was a serious political mistake.156 Regarding the Six-Day War, his opinion was not kinder. As he described it in his memoirs, Goldmann had spoken against the war long before it started. In spite of the quick and surprising victory of Israel, he considered the outcome a disaster that foreshadowed immense trouble because such a victory was apt to corrupt psychologically and create a false sense of reality unrelated to the broader political facts. The results, as he saw it later, had corroborated his worst predictions. Israel had become more isolated internationally, and the possibility of peace was more remote.157 “As long as Israel’s relations with the Arab world remain unsettled, its survival is precarious,” wrote Goldmann in his memoirs.158 This was not the insight of an aging man. Back in 1921, he had commented on the Zionist reaction to the riots in Jaffa, early in May: “It was as if, only now, the Yishuv had suddenly discovered that there was such a thing as an Arab problem. . . . We have overlooked the most obvious, the most important and the most elementary of all our political and social problems—the Arab question.”159 Now, more than fifty years later, he held the same ideas. In 1968 Goldmann was not reelected as WZO president, in part because the Israeli political establishment, led by Golda Meir, was opposed to him, in part because Goldmann himself had come to recognize that his usefulness had reached its end.160 Once freed of formal constraints, Goldmann became even more outspoken. His critique against the foreign policy of Israel, especially regarding the Arabs, touched a raw nerve among Israeli leaders, indeed, within the Israeli public in general. Goldmann found himself severely attacked from all sides, the more so because he rarely suggested that the continuing IsraeliArab stalemate might be the fault of both sides. Nor did he delve into the underlying reasons for the Arab opposition to a Jewish state. Under attack, he gave back as good as he got. His condemnation of Israeli attitudes and policies was sometimes pitiless. Goldmann stressed, among other arguments, the internal price Israel was paying for the no-peace situation with its Arab neighbors, “the fact that so much of Israel’s creative energy was diverted from making Israel what it should be—a unique center of Jewish life and a land of special significance to the world, implementing in its new reality the basic ideas of Jewish religion and philosophy—and that the Jewish state was forced to concentrate often the larger part of its resources, of its great moral and intellectual qualities, on strengthening its security, building up a powerful army, and winning wars.” Goldmann’s elaboration of the theme had interesting nuances:

40

Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel From a historical point of view, Israel started on the wrong foot. . . . In none of the ideologies and visions of a Jewish state by the spiritual and political founders of Zionism was war with the Arabs ever contemplated as a real possibility. It was one of the great distortions of Zionist history that the state started its career with a war against the Arabs, which was followed by several others.

Viewed from this perspective way, it mattered little that the Arabs might bear responsibility for such undesirable developments: “Even if one is convinced that the only responsibility for it lies with the Arab refusal to accept Israel and the Arab invasions of Israel after its proclamation, it was a tragic fact.”161 In an ongoing debate with Ben-Gurion, private as well as public, Goldmann contested the view that time was working to the advantage of the Israelis, and international developments in the 1970s, especially after the Yom Kippur War (October 1973), seemed to confirm, in his view, this analysis.162 In the spring of 1970, Goldmann attempted to reach, or even to force, a breakthrough in the Israeli-Arab impasse: he came up with the proposal to travel to Egypt for a meeting with President Nasser, which might prepare the ground for broader subsequent contacts between Egypt and Israel.163 Goldmann had tried to meet Nasser already in previous years but nothing came of it. The Egyptians had been evasive, and the Israelis were at best lukewarm.164 The current initiative was hatched in contacts between the representative of the WJC in Paris and high-level Yugoslavian and Egyptian officials. As the discreet contacts continued, the Egyptians demanded the visit be kept secret but that Goldmann should bring concrete proposals. Obviously, proposals involved the agreement of the Israeli government. Late in March 1970, Goldmann came to Israel to discuss his initiative with Prime Minister Golda Meir and other senior political figures. Meir, the ministers close to her, and her senior assistants thought Goldmann’s initiative was a nuisance, although there were, apparently, also some reflections about the unforeseeable possibilities of such a plan. In any case, considering Goldmann’s international standing, the matter had to be handled with care. The supposition was that the plan was a carefully kept secret, but Goldmann soon contacted additional ministers and senior government officials, perhaps because he sensed the negative attitude of the prime minister. The scheme was considered at a cabinet meeting at the end of March and rejected. Two days later, articles by Goldmann and others began to appear in the press and soon the initiative was widely known and debated. A widespread public discussion now developed about the plan’s advantages and disadvantages and, in general, about Israeli policy toward the Arabs. Soon the Egyptian government communicated officially that the rumors about an invitation to Goldmann were nothing but an Israeli fabrication. Goldmann managed to raise a ruckus in Israel. He spent the next weeks in a flurry of private conversations and public lectures, presenting and justifying


41

his initiative—perhaps the most intensive effort yet to bring one of his ideas before the Israeli public. The reception he got was far from encouraging. He was heckled, shouted down, and meetings were disrupted. Reactions in the Israeli press were mostly negative and sometimes outright hostile. Total rejection soon replaced the astonishment. The Israeli press gave wall-to-wall backing to the thwarting of Goldmann’s mission. Haim Gouri’s response was typical. Gouri, a well-known Israeli poet and publicist, described the “Goldmania,” as he termed the initiative as the entanglement of “an old, publicityhungry adventurer in an irresponsible delusion,” which was now revealed as “a deception of tremendous proportions, a grotesque fabrication.”165 True, an important international newspaper such as the New York Times took a different view: “Israeli officials have often said they are just ‘waiting for the phone to ring’ in order to regain negotiations. It is sad that, when Dr. Goldmann’s phone rang, the Israeli government declined to let him answer.”166 In Israel, however, he got little support. Some have sensibly argued that Goldmann never expected to go to Egypt, but he did think he would be able to achieve his main goal—to trigger a public debate over Israeli foreign policy—even without setting foot in Egypt.167 For a mission that was allegedly very secret, Goldmann spoke with too many people. Significant, too, was with whom Goldmann did not speak about his plan: Menahem Begin, the head of the center-right Likud Party, and then a member in the national unity coalition Golda Meir headed. And without Begin’s agreement, the government could not have supported Goldmann’s initiative.168 Last but not least, the moment Goldmann was informed that the Israeli government would not endorse his initiative, his next line of action was ready very quickly: articles in newspapers, interviews, and especially, a new plan, for which the national and international debate about the supposed meeting with Nasser had created a suitable background. Goldmann now presented a new proposal for a solution for the external problems of the Jewish state: the internationally recognized and guaranteed neutrality of the Jewish state. Goldmann had been talking about that idea since the mid-1960s. His intention was that Israel would adopt a strict neutrality in international politics and that the Four Powers should guarantee its security. Such a solution would also pave the way for a comprehensive agreement with the Arab neighbors of Israel. “We are, by definition, the neutral people par excellence. If there is one people in the world which has a moral right to be neutral, it is the Jews, for we live dispersed through the world; our history is full of encounters with all kinds of civilizations, in Asia and in Europe, in East and West.” This all at the end of 1965.169 In the spring of 1970, at the highpoint of the public debate about the Nasser mission, the prestigious and widely read U.S. monthly Foreign Affairs published an article by Goldmann, “The Future of Israel.”170 Goldmann wrote he “was beginning to have doubts as to whether the establishment of the State of Israel as it is today, a state like all other states in structure and form, was the fullest accomplishment of the Zionist idea. . . .” The twofold

42


aim of Zionism, Goldmann explained, was to save the Jewish people from persecutions, as well as from cultural disintegration in those lands where they enjoy full rights. Israel should be “a state of a specific character, more in conformity with the special nature of the Jewish people and Jewish history,” to express “the singular character and unique destiny of Judaism.” As it had turned out, the young state seemed engaged in an unending military struggle for its existence. Therefore, he had reached the conclusion that an international agreement should be reached that would bring about “the neutralization of the State of Israel.”171 Goldmann’s Zionist cultural background reverberated strongly through the article. “I am convinced that the Jewish state, in order to survive, must represent the singularity of this people and its destiny.” The Jewish state is “the new center where Jewish civilization can be continued and where new ideas will be created. . . .” And further on: “. . . Israel cannot be one of the more than a hundred so-called sovereign states as they exist today and that, instead of relying primarily and exclusively on its military and political strength, it should be not merely accepted but guaranteed, de jure and de facto, by all the peoples of the world, including the Arabs, and put under the permanent protection of the whole of mankind.” In this way Israel “would become the great source of Jewish inspiration and challenges, and in the deepest sense of the word, the spiritual center of the Jewish people.” Goldmann’s article, widely quoted in the Israeli press, exacerbated the storm caused by his proposed visit to Nasser.172 Here was a distinguished, wellknown Jewish personality, criticizing the political behavior of Israel in an influential international publication and proposing far-reaching reforms for the Jewish state that seemed completely unrealistic without any regard for the opinion of the Israeli citizenry. Did Goldmann himself, with his well-honed practical instincts, not realize how utopian his proposition was? He had a ready answer, one that could hardly be disputed: that we live in a time of enormous changes “with tremendous events taking place again and again that even experts would have regarded as impossible a short while before.” And what was more fantastic than Herzl’s dream, seventy-five years ago, about a Judenstaat ( Jewish state)? “The history of the Zionist movement, as of many others, proves that the greatest real factors in history in the long run are neither armies nor physical, economic, or political strength, but visions, ideas, and dreams.”173 Nevertheless, most Israelis found Goldmann’s involved noninvolvement in Israeli public life as outright offensive, all the more so because he did not even really live in the country. “A lot of Israelis resent the fact that I have not taken part in the political life of the state and have not settled in the country. For them, it is next door to being unpatriotic,” Goldmann recognized.174 Especially tense were Goldmann’s relations with the senior officials of the Israeli Foreign Ministry—little wonder, considering how frequently Goldmann invaded their turf. Indeed, Goldmann had his own diplomatic agenda, and usually did not bother to inform the Israelis about his moves. One such


43

example was his contact with Senator William Fulbright, the chairman of the influential Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. Senate, in April 1968 about Israeli policy regarding its Arab neighbors. The Israeli Foreign Ministry contacted the Americans to stress that Goldmann did not represent the Israeli government and was not authorized to speak on its behalf.175 In April 1970, faced with pressure in the United States due to Goldmann’s Nasser initiative, the then Israeli Ambassador in Washington, Yizhak Rabin, demanded the revocation of Goldmann’s diplomatic passport.176 Goldmann continued to respond to the criticism. The Israelis, he said, suffer from the Jewish weakness of being unable to distinguish between matters important from matters less so. “Israel cannot tell the great objectives from small. Everyone will lay down his life for the Golan. But when it comes to realizing a humanist Zionism, that can be left to utopian intellectuals like Goldmann.”177 He was dubious about the democratic structures of Israel: in Ben-Gurion’s time, he wrote, Israel was formally a democracy, but in fact it was a regime more dictatorial than many totalitarian countries. Israeli politicians and the Israeli party system was a favorite aim of his barbs, for evident reasons. Except in times of war, Goldmann wrote, the loyalty of Israeli politicians is more to their parties than to the state.178 Another favorite theme was what Goldmann called the Masada complex, or Masada cult, in his eyes “an absolutely anti-Jewish phenomenon. The Jewish ideal is to stay alive, and had the Masada example been followed there would not be a single Jew left.” And again, “The exaggerated feeling of self-confidence, of power not founded on realities, of a superiority not based on fact,” may lead to despair, and worse, to “a dangerous Masada complex with incalculable consequences.”179 The overall effect, however, was dispiriting. “I have, for a long time, ceased to express myself on the foreign policy of Israel and refrained from giving any advice,” he wrote in December 1973, “the reason being that I felt that it was nearly impossible to influence either public opinion or the foreign policy of the Government by any public utterances. The late Ben-Gurion once told me that a convincing mouth requires, to be effective, an adequate ear.”180

IX. Return to Europe In one version of his memoirs Goldmann tells that in 1964 he left the United States, settled in Israel, and took Israeli citizenship. In another version, written about ten years later, we learn that Goldmann indeed left the United States in the 1960s—but for Europe, not Israel.181 Goldmann settled first in Geneva and later moved to Paris. At the same time, he decided to acquire a flat in Jerusalem, a gesture, “a kind of noblesse oblige. . . . Officially I immigrated to Israel in 1964 and turned automatically into an Israeli citizen.”182 The language is typical Goldmannese, the smooth description veiling ambiguous situations and complex personal decisions. Although living in the United States since 1940 (and a

44


citizen since 1945), Goldmann apparently never integrated well there, a fact corroborated by his diverse descriptions about the United States and American Jewry. His two sons became Americanized, but not so Goldmann. Thus, in 1964, Goldmann left the United States, returned to Europe, and also became an Israeli citizen. In 1968 he adopted Swiss citizenship, “for economic and personal reasons.”183 In Europe Goldmann remained in the public eye. He was lionized in his old age, and indications are that he enjoyed the limelight very much. Goldmann’s renewed activities in Europe, and especially in Germany, had already begun in the 1950s. His first public major appearance there took place in November 1952, several weeks after the signing of the Luxembourg Agreement. Together with West Germany’s President Theodor Heuss (an acquaintance from prewar days) Goldmann participated at the dedication of the Holocaust memorial at Bergen-Belsen. He delivered there a detailed and scathing lecture on the Nazi atrocities against the Jews and warned against the dangers of extreme nationalism and racism,184 the first such appearance before a German public by an internationally leading Jewish figure. The close relations Goldmann established with Chancellor Adenauer continued also in the years after the signing of the Reparations Agreement, and influenced the collaboration between Israel and Germany. In June 1959 Adenauer, in a significant gesture, organized a meeting in his office between Goldmann and the heads of the governments of the German Länder (states).185 Goldmann participated in the preparation of the March 1960 meeting between Ben-Gurion and Adenauer in New York where further ties between Germany and Israel in economic and military matters were decided.186 He also met also with German ministers, Bundestag members, leaders of political parties, but “Adenauer himself was the last resort of Goldmann’s continuing appeals.”187 Adenauer’s interest in matters Jewish and for Israel, which seemingly combined moral and politicalpragmatic reasons, has drawn attention among scholars.188 Goldmann also had close connections with the successors of Adenauer in the German chancellorship, especially with Willy Brandt and Helmuth Schmidt. Gradually Goldmann became something of a public figure in Germany. He was frequently interviewed, and his articles in the prestigious weekly Die Zeit were widely read. If personal contacts and relations on the political level influenced a new understanding between Jewish and German public figures, as well as in the unproblematic implementation of the restitutions agreement, the presence of Nahum Goldmann certainly played an important role. There were, however, limitations to his influence. After the Luxembourg Agreement, almost naturally the state bureaucracies took over, the ministries of Israel talking to their counterparts in Germany on matters of defense, finances, and foreign affairs.189 Ordinary and not-so-ordinary political matters were now handled through channels over which Goldmann had little influence. A typical example was the very important question of the diplomatic relations between Israel and Germany. The Israeli side became very much interested in


45

such relations, while the German Foreign Ministry, under pressure from the Arab states, spoke against such ties, and successfully so. In 1960 Goldmann tried to convince Adenauer to establish normal diplomatic relations with Israel, but the German chancellor was unable (or unwilling) to overcome the resistance of his Foreign Minister. Only in 1965, when the Egyptians received the East German leader Walter Ulbricht in Cairo were the conditions created which enabled Adenauer’s successor, Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, to establish full diplomatic ties with Israel.190 Goldmann’s circle of acquaintances grew in the 1960s and 1970s to international dimensions, and included Pierre Mendes France, Marshall Tito, Bruno Kreisky, Henry Kissinger, and Anwar Sadat. He was received by Pope Paul VI. The touch of vanity that sometimes colors his biographical writings grew more intense in his later years. This does not mean that he became complacent in his political insight, however. Years of scintillating diplomatic contacts and interventions did little to temper his basic skepticism about many aspects of the relationship between Jews and Gentiles: In decades of political work I have nearly always found all foreign ministries to be anti-Zionist and anti-Israel. Only exceptional statesmen with a great historical outlook, like Lloyd George, Lord Balfour, General Smuts, President Wilson, could overcome their prosaic, realistic concerns in favor of the moral concept underlying the Jewish claim for a country of their own.191 The more Goldmann was lionized in Europe, the less he was appreciated in Israel. His continuing frequent incursions in matters relating to the foreign relations of Israel caused dismay and anger in the Israeli political establishment and among the public, and the general view was that he harmed the country. A brochure Goldmann published in 1975–1976, in French and in German, hardly contributed to a better understanding with the Israelis: “Israel must change its views!” read the title of the German edition.192 The brochure emphasized again ideas he had been speaking about for years: Israel should give back most of the territories conquered in 1967, invest more efforts in a better understanding with the Arabs, and again, the neutralization of Israel. The German edition contained a last chapter suggesting that Germany might take the initiative in such efforts for neutralization. Goldmann’s critique against Israeli foreign policy grew more acerbic after the political changes of 1977, when the Labor Party, which had dominated Israeli politics for decades, was routed in the elections and a government of center-right orientation was formed with Menahem Begin as prime minister. Goldmann continued to visit the country and to express his views, and he always attracted attention, supported by some, opposed by many. The elections marked deep changes in the composition and the inner workings of Israeli society: the immigrants of the 1950s, who now had reached

46


political maturity, gave new tones and emphases to Israeli public life. But these were aspects of the political development of the country that apparently failed to catch Goldmann’s attention. Goldmann’s last great public appearance was the festive dinner prepared in his honor in Amsterdam in July 1980 commemorating his eighty-fifth birthday. Present were Jewish, Dutch and German leaders: the heads of the Claims Conference, the WJC, the WZO; the Dutch Prime Minister; the German Chancellor, the Foreign Minister, leading politicians. Chancellor Helmuth Schmidt gave a most impressive laudatory speech in which he recapitulated Goldmann’s career and his contribution to the German-Jewish reconciliation. He finished with the Hebrew prayer: “Blessed art Thou our God, king of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us and allowed us to reach this day.” No official Israeli representative participated that evening.193

X. Conclusion He [Goldmann] dedicated the largest part of his life to Zionism and to the creation of a Jewish state, and is full of criticism, dissatisfaction and doubts regarding the development of Israel. —Mein Leben II, p. 459.

Goldmann’s Jewish profile was typical of a certain strata of Eastern European Jews born between the second part of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries: people who were deeply rooted in both the Jewish and in the general world and culture. Goldmann’s claim, on one hand, that “I had never consciously been through the process of assimilation myself. My Jewishness was entirely organic and spontaneous,” and on the other, “My favorite language is German. I dream in German, I laugh in German, I cry in German, I love in German,”194 may sound contradictory, but they are not. His was a human condition peculiar to modern Jewry, a most interesting sociocultural flowering no longer found a generation later, when the destruction of European Jewry and the creation of a Jewish state profoundly changed the human profile of Jewish society. Notwithstanding his professed disdain for ideologies, Goldmann’s own life did not corroborate at all his affirmation that “ideologies are usually only a superstructure erected on a given psychological outlook.”195 Goldmann held fast to several fundamental ideological issues: he was and remained a cultural Zionist, convinced that the inner life of the Jewish people was more important than the external circumstances of its existence; he opposed shlilat hagalut [negation of the exile], convinced that the future of the Jews should be built on a constructive collaboration between the Jewish center in Palestine (or Israel) and the Jewish communities in the diaspora—indeed, his positive attitude toward the golah became more pronounced in his later years. He insisted all


47

along that an understanding between Israel and the Arabs of the Middle East was a crucial priority. Everything considered, Goldmann was ideologically quite stable and consistent in his principles. The so-called (and by many derided) flexibility of Goldmann’s positions applied first and foremost to the political sphere. When it came to matters political, Goldmann was prepared (and apparently enjoyed) to maneuver over the field like a dancer, taking turns and defending concessions his contemporaries frequently found hard to bear. These gyrations sometimes bordered on the condemnable, even according to the very elastic rules of the political game. In spite of the obfuscations in which Goldmann engaged in his various memoirs, there were major facts in his public activities regarding which he preserved a sober and realistic assessment. Goldmann knew well that his two major public achievements were his contribution to the acceptance of the partition solution for Palestine and, especially, his part in the negotiations with the German authorities toward the reparations treaty. To be sure, for a correct perspective on Goldmann one must remember that only as a result of the Luxembourg Agreement in September 1952—and by then Goldmann was already in his later fifties—he came to be fully recognized as a major figure in Jewish and Zionist leadership and as a master of diplomacy. The “Goldmann legend” was a product of the next thirty years. It was a process in which Goldmann himself participated with gusto. In terms of Goldmann’s political biography, his role in the reparation talks between Germans, Israelis and the Jewish organizations, and the resultant agreement, were an act of diplomatic wizardry enhanced by the passage of time. Nevertheless, for an intellectual understanding of Goldmann, the partition subject offers the richest material. In spite of its enormous importance, the Reparations Agreement was, in a sense, simpler than the partition issue. The Reparations Agreement represented an event in the external relations of Jewry, the people and the state. Once the two governments, Germany and Israel, reached a decision, and the Knesset and the Bundestag endorsed that decision, the essential debate was over, and life went on. Partition was a very different matter, one with a bewildering internal Jewish ideological significance. Historically considered, partition was hardly an issue-for-decision, but rather an issue-for-consideration, characterized by unending and indecisive debates, perennial soul-searching where political concepts, religious beliefs, and tactical considerations intermingled, all leading to resolutions that never were the last word, and a question that has not lost its relevance until today. From Goldmann’s personal perspective, the idea of partition was bound both to his own political personality as well as to the kind of cultural Zionism he had adopted in his youth and remained faithful to also in his later years: the continuing existence of the Jewish nation was important, the state was only an instrument, albeit, in the conditions of the modern world, an indispensable one for the survival of the Jewish people. Moreover, for Goldmann, readiness to consider the partition of the Land of Israel embodied a new political maturity

48


that ought to be one of the characteristics of Zionist and Israeli thinking. The very thought of partition signaled a new openness to the realities of the world, the aptitude to cope positively with the unavoidable compromises that were a demand of political life among peoples. Goldmann, actually, considered also the question of the relations between Israel and the Arabs of the Middle East along a similar logic. To strive for understanding and compromise was an attitude that he wished Israeli Jews would develop as one of the attributes of political sovereignty. Independence as a nation had many advantages but it demanded also new patterns of public behavior, and Goldmann wondered frequently if the Israelis were willing to pay the price of their new condition. The Israelis, for their part, criticized Goldmann along quite similar lines: that in the age of Jewish political sovereignty he continued to behave like a shtadlan [intercessor] of times gone by. More elegantly put, “Nahum Goldmann was the epitome of Jewish prestate diplomacy, which has crafted, over centuries, instruments of statecraft without having a state at its disposal: as such, it was a unique Jewish contribution to diplomacy, and Goldmann was undoubtedly one of its most accomplished practitioners.”196 True, Goldmann’s most impressive political feats occurred in the transitional period before and shortly after the establishment of Israel. Afterward, new realities dawned. A Jewish state now existed, served by a political and administrative apparatus of its own, influenced by the delicate interplay of internal public concepts and interests, and wary of what amounted to outside interventions, even from so close and respected a figure as Goldmann. “With the establishment of Israel, the context [of Jewish diplomatic action] had radically changed, and with it the rules of the game.”197 Goldmann was not oblivious to the new situation. His efforts in the 1950s and 1960s to change the terms of reference of the WZO, or to build links between the WZO and the WJC, or to establish new all-encompassing Jewish public structures show that he tried to improve the public tools at his disposal, but this without binding himself to parliamentary rules of action, as other Zionist and Israeli leaders of his generation had done. Goldmann tried hard in his memoirs to justify his approach, and yet the latter-day observer of his life is left with the impression that the explanations are incomplete. To employ a phrase dear to Goldmann, the reasons for his public style were not so much a matter of philosophy but of psychology. Goldmann was viscerally unable to bow to the principles of modern political behavior, where authority and power are bound to the rules of the democratic process. One of the results of Goldmann’s very limited participation in the Israeli reality was that he seemingly never developed a full, or a realistic view about the land and its society. Although he quoted Ben-Gurion’s saying that “a convincing mouth requires, to be effective, an adequate ear,”198 Goldmann never worked out the deeper meaning of the words: the intricate relationship between a leader and the deeper currents of public opinion. In Goldmann’s mind, the Jewish state always retained something from the idealized image typical of cultural-Zionist philosophy of prestate days. For him, the


49

Jewish state should be something different—the possibility that this “differentness” was exactly what had endangered Jewish existence in modern Europe, that the “normalization” of Jewish life was not only a deeply imbued position of Zionist ideology but also a condition of Israel as sovereign state among the nations— all this somehow got pushed aside by the older Goldmann, when pondering the situation of Israel and its future. Perhaps here Goldmann was again ideologically consistent—a laudable quality in itself, only that in his case, consistency in combination with personal convenience turned into an obstacle that prevented adoption of a more advanced and more realistic political attitude. His ultimate decision not to participate in the normal political process of Israel transformed his image in the state in whose creation he had participated. Not that Goldmann was unaware of the problems embedded in his decision. “There is one question that even now he does not know if he did the right thing,” he wrote in his last memoirs, talking about himself, “namely, his refusal to enter actively in Israeli politics. Sometimes he wonders if the grounds for that decision which he gave to himself and to others were not a rationalization of his tendency to take matters easy. . . .”199 In retrospect, Goldmann’s decision cannot be judged as other than a grievous mistake. Articulate and farsighted, he was admired by many, distrusted by some, but truly feared by none. With all his achievements, with all his positions, the levers of real public power remained beyond his reach. The result carried a heavy price for all involved: for Israel, unable to engage the full services of one of the most politically talented sons of the Jewish people; and for Goldmann, who spent the last and very significant part of his days preaching like a prophet in the desert, trying to deliver a message that, with the means he himself had chosen, could not be heard. By the late 1960s Goldmann had, in his words, returned to Europe, but he had not really settled anywhere. To “settle” was a habit, or a frame of mind, that apparently had been eradicated from his inner self already in his young years. He kept moving among Geneva, Paris, New York, in Israel and elsewhere. Nahum Goldmann died in Bad Reichenhall, Germany, on August 29, 1982. He is buried in the section reserved for the Grandees of Israel [ gdolei haumah] at the National Cemetery on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

Notes Thanks are due to Guido Goldman for his careful reading and comments on a first draft of this piece. 1. Goldmann wrote (or, more precisely, participated in the preparation) of two autobiographies: The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann. Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969) [hereafter Autobiography]; and Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben als deutscher Jude, vol. I; Mein Leben: USA, Europa, Israel, vol. II (Munich, 1981) [hereafter Mein Leben I, Mein Leben II]. Also note a volume of autobiographical articles prepared with the assistance of Leon Abramowicz, The Jewish Paradox (London, 1978), which was

50


originally published in French in 1976 [hereafter Jewish Paradox]. Goldmann also participated indirectly in one of the biographies written about him, namely Raphael Patai’s Nahum Goldmann: His Mission to the Gentiles (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1987). Several autobiographical interviews can be found in the press in diverse countries. Use was made here of articles and speeches published in a variety of collections, especially the English edition Community of Fate. Jews in the Modern World. Essays, Speeches and Articles by Nahum Goldmann, ed. A. J. Sherman ( Jerusalem, 1977) [hereafter Community of Fate]. 2. Autobiography, 117–18; Mein Leben II, 427, 449. At one time or other Goldmann held Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian, Polish, German, Honduran, American, Israeli, and Swiss citizenships; see Autobiography, 133–34; Encyclopaedia Judaica 7, 725. 3. Mein Leben II, 441. Goldmann wrote a most interesting supplementary chapter in this volume, “Self-Analysis,” an interesting interplay of revelations and obfuscations about how he evaluated his own life. 4. Weizmann to Joseph I. Linton, June 16, 1948, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A—Letters, vol. XXIII [hereafter WL], 144–45; to Moshe Shertok, July 9, 1948, ibid., 161. 5. Central Zionist Archives [hereafter CZA], Z5/ 3488, 39. 6. Autobiography, 241–45; Mein Leben II, 456. 7. Mein Leben II, 451. 8. Autobiography, 2–3; see also pp. 4–7, where Goldmann dwells extensively on the happiness and serenity of his first years, and the positive influence that period had on his personal formation. For Goldmann’s youth, see Michael Brenner’s chapter herein, “The German Years: Early Chapters in the Biography of a Jewish Statesman.” 9. Autobiography, 10–13. 10. Gideon Shimoni analyzes Goldmann’s Zionist views in “Nahum Goldmann as Zionist Thinker,” herein. 11. Ibid. 12. “Der dreizehnte Zionistenkongress und die Zukunft des Zionismus,“ Der Jude, no. 10–11, 1923, 561–69. 13. Jewish Paradox, 7; see also the chapter by Gideon Shimoni herein. 14. Nahum Goldmann, “The Future of Israel,” Foreign Affairs 48 (April 1970): 450. 15. Die drei Forderungen des jüdischen Volkes (Berlin, 1919); see also the analysis of Goldmann’s article in Michael Brenner’s chapter herein. 16. Autobiography, 79; see also Gideon Shimoni’s chapter herein. 17. See Ahad Haam, “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,” and “The Negation of the Diaspora” in The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, ed. Arthur Hertzberg (Garden City, NY, 1959), 262–77. 18. See Michael Brenner’s chapter herein. 19. See Autobiography, 334; Jewish Paradox, 108–109; see also Goldmann’s lecture on Chaim Weizmann in 1962: “Weizmann’s Concept of Zionism and the Jewish State”


51

(CZA, Z6/2344), where the ideas attributed (rightly so) to Weizmann were obviously also Goldmann’s. 20. Goldmann quoted Winston Churchill stating that “democracy was the worst of all systems of government except for all the rest,” Jewish Paradox, 113. 21. Jewish Paradox, 112–13. 22. Ibid., 113; see also Community of Faith,110. 23. Autobiography, 94–95. 24. In 1935 Goldmann is noted in the minutes of the Nineteenth Zionist Congress as representing the Brazilian Zionist organization. 25. This relationship is described in the chapters by Gideon Shimoni and Michael Brenner herein. 26. Autobiography, 83–90. 27. Goldmann’s memoirs suggest that by then he was already well off financially. 28. Goldmann’s German citizenship was revoked in 1935 but through the intervention of friends he became a citizen of Honduras; see Autobiography, 133. 29. See Oscar I. Janowsky, The Jews and Minority Rights, 1898–1919 (New York, 1933), 309ff. 30. Ibid. 31. A new American Jewish Congress (AJC) was created in 1922 and exists to the present day. Although the second AJC has championed a large array of Jewish causes, its scope has remained much more limited than that of the original AJC. 32. See the chapter by Zohar Segev, “Nahum Goldmann and the First Two Decades of the World Jewish Congress,” herein; see also Unity in Dispersion: A History of the World Jewish Congress, ed. A. Leon Kubowitzki (New York, 1948). 33. Autobiography, 171–72. 34. Ibid., 136 35. Goldmann’s activities in the 1940s are analyzed in the chapters by Zohar Segev on the World Jewish Congress and Mark A. Raider, “Idealism, Vision, and Pragmatism: Stephen S. Wise, Nahum Goldmann, and Abba Hillel Silver in the United States,” both herein. 36. Autobiography, 200–204; see also the chapters by Segev and Raider herein and Avi Baker, “Diplomacy without Sovereignity: The World Jewish Congress Rescue Activities,” in Organizing Rescue: National Jewish Solidarity in the Modern Period, ed. Benjamin Pinkus and Selwyn Ilan Troen (London, 1992), 343–60. 37. See Autobiography, 192–99 as well as Goldmann’s ironic description, “The Uncles from America,” in Jewish Paradox, 146–54. 38. See the formulation of this concept in Jehuda Reinharz, Zionism and the Great Powers: A Century of Foreign Policy, The Leo Back Memorial Lecture 38 (New York, 1994). Reinharz considers this to be an idea of “historical dimensions and quasi-ideological

52


significance,” first articulated in the days of Theodor Herzl and adopted after the establishment of Israel as one of the principles of Israeli foreign policy. 39. See Autobiography, 221–23. On the American Jewish Conference, see Menahem Kaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership: Non-Zionists and Zionists in America, 1939–1948 ( Jerusalem, 1991). The very establishment of the American Jewish Conference was more impressive than its subsequent activities. The AJC was dissolved in 1949. 40. See Mark A. Raider’s chapter herein. 41. On Silver, see Marc Lee Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver: A Profile in American Judaism (New York, 1989); Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry and Israel, 1945–1958 (New York 1979), ch. 3; and Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, ed. Mark A. Raider, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Ronald W. Zweig (London, 1997). 42. See Chaim Weizmann to Nahum Goldmann, June 23, 1943, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, 40–42. 43. On the relations between Goldmann and Silver, see Mark A. Raider’s chapter herein; Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, 123–27; Ganin, Truman, American Jewry and Israel, 37–38. 44. Emanuel Neumann, Silver’s closest associate, claims in his memoirs that Goldmann was using the public influence the AZEC built to foster his own political standing. See Emanuel Neumann, In the Arena: An Autobiographical Memoir (New York, 1976), 260–62. 45. See William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–1951 (Oxford, 1984), 128–46. 46. See Michael Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–1948 (Princeton, NJ, 1982), 68–95. 47. See Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 397–419; Ganin, Truman, American Jewry and Israel, 49–79. 48. For the recommendations, see Foreign Relations of the United States [FRUS] 1946, vol. VII, 652–67. 49. The theme is described in a chapter herein by Evyatar Friesel, “Toward the Partition of Palestine: The Goldmann Mission in Washington, August 1946.” 50. See the minutes of the meeting quoted in Evyatar Friesel’s chapter. 51. Ibid. 52. See Joseph Heller, “From the ‘Black Sabbath’ to Partition (Summer 1946 as a Turning Point in the History of Zionist Policy),” Zion, XLIII, nos. 3–4 (1978): 325–28 (in Hebrew). 53. See Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, 148–49. Silver’s position was shared by many of his collaborators; see Neumann, In the Arena, 225–26. 54. See Ganin, Truman, American Jewry and Israel, 85; Eilat, The Struggle for Statehood, 378, 443. 55. Autobiography, 180.


53

56. See his long letter to David Ben-Gurion, Sept. 18, 1945, Political Documents, 115–17. 57. “A Scheme for the Solution of the Palestine Problem,” Political Documents, 477–79; see Friesel’s chapter, n. 30. 58. Resolutions of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Aug. 5, 1946, Political Documents, 500–501. 59. Minutes of conversation between Abraham Tulin and Milton Handler (from AZEC) with Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson on Aug. 19, 1946, CZA, Z5/483. 60. See Goldmann’s report to the Executive of the Jewish Agency in Paris, Aug. 13, 1946, Political Documents, 519, 521, 522. 61. See the letters from President Truman to Prime Minister Attlee and from Dean Acheson to the American ambassador in London, Aug. 12, 1946, in FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 679–83. 62. “In view of the extreme intensity of feeling in centers of Jewish population in this country neither political party would support this program at the present time. . . .” Memorandum of Conversation, by the Acting Secretary of State [Dean Acheson, meeting the British ambassador, Lord Inverchapel], July 30, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 673–74; also, cable of President Truman to Prime Minister Attlee, August 7, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 677. 63. Autobiography, 237. 64. Political Documents, 531. Ben-Gurion refused to accept Silver’s resignation. 65. Mein Leben II, 194. 66. Ibid., 197–98. 67. Ibid., 457. 68. Ibid., 98–100. 69. See Ronald W. Zweig, “Israel-Diaspora Relations in the Early Years of the State,” in New Perspectives on Israeli History: The Early Years of the State, ed. Laurence J. Silberstein (New York, 1991), 259–70. 70. Neumann, In the Arena, 270. 71. Ibid., 272–74. 72. The issue and the tactical steps involved are described in Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, 174–81; Autobiography, 229–30; Neumann, In the Arena, 274–79. 73. Mein Leben II, 100. 74. Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, 203; Neumann, In the Arena, 279–81. 75. Autobiography, 249. 76. The theme is analyzed in two chapters herein: Shlomo Shafir, “Nahum Goldmann and Germany after World War II,” and Ronald W. Zweig, “’Reparations Made Me’: Nahum Goldmann, German Reparations and the Jewish World.” See also Nana Sagi, German Reparations: A History of the Negotiations ( Jerusalem, 1980), which includes

54


also the text of the Luxembourg Treaty and the two protocols annexed to it; Ronald W. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference (London, 2001). Additional information is found in Zwischen Moral und Realpolitik. Deutschisraelische Beziehungen 1945–1965. Eine Dokumentensammlung, ed. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek (Tel Aviv, 1997), 173–74; Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, ed. Ludolf Herbst and Constantin Goschler (Munich, 1989). 77. See Unity in Dispersion, ed. Kubowitzki, 221–35. 78. Jewish Paradox, 122–23; see Nehemiah Robinson, Indemnification and Reparations: Jewish Aspects (New York, 1944). 79. Chaim Weizmann to Ernest Bevin, Sept. 20, 1945, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXII, 51–54. 80. See Sagi, German Reparations, 41; Autobiography, 251–52. 81. Israel State Archives, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel 1951, vol. 6 [DFPI], ed. Yemima Rosenthal ( Jerusalem, 1991), 163–69; Sagi, German Reparations, 56–58. 82. “The replies were courteous, careful and evasive,” Sagi, German Reparations, 59. 83. In April 1951 there was a first and secret contact in Paris between Chancellor Adenauer and Israeli representatives: David Horowitz, then the director-general of the Finance Ministry, accompanied by the Israeli ambassador in Paris, Maurice Fischer. In spite of Adenauer’s former declarations indicating readiness to consider Jewish demands, the meeting did not yield direct results. See Sagi, German Reparations, 64–65, 69–70. 84. Autobiography, 250; Nahum Goldmann, “Direct Israel-German Negotiations? Yes,” The Zionist Quarterly, vol. 1 (1952); Nahum Goldmann to Berl Locker, May 21, 1950 (CZA, S35/5), quoted in Zweig’s chapter herein. 85. Autobiography, 256–57. 86. “Deutsche und Juden,” Mein Leben II, 454–73. 87. Ibid. 88. “Germans and Jews,” Community of Fate, 80. The article was originally published in 1966 in a German weekly. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid, 255; Nana Sagi, “Jüdische Organisationen in den USA und die Claims Conference” in Wiedergutmachung, ed. Herbst and Goschler, 107–109; see also Zweig’s chapter herein, esp. nn. 13–19. 91. A major partner of Goldmann in the Conference on Jewish Material Claims was Jacob Blaustein, then the president of the American Jewish Committee, and a figure with close contacts in the U.S. Administration; see Mein Leben II, 388–89; Sagi, “Jüdische Organisationen,” 103. 92. Jelinek, Zwischen Moral und Realpolitik, 173–74. For reparations, the Germans used the term, Wiedergutmachung, which translates as “to do good again” and was unpopular on the Jewish side. The Jewish/Israeli side adopted a biblical term, shilumim.


55

93. Autobiography, 257. 94. See documents 24 and 25 in Jelinek, Zwischen Moral und Realpolitik, 177–78; Autobiography, 257–58. 95. Zweig, German Reparations, 72; Autobiography, 257. 96. See Huhn, “Die Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen in Wassenaar” in Wiedergutmachung, ed. Herbst and Goschler, 143–44; Michael Wolffsohn, “Globalentschädigung für Israel und die Juden? Adenauer und die Bundesregierung,” ibid., 163–64. 97. See Shlomo Shafir’s chapter herein. 98. Kings I, 21, 19. 99. Huhn, “Die Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen in Wassenaar,” 143. 100. Sagi, German Reparations, 130. 101. Autobiography, 264–65; Sagi, German Reparations, 134. 102. Autobiography, 265–68; Sagi, German Reparations, 139–42; Huhn, “Die Wiedergutmachungsverhandlungen in Wassenaar,” 152–54. In 1951, the worth of DM 3 was about $1. In 1951 US $1 was worth about US $8 in 2000. 103. See the detailed descriptions of Goldmann’s German contacts in Mein Leben II, 426–48; see also Shlomo Shafir’s chapter herein, esp. nn. 55–58. 104. See details in Zweig, German Reparations, 69–74, 119–20, 193–94. 105. Michael Wolffsohn analyzes the theme in “Globalentschädigung . . . ,” op. cit., 161–90. 106. See Mein Leben I, 426; Mein Leben II, 371–426; Shlomo Shafir’s chapter herein, n. 32; Jewish Paradox, 121–43. 107. Autobiography, 14. The relations between Goldmann and Klatzkin are described in the chapters by Michael Brenner and Gideon Shimoni herein. 108. Klatzkin’s ideas were developed in a book published first in 1918 titled Probleme des Modernen Judentums. An enlarged edition appeared in 1921 (and again in 1930) under the title Krisis und Entscheidung im Judentum. Goldmann mentions that the changed title was his suggestion; Autobiography, 75–80ff. 109. See Mark A. Raider’s chapter herein. 110. Autobiography, 122; “Dr. Stephen Wise” in Nahum Goldman, Bedarkhei Ami ( Jerusalem, 1968), 217–29 (in Hebrew). See also the chapters by Mark A. Raider and Zohar Segev herein. 111. See the chapter “Zionist Leadership in Crisis,” in Michael J. Cohen, Palestine: Retreat from the Mandate: The Making of British Policy, 1939–1945 (London, 1978), 125–39. 112. See the chapter by Jehuda Reinharz, “Nahum Goldmann and Chaim Weizmann: An Ambivalent ‘Relationship,’” herein.

56


113. In November 1962, on the tenth anniversary of Weizmann’s death, Goldmann gave an address, “Weizmann’s Concept of Zionism and the Jewish State,” which Reinharz describes “as one of the deepest and at the same time most generous analyses ever made about Weizmann.” 114. See Autobiography, 114–17, and Jehuda Reinharz’s chapter herein. 115. See Jehuda Reinharz’s chapter herein. 116. Quoted in ibid. 117. See Jehuda Reinharz’s chapter herein. 118. On the collaboration between Goldmann and Ben-Gurion, see Yosef Gorny’s chapter herein, “Negation of the Galut and the Centrality of Israel: Nahum Goldmann and David Ben-Gurion;” see also Gideon Shimoni’s chapter herein. 119. See Autobiography, 290–302; Goldmann’s lecture on Ben-Gurion in 1974 in Community of Fate, 109–16; Jewish Paradox, 93–101. 120. Autobiography, 290, 291, 292; Jewish Paradox, 94. 121. Community of Fate, 110. 122. Autobiography, 227. Goldmann continued, “He was an Old Testament Jew who never forgave or forgot and who possessed no trace of the talent for keeping personal and political affairs separate. . . . Anyone who fought him politically became his personal enemy.” 123. See Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, ch. 8. 124. See Evyatar Friesel’s chapter herein, esp. nn. 92–94. 125. Autobiography, 318–19. 126. “An Exchange of Views: American Jews and the State of Israel,” addresses by David Ben-Gurion and David Blaustein, Jerusalem, August 23, 1905 in American Jewish Yearbook, vol. 53 (1952): 564–68. 127. See Zionist Future: “Herzliah Formulations” ( Jerusalem, 1986). 128. Ibid. The full text states: The aims of Zionism are: the unity of the Jewish people and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life; the ingathering of the Jewish people in his historic homeland Erez Israel through aliyah from all countries; the strengthening of the State of Israel which is based on the prophetic vision of justice and peace; the preservation of the identity of the Jewish people through the fostering of Jewish and Hebrew education and of Jewish spiritual and cultural values; the protection of Jewish rights everywhere. 129. This encounter is extensively considered in Yosef Gorny’s chapter herein. The minutes of the symposium were published in Hasut, vol. IV, ed. Natan Rothenstreich, Shulamit Schwarz Nardi, and Zalman Shazar (1958) (in Hebrew). 130. Present were Salo W. Baron, Martin Buber, Abraham Jehoshua Heshel, Ben Halpern, Yehoshua Leibovitz, Mordechai M. Kaplan, Cecil Roth, Moshe Sharett, Zalman Shazar, Barukh Zuckerman, and many more.


57

131. David Ben-Gurion, “The State of Israel and the Future of the [Jewish] People, Hasut, vol. IV, 136–47 (in Hebrew); Nahum Goldmann, “Israel and the Jewish people,” in ibid., 148–55; Ben-Gurion, “An Answer to the Discussants,” in ibid., 166–70; Goldmann, “Conclusions” in ibid., 222–28; see also Yosef Gorny’s chapter herein. 132. See n. 122. 133. See “The Affirmation of the Diaspora” (1909) and “The Survival of the Jewish People” (1911) in Koppel S. Pinson (ed.), Simon Dubnow. Nationalism and History. Essays on Old and New Judaism (Philadelphia, 1958), 182–91, 325–35. 134. See, for example, “Germans and Jews,” Community of Fate, 77–85; about American Jewry, see Hasut, vol. 4 (1958): 224–25 (in Hebrew). 135. Jewish Paradox, 78. 136. Goldmann’s views on American Jewry and the Israel-Bavel equation are analyzed in the chapter by Gideon Shimoni herein. 137. Autobiography, 193. 138. Mein Leben II, 200–202. 139. Autobiography, 326–27. 140. Jewish Paradox, 19. 141. Significantly, Willy Brandt tells in his memoirs about a conversation with Leonid Brezhnev in 1981 in which the Russian leader chided him for acting as if he had succeeded Nahum Goldmann as president of the Jewish World Congress; see Willy Brandt, Erinnerungen (Frankfurt a.M., 1989), 411. 142. See Jewish Paradox, 97, 105; Mein Leben II, 197–200. 143. See an address from March 1964 in Community of Faith, 37–40. 144. See Suzanne D. Rutland, “Leadership of Accommodation or Protest? Nahum Goldmann and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry,” herein; also, Yaacov Roi, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1948–1967 (Cambridge, 1991). 145. See Suzanne D. Rutland’s chapter herein. 146. Jewish Paradox, 179. 147. Roi, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 228. 148. Jewish Paradox, 179. 149. “1960 Paris Conference,” quoted by Suzanne D. Rutland herein. 150. Statement by Dr. Nahum Goldmann at a press conference, June 10, 1965, quoted by Suzanne D. Rutland herein. 151. Jewish Paradox, 173. 152. See Roi, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 197. 153. Autobiography, 304–305. 154. Mein Leben II, 241.

58

Jehuda Reinharz and Evyatar Friesel 155. Ibid., 456. 156. Autobiography, 298–99. 157. Ibid., 241–45.

158. Ibid., 283. Goldmann elaborated on his views fully in a chapter in his memoirs; ibid., 283–311; see also Mein Leben II, 291–321. 159. From an article published in Freie Zionistische Blätter, no. 3 ( July 1921), reprinted in Community of Fate, 7. 160. Ibid., 244–45. 161. “Israel after the Yom Kippur War” (Dec. 1973), reprinted in Community of Fate, 155–56. 162. Ibid., 154, 165. 163. For the plan and its surrounding circumstances see the chapter herein by Meir Chazan, “Goldmann’s Initiative to Meet with Nasser in 1970.” 164. Autobiography, 309–10. 165. Quoted in Meir Chazan, ibid., n. 56. 166. Ibid., n. 62. 167. See Meir Chazan’s conclusion herein. 168. Nevertheless, in his memoirs Goldmann lamented that he had allowed Golda Meir to abort his initiative; see Mein Leben II, 457. 169. Community of Fate, 34. 170. Foreign Affairs, vol. 48 (April 1970), 443–59. 171. Ibid., 456. 172. See Meir Chazan’s chapter herein. 173. “The Future of Israel,” 457, 459. 174. The Jewish Paradox, 105. 175. See Meir Chazan’s chapter herein, esp. n. 10. 176. Ibid., n. 63. 177. Jewish Paradox, 116. 178. Mein Leben II, 195–96. 179. Jewish Paradox, 86; Community of Fate, 144–45. 180. Community of Fate, 142. 181. The pertinent chapter has the title “Return to Europe”; Mein Leben II, 283. 182. Ibid., 284. 183. Encyclopaedia Judaica 7 (1972): 725. 184. Quoted by Shlomo Shafir herein.


59

185. See Shlomo Shafir’s chapter herein, esp. n. 56. 186. See ibid., esp. n. 53. 187. See Shlomo Shafir’s chapter herein. 188. Ibid.; see also the articles by Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, Dominique Trimbur, and esp. Michael Wolffsohn in Röhderdorfer Gespräche, vol. 20 (Bonn, 2004). 189. See, for example, the comments of Asher Ben-Natan in Röhderdorfer Gespräche, vol. 20 (Bonn, 2004), 82–84; also Shlomo Shafir’s chapter herein, n. 62. 190. See Dominique Trimbur, “Verplichtung und Pragmatismus: Adenauer und Israel 1961–1967” in Röhderdorfer Gespräche, vol. 20 (Bonn, 2004), 61, 69, 71–80. 191. “The Future of Israel,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 48 (4/1970), 448–49. 192. Où va Israel? (Paris, 1975); Israel muss Umdenken! (Reinbeck, 1976). 193. Mein Leben II, 430–39; also Shlomo Shafir’s chapter herein. 194. Autobiography, 63; Zeugen des Jahrhunderts. Jüdische Lebenswege, ed. Karl B. Schnelting (Frankfurt, 1987), 26; see also Mein Leben II, 449 and Michael Brenner’s chapter herein. 195. Autobiography, 228. Interestingly, in another instance Goldmann himself stressed his ideological stability, as opposed to his political elasticity; ibid., 73. 196. See Shlomo Avineri’s chapter, “Statecraft without a State: A Jewish Contribution to Political History?” in Kontexte der Schrift: Kultur, Politik, Religion, Sprache. Ekkehard W. Stegemann zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Gabriella Gelardini, vol. 2 (Stuttgart, 2006), 403–19. 197. Ibid. 198. Community of Fate, 142. 199. Mein Leben II, 457.


Part II

(

Thinker


2

( Nahum Goldmann as ZionistThinker Gideon Shimoni

his chapter examines the role of Nahum Goldmann as a Zionist thinker; in other words as an ideologist of Zionism. By way of preface, however, one cannot avoid noting a certain paradox: Goldmann himself repeatedly expressed the view that ideology was but a secondary construct. “Ideologies are usually only a superstructure erected on a given psychological outlook,” is a typical statement in Goldmann’s writings. “Psychology is more important than ideology,” he comments. “The main thing is what a man, or a party or a nation wants. The rational superstructure that reinforces these wants (and which springs from regions much deeper than logic) follows of itself.”1 Given this view, we should not be surprised that Goldmann himself did not regard ideological exposition as a pursuit worthy of his own major endeavors as a Zionist. Indeed, in most respects his thought was more derivative and typical than innovative and seminal. By all accounts, he was less an ideologist than a doer; more a practitioner of diplomacy and builder of organizations than a thinker and writer; more a statesman—albeit paradoxically one without a state—than an intellectual, although he was something of that too. Hence historians have not been inclined to include Goldmann in the “canonized” pantheon of great Zionist thinkers.2 As a personality, what stands out strikingly is Goldmann’s extraordinary self-confidence and social sophistication. Raphael Patai, whose close personal familiarity with Goldmann informs the political biography that he has penned,

T

63

64

Gideon Shimoni

aptly describes “his boundless self-assurance, an independence of will, and an unshakable belief in the rightness of his own views even if opposed by men of the keenest intellect, highest position, greatest influence, and most widely recognized leadership.”3 (Incidentally, this is a description that might be applied quite as well to David Ben-Gurion, and which may go some way in accounting for their conflict-ridden relations.) This characteristic self-assurance of Goldmann’s personality has a bearing on his dignified, self-affirming identity as a Jew and hence ipso facto also as a Zionist. Goldmann relates that he had a very happy, contented childhood. He never felt any need for adolescent rebellion. He writes: Hence I never had to debate the problem of whether or not I was a Jew, as many Jews did after their assimilation. I never grew away from Judaism only to return later on. I had no trouble at all reconciling my feeling of being Jewish, and my duty to do my utmost to help the Jewish people, with my adaptation to German culture.4 In this connection he also claims that things came all too easily to him. Characteristically without pretense of humility, he also tells us, “I was what was commonly called ‘a brilliant pupil.’” Indeed, by all accounts the young Nahum was exceedingly bright and precocious. Goldmann was born in 1895. A formative part of his childhood was spent in the home of his grandparents in the shtetl (townlet) Visznevo (Wishniew), situated in the Lithuanian region of the Russian Empire, where his grandfather was a feldsher, which is a country medic of sorts. He relates that at Visznevo his education was traditionalist. He went to the synagogue every Saturday and respected all the Jewish customs. Back with his parents as an adolescent, his father, Solomon Goldmann, was an exemplar for him, whereas he was much less attached to his mother.5 Solomon Goldmann’s mode of Jewish identity was what might be described as partly secularized traditionalism. This may be inferred from the fact that although loyal to religious rites, he considered Jewish observance to be not an end in itself but rather a means for the preservation of Jewishness; a guard against assimilation. Goldmann comments, “on this and on many other questions he was tolerant and never tried to force me to observe rites I rejected.”6 Nahum himself relates, “Personally I stopped being religious in the traditional sense at the age of seventeen, meaning that I stopped observing the laws, eating kosher, going to the synagogue, and taking part in the holy days—except, of course, for Yom Kippur.” But he adds, “I have always retained a positive attitude, a blend of veneration and admiration, towards the Jewish religion, since without it there would be no Jewish people today.”7 Goldmann’s personal mode of Jewish identity was, therefore, essentially secular, although tempered by sentimental attachment to religious tradition and rational appreciation of its functional value for ethnic-national solidarity. However, if we are to comprehend fully his intellectual outlook, noting that his

Nahum Goldmann as ZionistThinker

65

secular rationalism was counterbalanced by a residing attraction to mysticism is significant. In his memoirs, one finds several self-expositions to the effect that (as he words it) “mysticism is a part of my make-up.” He tells us that he studied mysticism for many years, and even spent a month in a German monastery, which was a great center of Catholic mystical theology. He relates further: In Heidelberg, under the direction of Rickert and Jaspers, I had gained some knowledge of modern philosophy. In Murnau, I tried to supplement this general philosophical education by a more searching investigation of mysticism. I had always been skeptical of the possibility of discovering absolute truth by purely logical and epistemological means, and all my life I had been fascinated by other sources of experience and knowing, especially mystical apperception. If the absolute can be experienced anywhere, I felt, it is in mysticism. . . . I have retained my interest . . . until the present day sometimes to the astonishment of my friends. Even today, it is hard for me to say for sure whether this propensity for mysticism may not camouflage some religious need. Perhaps I am not old enough to know the truth about myself in this respect.8 Thus, on the one hand, Goldmann is known to us as a very rational, balanced, and realistic statesman. Yet beneath this prominent exterior there resides a self-declared mystic inclination, which on closer examination in fact informs much of his mode of Jewish identity and interpretation of Jewish history. It underlies, for example, the oft-repeated affirmation of Jewish “uniqueness,” which forms the cornerstone of his conception of the Jewish people. To be sure, his secular sensitivity prevented him from expatiating on the concept of the “Chosen People.” He decidedly preferred the surrogate notion of a “unique people.” Yet insistence on Jewish exceptionalism is a basic premise not only in his interpretation of the Jewish experience and role in human history but also in his justification of the Jewish right to the Land of Israel, not the least internationally contentious of all Zionist tenets. Implicitly acknowledging that putative divine right or so-called “historic rights” were contestable, Goldmann chose to place emphasis on the purported exceptionalism of the Jewish problem as consistently “a special problem to which regular political norms do not apply.”9 In his writings and speeches Goldmann repeatedly posits that “Jewish history and the character of the Jewish people are unique,” although he was careful to add the caveat that “unique” does not include any qualitative connotation of superiority. It meant only that the Jewish experience is exceptional. He insisted that without acknowledging this “it is impossible to understand the history of the Jewish people.”10 These characteristics of Goldmann’s upbringing, mode of Jewishness, and intellectual outlook illuminate him as an exemplar of the Eastern European–born and Central European-educated Jewish intelligentsia which rose to leadership

66

Gideon Shimoni

roles in the second and third generations after Theodor Herzl. His Jewish self-awareness and ideological outlook were in line of continuity with those exemplified by Ahad Haam, who was the first-generation prototype of this Zionist intelligentsia, and those who, following more or less in Ahad Haam’s path, formed the first political faction within the World Zionist Organization (WZO) at the turn of the twentieth century—the “Democratic Faction,” whose members prominently included Chaim Weizmann and Leo Motzkin. Like them, Goldmann was a secularized Jew who came to Jewish nationalism spontaneously. He did not come to Zionism through an epiphany. Rather, he was born and bred into it. Consequently, his was an organic nationalism a la Ahad Haam and Weizmann, not a functional nationalism, such as Theodor Herzl’s. Nevertheless, owing to his German cultural ambience, Goldmann was able to empathize with other members of the second Zionist generation leadership after Herzl; those who were “postassimilationist” Zionists, as the German Zionist leader, Kurt Blumenfeld, labeled himself. Blumenfeld’s was a Zionism that did not stem directly from Jewish tradition but sought to return to Jewishness out of assimilation. Goldmann explained his sympathetic understanding of Kurt Blumenfeld’s postassimilationist path to Zionism in these words: The great problem of assimilation was a recurrent theme in my thinking, and I believe it was more easily accessible to me because I had never consciously been through the process of assimilation myself. My Jewishness was entirely organic and spontaneous. Perhaps I was able to understand and appreciate postassimilation Zionism better because I was basically a preassimilationist Zionist.11 On the other hand, in light of Goldmann’s post–state of Israel refusal to negate all Jewish life in the diaspora, it is noteworthy that already then he was not enamored of Blumenfeld’s turn to what has been called the “Palestinocentrism” of his generation of Zionists in Germany.12 This relatively radicalizing development had been marked by the Posen Delegiertentag resolution of 1912 calling for Zionists to include aliyah (personal settlement in Palestine) in their Lebensprogram (life program). In common with both the Eastern European–born Democratic Faction generation Weizmann and Motzkin exemplified, as well as the German-born second generation in Germany itself, which Kurt Blumenfeld led, Goldmann was not merely a bright autodidact like Ahad Haam. He had earned a doctorate of law and had worked on, but not completed, a Ph.D. thesis in philosophy. Like them, too, in regard to policy advocacy within the WZO, he was inclined toward a pragmatic synthesis of Zionism’s political, cultural, and practical objectives. In his book The Jewish Paradox, written after the creation of Israel, Goldmann describes Weizmann as “half Herzlite, half Ahad Haamite,” an approving description that fits himself just as well. However he adds: “What has been achieved today is Herzl’s half, and as long as Israel ignores the Ahad


67

Haam half, by not making the state a spiritual center, Zionism will not fulfill its historic mission.”13 Describing his views as they crystallized in his Weimar period, Goldmann wrote: I thought of Zionism not just as a political movement that hoped to solve the Jewish question by establishing a national home, but also a people-oriented movement destined to create something new in Palestine—an order based on moral and social principles and consistent with the great Jewish ethical values. . . . I belonged to those [Zionists] who envisaged a radically new society. I was unequivocally on the side of labor and of the experiments then being made in Palestine with collective agricultural settlements such as the kibbutz (with no private property) and the co-operative moshav. However, I was never formally a member of the Zionist Labor Party . . . I was moderately leftist, progressive, and liberal, and remained in contact with the Zionist labor movement. In this respect I was a follower of Dr. Chaim Weizmann like the vast majority of German Zionists.14 One distinctive facet of Goldmann’s Weltanschauung must not be overlooked, however: His intellectual progression—or perhaps transformation is more apt—from pronounced Germanophilism during World War I, when he gained appointment as an official within the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to his post–World War II disenchantment with idealization of the nationstate idea. This early Germanophilism extended beyond the cultural sphere into identification with the militaristic German national state and justification of its authoritarian political system (modified only by social legislation) as opposed to the Western system of individual liberty.15 These advocacies contrast sharply with Goldmann’s later spirited defense of every citizen’s right to hold multiple loyalties and his enthusiastic anticipation of a post–nation-state humanity. A favorite theme of Goldmann’s speeches became his critique of what he called “the insanity of Hegel’s philosophy, making the state the climax of human history and the sacrosanct supreme value in human development.”16 Indeed, contrary to the thrust of Zionist ideology, Goldmann, as the proud bearer of some seven passports, came to personify the cosmopolitan image of “a wandering Jew.” Not surprisingly, this shatnez (forbidden mixture) of idealized cosmopolitanism and particularist Zionism came to be perceived by most Zionist leaders in the Yishuv as self-contradictory; a perception that deprived Goldmann of popular recognition as a true Zionist leader. Explaining his outlook, Goldmann argued that the nation-state is certainly not a permanent form of social organization: “In our own time the state has become the absolute ideal. . . . I am convinced that fifty or a hundred years from now the notion of the sovereign state will have disappeared.” To be sure, he added this caveat: “But do not misunderstand me: when I speak of abolishing the state I mean the political state, not the cultural entity it represents.”17

68

Gideon Shimoni

Because the WZO was a democratically structured movement of sorts, an examination of the Zionist thought of Goldmann must include his politicalparty affiliations within the movement. In this respect he was eclectic, nondogmatic, and mostly centrist. “Like everyone who grows, I have made shifts in my Zionist political position,” he acknowledged, adding, “Only stubborn minds stick to all their opinions for life. I have changed my mind many times on practical and administrative matters and on questions of party affiliation, and I am not ashamed of it.”18 Even in regard to the refusal to berate Jewish life in the diaspora that became his ideological trademark—a major theme to which I shall return—Goldmann changed his mind. On his first visit to Erez Israel in 1913, he was deeply impressed. Contrasting the rich promise of the burgeoning Yishuv with the poverty of Jewish life and culture in the diaspora, the young Goldmann evinced a negation of galut that contrasts glaringly with his well-known later views on the subject.19 A major political affiliation over the years was with the wing of General Zionism known as “Radical Zionists” whose prominent leader in Poland was Yitzhak Gruenbaum. Goldmann represented the Radicals in the Zionist Congresses of the 1920s. In this phase of his political allegiances, he was opposed to Chaim Weizmann on a major issue—the plan for creation of a Jewish Agency as an equal partnership between the WZO and eminent individual non-Zionists. The Radical Zionist political faction regarded Weizmann’s plan as a shameful dilution of Zionist ideological principles. It proposed limiting cooperation with the non-Zionists to the creation of a joint body purely for economic development of Palestine. The Radicals’ alternative strategies for expansion of Zionist influence were of a kind that culminated, after many trials and tribulations, in creation of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) as a parallel pro-Zionist but diaspora-focused organization. Goldmann persevered in this course and was one of the WJC’s founders and later became its foremost leader. From the mid-1930s until the establishment of Israel, the main trait of Goldmann’s intra-Zionist policy advocacy was for a partition solution to the Palestine question. In this respect his position largely converged with those of both Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. But after Israel’s establishment, Goldmann became an increasingly lone, and even maverick, policy advocate of far-reaching compromise-for-peace initiatives with the Arab world. In this most famous of all the phases in his political career, he, of course, was largely at loggerheads with David Ben-Gurion and afterward with Golda Meir, and found himself an outcast in relation to Israeli public opinion. Characteristic of Goldmann’s position in his last years is his statement, “As long as Israel’s relations with the Arab world remain unsettled, its survival is precarious. If any one basic idea deserves to be called the most fundamental conviction of my conception of Zionism it is that one.”20 With regard to the post–Six-Day War situation, he held that all the occupied territories should be restored to the Palestinians, except Jerusalem. “Israel must keep Jerusalem,” he wrote as late as the late 1970s.21


69

The political positions Goldmann advocated belong to the sphere of external Zionist politics. But he made his most distinctive mark as a Zionist thinker in the inward Jewish sphere. This lies in his position on the doctrine that has been labeled shlilat hagalut (negation of the exile). Goldmann refused to rest his conviction as a Zionist on radical denial of either the Jewish diaspora’s ongoing viability or its value, and he stuck to this position with remarkable perseverance throughout his life. This provided the ideological underpinning for the playing out of his distinctive role as founder and leader of the WJC. To be sure, the view that work for strengthening of Jewish life in the diaspora was compatible with work for national self-determination in Erez Israel was not an innovation made solely by Goldmann. It was part and parcel of the Zionist conception connoted by the term Gegenwartsarbeit (literally “work in the present,” but best understood as “Zionist work here and now in the diaspora”), which Russian Zionists at the Helsingfors conference of 1906 accepted and Zionists practiced intensely, especially those of the General Zionist persuasion in Eastern European countries, particularly Poland and Lithuania, between the two world wars. The names of several important Zionist leaders were associated with the practice of Gegenwartsarbeit in various countries— most notably Yitzhak Gruenberg in Poland—but Nahum Goldmann, above all others, became the spokesman for what might aptly be labeled “international Gegenwartsarbeit,” a conception that engendered the WJC. Goldmann’s ideological role in this important respect may be discerned as early as 1919—he was at the time merely twenty-three years of age—when he composed a thirty-two–page pamphlet entitled Die drei Forderrungen des jüdishen Volkes (The Three Demands of the Jewish People).22 This was his exposition of, and commentary on, the so-called Copenhagen Manifesto, the appeal issued by the Copenhagen Bureau of the WZO on October 28, 1918, setting forth the demands of the Jewish people to the Paris Peace Conference that was to convene in January 1919. Although the first demand was for a Jewish Palestine, the second was for Jewish autonomy in the diaspora, which implied a clear affirmation of the diaspora. Goldmann wrote, “Palestine and the diaspora are the two forms of existence of the Jewish people. Palestine is the higher, purer, more harmonious form; the diaspora the more problematic, more difficult, more specific. But the Jewish people constitute one unit (Einheit) in its two spheres of existence.” The third demand was for civic emancipation without it implying an obligation to relinquish or shed Judaism, “We demand a revision of emancipation, and we, as Jews, ask that we, recognized as the Jewish people, with the right of remaining Jewish, be emancipated.” The profundity of Goldmann’s conviction on the issue of affirming Jewish life in the diaspora, notwithstanding the primary goal of Erez Israelian construction aimed at self-determination there, may be gauged by his taking issue with the eminent Zionist thinker Jacob Klatzkin, who was in all respects bar this his much-admired mentor. Klatzkin was thirteen years his senior. Together

70

Gideon Shimoni

they founded and edited an independent Zionist newspaper in Heidelberg, the Freie Zionistische Blätter, and also launched the majestic Jewish Encyclopaedia project, which the Nazis brutally aborted. Goldmann has testified that his thinking on Jewish issues was greatly stimulated by daily contact with Klatzkin, who was then working on his magnum opus on Zionist theory Probleme des modernen Judentums (Problems of Judaism), later called Krisis und Entscheidung (Crisis and Decision). In Goldmann’s words: Klatzkin’s radical and original contribution . . . denied that any part of the people that remained in the diaspora after the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine could survive. . . . The unnatural existence of a Jewish community possessing no territorial center depended on one factor alone: the religious life that had dominated ghetto life throughout the centuries. Now that religion had lost its control over the Jew’s daily life as a result of modern emancipation, the Jewish minorities in other nations could no longer maintain their distinctive character. Moreover, he predicted, after a few generations of normal life in its own country the Palestinian nation would have no common language and no connection with the minority in the diaspora. . . . Diaspora Jews would become an amorphous group, retaining only superficial and meaningless symbols of the ancient Jewish religion and losing their own creative vitality.23 Yet, despite his high regard for Klatzkin, Goldmann stood fast then and ever thereafter in objecting to this radical shlilat hagalut thesis. Indeed, Raphael Patai likens the Goldmann-Klatzkin relationship to that between the Talmudic characters Elisha ben Abuya and Rabbi Meir or even, rather hyperbolically, between Aristotle and Plato.24 In his memoirs Goldmann himself recounts at some length his debate with his mentor. Interestingly, in arguing with Klatzkin, he admitted to being guided more by intuition than by logic, a disposition that perhaps drew upon his lifelong proclivity for the mystic dimension of life, which we noted earlier. Goldmann pitted an instinctive quasi-religious belief in the eternity of Jewish life against what he admitted were Klatzkin’s “logically irrefutable arguments.” He agreed that, logically speaking, the Jewish people ought to have vanished long ago because its diaspora existence contravened all the so-called laws of history. But he doubted the applicability of those laws to the exceptional case of the Jews. “I rejected Klatzkin’s thesis that the Jewish communities of the diaspora had no future because peoples lacking a territorial home cannot survive,” recorded Goldmann. “I reminded him that in contrast to other peoples the history of Jews is unique, that they have survived not one but several diasporas.”25 He argued that if a Jacob Klatzkin had lived at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, no doubt he would likewise have proved with the same cold logic that this meant the end of all Jewish life. But, clearly, such a pessimistic prognosis had not been vindicated by history. By


71

the same token, Klatzkin’s contemporary prognosis would be invalidated by future history. In fact, the operative balance between two extremes—national statehood on the one side and continuing diaspora on the other, rather than a zero sum game between the two—correctly portrays the overall historical record of Zionist ideology and practice. Even Klatzkin’s classic negation of the galut dogma was not entirely incompatible with Gegenwartsarbeit in his time. Although he insisted that diaspora Jewish life must not be regarded as an end in itself, even he allowed for work in the diaspora with a view to its serving as a resource that would be peeled off, so to speak, into the national home in Erez Israel. According to Klatzkin, the diaspora was to be fostered rationally only in so far as it sought to transcend itself and ultimately be eclipsed by Jewish statehood.26 By contrast, Goldmann nurtured an essentially irrational or mystic belief that diaspora was meant to be a permanent part of Jewish destiny alongside of the statehood, which he advocated with equal conviction, if not equal passion: It seems to me [Goldmann wrote] that the Jewish character shows an instinct for dispersal at least as strong as for the Land of Israel and territorial consolidation. . . . As a result, I held and still hold the opinion that the diaspora fulfills some deep need of the Jewish spirit or of the collective Jewish soul. . . . This led me to the conclusion that our situation cannot really be normalized by assembling a small portion of the people in Palestine and writing off the rest. I cannot accept the desirability of our becoming just a nation like all the rest, relinquishing the openness to the world and the global breadth of outlook that characterize us today. The situation of the Jews will never be normalized through a state alone, but only by creating a center in Palestine while at the same time retaining the great diaspora linked with the state in an enduring and mutually enriching relationship.27 There can be no doubt that Goldmann’s identification with the diaspora was profoundly rooted in his sense of Jewish history; it was part of his basic Weltanschauung. On the basis of a 1980 interview, Raphael Patai reports on Goldmann’s musings to the effect that love of Zion throughout the long exile could be likened to that love relationship in which the essential is not the fulfillment but the yearning, because the lovers are in dread of facing disappointment.28 One cannot but agree with Patai’s impression that, in the final analysis, underlying Goldmann’s global concept of the Jewish people, there resided an emotional identification with the diaspora “somewhat stronger than his solidarity with Israel.”29 One measure of this is evident from his having chosen never to become a permanent resident of Israel (although he acquired an apartment in Jerusalem) and from his declining a position, even a very high one, in the Israeli government.

72

Gideon Shimoni

Moreover, in Israel’s poststate era Goldmann’s long-established conviction on this point seemed to be greatly reinforced. An affirmation of diaspora life in regard to the inward-looking facet of Zionist policy, in conjunction with a much publicized compromise-for-peace position in regard to the outwardlooking facet, became all the more accentuated as the distinctive identifying marks of Goldmann’s Zionist thought and practice. These ideological and policy positions marginalized him in relation to the pantheon of Zionist leaders in his own time. Yet, today it is arguable that his conception of Israeldiaspora relations as a vital partnership, in which Israel is no more than primus inter pares, is at last enjoying considerable vindication even in Israel itself. But this is a subject that extends beyond the bounds of this chapter. It is illuminating of Goldmann’s deep-rooted attachment to the diaspora that in his book The Jewish Paradox he declared that even if he had the power to abolish the diaspora and concentrate all the Jews in Israel he would not wish to do so. He said he was convinced that “the reason why there is still a Jewish people in existence has a lot more to do with the diaspora than with Jewish states” [sic, meaning past periods of Jewish statehood]. He expressed the view that “if all the Jews had stayed in Palestine when the Romans destroyed the State and the Temple of Jerusalem in AD 70 there would probably be no Jews left today.”30 Associating Goldmann simply with the normative affirmation of diaspora that characterizes the Zionism of American Jews is tempting, especially because he spent most of his later years in the United States. His basic ideological position on this point was indeed in tune with that of the seminal American formulator of this view, Mordecai M. Kaplan, or even more so the version of diaspora affirmation Max Dimont popularized in his book entitled rather pretentiously, Jews, God and History, first published in 1962. Dimont argued that the existence of the diaspora is an absolute condition for the continued survival of the Jews; a condition equivalent in essentiality to the existence of the state of Israel.31 Certainly, the operative conclusions for Israel-diaspora relations Goldmann posited were much the same as those drawn by most American Zionist thinkers, including the European-educated Simon Rawidowicz.32 However, the historical-sociological reasoning that Goldmann advanced for his views was not quite the same. For the core rationale of the typical American Zionist refutation of shlilat hagalut dogma was the postulated exceptionalism of American society by virtue of its uniquely covenantal and therefore inclusive, national identity, by contrast with Europe’s ubiquitous organic, and therefore exclusive nationalism. But Goldmann never really embraced this indigenous American Zionist analysis. The context of his Zionist thought remained essentially European. Indeed, he retained a goodly measure of Eurocentric cultural snobbishness and skepticism about the very claim to exceptionalism of the United States in relation to the fate of the Jews. “No, I never accepted the idea that America is different from any other diaspora country,” he averred in his debate with


73

David Ben-Gurion at the ideological conference that took place in Jerusalem in the late 1950s. “As for America’s being a second Babylon,” he added, “I do not begin to believe anything of the sort.”33 In sum, as in his 1920s’ argument with Klatzkin, also in the post–state of Israel situation, Goldmann’s belief that the diaspora was both essential and viable still derived from intuition and was not contingent on the postulated exceptionalism of the United States. In concluding this analysis of Nahum Goldmann as a Zionist thinker, we should note that he deemed the word “paradox” most apt to describe the Jewish experience in history. He titled his major book of essays originally published in French, Le Paradoxe Juif (1976). We might equally aptly choose this word to describe the nature of Goldmann’s thought as a Zionist. To be sure, he is not the only thinker to whom the term “paradox,” implying an oxymoron, has been applied in relation to Zionism. Yitzhak Breuer of Agudat Israel, for example, has been called “the non-Zionist Zionist,” and—although on different grounds—the reverse term, “the Zionist non-Zionist,” might well be applied to Judah L. Magnes because he shared so many typically nonZionist reservations concerning Zionist policy. In the same paradoxical vein one might well supplement the already well-worn aphorism, Goldmann, the “statesman without a state” with yet another—Nahum Goldmann, the “Diasporist of Zionism.”

Notes 1. Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann, trans. Helen Sebba (New York, 1969) 228, 94, (in that order); see also ibid., 290–91. 2. For example, he is not included in the best known anthology, Arthur Herzberg’s The Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader, first published in 1959 and republished several times since then. 3. Raphael Patai, Nahum Goldmann: His Mission to the Gentiles (Tuscaloosa, 1987), 67 4. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, trans. Steve Cox (London, 1978), 17. 5. See Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 25 6. Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 13–14 7. Ibid., 14. 8. Goldmann, Autobiography, 81. 9. For example, ibid., 285. Another example, “The Jewish people is the most paradoxical in the world. It is not better than others, or worse, but unique and different— by virtue of its structure, history, destiny and character—from all other peoples, and paradoxical in its contradictions.” Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 7. 10. Nahum Goldmann, “The Zionist Ideology and the Reality of Israel,” Foreign Affairs (Fall 1978): 70. 11. Goldmann, Autobiography, 63.

74

Gideon Shimoni

12. This, according to Goldmann’s recollection as stated years later in Nahum Goldmann, “Hatnuah hazionit, haam vehamedinah: neum bifnei havaad hapoel hazioni” (The Zionist Movement, the Nation, and the State: Speech to the Zionist Executive), Session 1, May 7, 1952, Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem 3\12614. 13. Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 89. 14. Goldmann, Autobiography, 94. 15. See Goldmann’s own retrospective admission of this “misjudgment” in Autobiography, 50–51. 16. See for example, Nahum Goldmann, “The Vital Partnership” in The Jerusalem Ideological Conference, Forum IV, WZO, Jerusalem (Spring 1959), 131. 17. Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 107. 18. Goldmann, Autobiography, 73. To be sure, he adds, “When it comes to principles, however, my conception of Zionism as a great historical, moral and spiritual movement is essentially the same today as it was then.” 19. See Nahum Goldmann, Erez Israel: Reisebriefe aus Palästina (Frankfurt am Main, 1914). Also Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 39–43. 20. Goldmann, Autobiography, 283 21. Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 100. This English version of the original work in French was published in 1976 and again in 1978. 22. See Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 65–66. The translated quotations that follow are as given by Patai. 23. Goldmann, Autobiography, 75–79. 24. Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 56. 25. Goldmann, Autobiography, 75–79. 26. See Jacob Klatzkin, Tehumim: maamarim (Spheres: Essays) (Berlin, 1925), esp. 81–82. 27. Goldmann, Autobiography, 77–79. 28. Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 38. 29. Ibid., 64. 30. Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 77–78. 31. See Max Dimont, Jews, God and History (New York, 1962), esp. 418. 32. See Simon Rawidowicz, Israel: The Ever-Dying People and Other Essays, ed. Benjamin C. I. Ravid (London/Toronto, 1986). 33. Nahum Goldmann, “In Summation and Rejoinder,” in The Jerusalem Ideological Conference, Forum IV, WZO, Jerusalem (Spring 1959), 228. See also Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 78: “My own view is that it is an illusion to believe that the American Jewry of today, with all its financial and intellectual resources could eventually replace the European Jewry”; 146: “My opinion of American Jewry is very mixed.”

3

( Negation of the Galut and the Centrality of Israel Nahum Goldmann and David Ben-Gurion Yosef Gorny During a pretty lively discussion I once told Ben-Gurion that he considered problems from the viewpoint of Sde Boker, his little kibbutz, whereas I saw them from a plane flying twelve thousand meters high. —Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, 57

ne aspect of Zionist history that is psychologically fascinating, conceptually interesting, and politically important is the existence of “rival pairs” of leaders. Theodor Herzl and Ahad Haam faced off over the essence of Zionism; Menachem Ussishkin and Herzl did so over the Uganda Scheme; Chaim Weizmann and Vladimir Jabotinsky did so over political ties with Great Britain; David Ben-Gurion and Weizmann did so over Zionist policy during World War II. The last “paired clash,” which is the topic of this chapter, was between Nahum Goldmann and David Ben-Gurion. Although it had some “old” elements, for the most part it stemmed from the new circumstances that were dependent on the radical change in the historical status of the Jewish people after the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. It had to do with the relationship between the Yishuv that had become a state and the golah (exile) that had consequently become a tefuzah (diaspora). This new relationship, which was highly charged from its inception despite containing elements

O

75

76

Yosef Gorny

of older disputes—such as the debate over the centrality of Erez Israel in the Zionist enterprise, the conflict between political and spiritual Zionism, and even the tension between pioneering Zionism and general Zionism—was the result of an unprecedented situation for the Zionist movement. On both sides of the relationship, the difference was one of coercion versus freedom. For the Jews of Erez Israel, establishing a sovereign state meant liberation from the coercion of British rule, whereas for the Jews in democratic countries, it meant the ability to choose freely between remaining in their native lands and moving to their historical homeland. Such a situation, immediately following the annihilation of most of Eastern European Jewry, had never before faced the Zionist movement. This chapter therefore analyzes how the two men perceived the new situation, what they agreed on, and where they disagreed. From the overall national standpoint, given the new situation that prevailed among the Jewish people after the Holocaust and the establishment of the state, the two concepts mentioned in the chapter’s title—galut and centrality—require clarification. The distinction between golah and galut (both of which can be translated into English as “exile”) is not clear; the terms tend to be used interchangeably. Nevertheless, for this discussion, the semantic difference can express a real difference. Golah is a political, legal, and even physical situation in which a group that has been exiled from its country or homeland suffers overall discrimination and oppression. Galut, in contrast, reflects more of a spiritual and emotional condition, a sense of foreignness an individual or community feels. In this sense, the feeling of galut is not necessarily dependent on a state of golah. It can exist either in the sovereign state of Israel or in the free diaspora. It can apply to individuals who feel out of place where they live, or to a particular community that is worried about its spiritual and cultural survival. Assimilation in the Jewish diaspora and the problem of the Jewish character of Israeli society are examples of manifestations of a collective sense of galut. This was the focus of the debate between Goldmann and Ben-Gurion. The second concept, center or centrality, like the concept of galut, belongs to the religious and national tradition. Both the religious Zionist Mizrahi movement and the “free thinking” Zionist Ahad Haam sought to establish a spiritual center of high social quality in Erez Israel. Paradoxically, the aspiration for a center in Erez Israel was simultaneously recognition of the eternity of the golah. After all, the center is a derivative of its perimeter, not vice versa. But according to the various Zionist outlooks, the survival of the perimeter—the golah— depended on the strength and quality of the center. The political character and the conceptual and spiritual essence of this reciprocity between the center and its perimeter were at the heart of the dispute between Goldmann and BenGurion. Like every dispute in people’s lives, and especially those between political leaders, this one had several motivations. Before beginning, therefore, we need to try to rank their importance in the context discussed here. Unquestionably, Goldmann and Ben-Gurion represent two types of Zionist leadership, analogous perhaps to the Greek proverb about the difference

Negation of the Galut and the Centrality of Israel

77

between the fox and the hedgehog: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”1 Herzl, Jabotinsky, and Goldmann were “foxes,” whereas Weizmann, Ussishkin, and Ben-Gurion were “hedgehogs.” In his own mind and in Ben-Gurion’s, Goldmann was “the wandering Jew.” BenGurion considered this concept derogatory, but to Goldmann it was a badge of honor. Goldmann knew many languages and had lived in several cultures. Although Ben-Gurion had at one time been interested in classical Greek culture and had even tried to learn its language, and although he liked to amuse himself with Buddhist philosophy, he was entirely rooted in one culture only—the Hebrew culture. Goldmann had political power in the absence of a territorial base; BenGurion had his in the exact opposite situation. Goldmann, like Weizmann, was a leader without a party, whereas Ben-Gurion’s leadership is indescribable without the party. Both of them were aware of their differences and even appreciated one another’s traits; this made collaborating politically on several decisive issues in the history of the national movement possible. Goldmann enjoyed human company, although this preference was motivated more by self-love than by love of others; Ben-Gurion was an introvert and a recluse. Goldmann was inclined to analyze the character of his friends and rivals because he viewed ideology as an abstraction of psychology; Ben-Gurion tended not to do this. Certainly, Goldmann’s opposition to BenGurion was part of his attraction to him as a national leader. He described Ben-Gurion as a tyrant who ruled Israel with no-holds-barred, whom everyone except one man—Goldmann himself, of course—was afraid to disobey. But most of all he regarded Ben-Gurion as a “great statesman” and “a very able and cunning diplomat and politician” who “was absolutely unscrupulous. He never pursued any objective other than realizing the Zionist ideal and satiating his immense ambition.”2 These remarks were not meant to be derogatory; after all, even Goldmann shared a few of these traits. With charming candor, he confessed: I make up my mind fast, and I dislike long discussions, even if that means that I make mistakes. Patience is not one of my virtues. . . . Generally speaking I have a fairly high opinion of myself and I often give myself cause for it! . . . By nature, I am not a democrat. . . . I do not believe that parliamentary democracy as it exists today will last very much longer. The world has become too complex for its problems to be soluble by our good old democratic methods.3 As a result, he saw only one way in which he was Ben-Gurion’s exact opposite. Ben-Gurion, Goldmann claimed, “took himself seriously,” whereas, “Not only do I not take myself too seriously, but I have a tendency to be slightly skeptical: I do not exaggerate the importance of one man, and I do not believe that my every action has historic meaning.”

78

Yosef Gorny

Nevertheless, despite his skepticism about himself, Goldmann was not a modest man, and he did not hide the pleasure he derived from Ben-Gurion’s high opinion of him. The reason for this high opinion, he believed, was that “I had the courage to oppose him.” He also considered it important to stress that his main dispute with Ben-Gurion was on the “Arab question,” whereas: For the rest we felt fairly close to each other, and on matters such as the partition of Palestine and negotiations with post-Nazi Germany he was on my side. In his fundamental conception of the character of the Zionist movement and of the State of Israel, Ben-Gurion and I were in full agreement: both of us were convinced that if Israel became a state like any other it would not survive.4 For this reason, Goldmann did not hide the fact that Ben-Gurion had “forced” him to accept the WZO presidency. Both of them had clearly utopian leanings. Ben-Gurion’s were manifested in his “utopian leaps”5 from Zionism to socialism and from there to messianism. Goldmann, in contrast, believed: For great ideas, you have to be irrational; you have to try to reach the inaccessible, to want more than can ever be realized. It is the great utopias that create history, not the great realities. The Zionist idea, for example, is thoroughly irrational: for a people to wish to return to its former lands after two thousand years’ absence goes against all reason. If Zionism had been rational it would have had to find another, more or less empty, country.6 Neither of them was satisfied with Israel as an ordinary state. In Goldmann’s opinion, “although we need a state just as every nation does, it cannot be a state like every state. One more Lebanon, one more of some tiny country . . . won’t be enough to ensure our nation’s survival.”7 Indeed, Ben-Gurion was more comfortable with Goldmann than with other Zionist leaders. Goldmann was not Chaim Weizmann, in whose shadow Ben-Gurion lived in the 1930s and 1940s in the international political arena; he was not Vladimir Jabotinsky, whom Ben-Gurion viewed as a dangerous political alternative in the WZO; he was not Yitzhak Tabenkin or Meir Yaari, whom Ben-Gurion envied because they were the leaders of the kibbutz movement; nor was he Abba Hillel Silver, whom Ben-Gurion suspected of wanting to control Israel’s fund-raising apparatus to become some sort of ruler and national commander of the state of Israel. Goldmann, the multicultural “fox” who basked in the international political scene, who refused to head a political party that would act as an opposition to Ben-Gurion and Mapai, simply did not have any of these traits that Ben-Gurion saw as threats. Ben-Gurion did, however— with his practical political wisdom—understand the advantages of Nahum Goldmann’s unique qualities. Therefore, Goldmann said, Ben-Gurion was the


79

one who, with his characteristic vehemence, persuaded him to accept the WZO presidency. We can thus say that agreement and cooperation developed between BenGurion, the “pragmatic Zionist fundamentalist,” and Goldmann, the “fundamentalist Zionist pragmatist”—that is, between a man whose political path started with a principle and ended up in compromise, and one who realized from the start that without compromise the principle would be unattainable even in part. Thus they were both active partners in two historically far-reaching political decisions: the idea of partition, which led to the establishment of the state, and the reparations agreement with Germany, which ensured its economic survival. Thus, too, they agreed that the time was not ripe for Israel to separate religion and state. Aside from being politically pragmatic, they both negated the galut as a spiritual and emotional phenomenon, even though Goldmann, in keeping with his paradoxical way of thinking, proudly said that he was considered “by many an ideologue of what is called diaspora nationalism.”8 Typically, Ben-Gurion expressed his negation of the galut in a torrent of anger, whereas Goldmann did so with haughty elegance. In 1907, a year after immigrating to Erez Israel, the young Ben-Gurion wrote to his father about certain Jews who were giving the situation in Erez Israel a bad reputation. He called them “the mummified Jews who have already sunk up to their necks in the swamps of the galut.” In contrast, he extolled “the proud, new fighting Jew.”9 The young Goldmann, on the other hand, in the early 1920s, loved traveling and published a feuilleton about the types of travelers and tourists. He classified them by nationality, describing two types of travelers: the English and the Germans. The English bore their national culture naturally and openly, whereas the Germans tended to conceal theirs. But they had in common the fact that both had a home to which they always returned. He described the Jews, in contrast, as a special, exceptional type because we are always the only ones who are constantly on the road—albeit not always in practice. Psychologically, in any case, the Jew is on the road. This is a chapter of its own, a big, long chapter, and the most important chapter of the fundamental Jewish psychology. We have all the marks of a man who is on the road. The difference is that these marks have become stable and ingrained in us as much as the trait of being at home is ingrained in others. After all, for us being on the road is our home. He then proceeded to analyze the psychology of the homeless wanderers, emphasizing “that we are insecure and have the inner feeling of wayfarers who have no secure, stable way of life.” Always being mentally on the road made the Jews “virtuosos of insecurity,” “the most talented jugglers of all the nations, the best acrobats, the most gifted of all illusionists on the face of the earth.” This is the origin of the Jewish audacity that many people erroneously view as a source of strength and security. And the Jews are so good at pretending that “even we ourselves are often fooled and forget our helplessness, the

80

Yosef Gorny

fact that we are hovering in the air, our rootlessness, the fact that we are constantly on the road, until the hour of soul-searching arrives, some abnormal situation, some treacherous moment, and then we feel the rift inside us, our tragic situation.” Anyone who reads the descriptions of the “wandering Jew” carefully and comprehends them will find in them much of Goldmann’s own character. The last sentence in this feuilleton, however, reveals Goldmann as the wandering Zionist: “There is nothing better than being on the road—if you left your home and are returning home. There is nothing more terrible than being on the road—if you have left a strange place and your journey will end in a strange place.”10 This description explains his impressions of his first trip home to Erez Israel in 1924, the home that never became his permanent place of residence. He was extremely impressed with the practical, “productive” sense of the Jewish settlers. In that sense they resembled the English, who were “such wonderful colonizers, because they have a superb understanding of the facts and take the direct route in striving to reach their goal.” In contrast, “we Jews of the golah lack this talent. We take a thousand crooked paths and only occasionally choose the one short, direct route. We are experienced in forming new relationships, coming up with all sorts of new ruses and complications, but only occasionally do we produce simple facts.”11 In contrast to the “typical debates of galut Jewry,” which are characterized by “hair-splitting . . . about the remote future of the Jewish people,” the questions for the Jews in Erez Israel are practical, “productive,” everyday ones: building houses, acquiring plots of land, and founding villages. The fate of Judaism doesn’t and shouldn’t interest them, “because the Jew there knows that his present tasks are much more important and productive than all the theoretical ‘solutions’ to the big problems.”12 This is unquestionably one of the most outstanding expressions of Yosef Hayim Brenner’s form of negation of the galut. Here the “Brennerian antigalut” fervor is expressed by as non-Brennerian a man as Goldmann, lover of the good life, knight of intellectual discourse, who would show no sign of anguish in public. But perhaps that is precisely why he, like Brenner, admired the people of Erez Israel, “who [were] silent so long as [they were] productive,” and disdained the “unpleasant, grating” galut traits, “such as the constant yelling, the vocal loquacity, the passion for proclamations and arguments.” All these, which the galut Jews need to reinforce their national pride and justify their spiritual existence as a people, are not needed at all by the Jews of Erez Israel, where the nation does not need “self-praise” to survive spiritually.13 This sort of negation of the galut was in perfect harmony with BenGurion’s thinking. But there was something else in these remarks that the two also shared. The practical British colonial sense that Goldmann found in the Yishuv is not far from the conception of mamlakhtiut (state-building) that Ben-Gurion was advocating at the time as secretary general of the Histadrut: disciplined action by an organized population working together toward a common goal. This prestate mamlakhtiut venerated action and sneered at talk.


81

Attributing this negation of the galut to Nahum Goldmann’s “youthful spirit,” however, would be a mistake. Forty years later, he still had not changed his mind about the lack of a sense of mamlakhtiut in the political culture of the galut. In 1966, when summing up the history and nature of the reparations negotiations with Germany, he again spoke of what he considered the galut mentality of those who rejected the agreement. To ensure the nation’s spiritual survival, the Jews in the galut had to ignore the non-Jews around them and have a sense of superiority; this sense was fed by the collective consciousness of being more moral and having a greater intellect than those around them. Under these conditions, in the absence of a need for mamlakhtiut, Jewry could keep up the boycott of Spain for more than five centuries. Goldmann felt no contempt for this galut mentality. He even appreciated it as a method that made collective spiritual and psychological survival possible. But he could not accept its coexistence with the Jews’ new need for mamlakhtiut after World War II, and even earlier. To his mind, the non–mamlakhti galut approach, which was essential and even justified in the ghetto days, is completely unacceptable for modern Jewry, which, long before the Jewish state, proved—through the founding of the WZO and the WJC—that it was firmly resolved to be no longer an object of history, dependent on the good or bad will of other nations, but rather to take its fate into its hands. This meant, first, steps toward normalizing the Jews’ national political status. This was how the more powerful ideology of negation of the galut was manifested politically. It sought to bring about a total historical turnabout in the Jewish people’s relations with the other nations. Goldmann therefore stressed repeatedly that “a nation that intends to appear and function in the world historical arena along with the rest of the nations as an equal cannot continue using the same psychological methods to ensure continuity that it developed during the years of living in the ghetto.” After all, in the “normal” state of affairs in the international arena, “nations that don’t want to withdraw from world history or are not content to stand on the sidelines of history with folded hands cannot ignore another nation’s existence.”14 From this standpoint, Goldmann’s attitude toward mamlakhtiut was identical to Ben-Gurion’s. They differed in one respect, however: their view of the moral value of life in the galut. Goldmann accepted it with understanding, esteem, and even affection, whereas Ben-Gurion rejected it entirely. The direct, dramatic clash between them took place at the Zionist ideological conference in Jerusalem in 1957. The background for this debate included the following events: In 1953, Ben-Gurion provocatively and demonstratively quit the WZO, charging that it was no longer fulfilling its Zionist purpose, that is, aliyah (immigration) to Israel. He also resigned from the government and moved to Kibbutz Sde Boker as a symbolic act meant to inspire pioneering settlement of the Negev. After he left the government, the covenant between the WZO and the Israeli government was ratified (during Moshe Sharett’s brief term as prime minister). This covenant gave the WZO a special status in Israel, which Ben-Gurion opposed vehemently.

82

Yosef Gorny

It is worth noting the paradox that emerged in the debate over the covenant regarding the attitudes of Goldmann and Ben-Gurion toward the galut. Goldmann differentiated between ordinary Jews who were sympathetic to and supportive of Israel as long as its existence did not interfere with their own lives, and Zionists who remained unconditionally loyal to it. Thus he distinguished between the “positive galut” Jews, who formed a minority, and the less positive majority. Ben-Gurion rejected this distinction. To him, they were all positive provided that they complied with a few easy national precepts. For Ben-Gurion, these were four stormy years when lofty hopes ended in bitter disappointment. He was not followed to the Negev by young pioneers coming to make the desert bloom. His “heir,” Moshe Sharett, did not do exactly what Ben-Gurion wanted; he even showed independence in approving the covenant between the state and the WZO. Furthermore, the Sinai Campaign, despite all the justified enthusiasm that it evoked among the people, ended with a withdrawal under U.S. pressure. Ben-Gurion did not respond to his disappointment and frustration by sinking into despair. Instead, as in his earlier years of public leadership, he was animated by a new idea. This always meant practical plans of a utopian nature, as with his ideas in the 1920s to turn the Histadrut into a communal “workers’ battalion” and the political negotiations in the 1930s over his plans for a Middle Eastern federation. Now, in the 1950s, he traded in his Zionist ideology for messianic mysticism. Thus Ben-Gurion, who had rebelled against religion and the rabbinical establishment in his youth and remained a “free thinker” until the end of his life, and who as an adult had given up socialism, in his old age traded in the Zionist ideology for faith and the messianic morality of the prophets,15 with its particularistic national and universalistic panhuman content. Fired by these ideas, and perhaps also concealed anger at Goldmann for having obtained what his rival had refused to give him, Ben-Gurion came to the ideological conference to speak his mind. His long, very dry, historic address was devoted entirely to messianism. He summarized what he had to say in three principles on which he sought to base “recognition of the Jewish purpose and Jewish unity”:

1. Hebrew education, centered on knowledge of the Bible. 2. An increase in emotional attachment to the state of Israel to be achieved by various means (visits; capital investments; encouragement of children, teenagers, and university students to spend time— whether a lot or a little—in Israel; pioneering training for the top youngsters and intelligentsia so that they could take part in building up the land). 3. “Intensification of the attachment to the vision of messianic redemption, that is, the prophets’ vision of the human Jewish redemption.”16


83

The threefold attachment that Ben-Gurion posited between Israel and the future of the Jewish people—to Hebrew culture, to the state, and to messianic redemption—reflected his “Israel-centric” national conception clearly and sharply. What is new about this conception is that Zionism is supplanted by messianism, although whether Ben-Gurion had thought deeply about its meaning in the secular sense that he himself had in mind is not certain. After all, it could be interpreted in a particularistic political manner, that is, calling for bringing the Jewish people together in their land, or in a universalistic moral manner, referring to Jewish continuity in diaspora communities, as Reform Judaism advocates. Goldmann viewed things differently: “Israel was, is, and should be a joint enterprise, the biggest joint enterprise of the Jewish community living in Israel and of the Jewish people elsewhere, which I will deliberately call the golah.”17 Why did Goldmann deliberately refer to the diaspora as the golah? Without any doubt, it was because he rejected it, although in the existential sense rather than as a matter of principle. In this sense, he drew a distinction between the state and the golah. Although he maintained that a lack of full cooperation between the state and the golah would cause Israeli society severe difficulties, for the golah it would mean “certain disaster. Israel will eventually be able to survive without the golah. The golah will not be able to survive over time without Israel.”18 Unquestionably, in this respect Goldmann was the conscious spiritual and political heir of Ahad Haam. In the spiritual sense, according to Ahad Haam, a high-quality cultural and social center in Erez Israel was essential for Jewish continuity in the golah. Politically, however, as early as 1912 Ahad Haam hoped for the gradual formation of a Jewish majority in Erez Israel. Following the Balfour Declaration, he did not even discount the possibility of a Jewish state in Erez Israel once the Jews formed a clear majority there.19 Presumably, therefore, at this point Goldmann’s own view was derived from Ahad Haam’s famous distinction between two forms of negation of the galut: the “subjective” one, which rejects the galut in principle, based on personal feelings, and the “objective” one,20 which accepts it as something bearable. Goldmann, however, further developed and updated Ahad Haam’s teachings regarding the negation of the galut. In view of the catastrophic destruction of traditional and national Jewish society in Eastern Europe and the changes that had occurred in the status of the Jews in free Western society, where anti-Semitism went undercover, Goldmann developed “severe doubts as to whether Jewish continuity in the golah is possible” unless Israel takes the place of Eastern European Jewry as the national cultural center, acting as a brake on the growing trends of assimilation in the Jewish diaspora worldwide. Moreover, Goldmann—an expert at finding paradoxes in Jewish life—viewed the existence of that segment of the Jewish people that, in large part, had previously been in Eastern Europe, as more of a source of “self-respect, pride, and profound recognition of the meaning of [the] existence [of the Jewish

84

Yosef Gorny

people]” than those presently living in the free diaspora in Western countries. For the latter, pride in their uniqueness had given way to “imitation and assimilation” as described by Ahad Haam,21 but to an extent and depth that were unprecedented in Jewish society since the start of the Emancipation. He therefore reached the pessimistic conclusion that if the Jewish people living in the free West “cannot find a new source of pride and self-respect, it will collapse psychologically.” Such an extreme dialectical negation of the galut, according to which the galut was dying in freedom, was achieved only by his friend, the philosopher Jacob Klatzkin.22 But even though he always agreed with the historical logic of this outlook, Goldmann did not accept it because the Jewish historical experience had proved that this nation had a unique knack of recovering from every national tragedy in its history. Furthermore, in the present, unlike in the past, the Jewish people has freedom in the diaspora and sovereignty in Israel, which it can use to fight against this danger. Goldmann therefore saw salvation in the formation of an equal partnership between the state and the golah—a golah that proudly bears its Jewish cultural heritage, which must be recognized and appreciated even in the new Hebrew society in the state of Israel. Goldmann believed that this partnership would make Jewish history unique from then on. In his opinion, the nation’s spiritual, political, and economic strength all should be invested in “achieving this partnership despite the normal trends of life. Something unparalleled—at least in the history of the other nations—should be fashioned.”23 And this could be done, Goldmann believed, only through acceptance of all of Jewish history, in Erez Israel and in the golah: “The inevitability of fate in its entirety, with its heroic and tragic parts, its glorious and ugly episodes, applies to nations even more than to individuals, and it applies to a nation in our revolutionary condition following the establishment of the state even more than to nations that have continuously lived normal, routine lives.”24 True, Goldmann concluded, “the tragedy of the galut came to an end” following the establishment of the state because any “subjective” negator of the galut could now move to his or her own state. But the galut remained because—in keeping with its historical essence and cultural importance—it had to serve as one of the two pillars (the other being the state of Israel) on which the edifice of the Jews as the eternal people would rest in the future. Recognition of the historical purpose of an equal partnership between the state and the diaspora had Goldmann apprehensive “about excessive veneration of the state,” for fear of undermining the balance between the two. This remark, which sounded blasphemous given the “messianic” mood in Israel after the Sinai victory, attests not only to his public courage, but also chiefly to his worry that the “cult” of the state would supplant concern for the nation—that is, all the Jewish people scattered around the world in all galut communities— which had been the essence of Zionism from its inception. Moreover, we should stress that Goldmann’s misgivings about the cult of the state originated in his utopian political tendencies, which led him to view the


85

division of society into nation-states as a temporary historical phenomenon, essential but not good. His deepest utopian hope was for a multinational political federation in the future. He pointed out that he had expressed this fondness for utopianism thirty-five years before having misgivings about the cult of mamlakhtiut in Israel.25 This viewpoint, which ascribes greater value to the golah at the expense of the importance of the state, was strongly opposed by BenGurion, who came out against it with a vehement polemic (which was typical of him) and poetic ardor (which was rare in his public appearances). His remarks are therefore worth presenting in full. I do not share in the glorification of the galut that we heard from Dr. Goldmann. Each of us is in awe of and has profound admiration for the great moral strength shown by the Jews in their wanderings and sufferings in the golah. They knew how to bear their suffering in the golah; they knew how to withstand enemies, scorners, oppressors, and murderers without giving up their Jewishness. But the galut in which the Jews lived and still live is, in my eyes, a miserable, poor, wretched, dubious experience that one should not take pride in. On the contrary, it should be totally rejected. I respect everyone who has known illness and suffers pain, who struggles for survival and does not give in to his bitter fate, but I will not consider his situation ideal. Therefore, to counter the heroism of the struggle within the exilic illness, he posited alternative heroes: the builders of the land and the state who, in their everyday lives, fulfilled the aspiration for redemption before the term Zionism was coined and afterwards rebelled against the galut of which they had despaired. They were not rebelling against the moral heroism of the Jewish people, who knew how to withstand all their oppressors, but against dependence on foreigners, against the material and spiritual diminution, against the lack of Jewish and human freedom and independence in the galut, and in any galut. By adding the words “in any galut,” he was including those in the past and in the present, in the East and in the West. Thus, in Ben-Gurion’s opinion, a distinction must be made in principle between the galut Jew and the condition of galut. As a case in point, he chose Shakespeare’s Shylock for the climax of his emotional polemic against Goldmann: I do not disdain Shylock for making his living from usury; he had no choice in his place of galut, and morally speaking, he was better than the glorious nobles who humiliated him. But I will not turn Shylock into an ideal and an exemplary man whom we should strive to emulate.

86

Yosef Gorny The Jews of the golah are not Shylocks—but it is hard to reconcile glorification of galut life with the ideal that seventy years ago was given the name Zionism.26

He concluded by charging that Goldmann’s “glorification” of the galut as expressed in his remarks runs counter to the original Zionism and even promotes assimilation. As a result, he said, it is also anti-Jewish because “Judaism is more than Zionism, and the existence of Judaism is irreconcilable with assimilation, which is the lot of most of those in the golah who now call themselves ‘Zionists.’”27 The logic of his argument that Goldmann-style “Zionism” promotes assimilation is hard to understand because how the “galut Zionists,” to use BenGurion’s term, differ from the “galut Jews” whose connection to the state of Israel is passive, is not clear. Unquestionably, however, Goldmann’s remarks were the first manifestation of his inclination to trade in Ahad Haam’s negation of the galut for Simon Dubnow’s “necessity of the galut.”28 Goldmann quite likely was unaware at the time of this internal evolution of his worldview, but it seems to me that tracking his views over the next few years provides proof of it. This gradual change was directly related to the atmosphere and ideology of overemphasis on the value of the state of Israel, which came up every time Israel won a war against the Arab countries: the War of Independence, the Sinai Campaign, and especially the Six-Day War. Goldmann, the originator of the doctrine of balanced cooperation between the diaspora and Israel, objected vehemently to both of the conceptions that were liable to prevent this: the universalistic one, engendered, he said, by the German philosopher Hegel, and the particularistic Jewish one, which was propounded by David Ben-Gurion, although Goldmann did not say so explicitly. On the universal level, his opposition to the “deification of the state,” which he considered immoral, meant that “dual loyalty” was an absolute requirement, despite the fears of large numbers of diaspora Jews at the time. Goldmann was far ahead of his time in arguing that “every human being lives with many loyalties, and the richer he is, the more loyalties he will have.”29 He foresaw the decline in the moral value of the state and the development of transnational ethnic, cultural, and spiritual ties in today’s terms. For the Jews this would be manifested, he said, not only in the freedom to maintain their religious and cultural ways of life in their own countries, but also, and most importantly, in their right to have ties with the state of Israel and to be loyal to it. Ten years later, in the wake of the victory in the Six-Day War and the fervor that gripped not only the Jews in Israel but also most of diaspora Jewry as well, Goldmann reiterated his argument for the doctrine of balance between Israel and the diaspora even more strongly. But this time he focused on the other side. Whereas in the past he had preached not overemphasizing the value of the state, now, in view of Israel’s brilliant victory, he attributed greater value to the diaspora. The existence of the diaspora, he maintained,


87

like the existence of the state, is an existential matter for the Jewish people. In this way the Jews differ from other nations with national diasporas. From this standpoint, there is no longer any room for the doctrine of “negation of the galut.” Moreover, according to him, Zionism “has never preached total negation of the galut,” but rather aspired to constitute a center in which the Jews could be a “normal” nation. But this very mixture of diaspora and state in a single national framework is indicative of the Jewish phenomenon— “abnormal” but positive. Another ten years later, in a series of conversations with the journalist Leo Abramowitz, Goldmann declared, “even if I had the power to abolish the diaspora and concentrate all the Jews in Israel I would not do it. In fact I am convinced that the reason why there is still a Jewish people in existence has a lot more to do with the diaspora than with Jewish states.” This idea is based on the standard historiography that says that the unique image of the Jewish people was determined in the galut and not in the Jews’ own land. Therefore, if the Jewish people is necessary, the galut must be necessary, too. Furthermore, because a political and moral connection exists between the Holocaust and the state, the galut, by virtue of which the Jewish people exists, paid for the establishment of the state with its 6 million victims.30 Thus, the man who had said twenty years before that the golah could not exist without Israel was now saying that “the diaspora is a kind of guarantee or reserve” for the survival of the Jewish people. As a result he believed, “the life of the Jewish people is not uniquely in the diaspora nor uniquely in Israel, but in both. Israel and the diaspora should be interdependent.”31 Goldmann had now definitely diverged from Ahad Haam’s political views, which held that Israel formed the center on which the survival of the Jewish people as a worldwide phenomenon depended. Now his doctrine regarding cooperation between the state of Israel and the Jewish diaspora had achieved perfect balance. Paradoxically, this outlook lessened the importance of the Zionist movement. After all, all forms of Zionism held that Jewish society in Erez Israel was supposed to be the center. This was what Goldmann’s heated clash with Ben-Gurion had been about: Goldmann’s demand that the WZO be given a special, exclusive status in the state of Israel, as the representative of the Jews of the golah. From that point on, as occurred with Ben-Gurion, although for different reasons and under different circumstances, the focus in his overall national conception shifted from the Zionist movement to the Jewish people. Although Goldmann did not officially resign from the Zionist movement, as Ben-Gurion had a generation earlier, he gradually moved away from it. After the Yom Kippur War, Goldmann’s doubts regarding the historic achievement of Zionism and the centrality of Israel increased. From here on, his criticism of those responsible for Israeli policy in the Jewish-Arab conflict became a prophecy that rejected the purpose of the state’s existence in view of the dwindling, increasingly assimilated galut. This is not to say that Goldmann rejected the very existence of the state or cast doubt on the possibility that it

88

Yosef Gorny

could survive in the turbulent Middle East. He had simply started to question the point of its existence in view of the impossibility that it would fulfill its historical purpose—rescuing the Jewish people from the threat of assimilation and disappearance as the eternal people. At the interviewer’s request, he concluded his conversations about the Jewish paradox with two future scenarios: one pessimistic and the other optimistic. Although he described himself, as always, as a natural optimist, he explained: In fact the likelihood of a severe setback is greater in the present century than in any other period of Jewish history. It is one of the paradoxes of Jewish destiny that in the twentieth century, when the Jews of the diaspora have gained equal rights almost everywhere and enjoy almost unprecedented economic, political and cultural prosperity, and when the sovereign State of Israel has come into being, their future should be more endangered than in any other epoch. The reason for that is that it is always the interior front that finally determines the fate of a people, and although the Jewish exterior front now seems stronger than ever (or perhaps because of that very fact), the interior front is weaker. Equality, with the consequence of increasing assimilation, and the concentration of millions of Jews into a state of their own, under the threat of destruction by the Arabs, therefore render the pessimistic scenario more credible than it was in the past.32 This pessimism led him to an “objective” negation of the situation in Israel and in the galut. Unlike Ahad Haam, he believed that the “objective” circumstances made achieving the goals of Zionism impossible. After all, if Israel were focused on its own survival, in view of Arab hostility (which would only increase), it would not be able to serve as a source of spiritual inspiration for diaspora Jewry. The result would be less of a desire for Jewish life in the diaspora, and consequently the strengthening of a minority of religious extremists “who reject modern Judaism and the State of Israel.” This is liable to cause the disappearance of the Jewish people as a modern, multicultural entity open to the winds of change and progress in the Western world; instead only “a minor sect with no influence on world culture, huddled into a corner of international life and praying for the salvation which is to be brought by the Messiah” would remain.33 Meanwhile, Israel would find itself increasingly isolated from the nations of the world, and even the current American support would not be assured for the future. Goldmann also had an optimistic scenario related to his utopian inclinations. He envisioned peace in the Middle East, based on the establishment of a regional political confederation. But Goldmann the realist, who relied on demographic data about the Jewish people and was acquainted with the political leaders in the region, overcame Goldmann the utopian, with his vision for the Jews and the entire region.


89

Goldmann, the charismatic, pragmatic, utopian statesman, was undoubtedly disappointed and frustrated with the fact that the leaders of the state, especially Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, and Moshe Dayan, would not let him try to pull off his third “political miracle.” The first miracle was his part in persuading world leaders and Jewish public figures to accept the concept of the partition of Palestine and the establishment of the state of Israel; the second was the Reparations Agreement with Germany, which contributed to the economic stabilization of the state; and the third was to be the launching of negotiations for regional peace, which had started with his meetings with the heads of Arab countries and leaders of the Palestinian national movement. But aside from his political frustration, there was the tragic fate of Zionist leaders: Shortly before his death, Herzl witnessed the failure of his bold diplomatic efforts; Jabotinsky died alone in exile in the United States; Weizmann died isolated in his presidential palace in Rehovot; Ben-Gurion was forgotten in the political desert at Sde Boker. And Goldmann, without the WZO presidency or the WJC leadership, was left with no public platform, only his growing doubts. This tragedy stemmed from the objective circumstances that prevented the realization of these people’s subjective utopian inclinations; without these inclinations we cannot understand their historical political achievements, but neither can we understand their personal disappointments and frustrations. To summarize, the debate, both direct and indirect, between the two men on the “negation of the galut” and the “centrality of the state”—a debate that ended in the 1970s—is worth an interim evaluation against the backdrop of the condition of the galut and of the state today. The main question is in what way each of them was right or wrong. As we have seen, their differences were not as drastic as their heated argument in 1957 might make them appear. Their basic views of the two main concepts—“negation of the galut” and the “centrality of the state”—were identical. Both regarded the negation as relating not to the Jews of the golah as individuals but to the “exilic situation” of the Jewish people, which Goldmann considered tragic and Ben-Gurion regarded as miserable. The same is true of the centrality of the state of Israel in the life of the Jewish people scattered around the world. Both agreed that unless Israel has a leading, influential spiritual and moral status in the diaspora, the Jewish people might not be able to survive as a united entity. But although they agreed on these premises, they disagreed as to the relationship between the state and the diaspora. Ben-Gurion saw the role of diaspora Jewry as being to help the state survive, whereas Goldmann considered the two equally valuable partners in ensuring Jewish continuity in the present and in the future. In other words, whereas Ben-Gurion had Jewish survival dependent on the state, which he considered merely a “tool” but a “precious tool,” as he put it, without which individuals could not be free and the nation could not be independent, for Goldmann the “precious tool” was the unity of the Jewish people scattered worldwide.34 At root this was a classic Zionist idea—the unity of the nation and the state—even though, for various reasons, Goldmann distanced himself from

90

Yosef Gorny

Zionism and Ben-Gurion abandoned it. Thus they each emphasized one of the two national aspects of Zionism: concentration in Erez Israel and the continuation of the galut. One stressed the nation in its sovereign state; the other, the nation in its free diaspora. Hence I believe we can conclude, although this was not stated explicitly, that Ben-Gurion believed in the continuation of the historical existence of the Jewish people, even if the Jews were to vanish almost entirely as a result of assimilation in the galut, whereas for Goldmann such a development would mean the end of the Jewish people everywhere, even in their sovereign state. This is because Goldmann’s national Zionist outlook was based mainly on the uniqueness of the Jewish people as an “abnormal” spiritual, cultural, and political phenomenon, whereas Ben-Gurion—although he spoke of Judaism in unique moral “messianic” terms—perceived Jewish national existence since the establishment of the state as something fundamentally normal. We therefore can assume that despite his disappointment with developments in Israel, Ben-Gurion never would have negated the Israeli experience to the extent that Nahum Goldmann did about ten years after Ben-Gurion’s death. The disagreement between the two remains relevant even today, and the questions that emerged from it have become more and more fateful for Jewish history. Unquestionably, just as Zionism could not save most or even some of European Jewry from extermination during the Holocaust, Israel today cannot halt the process of assimilation that is engulfing diaspora Jewry. But the state is indeed a “precious tool” in the sense that it has created a normal national framework consisting of sovereignty, a territorial Jewish majority, and Hebrew as the spoken language, all of which ensure the survival of the Jewish people. From this standpoint, Ben-Gurion was right. But from another standpoint, Goldmann was right in both the Zionist and the Jewish senses. After all, in terms of historical truth, Zionism’s paramount intention was to save the Jews as a national entity. Unless it does so, the state of Israel will eventually turn into the Israeli state, which—even if it does not become the “state of all its citizens,” as the “post-Zionist” groups demand—will certainly no longer be Jewish in the historical sense. And without a Jewish state standing at the forefront of its public interests, the Jewish diaspora will not be able to survive for long as a united people. Thus, in a dialectical fashion, the extraordinary historical achievement of Zionism is liable to result in a victory for “Canaanism”—consistent with Western liberal concepts, to be sure, but nevertheless running counter to Jewish-Zionist concepts. Following Goldmann’s paradoxical approach, we can conclude by saying that history once again has the Jewish people in a stranglehold and can either immerse it in the universal global society that is taking shape or let it try to maintain its own uniqueness to a certain extent within the multiculturalism that is also evolving. Goldmann and Ben-Gurion had no unequivocal solutions for the situation, neither that in their times nor that in ours. We have no counsel either. But they raised essential questions, and we in Israel and the diaspora today must continue to ask them, no matter what our answers may be.


91

Notes 1. See Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox (New York, 1953), 1. 2. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox, trans. Steve Cox (London, 1978), 94. 3. Ibid., 112–13. 4. Ibid., 94–95. 5. Yosef Gorny, “Hazinuk hautopi bemahashavto hahevratit shel David Ben-Gurion” (The Utopian Leap in the Social Thought of David Ben-Gurion), Mibifnim, vol. 49, no. 3 (4) (Winter 1988): 257–71. 6. Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 115. 7. Goldmann, “Hamashber batnuah hazionit” (The Crisis in the Zionist Movement), in Bedarkhei ami (Along My People’s Paths) ( Jerusalem, 1968), 153. 8. Ibid., address at the Biltmore Conference, 1942. 9. David Ben-Gurion, Igrot (Letters) (Tel Aviv, 1972), vol. 1, 112. 10. Goldmann, “Bnei adam bemasaam” (People on Their Journey), in Bedarkhei ami, 52–53. 11. Goldmann, “Hayehudi hehadash beerez yisrael” (The New Jew in the Land of Israel), ibid., 14. 12. Ibid., 16. 13. Ibid. 14. Goldmann, “Germanim veyehudim” (Germans and Jews), ibid., 191–92. 15. See his 1957 correspondence with Nathan Rotenstreich in Hazut, vol. 3 (1956/7). 16. David Ben-Gurion, “Medinat yisrael veatido shel haam hayehudi—hazikah hameshuleshet letarbut ivrit, lamedinah veligeulah meshihit” (The State of Israel and the Future of the Jewish People: The Threefold Attachment to Hebrew Culture, to the State and to Messianic Redemption), Hazut, vol. 4 (1957/8): 147. 17. Goldmann, “Yisrael vehaam hayehudi” (Israel and the Jewish People), Bedarkhei ami, 148. 18. Ibid., 149. 19. See “Shalosh madregot” (Three Steps), and the preface to the third Hebrew edition of Ahad Haam’s writings ( Jerusalem, 1949). 20. Ahad Haam, “Shelilat hagalut” (Negation of the Exile) (1908/9), in Kol kitvei Ahad Haam (The Complete Works of Ahad Haam) (Jerusalem, 1949), 2d ed., 399–403. 21. Ahad Haam, “Imitation and Assimilation” (1893), in Selected Essays, trans. Leon Simon (Philadelphia, 1912), 107–24. 22. See Jacob Klatzkin, “Galut vaarez” (Exile and Land), in Tehumim: Maamarim (Domains: Articles) (Berlin, 1924/5), 45–107.

92

Yosef Gorny 23. Nahum Goldmann, “Israel and the Jewish People,” Hazut, vol. 4, 152. 24. Ibid., 154.

25. Goldmann, “Leshem mah nehutzot medinot rabot” (Why Are Many Countries Needed) (1922), in Bedarkhei ami, 37–41. 26. David Ben-Gurion, “Teshuvah lamitvakekhim” (A Reply to the Disputants),” Hazut, vol. 4 (1957/8): 166–70. 27. Ibid., 167. 28. Simon Dubnow, “Hiyuv hagalut” (The Necessity of the Exile), in Mikhtavim al hayahadut hayeshanah vehahadashah (Letters about the Old and New Judaism) (Tel Aviv, 1937), 96–103. 29. Goldmann, “Israel and the Jewish People,” 153. 30. Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 77. 31. Ibid., 79. 32. Ibid., 175–76. 33. Ibid., 216–17. 34. David Ben-Gurion, “Teshuvah lamitvakekhim,” Hazut, vol. 4, 168.

Part III

(

Maverick


4

( The GermanYears Early Chapters in the Biography of a Jewish Statesman Michael Brenner

I. Eastern European Roots: German Childhood I have lived in Germany from my fifth to my fortieth year, first in Frankfurt and then in Heidelberg, as well as a few years in Murnau and Berlin, and thus I spent my decisive formative years as a Jew in Germany. No other people and no other culture, not even the Jewish one, have influenced me so deeply as the German one. It is true that I began studying Hebrew already as a child, that I studied the Bible and the Talmud, but I cannot claim to be firm in traditional, especially religious Jewish intellectual history; I know modern Hebrew and Yiddish culture better. But no Hebrew or Yiddish hero—neither prophet nor Talmudist, neither religious philosopher as Maimonides nor poet as Yehuda Halevi or Bialik—had even a comparably strong influence on me as had Goethe, to name just one example. I have read and remembered no other literature more than the German one. . . . I felt my deepest spiritual experiences while listening to the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. I attended German schools and universities. Although my best friends were always Jews . . . and I was a Zionist since childhood, I felt, especially during the Weimar years, very consciously as a citizen of Germany.1

95

96

Michael Brenner

hese are Nahum Goldmann’s words taken out of the expanded German version of his autobiography. He added only shortly before his death in 1982 in a television interview, “My favorite language is German. I dream in German, I laugh in German, I cry in German, I love in German.”2 To understand Goldmann’s later career understanding his self-depiction as a person deeply rooted in German culture and society is essential. At the same time, Goldmann never saw himself as a German Jew. He was an Eastern European Jew, who spent his earliest childhood in a small shtetl between Vilna and Minsk (Visznewo) and became a German citizen only in his adult life. His Eastern European Jewish home and his German surroundings were the two inseparable parts of his identity during the first half of his life. A third formative element went along with those two as early as he could remember. As he remarked later, he did not have to become a Zionist, he was born one. Indeed, he was brought up in a staunchly Zionist home.3 His parents had left their Eastern European home, when Nahum was one year old, for Königsberg and later Frankfurt. Like Martin Buber, he grew up with his grandparents in a traditional Jewish environment. Only when he approached school age, his parents brought him to join them in Frankfurt. This is not the place to discuss why Goldmann’s parents took so many years to reunite with their only child. In any case, Goldmann’s relationship with his mother remained cool and distanced, and he would later claim that friends were always more important to him than family. His mother, he said in his last major interview, would never have treated him as well as his grandparents did.4 He felt, however, very close to his father, Solomon Goldmann, a Hebrew writer, editor for the German Jewish journal Frankfurter Israelitische Familienblatt, and an educator of teachers embarking for the Jewish colonies in South America, employed by Baron de Hirsch’s Jewish Colonization Association. While Rebekka Goldmann certainly did not resemble our stereotypes of the typical Eastern European yidishe mame, Solomon Goldmann did everything he could to advance his son’s career. He was his first Hebrew teacher and brought him close to Zionism. Goldmann was barely a bar mizvah, when his father arranged his first major public lecture in front of a few hundred listeners at the Frankfurt Zionist Organization during the holiday of Hanukah in 1908. He also took care that his son’s lecture on the topic of “Judaism and Hellenism” was reported in the local Jewish press, with which he himself worked as an editor. He certainly did his part to make sure that Nahum was handled as a Wunderkind in Jewish Frankfurt. Nahum Goldmann, in his own recollections many years later, seemed more concerned to emphasize another reputation he should later obtain. The only thing he claims to remember from this first public speech was how to draw the attention of a young girl who felt affection for him at the time. Only three years later, in 1911, while Goldmann was still in high school, his father took him to Basel, where they attended the Zionist Congress. And Nahum Goldmann’s first book, his travel account of Palestine, was published

T

The GermanYears

97

in 1914 on the initiative of his father without his own consent.5 Nahum was well aware that he was his father’s son. His first articles were published under the name “Ben Koheleth”—a reference to his father’s first name Solomon. In those essays he already emerged as a self-conscious fighter. In one of his earliest articles, published in the Frankfurter Israelitische Familienblatt in 1910, he attacked the French Jewish archaeologist Salomon Reinach because of his assimilationist views, and together with other accusations this led to his resignation as vice president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. The fifteenyear-old boy was certainly not shy expressing his views about the established scholar and politician. He titled his piece, “Salomon Reinach: A Character Type,” and wrote about the well-known archaeologist and director of the Museum of French Antiquities: “Take the galut [exilic] Jew with all his attributes, let him taste some European culture, let him study the Greek antiquity, put him into a European milieu, and you get Salomon Reinach.”6 Goldmann’s later claim, “in the course of my public life I have dealt with plenty of eminent people, but at no time have I ever felt any inferiority or weakness by comparison,” was already visible during his early youth.7 Goldmann’s publications during his German years foreshadow his diverse activities during his later life as a political leader of world Jewry. In many ways they represent his multifaceted personality and various identities: his deep commitment to the Zionist cause shines through every page of his account of his early visit to Palestine in 1913; the series of articles subsequently published as a book under the title “The Spirit of Militarism” in 1915 give evidence of his wartime German patriotism but also of pacifist leanings in the middle of the war; his immediate postwar publication on “The Three Demands of the Jewish People” (1919) underline his deep conviction that the diaspora is there to remain side by side with a Jewish state; the Freie Zionistsiche Blätter he edited in 1921–1922 show his critical stance toward dominant Zionist positions, which ultimately led to his conflict with Chaim Weizmann and other Zionist leaders; and his grand oeuvre, the Encyclopaedia Judaica, launched in the mid-1920s, remains perhaps the most impressive document of his learnedness and his commitment to Jewish scholarship.

II. Touring Palestine On the initiative of Berlin Zionist Theodor Zlocisti and with the help of a wealthy donor, Nahum Goldmann was able in the spring of 1913 to join a group of German Zionist students for a visit to Palestine. In the last and much enlarged German version of his autobiography, published in 1980, Goldmann leaves no doubt that this first journey to Palestine remained his most intensive encounter with the land of his childhood dreams. And, as in the 1914 book, the land itself, still sparsely populated, undoubtedly left an enormous impression on him—an impression that for Goldmann would remain the measure for

98

Michael Brenner

all future developments in Israel. As he wrote much later, “If the Land of Palestine had a soul and a will, it would probably spit out all of us Jews into the Mediterranean because we have completely ruined this unique landscape.”8 To have toured Palestine extensively before World War I and to have served as a Hebrew interpreter for the group, may have given him the feeling of a pioneer, at least compared to those of his generation who only got to know the Land of Israel when it was much more settled and the Hebrew language when it was already an obligation to speak it. To be sure, his experience of 1913 was certainly a formative one. A brief comparison between the actual travel account, published in 1914, and the various versions of his memoirs many decades later, reveal a discrepancy, especially concerning the people he met there and who did not always correspond to the notion he had from life in the Holy Land. While in his memoirs he writes critically about the disrespect Jewish immigrants showed both toward the land itself and toward its Arab inhabitants, his travel account is—perhaps little surprising for an 18-year-old visitor from central Europe— full of condescending comments about Arabs, and at the same time idealizing the transformative power of Palestinian soil for building the new Jew. On entering recently founded Tel Aviv he comments, “It seems to me like a little paradise. Wherever I look, only rejoicing children’s voices, only happy faces, only joyful atmosphere; everywhere only light and air, green trees and laughing people; here seems to be eternal holiday and eternal happiness.” The contrast of the cold, dark, sad galut immediately emerges: And unwillingly there rises in front of my eyes the picture of a Russian shtetl and a Jewish street in White Chapel. There the narrow, suffocating air, the dirt, the smell, the rotten holes unworthy of human beings called houses, the crooked bodies, the pale shopkeepers (Krämer), the bloodless mothers—and here the free air, the paradise-like sky, the neat houses, the clean street, the healthy people, the proud and strong young boys, the joyful girls’ faces, the happy children.9 He becomes disillusioned when he realizes that Arab labor is necessary even to grow Jewish wine, when he meets a kind of European ghetto in the old city of Jerusalem, and when he encounters young frustrated pioneers on their way out of Erez Israel to look for their fortune in North or South America. Still, the overall impression of an ideal place can be found throughout his account, including the disturbingly backward and frightening Arab inhabitants. His description of the Arab part of the old city shows little sympathy with “the Arabs, making curses and noises, and running in your way brutally and without consideration. . . . Those streets are a true incarnation of the lack of culture and neglect, a breeding place for dangerous bacteria and causes of all kinds of illnesses.”10 When he encountered an Arab with his donkey near the Western Wall (kotel ) he informs his readers about his rage, “In the first moment I was

The GermanYears

99

so enraged that I could have killed this stupid and rude guy.”11 He goes on to explain, however, that we could not expect from “this barbarian to be considerate toward the people praying at the kotel ” and that it was the Jews’ fault to allow such a profanization of their most holy site. And, after witnessing Arab wedding dances, he observes, “They resembled a gang of wild beasts. We were taken by shudder, mixed with disgust in the face of this repulsive image of unleashed, boundless savageness. . . . It gave us a sufficiently clear idea of the barbaric wildness and the uncontrolled passion of this people. . . .”12 Again, we should not forget that it was an eighteen-year-old Frankfurt boy speaking here, and we should not judge all those statements simply in terms of a European orientalist outlook in Imperial times. However, it is noteworthy that in February 1982, shortly before his death, Goldmann wrote a thirty-page afterword to a new edition of Letters from Palestine without referring to those and other embarrassing parts of the account. In many respects, Goldmann was a child of his time and not someone who rebelled against his upbringing and his environment. This put him in contrast to most postassimilationist German Zionists whose ideologies were formed in protest against their homes. Similarly, Goldmann, even without holding German citizenship, was a patriotic German when World War I broke out. He volunteered as a soldier, but was rejected due to his enemy alien status.

III. Wartime Patriotism: German Militarism Saves theWorld Goldmann had to leave Frankfurt for a while and settled in nearby Bad Nauheim. The German army soon discovered his talents and he was asked to serve in a propaganda unit of the German Foreign Ministry, a remarkable task for a twenty-two-year-old Eastern European Jew. Without holding a regular German passport he was able to cross borders enjoying German diplomatic status. And he publicly expressed his views on Germany as the stronghold of humanity and civilization, based on the principle of militarism. While Goldmann’s first book marked his Zionist identity in a clear fashion, his second book shows him as a staunch German patriot, hoping for the victory of what he considers the German virtues of order and militarism. And, as the first book stemmed from a series of newspaper articles published in a Jewish journal, the next one was a reprint of essays that appeared in the highly acclaimed Frankfurter Zeitung: “A new pyramidical, hierarchical system must be erected. This can be achieved only by the spirit of militarism with the great guiding principle of subordination. Neither descent nor name, neither property nor power will be decisive, but the talent to rule. In a society built upon the principles of an army, advancement will depend on one factor: the ability to command and to lead.”13 Where could this “supreme idea of the militaristic spirit” be better materialized than in Germany? Interestingly, hand in hand

100

Michael Brenner

with his passionate defense of militarism goes a clear rejection of war: “The militaristic spirit must reject war on the basis of its highest idea of the organism. The idea of organism and war stand opposed to one another as irreconcilable contrasts; every war means anarchy. . . .”14 This rather confused than chauvinistic identification with Prussian militarism certainly stood in clear contrast to Goldmann’s later views, and the later statesman called them “my intellectual sins,” not without adding, however, that “even today [in 1980] I am not embarrassed of the emotional ties with the country and the culture in which I grew up.”15 During the war, Goldmann collected his first experiences as a diplomat, helped to create a Jewish division in the Foreign Ministry, and was able to intervene in favor of the Eastern European Jews under German occupation.

IV. Heidelberg and Murnau Interludes: Beginnings of a Career as an Unorthodox Zionist Returning to civil life, Goldmann resumed his law studies in Heidelberg, where he had enrolled at the university with a special permit already in 1912, thus before his eighteenth birthday, as was usually the required age. A detailed examination of Goldmann’s law studies, which he apparently did not take as seriously as his Zionist activities, goes beyond the scope of this chapter. However, one of the most humorous episodes of his autobiography describes his final exams, which he passed without being prepared. He ascribes this surprising success to a common way of Talmudic thinking with one of his examiners, a Jewish-born law professor. In Heidelberg, he also intensified his contact with the person who had the greatest influence on him besides his father, the philosopher Jacob Klatzkin. The two friends, who had met in Solomon Goldmann’s house, when Nahum was still a child and remained very close until Klatzkin’s death in 1948, edited together the Freie Zionistische Blätter in Heidelberg in 1921, then spent two years in the Bavarian Alps, and after settling in Berlin began their huge joint venture, the Encyclopaedia Judaica. At first sight, they were a rather odd couple. Klatzkin was more than a decade Goldmann’s elder, an established philosophical thinker who had studied with (and distanced himself from) Hermann Cohen, and he had served as the editor of the Zionist periodical Die Welt. While Goldmann was always in favor of a Jewish diaspora in concert with a Jewish state, Klatzkin was perhaps the most radical Zionist thinker to adopt the concept of shlilat hagolah [negation of the exile]. In his 1921 publication Krisis und Entscheidung im Judentum, the title of which Goldmann suggested, Klatzkin wrote: A gap will open between Palestine and the diaspora. The national center, the concentration in Erez Israel, will accelerate the slow fading away of the galut, will set an end to its painful agony. . . . Hebrew

The GermanYears

101

Palestine will proclaim: here is national rebirth, there national death. There will only be an either-or; either full Jew, Hebrew Jew, or: anything but a Jew. But there won’t be half-Jews: German Jews, French Jews, English Jews, etc.16 A little bit earlier, Goldmann had published his third booklet, Die drei Forderungen des jüdischen Volkes (Berlin, 1919), in which he developed the opposite idea concerning the Jewish state and the diaspora. The two pamphlets read like a critical dialogue among friends and perhaps like an effort of the pupil to free himself of his master. The three demands he sets forward in response to the Copenhagen Manifesto of October 1918, in which the World Zionist Organization (WZO) defined its program for the Paris Peace Conference, are not revolutionary for this revolutionary time. They consist of first, the confirmation of Palestine in its historical boundaries as the Jewish National Home; second, the complete equality of Jews in the countries in which they live; and third, the granting of full national autonomy wherever Jews demand it. The third element stands in clear contrast to Klatzkin’s perspective, for whom the fight for national autonomy in the diaspora was a waste of time and perhaps even an obstacle to the gathering of all Jews in their homeland. Goldmann, on the other hand, leaves no doubt that: the diaspora will remain, but it will receive a center. . . . It is one of the specific characteristics of the Jewish people that its history and its national existence are contained within two great spheres: Israel and the diaspora. The diaspora constitutes an essential part of Jewish existence, and it seems to me unjustified . . . if one assumes Palestine will lead to the disappearance of the diaspora.”17 Interestingly, Goldmann includes Western Jewry in the demand of national autonomy. Jews, wherever they live, are part of a Jewish nation, he claims: “We are always and everywhere parts of the Jewish people, carriers of its culture; members of its country, Palestine; and nevertheless everywhere also parts of the polity of the state in whose midst we live, members of our individual native lands with equal duties and equal rights.”18 The whole last part of this pamphlet is a call to recognize in Germany, as has been done in most other states, that state and nation do not have to be overlapping definitions. This statement certainly reflected more the Eastern European Jew than the German because national autonomy never became an issue the majority of German Jews, or even German Zionists, adopted. However, in this very hour, other voices were heard among German Jewry, who shared Goldmann’s demands, even in the most prominent places. The most prominent advocate of national autonomy for German Jews was the Social Democratic Reichstag deputy Oskar Cohn. Cohn, who was also an

102

Michael Brenner

active Zionist, was a member of the parliamentary committee creating the new German constitution, and in this function at the time one of the most influential Jewish politicians in Germany. To the surprise of even most Zionists, Cohn spoke out in favor of granting the Jews in Germany national minority rights. He pleaded to change Article 40 of the constitution which granted Poles, Danes, and other nationalities living in Germany minority rights in order to include the Jews, “in the face of the changes which occurred in world politics and the public consciousness concerning Jewish nationality.”19 Suffice it here to note that Cohn was isolated in the constitutional committee by his views and that the committee’s two other Jewish members fiercely opposed his proposal. Oskar Cohn’s and Goldmann’s paths were to cross, however. Cohn became Goldmann’s closest collaborator when the latter succeeded Leo Motzkin as president of the Comité des Delégations Juives in December 1933.20 Only a few months before, during the last hours of the Weimar Republic, the concept of national autonomy for German Jews was revived by a few of its representatives—this time, however, under much more threatening circumstances and without the actual chance of realization.21 Goldmann’s differences with Klatzkin did in no way keep the two friends from initiating a new Zionist journal, which they called Freie Zionistische Blätter. “Free” was a popular name for new enterprises around this time, and we should not forget that only an hour away, Franz Rosenzweig opened the Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt during the same year, 1921. As Goldmann explained, “We wanted to be free from party discipline, from any binding to existing authorities, and free in terms of the dates of publication. . . .”22 This independence was visible in the journal, which had only one year of existence, but contained regular contributions by critical Zionist minds, such as Hans Kohn, Arnold Zweig, and Hugo Bergmann. Goldmann himself contributed to every issue, and quoting only from one of his articles, a critical review of present-day Zionism and the current Zionist leadership, may suffice here. His main accusation was that the Zionist leaders did not tell the masses the truth, but idealized the prospects in Palestine. Such a policy, he claimed, would necessarily lead to disappointment in and ultimately distancing from the Zionist movement: “We Jews have not known national politics for a period of two thousand years,” he asserted in his programmatic contribution to the first volume, and he continued by claiming that the first attempt to conduct such a national policy failed. The Zionist leadership had only used the traditional means of European diplomacy, he argued, and thereby fooled the poor Eastern European Jewish masses. By promising them fast redemption they remained passive and: they react to each new blow with the hope: Palestine; Palestine is their protection, their rescue, their salvation, and their redemption; and not for future times or generations, no—for today and tomorrow. How terrible must be every disappointment of such a national soul. How easily

The GermanYears

103

can it lose its trust and belief in our movement altogether. . . . We are today almost in the situation of an insolvent company, and every day brings with it new debts and responsibilities.23 A combination of the editors’ debts and manifold responsibilities, however, prevented the publication of this critical Zionist voice after a few issues in less than one year. In this transitional period of his biography, Goldmann chose to retreat for a while from the hectic life of both the financial center of Frankfurt and the academic center in Heidelberg.

V. In Defense of Universal Jewish Culture: The Encyclopaedia Judaica Little is known about the two years Goldmann spent with Klatzkin, his German shepherd dog “Adin,” and occasional female visitors in the romantic Alpine village of Murnau. Goldmann financed his life there with articles for a Yiddish journal in New York; an income in dollars at this time of Germany’s worst inflation was indeed a most generous source. Murnau was not just any village in Bavaria, but by then a well-known retreat for artists and writers. Vladimir Kandinsky had lived there, and the artist group Der Blaue Reiter had deep roots in this place close to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The writer Arnold Zweig lived close by at Lake Starnberg, and Goldmann was in close contact with the cultural life in Munich, which was an hour away. The political events there, culminating in November 1923 with the failed Hitler Beer Hall Putsch, may well have been responsible for making him move again. As he later recalled, those years served him especially to deepen his knowledge in philosophy and mysticism, but they also provide evidence of his deep connection with nature, which was mentioned earlier with respect to his Palestine journey. They gave him sufficient time to think and rethink his next major project. It would become a milestone of German Jewish scholarship and, in fact, the epitaph of German Jewry: the ten volumes of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, which he initiated with Jakob Klatzkin, with the help of his uncle in Warsaw, one of the pioneers of modern Hebrew printing. Goldmann amassed his first experiences as fund-raiser during this enterprise, which he planned to publish in English, Hebrew, and German. In this early phase, clear preference for a Hebrew publication was expressed, while a possible German edition “might be published . . . in an abridged version.”24 Goldmann and Klatzkin hoped to raise most of the money from wealthy American Jews, and for this purpose they toured the United States. They were deeply disappointed and returned basically empty-handed. German fund-raising efforts proved slightly more successful, although the effort drew largely on highly committed and impecunious Jews, who themselves had little to give. Goldmann received the first RM 5,000 as a loan from a friend, the Hebrew teacher Samuel

104

Michael Brenner

Weinberg, the father of the first director of Israel’s Beit Hatefuzot-Diaspora Museum. With his money they prepared a sixty-four-page fund-raising brochure.25 Much of the project’s initial financial assistance consisted of small loans and donations, and the breakthrough came only when the first volume was already in print, with the assistance of a major German Jewish philanthropist, Jakob Goldschmidt, the managing director of the Darmstadt und National Bank and an opponent of Zionism. With Goldschmidt’s support, Goldmann and Klatzkin proceeded with the publication of the German edition through their own publishing house, Eshkol. Between 1928 and 1934, ten volumes of the German Encyclopaedia appeared, while two Hebrew volumes of the Encyclopedia Israelit: Eshkol were published in 1929 and 1932. The English edition was to be postponed until the completion of the German one.26 Thus, the international plan of the Encyclopaedia Judaica became, after its realization, an essentially German Jewish work. It was initiated by two Jewish intellectuals living in Berlin, compiled by a majority of German Jewish scholars, addressed to a German Jewish audience, and—apart from the two Hebrew volumes—composed exclusively in German. Ismar Elbogen, the assistant editor was the leading Jewish historian in Weimar Germany and taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums. The majority of the eighteen departmental editors lived in Germany as well. The projected limit of ten volumes was reached in 1934, with the tenth volume containing entries up through the letter “L.” The remaining volumes never appeared as a result of the ensuing political climate in Germany. The scholarly merit of the Encyclopaedia emphasized aspects of Jewish history and culture that had been widely neglected by traditional Wissenschaft des Judentums. Thus, the social and economic history of the Jews was accorded stronger representation than the traditional history of suffering and scholarship. Lengthy entries on taxes, the Jewish workers’ movement, the Jewish community, and trades underlined this tendency. Kabbalah for the first time emerged as a central issue. Gershom Scholem’s hundred columns on Kabbalah were his first book-length general discussion of the topic. This largely forgotten piece of work is still an important source on early Kabbalah scholarship as well as on Scholem’s own scholarly development. Moreover, it represented the will of the editors to allot to the new discipline of Kabbalah a prominent place within the project, as can be seen from the fact that Scholem’s entry on Kabbalah was the third longest article in the entire ten volumes. To prove their political neutrality, Goldmann invited the Liberal rabbi and non-Zionist, Benno Jacob, to co-edit all articles on contemporary Jewish topics. Jacob agreed, and as a consequence many articles are signed with the letters “G–J.” This was not to the liking of all the project’s authors. The most famous victim of Goldmann’s rather radical editorial policy was Scholem’s close friend Walter Benjamin. He was assigned the important topic of “Jews in German Culture” within the article on “Germany,” and produced his first

The GermanYears

105

major piece on a specifically Jewish topic for this purpose. He was not happy at all, however, and claimed he did not recognize his own words, due to the significant changes editors Nahum Goldmann and Rabbi Benno Jacob made.27 The Encyclopaedia died together with German Jewry, and among its readers thereafter were some whom the editors certainly did not expect. One of them was Adolf Eichmann, who derived much of his knowledge of Judaica from Goldmann’s and Klatzkin’s oeuvre.

VI. Conclusion When Nahum Goldmann organized a special session of the WJC in Brussels in 1966, he invited two of his contemporaries to speak on the issue of “Germans and Jews.” The outline of Goldmann’s Jewish identity emerges somewhat more clearly in comparison to the remarks of the other speakers, Gershom Scholem and Salo Baron. In many ways, Scholem’s biography is almost the direct opposite of Goldmann’s. Although Goldmann was, as he claimed, born a Zionist, and his father always supported him in this respect, Scholem’s decision to adopt Zionism led to a violent break with his father and brought him to Palestine already in the 1920s. He would see Europe again only as a visitor. As for the past, he denied the existence of anything close to a German Jewish symbiosis. Salo Baron was, like Goldmann, an Eastern European Jew who came to the West, first as a student in Vienna, and later as a professor in New York. Just as Scholem settled in Jerusalem, Baron settled in New York, and while the former developed a rather Palestinocentric view of Jewish history, the latter became the prime advocate of a positive diaspora. His rejection of a “lachrymose” version of Jewish history caused the most vehement opposition among Zionist historians. Goldmann stood between those two poles. He never rebelled against his father, he did not leave Europe out of free will, and he never settled anywhere. He always was proud to remain a “wandering Jew,” commuting between New York, Geneva, and Jerusalem, having been born in Russia, growing up in Germany, and bearing for many years the citizenship of Honduras. He always maintained a positive attitude toward Germany, and he never doubted that German culture had the most crucial intellectual influence on him. Although he became a Zionist leader, he was even more a leader of the Jewish diaspora. The German years, which comprised his formative period and almost half of his life, left their imprint on his later career. The rather naive description of his first visit to Palestine, the “intellectual sins” of his advocacy of German militarism, the demand for national autonomy among all diaspora Jews—all bear little resemblance to his later politics. They show, however, the formation of a Jewish politician, who had one political mission—the well-being of the Jewish people—who fully identified with two cultures—German and Eastern European Jewish—and who was a citizen of three continents.

106

Michael Brenner Notes 1. Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben: USA, Europa, Israel (Munich, 1981), 454.

2. Karl B. Schnelting, ed., Zeugen des Jahrhunderts. Jüdische Lebenswege (Frankfurt, 1987), 26 3. Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox (London, 1978), 15. 4. Karl B. Schnelting, ed. Zeugen des Jahrhunderts, 13. 5. Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben, 89. 6. Jacob Dränger, Nahum Goldmann: Ein Leben für Israel (Frankfurt, 1959), vol. 1, 112–13. 7. Nahum Goldmann, Jewish Paradox, 12. 8. Raphael Patai, Nahum Goldmann: His Missions to the Gentiles (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1987), 37–38. 9. Nahum Goldmann, Erez-Israel: Reisebriefe aus Palästina, reprint of 1914 publication, (Darmstadt, 1982), 22. 10. Ibid., 54. 11. Ibid., 56. 12. Ibid., 80. 13. Raphael Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 49. 14. Ibid., 50. 15. Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben, 101. 16. Jakob Klatzkin, Krisis und Entscheidung (Berlin, 1921), 79–80. 17. Nahum Goldmann, Die drei Forderungen des jüdischen Volkes (Berlin, 1919), 10. 18. Nahum Goldmann, Drei Forderungen, 22; Raphael Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 67. 19. Die Deutsche Nationalversammlung im Jahre 1919 in ihrer Arbeit für den Aufbau des neuen deutschen Volksstaates, ed. E. Heilfron (Berlin, 1921), vol. 2, 1006. 20. Jacob Dränger, Nahum Goldmann, vol. 2, 82–83. 21. See my article, Michael Brenner, “Zurück ins Ghetto? Jüdische Autonomiekonzepte in der Weimarer Republik” in Trumah. Jahrbuch der Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg 3 (1992), 101–27. 22. Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben, 138. 23. Nahum Goldmann, “Bilanz der Zionsitischen Politik” in Freie Zionistische Blätter 1 (1921), 35, 45. 24. Schocken Archives, 517/222. 25. Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben, 156. 26. The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann: Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969), 89. 27. Encyclopaedia Judaica 5, col. 1022–34. Benjamin’s handwritten comment on the article is reprinted in his Gesammelte Schriften, vol. II/2, 807–13. See also Gershom Scholem, Walter Benjamin, 160.

5

( Nahum Goldmann and the FirstTwo Decades of the World Jewish Congress Zohar Segev

he Seventeenth Zionist Congress convened in Basel in 1931. Nahum Goldmann was a prominent representative there, and, among other activities, joined the efforts to remove Chaim Weizmann from the Zionist movement’s presidency. In the wake of the Congress and his broad political activity in the early 1930s, Goldmann became a central activist in the world Zionist movement.1 Significant in this development was Goldmann’s intervention in the Jewish arena in the United States, which he visited for the first time and for an extensive period following the Congress. By his own testimony, he delivered his first address in English at the Hadassah Organization conference during that visit.2 A central aspect of Goldmann’s U.S. activities was the beginning of his especially close political and personal ties with Stephen S. Wise, a Reform rabbi and one of the most important American Zionist leaders until the mid-1940s. Wise initiated, and acted to establish the World Jewish Congress (WJC) from 1932 until its founding convention in Geneva in August 1936.3 Although the WJC was a new Jewish organization, its ideological origins can be traced back to developments within the American and European Jewish communities during and after World War I. The American Jewish Congress (AJC) formed in 1918 and joined in 1919 with similar Eastern European organizations to establish in Paris the

T

107

108

Zohar Segev

Comité des Delégation Juives. The organization Wise formed continued this path of a voluntary association of representative Jewish bodies, communities, and organizations throughout the world, organized to ensure the survival and to foster the unity of the Jewish people.4 A combination of circumstances between Goldmann’s rise to the status of Zionist leader at that time, and his contacts with Wise, made Goldmann an integral part of the WJC. It began with Goldmann persuading Jewish community representatives to take part in the organization, and continued through his help in preparing for the founding meeting, where he delivered a major address, until he finally emerged a central WJC figure from 1940 on, first in Europe and then in the United States. Goldmann served as president of the WJC after Wise, ordering his activity there as an important anchor in his political and public pursuits, until he retired from the presidency in 1977.5 The ideas on which the WJC were based—such as providing concrete content for the abstract concept of Jewish unity and joint defense of the rights of Jews everywhere—suited Goldmann’s public political approach, as evidenced throughout the many years of his open public activity.6 Goldmann’s activity within the WJC, and his especially close ties with Wise, enabled him to immigrate to the United States, where he lived for more than twenty years.7 Goldmann identified himself with Wise’s American goals regarding both the American and Zionist arenas, and acted with Wise as a partner of long-standing, not as a recent immigrant to the United States.8 Goldmann’s role in the WJC during his residence in the United States had significance beyond his actual position because that country was the center of Jewish and Zionist political activity from the end of the 1930s until the establishment of the state of Israel.9 Despite the definition in principle of the WJC as a worldwide organization, in practice its activities were centered and conducted in the United States. The European and South American offices were financed by American sources and reported back to the heads of the WJC in the United States. Such was the situation before World War II, and for obvious reasons it became even more pronounced after the war broke out.10 Goldmann and the WJC founders wished to create a broad international organization to represent the Jewish people. However, they found determining and defining their organization’s unique role in the shadow of the Zionist movement and other Jewish organizations difficult and did not succeed in recruiting the community’s rank and file.11 Comprehending the serious difficulties behind the operational failures of the WJC in the 1930s and 1940s is important. Nevertheless, despite its public weakness, the heads of the organization, particularly Goldmann and Wise, played an important role in open and secret contacts with the U.S. government, and operated in the name of the WJC to modulate the American Jewish community’s reaction to the Holocaust in accordance with their own worldview. Research on the American Jewish leadership during the 1940s devotes much attention to the heads of the WJC in general and to Goldmann and

Goldmann and the FirstTwo Decades of theWJC

109

Wise in particular, reflecting their importance. Their activities have often been criticized.12 Space does not permit us to describe the broad research literature on the American Jewish leadership’s failure to save Jews during the Holocaust.13 The issue is examined in detail by the historian Henry Feingold, who stresses that a discussion of American Jews during the Holocaust should be placed within the broader context of their unusual alertness in other instances regarding the fate of the Jews, and in light of the limited action possible during World War II.14 True, the WJC did not attract the masses of American Jews, and one cannot disregard the difficulties and questions that arise in research on their leadership during the Holocaust. Nevertheless, Goldmann’s letters, and documents pertaining to the WJC’s activities, shed light on the American Jewish elites during the Holocaust, and help us understand what influenced his actions and those of his associates during that most critical period of Jewish history. This study points out the gap between the declared WJC goals as expressed in Goldmann’s public addresses and in his Memoirs, and the political and public activities he undertook in practice, especially in the United States. The letters and addresses inform us of the tremendous difficulties the American Jewish community and their representative institutions faced in attempts to function as a minority group in American society during World War II to rescue Jews, care for refugees, and realize the major goal of the Zionist movement: establishing a Jewish state following the war. The difficulties that confronted the WJC in general and Goldmann in particular, led them to moderate their political demands, limit their protests, compromise, and engage in activities kept secret from broad sectors of the Jewish community. Goldmann and the WJC founders wanted to democratize Jewish life and to increase activities to save European Jews and oppose Nazi Germany. Nonetheless they often cooperated with elite Jewish groups and with the U.S. government to restrain American Jewish reactions to the Holocaust. A significant gap opened, and built-in tension increased between the open and the secret political activities of Goldmann and his WJC associates. These emerged in the wake of changes in their socioeconomic status, as well as in their public and personal status within American political and social systems during the 1940s.

I. During his stay in the United States, Goldmann acted simultaneously in a broad spectrum of senior Jewish-Zionist positions. Such public activity was common among leaders of the Zionist movement, but in Goldmann’s case was especially striking. For example, in 1943 he requested that a New York telephone company immediately install a phone line with two extensions in his new Manhattan apartment. As justification, Goldmann listed his wide-ranging positions: he was chairman of the WJC executive, a member of the Zionist

110

Zohar Segev

movement’s administration, and chairman of the Jewish Agency office in Washington. These positions, he declared, required him to maintain continuous and reliable contact with senior government officials, members of the media, and international Zionist representatives—hence the need for an additional line.15 Other key WJC figures such as Wise, Louis Lipsky, and Leo Motzkin, who was deeply involved in the organization before his death in 1933, also filled senior roles in the American and world Zionist organizations. Even in the WJC’s preparatory meeting, most participants were clearly active Zionists. This is explicitly stated in biographies of deceased founders of the WJC, and Goldmann noted it in memorial speeches at Congress conventions.16 Such data make one wonder what led Goldmann and his associates to establish that organization. Why were they not satisfied to act within the Zionist movement? A WJC fundamental aim was concern for Jews around the globe in general and in Eastern Europe in particular. The ideology and activity of the Zionist movement during the 1930s shows that it too adopted this goal. The WJC founders, who were also Zionist activists, were aware of this duality, and knew as well that some non-Zionist bodies’ in the United States primary concern was diaspora Jewry.17 Goldmann himself noted that the Zionist movement was the moving force in Jewish community organization in the diaspora and in the revival of Jewish culture. He emphasized that the Zionist movement generally and the Jews in Palestine particularly were more active than any others in saving Jews in times of trouble.18 Nevertheless the WJC leaders presented a series of arguments to justify its parallel existence. They stressed that although the Zionist movement, in the Helsingfors Conference of 1906, decided to concentrate on “current work among diaspora Jews,” they were incapable of doing so because most of their efforts were directed toward Palestine. Thus an international Jewish organization was needed to complement the Zionist movement, to support it, and to work toward the same goals.19 Questions regarding the need for the separate existence of the WJC are even more acute in light of the scholarly work of Melvin Urofsky, Wise’s biographer. He describes the WJC as an organization with a pro-Zionist orientation, but also questions its existence alongside the Zionist movement.20 The WJC did not become an alternative to the Zionist movement, and its leaders continued in their central roles in the American and international Zionist movements. Support for a Jewish state to be established in Palestine was a principle of its ideological platform and part of its political plans, and it announced publicly its close cooperation with the Jewish Agency.21 This does not accord with the claim that the reason for creating the WJC was the desire to establish an international Jewish organization capable of acting on behalf of world Jewry, yet suiting its activities to the American arena. The WJC was meant to correspond to the view of Zionist leader and Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who favored an apolitical movement because it averted the dual loyalty question in the American reality of increased hatred of foreigners


111

and anti-Semitism during the 1930s. But the reverse was true. The continued membership in the Zionist movement of American WJC leaders, parallel to the establishment of the new international Jewish organization, only emboldened the champions of such allegations. WJC leaders and founders stressed their organization’s cooperation with the Zionist movement, but in fact the establishment of a parallel and competing organization did give rise to disputes between the two. Such tensions were revealed in 1941 in correspondence between Goldmann and Arthur Hantke, director of the main office of the Keren Hayesod in Jerusalem. The exchange concerned the struggle among Zionist funds and WJC appeals for control of contributions from South America. In the correspondence—and in reaction to a memorandum by Hantke to the Jewish Agency administration in Jerusalem—Nahum Goldmann explained that the Zionist movement had no legal control over WJC activity. This was because, in his opinion, the WJC was an independent body. In parallel, Goldmann stressed that although the WJC was independent, and despite the consequent financial losses, most funds the WJC collected were directed toward Zionist and pioneering goals. As a result, there was no reason for the Zionist struggle against WJC appeals.22 In reply, Hantke described the lack of clarity and the difficulties deriving from an independent WJC. It was absurd, he noted, that Goldmann was a Zionist activist not subject to Zionist institutions. This created an artificial separation, prevented cooperation between the two movements, harmed Zionist interests, and enabled Goldmann and his associates to direct an independent policy within the WJC.23 The difficulties that arose from the very existence of the WJC in parallel to the Zionist movement were also the main subject of a secret letter from Dr. Jacob Robinson to Goldmann and Wise in June 1943. Robinson was the founder of the Institute of Jewish Affairs, legal adviser of the Jewish Agency, and represented the WJC in United Nations deliberations.24 He had turned to them specifically because they held central positions both in the Zionist movement and in the WJC, depicting the relationship between the two organizations as one of serious conflict. In his opinion, WJC attempts to separate its concern for the fate of the European Jews from the Palestine question to define an agenda separate from that of the Zionist movement created serious ideological and practical difficulties.25 Goldmann himself recognized the dilemmas arising from the separate existence of a WJC in the summation he wrote after he retired from the WJC presidency. He told of serious limitations on cooperation between the WJC and the Zionist movement throughout the years of their parallel existence, despite formal WJC support for that movement. Exemplifying the haziness and lack of clarity inherent in the situation, he gave his own long service as president of both, when “Goldmann was negotiating with Goldmann” to solve interorganizational problems.26 Humorous as it is, this remark only underscores the question as to the need for a separate organization such as the WJC.

112

Zohar Segev

The Goldmann-Hantke exchange highlights the indistinctness in the status of the latter vis-à-vis the Zionist movement; the ensuing difficulties were apparent at the time. Viewed historically, this complex relationship also raises intriguing questions about the rationale for founding the WJC. Simply put, the public explanations of the founders do not suffice, nor do they adequately explain the need for establishing the WJC in 1936. For example, in an open letter to the American Jews that he circulated in 1936, Goldmann and his associates requested support for the creation of the WJC and presented their fundamental goals. They described the step as a continuation of efforts to create an international, representative Jewish group, and a response to the failure to found a representative Jewish assembly during and after World War I within the framework of then current political processes. According to the open letter, the WJC of Goldmann and Wise— who were also among the central activists in the earlier attempts—were again determined to achieve the politicization and democratization of Jewish activity in the United States and throughout the world, to be accomplished by activating the Jewish public as a political ethnic group struggling for its rights. Similar attitudes are evident in other instances throughout the 1940s. This was the case, for instance, at a WJC convention meeting in February 1940.27 Wise, the WJC president, asserted the defense of Jewish rights as a central goal of the organization. Likewise, Goldmann, at a 1944 convention, emphasized the notion of Jewish unity as key to the WJC’s wartime activities. He also spoke of the emerging struggle for the return of Jewish property and compensation for Jewish victims of the Nazis. He directed special attention to Western Jewry’s responsibility for the fate of Jews throughout the world.28 In contrast, documentation from several closed and secret forums Goldmann and his associates produced reveals completely different reasons for establishing the WJC during the 1930s. Although this study examines Nahum Goldmann’s American activity during the 1940s, it is highly significant that Goldmann was active previously, from 1932 to 1940, as the WJC representative in Europe, first in Geneva and afterward in Paris. In both instances, a disparity exists between Goldmann’s public explanations regarding the creation of the WJC and his practical activities. The declared purpose for creating a democratically organized WJC— a framework that did not differentiate between Jews from Western and Eastern Europe—clashed with opposing goals that derived from the practical need to attract Jewish elite groups in Western Europe and North America into the WJC. In fact, support from the latter was deemed essential because Western Jews alone were positioned to provide the economic and political backbone the WJC required to attain public authority and financial power. In this spirit, Goldmann and his American associates, Wise and Lipsky, acted to ensure that the WJC conference in Geneva in 1936 would be relevant first of all to Jews in the Western world. Their actions thus reinforced the impression of Western Jewish importance and the salience of Western attitudes, and they studiously avoided the


113

possibility the conference would be marked by an Eastern European sensibility. To achieve this goal, they insisted the opening session be carefully scripted and that most speakers be Jews from the West. To the extent possible, sessions were to be conducted in English, and the lectures short and to the point, as befitted the organizers’ conception of American style.29 Nazi Germany’s rise to power in Europe and the increasingly harsh conditions of the Jews there in 1938 led to vigorous activity on the part of the WJC.30 The extensive correspondence between Goldmann and his associates in the WJC leadership in the United States reveals their view of the political and public means available to influence European and American political systems on behalf of the European Jews. In their opinion, managing the Jewish struggle could not and must not be abandoned to people who were not experts in the world political system because they might harm the cause. For example, they objected to activity designed to ban trade with Romania in 1938 in the wake of the deteriorating situation of Jews there. They claimed that this was a typical instance of irresponsible activity on the part of uninformed advocates. Furthermore, some argued, the ban was organized by figures who did not understand the international political system and had not troubled to check and see that U.S. imports from Romania were practically nil—thus compounding the problem that the boycott would be ineffective and fail to pressure the Romanian government. A by-product of a mismanaged boycott, however, might be deleterious interference with the effort to reach an understanding with the Romanian government on behalf of its hapless Jews.31 In Wise’s opinion, activity on behalf of Romanian Jews should be carried out through international political activity as the WJC heads had demonstrated in the past and by personal diplomatic meetings with leaders of the Romanian government—for example, Goldmann’s private meeting with the Romanian foreign minister about which he would subsequently report to Wise that year.32 The beginning of World War II, the entrance of the United States into the war, and the news of the mass murder of European Jews sharpened the dilemma regarding the WJC’s European rescue activity. Goldmann expressed this in his letter to Yitzhak Gruenbaum, a member of the Jewish Agency executive and chairman of the Rescue Committee, early in April 1943.33 In the letter, he reported on the WJC’s activity vis-à-vis European Jewry and in the United States. He described receiving the first bits of information on the German murder of the Jews from WJC representatives in Europe, its verification by U.S. representatives in neutral European countries, and efforts to publicize the information in coordination with the U.S. government. In the wake of this knowledge, varied and intensive activity centered on the WJC with the aim of arousing public opinion and influencing the U.S. government to act with more determination to save Jews and aid Jewish refugees who succeeded in escaping from Europe. This effort peaked with a mass rally in Madison Square Garden in New York. Despite the great volume of public activity, Goldmann summarized the WJC’s practical achievements on behalf of the European Jews

114

Zohar Segev

as minor. He noted the sympathy the heads of the U.S. State Department expressed regarding the plight of the European Jews, which stood in stark contrast to British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden’s apathy. But he explained that he and the other WJC leaders knew with certainty that the State Department would take no practical steps on behalf of the Jews of Europe despite their verbal support. Goldmann asserted that this had become all too clear when the Bermuda conference devolved into an insignificant event. Clearly, the Allied leaders were unwilling to consider seriously Goldmann’s proposal, which amounted to a formal request of Germany by the Allies to permit the Jews to leave German occupied territory in parallel with a WJC effort to supply food to the immiserated European Jewish population.34 In the final analysis, Goldmann’s letter to Gruenbaum recognized the hopelessness of WJC activity to save European Jews. It was not a result of momentary frustration over failed rescue efforts, but rather derived from an indepth analysis of the American political arena. This evaluation had already been expressed in an earlier letter to Myron Taylor, chairman of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees at the U.S. State Department. The document gathered detailed data from Europe and transmitted it to the State Department. It concerned the German mass murder of Polish Jews and the spread of the Nazi scourge to other areas of Europe. The letter makes clear that the information did not lead to any significant U.S. reaction and that Goldmann did not expect the situation to change in the foreseeable future.35 Goldmann recognized the failure of diplomatic activity on behalf of the European Jews. He also lamented the fact that even limited achievements would not necessarily prompt American WJC members to conduct more radical public acts. Nor would they try to increase public pressure on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government to act to rescue European Jews. In short, Goldmann’s views clashed sharply with those of other WJC officials in the United States. The American leaders assumed that their limited power in the public arena severely curtailed their ability to influence the U.S. government. In their opinion, their only successes would be accomplished on the basis of secret diplomacy and at the margins of events, as was the case when public pressure prevented the expulsion of Jewish refugees from Spain. Goldmann felt certain that even the arrival in the United States of top Zionist leaders from Palestine would not alter the reality.36 Painfully aware of the terrible significance of his words, he emphasized the anguish of one who saw clearly that most European Jews in the areas of Nazi occupation would be annihilated before the war’s end. Any other analysis, he explained, would only ignore the facts on the ground.37 Goldmann’s analysis raises important questions concerning the American WJC members’ motives for refraining from greater political public activity on behalf of European Jews. It also underscores the complex relationship between the WJC leadership and the heads of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). In Goldmann’s letter, the AJC in general and its president in particular,


115

the prominent lawyer Joseph Proskauer, are presented as consistently, emphatically, and decisively opposing any attempt to ratchet up the level of public activity on behalf of European Jewry.38 Nevertheless, although he presents the AJC as especially culpable in this regard, Goldmann’s letter actually describes close cooperation and coordination with the AJC aimed at restraining public lobbying activity by the American Jewish community.39 Such cooperation merits special attention because the WJC was meant to be a public vehicle for mobilizing political activity against Jewish elites and stressing the democratization of organized American Jewish life. Indeed, Goldmann’s Memoirs provide a detailed description of this strategy. The notion of economic struggle against elite Jewish philanthropic funds is even mentioned as a principal WJC aim—as the raison d’être for such an independent organization and its fund-raising strategy.40 There appears to be a gap between Goldmann’s criticism of the AJC and the actual cooperation he describes in his letter. The facts Goldmann reveals to Gruenbaum are only the most obvious regarding the close cooperation between Goldmann and the WJC leadership on the one hand and the AJC heads on the other. The cooperation among the groups extended beyond the desire to present a united Jewish front and/or the need for help from the AJC leaders, who sustained important political connections and enjoyed high personal status. Goldmann’s desire to conceal the political cooperation between himself and Proskauer was also apparent in the second half of the 1940s. The two maintained their close, continuous political coordination regarding Goldmann’s mission to Washington in the summer of 1946, where he represented the Jewish Agency convening in Paris. Nevertheless, as Goldmann pointed out to Proskauer, they had to prevent their relationship from becoming public.41 One possible motive behind the aforementioned letter to Gruenbaum is that Goldman’s criticism of the AJC, which delineated the tragically failed endeavors on behalf of European Jews, was, at least in part, an attempt to conceal the cooperation of Goldmann and other WJC leaders with the American Jewish elite. Such an observation helps to explain the delicate interrelationship of the political and public activities of Wise, Goldmann, and Proskauer. Consider, for example, their attitudes toward a proposed press conference in April 1943. The conference was supposed to highlight the plight of the European Jews and criticize the Roosevelt Administration’s inaction with a view to stimulating more forceful government activity. Wise wrote to Goldmann about a consultation with Proskauer, which resulted in cancelling the press conference.42 Wise believed the press conference would not advance the struggle for the rescue of European Jewry but rather would precipitate an opposite result. He argued it would not bring Congressional pressure to bear on Roosevelt and prompt new activity, but would rather harm the cause. He explained that, ironically, the ensuing public discussion might for the first time win the President the support of a generally inimical Congress. In other words, he feared an anti-Semitic backlash from the U.S. Congress that might only encourage

116

Zohar Segev

Roosevelt’s cautious attitude and prompt him to refrain from being viewed as inordinately concerned with the plight of Europe’s Jews—all this at a moment when the war’s progress was highly uncertain.43 Wise stressed the ease of calling press conferences and public meetings, but insisted that his colleagues seriously consider the potential political repercussions. He worried that such activities might close several doors yet open and warned they should not expect help from Roosevelt with respect to Jewish rescue plans. Wise concluded by noting that although the president was not acting with the force he personally desired, one could still consider him a friend who would do whatever was realistically possible to help rescue the Jews.44 The letters Wise and Goldmann exchanged reveal the extent to which they considered cancelling the press conference in April 1943 preferable. In short, they argued any contribution to rescue efforts arising therefrom would be marginal at best and possibly cause serious harm if it resulted in widening the gap between Roosevelt, the U.S. government, and Jewish and Zionist rescue and relief efforts. The correspondence thus informs us of the desperate trap in which Wise and Goldmann found themselves. They were painfully aware the U.S. government was not doing enough to rescue European Jews, but meanwhile believed that Roosevelt’s inactivity derived from political constraints in the American arena in the first half of the 1940s. As a result, they concluded, this predicament necessitated close coordination with the American government regarding the nature of the American and world Jewish response to the murder of Europe’s Jews.45 They thought blurring Roosevelt’s treatment of the Jewish issue desirable to help weaken the political force of his many opponents in the U.S. Congress. These Wise described as anti-Semites who wished to harm the president by presenting him as a friend of the Jews whose activities in the war were not motivated by American interests, but rather by Jewish pressure. Increased propaganda against Roosevelt’s inactivity could harm the President in another respect; it could diminish Jewish support for him and his party in a way that would limit his freedom of political activity. Such a situation, according to Goldmann and Wise, was dangerous for the United States as well as for world Jewry.46 Therefore, in official letters devised for wide public distribution, Wise and Goldmann presented an optimistic evaluation of the obligations of the President and the State Department to act definitively on behalf of European Jewry, this to moderate the Jewish struggle against the President.47 Their actual expectations of Roosevelt, however, were for minor activity only, which they secretly asserted in their correspondence. Goldmann and his associates in the American WJC leadership cooperated with the U.S. government to curb public activity of American Jews not only with regard to the rescue of European Jewry, but also with respect to the struggle to establish a Jewish state within the framework of new international arrangements following World War II. Goldmann disclosed this in his letter of May 1944 to Moshe Shertok (later Sharett), head of the Political Department of the Jewish Agency. Here Goldmann and Wise flatly opposed presenting


117

pro-Zionist proposals to the U.S. Congress over Roosevelt’s objections, and they took aim at American Zionists such as Abba Hillel Silver, who together with Wise was head of the American Zionist Emergency Committee (AZEC).48 From that letter and additional documents, we can clearly see that Goldmann and his associates opposed Silver’s political activism, as well as the political process directed by American Zionist institutions Silver headed. Their independent status as WJC representatives was exploited to create an additional avenue of Zionist activity in which they worked to torpedo Zionist proposals and to remove Silver from office.49 Similar patterns of behavior were revealed in 1946 when the AngloAmerican investigation committee published its report at the end of April 1946. Goldmann’s senior position in the WJC led to his appointment as representative of that organization at the investigation committee meetings in London.50 The political importance of being the WJC delegate at the committee became manifest when, on completion of its work, Goldmann used his status to try to prevent and curb the American Jewish reaction against the committee’s conclusions. Representing the WJC rather than the Zionist movement facilitated his efforts, especially in light of Silver’s opposition as the senior American Zionist leader at the time. Goldmann, for his part, was not constrained by decisions reached by Zionist institutions.51

II. Goldmann’s documents regarding WJC activity during the 1930s and 1940s, and what he himself actually did during that period, reveal the shaping forces behind that organization’s activity in the world in general and the United States in particular. Its founders were aware of the fate of the European Jews. They attempted to curb American Jews’ political and public activity assuming that thus they would best serve the interests of the Jewish world and the American Jewish community. Wise, Goldmann, and their associates in the senior leadership of the WJC in the United States did not function in a vacuum. Rather, their activities should be understood against the background of their public and political status. The historical record demonstrates they considered themselves an integral part of the Democratic establishment, including Roosevelt’s governing coalition. They perceived no difference between themselves and the Jews in senior White House positions; they wished to direct Jewish public activity together with them into channels that would not harm the U.S. administration they viewed as serving their interests as Jews in the best way possible.52 It was not that they were misled. Neither did the President nor the Jewish and non-Jewish officials of his government lead them to act as they did. Nor did they convince themselves that the Roosevelt Administration was doing whatever it could to rescue Jews from the Holocaust, or, later, that President Harry S. Truman would support a Jewish state within the framework of

118

Zohar Segev

arrangements following World War II. The reverse was true. Goldmann’s and his associates’ policy was carried out despite their awareness of the tragic plight of the European Jews. They realized their success in influencing U.S. government policy on Jewish and Zionist matters was modest. Nevertheless, in their opinion, continuing the Roosevelt Admininstration and ensuring a Democratic majority in Congress were strategic aims of first priority to the American Jewish community as Jews and as Americans.53 They felt certain that restricting the Roosevelt Administration’s freedom of action, and worse still, replacing Roosevelt with a new president, would be much worse than the existing situation.54 Understanding that this policy was not conducted because of disregard, fear, or lack of concern is important. At the end of July 1943, Wise wrote to Goldmann of his efforts to influence the government to act on behalf of European Jews. Among other things he reported a telegram he had sent to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. and phone calls to Senator Robert Wagner, a Democrat. Wise emphasized in his letter: “I think we have done what could be done.”55 Goldmann, Wise, and their associates undoubtedly would have done anything they thought would help European Jews. Their documents indicate that tragically, according to their own view, nothing more could be achieved. From the second half of the 1930s—against the backdrop of the deepening U.S. economic crisis and despite American Jews’ fear of the spread of antiSemitism at home and abroad—a dramatic upsurge was seen in the support of broad segments of the American Jewish community for political activity, especially Zionism. While American Jewry as a whole did not initially hasten to react to Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, Zionist activity was clearly visible and robust from the outset. In fact, the 1930s witnessed a dramatic rise in fundraising activity, a surge in membership across the political spectrum, and a proliferation of public events.56 The continuing deterioration of the situation of German Jews, the escalation of anti-Semitism in Central and Eastern Europe, the ever-deepening rift between Great Britain and the Zionist movement— all countered the American Jewish fear of home-grown American antiSemitism. Paradoxically, such threats strengthened American Jews’ sense of solidarity and willingness to act publicly and politically as an ethnic group in the United States.57 Nor did the founders of the WJC overlook such trends. Established in 1936 as a democratic organization to strengthen and enhance Jewish fellowship and cultural life worldwide, they felt a keen responsibility to come to the aid of Jewish communities in distress. They further believed the management of such political activity must not be abandoned to those who were not worthy of—and not privy to—the secrets of diplomatic and public activity, especially in light of the Jewish crisis in Europe and the Holocaust. In short, they wanted to create an autonomous organization that enabled them to act as they saw fit. One reason was their view of the limitations of ethnic politics in


119

the United States. In their opinion, uncontrolled activity could fatally harm the social status of Jews in American society, eventually limiting their ability to act on behalf of European Jewry. A second reason was the context of the WJC founders’ political and public positions in the United States. The activity of Jews in the United States on behalf of European Jews during World War II was directed toward a solution to the problem of the uprooted and establishing a Jewish state in the postwar era. By its very nature, such activity challenged the Democratic administrations of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. Meanwhile, the WJC founders clung to the belief that the latter were far better than any Republican alternative. Importantly, these positions were not self-serving. On the contrary, by 1943 Wise’s vigorous support of Roosevelt was one of the key reasons he lost his position of authority in the American Zionist movement. Within the context of America’s political and social reality in the early 1940s, the WJC founders did not view themselves as differing significantly from the German Jewish elite or from Jewish figures who served in senior positions in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. These groups, too, possessed social, economic, and political interests that influenced their support of the Democratic Party as well as philosophical beliefs concerning the inclusion of Jews in American society. They viewed with suspicion any separatist Jewish ethnic activity that might precipitate a deviation from what they saw as the most desirable path for Jewish integration into the wider society. Thus the WJC, although created for distinctive democratic and populist reasons, in practice cooperated closely and behaved much like elite Jewish groups.58 The establishment of the WJC served its founders in another way too. American political status as a world power, the drastically deteriorating condition of the European Jews, and the deepening of the rift between the Zionist movement and Great Britain, made the United States the center of Zionist activity during the 1930s and 1940s. Mobilizing American Jews generally—an ethnic group that could perhaps exert political pressure on the U.S. government—constituted the basis of Zionist policy generally and in the United States particularly. But such an approach did not accord with the worldview of the Goldmann and his associates, who were also Zionist activists holding senior positions in the Zionist movement. These leaders confronted a dilemma with regard to activities that contradicted their viewpoint. Despite differences of opinion with Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership on this issue, they continued to consider themselves Zionists and did not resign from the Zionist movement. Indeed, establishing the WJC provided a partial solution. Through the WJC, Goldmann, Wise, and others could perform different duties and direct an independent policy not subject to the jurisdiction of Zionist institutions in the United States or overseas. Moreover, they could and did restrain Jewish political activity in the United States. The concept “congress” did not by chance become part of the name of the organization Goldmann founded in 1936, among others. The name was meant

120

Zohar Segev

to transmit to broad segments of the Jewish public a sense of a democratic organization aiming to strengthen the political and public activity of the Jews as a minority ethnic group acting on behalf of the Jews as a whole. In practice, the WJC directed a different policy from the late 1930s on. Its goal was to enable its leaders to manage political activity without supervision and to lead the ethnic activity of the American Jewish public into the channels they themselves favored. In effect, this meant they restricted such activity and at the same time impaired the exclusivity of the Zionist organizations. They also tried to diminish the influence of groups outside the Zionist establishment like the Bergson group.59 Goldmann in his letter to Gruenbaum described the series of Jewish public activities in the early 1940s as enabling diverse Jewish groups “to let off steam.” They created what seemed to be public activity, yet averted any threat to the Democratic Party and the Roosevelt government. Such activity remained strictly within bounds, avoiding the use of the Jewish vote, which the WJC leaders thought could harm their own status in American society. The extraordinary situation of world Jewry beginning in the early 1930s, and the status of the American Jewish community at the time—the largest and strongest Jewish community outside of Nazi–dominated Europe—enhanced the readiness of American Jews to work within separate political and ethnic frameworks. But it exacerbated the problems that such undertakings created. Consequently, the Jewish leadership felt compelled to establish new organizational structures to try to ensure patterns that would not exceed the bounds of what they perceived to be desirable and advantageous for Jews. This suited their political and public agendas in American society and in general.

Notes 1. Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann: Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969), 115–18. 2. Goldmann, Autobiography, 121–22. 3. Nahum Goldmann, “Dr. Stephen Wise,” in My People’s Way (Jerusalem, 1968), in Hebrew. For other examples of the close Wise-Goldmann relationship during the 1940s, see Wise’s staunch support for Goldmann among American Zionists, for example, Wise’s letter to Goldmann, Z–6/98, Central Zionist Archive (CZA), November 18, 1946. For more information on Wise, see Melvin I. Urofsky, A Voice that Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise (Albany, NY, 1982); Robert D. Shapiro, A Reform Rabbi in the Progressive Era: The Early Career of Stephen S. Wise (New York, 1988). 4. For detailed information, see the entry “World Jewish Congress” in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 16 (2006), 637–38. 5. Nahum Goldmann, “The Congress at Work,” in Nahum Goldmann, The Jewish Paradox (London, 1978), 54–55.


121

6. Monty N. Penkower, “Dr. Nahum Goldmann and the Policy of International Jewish Organizations,” in Organizing Rescue: National Jewish Solidarity in the Modern Period, ed. Selwyn Ilan Troen and Benjamin Pinkus (London, 1992), 141–53. 7. Goldmann, Autobiography, 192–93. 8. For example, see Goldmann’s letter to Wise, Z–6/2759, CZA, Aug. 10, 1944. 9. A similar view, held by David Ben-Gurion, chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive during the 1940s, is found in the minutes of Ben-Gurion’s talk with Meir Grossman, Microfilm #1604, American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, May 30, 1936. See also, Allon Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State (Jerusalem, 1991); Henry L. Feingold, The Politics of Rescue: The Roosevelt Administration and the Holocaust, 1938–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1970), 6–15. 10. Leon A. Kubowizki, Unity in Dispersion: A History of the World Jewish Congress (New York, 1948), 121–24. For a description of the situation, see Goldmann’s letter to Eliezer Kaplan, secretary of the Jewish Agency at the time, Z–6/2755, CZA, Jan. 11, 1943. 11. Shapiro, Wise, 422–23. 12. For a striking example, see David S. Wyman and Rafael Medoff, “A Race against Death”; Peter Bergson, America and the Holocaust (New York, 2002), 29–30, 230–31. Viewing Goldmann’s activities in the summer of 1943 dispassionately is indeed difficult when alongside his efforts to rescue European Jews he remembered to request a renewal of his fishing license. Goldmann’s letter to New York State Conservation Department, Z–6/18, CZA, July 20, 1943. 13. See, for example, David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York, 1984). Rafael Medoff, The Deafening Silence (New York, 1987). A detailed survey of research along these lines can be found in Gulie Neeman Arad, “Cooptation of Elites: American Jewish Reactions to the Nazi Menace, 1933,” Yad Vashem Studies 25 (1996): 32–33. 14. Henry L. Feingold, Bearing Witness: How America and Its Jews Responded to the Holocaust (New York, 1955), 14–16, 205–76. Henry L. Feingold, “Was There Communal Failure? Some Thoughts on the American Jewish Response to the Holocaust,” American Jewish History 81 (1993), 60–80. 15. Goldmann’s letter to New York Telephone Company, Z–6/18, CZA, June 3, 1943. 16. Goldmann, “Memorial Addresses at the Preparatory Convention and Foundation Conference of the WJC,” Z–6/2273, CZA, Aug. 10, 1936. For background, see Mordecai Figovitz, “The American Jewish Background of the Foundation of the World Jewish Congress: Policy Formulation between the Zurich Convention, 1927 and the Geneva Convention, 1932,” in Hebrew, graduation essay, Haifa University, Israel, 1977. 17. See, for example, Yehuda Bauer, My Brother’s Keeper: A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1929–1939 (Philadelphia, 1974).

122

Zohar Segev

18. Goldmann’s lecture at the WJC conference in Atlantic City, Nov. 1944 (no exact date), Z–6/2248, CZA, 15a. 19. Kubowizki, World Jewish Congress, 14–17, 67. 20. Urofsky, Wise, 298–99. On the pro-Zionist orientation of the Congress, see also Wyman, Abandonment, 76–77. For a similar view of Wise himself, see Stephen S. Wise, Challenging Years: The Autobiography of Stephen S. Wise (New York, 1949) 229–30. 21. Goldmann’s lecture, Nov. 1944, ibid., 15, 20. 22. Goldmann’s letter to Hantke, Z–6/2755, CZA, Nov. 6, 1941. 23. Hantke’s letter to Goldmann, Z–6/2755, CZA, Dec. 3, 1941. 24. Robinson’s letter to Goldmann, A-243/73, CZA, Mar. 25, 1943. 25. Robinson, ibid. 26. Goldmann, The Congress, 58–59. 27. Wise’s address, A-243/71, CZA, Feb. 11, 1940. 28. Goldmann’s address at the first WJC conference during World War II, Z–6/2248, CZA, Nov. 1944 (no exact date). 29. Lipsky’s letter to Goldmann, July 20, 1936. See Louis Lipsky’s documents in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York City, 3/5. 30. Isaac I. Schwarzbart, Twenty-Five Years in the Service of the Jewish People: A Chronicle of Activities of the World Jewish Congress, August 1932–February 1957 (New York, 1957), 10–11. 31. Wise’s letter to Goldmann, Z–6/2765, CZA, Jan. 18, 1938. 32. On earlier activity of the WJC leaders on behalf of Romanian Jews, see Schwarzbart, Twenty-Five Years, 9–10. On Goldmann’s meeting with the foreign minister of Romania, see Goldmann’s letter to Wise, Z–6/2765, CZA, Sept. 22, 1938. With regard to the boycott of German goods, too, Wise acted very cautiously. See, Urofsky, Wise, 297–98. On the Holocaust in Romania see Ioanid Radu, The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944, trans. Ivan R. Dee, published in conjunction with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (Chicago, 2000). 33. Goldmann’s letter to Gruenbaum, Z–6/2755, CZA, Apr. 5, 1943. 34. Goldmann’s letter, ibid. For more on Goldmann’s plan, see Wyman, Abandonment, 187–88. 35. Goldmann’s letter to Myron Taylor, Z–6/2755, CZA, Mar. 24, 1943. 36. A similar survey of American rescue activities with the conclusion that no more could be achieved and the evaluation that there was no need to send Zionist leaders from Palestine to the United States, can be found in an earlier, less detailed letter from Goldmann to Eliezer Kaplan, a member of the Zionist administration and treasurer of the Jewish Agency. See Goldmann’s letter to Kaplan, Z–6/2755, CZA, Jan. 11, 1943.


123

37. Goldmann’s letter, ibid., Apr. 5, 1943. 38. Goldmann’s letter, ibid. Discussion of American Jewish Committee activities during World War II is beyond the scope of this chapter, which presents these matters only as Goldmann raised them. For a broad discussion, see Naomi W. Cohen, Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906–1966 (Philadelphia, 1972), 227–64. 39. For more on the cooperation between Wise and Proskauer, see Cohen, Not Free to Desist, 244–45. 40. Goldmann, Autobiography, 195–96, and Wise, Autobiography, 223–24. 41. Goldmann’s letter to Proskauer, Z–6/69, CZA, June 28, 1946. For testimony on other secret meetings between Goldmann and Proskauer, see the letter of Emmanuel Neumann, an active American Zionist and close aid of Abba Hillel Silver, to Lipsky, who was previously (after the downfall of Brandeis) president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), A–123/120, CZA, Aug. 30, 1946. 42. Wise’s letter to Goldmann, Z–6/18, CZA, Apr. 22, 1943. 43. Wise’s words should be understood in light of Roosevelt’s difficulties in the Congress. See T. Morgan, FDR: A Biography (New York, 1985), 646–47 and 713–14 regarding Roosevelt’s concern for relaxing immigration control because of public and Congress’s objections. Regarding the challenge to Roosevelt’s reelection to a third term, see S. I. Rosenman, Working with Roosevelt (New York, 1952), 293–94. 44. Wise’s letter to Goldmann, ibid., Apr. 22, 1943. A similar view of Roosevelt’s attitude to the Jewish issue is found in a later letter to Goldmann. Wise thought Roosevelt would not change his pattern of activity regarding the rescue of European Jews and that no more could be done. Wise’s letter to Goldmann, A–243/24, CZA, July 27, 1943. For more on Wise’s refraining from publicizing information about the Holocaust, see Mark A. Raider, “Toward a Re-examination of American Zionist Leadership: The Case of Hayim Greenberg,” Journal of Israeli History 15 (1994): 155–56. 45. See, for example, Wise’s letter to Goldmann, A–243/124, CZA, Sept. 4, 1942. 46. For a clear example of Wise’s views as an American and his belief in American democracy as the only means of rescuing world Jewry and defeating Hitler, see his address at an AJC convention, A–243/71, CZA, Feb. 11, 1940. 47. In contrast to the documents critical of Roosevelt’s policy presented here, see Wise’s account of contacts with Roosevelt, sent to Goldmann and heads of Jewish organizations, A–243/173, CZA, Sept. 14, 1942. For Goldmann’s positive evaluation of American government activity, see his address to the first WJC conference after the outbreak of World War II, Z–6/2248, CZA, Nov. 1944 (no exact date). 48. Goldmann’s letter to Shertok, Z–6/2755, CZA, May 19, 1944. 49. See, for example, Wise’s letter to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, A–243/137, CZA, Oct. 28, 1944; Goldmann’s letter to Wise, Z–6/2759, CZA, Aug. 10, 1944; Goldmann’s letter to Chaim Weizmann, president of the Zionist movement, ibid.; Wise’s letter to Roosevelt, A–243/83, CZA, Dec. 12, 1944. 50. For more about the appointment, see Wise’s cable to Goldmann’s wife, A–243/124, CZA, Jan. 18, 1946.

124

Zohar Segev

51. Goldmann’s letter to Wise, A–243/124, CZA, Apr. 18, 1946. On Silver’s opposition to the committee’s conclusions, see his letter to Wise, A–243/132, CZA, Apr. 12, 1946. 52. See the top secret protocol of Goldmann’s meeting with Judge Samuel Rosenman, close adviser of Roosevelt and his speechwriter, Z–5/388, CZA, Apr. 27, 1944. See also Wise’s letter to Felix Frankfurter, A–243/137, CZA, Oct. 28, 1944. 53. On coordination with the government and attempts to prevent electoral damage to Roosevelt because of his policy on the Jewish issue and Palestine, see Wise’s letter to Frankfurter, A–243/137, CZA, July 26, 1944, and Goldmann’s letter to Weizmann, Z–6/2759, CZA, Aug. 10, 1944. 54. For a description of Roosevelt as a defender of the United States, see Wise’s personal and confidential letter to Roosevelt, A–243/33, CZA, Mar. 4, 1938. Wise did not always support Roosevelt. For example, during Roosevelt’s governorship of New York state, notable tensions existed between Wise and him due to Wise’s request that he act against corruption in the Democratic Party. See Urofsky, Wise, 246–49. 55. Wise’s letter to Goldmann, A–243/124, CZA, July 27, 1943. 56. For an evaluation along these lines, see the memoirs of Eliahu Elath (then Epstein), the Jewish Agency’s representative in Washington and future senior official in the Israeli foreign ministry: Eliahu Elath, The Struggle for the State (Tel Aviv, 1979), 98–99, in Hebrew. See also, David H. Shapiro, From Philanthropy to Activism: The Political Transformation of American Zionism in the Holocaust Years 1933–1945 (New York, 1994), 1–22; Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism (Detroit, 1961), 20–28. 57. For examples concerning the boycott of German goods in the United States, see Yfaat Weiss, “The Transfer Agreement and the Boycott Movement: A Jewish Dilemma on the Eve of the Holocaust,” Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998): 129–71. 58. Another view is found in Arad, “Cooptation of Elites.” See also, Gulie Neeman Arad, America, Its Jews, and the Rise of Nazism (Bloomington, 2000), 129–56. 59. With regard to Goldmann’s activities against the Bergson group, see Goldmann’s letter to Shertok, Z–6/27755, CZA, May 19, 1944. Peter Bergson, the pseudonym Hillel Kook used, headed a group of Ezel (Irgun Zvai Leumi) members in the United States from 1939 to 1947. See also, Medoff, Silence, 157–58. For additional information see Monty Noam Penkower, “In Dramatic Dissent: The Bergson Boys,” in American Zionism: Missions and Politics, ed. Jeffery S. Grock, American Jewish History, vol. 8 (1998): 361–89.

6

( Nahum Goldmann and ChaimWeizmann An Ambivalent “Relationship” Jehuda Reinharz

bout one generation separated Nahum Goldmann, born in 1895, from Chaim Weizmann, born in 1874. Pondering the Zionist paths of both men, one’s first impression is their similarities, starting with their personal traits: two highly gifted individualists, statesmen rather than politicians. Two cosmopolitans, familiar with diverse European languages and cultures but rooted in none, shtetl-Jews from Eastern Europe who went on to establish themselves in the world but remained anchored in their essential Jewishness. Their Zionist careers had much in common, and their ideological positions, as we shall see, were almost similar. Unlike many other outstanding Zionist figures of their time, Weizmann and Goldmann rose to the highest level of general Jewish leadership. Weizmann, while commenting on the startling, almost magic influence he had on his interlocutors, especially on the Gentile ones, said once that he spoke to them “in his blue voice.” Many of Goldmann’s conversations had that same quality. Both men gave to many of their interlocutors the impression of being larger-than-life. Logically, one may have expected a close collaboration between the older master and the rising star. But formal logic was never one of the characteristics of Zionist life, and the relations between Weizmann and Goldmann are one more example of this. The more experienced observer of Zionist life and

A

125

126

Jehuda Reinharz

history is soon caught by a disconcerting sense that the superficial resemblances between the two men cover some darker realities. How did it happen, one asks, that two men so similar in their bearings, so dedicated to the same dream, so close in their positions, who hold, in different times, the highest position in the movement, the presidency of the World Zionist Organization (WZO)—how is it that they almost never collaborated? Soon the contours of a drama begin to unravel—a Zionist drama, not without tragic overtones. As Goldmann tells it in his memoirs, he was a great admirer of Weizmann, although their relationship was not without strain: First came a short period of very close collaboration that led to some degree of personal intimacy, despite the difference in our ages. Within a few days at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress in 1931, this gave way to out-and-out antagonism that brought a complete rupture of personal relations for three years. Finally, in the last ten years of his [Weizmann’s] life, our cooperation was so close that I became one of his most intimate friends and colleagues.1 This is a rather subjective description, not always supported by other data. The impression one gets from copious Weizmann letters about the relations between the two men is much more sober. And in the (equally subjective) Weizmann memoirs, Trial and Error, Goldmann is not mentioned. Goldmann was not fazed. In November 1962, on the tenth anniversary of Weizmann’s death, he gave an address on “Weizmann’s Concept of Zionism and the Jewish State” that deserves to be recognized as one of the deepest and at the same time most generous analysis ever made about Weizmann.2 Chaim Weizmann had been one of the young supporters of Herzl. Later he became an eloquent critic of the founder of the modern Zionist movement, this from a cultural perspective that Ahad Haam clearly influenced. Still later, in 1917, Weizmann turned into the outstanding political figure of the movement and played a critical role in the birth of the Balfour Declaration. Goldmann belonged already to the post–Balfour Declaration generation in Zionist life. Nevertheless, he too adhered, in his younger years, to a Zionist position strongly influenced by the Zionist-cultural approach that later on turned political. In his 1962 address, Goldmann stressed the synthetic character of Weizmann’s Zionism, its combination of political, cultural, and practical elements, together with his emphasis on the Jewish people, more than on the Jewish state: “The aim of Weizmann’s Zionism was the Jewish people, not the Jewish state. . . . He had like most Eastern European Jewish intellectuals a healthy lack of respect for statehood as such.” All characteristics that were as much Goldmann’s as they were of Weizmann. The similarity repeated itself in the views of both men about the attitude of the Zionist movement, or more exactly, the Jewish community in Palestine, toward the Arab population of the country. In his lecture on Weizmann from

Nahum Goldmann and ChaimWeizmann

127

1962, Goldmann quoted from a speech Weizmann delivered in the United States as early as 1923: For years we have drafted political resolutions that we Jews want to live in peace with the Arabs. We have passed resolutions which have the character of a pledge. But as soon as it comes to taking decisive and effective steps to carry out those resolutions, because the realization of all these problems is a question of life or death of our work in Palestine, one is attacked from all sides. A clamour is raised that one sells out to the Arabs or to someone else all that is sacred to Zionism. It should be clear to our great politicians that one cannot put off the Arabs with empty talk. . . . Whatever the Jewish National Home will ultimately become, even if it absorbs millions of Jews and if, as I hope, there will be a Jewish majority in Palestine, it will nevertheless remain an island in the Arabic sea.3 Again, Goldmann’s own position was strikingly similar,4 and in later years, when president of the WZO, Goldmann’s critique against the Israeli policy toward the Arabs was a theme of constant friction between him and the Israeli political establishment. Rather surprisingly, it was an ideological issue, Goldmann’s cultural Zionism, which stood in the background of the first encounter between the two men. Toward the end of 1923, Goldmann (then twenty-eight years old) published in the prestigious monthly Der Jude (The Jew) an unfavorable article about the justconcluded Thirteenth Zionist Congress. He wrote that the Balfour Declaration had led the Zionist movement away from its spiritual, renaissance-directed goals. He criticized the negotiations for the establishment of an enlarged Jewish Agency, where Jewish non-Zionist plutocrats would have a dangerous influence over the movement. Last, Goldmann commented about what he called the “Weizmann problem.” The WZO president, he stated, overshadowed the movement, was much too adulated, possessed power that was unhealthy and undesirable.5 Weizmann was stung: “. . . when Dr. Goldmann was still a young boy I dreamt of a University which is now becoming an accomplished fact, and to which Dr. Goldmann and his group have not contributed intellectually, morally, or materially in any way,” he commented in a letter to Robert Weltsch.6 During the 1920s Goldmann lived in Germany, where he collaborated with Jacob Klatzkin in the Eshkol Publishing House and worked on the Encyclopaedia Judaica. Goldmann belonged then to the Radical Party of the Zionist movement, a small group of distinguished Zionists led by Yitzhak Gruenbaum. The “radical” message of the faction was unclear: besides opposing the enlargement of the Jewish Agency through the addition of non-Zionists, the diverse members of the group followed their own ideological inclinations. Goldmann himself was a supporter of the pioneer movement in Palestine and the building of a new Jewish society in the land. In the early 1920s he went as

128

Jehuda Reinharz

far as to participate in the socialist Hapoel Hazair delegation to one of the Zionist congresses, “but I resigned a couple of days later when it was explained to me that I should be subject to party discipline.”7 Goldmann saw himself as “moderately leftist, progressive and liberal, and remained in contact with the labor movement. In that respect I was a follower of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, who throughout his life held this progressive, moderate position and whose Zionist policy hinged on the closest cooperation with Labor.”8 As a result of the political realignments in the Zionist movement on the eve of the Seventeenth Zionist Congress in 1931, Goldmann adhered to the smaller A group of the General Zionists, a group with a center-left tendency. As in the past, he never became a real party activist, but proceeded on a political course of his own. After the brief episode in 1923, it was only in 1931 that the political paths of Goldmann and Weizmann crossed again, but then in a most poignant manner. In 1929 Weizmann succeeded in forming the enlarged Jewish Agency, and Goldmann accepted the new reality in spite of his erstwhile opposition. Two years later, prior to the Zionist Congress of 1931, there were new political developments, reflecting the situation in Palestine and the political relationship with Great Britain. The Arab riots in Palestine in the second half of 1929 propelled the British to reconsider the situation in the country, and the outcome was the Passfield White Paper of October 1930, which seriously limited the Zionists’ work and the development in Palestine. In a brilliant political maneuver, Weizmann managed to force Prime Minister MacDonald to step back from the White Paper and in a declaration in the House of Commons in February 1931 McDonald reaffirmed the former British policy in Palestine. When several months later, in the summer of 1931, the Zionist movement met at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress, Weizmann was at the peak of his career as the architect of the enlarged Jewish Agency and as the Zionist leader who had avoided a turn for the worse in the British policy in Palestine. Nevertheless, the Weizmann who appeared before the Congress seemed strangely vulnerable. In part, it reflected a personal situation. Weizmann was tired, and contrary to custom he left it to Nahum Sokolow to deliver the traditional opening address. Weizmann spoke the next day, and his words had the aura of a great leave-taking message.9 Furthermore, the party alignment at the Congress indicated that Weizmann was politically exposed. Weizmann’s position as president of the WZO suffered from a built-in weakness that he refused to recognize, although for years it had been growing: Weizmann never bothered to establish a political party of his own, or to connect to a political party in a way that would guarantee him political support in an hour of need. Weizmann started as a “general” Zionist at a time when the ideological alignments in the Zionist movement were not yet expressed by parties. “General” Zionism (not to be confused with the General Zionists that emerged as formal parties in the 1930s) commanded the Zionist scene before World War I, and still dominated the movement in 1921, when Weizmann, at the Twelfth Zionist Congress, was elected WZO president. The Zionist parties, such as the


129

religious Mizrahi or the two socialist Zionist groups, the Poalei Zion and the Zeirei Zion, were active and well-organized, but still small and relatively noninfluential on the broader Zionist scene. However, this situation changed with time, and the indications were clearly shown in the biennial Zionist Congress. With each congress, the power of the parties grew, and the weight of the unaffiliated Zionists decreased. In 1925, at the Fourteenth Zionist Congress, the nationalist right in the Zionist movement organized within the framework of the Revisionist Party. By then the Zionist movement had acquired all the political characteristics of the European milieu it had arisen from: it was now divided into right and left, with a strong religious representation. It was only a matter of time for the middle of the political map to define itself politically: this happened at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress, in 1931, when the remaining “general,” unaffiliated Zionists, especially those in the United States, defined themselves in two political parties, the smaller “General Zionists A” and the larger “General Zionists B,” the first somewhat center-left, the second somewhat center-right. Weizmann felt ideologically close to the General Zionists A (as did Goldmann), but he never became their recognized and actively involved leader. Weizmann failed to recognize that Zionist political life had structured itself during the 1920s along party lines. He saw himself as above “petty” Zionist politics. It was a grievous mistake. Weizmann was left in a situation where he was open to criticism from all sides with no politically guaranteed backing to support him. At that same congress, the Seventeenth, when the process of reorganization of the Zionist movement along party lines reached its end, Weizmann was removed from office. In the end, Weizmann’s downfall was engineered by an issue of a certain ideological but little political significance: a debate started by Vladimir Jabotinsky about the Endziel [the final goal] of the Zionist movement. Jabotinsky wanted the Congress to accept a resolution saying that establishing a Jewish state was the ultimate aim of the movement. Nevertheless, the motion he presented did not say so explicitly, but only that “the aim of Zionism . . . is the formation of a Jewish majority in Palestine on both banks of the Jordan.” When later on a vote was taken, even this veiled proposal was not accepted by the Congress because it was considered politically unwise.10 Unfortunately, Weizmann decided not only to tilt the debate into a direction critical of Jabotinsky, but to do so in a way that was unnecessarily offensive to many of the participants at the Congress who normally would have supported Weizmann. Speaking to a news agency he was reported as stating, “I have no understanding nor sympathy for the demand of a Jewish majority in Palestine. A majority does not guarantee security, a majority is not essential for the development of a Jewish civilization and culture. The world will interpret the demand for a Jewish majority as indication that we want to achieve it in order to drive the Arabs from the country.”11 The interview caused consternation and anger. Motions and formulations were considered in a subcommission—

130

Jehuda Reinharz

of which Goldmann was elected chairman—of the Political Committee of the Congress. Compromises were sought but not found, and in the end the Congress approved a motion of censure against Weizmann. In practice it meant that Weizmann was not reelected as WZO president. It was a result that surprised everyone—supporters, opponents, Weizmann himself. “It was all so tricky and treacherous and beastly,” he wrote to his secretary.12 Weizmann would spend the next four years in a political limbo. In old age, when pondering those happenings of 1931, Goldmann dressed his part in those dramatic events in the dignified gown of political wisdom: “In spite of my budding friendship with Weizmann, I had become convinced that in the interests of the movement he ought to resign temporarily as president.”13 And later on, “I had come to a kind of gentlemen’s agreement with Weizmann that he would voluntarily resign. . . .”14 Goldmann’s explanation is hardly convincing, the less so considering that Weizmann, who tended to personalize his defeat and certainly knew about Goldmann’s role in the events, did not mention him among the major culprits of his downfall.15 It is also difficult to figure out what exactly were Goldmann’s motives at the Congress. “My relations with Weizmann were abruptly broken off and were not resumed until he returned to the presidency, when we gradually developed a political and personal friendship,”16 writes Goldmann in his memoirs. To judge from the Weizmann correspondence, the two men had relatively little contact after 1935 when Weizmann was reelected to the presidency of the Zionist movement. Both men met in 1937 around the issue of partition, which both supported, but even then the tenor of the few letters Weizmann wrote remained careful in tone (“My dear Dr. Goldmann . . .”) and somewhat distant in approach, although friendly. For most of the 1930s Goldmann was living in Geneva. By then a member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Goldmann was the representative of the Jewish Agency at the League of Nations, and after the death of Leo Motzkin in 1933, he became the head of the Comité des Delégation Juives, a body established at the 1919 Peace Conference in Paris to deal with general Jewish interests. Together with Stephen S. Wise (who at the Congress in 1931 had been one of the most vociferous critics of Weizmann) he participated in 1936 in establishing the World Jewish Congress (WJC), and became its vice president. In those years most of Goldmann’s public activities were concentrated on the general Jewish scene. Goldmann returned fully to Zionist affairs from 1940 onward, when he settled in the United States. He took a leading part in the Biltmore Conference in May 1942. In the fall of 1942 Weizmann established an American branch of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, whose members included himself, Stephen S. Wise, Nahum Goldmann, and Louis Lipsky. This step expressed the recognition of the growing importance of the Zionist contacts with the American policymakers. Weizmann considered the main existing Zionist body, the American Zionist Emergency Committee (AZEC), headed by Wise and Abba Hillel Silver (but soon dominated by Silver) as unwieldy and unfit for proper political work.17


131

After debates in the Zionist leadership for and against Weizmann’s proposal, a political office in Washington was established in June 1943 under the direction of the Executive. Goldmann and Lipsky were nominated as heads of the office and proper guidelines were issued.18 The Washington office did very important work among the members of the American political elite,19 but it was hampered by the very confusing and troublesome situation in the Zionist leadership in the years from mid-1942 to the end of 1946. In spite of the developing tragedy of European Jewry, in spite of the worsening relations between the Yishuv in Palestine and the British government—or perhaps because of all these—in the years in question an unprecedented crisis occurred in the relations between the leading figures of the Zionist movement. Ben-Gurion confronted Weizmann; Abba Hillel Silver quarreled with both and with his co-chairman in the AZEC, Stephen S. Wise; Mapai, the leading political party in the Zionist movement, split in 1944. Goldmann tried to maneuver between the quarreling political figures and kept regular relations with all, including Weizmann.20 Nevertheless, Silver, the strong man in the AZEC, was very much angered by what he considered a competing Zionist body in the United States that did work that in his opinion belonged to the realm of his AZEC.21 Goldmann’s hour in Zionist life came in August 1946. Together with Eliahu Epstein (later Eilat) he had been an observer of the new international settings evolving from the establishment of the Organization of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. Goldmann, who had years of experience with the now abolished League of Nations, recognized that the new situation worked to the Zionists’ disadvantage. In letters written in September 1945 to David BenGurion, the chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, and to Abba Hillel Silver, the co-chairman of the AZEC, Goldmann stressed that on one hand the Jewish Agency no longer had the official standing it had enjoyed at the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. On the other hand, five Arab States were now full members at the U.N., and many more countries were favorably disposed to the Palestinian Arabs and their demands. Furthermore, the U.S. government tended to consider the Jewish problem in Europe in humanitarian terms, while the Zionist movement was trying to connect it to political solutions. The United Nations was establishing a trusteeship system for countries that had remained as mandates, and Goldmann was convinced that the change would work to the disadvantage of the Yishuv and of the Zionist movement. Instead of trusteeship, Jewish statehood was now of vital importance for the Zionist movement, he stressed.22 On that point Goldmann went a step further. In his letter to Ben-Gurion (although not in the one written to Silver), he proposed to raise again the partition of Palestine. Partition was an explosive issue in Zionist political life. First officially proposed by the British in 1937, it had been fiercely debated at the Seventeenth Zionist Congress, which took place the same year. Soon the British themselves had second thoughts, and the MacDonald White Paper of May

132

Jehuda Reinharz

1939 envisaged again a unitary state in Palestine, where Jews and Arabs should try to find ways of co-existence. By 1945 to 1946, partition was opposed by the Arabs (it always had been), by the British, and by a large and assertive part of the Zionist movement. The British had in the meantime a new proposal: the Morrison-Grady Plan, an evolution of the report of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AACI), that envisaged, in the framework of a Britishdominated unitary state, autonomous cantons for Jews and Arabs. The British were trying to get official U.S. support for the plan. The Executive of the Jewish Agency was very much against the Morrison-Grady scheme, the problem now was how to oppose it with a positive alternative on the Zionist side. In the confused and confusing situation the Zionists found themselves— burdened by the consequences of the Holocaust, looking for ways to neutralize most of the recommendations and possible consequences of the MorrisonGrady Plan, enmeshed in a developing armed conflict with the British authorities in Palestine, trapped in internal leadership confrontations—a new, sensible, and realistic political goal for the movement was highly necessary. Considering the Palestinian and Zionist realities of 1946, partition appeared to offer exactly what the Zionists were lacking: a way out of the cul-de-sac in which the movement found itself, a realistic solution for the Palestinian imbroglio, and Jewish statehood with all the obvious advantages. True, Jewish statehood (“that Palestine be established as a Jewish commonwealth”) had been the main recommendation of the Biltmore Conference in May 1942, and had meanwhile been accepted as the political goal by the leading Zionist bodies. But the Biltmore Plan was an internal platform. In the context of the external relations of the Zionist movement, vis-à-vis the British, the Americans, or others, the Biltmore resolutions had little more than a declarative significance because it did not offer a political solution for the Arab majority of Palestine. The solution, in Goldmann’s opinion, was the partition of Palestine. In a dramatic meeting of the Executive of the Jewish Agency in Paris early in August 1946, Goldmann proposed and the Executive accepted a plan of political action whose centerpiece was a resolution (no. 2) stating: “The Executive [of the Jewish Agency] is prepared to discuss a proposal for the establishment of a viable Jewish State in an adequate area of Palestine.”23 Furthermore, it was decided to send Goldmann to Washington to act for the rejection of the Morrison-Grady Plan and to get the support of the American administration for the new Zionist proposals. Weizmann, who favored partition, did not participate in the deliberations of the Executive in Paris. Neither did Abba Hillel Silver, the fierce leader of the American Zionists and an opponent of partition. Ben-Gurion was present, and although he understood that partition was unavoidable, his position was not emphatic enough. In other words, Goldmann went to Washington carrying the burden of a proposal, which important figures in the movement were opposed to, and others, while supporting it, thought better not to express their views too clearly. It was a gamble, and one that Goldmann obviously enjoyed. He spent six


133

hectic days in the United States, explaining, negotiating, cajoling—presenting with brilliance the solution out from the cul-de-sac in which the Zionist movement found itself. The results of the mission were mixed: the Americans were already in the process of rejecting the Morrison-Grady Plan for the cantonization of Palestine, primarily due to the political campaign organized by Abba Hillel Silver, the head of the AZEC.24 Goldmann met with high officials in the U.S. State Department and the White House. They took notice of the Zionist partition proposal and transmitted it to the British without committing the American administration. Nevertheless, partition was now launched as an official Zionist policy, and in spite of ups-and-downs in the coming months (the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress, in December 1946, would once again declare itself for Jewish statehood in all of Palestine), it was now acknowledged wisdom that the Zionist movement considered partition a sensible political option for the solution of the Palestine problem. It seems there were no consultations between Goldmann and Weizmann before the presentation and adoption of the partition resolution at the meeting of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. True, Weizmann was sick, about to undergo eye surgery. However, two days before the operation, on August 15, Weizmann, accompanied by Goldmann (back from the United States) and Stephen S. Wise, met with the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, George H. Hall. Hall was informed of the resolutions of the Zionist Executive meeting on August 5, and the results of the Goldmann mission in Washington.25 Weizmann returned to political activity at the beginning of September, but it seems that also then there were no meaningful contacts between him and Goldmann. The British continued to pressure for Zionist participation in a British-Arab-Jewish conference in London on the future of Palestine based on the Morrison-Grady proposals, even without American support, and refused to consider the new alternatives the Executive of the Jewish Agency approved in early August. The Zionist Executive agonized over the question of participation at the planned London Conference. Weizmann and Goldmann were for participation, the majority of the other members of the Executive, against. In the meantime, Silver intensified his attacks against Goldmann and his Washington mission in August, claiming that it had done much harm and demanding that Goldmann not carry on political work in the United States.26 Ben-Gurion, attentive to the political constellation in the movement with the approaching Zionist Congress, was intent on appeasing Silver. He downgraded the significance of the August decisions taken in Paris, and his views about Goldmann’s mission were less than supportive.27 All in all, in the second half of 1946 Goldmann was fighting for his political standing in the Executive of the Jewish Agency, and doing it quite alone. Among the leading figures in the movement, Goldmann and Weizmann were the main casualties of the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress in December 1946 in Basel. Obviously, Weizmann’s fall was the more spectacular because he was not reelected as WZO president. With the return of the

134

Jehuda Reinharz

Revisionist Party to the movement and the predominance of Silver and the strong American delegation at the Congress, the tenor of the resolutions was “activist” and extreme. Weizmann and Goldmann tried in vain to defend a more reasonable line. “Nahum Goldmann made a very courageous speech, in favor of going into the [London] Conference and of partition, and was listened to without interruption and got a great ovation at the end,” wrote Blanche Dugdale, who was participating at the Congress, in her diary.28 And some days later she noted, “The best speech at the Congress so far has been Nahum Goldmann’s.”29 It did not help. Although Goldmann was reelected as member of the Executive, Silver, now elected chairman of the American section of the Jewish Agency, imposed his demand that Goldmann should not act independently in the United States. During that fateful year of 1947, when the future of the Zionist movement and of the Jewish community in Palestine were being considered at the Organization of the United Nations in Lake Success, Goldmann was certainly active in the Zionist team, but he played a secondary role to the powerful Silver’s main one. During 1947 Goldmann’s relations to Weizmann visibly warmed up. After the Congress, Weizmann was quite isolated from Zionist affairs. “With the exception of [Eliezer] Kaplan and Goldmann, and occasional visitors who drop in to see me, I have no contact with anybody connected with the Agency . . . ,” he wrote to Weisgal in March 1947.30 Goldmann tried to have Weizmann lead the Zionist delegation to the United Nations, but Silver was against, Ben-Gurion was noncommittal, and nothing came out of it.31 In spite of the good relations between the two men from 1947 onward, it seems that something from Weizmann’s distrust toward Goldmann never disappeared completely. Over a year later, already after the establishment of the state of Israel, Weizmann introduced Goldmann to Leopold S. Amery and asked for Amery’s support: Goldmann was on a mission in London trying to rebuild political relations between Israel and Great Britain.32 At the same time Weizmann wrote to Joseph I. Linton, “I am somewhat worried about the negotiations which our friend Goldmann is carrying out in London. It is quite clear that the British Government would be ready to recognize us if we are prepared to give up the Negev and perhaps some part of Northern Galilee. . . .”33 And a month later, writing to Shertok: “Goldmann is always optimistic when he returns from London, but to be frank, I am not prepared to share this optimism.”34 In 1949, after the death of Stephen S. Wise, Goldmann became acting president of the WJC. In the same year he also became the chairman of the American Section of the Jewish Agency, having managed to oust Abba Hillel Silver from this position.35 We find no indications of significant contacts between Goldmann and Weizmann after 1948. Weizmann, elected president of Israel in February 1949, lived until November 1952, and until the middle of that year remained well informed about political developments. Weizmann’s letters contain no mention about the start of contacts between Goldmann and the German

Nahum Goldmann and Chaim Weizmann

135

government in the second half of 1951 that would eventually lead to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and the German Federal Republic.

( If we try to sum-up the political careers of Weizmann and Goldmann, our attention is again caught by the similarities between the Zionist careers of both men, in spite of the generation that separated them. Regarding Weizmann, it can be said that the culmination of his Zionist activities was between 1917 and 1931: from the negotiations following the Balfour Declaration, until that very rare and dramatic success in politics, the MacDonald letter of February 1931, which was read in Parliament. Regarding Goldmann, his political zenith can be seen as spanning the summer of 1946 until 1952: from the official return of the Executive of the Jewish Agency to the partition idea of Palestine, to the successful signing of the Reparations Agreement between Israel and the German Federal Republic. Obviously, both men filled significant roles in Zionist life before and after the dates mentioned for each of them. But at their respective zenith they acted basically alone. They fulfilled political tasks that put them a step beyond the broader leadership of the Zionist movement. Their achievements expressed the innermost interest of the movement, and in a certain sense also contributed to give that interest new, and sometimes startling expressions. If we look not at their successes but at the weaknesses of Weizmann and of Goldmann as Zionist leaders, we also discover significant similarities. If we consider again Weizmann’s astonishing downfall at the Zionist Congress in 1931 (in which Goldmann played a certain role), our attention is drawn to the lack of proportion between causes and consequences. Apparently, Weizmann’s fall was less the result of the machinations of these individuals, but it was Weizmann himself, or rather the political characteristics of Weizmann’s leadership and his disdain for party politics, which prepared the conditions for his debacle. The external motive for his debacle, the interview to a Jewish news agency, was insignificant in itself, but one with a moral: it showed how politically vulnerable Weizmann had become. Weizmann had turned into a giant with political feet of clay. It was a mistake that none other but Nahum Goldmann repeated, identically, a decade and half later. In his memoirs, Goldmann recognized indirectly the political defeat Silver had handed him in 1946.36 What he did not recognize was the fateful political symmetry between him and Weizmann. Like Weizmann, Goldmann too had not built a political power base and had failed to ally himself with one of the Zionist parties, so that in his hour of need he might count on its political support. In the summer of 1946, Goldmann was used by Ben-Gurion, who supported partition, but preferred to let Goldmann carry the idea forward and to present it officially in the United States and in England, so he would bear the brunt of the fury of those who opposed partition. Ben-Gurion, or his associates in Mapai, had no qualms in letting Weizmann fall, as well as Goldmann, when political logic indicated that each of them, for different reasons, had become politically expendable.

136

Jehuda Reinharz

In 1946, at the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress—the same congress that refused to reelect Weizmann as president of the WZO—Goldmann was made to pay by Abba Hillel Silver for his political activities in the United States. Goldmann was politically neutralized, and during the vitally important political activities that went on in the United States, and especially at the Organization of the United Nations in 1947, Silver closely controlled Goldmann’s activities. Incidentally, Ben-Gurion would once more use Goldmann several years later in the very necessary but highly unpopular negotiations about the Reparations Agreement with the German Federal Republic.37

( Historically considered, one is forced to recognize that although belonging to different generations in Zionist life, Nahum Goldmann and Chaim Weizmann were astonishingly similar in their personal characteristics, in their political strengths, as well as in their political weaknesses. This raises an interesting question: how did it happen that the two men, who in their political ideas were so similar, rarely collaborated? One is left wondering what they might have attained had they been able to work together. Clearly, one reason is that Weizmann did not completely trust Goldmann. It was perhaps a consequence of their inauspicious first contact in 1923, and perhaps also Goldmann’s role in Weizmann’s dismissal, in 1931. More, Weizmann, who was basically a cautious man, distrusted the flamboyant side of Goldmann, who with all his brilliancy had in him a streak of recklessness, of the gambler. Last, another possible reason should be mentioned for the relative lack of contact between the two men: it was one more result of their respective unattachment to one of the Zionist political parties. Goldmann’s explanation (again in the 1962 lecture) about Weizmann’s attitude in that matter is illuminating: “He hated organically the main curse of Jewish internal politics, our party fanaticism. He never really agreed to be tied up with one or the other party, and very often his position above parties was the source of great difficulties for him at Congresses and otherwise . . . he could not bring himself to accept party programs as the full and only truth.” These views fitted Goldmann’s own position: as we have seen, it was exactly the way he acted all along his political career. Nevertheless, behind the righteousness of those words looms a reality that is markedly different: the contingencies of life in the framework of a party force political figures to overcome personal idiosyncrasies and prejudices, to put aside personal antipathies (and sometimes also sympathies), to concentrate on the political goals, and to surmount the inescapable personal frictions that are one of the unavoidable realities of public life, indeed, of life in general. Considered that way, the kind of political independence both Goldmann and Weizmann chose as their personal patterns of public behavior made them weaker, not stronger. Both men remained political individualists who preferred to forge their own personal paths unattached to a political party. One is left wondering what they may have attained, in their Zionist activity and in their mutual relationship, had the positive constraints of political party life forced them to behave differently.

Nahum Goldmann and Chaim Weizmann

137

Notes 1. Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann. Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969), 108. 2. Central Zionist Archives [CZA], Z6/2344. Goldmann gave additional lectures on Weizmann; see “Chaim Weizmann: An Appreciation” (Nov. 1952), in Nahum Goldmann, Community of Fate. Jews in the Modern World. Essays, Speeches and Articles ( Jerusalem 1977), 101–105; and a very personal description in a lecture from 1974, CZA, Z6/2747. 3. CZA, 6/2344; Goldmann’s quotation, with slight changes, was from Weizmann’s speech at the Twenty-Sixth Annual Convention of the Zionist Organization of America, June 17, 1923, in Baltimore, MD. The full version is found in The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann. Series B. Papers, vol. I, August 1898–July 1931 (Jerusalem, 1983), 390–91. 4. See “Israel and the Arab World,” in Goldmann, Autobiography, 283–311; Goldmann, Community of Fate, 12–13 (from 1937), 99–100 (from 1954), 148–51 (from 1973). 5. “Der dreizehnte Zionistenkongress und die Zukunft des Zionismus,” Der Jude, no. 10–11, (1923): 561–69. 6. January 15, 1924, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A–Letters, vol. XII, 94. 7. Goldmann, Autobiography, 94–95. 8. Ibid., 95. 9. Chaim Weizmann, The Zionist Movement 1916–1931. Statement of Policy Submitted to the XVIIth Zionist Congress, Basle, July 1, 1931 (London, 1931). 10. Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol. XV, XX; Goldmann, Autobiography, 101. 11. Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol. XV, XXI. 12. Weizmann, Letters and Papers, to Doris May, July 25, 1931, vol. XV, 174. 13. Goldmann, Autobiography, 114. 14. Ibid. 15. To Julius Simon, Aug. 14 1931, ibid., 181. 16. Ibid., 117. 17. Chaim Weizmann to Meyer W. Weisgal, Oct. 6, 1942, in Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol. XX, 353. 18. Chaim Weizmann to Nahum Goldmann, June 23, 1943, in Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol. XXI, 40–42. 19. A good description is found in Eliahu Eilat, The Struggle for Statehood. Washington 1945–1948, vol. I: 1945–1946 (Tel Aviv, 1946), in Hebrew. 20. Goldmann sent long reports to Weizmann about political developments of Zionist interest in the United States, see his letters from June 7, 1944, Aug. 10, 1944, Apr. 19, 1945, CZA, Z6/2759. The tenor of the letters is friendly and factual, but not personally close.

138

Jehuda Reinharz

21. See, at instance, Chaim Weizman to Abba Hillel Silver, Sept. 28, 1944; to Meyer W. Weisgal, Oct. 1, 1944, in Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol. XXI, 214–16, 218–19. Silver’s complaint was about Goldmann; it seems that Goldmann had neutralized his co-chairman of the office, Louis Lipsky; see Chaim Weizmann to Meyer W. Weisgal, Feb. 2, 1944 (cable), note 1, in Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol. XXI, 125. 22. Goldmann’s ideas were expressed in two diverse letters from Sept. 19, 1945, one written to David Ben-Gurion, the other to Abba Hillel Silver, Political Documents of the Jewish Agency, vol. I, May 1945–December 1946 ( Jerusalem, 1996), Political Documents, 115–20. 23. Resolutions of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, Aug. 5, 1946, Political Documents, 500–501. 24. See Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry and Israel, 1945–1948 (New York, 1979), 75–83. 25. B. Locker to E. Shinwell, Aug. 15, 1946, Political Documents, 525; N. Goldmann, Report, Aug. 15, 1946, ibid., 526–30. 26. See A. H. Silver to L. Segal, Sept. 9, 1946, Political Documents, 589–91. 27. D. Ben-Gurion to A. H. Silver, Oct. 1, 1946, Political Documents, 646–52. 28. A. Rose Norman, Baffy. The Diaries of Blanche Dugdale (London, 1973), Dec. 12, 1946, 243. 29. Ibid., Dec. 14, 1946, 243–44. 30. Mar. 20, 1947, in Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol. XXII, 283. See also Ch. Weizmann to N. Goldmann, Apr. 18, 1947, ibid., 311–12. 31. N. Goldmann to Ch. Weizmann, May 7, 1947, CZA, Z6/67. 32. June 13, 1948, in Weizmann, Letters and Papers, vol XXIII, 137. 33. June 16, 1948, ibid., 144–45. Linton worked with Weizmann in the office of the Jewish Agency in London and was at the time Israeli representative in London. 34. July 9, 1948, ibid., 161. 35. Goldmann, Autobiography, 229–30. 36. Goldmann, Autobiography, 228–29. 37. See Goldmann, Autobiography, 249–82.

7

( Idealism, Vision, and Pragmatism Stephen S.Wise, Nahum Goldmann, and Abba Hillel Silver in the United States Mark A. Raider Whoever hath an Ambition to be heard in a Crowd must press, and squeeze, and thrust, and climb with indefatigable Pains, till he has exalted himself to a certain Degree of Altitude above them. Now, in all Assemblies, tho’ you wedge them ever so close, we may observe this peculiar Property; that, over their Heads there is Room enough; but how to reach it, is the difficult Point; It being as hard to get quit of Number as of Hell; Evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est [But to return, and view the cheerful Skies; In this the Task and mighty Labor lies]. —Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub (1704)

n A Tale of a Tub Jonathan Swift, the Anglo-Irish clergyman and satirist known for his keen wit and deft observations of human nature, notes the paradoxical nature of leadership and power. On the one hand, he alludes to the unusual inner resources and grandness of vision those who seek to transcend and transform the status quo possess. On the other, he asserts, the very egocentrism that drives men to vie for political authority sows the seeds of its own discontent; for once obtained such positions and the power inherent in them are often difficult to relinquish. Additionally, the delicate matter of sustaining one’s place in the social hierarchy and the psychological distress attendant in the downgrading one’s status must be considered.

I

139

140

Mark A. Raider

Swift’s timeless observations are an instructive reference point for exploring the complex triad of Stephen S. Wise (1874–1949), Nahum Goldmann (1895–1982), and Abba Hillel Silver (1893–1963) and the turbulent decades of the 1930s and 1940s. Towering figures among the generation of the founders of the state of Israel, each not only sought to elevate himself above the rank and file, but went on to play a crucial role in advancing the Zionist cause. Each also experienced a rise and fall that demarcated significant junctures in the history of American Jews and Zionism. Given the serious and tragic conditions of the period, that they exhibited sharp philosophical and political differences is hardly surprising. On balance, however, as this chapter shows, they did sustain a functional relationship that ultimately placed the needs and interests of the Yishuv ahead of their personal gain and prestige. Judging by their bitter personal battles (of which ample evidence is found in correspondence, public utterances, and published memoirs), each man was motivated by a sizable quotient of eros and thanatos—showing love as fiercely as resentment in the private and public spheres. They could be self-aggrandizing, authoritarian, argumentative, shortsighted, small-minded, and entirely lacking in humility. In a word, they were deeply flawed leaders. And yet, not unlike Louis D. Brandeis, Chaim Weizmann, or David Ben-Gurion, they displayed the skills and traits associated with political greatness: charisma, intelligence, vitality, eloquence, organizational talent, passion, self-confidence, daring, vision, and (to borrow a Hegelian term) the “will to power.” It is, in part, the mixture of the banal and the sublime that makes Wise, Goldmann, and Silver such compelling historical personalities. In the United States, where the Zionist cause exerted substantial force on American Jewish political interests and behavior, the interwar period witnessed a rapid shift that brought Zionists, non-Zionists, and even some former anti-Zionists into new and unprecedented alliances.1 Wise, Goldmann, and Silver provided crucial public leadership in this process through a variety of undertakings and activities. They were also distinguished for their participation in frameworks that exceeded the Zionist orbit such as the World Jewish Congress (WJC) and, in the case of Silver, the Central Conference of Reform Rabbis.2 In the 1930s the emerging American Zionist consensus, conditioned in previous decades by the Brandeisian synthesis of political pragmatism and social idealism,3 gave way to the growing ideological and political convergence of American Jewry and Palestine’s ascendant Labor movement. With the Nineteenth Zionist Congress (1935), Labor, which advocated “solving” the Jewish problem and the inequities of modern capitalist society through the establishment of a progressive Jewish society in Palestine, attained political dominance in the World Zionist Organization (WZO), the Jewish Agency, and the Yishuv. The so-called Labor Executive’s vision dovetailed with the mentalité of the sons and daughters of America’s Eastern European Jewish immigrants: first-generation American Jews who rallied to the liberal agendas of the trade union and labor

Idealism,Vision, and Pragmatism

141

movements as well the American Socialist Party and who, with the onset of the Great Depression, “warmed to the prospect of a New Deal” along with Italians and Poles and became stalwart members of the Democratic Party.4 To this uniquely American synthesis the fledgling Zionist movement contributed a Jewish national impulse. The movement’s leaders vigorously championed the promise of Palestine’s new Jewish society-in-the-making and the Labor movement’s values of pioneering, hard work, pluralism, and social justice, which provided, in the words of Brandeis himself, a lofty vision of what both the Yishuv and the United States “ought to be.”5 Thus American Jewish life, with tap roots in the Eastern European Jewish milieu and top roots in the New World and the Yishuv, developed a peculiar form and direction that was to be profoundly shaped by the course of liberal idealism and a residual Jewish national consciousness.6 Notwithstanding the competing Zionist plans for building the Jewish national home and the ambivalence of several American administrations toward the Zionist enterprise itself—from Wilson to Truman—Zionism was by the 1930s clearly an idea whose time had come.7 The generation of American Jews who came to maturity in interwar period viewed the Yishuv (and indeed the United States) as a vehicle for liberating the Jewish people from its emancipationist past. Increasingly, the American Jewish community—its leadership as well as the rank and file—sensed that its own postemancipationist fate hinged, in part, on the outcome of the great struggle that was taking place in Palestine for the future of the Jewish people. Anticipating this sea change as early as 1930, Wise, then American Zionism’s premier figure, noted the “complete lull” in the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and the inability of the enlarged Jewish Agency to “win the confidence of the Jewish masses.” “We are pretty much disheartened over things in America,” he observed.8 The Zionist Organization [of America] is gone, though the corpse will make some sort of noises in Cleveland [at the national convention of 1930] ere it perishes. . . . I wonder whether we have not touched bottom. . . . I would be hopeless about the situation, I confess, if it were not for faith in the Yishuv which I think in a very little time will take the Zionist movement, such as it is, into its hands and have done with London quibbling and New York playing with a great problem of national resurrection.9 If the liberal American Jewish Weltanschauung of the 1930s and 1940s was buoyed by the twin visions of the Roosevelt Administration in the United States and the Labor movement in Zionist affairs, the social realities in both instances also tested American Jewry’s political resolve and the durability of its attachments. Like Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition (in which American Jews played an important role), the Zionist Organization’s prevailing Labor-led coalition (in which American Zionist groups played a crucial part) consolidated its power and authority around grand strategies and the global realpolitik of the

142

Mark A. Raider

1930s. Roosevelt persuaded the country to accept the proposition that the national government is responsible for the welfare of its citizens and that the New Deal would provide social and economic security for all Americans.10 Meanwhile, David Ben-Gurion, who emerged as Labor’s undisputed leader in 1935, articulated a similar set of priorities: “Zionism means the growth of a state, and a state does not build itself, nor is it built by those who seek their own interests and survival. Only through mobilization of mass strength and movement, with pioneer training and a readiness for self-sacrifice can this be made a reality.”11 In sum, the Labor-led coalition that dominated Zionist politics from the mid-1930s onward—and which came to power on the basis of a countrywide socioeconomic infrastructure organized along cooperative and nationalist lines—also captured the hearts and minds of broad array of American Jews inspired by socialism, Progressivism, and liberalism.12 This remained true even after the outbreak of World War II, when both Roosevelt and Ben-Gurion led their respective nations into the international arena as part of the Allied fight against the Nazi Germany. To summarize, this chapter argues not only that Wise, Goldmann, and Silver were equipped with innate talents that enabled them to forge links among American Jewry, the Zionist enterprise, and the American political establishment, but moreover that their political authority was coextensive with the emergence of a new and ultimately biding consensus in American Jewish life.13 Throughout the decade that preceded the establishment of the State of Israel, the Yishuv and the New Deal (and later Harry Truman’s Fair Deal) enjoyed steady and solid American Jewish support. Against this backdrop, Wise, Goldmann, and Silver articulated a bold, pragmatic, and activist Zionist strategy that emphasized liberalism, internationalism, and peoplehood.14 Despite American Jewry’s inchoate array of political parties, communal agencies, synagogue movements, fraternal associations, and membership organizations from all walks of Jewish life, they succeeded at critical junctures in steering the community in constructive and meaningful ways that drove forward the campaign for Jewish statehood. Exploring the impact of Wise, Goldmann, and Silver on Zionism and the American Jewish experience raises several intriguing questions and possibilities for understanding the philosophical and ideological proclivities of American Jewry, the nature of Jewish leadership in the American diaspora, and the place of American Jews in the Zionist enterprise. This chapter examines Wise, Goldmann, and Silver in comparative perspective, beginning with a brief analysis of American Zionism’s orientation in the 1930s, which was tested by the Haavarah Agreement and the right-wing challenge of Revisionist Zionism, two political phenomena that highlight the American movement’s pragmatic orientation. Next, the chapter examines the dramatic interlude between 1937 to 1939 and the intensification of American Jewish politics in the wake of the British partition proposal. Last, the chapter turns to the restructuring of American Zionism after 1942 and the development of a new postwar Zionist strategy on the eve of statehood.


143

I. The Pragmatic Orientation of American Zionism With the rise of Adolf Hitler to power in Germany, Wise and Silver in the United States—and Goldmann in Europe—were among the first Jewish leaders to speak out against the threat of Nazi aggression and anti-Semitism. As early as 1933, in defiance of the model of special pleading conducted behind closed doors by groups such as the American Jewish Committee (AJC), Wise and Silver called for a countrywide boycott of German-made goods and helped mobilize American Jews to participate in mass anti-Nazi demonstrations in major metropolitan centers.15 Likewise, Goldmann called on the WJC (then in formation) to enter the fray.16 Their vigorous advocacy in this regard did not preclude their support of the Haavarah [Transfer] Agreement. The Trust and Transfer Office Haavarah Ltd. was created through the initiative of Labor Zionist leader Chaim Arlosoroff following an agreement with the Nazi regime in August 1933. The agreement made possible the emigration of Jews to Palestine by allowing the transfer of their capital in the form of German export goods. Between 1933 and 1939, the Haavarah office facilitated the emigration of approximately 60,000 German Jews to Palestine and the transfer of more than $40 million that was used for the immigrants’ socioeconomic absorption.17 In the United States, the Haavarah Agreement was roundly criticized in the Yiddish press on ideological grounds as well as by the AJC and non-Zionist groups who alleged that the plan weakened the boycott of Nazi Germany.18 The latter opponents, who jealously guarded control of American Jewry’s overseas relief efforts, may have also been mindful of a similar enterprise engineered during World War I that brought considerable political leverage to the American Zionist leadership grouped around Louis D. Brandeis. Under the so-called Brandeis group, the Provisional Executive Committee had created a short-lived Transfer Department that “not only kept Zionist institutions alive, but . . . made it possible for millions of dollars to be sent by individuals to Palestine and other parts of the Middle East, and to Russia and Rumania [sic].”19 Interestingly, both Wise and Silver initially decried the Haavarah scheme. As Silver explained, “The very idea of Palestinian Jewry negotiating with Hitler about business instead of demanding justice for the persecuted Jews of Germany is unthinkable.”20 Despite such rhetoric, the paramount concern for both men was—as had been the objective of the Brandeis group in previous years—alleviating the plight of European Jewry. After the Nineteenth Zionist Congress (1935) approved strict guidelines for the Haavarah Agreement, Wise and Silver publicly supported the plan. At the same time, Goldmann, unconcerned with the fracas over questions of morality or political rectitude, proved to be one of the Haavarah Agreement’s most vigorous proponents. He later recalled, very simply, that “saving eighty thousand Jews and transferring Jewish assets to Palestine seemed to me worth doing.”21

144

Mark A. Raider

Another area of early political convergence among Wise, Silver, and Goldmann was their shared commitment to Zionist pragmatism. Each man arrived at such an orientation from a different point of departure. Of the three, Wise was well-known as a champion of the political left. Since his early years in Portland, Oregon, he had been a staunch defender of American labor interests.22 (Indeed, a chapter of his autobiography is defiantly titled, “A Rabbi Sides with Labor.”) Wise’s belief in the need to improve the socioeconomic conditions of the toiling and the disenfranchised classes resonated with Reform Judaism’s mission ethos.23 This orientation gave rise to his early association with figures on the American left such as Jane Addams, Samuel Gompers, Philip Murray, and Sidney Hillman as well as his visible support of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Passaic textile strike, the presidential campaigns of Al Smith and Woodrow Wilson, and so forth. It also set the stage, in the Jewish public arena, for his deep appreciation of labor’s role in building the Yishuv, which began with his first visit to Palestine in 1913 and was sustained over the years by contact with David Ben-Gurion, Chaim Arlosoroff, Berl Kaznelson, and others. A noteworthy threshold was crossed in 1935 when Wise championed an unprecedented declaration, signed by several hundred Reform and Conservative rabbis, publicly endorsing the Histadrut program in Palestine—two years prior to the watershed Columbus Platform that officially replaced the anti-Zionist Pittsburgh Platform of 1885.24 To be sure, Wise never publicly identified himself with any Zionist faction other than the mainstream ZOA—a mantle he may have felt duty-bound to uphold as much out of his fidelity to Brandeis as his larger tactical approach to the elusive quest for American Jewish unity, a strategy he used to great effect in the campaign for the American Jewish Congress during World War I.25 And yet we find ample evidence of Wise’s pro-Labor orientation, including his key participation as a General Zionist interlocutor who worked with the Histadrut leadership to ensure the success of Weizmann’s custodial presidency of the WZO in the early 1930s.26 By contrast, neither Silver nor Goldmann ever displayed an affinity for a particular Zionist ideology or partisan viewpoint other than what might be called the pragmatic activist center, a loose coalition of forces that synthesized the original Herzlian program with a variety of centrist and left-oriented political views. Thus from roughly World War I to the early 1930s, they acceded to the practical stewardship of Brandeis and Weizmann. But they also maintained a special appreciation for the political calculus of the Labor movement in Palestine. That would explain why both men, unlike Wise and other Reform rabbis whose passion for “social justice approach[ed] socialism,”27 were responsive to what Silver saw as the real essence and achievement of the Zionist pioneering movement: “Vision coupled with a cold realism and hard discipline.”28 Some scholars have argued that Silver, especially after news of the Holocaust was verified in 1942, leaned heavily in the direction of the right-wing Zionism. This interpretation emphasizes Silver’s long-standing associations with the Republican Party (particularly Robert Taft of Ohio), his pitched battles with Wise


145

and Goldmann over their “trust in princes” and cautious leadership styles, and his efforts to bring the Bergson group into the Zionist fold.29 And a new study goes so far as to assert that Silver’s idea of American Zionism was actually “Revisionism without the Revisionists.”30 These approaches provide telling criticisms of the traditional views of American Zionist historiography, which generally dismiss the significance of right-wing Zionism in the United States.31 At the same time, however, they create fresh difficulties by obfuscating the richness and complexity of Silver’s Zionist thought and insisting on reductionist assertions.32 In fact, Silver’s Zionist career was primarily influenced by his views as a scholarrabbi.33 He rejected “the Greek idea of the golden mean,” preferring instead what he called the Jewish vision of “Balance, but never indifference. Balance, but never inactivity.” “Life is possible only through cooperation between men,” he asserted in 1949, “and no more is really necessary to keep this a decent world in which to live.”34 Silver’s expansive view is also evident in an address he delivered in 1936 to the graduating class of the Hebrew Union College: The rabbi today should strive not for unity in Israel—a task quite impossible of achievement among our people or among any other people—but for a maximum measure of cooperation on the basis of common needs and obligations. He should foster among his people the larger loyalty to the whole house of Israel—here and abroad— and the sense of a common destiny. Provincialism and protective isolationism are no longer possible for any Jewish community in the world today. The rabbi should encourage the cooperation of his people in the upbuilding of the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine, not because that is the solution of the Jewish problem—there is no one solution, for there is no one Jewish problem—nor because he is enamored of nationalism, which has more or less run riot in the modern world, nor yet because he feels the galut is liquidating and there is no longer any hope for Jewish communities in the diaspora. That is too hasty a reading both of past and of contemporaneous Jewish history as well as of the history of mankind. He should encourage cooperation because a Jewish homeland will help to normalize the status of our people in the world, because it will remove the element of desperation—of fighting with our backs to the wall—from our renewed struggle for equality and emancipation which the world has again forced upon us, because it will serve as a haven for hosts of our people who must now seek homes in a world where doors are everywhere closing, and because this Jewish National Homeland may become in the days to come a vast dynamo of creative Jewish cultural and spiritual energies.35 The foregoing passage amplifies what historian Aryeh Goren identifies as the “three equally powerful stimuli” in Silver’s Weltanschauung: “a profound

146

Mark A. Raider

religiosity, a Hebraic-Zionism that evoked an intimacy for the Land of Israel, and the realpolitik of Jewish need.”36 Silver’s address also offers important clues why even so imperious and forceful a personality as he would sustain a broad array of working relationships with all quarters of American Jewish and Zionist life. Moreover, it is instructive to note that until Silver challenged Wise for outright control of American Zionism in 1943 he remained solidly grounded in the orbit of the American Jewish establishment. His astute instincts enabled him to participate in a wide range of organizational, philanthropic, and political activities, and these experiences in turn gave him an unusually broad base of support—one that positioned him for his renegade activities during the critical years between 1943 and 1947, but which would not be cohesive or stable enough to ensure his lasting political dominance. In sum, Silver was very much a product of the American Jewish scene and a loyalist within the Zionist camp. However, a clear outline of his vision and pragmatic leadership comes to light only when one breaks with much of the historical literature produced in the past thirty years, including the myth of Zionist culpability during the Holocaust and the notion that “insight into the past and their dedication to the future hampered [the Zionist leadership’s] vision of the present.”37 Rather, when one goes back to the primary sources and attempts to analyze Silver’s trajectory as a “scholarly Zionist rabbi”38—from activist to loyalist to maverick, including his close association in the 1940s with the Zionist leadership of the Yishuv—what stands out is his capacity for mobilizing a novel type of pro-Zionist coalition in the United States. At the center of this robust coalition stood neither the Bergson group nor Silver’s elite contacts in the Republican Party, but something else: a new kind of power bloc comprising left-wing and centrist forces in America and Palestine. Seen in this context, the impact of the right-wing Revisionist movement in the United States is arguably best understood as a litmus test of Zionist politics and American Jewish priorities in the 1930s and 1940s. Here, interestingly, Wise, Goldmann, and Silver maintained a largely respectful attitude (albeit with varying degrees of personal warmth) toward Vladimir (Zeev) Jabotinsky, the founder and chief ideologue of Revisionism. Nonetheless, the distance between them, on the one hand, and Revisionism, on the other, grew substantially during the 1930s as the Zionist right-wing became embroiled in a protracted struggle between Jabotinsky and the Palestinian leader Abba Ahimeir, who rejected democracy and embraced the model of Italian fascism.39 Wise, Goldmann, and Silver also generally distrusted the Revisionist movement’s separatist tendencies.40 A critical juncture was reached following the 1933 murder of Chaim Arlosoroff. Wise, who had become personally disenchanted with Jabotinsky after an otherwise friendly working relationship, now issued a particularly damning attack. “Revisionism is counter to every idea of the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition,” he opined in a sermon to his congregation. Revisionism does not mean peace in Palestine. . . . Revisionism is a species of fascism, uttering its commands in the Hebrew language


147

and therefore doubly baleful to us who believe that Hebrew should be the medium of a forward-looking hope, not of a dangerously reactionary movement. Revisionism is a surrender to the stark acceptance of the rightfulness of fascism.41 Jabotinsky responded “with an ad hominem attack on Wise, calling him a liar and a ‘fuhrer,’ a man ‘who says what he thinks, but unfortunately never thinks.’ ”42 The exchange severed relations between Wise and Jabotinsky, and the rupture caused a rift in American Zionist circles. Also noteworthy is that as early as 1926, when Jabotinsky visited the United States, he wrote that he felt “unwelcome in Cleveland.”43 The reference to Silver, who occupied the pulpit of Cleveland’s leading synagogue, known as “The Temple,” is both unmistakable and interesting. Silver, who did little to alter Jabotinsky’s perception, seemed to understand the power of the gatekeeper to American Jewry’s sanctuaries. Likewise, in the 1930s and 1940s when Revisionist Zionists sought to establish a foothold in the United States, Silver impassively maintained his distance from the Zionist right.44 Pressed to clarify his stance, he voiced a perspective strikingly similar to Wise, explaining that he categorically opposed “all Fascist, Nazi, and Communist governments and movements.” “I believe them to be a menace to civilization,” he said. “I am opposed to them regardless of whether under those regimes Jews are persecuted or not.”45 In turning to Goldmann, one cannot help but notice that here was a relationship to Jabotinsky and Revisionism based largely on personality and tactics rather than principles and philosophy. And although Goldmann’s close association in the 1940s with Wise and Silver eventually brought him into sharp conflict with the Revisionists, he was, in fact, an unapologetic admirer of “Jabotinsky’s genius,” referring to him with affection and reverence.46 That Goldmann alone could sustain such a bond with Jabotinsky underscores his special talent for disentangling the complex personal relationships that characterized the rough and tumble of prestate Zionist politics. In 1944, for example, at the height of a bitter public relations battle that nearly paralyzed the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), then under the joint leadership of Wise and Silver, Goldmann was the one who showed an appreciation of the Revisionists’ renegade public lobbying efforts: What we are doing here is what Revisionists have done for twenty years. It is exactly Revisionist tactics. Revisionists are very good Zionists. There has never lived in the world a better Zionist than Vladimir Jabotinsky, the incarnation of passion and devotion to Zionism, but if we would have adopted his tactics we would never have had 600,000 Jews in Palestine; we would have remained with resolutions, protests, and emotional outbursts of the so-called Jewish masses and would never have achieved the little or the much we have achieved in Palestine.47

148

Mark A. Raider

This passage illustrates what Louis Lipsky described as Goldmann’s “refusal to dogmatize” and the “impersonality of his approach.”48 It is also in many ways a political sensibility reminiscent of Silver’s aforementioned insight about the “cold realism” and “hard discipline” of the Palestine labor movement. In other words, seizing the moral high ground on a range of controversial issues, from rejecting Faustian bargains with the Nazis to the matter of territorial compromise under the British Mandatory, was one thing, but taking responsibility for the Zionist enterprise as a whole, including development of the fledgling Yishuv, was quite another. “Like everybody who grows,” Goldmann would later explain, “I have made shifts in my political position.” Only stubborn minds stick to all their opinions for life. I have changed my mind many times and on questions of party affiliation, and I am not ashamed of it. When all is said and done, these are only means to an end. A party is not an end in itself, an organizational structure is not an ultimate goal, and anyone who lacks the flexibility for tactical politics should keep out of politics altogether.49 In the final analysis, Goldmann, although he shunned political attachments to the Zionist right-wing, stood alone in his capacity to sustain over many decades an unreserved appreciation for Jabotinsky as a leader and a thinker. The difference in this regard between Goldmann, on the one hand, and Wise and Silver, on the other, may have been partially due to a combination of personal chemistry and cultural background. Wise and Silver may also have recognized that “the key to twentieth-century American Jewish leadership” was to have Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their offspring “as one’s clients.”50 Clearly, the Yiddish-speaking immigrant milieu and the “second-generation” of American Jews provided the constituency that would rally to the communal aims and organizational objectives Wise and later Silver articulated. Ultimately, Jabotinsky’s efforts to generate political and monetary support in the United States were largely unsuccessful.51 His failure to build a popular base among American Jewry’s rank and file was certainly not lost on the Zionist leadership.52 Speaking to Berl Kaznelson on the eve of World War II, Jabotinsky lamented, “You have won. You have America, the rich Jews. I have only Polish Jewry and now it is gone. I have lost the game!”53 By way of an interim summary, I would like to suggest that, as the issues of the Haavarah and Revisionism indicate, the basic thrust of the American Jewish outlook vis-à-vis Palestine was shaped by: 1. a predominantly liberal and progressive worldview, 2. an emphasis on klal yisrael and inclusivism, and 3. a rejection of ideological and political extremism. These elements formed the core of American Zionist pragmatism during the interwar period.


149

II. 1937–1939 as aTurning Point in American Zionism A bellwether of significant changes in American Zionism was the political struggle that started in 1937 with the Peel Commission’s proposal to partition Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. The Royal Commission, headed by Lord Peel, was responsible for investigating the cause of the 1936 Arab riots and offering policy recommendations for resolving Arab-Jewish tensions in Palestine. At the time of the Peel investigation, no American Jewish consensus existed concerning the political future of the Yishuv. By 1937, however, a considerable number of Jewish communal organizations had gone on record in favor of building the Jewish National Home.54 At the Fortieth Annual Convention of the ZOA, meeting just days before the Peel Commission released its official findings, Abba Hillel Silver, who publicly opposed Chaim Weizmann’s gradualism and distrusted Great Britain, made a passionate appeal to the ZOA’s largely pro-Weizmann constituency.55 Wary that the British government intended to limit the size and growth of the Jewish National Home, he asserted that “there is no other logical solution” to the problem of Palestine other than “a complete and loyal fulfillment of terms of the Mandate.” And let it be said, and frankly said, that a partition of Palestine will make of every Jew a Revisionist; for it is quite clear that a Palestine without Jerusalem, without Haifa, without the Hills of Judea is not the Jewish Palestine. . . . Certain arrangements with reference to Palestine may be forced upon us. However, we shall not accept them. We shall continue to work, to advocate, to educate until such time as the just claims of our people are established. We have no right to sign away the historic claims of the Jewish people nor the future of our children. We have no right to pledge future generations to a political arrangement which is in consonance neither with the hopes, the history nor the religious convictions of our people.56 When in July 1937 the Peel Commission recommended that Palestine be partitioned into separate Arab and Jewish states,57 the response of American Jews to the commission’s proposal was mixed.58 Most American Zionists, grouped around a loose coalition of General Zionists, Labor Zionists, and unaffiliates, were reluctant to publicly oppose Great Britain.59 But it was opposition to the Peel proposal that brought the American movement’s leadership together in a close working relationship. In the international arena, two distinct Zionist camps swiftly emerged around the partition issue. On the one hand, a London-Jerusalem coalition headed by Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion adopted a “double-edged tactical” strategy based on the notion of publicly rejecting partition while simultaneously “conduct[ing] negotiations

150

Mark A. Raider

with the British government to ensure that the actual plan would be favorable to the Yishuv.” This so-called dual formula, it has been observed, “was neither the first nor the last that the leaders of the still weak Yishuv adopted.”60 On the other hand, a coalition of centrists, Revisionists, religious Zionists, and even a sizable Labor faction—each emphasizing a different facet of the maximalist orientation—opposed partition as inadequate and a violation of the Mandate’s expressed and implied commitments to the Jewish people. At the Twentieth Zionist Congress, Wise joined Menahem Ussishkin, Berl Kaznelson, Meir Berlin, and other opposition leaders in voicing strenuous objections to the proposal. Speaking for the nonpartisan camp of naysayers, including Hadassah and other American factions, Wise asserted: The Congress cannot enter into any contract with Britain that would give less than the whole of Palestine to the Jewish people. . . . If you tell me that the Yishuv wants partition, then I will tell you that if the British government could have maintained order in [the 1936 riots], you would not now agree to a partition scheme. I never expected to find Labor in favor of partition. We do not want an illusory hope to be held out to our suffering brethren. I believe that eight million Jews would be willing to settle in Palestine in the next twenty years, but you may have room for only a tenth. I cannot accept a minimized and bagatelline Palestine. The Jewish people’s answer to Britain must be not “yea” or “nay,” but “non possumus”—we cannot. The British people would respect us more if we refuse it. We have to justify our conduct not to the British government but to our own consciences. . . . My answer to Great Britain is clear on all points. Partition, no! Palliative, no! Jewish state, yes! Fulfillment of the mandate, yes!61 Wise’s public statement highlights the core of American opposition in 1937. He did not object so much on religious-historical grounds, but rather argued that the proposal was tactically imprudent and would set back Jewish claims to a larger territory. It not only envisioned a miniscule Jewish province that would prove untenable, he argued, but the British would exploit Jewish acceptance of the plan (and its rejection by the Arabs), use the opportunity to reinterpret the Mandate, and impose new restrictions detrimental to the longterm interests of the Yishuv and the Jewish people. Silver made much the same case to a meeting of the Actions Committee in what Wise later described as a “very fine” and “a powerful, passionate protest against partition.”62 He, too, was unconvinced that a small semiautonomous Jewish territory would relieve the distress of either Palestinian or European Jewry, and emphasized instead the long-term contractual advantages enumerated in the Mandate. By contrast, Nahum Goldmann, whom Wise had some months earlier handpicked to assist him in creating the WJC, proclaimed his strong support for the partition plan. He subscribed to Ben-Gurion’s view, stated plainly in an


151

instructive Goldmann received just days before the Congress, that “the choice before us is: partition—or a Jewish minority in an Arab state. And we must act accordingly.”63 Allying himself with Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, he contended “in an impassioned midnight speech . . . that [partition] was the only way to bring large number of immigrants to Palestine and to achieve the ageold dream of a Jewish state. . . .”64 With the Twentieth Zionist Congress, the movement as a whole reached a crossroads. The Labor enterprise in Palestine, which favored an expeditious approach to building the Yishuv, clearly was forcing the hand of Zionist diplomacy. Weizmann himself feared Labor’s growing power and his loosening grasp on the international scene. He sought to bolster his own position by appealing to the American faction and American Jewry’s general feeling of responsibility for the welfare of European Jewry. “I am not dazzled by the name ‘Jewish State,’” Weizmann declared, sounding very much like his old opponents in the Brandeis camp, “but I regard the offer as the first stage of a great achievement and as an alternative to [the unacceptable British schedule of] 8,000 [immigration] certificates a year.”65 Likewise, the Labor leadership sought to bridge the gap by arguing that both the Peel proposaland the possibilities for state–building rested upon on the fait accompli of Zionist colonization and the status quo of the Yishuv’s pioneering infrastructure. The terms thereof, they reasoned, would no doubt have been more favorable a few years hence, but timing was essential and the Jewish people could not wait.66 The Congress officially rejected the partition plan but authorized the Zionist Executive “to conduct negotiations to learn the specific content of the British government’s scheme to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.”67 Fourteen months later all Zionist hopes were dashed when Great Britain retracted the partition scheme and declared it impracticable. In May 1939 London issued the MacDonald White Paper that placed a cap on the growth of the Yishuv and closed the doors of Palestine to Jews in distress. The new British policy shocked and enraged American Zionists. Wise and Silver, the latter having become national chairman of the United Palestine Appeal and cochairman of the United Jewish Appeal in the intervening period, joined other ZOA leaders in calling an emergency conference in Washington, D.C. The conference reiterated the need for constructive Zionist work on all fronts, particularly the realization of Great Britain’s commitment to the establishment of an autonomous Jewish national home.68 In an unusual move, the conference censured antipartition and maximalist Zionist groups who refused to honor the decision of the recent congress. The ZOA Administrative Committee passed an unprecedented resolution barring all “unauthorized” Zionist political activity that undermined the Jewish Agency’s negotiations with the Mandatory Power. Leaders hoped that such a policy would strengthen American Zionism and pave the way for united American Jewish political action.69 In this instance, Wise and Silver were unified by a political strategy that was completely congruent with the interests of the Labor-led Yishuv. On other occasions, especially situations that pertained to the American scene,

152

Mark A. Raider

they varied considerably. In the spring of 1939, for example, in opposition to the AJC headed by Wise, Silver withheld his support of a refugee proposal George Rublee, the U.S. director of the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, put forward. The Rublee Plan would have resulted in funneling approximately $500,000 from the United Jewish Appeal (UJA) to a non-Zionist agency responsible for the emigration of German Jewish refugees and the transfer of Jewish capital to new host nations. “I would strongly advise against it,” Silver wrote to Wise. “Certainly we ought to do nothing without authorization from the Executive of the Jewish Agency in Palestine.”70 What would be involved is the taking of 150,000 to 200,000 dollars of money that would go to Palestine directly, to finance a project which only indirectly may benefit Palestine. . . . It seems to me that at this time, when Palestine is clamoring for more and more funds, and when efforts are being made and will have to be made by us to raise additional funds outside of those raised in the united national campaign, we ought not to vote away Palestinian funds for any projects outside of Palestine however worthy they may be.71 A few months later, when the need for transporting immigrant refugees to Palestine and relief of the Yishuv became especially dire, Silver again deferred to the Labor-led Zionist Executive. Here, too, his perspective on the distribution of American Jewish resources underscores the dynamic tension over the movement’s priorities. Silver clearly felt that nothing should be done that could jeopardize the stability of the Yishuv. “Should we, at this moment, concentrate on sending all the available money into Palestine so as to avert a major collapse,” he asked, “or should we use part of our funds to transport additional immigrants into the country who, by the way, might still further increase the relief burden of the Yishuv?” Frankly, I am unable to answer this question. It seems to me that we should depend in large measure upon the judgment of our Executive . . . . There is, of course, terrific pressure brought to bear from our distressed refugees in all parts of Europe. But is not our first responsibility to look after the minimum needs of those already in the country, and our institutions there?72 What is significant here is that although Ben-Gurion and the American Zionist leadership initially differed over the issue of partition, after 1937 the gap began to close. Wise, we should note, although he generally adhered to the path of the Yishuv leadership, remained at heart a Brandeisist and had been severely critical in 1931, not only of Weizmann but also the Palestine Labor movement for its misplaced trust in the British Labor Party which failed to repudiate the Passfield White Paper of 1930.73 But by 1937 Wise


153

was reticent to isolate Weizmann with whom he had reached a rapprochement after many stormy years. There were other instances as well when Wise’s American and Zionist attachments came into sharp conflict. Of course, one cannot help but notice a kind of symmetry in this regard when it comes to Wise’s acute sensitivity to Jewish needs and his overall reluctance to challenge Franklin Roosevelt’s wartime strategy or stray from the Roosevelt Administration’s policies. By contrast, from 1937 forward Silver became consistent in his support of the Zionist agenda set by Labor and increasingly outspoken in his advocacy of a proactive American Jewish political orientation that championed the Yishuv, above all other considerations, as the key to relieving the distress of European Jewry. Ben-Gurion, whose firsthand knowledge of the situation in the United States continued to grow and deepen following his sojourn there during World War I, possessed a shrewd appreciation of the increasing self-confidence and political potential of American Jewry. He recognized the profound change in the American Jewish body politic and the growing attachment of American Jews to Zionism and the Yishuv.74 “If the chance of a Jewish state seems realistic,” he observed in 1937 on the eve of the debate over the British partition proposal, “and a special session of Congress is summoned to discuss it, people are going to flock to the Congress.”75 The mood of the Jewish masses in Eastern Europe is known. And I saw now the same applies over there. Only the assimilated minority is against the idea. . . . But the masses of Jews, even those who have not been close to Zionism, favor a Jewish state. So does the Yiddish press of New York.76 Ben-Gurion also understood the persistent attachment of American Jews to Franklin Roosevelt and the social idealism that underlay Jewish loyalty to the Democratic Party. Such a sensibility, he believed, provided a mooring in the United States for Zionist interests and could be parlayed into broad support for the campaign for Jewish statehood.77 “Be American and learn from your great leader; have far-sightedness,” he would later assert in a January 1941 ZOA address. “Look ahead and inspire the Jewish people, as your great American leader is inspiring the United States. With such a bold and inspiring program, and with unity in American Zionism, you will lead American Jewry.”78 That Ben-Gurion would articulate such a position, implicitly emphasizing Jewish national interests over the Histadrut’s “working nation” formula, illustrates a profound shift in his own thinking.79 In the mid-1930s he came to view the question of “implementation” rather than “ideology” as decisive. “It’s not so important to me what a man thinks: what counts is what he does, what he has to and wants to do. . . . During an era of implementation, the way, the path, is all-important.”80 He also presented such views to the American Jewish public in an article titled “New Perspectives on Zionism” in the June 1935 issue of Jewish Frontier:

154

Mark A. Raider

The realization of Zionism must be speeded up. And this cannot generate itself. Without a great mass movement, wide resources, a strong will, a long perspective, a purposive direction and political influence, it will not be achieved. The present Executive, in the past two years of activity, has been motivated by this idea—to broaden the Zionist movement and Organization—to steer towards the great colonizational and political responsibilities of the present moment.81 “New Perspectives on Zionism” reveals the extent to which Ben-Gurion’s strategy had yet to crystallize fully. But there could be little doubt as to the thrust of his intentions. Indeed, Ben-Gurion’s Histadrut contemporaries widely perceived that he now not only believed in the supremacy of national interests, but also meant to place the energy and power of the Palestine Labor movement at the service of mainstream and centrist Zionist concerns. The Mapai leader Yizhak Ben-Aharon, for instance, noted that Ben-Gurion meant “the Histadrut was no longer the nation’s pillar, but one of the nation’s pillars; it was no longer the state in genesis but the tallest support structure of the struggle for statehood.”82 To be sure, Ben-Gurion continued to stress a progressive vision of the Jewish society-in-the-making. He intended to use the power of the Zionist movement to implement a vigorously interventionist social and economic agenda, and he maintained a special passion for the place of Zionist rural pioneering as the “vanguard” of the Yishuv. But beyond these basic assumptions, everything would be worked out in the give-and-take of the Zionist political arena.83 Several scholars have examined the contours of Ben-Gurion’s evolving approach to state-building in this period. What is clear is that from all sides, enormous pressures—most especially the catastrophe of European Jewry, the hostility of the Mandatory regime, the Arab riots of 1936–1939, the British partition proposal of 1937, and the isolation of the Yishuv—came to bear on his decisions to commit himself to specific policies, programs, and structural relationships.84 Against this backdrop, Ben-Gurion’s American orientation assumed ever greater significance as part of his overall strategy. In general, the American Zionist movement and pro-Zionist American Jewish groups proved responsive to the agenda the Labor-led executive charted for the WZO and the Jewish Agency.85 Turning briefly to the American Jewish arena as a whole, it is important to consider the steady rise of organizational and internal political activity among American Jews in this period generally. In response to the escalating global Jewish crisis total membership in Jewish voluntary organizations grew from 807,000 in 1935 to 1,085,000 in 1941 and eventually 1,436,000 in 1945. The growth of American Zionism and communitywide interest in the Zionist Congresses also jumped in this period. For example, the elections to the Nineteenth and Twentieth Zionist Congresses witnessed dramatic increases in the number of shekels purchased as well as what the American Jewish Year Book, at the time, described as a surge in “the strength of pro-Labor sentiment in the


155

United States.”86 Surveying the changing landscape, Ben-Gurion perceptively reasoned that American Jewry could be won over by the Zionist leadership and “for all their divisions would awaken and rally together for a [Jewish] state.”87 But the transformation did not come overnight, and it is instructive to note that although the Zionist strategy Ben-Gurion pursued in the mid-1930s on the one hand and Wise and Silver pursued on the other grew increasingly attuned, the two camps were not brought into a more coherent alliance until Hitler’s forces overran Poland in September 1939.88 Some observers have suggested a connection between the rifts in American Zionism, which presumably “sapped [the movement] of the strength and unity needed to face the terrible challenges of a world gone mad,”89 and the inability of American Jewry to prevent or at least impede the annihilation of European Jewry by the Nazi regime. Goldmann himself later opined: If there has been a tragedy in the history of Zionism, it is the fact that largely through our fault, partition was not put into effect the first time it was suggested, in 1937. . . . It was opposed by men like Berl Kaznelson, the most respected moral and intellectual leader of the Palestinian labor movement, and, for different reasons, by Louis Brandeis; Stephen Wise and all his friends were also against it.90 Goldmann also asserted that the opposition to partition in 1937 stemmed from an: inability to compromise, determination to hold on to every inch of Palestine as something historically sacred, the obstinacy and fanaticism of a persecuted people that for 2,000 years had set beliefs and ideals above reality and practical necessity, [and] an unwillingness to . . . reckon with realities, even if this means sacrificing some cherished historic ideas as a means towards shaping its own destiny.91 Goldmann makes some interesting (and rather large) claims here. The first is that he, then living in Geneva and working for the WJC, saw more clearly than most the looming probability that Hitler’s rise would result in calamity for Europe’s Jews and that Great Britain’s long-term strategic and regional interests militated against a swift accommodation of Zionist claims. This keen understanding of realpolitik, he suggests, impelled him to favor the pragmatic notion of partition sooner rather than later, “provided the area [of Palestine] allotted to [the Jews] would permit large-scale immigration.”92 The second is that Goldmann (along with Ben-Gurion) anticipated what other Jewish leaders, including Wise and Silver, would come to realize only later. One useful observation has little to do with whether Goldmann was correct in 1937, but rather what this juncture reveals about the triangular relationship developing among Wise, Goldmann, and Silver on the eve of World

156

Mark A. Raider

War II. Wise, the aging Zionist steward, assiduously grooming a new generation of leaders, handpicked both Silver and Goldmann to be his successors— the former in American Zionism, the latter in the WJC, which he hoped would strengthen the Zionist movement overall. In different ways, Silver and Goldmann were initially responsive to Wise and tried to work within the constraints imposed by his leadership. But the years 1937–1939 proved to be a turning point that impelled Silver and Goldmann to cross the Rubicon, at first working in tandem and then joining forces with Ben-Gurion and the ascendant Palestine Labor movement. This shift away from the gradualism of Brandeis and Weizmann and toward the combative approach of the Yishuv leadership dovetailed with the emergent American Jewish sensibility of New Deal activism with its emphasis on internationalism and interventionism.93 That this current would sweep up Goldmann, a newcomer to the American Jewish scene, even as he sought to use his attachments to his patrons Weizmann and Wise, illustrates the extent to which he anticipated the trajectory of the American movement and the coming realignment in world Zionist politics.

III. The Silver–Goldmann– Ben-GurionTriad Ben-Gurion, a longtime advocate of restructuring the American Zionist movement, was wary of Chaim Weizmann’s cautious overtures in the United States and the prevailing inhibitions of American Jewry’s leadership.94 Impatient with Weizmann’s gradualist approach, he asserted that the movement’s first priority in the United States was “not to try to convert the non-Zionists to Zionism, but rather to make Zionists out of the Zionists.”95 In December 1940, just a few months after Weizmann installed Goldmann as the Jewish Agency’s representative in Washington, D.C., Ben-Gurion traveled to the United States and undertook a whirlwind campaign to persuade the American movement to support Zionist demands for a Jewish army and a Jewish state. This was, in fact, a position Goldmann had begun advocating in 1939 in his frequent reports to Wise.96 Arriving in the United States, both men quickly grasped the need for additional propaganda work in American Jewish and general American spheres before such ideas could take root. The utility of adopting a moderate position prompted Goldmann and Ben-Gurion to modify their American tactics. Thus, for example, although definitive about their shared postwar vision of the Yishuv, they employed the word “commonwealth” instead of “state” in public utterances. They also worked hard to uphold the status Weizmann and Wise enjoyed to reap the benefits of their association with them. This façade masked the growing tensions between Ben-Gurion and Weizmann and initially deflected attention away from Goldmann’s and Silver’s competing efforts to claim the mantle of Wise and, to a lesser extent, Weizmann. Meanwhile,


157

Ben-Gurion, thoroughly unimpressed by the American movement in 1940, threw his support to Goldmann’s preliminary diplomatic efforts and Silver’s emergent leadership. His rationale for promoting Goldmann had much to do with the latter’s track record and Moshe Shertok’s backing, but it was also due to his animus for Weizmann. By contrast, his reasons for reaching out to Silver were based on an astute political calculation, which he summed up in a report to the Mapai Central Committee: “I found one exception to the all-pervasive Jewish timidity in the United States—Rabbi Silver.”97 What this juncture points to is the making of a new Jerusalem-Washington axis in Zionist politics, which the political triad of Ben-Gurion, Silver, and Goldmann illustrated. All three placed the drive for Jewish statehood at the center of their political efforts. They understood the complex nature of Great Britain’s unraveling commitment to the Mandate, recognized the possibility for American Jewry and the United States to play a critical role in postwar reconstruction, and they were prepared to use Weizmann and Wise, the movement’s standard bearers, to advance their shared agenda. Moreover, Ben-Gurion seems to have correctly sized up both Silver and Goldmann, and, over time, he deftly harnessed their considerable skills and talents to meet the needs of the unfolding political reality. The first real test of Silver’s strength was the Biltmore Conference of 1942, an American Zionist gathering held in New York City in lieu of a wartime Zionist Congress. At Biltmore, Silver publicly called on the movement to embrace the Zionist Executive’s combative approach and unite behind a common platform for Jewish statehood. In a rhetorical blow to the conference’s pro-Weizmann forces, including Hadassah and other groups which hesitated to support forceful Zionist action, he decried the “unreal, spurious and dangerous” distinctions between “political Zionism” and “philanthropic humanitarianism.”98 With these words, Silver not only planted himself squarely in the combative Zionist camp, he redefined the movement’s long-standing Brandeisian ethos to emphasize interventionism as the linchpin of the new American Zionist platform. Silver’s speech electrified the conference and won the enthusiastic support of the ZOA, Poalei Zion, and Mizrahi. This unusual coalition, with Ben-Gurion and Silver at its helm, opposed minority efforts to reduce Jewish claims to Palestine to appease the Arabs or Great Britain. The conference adopted an eight-point resolution that came to be known as the Biltmore Program whose operative political concepts were: (1) that the Jews of Palestine be allowed to create a military force under the Zionist flag, and (2) that Palestine be established as a Jewish commonwealth integrated into the structure of the postwar democratic world.99 Following the Biltmore Conference, a battle ensued in American Zionist circles over the movement’s leadership. A convoluted process of political intrigue led to Silver’s appointment as co-chairman of the Emergency Committee for Zionist Affairs (renamed the American Zionist Emergency Council, or AZEC) and solidified the animus between Wise and Silver. In addition to elevating Silver to a position of chief responsibility, the conflict also had

158

Mark A. Raider

the effect of humiliating an aging Wise and forcing him to limit his own authority. Wise thereafter complained to Nahum Goldmann: I was perfectly willing to step out from the Chairmanship, but, although Silver could hardly bring himself to believe it, there are still people in and outside of the Zionist movement who, curiously enough, imagine that my name means something in American life. [Emanuel] Neumann, I understand, spoke in insulting terms of me. . . . I shall show my fellow-Zionists now that I am not to be shelved, I am not to be displaced, that I will exert my authority as the Chairman of the Emergency Committee, with Silver, of course, as cooperative Co-Chairman.100 Although a full explication and analysis of Wise’s statement goes beyond the scope of this chapter, I would like to suggest that the issue of “aging and political leadership,” which in recent years has received considerable scholarly attention, is important to understanding Wise at this juncture.101 With old age and illness creeping up on him, displaced as the maverick rabbi who for decades stood at the center of American Jewish life, and finally supplanted as the leader of American Zionism, the Wise of the 1940s was simply not the Wise of previous decades. Indeed, we can even detect in Weizmann a similar sense of growing isolation and weariness at this stage. Ultimately, the decline of both Wise and Weizmann was, in part, the result of a generational transition. In any case, the leadership contest provided both Silver and Goldmann with openings to assert their authority. Silver swiftly assumed complete control of the AZEC. The timing of Silver’s political ascension coincided with Bnai Brith President Henry Monsky’s call for the convening of an American Jewish Assembly (later renamed the American Jewish Conference). Monsky proposed to unite American Jewry behind a platform for the rescue of European Jewry, the removal of restrictions on Jewish immigration to Palestine, and postwar Jewish reconstruction. In all, 501 delegates representing roughly 2,250,000 men and women from 64 national organizations and 375 communities comprised the democratic assembly.102 The conference saw virtually unanimous agreement among the delegates concerning the aforementioned issues. The Palestine proposal, however, generated considerable controversy. Indeed, to present a united front, a group of moderate Zionists led by Nahum Goldmann, Louis Lipsky, and Meyer Weisgal agreed to omit any references to “Jewish statehood” from the conference proceedings. This agreement was reached in spite of Silver’s strong objections, and the organizers denied Silver an assigned speaking position at the conference. When the conference finally convened on August 31, 1943, there was no assurance that the delegates would endorse the notion of an independent “Jewish commonwealth.” Judge Joseph M. Proskauer, representing the American Jewish Committee, delivered an opening address in which he declared


159

that the battle for Jewish self-preservation “requires that we use every effort to avoid schism and achieve cooperation.”103 We cannot all be Orthodox; we cannot all be Reform; we cannot all be Conservative; we cannot all be Zionists or non-Zionists or Revisionists. But what we can do is to take counsel together and work out for this emergency which confronts us a program to which all right-thinking Jews can adhere. . . . My friends, we are in this Conference fellow-Jews and brethren. None of us is seeking to impose an intransigent will upon another. And while I have stressed the importance of unity of conduct, this unity must be built in the area of our agreements. . . .104 It would have been natural for a Zionist spokesperson to challenge this thinly veiled prescription for averting discussion of the political status of Palestine. On this occasion, however, Proskauer was followed by Wise, who (at Goldmann’s urging) sought to avoid conflict at all costs. “To act effectively is to act in unison,” Wise explained. “Action in unison does not mean identity of thinking.”105 Effective action is born of the capacity for adjustment in situations which call for agreement without compromise. . . . I have not chosen to anticipate the program which only this Conference can adopt after the fullest consideration and fairest discussion. . . . Whatever we hope and plan is to be the future status of Palestine, and there may be room for discussion, its gates must not be closed. . . .106 Proskauer’s and Wise’s addresses seemingly neutralized the discussion of Jewish political autonomy in Palestine. The next day, however, it became apparent that several Zionist factions—notably Labor,107 Mizrahi,108 and the militant centrists109—feared the conference might adopt an ambivalent Palestine resolution in the name of communal unity. That the maximalist Zionist program was on the defensive was clear from the ensuing deliberations concerning “the rights of the Jewish people with specific reference to Palestine.”110 The situation changed on September 1 when Abba Hillel Silver gave an unexpected address during the general debate on Palestine. By all accounts, his forceful argument reversed the moderate trend of the conference. “There is but one solution for national homelessness,” Silver declared. “That is a national home!” I am for unity in Israel, for the realization of the total program of Jewish life: relief, rescue, reconstruction and the national restoration in Palestine. I am not for unity on a fragment of the program, for a fragment of the program is a betrayal of the rest of the program and a tragic futility besides. We cannot truly rescue the Jews of Europe unless we have free immigration into Palestine. We cannot have free

160

Mark A. Raider

immigration into Palestine unless our political rights are recognized there. Our political rights cannot be recognized unless our historic connection with the country is acknowledged and our right to rebuild our national home is affirmed. The whole chain breaks if one of our links is missing. . . .111 Asserting the essential role of the Zionist enterprise in modern Jewish life, Silver argued the case for an immediate political solution based on wartime realities. His moral position cut across ideological and philosophical lines, and the Palestine vote was carried with only four dissenting votes.112 The delegates resoundingly called for “the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration” and the reconstitution of Palestine as the Jewish commonwealth. Next, the audience spontaneously “rose, applauded and sang Hatikvah” (The Hope).113 The American Jewish Conference signaled a watershed in American Jewish life and Zionism presently came into view as the driving political force of the hour. The broad coalition that crystallized around Silver, with the Labor, Mizrahi and the militant centrist Zionists as its core, prevailed on the delegates to adopt an unequivocal Palestine resolution. In the event, this was achieved irrespective of the elusive quest for American Jewish harmony. As for Silver, he prevailed not only because of what Weizmann later characterized as “the weakness of the rest,” but also because he articulated the new political attitude of American Jews to Zionism.114 The significance of this profound change was not lost on Goldmann, who along with Louis Lipsky had in May been appointed to head of the Jewish Agency’s Political Office in the United States. Goldmann swiftly turned to the diplomatic front in Washington with renewed energy as well as backing of the Executive of the Jewish Agency and, indirectly, the support of organized American Jewry. In the coming months, personal and political differences vexed relations between Silver and Goldmann and the situation smoldered as each man sought to outflank the other, insisting on his authority to deal with Washington in behalf of the Jewish Agency and the WZO. Initially, Silver had the advantage following the State Department’s request, at the suggestion of political advisor Wallace Murray, that if Goldmann and Lipsky desired to submit a statement in behalf of the Jewish Agency, they should do so through the British embassy. Meanwhile, however, Goldmann’s diplomatic activity continued unabated and he and his assistant Eliahu Eilat, an expert on Arab affairs, applied their energies to the convening of the Conference of International Organizations in San Francisco (April 25–June 26, 1945), which laid the groundwork for the United Nations. By August 1945, the situation culminated at a Jewish Agency executive meeting in London, where Weizmann and Ben-Gurion engineered a compromise that expanded American representation on the executive to include Silver, Wise, Lipsky, and Goldmann, with Silver as chairman of the American section and Goldmann as the Jewish Agency’s designated political representative in Washington. Rather than diffusing the situation, however, the


161

stage was now set for a clash of heroes. A reinvigorated Silver appeared unstoppable, and a somewhat chastened Goldmann unflappable. The former sought to transfer the mandate of the executive to the American Zionist movement, whereas the latter embarked on a one-man diplomatic campaign that expanded his contact with the U.S. State Department, British officials, and highly placed U.S. and British political figures and, after November 1945, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry. Adding to Silver’s leverage, his control of the AZEC was by this time absolute, and he was elected president of the ZOA and president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. The bitter personal clash between Silver and Goldmann reached a zenith in early August 1946 when the latter undertook a series of independent meetings with key U.S. diplomats and officials, including Dean Acheson, Bartley Crum, and others, on behalf of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. Goldmann’s “mission,” which Evyatar Friesel closely examines elsewhere herein, ran afoul of Silver and the AZEC, who deeply resented his behind-the-scenes negotiations and attempts to engineer support from the Truman Administration for “Jewish statehood through partition.”115 Viewed in historical perspective, Goldmann and his backers among the Jewish Agency leadership, on the one hand, and Silver and the AZEC, on the other, were in fact clearly working along parallel tracks. Both camps anticipated the impending shift in the Zionist movement’s postwar strategy—that is, away from old alliances with Great Britain and toward the United States as the great power that would ensure the realization of Jewish national aspirations in Palestine.116 The political firestorm between Silver and Goldmann stemmed, in part, from tactical differences over the Morrison-Grady Plan, which grew out of the Anglo-American Commission and called for the cantonization of Palestine. In the event, Silver (not Goldmann) came out ahead—not only due Silver’s entrenched role in American Jewish affairs, but also because of Goldmann’s iconoclastic style and inability to secure his political authority. Thus, at the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress, held in Basel in December 1946, Silver and Ben-Gurion (without Goldmann) spearheaded a new maximalist coalition that rejected the Morrison-Grady Plan. Their stance contrasted dramatically with the moderate Zionist forces grouped around Weizmann and Wise, the movement’s aging veteran leaders who, notwithstanding previous battles, had reached a rapprochement of their own. Meanwhile, the Ben-Gurion–Silver coalition simultaneously opposed the Weizmann-Wise camp’s willingness to participate in a proposed British-sponsored JewishArab conference in London. The London Conference, the combative leaders averred, would force the Zionist movement once again to capitulate to Arab demands and jeopardize prospects for Jewish statehood. In the end, the Congress decided to withhold the Zionist Organization’s participation from the London Conference but left open the possibility for the Zionist Executive to consider terms for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. This decision, which signaled a marked transformation in British-Zionist relations,117 placed Weizmann in a completely untenable political position.

162

Mark A. Raider

His credibility as the guardian of Anglo-Jewish cooperation was totally undermined, and he subsequently resigned as WZO president. Wise was similarly discredited and on his return to the United States he resigned as ZOA vice president. In fact, the defeat also marginalized Goldmann, whose intense diplomatic activity in Washington had seemingly come to naught; he thereafter relocated to the London office. In the end, the Ben-Gurion–Silver coalition made it possible for Weizmann and Wise to retain honorific positions, whereas Ben-Gurion and Silver themselves assumed unchallenged dominance in the international arena. This was precisely the objective Ben-Gurion and Silver shared, who now faced the challenge of charting a course from the fateful meeting of the U.N. General Assembly at Lake Success in 1946 to Jewish statehood a year later.

IV. Conclusion The decades of the 1930s and 1940s witnessed a profound transformation in American Jewish life and a major shift in American Jewry’s attitude toward Zionism and the establishment of the Jewish state. Several factors significantly influenced the pace and rhythm of Jewish and Zionist politics. The mounting Nazi assault on European Jewry, the outbreak and prosecution of the war, and the emergence of the United States as a global superpower cannot be overstressed. But these factors alone do not adequately explain the process that brought about American Jewry’s transformation from a remote diaspora community, only marginally concerned with the fortunes of the Yishuv, into a fully active political partner that played a critical role in the creation of the state of Israel. In the United States, where the Jewish political spectrum proved remarkably permeable, the interwar period witnessed a comprehensive shift that brought Zionists, non-Zionists, and even anti-Zionists into new and unprecedented alliances. The key to this phenomenon was the increasing ideological and political congruence, starting in the early 1930s, of American Jewry and the ascendant Labor movement in Palestine. In the ensuing decade, the rise of Hitler and Nazi Germany would quicken the pace of such developments and underscore the importance of emerging American Jewish support for the Yishuv as the only viable answer to plight of European Jewry. In the final analysis, Stephen S. Wise, Nahum Goldmann, and Abba Hillel Silver provided crucial leadership as American Jewry shifted from a posture of remote and cautious interest in the Yishuv to one of combative and pragmatic Zionist activism. Their shrewd, visionary, and ultimately successful stewardship enabled American Jews to squarely confront unprecedented existential challenges and play a constructive role in postwar Jewish reconstruction and the campaign for Jewish statehood.


163

Notes 1. Ben Halpern, The Idea of the Jewish State, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1969), 195–200, 208–10; John Higham, Hanging Together: Unity and Diversity in American Culture (New Haven, CT, 2001), 206–207; Menahem Kaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership: Non-Zionists and Zionists in America, 1939–1948 ( Jerusalem, 1991), ch. 1; Frank E. Manuel, The Realities of American-Palestine Relations (Washington, DC, 1949), 304–305. 2. Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971), vol. 16, 638; Michael A. Meyer, “Abba Hillel Silver as a Zionist within the Camp of Reform Judaism,” in Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, ed. Mark A. Raider, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Ronald W. Zweig (London, 1997), 20–25. 3. For a useful overview of the development of Brandeis’s Zionist outlook, see Ben Halpern, A Clash of Heroes: Brandeis, Weizmann and American Zionism (New York, 1987), 101–108. 4. The use of the terms “Labor Executive” and “Labor domination” in the debates leading up to the elections to the Nineteenth Zionist Congress is noted in Baruch Zuckerman, “Why Vote Labor?” Jewish Frontier ( June 1935): 20. For a comprehensive analysis of Jewish socialist politics in the United States from 1897 to 1918, see Jonathan Frankel, Prophecy and Politics: Socialism, Nationalism and the Russian Jews, 1862–1917 (Cambridge, UK, 1981), ch. 9. For insightful analyses of the shifting social and political attitudes of first- and second-generation American Jews see: Lawrence H. Fuchs, The Political Behavior of American Jews (Glencoe, IL, 1956), 73–78, 121–30; Arnold M. Eisen, The Chosen People in America (Bloomington, IN, 1983), 25–52; Deborah Dash Moore, At Home in America: Second Generation New York Jews (New York, 1981), 201–30. 5. Jonathan D. Sarna, “A Projection of America as it Ought to Be: Zion in the Mind’s Eye of American Jews,” in Envisioning Israel: The Changing Ideals and Images of North American Jews, ed. Allon Gal ( Jerusalem, 1996), 59. See also American Jewish Year Book, vol. 37 (1935), 148–50; Arthur A. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington, IN, 1999), ch. 8. 6. Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Scene (Cambridge, MA, 1995), 142–47; Beth S. Wenger, New York Jews and the Great Depression (Syracuse, NY, 1999), ch. 5; Ira N. Forman, “The Politics of Minority Consciousness: The Historical Voting Behavior of American Jews,” in Jews in American Politics, ed. L. Sandy Maisel et al. (Lanham, MD, 2001), 155–56; Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven, CT, 2004), 255–71. 7. Manuel, The Realities of American-Palestine Relations, 170–78, 218–20, 275–84, 305–308, 318–19. 8. Stephen S. Wise: Servant of the People. Selected Letters, ed. Carl Hermann Voss, 167. 9. Ibid., 167–68. 10. For useful overviews of the Roosevelt Administration’s impact on U.S. politics, see Allan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York, 1995); David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999).

164

Mark A. Raider

11. David Ben-Gurion, “New Perspectives on Zionism,” Jewish Frontier ( June 1935): 21. 12. Allon Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State (Bloomington, IN, 1991), 134–36. On the hegemony of Labor Zionism in Palestine and world Zionist affairs see Ben Halpern and Jehuda Reinharz, Zionism and the Creation of a New Society (Hanover, NH, 2000), chs. 9–10. 13. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews, 188. 14. Fuchs, The Political Behavior of American Jews, 73–80, 99–107; Martin E. Marty, Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (Chicago, 1996), ch. 12; Lipset and Raab, Jews and the New American Scene, 164. 15. Melvin I. Urofsky, A Voice that Spoke for Justice: The Life and Times of Stephen S. Wise (Albany, NY, 1982), 264–72; Marc Lee Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver: A Profile in American Judaism (New York, 1989), 62–63. 16. Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann: Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969), 182. 17. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry (New York, 1990), 100–104; Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 7 (1972), 1012–13. 18. American Jewish Year Book, vol. 37 (1935), 149; The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. 16: June 1933–Aug. 1935 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1978), 77. 19. Rufus Learsi, The Jews in America: A History (Cleveland, OH, 1954), 249; Manuel, The Realities of American-Palestine Relations, 144–46. 20. Jewish Daily Bulletin, Aug. 30, 1933. 21. Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann, 182. 22. Urofsky, A Voice that Spoke for Justice, 92. 23. Allon Gal, “Universal Mission and Jewish Survivalism in American Zionist Ideology,” in From Ancient to Modern Judaism: Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. Jacob Neusner et al., vol. 4 (Atlanta, GA, 1989), 73–74. 24. Mark A. Raider, The Emergence of American Zionism (New York, 1998), 66–67. 25. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews, 124–25, 130–31. 26. David Ben-Gurion, Letters to Paula, trans. Aubrey Hodes (Pittsburgh, PA, 1971), 81, 85; Stephen S. Wise, Challenging Years (New York, 1949), 300, 307; The Personal Letters of Stephen Wise, ed. Justine Wise Polier and James Waterman Wise (Boston, 1956), 239; Stephen S. Wise: Servant of the People. Selected Letters, ed. Carl Hermann Voss (Philadelphia, 1970), 205; Michael Brown, The Israeli-American Connection: Its Roots in the Yishuv, 1914–1945 (Detroit, 1996), 221. 27. Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York, 1988), 309–14. In a related vein, it is interesting to note Wise’s reference to the haluzim as “young Zionist pioneers” who bear the “burden of colonization” and “youthful pilgrims” who know “the joy of homecoming.” The interchangeability of such locutions reflects his distinctive emphasis on Zionism as an


165

extension of the biblical imperative “to do justly.” See “As I Saw Palestine—A Diary” ( July 9, 1935) in Stephen S. Wise, As I See It (New York, 1944), 142 28. Quoted in Arthur Goren, “Between Ideal and Reality: Abba Hillel Silver’s Zionist Vision,” in Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, ed. Mark A. Raider, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Ronald W. Zweig (London, 1997), 71. 29. For a brief overview of Silver’s attitude to the Republican party, see Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, 109–15. 30. Rafael Medoff, Militant Zionism in America: The Rise and Impact of the Jabotinsky Movement in the United States, 1926–1948 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2002), 133–34. 31. Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Garden City, NY, 1975), 357–58; Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist Idea (Hoboken, NJ, 1975) 52–53. There is no mention of Revisionist Zionism in Yonathan Shapiro, Leadership of the American Zionist Organization, 1897–1930 (Chicago, 1971). 32. Some examples are Auerbach, Rabbis and Lawyers, 192–94; David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941–1945 (New York, 1987), 163, 176; Aaron Berman, Nazism, the Jews and American Zionism, 1933–1948 (Detroit, 1990), 88–89. 33. Eisen, The Chosen People in America, 62, 65–66; Meyer, Response to Modernity, 305–306, 328–30; Alexander M. Schindler, “Zionism and Judaism: The Path of Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver,” in Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, ed. Mark A. Raider, Jonathan D. Sarna, and Ronald W. Zweig (London, 1997), 6–7. 34. Therefore Choose Life: Selected Sermons, Addresses and Writings of Abba Hillel Silver, ed. Herbert Weiner (Cleveland, OH, 1967), 87, 88. 35. Ibid., 425–26. 36. Goren, “Between Ideal and Reality,” 86. 37. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews, 177. For an important historical corrective, see Anita Shapira, “Did the Zionist Leadership Foresee the Holocaust?” in Living With Anti-Semitism, ed. Jehuda Reinharz (Hanover, NH, 1987), 397–412. 38. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 305. 39. Joseph Heller, The Stern Gang: Ideology, Politics and Terror, 1940–1949 (London, 1995), 4. 40. See Yaacov Shavit, Jabotinsky and the Revisionist Movement, 1925–1948 (London, 1988), ch. 2. 41. Quoted in Urofsky, A Voice that Spoke for Justice, 279. 42. Quoted in Michael Brown, The Israeli-American Connection, 62. 43. Vladimir Jabotinsky to Abba Hillel Silver, March 23, 1926. 33/818, Microfilm Edition of the Abba Hillel Silver Papers. 44. Joseph B. Schechtman, Rebel and Statesman: The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story. The Early Years (New York, 1958), 388–94; Chanoch (Howard) Rosenblum, “The New Zionist Organization’s American Campaign, 1936–1939,” Studies in Zionism, vol. 12,

166

Mark A. Raider

no. 2 (Autumn 1991): 169–85; Elias Ginsburg, “Is Revision-Zionism Fascist? [sic],” Menorah Journal, vol. XXII, no. 2 (Oct.–Dec. 1934): 190–206. 45. Abba Hillel Silver to John M. Powers, Apr. 13, 1938. 2/32, Silver Papers. 46. Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann, 102. 47. Quoted in Medoff, Militant Zionism in America, 133. 48. Louis Lipsky, Memoirs in Profile (Philadelphia, 1975), 185. 49. Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann, 73. 50. Ben Halpern, “Foreword,” in Lipsky, Memoirs in Profile, xiii. 51. Rosenblum, “The New Zionist Organization’s American Campaign,” 169; Brown, The Israeli-American Connection, 63–68; Allon Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State, trans. David S. Segal (Bloomington, IN, 1985), 216. 52. Lipsky, Memoirs in Profile, 150; Brown, The Israeli-American Connection, 62. 53. Quoted in Anita Shapira, Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist (Cambridge, England, 1984), 284. 54. American Jewish Year Book, vol. 39 (1937), 235–38, 272–74, 289–90; American Jewish Year Book, vol. 40 (1938), 155–57. 55. The ZOA’s continued support for Chaim Weizmann is noted in “Review of the Year 5699—United States,” American Jewish Year Book, vol. 41 (1939), 231. 56. “ZOA Convention, New York City,” June 28, 1937, 178/428, Silver Papers. 57. Palestine Royal Commission Report, July 1937 (London, 1937), 394. 58. Avraham Ben-Shalom, “A Different Point of View,” Jewish Frontier, vol. IV, no. 7 ( July 1937): 20–22. 59. Marc Lee Raphael asserts the “large majority of the American delegation [to the WZO], despite Silver’s oratory, favored the [partition] plan.” See Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, 74. 60. Gabriel Sheffer, Moshe Sharett: Biography of a Political Moderate (Oxford, England, 1996), 87. 61. Quoted in Urofsky, A Voice that Spoke for Justice, 286–87. 62. Stephen S. Wise, ed. Voss, 220. 63. See “Appendix A” in Raphael Patai, Nahum Goldmann: His Missions to the Gentiles (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1987), 270. 64. Ibid., 78. 65. Palestine Post, Aug. 11, 1937, 4. 66. Palestine Post, Aug. 12, 1937, 1, 4. 67. Quoted in Shabtai Teveth, Ben-Gurion: The Burning Ground (Boston, 1987), 615. 68. Morris Fine, “Review of the Year 5699,” American Jewish Year Book, vol. 41 (1939), 200.


167

69. Ibid.; “Revisionism Redivivus,” Reconstructionist, vol. 5, no. 15 (Nov. 24, 1939): 5; “Correspondence,” Reconstructionist, vol. 5, no. 16 (Dec. 8, 1939): 13–16. 70. Abba Hillel Silver to Stephen S. Wise, May 26, 1939. Microfilm Edition of the Stephen S. Wise Papers. 71. Ibid. 72. Abba Hillel Silver to Stephen S. Wise, Oct. 19, 1939. Wise Papers. 73. Esco Foundation, Palestine: A Study of Jewish, Arab, and British Policies, vol. 2 (New Haven, CT, 1947), 746–47. 74. Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 767. 75. Ben-Gurion, Letters to Paula, 144. 76. Ibid. 75. Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State, 15–29; Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 625–30; Joseph Heller, The Birth of Israel, 1945–1949: Ben-Gurion and His Critics (Gainesville, FL, 2000), 21–22. 78. See Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State, appendix IV, 240–41. 79. Mitchell Cohen, Zion and State: Nation, Class and the Shaping of Modern Israel (Oxford, England, 1987), 186–87. 80. Ben-Gurion, Letters to Paula, 92–93. 81. David Ben-Gurion, “New Perspectives on Zionism,” in Jewish Frontier ( June 1935): 21. 82. Cohen, Zion and State, 188. 83. Amos Elon, The Israelis: Founders and Sons ( Jerusalem, 1981), 118–19. 84. Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State, 48–67. 85. Heller, The Birth of Israel, 24–25, 33. 86. American Jewish Year Book, vol. 37 (1935), 150; American Jewish Year Book, vol. 39 (1937), 236–38; Brown, The Israeli-American Connection, ch. 7. 87. Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 629. 88. Abba Hillel Silver to Israel Goldstein, July 28, 1938; Abba Hillel Silver to Stephen S. Wise, May 26, 1939; Abba Hillel Silver to Stephen S. Wise, Oct. 19, 1939. Wise Papers. 89. Melvin I. Urofsky, “Rifts in the Movement: Zionist Fissures, 1942–1945,” in Herzl Year Book, vol. 8 (1978), 195. 90. Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann, 179–80. 91. Ibid., 180. 92. Ibid., 179.

168

Mark A. Raider 93. Fuchs, The Political Behavior of American Jews, 100.

94. See Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State, 92–97, 102–105, 118–25; Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 688–89. 95. Quoted in ibid., 776. 96. Nahum Goldmann to Stephen S. Wise, Oct. 4, 1939. P–672, box 6. Louis Lipsky Papers, American Jewish Historical Society. 97. Quoted in Teveth, Ben-Gurion, 777. 98. Quoted in Samuel Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism, reprint (Silver Spring, MD, 1985), 222. 99. The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, 2nd ed. (New York, 1995), 618. 100. Stephen S. Wise to Nahum Goldmann, Aug. 4, 1943. Wise Papers. 101. See, for example, Aging and Political Leadership, ed. Angus McIntyre (Albany, NY, 1988); Jerrold M. Post and Robert S. Robins, When Illness Strikes the Leader: The Dilemma of the Captive King (New Haven, CT, 1993). 102. The American Jewish Conference: Its Organization and Proceedings of the First Session, ed. Alexander S. Kohanski (New York, 1944), 361–62, 373–77. 103. Conference Record, Aug. 30, 1943, 6. A180/69, Baruch Zuckerman Papers, Central Zionist Archives. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid., 5. 106. Ibid. 107. See the address by Baruch Zuckerman in Conference Record, Aug. 31, 1943, 5. Zuckerman Papers. 108. See the address by Gedaliah Bublick in Conference Record, Aug. 31, 1943, 5–6. Zuckerman Papers. 109. See the address by Robert Szold to the Palestine Committee of the American Jewish Conference, A406/171, Robert Szold Papers, Central Zionist Archives, Emanuel Neumann, In the Arena: An Autobiographical Memoir (New York, 1976), 190–91. 110. Lipsky, Memoirs in Profile, 612. 111. Conference Record, September 1, 1943, 4–5. Zuckerman Papers. 112. Halperin, The Political World of American Zionism, 234; Lipsky, Memoirs in Profile, 614–15. 113. The American Jewish Conference, ed. Kohanski, 177. 114. Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error: The Autobiography of Chaim Weizmann (New York, 1949), 442. 115. See Evyatar Friesel’s chapter herein. 116. Jehuda Reinharz, Zionism and the Great Powers: A Century of Foreign Policy (New York, 1994). 117. Israel Kolatt, “The Zionist Movement and the Arabs,” in Essential Papers on Zionism, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira (New York, 1996), 645–46.

8

( Toward the Partition of Palestine The Goldmann Mission inWashington, August 1946 Evyatar Friesel

“

T

he Executive [of the Jewish Agency] is prepared to discuss a proposal for the establishment of a viable Jewish State in an adequate area of Palestine,” asserted one of the resolutions of a meeting of the Executive in Paris on August 5, 1946. In historical perspective, the decision opened a new chapter in Zionist policy that would reach a climax sixteen months later in November 1947 with the U.N. partition resolution on Palestine. In historical perspective only: for the participants at the Executive meeting the theme was only one issue among several. The other major resolution adopted at the meeting, which in the eyes of most of the members of the Executive of the Jewish Agency probably seemed more important, was the rejection of the Morrison-Grady Plan—the division of Palestine into semiautonomous cantons with the country still left under overall British domination. Furthermore, it was decided that Executive member Nahum Goldmann should travel to the United States to secure American official support for the Zionist proposals.1 Goldmann left the same day. The Goldmann mission has attracted interest among scholars.2 An implicit reason for such an attention is the disparity between the microhistorical and the

169

170

Evyatar Friesel

macrohistorical results of the event. From a microhistorical angle—on which most of this chapter focuses—the results of Goldmann’s negotiations in Washington were modest at best; worse, many were convinced that his mission was a failure, and worst, that his demarches had done the Zionist cause enormous harm. However, from a macrohistorical perspective—obviously, a perspective that is the privilege of the latter-day historian—Goldmann’s mission represented an important, even an essential step in postwar Zionist political work.

I. In mid-1946, the Palestine question stood at the crossroads of three diverging political interests: British, Arab, and Zionist. The aim of the British was to maintain, in the changed postwar conditions, a presence in the Middle East as strong and influential as possible. From that angle British policymakers also considered the ongoing Jewish-Arab conflict in Palestine. Their conclusions had been reached already before World War II and were embodied in the Palestine White Paper of May 1939. The White Paper had expressed a departure from the British policy established in between 1917 and 1922, which had been positively inclined to create a national home in Palestine for the Jewish people. According to the 1939 White Paper, the Jews were relegated to minority status in a future Arab-dominated state. The logic behind the new British thinking was unabashedly a matter of realpolitik: The future of the Middle East lay in the hands of the emerging and increasingly assertive Arab countries, and it was in the interest of Great Britain to strengthen its presence in the region through good relations with the Arabs, even if they had to sacrifice Zionist aspirations in Palestine. Middle Eastern conditions after World War II emphasized these premises. Great Britain, still the dominant power in the region, had emerged from the war weaker than before, while the Arab countries were attaining independence and reaching out for international influence. The Jews, truly to be lamented because of the Holocaust in Europe, were now politically all the weaker, also because of the tragedy that had befallen them. The Arab League, created in 1945, now represented the Arab position regarding Palestine. The Arab League filled the political vacuum left by the proNazi war record of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el-Husseini, which in the postwar situation encumbered his effectiveness as the leader of the Palestine Arabs. The Arab League, to which belonged also the five Arab countries that were members of the recently established Organization of the United Nations, took a keen interest in the Palestine question. In June 1946, after the publication of the recommendations of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AACI), the Council of the Arab League met in Bludan, near Damascus, to discuss its policy regarding Palestine. The political line adopted was identical to the traditional Arab position. It was demanded that the Zionist

Toward the Partition of Palestine

171

claims—all of them—be rejected, that the British mandate in Palestine be abolished, and that Palestine be recognized as an independent country, thus fulfilling what the Arab League considered the legitimate rights of the Arab inhabitants of the country.3 A permanent Palestine Committee was established at the Bludan meeting, whose task it was to guide the Arab struggle for Palestine. In fact, that committee now took over the political leadership in Palestine from the Husseini faction. Privately, leading Arab politicians agreed that partition was the only practical solution for Palestine.4 But it was the Bludan Conference resolutions that would guide Arab strategy regarding Palestine in the next two years and beyond. Realistically considered, the Zionists were the weaker leg of the Palestinian political triangle. In 1946 a long list of disasters and difficulties bore down on the Zionist movement, including the tragedy of European Jewry, whose tremendous dimensions had become clear toward the end of World War II. The main reservoir of Zionist support, European Jewry in general and Eastern European Jewry in particular, had been destroyed in the Holocaust. All that remained in terms of Zionist support were several hundred thousands of refugees lingering in camps in Europe, many of whom wanted to immigrate to Palestine. Additionally, the British policy in Palestine, still guided by the 1939 White Paper, was vehemently rejected by the Zionist movement. Soon after the end of the war, in the summer of 1945, Great Britain held elections. In one of the great turns in British political history, the Labor Party came into power. In spite of previous repeated declarations of support for Zionist hopes in Palestine, Ernest Bevin, the powerful new Foreign Minister, decided to hold on to the 1939 White Paper. In reaction, in the fall of 1945 the Zionists adopted what was called an “activist” line vis-à-vis the British in Palestine.5 Its central aim was to force the entrance of Jewish immigrants into the country, by violent means if necessary. Violence led to counterviolence and by the summer of 1946 the Zionist movement and the British authorities were set on a course of confrontation that bode ill for the Zionist camp. On June 29, 1946 (later called Black Saturday), after a wave of sabotage attacks in Palestine by the Zionist underground, the British government put the country under what essentially amounted to martial law. The British conducted destructive searches in scores of cities and settlements. Hundreds of Zionist activists were imprisoned, including three members of the Zionist Executive, among them Moshe Shertok (Sharett), the director of the Political Department of the Zionist Executive. David Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Executive remained free only because he happened to be in Europe. On July 22, 1946, the right-wing Ezel underground group managed to smuggle explosives into the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where many offices of the British government were headquartered. Close to 100 people were killed or wounded in the explosion. A grim British reaction was to be expected. Since 1945 a new factor had appeared in the Palestine equation: the U.S. government. In part, this reflected the realities of the postwar situation, which

172

Evyatar Friesel

forced U.S. policymakers into a growing, although reluctant, interest in the situation in the Middle East. In part, it was a result of political Zionist work in the United States. Jehuda Reinharz has called attention to the development of such a strategic trend in Zionist and later Israeli foreign policy, a concept of “historical dimensions and a quasi-ideological significance” he identifies as the idea of a necessary political connection to a great power—whose roots stretch back to the time of Theodor Herzl.6 Between 1917 and 1939 that connection had been to Great Britain. With the publication of the 1939 White Paper, the Zionist movement was forced to search for a link to another great power. This effort vis-à-vis the United States proved to be a difficult and arduous task that lasted many years. The bearers of these new political efforts were the American Zionist movement and, to a lesser degree, the American office of the Jewish Agency for Palestine—sometimes in synchronization, sometimes not. Zionist activities in the United States reflected the character of the American Zionist movement and were also related to general American Jewish factors. The American Zionist movement was large, with a tradition of its own, peculiar organizational trends, and a varying degree of influence on American Jewry as a whole. Its central body was the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), but by 1946 the main political activities were in the hands of the American Zionist Emergency Council (AZEC), where four Zionist groups were represented: the ZOA, Hadassah, Poalei Zion, and Mizrahi.7 Additional organizations were to be taken into account, such as the important local and regional federations of the Jewish communities, the great fraternal orders, chief among them the Order of Bnai Brith, and the Jewish religious movements. Considerable segments of these organizations possessed strong Zionist sympathies, although the organizations themselves were not explicitly Zionistic. Last but not least, was the very influential American Jewish Committee (AJC), whose leaders often had strong connections to the highest levels of the U.S. government. The AJC’s position had changed over the years from anti-Zionist to nonZionist. By the early 1940s, the AJC was in one of its anti-Zionist phases, but the matter was never a closed one. The Zionists had an ongoing dialogue with the leaders of the AJC, which would continue in the years ahead.8 Two personalities were the recognized leaders of the American Zionist movement in this period: the older Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, a veteran from the beginnings of Zionism in the United States, and the emerging star, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, who would soon fulfill a central role in the struggle for Jewish statehood at the Organization of the United Nations. Silver was a forceful personality, a spellbinding speaker, independent-minded, and difficult to work with. “There was something of the terrorist in his manner and bearing,” wrote Nahum Goldmann, in an (untypical) bitter moment of recollection.9 In June 1943, the Jewish Agency established a political office in Washington, under the joint direction of Goldmann, who had been living in the United States since 1940, and Louis Lipsky, a veteran American Zionist leader.10 Although the


173

office developed good contacts with the American political establishment, it was almost continuously at odds with Silver and the AZEC, who opposed the existence of such a parallel Zionist body and considered all political activity in Washington to be the prerogative of the AZEC.11 The influence and importance of the AZEC, who counted on the support of a large and engaged countrywide network of Zionist branches, was undoubtedly more substantial, especially after 1945 when Silver became the dominant figure in the AZEC. In fact, the Jewish Agency office and the AZEC concentrated on the same issues. One was the abolition of the 1939 White Paper with the limitations it imposed on the development of the Jewish National Home. Another theme, proclaimed in May 1942 at the Biltmore Conference in New York City, was the demand for the establishment of a “Jewish commonwealth” in Palestine. The third was the plight of the Jewish refugees in Europe—survivors of the Holocaust. The last issue was especially sensitive, owing to its humanitarian dimensions and because the refugees, several hundred thousand of them, were mostly concentrated in camps in the American zone in Germany. Almost all wanted to emigrate, and a significant and vocal segment among them wished to immigrate to Palestine. In mid-1945, President Truman sent to Europe Judge Earl G. Harrison, a former Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization, to study the situation of the Jewish refugees. In his report to Truman, Harrison wrote that 100,000 Jewish refugees should be allowed to immigrate to Palestine. At the end of August 1945, Truman transmitted the proposal the new British prime minister, Clement R. Attlee.12 The British did not accept the recommendation, but toward the end of the year they decided to form a joint commission, the AngloAmerican Committee of Inquiry, to study the problem of the Jewish refugees in Europe and its relationship to Palestine. The commission visited the major camps of refugees in Europe, then traveled to Palestine and the neighboring countries. The recommendations of the commission, published in April 1946,13 caused mixed reactions among the Zionists. The pragmatically oriented American members of the commission continued to recommend that 100,000 Jewish refugees should be allowed into Palestine. The more politically motivated English members introduced resolutions postponing independence for the country and supporting a continuing trusteeship of Palestine within the framework of the United Nations. The result was that the main goal the Zionists hoped to attain through the commission—namely, the abolition of the 1939 White Paper—was neatly side-tracked by the British. In addition, British Prime Minister Attlee rejected a second request by President Truman, presented on April 30, 1946, for the immediate admission of 100,000 Jews into Palestine. Attlee, who argued that the committee’s recommendations should be treated as a whole and not dealt with as separate items, asserted that the execution of Truman’s plan would involve immense practical difficulties.14 In June 1946, the British government proposed the formation of a smaller commission to study ways to implement the recommendations of the Committee of Inquiry. This led to the

174

Evyatar Friesel

Morrison-Grady Commission, with Herbert Morrison representing the British government’s position and Henry Grady that of the United States. The commission developed a plan for the cantonization of Palestine according to which the country was to be divided into four semiautonomous provincial sectors ( Jewish, Arab, Jerusalem, and the Negev region) under the general control of the central (British) administration. Issues such as immigration and land transfers would be left in the hands of the local authorities, although ultimate authority for such matters would reside with the central administration.15 The plan was exceedingly ambiguous and, considered in practical terms, it could be exploited from several angles. As such, it did not satisfy the Zionists who in any event no longer trusted the British—who, according to the new plan, would retain overall control of the country. Furthermore, the proposed Jewish canton was very small, densely populated, and the Zionist leadership suspected that the British, in collusion with the Arabs, would thwart development plans and the immigration of any significant number of refugees. Thus from a Zionist point of view the Morrison-Grady Plan meant the continuation of the White Paper regime under a different name. The result was that the Zionists used all the means at their disposal to oppose the plan. By 1946, however, the Zionists were caught in a political conundrum. They generally agreed on the goals of the movement—the termination of the British Mandate, the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine—but they disagreed about how to reach these goals. Weizmann dominated the London section of the Zionist Executive (or the Executive of the Jewish Agency, in practice the same). Sick, his powers waning, Weizmann remained nevertheless a very influential figure. True to himself, Weizmann still hoped and worked for an understanding with the British. Weizmann was unprepared to recognize the long-term negative consequences of the British Middle Eastern policy, which by now was being upheld consistently since the later part of 1937, and this in spite of the war and the political changes that had occurred in Great Britain before and after. Weizmann was very much opposed to the “activist,” belligerent line of part of the members of the Executive of the Jewish Agency. The AZEC, aggressively led by Abba Hillel Silver, pursued a political line of its own, much more extremist than Weizmann’s. Silver’s aim was to exert pressure on the U.S. government, especially on the president, to force him to force the British to consider the Zionist demands—a rather far-stretching strategy. At the same time, Silver guarded his turf jealously: when Weizmann visited the United States in November 1945 and was about to be received by President Truman, Silver demanded that Weizmann “. . . fall in line. Any attempt to play the role of ‘the wise and patient statesman’ instead of the forceful and aggressive leader at this critical time will do us terrific damage.”16 Especially problematic was the political line—or rather, the lack of a clear political direction—of the Palestinian section of the Zionist Executive, which Ben-Gurion led. Always the political realist, Ben-Gurion must have been aware of the heavy price the Jewish community in Palestine was paying for the


175

activist line the Zionist leadership had adopted in Palestine and the danger of losing control over the Yishuv, even more so after the Ezel bombed the King David Hotel. Ben-Gurion was certainly aware that the British had not budged from their political position, that their threats of further and more extreme military measures in Palestine were to be taken seriously, and that the Zionist Executive was relatively powerless in London and in Washington. The inner political situation in the Zionist movement must have weighed heavily on him: his party, Mapai, left weaker and poorer after the split of 1944; rightwing tendencies in the Zionist movement growing stronger due to the confrontation with the British; the assertiveness of Silver and his associates in the United States; the return of the Revisionists to the World Zionist Organization (WZO). All together, in the middle of 1946 Ben-Gurion seemed politically unsure of himself—for him a most uncharacteristic situation. In fact, the Zionists were caught in a situation of political disarray, faced with vital problems, insufficient understanding among the diverse sectors of the movement, and with few realistic options pointing towards a way out of their predicament.

II. Goldmann occupied a position of his own, in the personal and political structure of the Zionist leadership in 1946. A member of the Executive of the Jewish Agency since 1931, Goldmann had spent the 1930s as the representative of the Jewish Agency at the League of Nations in Geneva. In 1940 he moved to the United States, and in June 1943 he was nominated as a member of the just established American section of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, together with Abba Hiller Silver, Stephen S. Wise, and Louis Lipsky.17 Nahum Goldmann was one of the few members of the Zionist leadership without a firm party connection within the Zionist movement. Whatever the advantages of the situation—it was, after all, Goldmann’s own choice18—it also involved serious drawbacks as Goldmann would soon discover in the aftermath of his mission in Washington. Nevertheless, it allowed him a measure of political aloofness that in some circumstances could be advantageous. Extremely clever, independent-minded and with great experience in diplomatic work, Goldmann was not bound to only one of the diverse approaches to Zionism and the Palestine question—as was the case with the Great Britain–attached Weizmann, the Erez Israel–attuned Ben-Gurion, and the America-rooted Silver. Ably assisted by Eliahu Epstein (Eilat) and later also by Leo Kohn (both, after 1948, important figures in the Israeli foreign service), Goldmann had accompanied the international deliberations that led to the foundation of the Organization of the United Nations. He recognized much more clearly than his colleagues in the Jewish Agency, who before 1947 paid little attention to the new international setup, the negative implications for the Zionist movement imbued in the

176

Evyatar Friesel

framework of the United Nations. He formulated his views in two letters written on September 18, 1945, one to Ben-Gurion, the other to Silver.19 The letters were not identical, but complemented each other. Compared to the old mandatory system of the League of Nations, explained Goldmann, the situation of the Zionists in the United Nations structure was much weaker. Five Arab states and many more countries with large Moslem minorities were now represented at the United Nations, and they were intent on abolishing the recognized status of the Jewish Agency, according to the terms of the original mandate for Palestine. The Jewish Agency might now be reduced to the status of a private nongovernmental organization. All of this underscored the need to reach as soon as possible independent Jewish statehood in Palestine. Additional political factors supported his analysis, wrote Goldmann. He was writing in the wake of President Truman’s appeal (unsuccessful, as it soon turned out) to the British prime minister to allow the quick immigration of 100,000 European Jewish refugees into Palestine. Observing the political scene in Washington, Goldmann reached the conclusion that concentrating the efforts of the Jewish Agency on the refugee question was a mistake. The Americans, he stressed, were ready to support the immigration of 100,000 refugees because of the humanitarian significance of such a step, but it did not mean that they recognized the political dimension of the Zionist problem— quite the contrary. Furthermore, Goldmann wrote, without government powers coping with the absorption in Palestine of a large number of newcomers would be practically impossible. The huge financial means, the transportation facilities, the contacts with the governments where the refugees were concentrated or had to pass through—all these were tasks that only a politically independent authority could undertake. It was indispensable, concluded Goldmann in his letter to Silver, to: do everything to get the British and American governments to understand that the Palestine problem must be solved now in a radical manner and that immigration without a state does not mean much but is really a trap into which we are being led, and that only a full solution giving us the political status which we need in order to go on with our work is an answer to the necessities of the actual Jewish situation.20 Jewish statehood, then, was for Goldmann the imperative of the hour. Significantly, however, he mentioned statehood through partition only in his letter to Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion’s answer, from September 27, makes for disconcerting reading. Were it not for one point in his letter (no. 4) that relates to Goldmann’s epistle—one might think that the correspondence between both men was unrelated. Ben-Gurion had no reaction to the political reflections of Goldmann.


177

Ben-Gurion’s letter was entirely concentrated on the Jewish community in Palestine, and to the “activist” line against the British then in preparation. If we add Ben-Gurion’s attack on the talks that Weizmann was conducting with members of the British Cabinet, we get a rather melancholy picture about the condition of and the relations in the Zionist leadership at so difficult a time. And about the partition proposal Ben-Gurion said nothing.21

III. Partition was a most sensitive issue in Zionist life. Since the debates in 1937, when the proposal had been broached, adopted, and rejected by the British, the Zionists, and the Arabs (each side according to its own views), the idea of partition had not disappeared. The White Paper of 1939 envisaged a united country and implicitly rejected partition. The only major Zionist meeting during the war years, the Biltmore Conference held in New York City in May 1942, had resolved that after the war “. . . Palestine be established as a Jewish Commonwealth integrated in the structure of the new democratic world.”22 Opponents of partition would later claim that according to the Biltmore Program all of Palestine should be established as a Jewish state. This was, of course, a narrow interpretation of the proceedings: partition or nonpartition had not been an issue at the Biltmore Conference, rather the emphasis had been on Jewish statehood. At most, after 1937 the Zionists, parallel to the British, had also retreated from partition, some for tactical reasons, others as a matter of principle. The issue was again mentioned among the resolutions of the first World Zionist Conference after the war in London, held in August 1945. It asserted that Palestine, “undivided and undiminished,” should be constituted as a Jewish state “in accordance with the purpose of the Balfour Declaration.”23 Apparently, the resolution was merely declarative in character; to discern such a purpose in the Balfour Declaration was purely imaginative. Still, the idea of partition continued to permeate the political arena and was frequently mentioned—semiprivately and semiofficially—by the Zionists, the British, and even the Arabs. The Executive of the Jewish Agency and other institutions of the Yishuv discussed the possibility during February and March 1946. The position espoused by most of the participants in the deliberations was that the Zionists should not mention partition—but if the British raised it, it should be considered. This was a solution that avoided, at the least for the time being, a difficult internal debate in the movement. Furthermore, it was regarded as tactically astute: to consider the partition issue if raised by others was seen as a better point of departure for negotiations on the matter.24 Abba Hillel Silver and his AZEC associates strongly supported such a view. Silver did not sympathize with those who favored partition and his position was essentially tactical. He did not believe that the Zionists should present the idea because it involved a most serious concession. Moreover, he argued that if suggested by the

178

Evyatar Friesel

Zionists, partition would only turn into the point of departure in the direction of further concessions.25 In spite of this, a partition proposal was one of the possibilities debated in the AZEC at the end of July 1946, when the political situation seemed dark and there was a real possibility that President Truman might accept the recommendations of the Morrison-Grady Commission.26 Goldmann was convinced that the foregoing tactical attitude regarding partition was wrong, and he spoke about the issue openly and frequently. He had supported partition since the debate at the Twentieth Zionist Congress in 1937 and, as mentioned previously, he stressed the topic after the war as a result of his own analysis of the Zionist situation. In mid-July 1946 he spoke about the partition option before the national board of Hadassah. Two weeks later Emmanuel Neumann, Silver’s close associate in AZEC, refuted Goldmann’s arguments in the same forum. At the same time, the theme of partition was mentioned in articles in the New York Times.27 Furthermore, the possibility of partition was frequently mentioned by the people who were themselves involved in negotiations regarding the future of Palestine. Goldmann informed Ben-Gurion that he had unofficially raised the idea in June 1946 in a conversation with Henry F. Grady, the U.S. representative who was to elaborate, together with the British, the cantonization proposal for Palestine.28 In fact, Goldmann and Ben-Gurion were quite close in their views on the partition issue. In June 1946 partition came up, although indirectly, in a conversation among Ben-Gurion, Richard Crossman, an AACI member, and George Hall, the British Secretary for the Colonies.29 More significant, partition was the centerpiece of a political memorandum Ben-Gurion prepared in mid-July 1946 with the title, “A Scheme for the Solution of the Palestine Problem.” In the proposal Ben-Gurion envisaged establishing two independent states covering Palestine and Transjordan, and even suggested names “Judea” and “Abdalia.” Areas settled by Arabs on the western side of the Jordan River should be integrated in Abdalia. Uninhabited territories on the eastern side of the river should become part of Judea. Ben-Gurion sent copies of his proposal to Eliahu Eilat, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, and Harold Laski, a leading figure of the British Labor Party.30 In short, whatever the merits or deficiencies of the partition solution for Palestine, the idea was well-known.

IV. The session of the Executive of the Jewish Agency in Paris, early in August 1946, was a relatively large one, with participants from the United States, England, and Palestine. Significantly, two important figures were absent: Weizmann and Silver, which said much about the Zionist situation, considering that the aim of the meeting was to consider ways out of the political impasse in which the Zionists found themselves. The main items on the agenda at the meeting were the continuing crisis in Palestine, the relations (or lack thereof) with the British authorities


179

in Jerusalem and in London, and the very undesirable Morrison-Grady proposals. Partition was not an issue on the agenda, at least not at the beginning of the deliberations. Bearing in mind the seriousness of the state of Zionist affairs at this juncture, the start of the deliberations on August 2, 1946, was surprisingly unfocused. First, a message from Silver was read, demanding (once again) that no contacts should be made by representatives of the Jewish Agency with the U.S. government—obviously a reference to Goldmann and his collaborators, Eliahu Epstein and Leo Kohn—without consultation with Silver himself. Next, however, the deliberations began in earnest. Goldmann spoke about the Zionist activities in the United States and explained that the conditions there were fluid, but that the general political situation had worsened because people were wearying of the constant political pressure of the Zionists—obviously a reference to the activities of Silver and the AZEC. Goldmann dwelled then on the work of the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry (AACI). He stated that the Zionists had perhaps committed a mistake by not having pressed for a minority report “in support of a Jewish state in the greater part of Palestine.” Presently Truman nominated a Cabinet Committee on Palestine to advise him with regard to the recommendations of the smaller Morrison-Grady Commission. Goldmann thought that the committee would report back in the next days and that the president would accept its recommendations. After Goldmann, the situation in the United States was discussed. Then Selig Brodetsky reported about the situation in England. Afterward, Rabbi Fishmann, Golda Meyerson (later Meir), and Eliahu Dobkin spoke at length about the situation in Palestine. No new line of action emerged from these reports. The session came to an end.31 The next day, Saturday, August 3, Goldmann asked for an urgent session of the Executive of the Jewish Agency on the same evening. Goldmann had been informed from Washington, he told the assembled members, that President Truman had called a meeting of all the participants of the two Palestine commissions—the three U.S. members of the Grady Commission and the six U.S. members of the AACI—to consider the American position regarding the Morrison-Grady Plan. The meeting would take place in four days, on Wednesday, August 7. “Friends of ours, close to the administration,” stated Goldmann, “have indicated that it would be very advisable for a member of the Executive [of the Jewish Agency] to go to Washington for a few days, that is, a member who would have the authority to speak on behalf of the Executive and bring to the Government the minimum demands of the Agency with regard to the new British proposals.”32 The suggestion came from none other than David Niles, one of President Truman’s personal assistants, who maintained close relations with the Zionist representatives in Washington, both in the Jewish Agency as well as the AZEC.33 In other words, a way had apparently arisen to influence the U.S. position regarding the Morrison-Grady Plan, which proposed the division of Palestine into semiautonomous cantons—an idea the Zionists very much opposed.

180

Evyatar Friesel

Next, Goldmann suggested a course of action. Referring to comments Ben-Gurion made, he said that he agreed with Ben-Gurion’s overall perspective but rejected his tactics, especially his ideas about “revolutionary Zionism,” which included the avoidance of contacts with the British government. It means that Zionism must be driven into a policy of fight, pure negativism, protest meetings in America, and “activist” policy in Palestine. . . . Ben-Gurion spoke of revolutionary Zionism. It has great appeal, but I doubt if our movement can do it. Today, we have the support of 80 percent of the Jewish people. I don’t believe that these 80 percent have the moral courage and firmness to support such a revolutionary policy for many years. I don’t believe that the Yishuv will do it, and some of the reports which we heard yesterday confirm this. . . . American Jews are very willing to talk big, but I am not so sure at all if they are ready to fight their government on the Palestine issue . . . only by meetings in Madison Square Garden but also by voting against the Administration, by losing the favors of the Government, by encouraging antisemitism in America and taking all the consequences of a policy along these lines. The British would end by withdrawing recognition of the Jewish Agency, Goldmann continued, and the Zionists “will become an underground, illegal movement.” Some of us will be happy to head such a movement, but the movement will disintegrate. A dispersed people, not living in its country, cannot be revolutionary, and the Yishuv in Palestine lives in a country with a doubly as large, hostile population. The way out of the Zionist predicament, Goldmann continued, was to pursue a policy of legal opposition, and now a chance had arisen, due to the present circumstances in Washington: “England is desperately anxious to get America into the Palestine picture. The refusal of the President to sign the Grady report was a great and unexpected shock to them.” Returning now to the line of action he had been speaking about during the previous year, Goldmann said that several improvements could be introduced into the British plan through the intervention, or the pressure, of the U.S. government, the most important being that a Jewish state should be established in Palestine in one or two years. All this presupposes one decision, that we are ready to accept partition. For years we have postponed discussion of this issue. We were afraid of internal differences of opinion. We are afraid to play out the cards and to take positions. I have always warned that the time will come when we shall have to decide without notice, and this is the moment. Unless


181

we are ready to tell the President that we are ready to accept the Jewish State in an adequate part of Palestine, it is no use going to Washington and trying to obtain these improvements. I felt for years that partition of Palestine is the only way out. [The] Biltmore [Program] is no realistic policy of the movement, because we have no Jewish majority, and we cannot wait until we have the majority to get the State. I know it is a tragic decision, but we have only the choice between two things, British rule with the White Paper policy, or a Jewish State in part of Palestine. For the reasons I have given, I choose the Jewish State in a part of Palestine today. If the Executive agrees and assumes the responsibility, as we cannot wait for the [Zionist] Congress, we must send a representative to Washington to advise the President along these lines. The discussion that followed Goldmann’s statement—and that went on for the next two days (Monday afternoon, August 5, was the deadline for the participants’ departure to the United States)—gives a picture of the relative helplessness that prevailed among the Zionist leadership. The participants spoke about the Zionist situation in England, Palestine, the United States, and Europe, frequently without a clear connection to the issue at hand. At some point, BenGurion expressed doubt whether the deliberations had any urgency, and in general his own position was not always clear. Several of those present changed positions during the debate. Gradually, however, a line of action evolved with most of the members supporting the mission, agreeing that Goldmann should be the emissary of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, and that partition should be mentioned as a possible solution for the Palestinian problem. When resolutions were considered—which Goldmann, Kaplan, Sneh, and Ben-Gurion presented—it was already about noon, on Monday, August 5. Goldmann’s set of proposals was accepted, but he demanded a second vote, for each item separately. Article 2 stated, “The Executive [of the Jewish Agency] is prepared to discuss a proposal for the establishment of a viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine,” and was carefully redacted. It did not state explicitly that the Jewish Agency would initiate a partition proposal, and it left open the details about the size of the Jewish state it demanded. Of the twelve members of the Executive of the Jewish Agency present, ten voted for the proposal, one against, and one abstained.34 The meeting ended at 1:30 P.M. Soon after Goldmann left for the airport. Before parting he wrote two short letters, one of them to Stephen S. Wise: “I wanted to get your blessings both as a Rabbi and as a friend. You know better than anybody else how much I need them.” If his mission failed, he added, he would return in a couple of days, “not with flying colors, but with a feeling of having done my duty.”35 The other letter was to David Ben-Gurion. Goldmann also asked for his blessing “even if you don’t fully agree with the decisions taken.” He informed Ben-Gurion that he would meet Silver in New York and do his best to collaborate with the AZEC, “but only if they accept the line of the decisions of

182

Evyatar Friesel

the Executive.” Additionally, he requested that the resolutions of the Executive be published and not remain secret.36 Clearly, Goldmann went to Washington fully aware of the significance of the decisions taken by the Executive and, at the same time, without any illusions about the difficulties awaiting him.

V. Because Goldmann was supposed to contact leading figures in the U.S. government, noting the views at the time of the U.S. government toward Palestine and Zionist aspirations is important. Some historians maintain that President Truman supported the emigration of a sizable number of European Jewish refugees into Palestine due to deep humanitarian feelings for the survivors of the Holocaust. Such a view deserves a critical reappraisal. Many of Truman’s contemporaries claimed that the president’s pro-Zionist steps were inspired by domestic political opportunism.37 Intelligent and independent-minded men close to the president, such as Henry A. Wallace (former vice president, now Secretary of Commerce), saw Truman as weak and vacillating, a man who filled the shoes of the late President Franklin Roosevelt with only the greatest of difficulty. Wallace thought that Truman possessed little humanitarian concern for the Jewish survivors in Europe.38 Truman’s lack of experience in international affairs strengthened the influence of the State Department, whose position on Palestine was similar to that of the British Foreign Office. The director of the Near Eastern and African Affairs division, Loy W. Henderson, an able and articulate official, was deeply convinced that support for Zionist aspirations ran counter to American interests in the Middle East, a view shared by U.S. ambassadors in the region.39 Secretary of State James Byrnes abstained from dealing with the Palestine question, which was left to Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, soon Nahum Goldmann’s most important interlocutor in Washington. Acheson was “puzzled” by the Palestine problem, but in no way was moved to look upon it in terms other than from the perspective of American interests. General consensus in the State Department during 1946 to 1948 (and beyond) was that a policy of support for Zionist political plans in Palestine would be disastrous for the larger interests of the United States in the Middle East.40 The influential military establishment also shared this view.41 All-in-all, the Zionists had as few sympathizers in Washington as they had in London, and perhaps even fewer. What they had, however, was political pressure, much of it concentrated in the hands of Silver and his AZEC.

VI. Even before Goldmann boarded the airplane taking him to the United States, the realities of the political landscape had overtaken the Zionists. From mid-July onward the details of the Morrison-Grady Plan were published in the American


183

press. The AZEC mounted a broad public relations campaign against the scheme.42 At Silver’s request, James McDonald, one of the pro-Zionist members of the AACI, and Robert Wagner and James M. Mead, the two U.S. senators from New York, met President Truman on July 27 and spoke against the Morrison-Grady recommendations.43 The conversation was difficult, and the pressure to which he was being subjected visibly irritated the president. (Truman subsequently noted, “The Jews are not going to write the history of the United States, or my history!”44) Two days later, on July 29, a cable arrived from Secretary of State Byrnes, then in Paris, urging Truman to endorse the Morrison-Grady Plan.45 The Zionists in Washington mobilized all their contacts, but the president seemed that he would indeed accept the plan.46 However, Truman changed his mind the next day, on July 30, during a meeting of the Cabinet. A new cable came in from Byrnes, contradicting the positive views about the Morrison-Grady proposals he had expressed the previous day.47 Earlier on the same day David Niles had urged the president not to accept the plan but rather to call back the Grady Commission members and the six AACI members—the meeting Goldmann was told about when he phoned from (or was phoned in) Paris—to reconsider the American position.48 After a long discussion during the Cabinet meeting (several of whose members had been contacted by the Zionist lobby) there was a general shift in attitude toward the Morrison-Grady Plan, and it was decided to reconsider U.S. support in this regard.49 The same day ( July 30) Dean Acheson, the Acting Secretary of State (in Byrnes’s absence), went to see the British ambassador, Lord Inverchapel, and told him that the president had doubts about the plan: “In view of the extreme intensity of feeling in centers of Jewish population in this country neither political party would support this program at the present time. . . .”50 Acheson also informed the British ambassador that Grady’s commission was being recalled for consultations. In sum, the tide in Washington had turned against the Morrison-Grady proposals. In fact, U.S. support for the latter recommendations was evaporating. The meeting of the American participants in the two commissions, which Acheson chaired, took place in Washington on August 7. It developed into a fierce encounter between the six participants of the original AACI team and the three members of the Grady commission. Grady was severely criticized. “Hello, sucker!” Grady was greeted by Bartley Crum, a pro-Zionist and one of the AACI members. “It looks to me as though they [Grady and his two colleagues] have slipped and fallen on their faces,” wrote Judge Hutcheson, the American chairman of AACI. Hutcheson was very much opposed to the partition of Palestine, but even more opposed to what he saw as the unnecessary concessions that, in his opinion, Grady had made to the British.51 William Phillips, another member of the AACI, stated that “the Americans have become the ‘tail to the British kite.’”52 American backing for the Morrison-Grady Plan was now doomed. On the afternoon of the same day, Truman cabled Attlee and informed him, “I do not feel myself able in present circumstances to accept the plan proposed as a joint Anglo-American plan.”53

184

Evyatar Friesel

With regard then to the Goldmann mission, if its aim was to work for the rejection of the Morrison-Grady Plan, the trip was superfluous. In fact, support for the plan had disappeared even before the deliberations of the Executive of the Jewish Agency began in Paris on August 2, in large part due to the efforts of Silver and the AZEC during July and also due to the intervention on July 30 of David Niles. We have no reason to believe that these facts were unknown to Goldmann. But then, Goldmann had his own priorities.54

VII. Goldmann arrived in New York on the afternoon of August 6.55 He met Silver and they flew together to Washington. That same evening there was a consultation with the AZEC staff in Washington. In spite of the informational atmosphere of the talks, from the point of view of Silver and his associates, Goldmann and his mission were seen as a serious, even dangerous, nuisance. Through a well-organized and highly successful campaign—both public and behind the scenes in Washington—the AZEC leadership had managed to virtually eliminate the Morrison-Grady Plan. Indeed, the final deliberations of the U.S. representatives were to take place in Washington the very next day, August 7. Silver had just insisted (again) that at such a delicate moment coordinated action (under his direction) was essential,56 but now here was Goldmann, armed with a mandate from the Executive of the Jewish Agency, smart and gold-tongued, difficult to control, and apt to commit what in Silver’s eyes was unforeseeable mischief. Nevertheless, the impression the conversations on Thursday evening, August 6, left was that Goldmann and Silver had reached a basic understanding. Goldmann would stress the twin issues of Jewish refugee immigration into Palestine and Jewish statehood, while partition would become a topic of discussion only if the Americans raised it. Additional consultations would take place the next day.57 Goldmann, however, had his own agenda. In fact, the next day, Wednesday, August 7, he had a conversation with David Niles, followed in the afternoon by a long interview with Dean Acheson, Acting Secretary of State—set up, obviously, by Niles. At the same time, the Truman cable to Attlee, communicating that the Americans were no longer endorsing the Morrison-Grady Plan, was being sent.58 The meeting with Acheson can be seen as the zenith of Goldmann’s mission, and Acheson revealed himself as a keen and fairly positive interlocutor.59 Goldmann played his cards: he delivered the resolutions of the Executive and explained their contents. He stressed the broad opposition among Zionists and American Jews to the Morrison-Grady Plan. He presented the plan for establishing a Jewish state through partition as a solution for the Palestinian problem, emphasizing that the minimum territory the Zionists would consider was the Peel Plan of 1937 plus the Negev territory. Goldmann told about the secret negotiations of the Jewish Agency with Arab leaders, which


185

indicated that the Arabs would accept the partition solution if both the British and the U.S. governments supported it. It seems that Goldmann, ever the experienced diplomat emphasized the advantages that his plan would have from an American perspective: the internal aspect, because of the support of American Jewry for the proposals of the Jewish Agency, and the external aspect, due to the possibility of reaching a peaceful solution in Palestine. Acheson, although not identified with the Zionist point of view, was apparently impressed by Goldmann’s exposition. From Acheson’s point of view, the plan now suggested might ease the political pressure the American Jewish lobby placed on President Truman and, equally important, it might open an alternative path for the political standoff with the British. Acheson asked Goldmann to contact the other two other members of the Cabinet Committee for Palestine established by the president and Secretaries Snyder and Patterson. Recent experience notwithstanding, Acheson wanted to know if American Jewry indeed supported the proposals of the Jewish Agency. Specifically, he inquired about Silver’s position. “I assured him that Silver was not against partition. There were only tactical differences.”60 From the appointment with Acheson, Goldmann went directly to a meeting with the AZEC, where he arrived at about 6:00 P.M. A rather farcical situation developed now, with Goldmann listening to a heated repetition of the arguments from the evening before, without telling the activists of AZEC where he was just coming from and what had transpired in his conversation with Acheson.61 That incident would soon lead to bad blood between Goldmann and the heads of AZEC. At some point on the evening of August 7, after the meeting with the AZEC representatives, Goldmann met Joseph M. Proskauer, AJC president, who had been called to Washington to advise Congressional leaders on the ongoing discussions concerning Palestine.62 The meeting brought one of the important dividends of Goldmann’s trip. After a long conversation, Proskauer—who for years had been negatively disposed toward Zionist endeavors—accepted the partition option for Palestine. This was hardly an insignificant change, especially considering that only seven months earlier Proskauer had opposed partition in testimony before the AACI.63 The next day he went with Goldmann to see Secretary of War Patterson, and his very presence helped to gain Patterson’s support for the partition idea.64 In the coming months Proskauer would continue his contacts with Goldmann and gradually effect a change in the AJC’s official position. In spite of occasional uncertainty the AJC would support the Zionist campaign toward statehood in Palestine in 1947 and 1948.65 The next day, Thursday, August 8, Goldmann had breakfast with David Niles (Epstein participated too) and told him about his conversation with Acheson the day before.66 Niles promised his support for Goldmann’s next steps. Later the same day, on Acheson’s suggestion and with his help, Goldmann met the British ambassador, Lord Inverchapel.67 Acheson felt that the message Goldmann was bearing should be synchronized with the British.68

186

Evyatar Friesel

The conversation with the ambassador was satisfying, although Goldmann was careful and refused at that point to deliver any written document.69 Goldmann would have loved to present his plan personally to President Truman (and he asked to do so), but this proved unfeasible.70 Instead, after the endorsement of the partition plan by the two members of the Palestine Commission, Snyder and Patterson, the proposal (which Kohn prepared on Thursday morning) was brought to the president by Acheson and Niles the same day, in the late afternoon. Goldmann, Epstein, and Kohn remained in Niles’s hotel room, impatient and excited, awaiting the president’s decision. Finally a deeply moved Niles arrived, and told them, in tears, that Truman had endorsed the partition idea.71 At noon the next day, Friday, August 9, Goldmann again met Acheson. Loy Henderson was present, too. The conversation was positive in tenor, factual, based on the president’s approval, and dealt with the details of the American communication to be sent to London.72 Moreover, that very day Goldmann also met the British Ambassador and told him about these latest developments.73 Goldmann left New York on Sunday, August 11, and arrived in Paris the next day. On Tuesday, August 13, he presented his report to the Executive of the Jewish Agency. His conclusions, although optimistic, were somewhat contradictory. “I believe that the State Department is not only for our plan, in a grudging sort of way, but that they are sincere about it,” he said. Later, he stated that “the American government has submitted a partition plan as we wanted it,” and “the Americans have agreed to support our plan one hundred per cent,” but before that he also said, “as matters stand the American Government is not officially committed.”74 For once, Goldmann was being somewhat careful, at least in so far the conclusions he reached.

VIII. During the week of August 5–9 (Monday through Friday) two parallel processes regarding Palestine were developing in Washington—the demise of the Morrison-Grady Plan and the Goldmann mission. Meanwhile, a third course of events was unfolding among the AZEC activists. As mentioned previously, Goldmann had not told the participants in the AZEC session, which took place on Wednesday afternoon, August 7, about the critical meeting with Acheson from which he was just arriving. However, Silver and his associates had their own sources of information, and they were able to trace Goldmann’s doings step by step. The next morning, August 8, the details of the conversation with Acheson were already known to Emanuel Neumann, Silver’s closest associate. Soon cables were being sent from Neumann to Lipsky (in Paris), and consequently from Lipsky to Goldmann (in Washington) transmitting Neumann’s protest against the fact that Goldmann had not upheld the procedure agreed to at the meeting with Silver and the AZEC staff:


187

Neumann then proceeds to charge on alleged unimpeachable sources that you had already pressed proposals [for partition] in official circles and are addressing letter to Chief [Truman]. This you did, Neumann alleges, while assuring Council [read: AZEC] you had not and would not approach Government officials without prior consultation with Silver. Alleges further that you had ignored Silver and Council. Please wire explanation.75 In turn, Goldmann became worried. He did not answer Lipsky but rather cabled Ben-Gurion directly (in Paris) telling the latter that his mission was developing well, but that Silver was . . . trying interfere because saw them [the American officials] myself. He also opposing our informing them of [Executive] decisions. Must insist leaders three American parties cable their constituents definite instructions prevent any attempt Caspi [read: Silver] disavow me and decisions Executive thus endangering most hopeful attempt get support here for [Executive] resolution.76 Goldmann later explained his decision not to include Silver in the Washington negotiations by noting: “I could not be sure that he would sincerely uphold the partition plan he privately rejected. Besides, I knew that Acheson preferred to confer with me alone, having had an embarrassing clash with Dr. Silver a few months earlier.”77 To be sure, had Silver participated in the discussions, there was no reason to suppose he would have allowed Goldmann to play a primary role. Indeed, why should he? After all, it was Silver who had prepared the groundwork. The American rejection of the Morrison-Grady Plan was very much the result of his political efforts—“pressure in Congress, etc. . . .” read Acheson’s August 12 message to the British Foreign Office. Goldmann tried to contact Silver on Thursday, August 8, but the chagrined AZEC chairman refused to talk to him.78 They eventually spoke on the phone two days later, on Saturday, and Goldmann described what he saw as the very positive results of his mission in Washington.79 The next day, Sunday, August 11, Goldmann returned to Paris.

IX. Goldmann’s impressions, as it turned out, were unduly optimistic. When he met Acheson and Henderson on Friday, August 9, they spoke in generalities about the content and scope of the intended communications. Goldmann was shown draft documents, but Henderson told him he would not prepare the finalized letters before Saturday. The two communications—one from Truman to Attlee and a long message from Acheson to W. Averell Harriman—were sent on the

188

Evyatar Friesel

afternoon of Monday, August 12. The content of the communications was considered very carefully.80 In Truman’s letter, the emphasis was on the rejection of the MorrisonGrady Plan: “I cannot give formal support to plan in its present form as a joint Anglo-American plan. The opposition in this country to the plan has become so intense that it is now clear it would be impossible to rally in favor of it sufficient public opinion enable this Govt to give it effective support.” Still, because of the “critical situation Palestine and desperate plight of homeless Jews in Europe I believe search for a solution to this difficult problem should continue.” Therefore, added Truman, the U.S. embassy would discuss with the British “certain suggestions which have been made to us and which, I understand, are also being made to you.” These suggestions, it was hoped, might produce a course on the part of the British government “for which we can obtain necessary support in this country and in the Congress so we can give effective financial help and moral support.” This cautious and qualified message was amplified in Acheson’s communication. First, the Morrison-Grady Plan was again disposed of. Then Acheson communicated the full resolutions of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, the arguments Goldmann presented against the Morrison-Grady Plan, and Goldmann’s views for the immediate future of Palestine: a Jewish state in two to three years, the supposed area of the Jewish state (Peel Report plus Negev) and other demands. According to Goldmann, Acheson’s cable stated that “more moderate Arabs could be induced not to oppose such a plan.” Then came the position of the State Department. Although the Executive of the Jewish Agency had rejected the Morrison-Grady Plan, Acheson’s message stated “counter-proposals of Executive as elaborated by Goldmann might be regarded as certain alterations and extensions in various provisions Morrison plan rather than outlines of an entirely new plan.” The message further suggested that the British government “might let it be known that coming consultations will not be rigidly bound to consideration of one plan and the possibility of early creation of viable state of Jewish portion not precluded.” In the event that the consultations resulted in a positive outcome, American moral support and financial assistance were again to be mentioned. In other words, the Americans were transmitting, albeit in a fairly positive tenor, the Zionist proposals—without committing themselves. And those proposals were not to be understood as a new plan, but rather as a broadening of some of the Morrison-Grady Plan. If Goldmann understood that a deeper American commitment to the Zionist position had been expressed when he met Acheson and Henderson on Friday, then such an accord was considerably watered down in the message that went out three days later—in that case Henderson’s doing, obviously with Acheson’s agreement. This at least was the view that soon took hold among the AZEC collaborators when faced with an account of the Goldmann mission on August 14. On that day, the New York Times published on its front page an article titled “Two Free Palestine


189

States,” with a fairly accurate description of Goldmann’s negotiations, including the contents of the messages that had been sent from Washington to London two days earlier.81 Silver and the AZEC staff, who so far had only heard Goldmann’s version of recent events, were now faced with information that depicted the results of his negotiations in a much dimmer light. They asked their sources in Washington for an explanation and put together their own picture of what had happened. “The President’s entourage has convinced him to introduce into his reply a recommendation in favor of the Jewish Agency proposal,” reported Benjamin Akzin to Silver on August 16. Akzin continued: At the same time, he [the President] wanted to emphasize his special interest in the early admission of the 100,000 along the lines suggested by us. He told Dean Acheson to prepare and send to London a reply along these lines. The actual drafting of the reply was done by the State Department, that is, by Loy Henderson on Acheson’s instructions. The State Department, following its own bent in this matter, considerably softened and watered down the extent of the President’s support for the Jewish Agency proposal. . . . The State Department text was either not shown to the President at all but sent directly to London, or submitted to the President, who went over it in a perfunctory manner and did not realize its implications.82 There are problems with such a view. Leo Kohn was informed about the contents of the Acheson message. On Monday, August 12, he met Loy Handerson who read him “parts of the telegram which was being sent within the next half hour to Harriman under the strictest confidence.”83 Kohn demurred about the part explaining the Zionist proposal as an improvement of the Morrison-Grady Plan, but said nothing regarding the distance the Americans were keeping from the Zionist position. It may well be that that neither Kohn nor Goldmann (who was informed by Kohn about his conversation with Henderson84) paid enough attention to the nuances of the American message.85 Or perhaps they did, but at that point, before an internal debate arose among the Zionists, Goldmann and Kohn had accepted the American position as a political reality. After all, the State Department was holding to views it had asserted all along—now with an added show of interest in the new Zionist proposals. Additional American utterances strengthen such an interpretation. For example, on August 16 the White House published a communication stating that “although the President has been exchanging views with Mr. Attlee on the subject, this Government has not presented any plan of its own for the solution of the problem of Palestine.”86 As for Acheson himself, several days later he again explained his views in a conversation with two AZEC members. Goldmann’s proposal, he said, had arrived at a very propitious moment, when the U.S. government (read: President Truman):

190

Evyatar Friesel

had decided to wash its hands of the whole Palestine problem and not to formulate any further solutions, but to leave the finding of a solution to the British. Thereafter the Agency came forward with the partition proposal, which he Acheson regarded as the first sign of reasonableness on either side. The American government decided to transmit the proposal to the British government, not, however, as a proposal of the American government, but rather as a proposal of the Agency. It did so with a statement of the American government’s approval of the proposal.87 The State Department clearly considered Goldmann’s proposals in the context if its own priorities. To maintain its working relationship with the British on many other (and more important) issues occupying both powers, as well as to uphold the standing of the United States in the Arab Middle East, the State Department deemed responding to the demands of the Zionists sufficiently important. The State Department’s diplomatic representatives in the Middle East advised great caution concerning any steps in the direction of the Zionists. Arab views, they asserted, rigidly adhered to the decisions of the Bludan Conference of the Arab League, which had demanded the independence of Palestine and opposed any concessions to the Zionists. The Arab foreign ministers assembled in Alexandria, the American embassy in Egypt informed the State Department on August 15, 1946, “completely reject partition in any form and reflect resentment of American participation in Palestine problem.”88 True, there was much double-talk in Egypt. Goldmann had brought information according to which leading Egyptian and Arab politicians (including the secretary general of the same Arab League) privately considered partition a most feasible solution to the Palestinian problem.89 Apparently, neither the British nor the Americans took these reports seriously, perhaps with good reason. While listening to Goldmann, the State Department officials must have pondered how the new Zionist proposals fit within the context of the U.S. government’s internal pressures and its external interests. They reached the conclusion that his were ideas worth considering and transmitting, but nothing more. In other words, Goldmann found in Acheson an attentive and interested interlocutor, but nothing else.

X. Armed with new information and their own analysis, the AZEC activists reached devastating conclusions about the Goldmann mission. “I appreciate that the important issue is whether we obtain the substance of partition or not,” Akzin continued in his report to Silver on August 16. Voicing both the views and the style of his boss, Akzin stated:


191

The great and unforgivable mistake was committed when Goldmann, contrarily to our tactical agreement, told the American government and the British ambassador that partition is a Jewish Agency proposal. This has led to precisely the results which we foresaw: Partition has not been proposed as an American suggestion, but merely transmitted by the American government as a Jewish suggestion. The Jews have made their stand known in advance of any proposals and negotiations. There are bound to follow now three stages, at each of which something will be sliced off of the Jewish proposal. The first stage is already behind us: the American suggestion already waters down the Jewish proposal to a mere modification of the Grady plan. A second slice must be taken off as a condition for obtaining tentative British consent. A third slice will be taken off when it comes to the consultations between the British and the Arab States. Since we have given our consent in advance, there will be no opportunity for us of doing any bargaining later on. The best that can emerge from these negotiations will, therefore, be utterly unsatisfactory. Once more, in a position where we did have some chances, we have lost them by our stupidity.90 It was an opinion that Goldmann hotly rejected. “As to the rest of Akzin’s hokhmes, I have no time to argue with him, and it is unnecessary for you to do so. If we hadn’t put forward partition now, we’d have been sunk from the beginning.”91 Goldmann was both right and wrong. Evidence suggests that the Zionists might have attained more from the U.S. government had Goldmann and Silver appeared and acted together. Goldmann had come with an interesting idea, but it was Silver who wielded the political power that made people in the American administration think twice. The measure of support that “Goldmann’s plan” (as it came to be called in American documents) was receiving among American Jews in general and on the part of Silver and the AZEC in particular was an important matter for U.S. officials. Acheson mentioned it specifically in his conversation with Goldmann. The issue was also stressed in private correspondence between Bartley C. Crum and Goldmann. Crum, who had excellent contacts in the government, told Goldmann that although his proposals had impressed the members of the cabinet, he (Crum) had been repeatedly asked by leading figures in the administration, if “the proposal of the Jewish Agency met with the approval of the leaders of American Jewry. They wondered why Dr. Silver was not with you when you talked.”92 Goldmann’s answer is a most candid expression of his views. “As for the fact that I went myself to see Acheson and Snyder and others, and did not take Dr. Silver along—I had to do that, because I could never have talked to Acheson, etc. as frankly as I did, in Silver’s presence, especially as he did not agree fully with our policy.” And further on:

192

Evyatar Friesel

I could never have achieved what I did achieve in those days except by being able to move alone, with the backing of the executive, and to talk to the members of the administration very frankly and personally. You know very well that there are often situations where you can do business only in a man-to-man talk, and not by formal delegations. I hope that one day Silver will understand this.93 In spite of Goldmann’s finely honed political perception, he did not grasp the full significance of Crum’s message. Already in mid-August Crum had delivered his views in a rawer, but more explicit way to Leo Kohn, who had cabled the information to Goldmann: Bartley [Crum] . . . told me Chayat [John W. Snyder, the Secretary of Treasury] informed him official attitude towards [partition] scheme continues very favorable but Nassi [Truman] concerned whether scheme commands unanimous Jewish backing and whether by endorsing it he may not lose Jewish support here stop Bart [Bartley Crum] considers strategical error you proceeded without Caspi [Silver] stop. . . .94

XI. Returning to Paris, Goldmann must have felt an incongruous sensation. Although his report was well-received and must have strengthened Goldmann’s standing as an able negotiator, the attention of the executive was focused on other matters: the situation of the Yishuv, the fate of “illegal” immigration, and negotiations with the British. From the minutes of the executive meetings, one gets the impression that Goldmann’s efforts in Washington were something of a sideshow in the mainstream of Zionist political activities. On August 14, Goldmann met British Foreign Minister Bevin, and they spoke about the negotiations in Washington and the idea of Jewish statehood through partition.95 On August 15, the executive of the Jewish Agency officially communicated the formula for the “establishment of a viable Jewish state in an adequate area of Palestine” to the British government.96 Goldmann met again with Bevin and with other members of the British cabinet, and it appears that at first they were, like the Americans, favorably impressed by the new alternative the Zionists raised. Soon, however, they returned to their traditional positions: the Americans, to noncommitment (the policy of the State Department), and the British to their existing political position (which the Foreign Office advocated)—an indication of the strength of the foreign affairs bureaucracies of both countries. In the United States, however, Goldmann’s mission had a measure of influence in at least one way. On October 4, 1946, in a carefully crafted Yom Kippur statement, Truman declared his support for Zionist hopes in Palestine, including partition.97


193

XII. In the framework of the Zionist leadership, the Goldmann mission was the cause of one more row. On August 14, upon the publication of information of Goldmann’s mission in the New York Times, Abba Hillel Silver announced his resignation from the Executive of the Jewish Agency. According to Silver, Goldmann’s mission had not only been a failure, but had done great harm to the political work of the Zionist movement in the United States.98 Silver rejected the partition resolution adopted in Paris, and agitated against it among the American Zionists, supported by the ZOA and Hadassah.99 Ben-Gurion, while refusing to accept Silver’s resignation—Silver continued to fulfill his positions in the American Zionist movement—did not react to Silver’s critique of the resolutions taken in Paris. Neither did he express support for the Goldmann mission. With respect to Goldmann’s personal standing among the Zionist leadership, his mission in the United States would exact a high price. Silver and his supporters did not forget Goldmann’s forceful foray into what they considered their turf, and at the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress in December 1946 Silver saw to it that Goldmann was severely restricted in his latitude for independent diplomatic action. First, he was relegated to act in London, where there was by then little to do. In 1947, during that fateful year in Zionist politics and diplomacy, Goldmann was brought back to New York as member of the Zionist delegation to the United Nations, but kept under the thumb of a determined Silver—Goldmann now but a shadow of his former assertive self. Only after the establishment of Israel would Goldmann return to the first tier of Jewish and Zionist political activity, although in completely changed circumstances. In the second half of 1951 he would initiate the negotiations that soon led to the Reparations Agreement between Israel and the German Federal Republic. Then, in 1956 he was elected president of the WZO.

XIII. Viewed in historical perspective, what were the results of the Goldmann mission in Washington in August 1946? As noted at the outset, the question should be considered from two separate angles: the microhistorical aspect and macrohistorical significance. Considered in microhistorical terms—after all, the whole mission went on for only three or four days—Goldmann’s undertaking was hardly successful. That, however, is not surprising, especially considering the internal and external obstacles he confronted. On the internal level, the Zionists were caught in a situation in which diverse centers of power in the movement—in London, in Palestine, and in the United States—were pulling in different directions, due to diverging tactics, and even more due to clashing personalities. The highly contentious topic of partition accentuated the situation. Two of the most important members of the Zionist leadership, Weizmann and Silver, did not participate in the executive meeting in early

194

Evyatar Friesel

August 1946, where the partition resolution was adopted. Even had they been there, it is doubtful the executive had the right to take a decision, carefully as it might have been worded, that would change former resolutions adopted in wider Zionist plenaries. But then, for many of the participants at the meeting—perhaps for most—partition was not the chief goal of Goldmann’s journey to Washington, but rather something of an additional tool. Not so for Goldmann, however, who had his own order of political preferences, and in this regard partition played a central—even a decisive—role. In August 1946 Goldmann glimpsed the opportunity to transform his convictions into a plan of action: circumstances had arisen where partition could be presented as a means to an end but not an end in itself, as a tool paving the way to much more important goals—rejecting the Morrison-Grady Plan and establishing Jewish statehood in Palestine. Goldmann seized the opportunity. There was a measure of political recklessness in Goldmann’s step—brilliant and reckless—that was characteristic of the man. And there were those who grew to consider him unscrupulous as a consequence, a view not entirely without justification. On the external level, it is true is that during Goldmann’s stay in Washington the Morrison-Grady Plan was discarded, but that was not Goldmann’s doing. Silver, the AZEC, and David Niles, Truman’s assistant, played significant and perhaps even decisive roles in the demise of the cantonization plan. However, U.S. policymakers did listen to Goldmann with interest. His partition plan was presented at the right moment, when the rejection of the Morrison-Grady Plan seemed to leave the Palestinian imbroglio without positive alternatives. The Americans agreed to transmit, in a fairly constructive tenor, the Zionist proposals to the British government, but Goldmann was unable to convince the U.S. State Department to adopt his proposals as their own and to reconsider their basic position about Palestine. American policy toward the Middle East would continue to be cautious and hesitant for a considerable time. The State Department remained attuned to the general Middle Eastern line of the British Foreign Office (Palestine included), whereas the White House preferred not to get too involved in a question loaded with unforeseeable complications. It should nevertheless be stressed that the Zionists might have produced better results in Washington had Goldmann and Silver managed to appear together—Goldmann was even told so at the time. This proved to be impossible due to tactical and personal differences. Silver was committed to the dogmatic formulation he had adopted and imposed on his collaborators regarding the tactics of the partition proposal—that it should not be raised by the Zionists but by some other party. In historical perspective, that argument, then quite popular also among other Zionists, was nothing but an empty brainstorm. Between 1946 and 1948, neither the British nor the Americans presented a partition proposal for Palestine on their own. And once the Zionists raised the idea it did not, as Silver and others feared, become the basis for a further erosion of the Zionist position. Meanwhile, the range of Goldmann’s


195

activity in the 1946 Washington mission emphasized all the strengths and weaknesses of his style. He was an exceedingly skillful solo player, indeed, a great virtuoso, but a man unable to accept the unavoidable compromises that are part of life in a political movement. The Goldmann that appeared in Paris and Washington in the summer of 1946 was a great Zionist figure—a great Zionist leader he was not. In the final analysis, however, employing a macrohistorical perspective underscores the actual importance of the Goldmann mission. That is, the mission is best understood as part of the long-term effort by Zionist foreign policymakers to create a link to a great power, in this instance, to the United States rather than to Great Britain. Indeed, the Zionist attachment to Great Britain had clearly run its course with the White Paper of 1939. As such, the Goldmann mission in fact ran parallel to the general efforts of Silver and the AZEC, and it had a sharp and well-defined short-term goal: to win the support of President Truman and his administration for Jewish statehood in Palestine through partition. It was a goal that at the moment proved unrealizable. Yet as a result the partition option was officially presented as a solution, and the idea continued to reverberate in the international arena. The partition resolution the Executive of the Jewish Agency adopted on August 5, 1946, was repeated in all subsequent negotiations with the Americans, British, and, during 1947, with the U.N. Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), who would ultimately adopt the partition solution as its majority recommendation.100 The Goldmann mission to Washington in August 1946 was thus one of the most significant episodes in Zionist postwar diplomacy. But, in real time, it was also one step among many in the summer of 1946, a nadir in the Zionist movement’s political fortunes, and the general political situation seems to have blurred the perceptions of many Zionist leaders. It is astonishing to consider how from such a low point the Zionist movement would—less than a year-and-a-half later—reach the zenith of its aspirations with U.N. partition resolution. One is indeed tempted to agree with the words of a distinguished historian: “One way of interpreting the sequence of these complex events would be to maintain that it was the Zionists’ year for a miracle.”101

Notes Thanks are due to Yemima Rosenthal and Tuvia Friling for providing assistance and information used in this chapter. 1. Resolutions of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, August 5, 1946, in Political Documents of the Jewish Agency, vol. I, May 1945–December 1946, ed. Y. Freundlich ( Jerusalem, 1996), 500–501. The full text of the resolution is as follows: It was decided by 9 votes of members of the Executive, 3 abstaining, that Dr. Goldmann should proceed to Washington, 3 non-members were in favor, the rest abstaining.

196

Evyatar Friesel

The following resolution, to serve as basis for Dr. Goldmann’s mission in America, was adopted: 1) The Executive of the Jewish Agency regards the British proposals on the Report of the Committee of Six and as announced by Mr. Morrison in the House of Commons as unacceptable as a basis of discussion. 2) The Executive is prepared to discuss a proposal for the establishment of a viable Jewish State in an adequate area of Palestine. 3) As immediate steps for the implementation of Paragraph 2 the Executive puts forward the following demands: a) the immediate grant of 100,000 certificates and immediate beginning of the transportation of the 100,000 to Palestine; b) the grant of immediate full autonomy (in appointing its administration and in the economic field) to that area of Palestine to be designated to become a Jewish State; c) the grant of the right of control of immigration to the administration of that area in Palestine designated to be a Jewish State. Voting: on paragraph 1): Executive Members: unanimously in favor; Non-members: 9 in favor. On paragraph 2): Executive members: 10 in favor; 1 against; 1 abstained. Non-members: 5 for it; 4 abstaining. On paragraph 3): a) Executive members: 10 in favor; 2 abstaining; b) Executive members: 9 in favor; c) Executive members: 9 in favor. 2. The literature on Goldmann’s mission can be divided into: (1) writings of direct and indirect participants in the mission; and (2) historical research on the theme. For (1), see the two autobiographical works of Goldmann, one in English, one in German, written about ten years later and more extensive. Mostly, I quoted from the English version: Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann. Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969), ch. 20; Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben als deutscher Jude; vol. II, Mein Leben: USA, Europa, Israel, vol. 1 (Vienna, 1980–1981); Eliyahu Eilat, The Struggle for Statehood. Washington 1945–1948, vol. I: 1945–1946 (Tel Aviv, 1946), in Hebrew; and the diary of Leo Kohn, then a staff member of the Jewish Agency office in Washington, where the events of those days are described in detail (Israel State Archives [ISA] 68/576/34/A). For (2), see Joseph Heller, “From the ‘Black Sabbath’ to Partition (Summer 1946 as a Turning Point in the History of Zionist Policy),” Zion, vol. XLIII, no. 3–4 (1978): 314–61, in Hebrew; republished in Yaacov Shavit, Struggle Revolt Resistance: British and Zionist Policy and the Struggle against Britain, 1941–1948 (Jerusalem, 1987), 225–72, in Hebrew; Y. Freundlich, From Destruction to Resurrection: Zionist Policy from the End of the Second World War to the Establishment of the State of Israel (Israel, 1994) in Hebrew; Zvi Ganin, Truman, American Jewry, and Israel, 1945–1958 (New York, 1979); idem, “The Partition Plan and the Mission of Dr. Nahum Goldmann to Washington in the Summer of 1946 (The American Perspective),” Zionism, vol. 5 (1978), 225–62, in Hebrew; William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951 (Oxford, England, 1984); Michael Cohen, Palestine and the Great Powers, 1945–1948 (Princeton, NJ, 1982); Norman Rose, “Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, and the 1946 Crisis in the Zionist Movement,” in Power, Personalities and Policies: Essays in Honour of Donald Cameron Watt, ed. Michael Graham Fry (London, 1972), 258–77; John Snetsinger, Truman, the Jewish Vote and the Creation of Israel (Stanford, CA, 1974).


197

3. Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), 1946, vol. VII, 634–36; on the Arab League, see Williams, The British Empire, 128–46. 4. See the talks of Jewish Agency representative Eliyahu Sasson in Egypt during the summer of 1946—Political Documents, 508–12, 523, 554. Both the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office were duly informed about Sasson’s conversations; Cohen, The Great Powers, 184–202. 5. Cohen, The Great Powers, 68–95, 229–59; David Ben-Gurion, letter from Oct. 1, 1945, Political Documents, 148–50. 6. See the discussion of this concept in Jehuda Reinharz, Zionism and the Great Powers: A Century of Foreign Policy, The Leo Back Memorial Lecture 38 (New York, 1994). 7. See Melvin I. Urofsky, We Are One! (New York, 1978), 65–120. 8. See Menahem Kaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership. Non-Zionists and Zionists in America, 1939–1948 ( Jerusalem, 1991), chs. 4–5. 9. Goldmann, Autobiography, 117; for a more balanced view of Silver, see Marc Lee Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver: A Profile in American Judaism (New York, 1989); for Silver’s relations with Goldmann see ibid., 123–27; see also Ganin, op. cit., 34–48. 10. See Chaim Weizmann to Nahum Goldmann, June 23, 1943, The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, Series A, vol. XXI, Jan. 1943–May 1945 ( Jerusalem, 1979), 40–42. 11. See Silver to the Executive of the Jewish Agency, cable, Sept. 5, 1945, Political Documents, 106–104. 12. See Jewish Agency for Palestine, Book of Documents Submitted to the General Assembly of the United Nations Relating to the Establishment of the National Home for the Jewish People (New York, 1947), 243–45. 13. Report of the Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry Regarding the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, Cmd 6808 (London, 1946). For literature on the AACI, see The Anglo-American Committee on Palestine, 1945–1946, ed. Michael J. Cohen (New York, 1987); Joseph Heller, “The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry on Palestine (1945–1946): The Zionist Reaction Reconsidered,” in Essential Papers on Zionism, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Anita Shapira (New York, 1996), 689–723; Louis, The British Empire, 397–419; Ganin, Truman, 49–79. 14. See Book of Documents, 267–68. 15. For the recommendations, see FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 652–67. 16. A. H. Silver to N. Goldmann, Nov. 6, 1945, in Political Documents, 189–90. 17. Chaim Weizmann to Nahum Goldmann, June 23, 1943, Weizmann Letters, vol. XXI, 40–42. Goldmann and Lipsky were supposed to lead the office together, but in practice Goldmann acted alone, assisted by Eliyahu Eilat and Leo Kohn. In August 1945 it was decided to broaden the U.S. representation of the Jewish Agency to eight members; see Report of the Jewish Agency to the Twenty-Second Zionist Congress (Basel, Switzerland, 1946), 18, in Hebrew.

198

Evyatar Friesel

18. Goldmann, Autobiography, 94–95. 19. Political Documents, 115–17, 117–20. 20. Ibid., 120. 21. Ibid., 141–43. 22. Book of Documents, 226–27. 23. Resolution 8. For the full resolutions, see Book of Documents, 238–42. 24. See Heller, “From ‘Black Sabbath’ to Partition,” 325–28. 25. See Raphael, Abba Hillel Silver, 148–49; for a full explanation on Silver’s views about partition, see Silver’s report at the meeting of the AZEC, Aug. 26, 1946, minutes (hereafter: Silver Report at AZEC), 34–36, F39/422, Central Zionist Archives (CZA). Silver’s position was shared by most of his closer collaborators, for example, see Emanuel Neumann, In the Arena: An Autobiographical Memoir (New York, 1976), 225–26. 26. Silver Report at AZEC, 28; Silver to Ben Gurion, cable, Aug. 3, 1946, Political Documents, 498–99. 27. See Ganin, Truman, 85; Eilat, The Struggle for Statehood, 378. 28. Eilat, The Struggle for Statehood, 443. 29. Ibid., 447. 30. Ibid., 477–79; Freundlich, From Destruction to Resurrection, 47–48. 31. All the references to the meeting of the Executive are from the minutes, CZA. The minutes are incomplete, but the available parts are relatively correct, some of them with corrections of the participants. About the meeting, see also Freundlich, From Destruction to Resurrection, 44–49; Heller, “From ‘Black Sabbath’ to Partition,” 344–53. 32. Minutes of the Executive meeting, CZA. 33. Goldmann wrote that David Niles had called from Washington; see Goldmann, Autobiography, 232–33. However, other versions of these events seem more precise. For example, according to Eliyahu Eilat, who was in Washington, Goldmann called Eilat and asked him to consult Niles about the situation. Eilat did so, Niles indeed suggested Goldmann come to Washington as a representative of the Jewish Agency, and Eilat called Goldmann back, transmitting the suggestion; see Eilat, The Struggle for Statehood, 379. An even fuller description is found in the diary of Leo Kohn. According to Kohn, he also spoke twice with Goldmann (once on July 31 and again on the afternoon of Saturday, August 3), conveying Niles’s suggestion that a representative of the Jewish Agency should come to Washington. It seems that it was this second call from Kohn that brought Goldmann to ask for the meeting of the Executive of the Jewish Agency for the same Saturday evening. Regarding Niles, see Ganin, Truman, 24–25, and Snetsinger, Truman, the Jewish Vote and the Creation of Israel, 35–39. 34. Diverse possibilities have been suggested in the research literature for the identification of the two Executive members who abstained and voted against. The sources available to me did not justify any decision in that matter. 35. Aug. 5, 1946, Z6/98, CZA.


199

36. Aug. 5, 1946, Z6/24, CZA. 37. See Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York, 1969), 169. 38. See The Price of Vision. The Diary of Henry A. Wallace, ed. John Morton Blum (Boston, 1973), 43–44. Wallace was fairly supportive of Zionist aspirations in Palestine. 39. Williams, British Empire, 422–23; Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 225–26. 40. The most comprehensive analysis along the lines mentioned is the memorandum written by George Kennan, Director of the Policy Planning Staff of the State Department, January 1948; see FRUS, 1948, vol. V, part 2, 545–54. 41. See the convincing description of Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 347. 42. Ganin, Truman, 82; Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 366; for descriptions of the AZEC campaign, see Benjamin Akzin to Harry Shapiro, July 22, 1946 (F39/65), and July 30, 1946 (F39/598), CZA. 43. See Silver, meeting of the full council of AZEC, Aug. 26, 1946, 27 (F39/422), CZA. 44. Ganin, Truman, 80–82; Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 366–67. 45. FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 671–73. 46. See Leo Kohn Diary. 47. According to a British account that relates to the recollections of Acheson. See Bromley to Burrows, “Personal and Secret,” June 10, 1948, FO 371/68650, quoted in Roger Williams, op. cit., 437; see also Diary of Henry A. Wallace, ed. Blum, entry for July 30, 606–607; Wallace spoke with Truman about the Palestinian issue on July 26, criticizing the work of the Grady Commission, see ibid., 603–604. Why Secretary of State Byrnes changed his mind is not clear. 48. Leo Kohn Diary, July 30, 1946. 49. Leo Kohn was in David Niles’s office when President Truman himself called on the phone and told Niles “he had decided not to accept the Grady Report but to act on Niles’s suggestion and recall the six American members of the AACI, and have the two groups [they and the members of the Grady Commission] fight it out between themselves. Niles was overjoyed and actually broke down”; Leo Kohn Diary, July 30, 1946. See also Williams, British Empire, 436–37; Diary of Henry A. Wallace, ed. Blum, 606–607. 50. Memorandum of Conversation by the Acting Secretary of State, July 30, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 673–74. 51. See “Meeting in Mr. Lourie’s Room,” Aug. 5, 1946, F39/65, CZA. See letter from a member of the staff of the Grady Commission (perhaps Oscar Grass) criticizing Grady’s actions, July 28, 1946, 68/576/34/B, Israel State Archive (ISA). Apparently this letter that was shown also to David Niles; see Leo Kohn Diary, Aug. 4, 1946. 52. Ganin, Truman, 92–93; Acheson, Present at the Creation, 175–76. Acheson was less than happy with the rejection of the Morrison– Grady Plan. 53. FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 677. The exchange of views between the members of the Commission of Nine, as it was sometimes called, continued also the next day,

200

Evyatar Friesel

although obviously a decision had already been made; see Arthur Lurie (from AZEC), “Notes of conversation with F,” Aug. 8, 1946, F39/598, CZA. 54. Goldmann had cabled to Kohn already on the August 4 that he was coming to Washington—a day before the Executive of the Jewish Agency approved the journey and the pertinent resolutions. Kohn delivered the information to Niles; Leo Kohn Diary. 55. The main sources for what happened during the visit are: Goldmann’s report to the Executive of the Jewish Agency in Paris on Aug. 13, 1946 (hereafter: Goldmann report), Political Documents, 513–23; Goldmann, Autobiography, 225–41; the detailed communication of Acheson to the U.S. Ambassador in London from Aug. 12, 1946 (hereafter: Acheson communication), FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 679–82; Acheson’s notes of the meeting with Goldmann in Zvi Ganin, “The Partition Plan and the Mission of Dr. Nahum Goldmann to Washington in the Summer of 1946 (The American Perspective),” Zionism, 5 (1978), 258–62; Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 381–88; Abba Hillel Silver’s report at AZEC meeting, Aug. 26, 1946 (hereafter: Silver AZEC Report), F39/422, CZA; and last but not least the diary of Leo Kohn, 68/576/34/A, ISA. 56. Silver AZEC Report, 29–30. The Jewish Agency staff in Washington refused to accept Silver’s demands; the matter is mentioned several times in Leo Kohn’s diary. 57. See Leon I. Feuer, “A memorandum on the Zionist political front,” Sept. 30, 1946, 5, F39/74, CZA. 58. FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 677. The cable carried the time 5 P.M. 59. Strangely enough, there is an indication that Acheson already had an inkling about the contents of Goldmann’s message. In a meeting of the AZEC staff on Monday evening (August 5), Emmanuel Neumann reported that Bartley Crum (a proZionist member of AACI) had seen Acheson and been told by him “that the Jewish Agency meeting in Paris was favorable to partition”; see, “Meeting in Mr. Lourie’s Room,” Aug. 5, 1946, F39/65, CZA. 60. Goldmann report, 516. Several versions of Goldmann’s argumentation exists, but because they are based on transcripts of oral presentations none can be entirely exact. The most reliable summary of Goldmann’s line of reasoning is found in a carefully redacted letter of Goldmann to David Niles, from August 8 (written by Leo Kohn and Goldmann), to be delivered to President Truman, but that remained at the draft stage and was not sent; see Political Documents, 505–507. See also Goldmann report, 515–16. On Acheson’s notes of the meeting with Goldmann, see n. 55. 61. Goldmann report, 520; Silver AZEC report, 32; Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 382–83. 62. Who invited Proskauer is unclear. In his memoirs, Proskauer mentioned that he got “an urgent call from an official of the government”; Joseph Proskauer, A Segment of My Times (New York, 1950), 242–43. Before meeting Goldmann, Proskauer had dined with several of the American AACI members and suggested an alternative draft for the Morrison-Grady report, but his proposals were not accepted; see Arthur Lourie, “Notes of Conversation with F.,” Aug. 8, 1946, F39/598, CZA. Diverging data exists about Goldmann’s actions the same evening and the next morning; see: Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 384; Leo Kohn Diary, 6–7; Goldmann, Autobiography, 234–35;


201

Goldmann, Mein Leben, vol. II, 164–65). According to Leo Kohn, Goldmann went to meet Niles after the AZEC meeting, but my impression is that Kohn made a mistake and wrote “Niles” instead of “Proskauer”; see Leo Kohn Diary, 6. The name “Niles” came up because Goldmann called Kohn late in the night (after the conversation with Proskauer), told him about the meetings with Niles and Acheson, and asked Kohn to prepare a letter to be delivered to President Truman; Leo Kohn Diary, 6–7. 63. For Proskauer’s changed position, see his communication on Aug. 16, 1946, to John Slawson, the influential AJC executive vice president, quoted in Ganin, Truman, 204–205, n. 71; see also Kaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership, 207–10. 64. Goldmann, Autobiography, 235. That same morning Goldmann met Secretary of Treasury Snyder, who was also supportive regarding Goldmann’s proposals; Leo Kohn Diary, 7. 65. Naomi W. Cohen, Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906–1966 (Philadelphia, 1972), 300ff.; Kaufman, An Ambiguous Partnership, 350–57. 66. Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 384. According to Kohn, the meeting with Niles happened the evening before; Leo Kohn Diary, 6. 67. Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 384. 68. In fact, Acheson thought little of the ambassador: “. . . an agreeable companion but unsatisfactory as a diplomatic colleague. Unquestionable eccentric, he liked to appear even more eccentric than he was. . . . He also professed strong Zionist sympathies, certainly not shared by Attlee or Bevin”; Acheson, Present at the Creation, 178. 69. Goldmann report, 517–18. 70. Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 381. 71. Eliyahu Eilat brings the fullest description of Truman’s decision to support partition, as it was told by Niles; see Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 385. See also Goldmann, Autobiography, 235; Goldmann, Mein Leben, vol. II, 166; Leo Kohn Diary, 8; Goldmann report, 518. Leo Kohn wrote that the meeting in Niles’ hotel was on the afternoon of Thursday, August 7. Eilat wrote that it happened on Friday, August 9, and his date was adopted also in Goldmann’s memoirs. A comparison of the sources seems to support Kohn’s date. 72. Goldmann report, 519. 73. Ibid., 519. 74. Ibid., 519, 521, 522. 75. Political Documents, 504. The referenced letter was the draft Goldmann was still working on. As mentioned (see n. 60), the letter was not sent. See ibid., 505–507 and Leo Kohn Diary, 7. 76. Political Documents, 505. 77. Goldmann, Autobiography, 237. 78. Goldmann report; Political Documents, 520; Leo Kohn Diary, 7.

202

Evyatar Friesel

79. There are diverging accounts of Silver’s reaction. According to Goldmann, Silver’s reaction was very positive. According to Silver, he only listened. See Goldmann report; Political Documents, 521; Silver, AZEC Council report, 34. 80. FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 679–83. 81. Because the matter was supposed to be secret, the publication caused general consternation and anger with open and veiled comments that the disclosure had been made either by the British Embassy in Washington, or by the Zionists, or by the Americans; see Acheson to Harriman, Aug. 15, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 684 and Leo Kohn Diary, Aug. 14–15, 1946. Considering Leo Kohn’s reaction and the details of the information published, I believe the source of the leak was not among the Zionists. 82. Aug. 16, 1946, Z6/81, CZA. 83. Leo Kohn Diary, 9. 84. “Goldmann said it was exactly on the lines agreed upon between him and Dean Acheson and Loy Henderson on Friday morning”; ibid. 85. Goldmann, who had his own sources of information inside the office of the AZEC, got a copy of Akzin’s report through Eliyahu Epstein. His reaction is telling: “. . . in view of all these rumours and lies spread around, why can’t you drop in on Henderson and ask him point blank whether his communication to the British said that they support the partition plan, or just that they recommend it for consideration?” He wrote to Epstein, revealing that he probably had not paid attention to that essential point in the State Department communication of August 12. See Eliyahu Epstein to Nahum Goldmann, Sept. 9, 1946, with a copy of Akzin’s letter; Goldmann to Epstein, Sept. 10, 1946, Z6/81, CZA. 86. The message was communicated to the British the day before. See Acheson to Harriman (the U.S. ambassador in London), Aug. 15, 1946, FRUS, 1946, vol. VII, 684–85. 87. Minutes of conversation between Abraham Tulin and Milton Handler (from AZEC) with Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson on 19 August 1946, transmitted to Abba Hillel Silver on Aug. 20, 1946, Z5/483, CZA. 88. FRUS, 1946, vol. VII , 683. 89. See Eliyahu Sasson to Zeev Sharef, Aug. 15, 1946, Political Documents, 508–12. This was also the position of Emir Abdallah of Transjordan; see Sharef to I. J. Linton, Aug. 13, 1948, ibid., 523. See also Report from Egypt, Aug. 29, 1946, ibid., 554–57. 90. Aug. 16, 1946, Z6/81, CZA. 91. Goldmann to Epstein, Sept. 10, 1946, Z6/81, CZA. Also Leo Kohn reacted angrily to Akzin’s report; see Leo Kohn Diary, 12–13. 92. Aug. 27, 1946, Z6/24, CZA. 93. N. Goldmann to Bartley C. Crum, Sept. 10, 1946, Z6/24, CZA. Crum acknowledged the letter on Sept. 17 1946: “Your strongest line of support must necessarily come from the ranks of American Jewry and therefore, it is of vital importance to keep them unified to the greatest extent possible”; Z6/24, CZA.


203

94. Leo Kohn to Nahum Goldmann, cable, Aug. 16, 1946; Leo Kohn Papers, 68/576/34/B, ISA. See also the entry in Kohn’s diary for the same day, with similar information. 95. Report by N. Goldmann, Aug. 14, 1946, Z6/2759, CZA. 96. Political Documents, 530–31. 97. Political Documents, 663–65; Ganin, Truman, 99–109. 98. Political Documents, 531; Silver AZEC report, 38–39; Eilat, Struggle for Statehood, 387. 99. Stephen S. Wise to Nahum Goldmann, Sept. 11, 1946, Z6/98, CZA. 100. Regarding the British, the partition resolution of August 1946 was included in the last proposals of the Jewish Agency, on Feb. 2, 1947, shortly before the British turned the Palestine question over to the United Nations. See Book of Documents, 314–18; regarding UNSCOP, see Cohen, Great Powers, 260–300. 101. Williams, British Empire, 395.


Part IV

(

Leader


9

( Nahum Goldmann and Germany afterWorldWar II Shlomo Shafir

t is an irony of history that the most important chapter of Nahum Goldmann’s life-long involvement in Germany, and perhaps of his long life in general, began only after the Holocaust. West Germany, despite the Nazi Reich’s decisive defeat, recovered from the war much sooner than expected. Within only a few years, it was already on its way to reestablishing itself as a key economic factor in Europe and subsequently as a political one. Thus, as a successor to Nazi Germany, which had wrought havoc on German and European Jewry, postwar West Germany became the main locus of manifold legitimate Jewish claims. In presenting and handling these claims, Goldmann played a most prominent role and had a major impact on the postHolocaust Jewish world. This chapter deals with various stages of Goldmann’s activities with regard to postwar Germany over a period of more than thirty-five years. He communicated with heads of Conservative and Social Democratic (SPD) led governments, members of parliament, high officials and intellectuals, and at the end of his life even tried to enlist West German leaders in support of his ideas relating to a Mideast and Israeli-Palestinian settlement. The principal focus of this chapter, however, is Goldmann’s vital achievements in the 1950s: (1) his role in the successful conclusion of the shilumim agreement, thanks to his personal access to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and (2) the establishment and enduring leadership of the Conference

I

207

208

Shlomo Shafir

on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference), which for many years served as a representative umbrella organization of more than twenty groups for the implementation of the two protocols added to the West German–Israel treaty. While Goldmann was one of the most Holocaust-conscious Zionist leaders, his outspoken opposition to boycott threats and his future-oriented stance on postwar Germany were very unpopular for quite a few years after World War II. However, they were a precondition for his successful handling of the two major tasks he was to face in the early 1950s. His more far-reaching ideas regarding the resumption of a meaningful German-Jewish post-Holocaust dialogue were ahead of their time.1 Moreover, he performed the difficult tasks at a time when the Holocaust had not yet become a major subject of the political and intellectual discussions in postwar Germany.

I. In 1936 Nahum Goldmann joined veteran American Zionist leader Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in founding in Geneva the World Jewish Congress (WJC) to confront the growing Nazi and fascist threat to the Jewish people in Europe. Since 1940 Goldmann resided in the United States and became sensitized to the issues of postwar restitution of Jewish property and compensation for Jewish suffering, due to the preliminary work of the newly established Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA) in New York. That institute was led by two brothers who were recent immigrants from Lithuania and eminent legal experts, first Dr. Jacob Robinson and later Dr. Nehemiah Robinson. Two weeks before America’s entry into the war, the WJC Inter-American Conference took place in Baltimore. At the conference, Goldmann declared that the Jewish people as a whole was entitled to postwar reparations to provide help for European Jewry, which was deprived of all its property and economic possessions. At that time the full dimensions of the mass killings that started after the German invasion of the Soviet Union had not yet become known.2 In November 1944, when victory in Europe was already in sight and the murder of millions of Jews had become common knowledge, the WJC summoned its War Emergency Conference in Atlantic City. The conference, with the participation of delegates from Europe, Palestine, and Latin America, was the largest wartime Jewish gathering. In his keynote address, Goldmann reiterated the demand that “the Jewish people as a whole should be regarded as heirs to those of its children who have been murdered.”3 Besides stipulating that all forms of persecution of racial, religious, and political minorities committed since January 30, 1933 be prosecuted, the conference called for restitution and compensation for losses suffered by surviving Jewish communities and by individual Jewish victims. Heirless property would be handled by an international Jewish Reconstruction Commission. This proposal

Nahum Goldmann and Germany after World War II

209

was implemented after the war by establishing the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO) in the U.S. zone and later by establishing similar organizations in the British and French zones. Another resolution emphasized the right of the Jewish people to collective reparation for the material and moral losses it sustained. These resources would be used for the development of Palestine.4 Dr. Georg Landauer of the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and Dr. Siegfried Moses of the Association of Central European Immigrants drew up similar proposals regarding amends for individual and heirless property and some kind of collective compensation for the development of Palestine.5 Upon the conclusion of World War II, the demand for collective payments from the Germans to cover the expenses of resettling the Jews in Palestine was recapitulated in a note to the four Allied governments by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the president of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and the Jewish Agency. The note also included claims for individual compensation and restitution of Jewish property. Altogether, these remained the central Jewish material claims against Germany until the September 1952 signing of the Luxembourg Treaty between the Federal German Republic and Israel, as well as the additional protocols with the Claims Conference.6 During Goldmann’s first visits to occupied Germany, he met with representatives of the Central Committee of the Liberated Jews in the U.S. zone. Together with Stephen S. Wise, he discussed with the U.S. Commander-in-Chief General Joseph McNarney the problems of the Displaced Persons (DP) camps that were flooded by the exodus of many thousands of Jews from Eastern Europe. He also managed to spend one day at the deliberations of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.7 Nonetheless, his early visits to postwar Germany were of marginal importance. Between 1946 and 1948 he was predominantly involved in promoting the Palestine partition plan in the final struggle to establish a Jewish state. Moreover, occupied Germany had not yet recovered the status of a partial self-governing nation. In the meantime, the WJC at its plenary assembly in Montreux in July 1948 radicalized its position, demanding from the German people “the recognition of its collective guilt for the unprecedented tragedy that befell the Jews after Nazi accession” and emphasizing “the determination of the Jewish people never again to settle on the bloodstained soil of Germany.”8 The wording reflected the outspoken anti-German attitude of the overwhelming majority of the Zionist and pro-Zionist camp at that time. Following Montreux, calls for an all-out Jewish boycott of Germany were voiced by Rabbi Mordecai Nurock, a Mizrachi member of the Israel WJC executive, who for many years represented his party in the Knesset.9 In 1950 such demands were repeated by American Jewish Labor Zionist leaders Louis Segal and Baruch Zuckerman who, nevertheless, would not object to recovering Jewish property.10 Even the editor and publisher of Israel’s liberal daily Haarez, Gershon Schocken, recommended in September 1949, after the creation of the West German state, to prohibit any social contacts between Israelis and Germans and to exclude Jews who remained in Germany from their right to immigrate to Israel.11

210

Shlomo Shafir

Nahum Goldmann, who became the WJC’s acting president after Rabbi Wise’s death in April 1949, and was concurrently the chairman of the American Section of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, distinguished himself in his pragmatic view and opposed all these calls. He argued that the German situation could not be compared with that of Spain after the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492. Boycott threats would only harm American Jewry at a time when the competing powers in the East and West were anxious to rebuild Germany. Moreover, sooner or later Israel itself would have to approach Germany directly because otherwise its reparation claims might not be satisfied.12 Goldmann’s Zionist philosophy differed markedly from the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) integrationism, which was based on American values and national interests. With respect to postwar Germany, however, Goldmann’s outlook was actually closer to the AJC’s attitude than to that of his own Congress.13 Last but not least, Goldmann also refrained from totally negating the reemergence of a new permanent Jewish community in Germany, consisting of German Jewish survivors or emigrants returning to Germany and thousands of Eastern European DPs, who chose to remain in the western part of Germany for various reasons. In spite of strong opposition from Israel, the Zionist movement and major parts of the Jewish world, Goldmann, with the help of a special WJC representative, facilitated the formation of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany in 1950.14 Today, more than fifty years later, it presides over the third largest Jewish community in Western Europe, thanks mainly to the influx of Russian Jews to Germany. The WJC emissary was recalled six months after being appointed, mainly for lack of funds. However, the pressure from Israeli and American members of the WJC executive notwithstanding, the links between the Central Council in Germany and the WJC were not severed. After several years, they were normalized.

II. Following more than four years of direct rule by the Occupying Powers, the German situation changed. The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was established, spanning two-thirds of the territories in the west, while the Communist-led East German Democratic Republic (GDR) was in charge of the other third. Both Adenauer’s inaugural address in the Bundestag, in which he spoke about the necessity to punish only the “real guilty for crimes committed during the Nazi regime,” and his subsequent meager proposal to supply Israel with goods to the value of DM 10 million as a first step of recompense, disappointed Jewish observers.15 However, successively, new vistas opened for attempts to achieve more progress on the Jewish-German reparation complex. Goldmann’s contribution was his tacit but essential support for the unofficial behind-the-scenes communications between Noah Barou, the Londonbased chairman of the WJC’s European section, and Herbert Blankenhorn,


211

Chancellor Konrad Adenauer’s closest adviser on foreign policy, as well as with other influential West German government officials, politicians of the major political parties, and members of the economic-financial elites.16 Barou, an experienced economic consultant, also tried to convince German industrialists that they would benefit considerably from reparations to Israel. Later on, Barou approached former exiles such as Erich Ollenhauer, the SPD deputy chairman who would succeed Kurt Schumacher as party leader following his death, and Ludwig Rosenberg from the Trade Union Federation, on the basis of Social Democratic solidarity with Jews and Israel.17 Although not immediately and not always successful, these contacts fulfilled a significant role toward the official German-Israeli-Jewish negotiations that started in 1952 and continued subsequently. Upon Barou’s unexpected death in 1955, Goldmann praised the steadfastness of Barou’s drive, without which the reparation process may not have succeeded.18 But in 1951 to 1952, Barou’s contribution also depended on Goldmann’s consistent support. Blankenhorn, who was a member of the Nazi party since 1938 and was in charge of information at the German embassy in Washington in the latter 1930s, started a thriving political and diplomatic career in Bonn after the war. Thanks to the chancellor’s full trust in him and his place at the crossroads of post-Holocaust German-Jewish contacts, he became Barou’s and later Goldmann’s most important interlocutor.19 After the FRG was established, both Barou and Alex Easterman, the political director of the WJC London office, became convinced that Jews could obtain reparations from Germany only by direct talks.20 Thus Barou started looking for German intermediaries, who from the beginning were made aware of the basic Jewish prerequisites for direct talks between the two sides: Germany’s acceptance of its responsibility for the crimes committed against the Jewish people, concrete steps to prevent renewed anti-Semitism, and preparedness to offer not only individual indemnification, but also collective compensation to the Jewish people and the newly established state of Israel.21 Because of the strong opposition to German-Jewish contacts in the WJC and in the Jewish world in general, Goldmann preferred to delegate the continuing informal communications to Barou, although in March 1951 he accepted an invitation of the West German information office.22 A few months later, when Adenauer spent his vacation in the fashionable Bürgenstock resort at Lake Lucerne and Goldmann was nearby, Blankenhorn failed to arrange a personal meeting between them.23 In the previous year, Israel’s ailing president Chaim Weizmann had evaded such a meeting with Adenauer at the same place. But in contrast to Goldmann, Weizmann showed more restraint with regard to contacts with Germans after the Holocaust, although he too favored reparations.24 However, in the summer of 1951, Goldmann had already been commenting on and proposing adjustments to the chancellor’s September 27, 1951, Bundestag statement, the final draft of which Blankenhorn prepared. Others who partook in the process were Elijahu Livneh, Israel’s consul in Munich accredited to the

212

Shlomo Shafir

U.S. authorities, Benjamin B. Buttenwieser, Assistant U.S. High Commissioner (himself an executive member of the AJC), and Maurice Fischer, Israel’s minister to France.25 In April, on Adenauer’s initiative and thanks to the mediation of Jakob Altmaier, a Jewish SPD Bundestag member, Fischer and David Horowitz, the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Finance, had attended a secret meeting with the chancellor in Paris, although it bore no concrete results.26 The main issue preceding Adenauer’s declaration in September was the German objection to accusations of collective guilt. While in private communications after the war Adenauer had mentioned the guilt of many Germans, as chancellor he rejected all references to collective guilt. Eventually, because of Israel’s urgent need for reparation money and the Four Powers’ refusal to deal with Israel’s claims as stated in the diplomatic notes dispatched to them, the Jewish-Israeli side had to consent to the chancellor’s watered down language. Thus, the statement apologetically recalled that the great majority of the German people despised the crimes against the Jews and did not participate in them. Nonetheless, the unspeakable crimes committed “in the name of the German people” required moral and material recompense that would be discussed in talks with representatives of the Jewish people and the state of Israel.27 In comparison to the full-fledged acceptance of German responsibility for the murder of Jewish women, men, and children, and the plea for forgiveness addressed to Jews throughout the world by the first and only democratically elected East German parliament in April 1990,28 Adenauer’s celebrated statement of thirty-nine years earlier sounds rather disappointing, even though its material results were far more important. But since the chancellor’s declaration, almost two generations had passed, the Cold War against the Soviet Union and its Communist allies had ended, Germany was reunited, and the Holocaust, and particularly the systematic murder of 6 million Jews, had become a significant component in German historical narrative. The revived academic and literary interest in the suffering of the German people from Allied bombings of its cities, and the expulsion of more than 12 million from the eastern territories has until now not reversed the insights of the last decades with regard to the Holocaust. In 1951, Blankenhorn, who at first served in the chancellor’s office, became the director of the political department of the Foreign Office that until 1955 was headed by Adenauer as foreign minister. He remained close to his boss also when serving as ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and France and later to Italy, although in the early 1960s he disagreed with Adenauer’s pro–de Gaulle policy. In December 1951 he joined Adenauer at his first meeting with Goldmann, who was accompanied by Barou, and took part in further crucial meetings and deliberations in Bonn that paved the way for the shilumim29 agreement. At first, spokespeople for the languishing Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League in the United States complained about Blankenhorn’s prewar Nazi propaganda activities at the German embassy in Washington.30 However, the main attacks against Blankenhorn were launched at home in Germany.


213

Right-wingers in the Christian Social Union, Adenauer’s Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) Bavarian sister party, and pro-Arab businessmen and government officials accused him of having sold out to the Jews. Left-wingers argued that by helping the Jewish and Israeli cause, he had looked for an alibi for having staffed the reestablished Foreign Office with a large number of former Nazi officials. Otto Lenz, Hans Globke’s short-lived predecessor as state secretary in the chancellor’s office, told Blankenhorn frankly that he regarded the agreement with Israel as a major blunder because of its negative repercussions in the Arab states. People with an anti-Nazi past, such as Lenz, were sometimes less inclined to fulfill Jewish and Israeli requests than former members or supporters of the Nazi party, although one should beware of generalizations.31 In 1959 Blankenhorn and Professor Walter Hallstein, the first director general of the German foreign ministry and thereafter president of the European Economic Community’s commission in Brussels, lost a libel suit against an official of the Ministry of Economics, an opponent of the reparations treaty. He accused them of having promoted the treaty against the best interests of the Federal Republic. Blankenhorn was given four months’ probation sentence, but was cleared by the Court of Appeals and stayed in the Foreign Service.32

III. After having been involved behind-the-scenes in suggesting a few changes of the text of Adenauer’s Bundestag statement, Goldmann met the chancellor at London’s Claridge’s Hotel on December 6, 1951, in connection with Israel’s demand that he accept, in advance, its claim of $1 billion as the basis for the forthcoming negotiations. That meant that West Germany would undertake two-thirds of the sum Israel had claimed from Germany through the Four Powers. In theory, Communist-controlled East Germany would have to pay the other third, but that was not in the realm of realistic policies. The chancellor concurred in principle, and while the implementation of that pledge during the following year still encountered many difficulties, the meeting between him and Goldmann inaugurated a relationship of mutual respect between them. Despite their totally different political, personal, and intellectual backgrounds, and their divergent opinions on international affairs, this relationship lasted, although there were ups and downs, during the years.33 Adenauer’s promise removed the obstacles from the final approval of direct negotiations with Germany by Israel and the Jewish organizations who under Goldmann’s leadership had joined forces in the Claims Conference. One year earlier, with the impending end of the state of war between the Western powers and West Germany, Israel’s prime minister and Mapai party leader David Ben-Gurion had considered proclaiming that since its establishment, the State of Israel had been at war with West and East Germany. The aim of such a declaration, which was stalled by the government’s legal experts,

214

Shlomo Shafir

was to secure Jewish claims against Germany.34 Now, in December 1951, thanks to Ben-Gurion’s forceful lead, the Mapai central committee, with a decisive majority of 42 to 5, approved direct negotiations. On this issue, BenGurion saw eye-to-eye with Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, who had been among the first to insist that the government revise its policy of ignoring the German state.35 The Knesset’s affirmative vote, a few weeks later, took place after the stormiest session in the history of Israel’s parliament. The Claims Conference saw some opposition to direct negotiations; however, Goldmann boasted of having obtained a much larger majority at the conference than did Ben-Gurion in Jerusalem.36 Goldmann himself did not participate in either of the two delegations (of Israel or of the Claims Conference) that started talks with the Germans in March 1952 at Wassenaar near The Hague. However, thanks to his access to Adenauer, he served in the name of both Israel and the Jewish organizations as a supreme troubleshooter who intervened at critical crossroads of the negotiations and helped to reach adequate settlements.37 Eventually, the Luxembourg Treaty between Germany and Israel was signed by Adenauer in his capacity as foreign minister and Israel’s foreign minister Moshe Sharett. Goldmann signed the two protocols that were added to the treaty in the name of the Claims Conference.38 There is no doubt that besides Goldmann’s open-mindedness toward postwar Germany, about which the chancellor may have been informed by Blankenhorn, his educational and cultural German background was essential for their mutual understanding, particularly because Adenauer did not need any translators to communicate with him. Thus, as an intermediary who at least in the first years spoke both for Israel and for the Jewish diaspora, which the chancellor hoped to conciliate, Goldmann was Adenauer’s ideal interlocutor. Moreover, Goldmann, while not an American Jew, lived and was active in the American Jewish community. As historians dealing with the chancellor’s motives have stressed, Adenauer’s position on the Jewish-Israeli reparations complex was a mixture of moral and pragmatic elements.39 Although it took him two years to try to achieve a breakthrough on the reparation problem after all that had happened, the final decision was his, despite the lack of support from the German public and opposition from parts of his government coalition.40 On the other hand, Adenauer did not deny that his reparation efforts matched significant West German foreign policy objectives. He attached great importance to expanding relations with the United States and winning over American public opinion, besides the emerging political and subsequent military partnership between the two nations. Here the need to conciliate the American Jewish community became urgent, and Adenauer regarded an agreement with Israel and the Jewish people as a vital precondition for that.41 Neither for political nor for economic reasons were the Western Allies interested to impose on West Germany reparations for Israel and the Jews at a time when they were engaged in successively strengthening its bond with the


215

anti-Communist western bloc. However, while refraining from taking a public stand, the State Department and U.S. High Commissioner for Germany John J. McCloy expressed to the chancellor their concern lest the negotiations fail. The most important role in using “friendly persuasion” on Adenauer was that of McCloy, who had been in touch with Baltimore oil magnate and AJC President Jacob Blaustein. However, as a good friend of postwar Germany, McCloy himself thought that a German-Jewish settlement might help Germany’s image.42 At one point, before signing the contractual agreements with the Federal Republic in May 1952, Secretary of State Dean Acheson mentioned to Adenauer the American interest in Germany’s reaching a satisfactory settlement at the talks at Wassenaar, but added that Bonn should not expect U.S. aid for that purpose.43 As a result of the Luxembourg Treaty, at least a part of the official Jewish pronouncements became less hostile. In comparison to Montreux, resolutions of the WJC plenary assemblies in Geneva in 1953 and in Stockholm in 1959 sounded much more modest. Against strong opposition in WJC ranks, Goldmann, a hidden neutralist himself and supporter of an East-West detente, vetoed resolutions against German rearmament in order not to antagonize Adenauer.44 On this issue, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, Goldmann’s adversary in the Zionist movement, took the opposite stand. He strongly opposed U.S. Cold War policy leading to West German rearmament and preferred a united neutralized Germany agreed on by the West and the Soviet Union.45 In general, the immediate psychological and emotional impact of the Reparations Agreement as well as of the restitution and compensation arrangements on American Jewry was not significant, even though Goldmann tried to reduce the hostility that had been particularly strong among Zionist and pro-Zionist groups. At the same time, Israel’s economic dependence on the reparations shipments gradually had a mitigating effect on the community.46 That was also taken into account by some of its most prominent leaders such as Bnai Brith president Philip Klutznick who favored a pragmatic look at the developments in Germany, both because of Israeli and American national interests. In 1977 Klutznick became Goldmann’s successor as WJC president, but bowed out after only two years, because of his appointment as secretary of commerce and industry in the Carter Administration. As for Goldmann, with all his diplomatic flexibility and favorable attitude to West Germany’s chancellor, we should note that he distinguished between pragmatism in politics and the memory of the Holocaust. Thus, two months after signing the Luxembourg Agreement, he attended together with West German President Theodor Heuss, whom he knew from his student years, the dedication of the Bergen-Belsen Holocaust memorial. On that occasion, Goldmann delivered a most penetrating account of the atrocities and systematic murder the Nazi regime perpetrated on the Jews of Europe. He also voiced a renewed warning against the dangers of extreme nationalism and racism.47 Adenauer, who was not keen to attend such a ceremony, declined Goldmann’s invitation to participate and sent Blankenhorn instead.

216

Shlomo Shafir IV.

In the history of Israel-Jewish-German postwar relations, the shilumim agreement, which provided Israel’s crisis-ridden economy with a vital infusion of yearly reparations shipments in capital goods and payments in foreign exchange for oil from the British Petroleum Company, is usually regarded as Nahum Goldmann’s most important achievement. In comparison to West Germany’s expenditures in the early 1950s, the total of $823 million pledged to Israel during this twelve-year period was a rather high sum, and it had a significant impact on Israel’s economic development. Notwithstanding the paramount political value of the direct Israel-German agreement, which overshadowed the additional protocols agreed to by the Germans and the Claims Conference, in fact, the improvement of the individual compensation payments and the broadening of their scope exceeded many times over the global sum West Germany accorded to Israel. Out of DM 115 billion paid until 2001 to different claimants, more than 40 percent was transferred to citizens of the state of Israel, improving considerably their living standard and increasing the nation’s foreign currency reserves. Approximately another 40 percent was received by Jewish claimants in the diaspora. Originally, Foreign Minister Sharett requested that Goldmann, as chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency, summon a meeting of leaders of Jewish organizations from different countries to coordinate their views and garner broad public support for Israeli claims to be submitted to Germany. However, contrary to the original guidelines from Jerusalem, the meeting of twenty-three major U.S. and world Jewish organizations became more than a one-time demonstration of support for Israel’s stand. Rather, it led to the establishment as a permanent body of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.48 In addition to guaranteeing indemnification to all victims of German persecution, the Claims Conference also demanded a separate global sum for the plunder of unidentified Jewish property. That conformed, of course, with the AJC’s position which, despite the political rapprochement between American Jewry and Israel initiated by Blaustein and Ben-Gurion and the former’s cooperative attitude toward Israel’s reparations claims, did not wish diaspora Jewry to become subservient to Israel. In the long run, however, the Claims Conference’s emergence as a semi-independent body also suited Goldmann’s own interest in using at least a part of the funds for reconstructing European Jewish communities and sponsoring their cultural revival. This reflected a more liberal interpretation of the partnership between Israel and the diaspora as compared to the still-prevalent Israel-centered classical Zionist platform. Goldmann remained the Claims Conference’s undisputed leader for many years to come. That appointment strengthened his position because in the Jewish Agency and the WZO his freedom of action was limited, and the WJC, over which he presided, in spite of its manifold activities, was at that time still a rather weak umbrella group. Jacob Blaustein, second to Goldmann as the most influential figure in the Claims Conference,


217

served as its senior vice president until 1967. The historian Ronald W. Zweig has noted that within the Claims Conference—despite their dissimilar backgrounds and personal, ideological, and practical differences—Blaustein and Goldmann did work together very effectively.49 The global claim of $500 million the Claims Conference delegation submitted to the Germans met with stronger opposition than all of the Israeli demands. So that prior agreements regarding Israel’s claims would not be endangered, Goldmann consented to reduce the Claims Conference’s request to DM 450 million, less than one-quarter of the original amount. That sum was to be transferred to the Claims Conference in foreign currency by conversion from the sale of German goods Israel was to receive as reparations during the next twelve years. Still, even that reduced amount provided the Claims Conference with a guaranteed income for the next decade. It was disbursed mainly through the Jewish Agency and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC) for the social care and rehabilitation of individuals and their collective needs in Israel and in the diaspora. Whereas most of the monies were spent in Israel, the percentage dedicated to communities in Europe which absorbed survivors also played a key role in the communal and cultural reconstruction process. Altogether, despite the ongoing differences of opinion between Israeli and diaspora leaders, the work of the Claims Conference strengthened the Israel-diaspora relationship and eventually helped to bring about the adjustment in Zionist ideology that Goldmann favored. The Claims Conference’s cultural operations eventually led to the creation of and were absorbed by the diaspora-based Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. After the peak of the Goldmann-Adenauer relationship in the early 1950s, its political importance for Israel declined. Even before the ratification of the Luxembourg Treaty by the Bundestag in March 1953, Ben-Gurion and Sharett rebuffed a German proposal intended to assuage Arab opposition— to which Goldmann initially adopted a conciliatory attitude—that involved the United Nations in controlling German reparations shipments. That was only one example of the growing differences between Goldmann and Israel’s government.50 On the other hand, a few years later Adenauer, a deeply convinced and vehement anti-Communist, became upset upon learning that Goldmann, during a speech in New York, expressed satisfaction that the Soviet Union had become one of the most influential powers in the Middle East.51 But the main turning point came after the Sinai Campaign in fall 1956 when Adenauer refused to exert pressure on Israel by stopping reparation shipments and when Ben-Gurion himself became actively involved in IsraeliGerman relations,52 praising the so-called other Germany of Adenauer and the Social Democrats. In the eyes of West German Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauss, who in 1953 had not supported reparations for Israel, Israel’s brilliant performance in the short Sinai Campaign had increased its value as a factor that might contain Soviet expansion.53 The military cooperation

218

Shlomo Shafir

between Germany and Israel that began in the latter 1950s expanded after the Adenauer–Ben-Gurion “summit” at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. At that meeting, Adenauer committed himself to a substantial increase of arms supply for Israel, together with a major development loan.54 Despite their totally different cultural and ideological backgrounds, Ben-Gurion was relatively closer to Adenauer on international affairs than was the neutralist Goldmann. The West Germans were also content that Ben-Gurion did not press the issue of diplomatic relations that was inconvenient for Bonn because of German interests in the Arab world and the fear of Arab retaliation. At least privately, Goldmann criticized as “exaggerated and damaging” Ben-Gurion’s statement that the Germany of today was a new nation.55 For the Claims Conference, however, Goldmann’s access to Adenauer remained a vital asset. While the Claims Conference’s officials dealt with lower and middle-ranking German officials on current issues, Goldmann kept in touch with the changing ministers of finance, members of Bundestag committees, and leaders and representatives of the political parties. Of course, he also visited the office of the influential state secretary Hans Globke, who Adenauer retained until the last day of his government, domestic and foreign criticism notwithstanding.56 Whether or not because of his ambiguous past, according to Goldmann’s autobiography Globke was usually helpful. Adenauer himself was the last resort for Goldmann’s continuing appeals. Once, in 1959, he enabled Goldmann to meet in the chancellor’s office with the heads of government of the Länder (the states that compose the Federal Republic) and to ask them to deal with compensation for the victims not just from legal aspects but “from a liberal and humane viewpoint.”57 After the Federal Indemnification Law was twice amended in 1956 and 1965, Goldmann made continuing successful requests regarding indemnification for groups and cases not included in the original law. Additionally, in talks or correspondence with Adenauer’s successors, the chancellors Ludwig Erhard, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Willy Brandt, and Helmut Schmidt, the “last request” never turned out to be the last. In 1957 Goldmann alerted Adenauer that German criticism regarding the large amounts of indemnification as voiced by Minister of Justice Fritz Schäffer, the former minister of finance and veteran opponent of the chancellor’s shilumim policy, might endanger the improved image of West Germany in the United States.58 However, such periodic protests did not affect the ongoing transfer of the payments with all their shortcomings. Although the German government was committed by the contractual agreements with the Allies in 1952 to honor indemnification arrangements, at least to the level then in effect in the American zone, the payments exceeded that level many times thanks to the agreement with the Claims Conference. Indemnification mainly remained a domestic German affair. A German historian, who has reviewed the entire process, recently observed that the individual compensation was effected by a cartel of the elites, perhaps not against popular opinion but, of course, without such support.59


219

V. Nahum Goldmann’s sporadic intrusions in the field of German political culture were much less successful. When anti-Semitic manifestations multiplied in the latter 1950s, Goldmann proposed a program for social and political education to fight exaggerated nationalism, racism, neo-Nazism, and anti-Semitism. He submitted it to the chancellor, to President Heuss, and to the minister of the interior Gerhard Schroder. But the government took no action. Still, Goldmann warned against exaggerating the import of such incidents. He reiterated his confidence in Adenauer and his government and described the two large parties—the CDU and the Social Democrats—as “liberal and well-minded.” He urged that Jews should beware of generalizations about the Germans as a people of murderers, and stated that constantly demanding improvement of German indemnification legislation while protesting against German policies was unwarranted. Furthermore, he argued, West German rearmament was already a fact of life.60 The AJC, chaired by Joachim Prinz, a former Berlin Liberal rabbi, displayed a much more critical attitude to the German situation in “The German Dilemma,” a report prepared by two of its top professionals.61 But Goldmann’s supporters in the WJC did not approve of its content. After the desecration of the Cologne synagogue in December 1959, Goldmann revisited Germany and reiterated some of his earlier proposals, but warned against exaggerating the importance of the swastika rash and the threat of the incidents to the German Jewish community. At the same time, he advised the chancellor to demonstrate his good will toward Jews in Germany and abroad by joining him and the Claims Conference in a commemoration of the Nazi victims at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.62 Adenauer accepted Goldmann’s invitation. It was the only time in his life that he visited a former concentration camp. However, he did not heed Goldmann’s other suggestion that Bonn should assuage Jewish bitterness by establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Five more years passed until Adenauer’s successor Ludwig Erhard made the decision to establish such relations due to the crisis in the Federal Republic’s Mideast policy.63 During that crisis Goldmann appealed to Ben-Gurion’s successor, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, to focus on the demand for normalization of relations, but to refrain from boycott threats.64 In general, the AJC had a somewhat larger impact on German political culture in the early 1960s,65 thanks to its cooperation with the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research and particularly with Max Horkheimer, who for several years continued to act as the AJC’s special adviser. The WJC, for its part, particularly the New York office, made a substantial contribution to a number of trials of Nazi war criminals through an intense search for witnesses in the United States, Israel, and other nations. Until his death in 1964, IJA Director Nehemiah Robinson, who had been involved in preparing the reparations and restitution claims and uncovering Nazi crimes since the 1940s, enjoyed effective and good working relations with German judges and prosecutors.66

220

Shlomo Shafir

In 1963 Goldmann endorsed a proposal by Rabbi Prinz pertaining to a dialogue between American Jews and young German Social Democrats as well as left-wing Catholics. German Social Democratic leader Willy Brandt was ready to help, but the plan was dropped because of strong opposition from the American Jewish Congress executive committee.67 Three years later, after establishing German-Israeli diplomatic relations, Goldmann convened a highlevel German-Jewish dialogue at the WJC plenary assembly in Brussels. The objections of the right- and left-wing Zionist opposition groups notwithstanding, the meeting took place with the participation of, among others, Professor Salo W. Baron of New York, Professor Gershom Scholem of the Hebrew University, Rabbi Joachim Prinz, and Bundestag President Eugen Gerstenmaier. Karl Jaspers, one of Goldmann’s former teachers at Heidelberg, was too sick to attend but his paper was read publicly at the meeting. In contrast to skeptic Scholem, who stated that “after the horrible past, new relations between Jews and Germans must be prepared with great care,” Baron, the dean of Jewish historians in the United States and a witness at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, sounded a more optimistic note. In his view, a “modus vivendi between the German nation and world Jewry, including the State of Israel, would prove to be of great significance, not only for these two peoples but for humanity at large.” Jaspers, for his part, doubted that after what had come to pass, Jews and Germans would be able to conduct a fruitful dialogue. Hendrik G. van Dam represented the German Jewish community. Goldmann himself regarded the symposium as a step toward creating a basis for coexistence between the two peoples.68 His approach toward Germany was, of course, more far-reaching than that of Ben-Gurion, whose definition of the “other Germany” of Adenauer and the Social Democrats was rooted in pragmatic political considerations. In the final analysis, the Brussels symposium did not have a considerable impact on Israel, the United States, or Europe. Meaningful JewishGerman dialogue would require more time.

VI. Despite years of contact with postwar Germany, Goldmann was mainly involved in the western FRG. Notwithstanding his neutralist proclivities and earlier wartime efforts to employ diplomatic contacts with high-ranking Soviet officials and bring about a change in Moscow’s attitude toward Zionism, Soviet support for Israel was short-lived and eventually changed into an unfriendly and even hostile policy. The Cold War that affected the international scene also deepened the gap between the two parts of Germany that were now becoming semisovereign nations. Quite understandably, Goldmann’s personal access to Adenauer, his role in the shilumim agreement and the work of the Claims Conference placed him squarely in the camp that fostered relations with Bonn—even before Israel had given up hope of


221

achieving at least a part of the material compensation requested from East Germany. In a friendly gesture toward Adenauer, on whom he heaped excessive praise, and to the dislike of East Germany, Goldmann vetoed WJC resolutions that opposed West German rearmament that had been under consideration since 1950. In 1973, when the admission of the two German states to the United Nations became imminent, Israel renewed its efforts to change East Germany’s negative position on restitution of Jewish property and compensation for Holocaust survivors. Goldmann appealed to the constituent organizations of the Claims Conference to prevail upon their respective governments and urge them to raise the issue of the reparations complex in their negotiations over establishing diplomatic relations with East Berlin.69 But even the United States disappointed Jewish interlocutors when it declined to include the issue of reparations as part of the agreement to establish relations between East Berlin and Washington.70 Goldmann also discussed the problem with West German Chancellor Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr, one of his closest advisers. He hoped he would be able to meet Erich Honecker, who in 1971 had succeeded Walter Ulbricht as the GDR’s leader. But despite “friendly greetings” conveyed to Goldmann from Honecker through historian Josef Wulf, such a meeting never took place.71 Because of the Claims Conference’s continuous involvement in West Germany, Goldmann at one point thought that the GDR might prefer to work with another body such as the WJC. However, the consensus of the major Jewish organizations was that any negotiations with the East Germans, about restitution and indemnification, had to remain with the Claims Conference.72 Although the East German government steadfastly refused to enter direct negotiations with the Claims Conference because of its status as a “private organization,” it did agree that the Claims Conference should discuss American Jewish claims with the Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters Committee (AFC), one of its front organizations. As a sign of goodwill, the AFC transferred a symbolic $1 million “for humanitarian reasons” to the Claims Conference’s account for U.S. citizens of Jewish faith who were victims of Nazi persecution, without implying recognition of any legal or moral claims of Jewish victims of the Nazis in general. At Goldmann’s request, the check was returned to the East German committee.73 Further overtures by Goldmann as well as those of his successors remained futile. The ice was broken only after the fall of East Germany’s Communist regime and the free democratic elections to its Volkskammer which in April 1990, among other pronouncements, expressed its readiness to material recompense.74 However, time was running out for a comprehensive reparations agreement, except for an understanding relating to the restitution of immovable property. The agreement between the government of the united FRG and the Claims Conference regarding $670 million in Jewish postunification claims was signed in October 1992.

222

Shlomo Shafir VII.

The last chapter of Goldmann’s activities in Germany took place in the era of the two Social Democratic chancellors, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt, with whom he was closer on many international issues than with their conservative predecessors, Konrad Adenauer included. In the early 1950s, German Social Democrats complained that Goldmann, who consistently praised Adenauer, generally failed to mention their part in bringing about the shilumim agreement, and particularly the Luxembourg Treaty’s ratification in March 1953.75 In truth, support for the Israel agreement among the SPD party membership was no greater than among the Christian Democrats. However, the SPD parliamentary group included many Nazi opponents and repatriated exiles, and it solidly supported the treaty.76 In subsequent years, in light of Israel’s retention of conquered Palestinian territories following the Six-Day War, pro-Israel sentiments in the SPD weakened. Brandt, the first German SPD chancellor since 1930, changed Bonn’s rigid policy toward the Soviet Union and other Eastern European nations including East Germany. But his basic sympathy for Israel notwithstanding, he distanced himself from Israel’s hard-line policy under Prime Minister Golda Meir.77 Brandt resigned from the chancellorship in 1974, but retained the party leadership until 1987 and had served as chairperson of the Socialist International since 1976. Brandt’s Ostpolitik, his support for East-West detente, and his proPalestinian stance may have contributed to the “meeting of the minds” between himself and Goldmann, whom Brandt had first met while serving as mayor of Berlin. In addition to the Claims Conference requests Goldmann asked Brandt to assist with liberalizing emigration policies for Soviet Jews. Goldmann also urged Brandt, in conjunction with Austrian chancellor Bruno Kreisky, to convene a meeting of Jewish, Israeli, and Palestinian intellectuals. This proposal foundered, however, as a result of Yassir Arafat’s objections.78 Brandt, an active member of the left-wing German resistance who returned home from his Scandinavian exile in 1946, did not need rehabilitation by Jewish spokespeople from Israel or the diaspora. His successor Helmut Schmidt, a pragmatic Social Democrat, was another matter. As a youngster, Schmidt belonged for a few years to the Hitlerjugend and later served in the army because the well-kept secret of his paternal Jewish grandfather had not become known. He joined the SPD as a university student after the war and gradually moved up to central positions in the city of Hamburg and in the federal party and government. Schmidt assumed the chancellorship after the Yom Kippur War and the trauma of the Arab oil embargo, and his policy regarding Israel was correspondingly skeptical, even though he continued to regard himself as a friend of the Jewish state.79 In 1975 Yitzhak Rabin became the first Israeli prime minister to pay an official visit Germany. However, as long as Schmidt served as chancellor, he refused to visit Israel. Anwar Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and the subsequent Egypt-Israel peace treaty, which returned all Egyptian territories


223

without solving the Palestinian issue, did not ease Schmidt’s doubts with regard to Israel’s Mideast policy. Neither did he like the efforts of Israel’s American Jewish supporters who sought to link U.S. confirmation of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Treaty (SALT II) with Soviet concessions on Jewish emigration.80 Schmidt’s criticism of Israel, already substantial under Labor rule, became more outspoken after Likud leader Menahem Begin ascended to power. The tension peaked when Begin impugned Schmidt’s ambiguous past as Wehrmacht officer. Schmidt’s references, following a visit to Saudi Arabia in April 1981, to the moral rights of the Palestinians and Germany’s responsibility for helping to protect them exacerbated the situation.81 In light of these developments, Schmidt became more interested than Brandt in expressions of goodwill from Jewish leaders in the diaspora.82 The critique of Israel’s policies that isolated Goldmann from the Jewish establishment in Israel and the diaspora endeared him to Schmidt and vice versa. In November 1978 Goldmann joined Schmidt at a commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of Kristallnacht. The commemoration took place at the Cologne synagogue, which itself had been desecrated at the beginning of the swastika rash in December 1959. Schmidt’s address at the event was the most substantial statement by any German chancellor until then about the extent of the Nazi decimation of the Jewish people in Germany. Goldmann spoke about the problematics of the German-Jewish relationship, which he defined as a “schizophrenic closeness.” He also called on the Germans to contribute to Jewish-Arab conciliation and, in conjunction with the other powers, to guarantee Israel’s safety.83 Two years later, Goldmann chose Schmidt to deliver the keynote address at the celebration of his eighty-fifth birthday in Amsterdam, in the presence of leaders of Jewish organizations and high-ranking guests, mainly from Germany and the Dutch host country.84 Because of Israel’s informal boycott, only the chairman of the Jewish Agency and WZO Leon Dulzin attended. A congratulatory message from Yigael Yadin, Israel’s deputy prime minister, was— perhaps inadvertently—never read. There were only very few personal congratulations on Goldmann’s birthday, one of them by veteran liberal political leader Simcha Ehrlich, the first minister of finance in Menahem Begin’s cabinet.85 The balance of the Jewish-German relationship, with all its creativity and ambiguities, and the search for an Israeli-Arab settlement to be facilitated by Germany—with respect to the Palestinians—were the principal subjects of extensive essays by Goldmann, disseminated to the German public through West Germany’s leading intellectual weekly Die Zeit.86 Some of Goldmann’s reflections were included in the last version of his autobiography, the first volume of which was titled Mein Leben als deutscher Jude [My Life as a German Jew].87 In truth, despite his education at German schools and universities and his immersion in German thought, philosophy, and literature, Goldmann was not a German Jew. Rather, he was an Eastern European–born cosmopolitan Jewish Zionist intellectual, well-versed in European cultural traditions. Goldmann, who more than other Jewish leaders was interested in a new Jewish-German

224

Shlomo Shafir

dialogue, never neglected the legacy of the Holocaust. Paradoxically, he regarded the creation of the state of Israel as a positive result of the Holocaust, and he spoke on several occasions about the historic connection between the Shoah and Jewish national rebirth.88 Despite his vociferous disapproval of Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors, Goldmann never blamed that policy on the primacy of the Holocaust in Israel’s national consciousness, as post-Zionist historians have done since the end of the last century. On the other hand, Goldmann expressly rejected Begin’s comparison of Yassir Arafat with Hitler.89 In his last article in Die Zeit, published during the Lebanon war—just two weeks before his death—Goldmann cautioned that a continuation of Israel’s militaristic policies might endanger its future existence.90 Nahum Goldmann, who was born in the Eastern European shtetl of Visznevo and was for many years a central figure in German Jewish affairs, died in August 1982. He spent his final days in Bad Reichenhall, a few miles from Berchtesgaden, which housed Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat. Goldmann often encountered strong opposition from parts of the Israeli body politic and from the pro-Israel establishment in the diaspora, who regarded him as an example of the rootlessness of a cosmopolitan statesman without a state. The political efforts of the last decade of his life—including foreign policy proposals such as a rather unrealistic suggestion concerning the neutrality of Israel to be guaranteed by the great powers, his efforts to facilitate a Palestinian settlement, and his aborted plan to visit Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser—were subject to intense public criticism. Nevertheless, and despite the problematic nature of Jewish-German relations after the Holocaust, Goldmann earned a place of honor for his pivotal contribution in securing through German reparations and necessarily enlarged indemnification payments vital resources for the state of Israel, which helped the development of its economy and facilitated the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors in the Jewish state and the diaspora as well as the social and cultural reconstruction of many European Jewish communities.91

Notes 1. The most important sources for Nahum Goldmann’s role in regard to postwar Germany are his extensive archive in the Central Zionist Archives (CZA), Jerusalem; the collections of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) British section and the WJC Israel Office, CZA; the WJC collection at the American Jewish Archives (AJA) in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Claims Conference Papers at the Central Archives of the Jewish People in Jerusalem; and several collections at the German Bundesarchiv in Koblenz. Of special significance for the early 1950s are the papers of Herbert Blankenhorn at the Bundesarchiv and his political diary based on his papers. Goldmann’s own biography, which he wrote and rewrote several times until its final version appeared in two volumes in German two years before his death, comprises of an account of his manifold activities, as well as of his reflections and judgements, but it should be used with caution.


225

2. Baltimore, WJC Inter-American Conference, Nov. 23–25, 1941, CZA, Goldmann Archive (GA), Z6/2053. For the IJA see A. Leon Kubowitzki, Unity in Dispersion: A History of the World Jewish Congress (New York, 1948), 134–51. The Institute became an integral part of the WJC in 1947. 3. WJC, Atlantic City War Emergency Conference, Nov. 26–30, 1944, CZA, GA, Z6/2269. 4. Kubowitzki, Unity in Dispersion, 221–35. 5. Nana Sagi, German Reparations: A History of the Negotiations (Jerusalem, 1980), 17–27. 6. Chaim Weizmann to the Secretary of State, Sept. 20, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1945, vol. 3 (Washington, D.C., 1968), 1302–1305. 7. Nahum Goldmann, Mein Leben als deutscher Jude, vol. 1 (Munich, 1980), 365–69; N. Goldmann, Mein Leben: USA, Europa, Israel, vol. 2 (Munich, 1981), 142–43; Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope: The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany (New York, 2002), 123, 264–65. 8. Resolutions of the WJC Second Plenary Assembly, June 29–July 6, 1948, here July 5, 1948, AJA, Cincinnati, OH,World Jewish Congress Collection (WJCC) #361, A46/5. I am very grateful to Ina Remus, AJA project historian for the World Jewish Congress Papers, for helping me to adjust the former registration numbers in footnotes based on the WJCC material. 9. Minutes of the Israel executive, Tel Aviv, May 18, 1949, CZA, GA, Z6/243. 10. Zuckerman-Segal memorandum, July 3, 1950, AJA, WJCC, A80/2. Both excepted Austria from a similar boycott. That was characteristic of the lack of knowledge of the Austrians’ wide support for Nazism and their active participation in the extermination of European Jewry. 11. “We and the Germans,” Haarez, Sept. 2, 1949 (in Hebrew). 12. Goldmann against herem, Minutes of the WJC executive (American branch), Oct. 1, 1950, AJA, WJCC, A80/2. See also WJC, Minutes of the Israel executive, Tel Aviv, May 18, 1949, CZA, GA, Z6/243. 13. For example, transcript of the AJC executive meeting of May 5–6, 1951. Blaustein Library, New York. 14. Minutes of the enlarged meeting of the European members of the WJC executive, Paris, Aug. 25–28, 1949, AJA, WJCC, A88/7. 15. Verhandlungen des deutschen Bundestages, 1. Leg. period, 5. Session, Sept. 20, 1949, 20–30, here p. 27; Adenauer’s interview with Karl Marx of Nov. 11, 1949, appeared in the Allgemeine Wochenzeitung der Juden in Deutschland (edited by him) on Nov. 25, 1949. For the negative reaction see WJC, Statement of Germany, Dec. 20, 1949, AJA, 80/1 (old reg.). 16. Goldmann, Mein Leben, 376, 378–79. For more details on Barou’s activities, see the Barou-Goldmann correspondence, CZA, GA, Z6/1810. 17. In the long run, as an experienced economic consultant Barou himself may also have been interested in profiting from the reparation business translations after the conclusion of an agreement. Barou to Goldmann, Aug. 11, 1952, CZA, GA, Z6/1810.

226

Shlomo Shafir

18. Goldmann, “A Noble Son of Jewry,” in Essays in Jewish Sociology, Labor and Cooperation in Memory of Dr. Noah Barou, 1889–1955, ed. Henrik F. Infield (London, 1962), 9–13. 19. For Blankenhorn’s participation in crucial meetings see the entries in his political diary in 1952–1953, Verständnis und Verständigung: Blätter eines politischen Tagebuchs von 1949 bis 1979 (Frankfurt, 1980). 20. A. L. Easterman to Robert S. Marcus, New York, Oct. 21, 1949, AJA, WJCC, A79/12. 21. Gerhard M. Lewy, a Jewish businessman who fled the Nazis and was in London in touch with Barou, mentioned these conditions in a letter to Christian Democratic Union (CDU) member of the Bundestag, Hermann Pünder, until 1949 director general of the united economic western zone, Mar. 26, 1950, Bundesarchiv (BA) Koblenz, Pünder Papers, 630, 104–107. Barou whom Lewy introduced to Blankenhorn met with the German diplomat the first time in London on Apr. 28, 1950. BA, Blankenhorn Papers, 351/5. 22. Diplomatische Korrespondenz, Bonn, Mar. 10, 1951, Israel State Archives (ISA), Jerusalem, Documents of the Foreign Ministry, 2539/1. 23. Goldmann, Mein Leben, 379. 24. Norman Rose, Chaim Weizmann: A Biography (New York, 1986), 451. 25. Yeshayahu A. Jelinek, Zwischen Moral and Realpolitik. Eine Dokumentensammlung (Gerlingen, 1997), 152–56. See also Willy Albrecht, “Ein Wegbereiter: Jakob Altmaier und das Luxemburger Abkommen,” in Ludolf Herbst und Constantin Goschler, Wiedergutmachung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich, 1989), 205–13. Joseph (Josele) Rosensaft, the former head of the Bergen-Belsen DP camp and of the liberated Jews in the British zone, was also asked by Goldmann to assist at different stages of the preliminary contacts and the subsequent negotiations. Goldmann, Mein Leben, 339; Gerhart M. Riegner, Ne jamais désespérer. Soixante annes au service du peuple juif et des droits de l’homme (Paris, 1998), 567. 26. Jelinek, op. cit., 19–20. 27. Adenauer to Pastor Custodis, Feb. 23, 1946, Konrad Adenauer: Briefe, 1945–1947, ed. Hans Peter Mensing (Berlin, 1983), 172–73; Verhandlungen des Deutschen Bundestages, 1. Leg. period, 165.Session, Sept. 27, 1951, 6697–6700. 28. As published in Neues Deutschland, Apr. 14–15, 1990. 29. Shilumim was an euphemistic term that was introduced instead of “reparations” in order not to antagonize the Germans and not to cause difficulties with the Western powers. 30. James Sheldon to Dean Acheson, Mar. 10, 1952, and Perry Laukhuff to Sheldon, Mar. 17, 1952, U.S. National Archives (NA), RG59, 762A.00/3–1052. 31. Franz Josef Strauss was among those who early in 1953 demanded an inquiry into the origins of the reparations treaty. Deliberations of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Feb. 24, 1953, Archiv für Christlich-Demokratische Politik, St. Augustin. For the left-wing accusations, see memorandum presented to Goldmann, June 27,


227

1953, CZA, GA, Z6/1019. For Otto Lenz’s objections, see the entry in his diary of Mar. 2, 1953, Im Zentrum der Macht: Das Tagebuch von Staatssekretär Lenz 1951–1953, ed. Klaus Gotto a.o. (Düsseldorf, 1989), 570–72. 32. Historian Henning Köhler, the author of a critical Adenauer biography, wondered why Blankenhorn never challenged in court those who accused him of having been bribed for his part in bringing about the German-Israel agreement. Köhler, Adenauer: eine politische Biographie (Berlin, 1994), 720. 33. Adenauer to Goldmann, Dec. 6, 1961, CZA, GA, Z6/2345. For Goldmann’s excessively positive appraisal of Adenauer, see Mein Leben, 383–87, 417–25; idem, “Adenauer und das jüdische Volk,” in Konrad Adenauer und seine Zeit: Politik und Persönlichkeit des ersten Bundeskanzlers, ed. Dieter Blumenwitz (Stuttgart, 1976), 427–36. My article “Goldmann and Adenauer” appeared in Gesher vol. 40 (Summer 1994): 59–83. 34. Jellinek, op. cit., 149. 35. Protocols of the Mapai Central Committee, Dec. 13, 1951, Israel Labor Party Archives, Beit Berl, II, 21/51. For Sharett’s focal role in preparing the way for negotiations with the German government, Gabriel Sheffer, Moshe Sharett: Biography of a Political Moderate (Oxford, 1956), 524–64, 606–607, 637–39. 36. WJJC, Minutes of the WJC executive (American branch), Jan. 22, 1952, AJA, WJJC, A80/5. 37. Cf. Goldmann’s Oral History interview, Nov. 14 and 20, 1961, Hebrew University Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Oral History Division. For a critical view of Goldmann and the differences of opinion between him and the Israeli side, see Felix Eliezer Shinnar, Oral History interview, Nov. 18, 1970, ibid. 38. Israel Foreign Office, Documents Relating to the Agreement between the Government of Israel and the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (Jerusalem, 1953), 94–123. 39. For a rather critical but balanced appraisal of Adenauer’s Israel policy between moral commitment and political pragmatism, see Yeshayahu A. Jelinek’s essay, “Political Acumen, Altruism, Foreign Pressure or Moral Debt: Konrad Adenauer and the Shilumim,” in Tel Aviv Jahrbuch für Deutsche Geschichte, XIX (1990): 77–102. In a recent essay, “Konrad Adenauer and the State of Israel: Between Friendship and Realpolitik, 1953–1963,” Orient, vol. 43 (Mar. 2002): 41–57, Jelinek concludes that “Adenauer was a qualified friend of Israel.” Closer to Goldmann’s outright positive view of Adenauer is Niels Hansen, Aus dem Schatten der Katastrophe: Die deutsch-israelischen Beziehungen in der Ära Konrad Adenauer und David Ben Gurion (Düsseldorf, 2002), for example, 15–24, 238–44, 825–34. Pressure on the part of the powers and particularly the United States is disregarded by Wolffsohn, “Das deutsch-israelische Wiedergutmachungsabkommen von 1952 im internationalen Zusammenhang,” in Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 36, no. 4 (1988): 691–731. 40. Michael Wolffsohn, “Globalentschädigung für Israel und die Juden? Adenauer und die Opposition in der Bundesregierung,” in Herbst und Goschler, 161–90. Also his survey Deutsch-Israelische Beziehungen: Umfragen und Interpretationen (Munich, 1989), 34.

228

Shlomo Shafir

41. For example, Adenauer at the CDU federal executive committee, Sept. 5, 1952, Günter Buchstab, ed., Adenauer: Es musste alles neu gemacht werden.” Die Protokolle des CDU–Bundesvorstandes, 1950–1953 (Stuttgart, 1986), 140–41; May 28, 1952, Adenauer: Teegespräche 1950–1954, ed. Hanns Jürgen Küsters (Berlin, 1984), 284–85; also Walter Hallstein on the importance of the Israel treaty, Mar. 20, 1953; ibid., 422–34. 42. Confidential Security Information, Chronology of Principal Events in German-Israel-Jewish Claims Settlement. Oct. 13, 1952, NA, 262–84A, 41, 10–52; John J. McCloy, Jacob Blaustein Oral History Collection, New York Public Library, Feb. 23, 1972. For McCloy’s role on Wiedergutmachung, see also Thomas Alan Schwartz, America’s Germany: John J. McCloy and the Federal Republic of Germany (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 175–84. 43. Sharett to Acheson, May 22, 1952, FRUS, 1952–1954, vol. 9, part 1, 936–38; McCloy from Acheson, May 25, 1952, ibid., 938; Acheson to Sharett, June 3, 1952, ibid., 939. 44. WJC, Minutes of the executive (American branch), Apr. 29, 1954, AJA, WJCC, A80/7, and Minutes of the plenum of the WJC executive, Paris, Jan. 27–30, 1955, A95/2. 45. For example, “Shall We Rearm Germany?” Address delivered by Rabbi A. H. Silver at The Temple, Mar. 4, 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, Papers of Abba Hillel Silver, Microfilm Edition, Ben-Gurion Research Center Sde Boker, IV/843; also his address “American Stake in Human Freedom,” Dec. 12, 1953, quoted in In Time of Harvest: Essays of Abba Hillel Silver on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Daniel Jeremy Silver (New York, 1963), 89–90. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Goldmann’s predecessor as president of the WJC, was also very much troubled by the changing U.S. policy toward Germany. In the last years of his life he protested the administration’s Paperclip project of securing the services of German weapons specialists and technicians. Stephen S. Wise to Secretary of War Robert Patterson and Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall, quoted in Tom Bower, The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists (Boston, 1987), 206–208. 46. Written interview with the author, June 15, 1988. 47. Address at the Commemoration in Bergen-Belsen, Nov. 30, 1952, CZA, GA, Z6/2056. 48. Statement issued by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, Oct. 25–26, 1951, Documents on the Foreign Policy of Israel, ed. Yemima Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1951), 733–34; for Israel’s initial lack of confidence in the diaspora dominated Claims Conference, see Gershon Avner, Oral History interview, Sept. 30, 1971, Hebrew University Institute of Contemporary Jewry, Oral History Division. 49. German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference. Sec. Edition (London, 2001), 74. In summarizing the achievements of the Claims Conference I have mainly relied on Zweig’s monograph, although some judgments with regard to Goldmann are mine. 50. Ben-Gurion Archive (BGA), Ben-Gurion Diaries, Nov. 10, 1952; Goldmann to Blankenhorn, Dec. 8, 1952, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes (PA), II, 244–13.


229

51. Goldmann tried to convince Adenauer that he really meant the Western powers should increase their cooperation in order to contain Soviet expansion in the Middle East. Goldmann to Adenauer, Oct. 29, 1956, CZA, GA, Z6/2001. 52. On Ben-Gurion and Germany in those years see Moshe Pearlman, BenGurion Looks Back (London, 1965), 162–70. 53. Franz Josef Strauss, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1990), 341–51. 54. “Document: David Ben-Gurion and Chancellor Adenauer at the Waldorf Astoria,” Mar. 14, 1960, introduced by Zaki Shalom, in Israel Studies vol. 2 (Spring 1997): 56–71; Goldmann to Adenauer, Feb. 13, 1960, CZA, GA, Z6/2034. 55. Goldmann to Shinnar, Mar. 31, 1960, ibid., Z6/ 2017. 56. Goldmann, Mein Leben, 439–40. 57. Meeting with the ministers-presidents and the ministers of finance of the Länder, Bonn, June 26, 1959, CZA, GA, Z6/2034. 58. Goldmann to Adenauer, Dec. 19, 1957, ibid., Z6/2033. 59. Hans Günter Hockerts, “Wiedergutmachung in Deutschland: eine historische Bilanz,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 49, no. 2, 167–214, here p. 186. 60. Goldmann to Adenauer, Jan. 23, 1959, CZA, GA, Z6/2034; WJC, Minutes of the executive (American branch), May 6, 1958, AJA, WJCC, A81/1, and Minutes of the plenum of the WJC executive, Geneva, July 23–28, 1958, A97/3. 61. The AJC pamphlet was prepared by the AJ Congress Commission on International Affairs and edited by Philip Baum and Herbert Poster. 62. Adenauer to Goldmann, Jan. 15, 1960, CZA, GA, 2034; Goldmann to Blankenhorn, Jan. 22, 1960, ibid.; “Adenauer und Goldmann gedenken der Opfer in BergenBelsen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Feb. 3, 1960. Strauss joined the group on his own. 63. Goldmann to Adenauer, Feb. 13, 1960, CZA, GA, Z6/2034. 64. Goldmann to Eshkol, Feb. 12, 1965, CZA, GA, Z6/1141. 65. The AJC’s German Education program that was established after the antiSemitic events of winter 1959–1960 continued throughout the 1962s. Summary in BGX 79, Germany/West, Apr. 9, 1979, AJC Records, New York. 66. Nehemiah Robinson, Documentation on Persecution of War Criminals, AJA, WJCC, C25/14. The West German government stopped its cooperation with the WJC on prosecution and trial of Nazi criminals in 1974. 67. AJC, Minutes of the executive committee, June 13,1963, American Jewish Historical Society Archives, AJC papers, 1–77, 7. 68. WJC, Fifth Plenary Assembly, Brussels, Session on Germans and Jews, Aug. 4, 1966. “Jews and Germans,” an essay adapted from Gerschom Scholem’s address appeared in Commentary, 42 (Nov. 1966): 31–38. Another essay, “Jews and Germans: A Millennial Heritage,” adapted from Salo W. Baron’s address, appeared in Midstream, 13 (Jan. 1967): 3–13. For a detailed report see Rolf Vogel, ed., Deutschlands Weg nach Israel (Stuttgart, 1967), 212–75.

230

Shlomo Shafir

69. Angelika Timm, Hammer, Zirkel, Davidstern: Das gestörte Verhältnis der DDR zu Zionismus und Staat Israel (Bonn, 1997), 242. 70. Resumé of meeting of Jewish delegations with Assistant Secretary of State Arthur Hartman, July 17, 1974, AJC Archives, July 25, 1974, AJC Records, Germany East/Restitution, BGX 73. Instead Hartman promised to press for a settlement of claims by victims of the Nazi persecution and by Americans whose property had been seized. 71. Goldmann to Werner Nachmann, Sept. 2, 1974, CZA, GA, Z6/2466. 72. Angelika Timm, Alles Umsonst? Verhandlungen zwischen der Claims Conference und der DDR über “Wiedergutmachung” and Entschädigung (Berlin, 1996), 19–40. 73. Otto Funke, AFC, declaration, Nov. 22, 1976, and Saul Kagan to Funke, Dec. 6, 1976, AJC Records, Germany East/Restitution, BXG, 76. 74. Neues Deutschland, Apr. 14–15, 1990. 75. Altmaier to Barou, apr. 1953, CZA, GA, Z6/3680; Heinz Putzrath to Kurt Grossmann, Apr. 29, 1953, and Grossmann to Putzrath, May 5, 1953, ibid., Z6/761. 76. For the high percentage of persecuted Social Democrats in the first Bundestag, see Susanne Miller, “Zwischen Konfrontation und Anpassung: die Bundestagsfraktion, 1949–1957, Die Neue Gesellschaft/Frankfurter Hefte, v. 42 ( Jan. 1995): 94–95. 77. Willy Brandt, Erinnerungen (Frankfurt, 1989), 446–47. 78. Goldmann, Mein Leben, 435–36; also vol. 2, 308–10. 79. Yohanan Meroz, In schwieriger Mission: Als Botschafter Israels in Bonn (Frankfurt, 1986), 88–100. 80. AJC delegation led by Richard Maass, meeting with Helmut Schmidt in New York, June 8, 1979, AJC Archives, BGX79, Germany/West. 81. For the debate in Israel see Nachum Orland, Das Deutschlandbild der israelischen Presse (Frankfurt, 1984), 43–60. 82. In 1979–1981 Schmidt met several times with delegations of the AJC. One of the results was the institutionalized American Jewish–German exchange program in cooperation with the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. However, to assuage Jewish resentment he also met with avowedly pro-Israeli delegations, such as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the WJC. Meeting with the Presidents Conference delegation, note of May 21, 1981, Archiv der sozialen Demokratie, Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung, Bonn, Schmidt Depositium 6770; with WJC leadership, note of May 24, 1982, ibid., 8983. 83. Schmidt’s and Goldmann’s addresses, CZA, GA, Z6/3643. 84. Goldmann, Mein Leben, 430–39. See also Helmut Schmidt’s impressions of Goldmann, Weggefährten (Berlin, 1996), 288–90. At a meeting in Bonn before his birthday celebration Goldmann reported to Schmidt about Israel’s growing isolation abroad and its domestic polarization. He advised him not to visit Israel as long as Begin remained in power whereupon Schmidt added “as long as the settlement policy continues.” Note of June 23, 1980. Schmidt Deposition 8911.


231

85. Simcha Ehrlich’s gratulation, July 2, 1980. CZA, GA, Z6/2705; Goldmann to Yigael Yadin, July 9, 1980, ibid., Z6/ 2706. 86. For example, “Juden und andere Deutsche,” Die Zeit, Jan. 28 and Feb. 2, 1979. 87. Goldmann, Mein Leben, 454–73. 88. Ibid., 461. 89. Goldmann, “The Danger Facing World Jewry,” New Outlook, 24, no. 9 (Dec. 1981). Reprinted from Jewish Chronicle (Sept. 25, 1981). 90. “Israel—wohin gehst Du,” Die Zeit, Aug. 13, 1982. 91. For the preparation of this chapter I have also relied on several chapters of my monograph, Ambiguous Relations: The American Jewish Community and Germany Since 1945 (Detroit, 1999).


10

( “Reparations Made Me” Nahum Goldmann, German Reparations, and the JewishWorld Ronald W. Zweig

ahum Goldmann would have been a minor figure in modern Jewish history had it not been for the 1952 Luxembourg Agreements wherein the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) agreed to pay reparations to Israel and to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference) and to pay indemnification to individual survivors of the Holocaust. But Goldmann is a very major figure, both because of his central role in reaching agreement with Germany and because of the huge success and importance of the reparations process in the years that followed. Goldmann’s personal contribution to the evolution of policy on reparations and restitution issues was particularly apparent at numerous critical junctures before, during, and after the negotiations with Germany. The general history of the negotiations and the impact of the Claims Conference have been recounted elsewhere.1 This chapter focuses on Nahum Goldmann’s role in the success of this complex, sensitive, and immensely significant historical process that did so much to transform the Jewish world after the Holocaust. As a joint chairman (with Berl Locker) of the Jewish Agency for Israel ( JAI) since 1948 and as president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), after the death of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise in 1949, Goldmann had a unique position in public Jewish affairs. The JAI and the WJC were separated by significant policy

N

233

234

Ronald W. Zweig

differences since World War II. The JAI, as an arm of the Zionist movement, believed that the catastrophe of European Jewry placed the national home in Palestine at the center of the Jewish world, and that all resources and efforts should be drected to strengthening the Yishuv. The WJC, with its ideological commitment to Jewish collectivity, strongly supported the Zionist endeavor but did not support the “negation of the diaspora.” The WJC advocated that Jewish resources, especially those deriving from the restitution of heirless and public Jewish property in Europe, be spent not only in strengthening the Yishuv but also in rebuilding those communities that wished to revive their diaspora existence. The conflict between these two approaches became apparent when the leading Jewish organizations began formulating plans for postwar reconstruction, a process that began during the last two years of the war.2 The differences between the views of the JAI in Jerusalem and the WJC came to the fore during the first international (as far as was possible at the time) conference held to consider issues relating to the anticipated end of the world war. The conference, convened by the WJC in November 1944 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, discussed the future of Palestine, rehabilitating Holocaust survivors, restituting Jewish property, punishing war criminals, and commemorating the Holocaust.3 Each of the major Jewish organizations jostled for a position in deciding the nature of the Jewish property claims, leadership in asserting the claims, and in the allocation of any funds that would derive from them. Even before the war was over, each of the contending organizations knew that funds deriving from reparations and restitutions would be a major factor in the task of rebuilding Jewish life after the Holocaust. Control of these funds would potentially determine the future character of the Jewish world. Would the effort to rehabilitate and resettle the survivors be focused on the Jewish national home in Palestine or would it be divided among various communities, of which the Yishuv was only one? In the closing months of the war the differences between the WJC and the JAI on this issue began to loom large in Jewish public affairs.4 Ultimately, the Allies decided the issue on entirely pragmatic grounds. The first steps toward recognizing Jewish property claims were taken during the Allied deliberations on reparations to be imposed on Germany, held in Paris in December 1945–January 1946. Limited sums were set aside for the “non-repatriable victims of Nazi persecution,” and a few months later the international community determined that this money would be paid to the JAI and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee ( JDC) based on these organizations’ extensive welfare work in the Displaced Persons (DP) camps in Germany and Austria.5 The ideological issues that had engaged the Jewish world so intensely since 1944 were now brushed aside in favor of the need to support those two organizations that worked directly to resolve the postwar refugee problem. Although these decisions were very far from being the last word on the reparations and restitution claims of the Jewish world, the Allied powers’ selecting the JDC and the JAI as “operating agencies” effectively anointed them as the two bodies that would lead the major political campaigns

“Reparations Made Me”

235

in the future for the return of heirless and communal Jewish property and for the eventual payment of restitution.6 Goldmann straddled the organizational divide. His leadership position in both the JAI and the WJC gave him immense prestige, but did little to resolve the tensions between the JAI (and later the Israel government) and the WJC. In fact, during 1940s and 1950s Goldmann was a distant leader of the WJC, devoting most of his energies to the cause of Zionism and Israel.7 In the immediate postwar years, the landmark decisions on initial reparations and restitution issues were taken by the Allies, particularly by the United States. But these decisions were limited in scope, and the Allied governments were unwilling to impose on Germany meaningful reparations to the Jewish people.8 Goldmann was one of the first (in early 1950) to realize that if Israel and the diaspora organizations wished to obtain indemnification payments for individual Holocaust survivors and a global reparations payment to meet Jewish material claims against Germany, then it would have to negotiate directly with the German government in Bonn.9 Although Goldmann was not alone in advocating this position, it marked a major crossroads on the way to a reparations settlement. Dealing directly with a German government was unpalatable to Jewish opinion, and most Jewish leaders preferred to rely on U.S. pressure on Bonn to achieve their demands. Goldmann was at the vanguard of Jewish leadership in 1950 when he understood that boycotting Germany would no longer be effective. Nearly eighteen months passed before the major Jewish organizations, together with the government of Israel, adopted this position. One of the thorniest difficulties in formulating a Jewish material claim against Germany was the potential for conflict between the reparations demands of the Israeli government and those of the diaspora organizations. Who spoke on behalf of the Jewish world? Which body could claim to be the heirs of the victims that perished? For most of the postwar period, the JDC and the JAI were able to cooperate and manage the small funds derived under the 1945–1946 agreement and the beginning of the restitution of real property after 1948. But once a much larger settlement loomed that would influence Jewish public budgets for future generations, this consensus became fragile. Other organizations, beyond the two operating agencies, now wished to be part of the negotiations and also participate in the allocations process. In September 1950 it was resolved that separate claims for reparations would be pressed against Germany—one on behalf of Israel and the other on behalf of the diaspora organizations.10 One year later, when German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer publicly announced his government’s willingness to negotiate a settlement, his carefully prenegotiated statement to the Bundestag on September 27, 1951, offered to negotiate “a solution of the material indemnity problem . . . jointly with representatives of Jewry and the State of Israel.” The German offer of joint negotiations brought the different interests of the diaspora organizations and Israel to the forefront. Who would negotiate on behalf of world Jewry? And how was the potential of conflict with Israel to

236

Ronald W. Zweig

be diffused? Adenauer had obtained prior approval of his statement from the president of the Federal Republic of Germany, Theodor Heuss, and had shown the text to representatives of the leading German political parties. Terms of the statement had been agreed on in advance between the chancellor and representatives of both Israel and the Jewish organizations.11 Germany’s insistence on negotiating with representatives of world Jewry as well as with Israel came as no surprise. In fact, Israel, the JDC, and the JAI had already agreed among themselves that Israel’s claims and those of world Jewry would have to be presented separately if they were to have any success in the negotiations.12 Distinct claims presented by separate delegations were considered preferable by the Jewish side from the beginning. Even before Adenauer’s statement, the Israeli government asked Goldmann to bring various diaspora organizations together as a step toward creating an umbrella body to represent the non-Israeli claims in the anticipated negotiations with Germany. Such an organization was necessary in view of Adenauer’s specific statement that the German government wished to negotiate both with the Israeli government and “representatives of Jewry.” But that was not its only function. The meeting to which Goldmann now issued invitations was originally planned as a public demonstration of support by the Jewish world for the principle of negotiations with the Germans.13 The meeting, planned for the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, would also endorse the leadership of the Israeli government in such negotiations. The invitations, drafted before the Adenauer statement, explained the meeting’s purpose frankly. The organizations were to convene “for the purpose of giving public support to Israel’s claim against Germany . . . and to discuss ways and means how best to organize such support in the future.”14 A draft agenda the Israeli Foreign Ministry prepared specified four speeches: introductory remarks by Goldmann followed by an address from Israel’s ambassador to the United States (Abba Eban) and two speeches from representatives of the twenty-two organizations invited. These were to be followed by the adoption of a declaration of the organizations’ “wholehearted support” of Israel’s position.15 In all, the meeting was planned to take no more than one day. Goldmann’s advance planning of the meeting anticipated the compliant cooperation of the diaspora organizations. How unjustified this assumption was quickly became apparent. Each of the twenty-two invited organizations attended the meeting in New York. Ostensibly, they had been selected to include as representative a list of Jewish groups as possible, both geographically and ideologically, and in fact the Claims Conference (as it later developed) did represent all shades of opinion within the Jewish world with the exception of the Communists. However, the widest representation of ideologies and communities was not the only key to the invitation list. As Goldmann subsequently stated: At first we invited the important organizations in the countries of the Western powers in order to exert pressure on these powers. We could


237

not invite the Jews of the East [Bloc], because they are unable to come and attend the Conference. The idea was that these bodies in the Western countries should exert influence on their states and thus put pressure on Germany. We invited all the larger organizations in Europe, England, Canada, and America.16 Having invited so many organizations, excluding the representative bodies of the Jewish communities of South Africa, Australia, and Argentina was not possible, and they were also invited. The invitations to the meeting had been issued without the prior knowledge of the JDC or the American Jewish Committee (AJC). They were concerned that such a meeting might leave the task of negotiating to the Israelis while leaving only a symbolic role for the Jewish organizations. This would not only upset the balance of interorganizational cooperation that had evolved on the question of reparations since the end of the war, but also would undermine their own positions in any subsequent allocation of reparations achieved.17 The conference convened at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York, on October 25, 1951. Prior to the meeting, those most actively pressing for reparations had simply assumed that the Jewish world as a whole would agree to negotiate with Germany. When the question was debated by the twenty-two organizations present, and despite a demonstration by a group of Revisionist youth against negotiations, the participants resolved that the time had indeed come to press the claim for reparations. However, although the organizations did give full backing to the priority of Israel’s global claim against Germany, they had no intention of being pliant bystanders in the negotiations. Goldmann had initially planned that only he, the Israeli ambassador to the United States (Abba Eban), and two representatives of the invited organizations would address the conference. The purpose of the meeting had been to endorse Israel’s reparations claim, to accept in principle negotiations directly with the Germans, and to authorize a small group to negotiate with the latter on behalf of diaspora Jewry. In an impassioned address to the meeting, Goldmann called for a united stand, both so that the German authorities would not be able to set Jewish groups against each other during any negotiations, and so that the entire Jewish world would share the responsibility for dealing with the Germans (“let us all share the averah [transgression]”). He argued that the Jewish organizations should avoid formulating an itemized claim buttressed by complex legal justifications. The Jewish Restitution Successor Organization ( JRSO) had been compelled to pursue the task of restituting heirless Jewish assets in West Germany by painstaking legal actions and Goldmann wished to avoid such a long drawn-out procedure in the case of general reparations. Instead, he proposed demanding from the Germans an overall settlement. If the sum offered was adequate, then the organizations should accept it. Goldmann pointed out to the meeting that time was working against the Jewish world. As Germany’s economy recovered, and as its strategic

238

Ronald W. Zweig

importance for the West grew due to the Cold War, Germany’s need to come to terms with the Jews declined. He felt that if the organizations waited much longer, they risked endangering reparations as a whole. Detailed, legalistic negotiations would only give the German government an opportunity for delaying a real settlement.18 Despite the careful planning, the organizers of the Waldorf-Astoria meeting quickly discovered that each of the groups invited intended to make a public statement from the rostrum. Nineteen organizations endorsed negotiations and two abstained. Only Agudat Israel opposed direct negotiations on the basis of Adenauer’s September 1951 statement to the Bundestag. Although Agudat Israel supported Israel’s claim for reparations through the Allied powers, it rejected the German attempt to use reparations as a means of making “moral and material amends.” The Agudat Israel representative at the meeting, Rabbi Isaac Lewin, argued that moral amends were not in the gift of the current generation, or of any generation for a thousand years. Furthermore, Lewin doubted the honesty of Adenauer’s intentions in view of the superficial manner in which the Federal Republic of Germany was pursuing denazification. Germany must be compelled to return what had been stolen, but it should be granted no measure of moral rehabilitation by reparations. Lewin reminded the delegates of the biblical injunction, “Do not take ransom for the life of a murderer that is guilty of death” (Numbers 35:31). His policy recommendation was unambiguous: “The Jewish people would commit moral suicide if the offer of Mr. Adenauer would not be immediately rejected.” Agudat Israel’s position was a principled stand, but it did not address the practical issues Goldmann raised. The widespread support for negotiations at the meeting presented its organizers with the mandate they wanted, both to endorse Israel’s demands and to begin contacts with Germany on behalf of the diaspora organizations. Two organizations abstained (the Synagogue Council of America and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry), but they later endorsed the general resolution of the meeting. As Goldmann subsequently pointed out, the majority at the Waldorf-Astoria meeting was more decisive than that obtained later by the Israeli government in the Knesset. Despite the position forcefully expressed by its delegate, Agudat Israel did not withdraw from the Conference. Once the general resolution had been adopted, Goldmann shared his relief with the delegates. “The Conference went much better than at certain moments I was afraid; a Jewish conference is always a risky undertaking . . . and sometimes if a Conference finishes without having done too much harm then one should say a brakhah [blessing].” The consensus of the meeting was that negotiations of material claims could not lessen Germany’s moral debt and that only the material claims could be discussed with Germany. This view was expressed in a public statement released after the meeting: Crimes of the nature and magnitude perpetrated by Nazi Germany against the Jews cannot be expiated by any measure of material


239

reparations . . . [but] every elementary principle of justice and human decency requires that the German people shall, at least, restore the plundered Jewish property, indemnifying the victims of persecution, their heirs and successors, and pay for the rehabilitation of the survivors.19 The limited intent of the meeting in agreeing to enter into negotiations with the Germans was made explicit in the name chosen by the Jewish organizations for the body created at the Waldorf-Astoria: The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. The unwieldy title was soon contracted to the Claims Conference, the name by which it is still commonly known after almost fifty years of activity. (Although this contraction was more practical, it obscured the important distinction the founding members wished to make—that the negotiations with Germany were limited to pragmatic material matters and did not imply any degree of reconciliation.) After endorsing the principle of negotiations, the Claims Conference’s next task was organizational: establishing a framework for continuing the consultations between its constituent organizations and selecting experts to formulate the details of the Jewish claim in anticipation of the forthcoming negotiations with Germany. These problems were overcome without difficulty. By the time of the foundation meeting at the Waldorf-Astoria numerous Jewish organizations had acquired a considerable amount of expertise and experience in the general question of reparations, in the work of the successor organizations, and in the rehabilitation of DPs. There was no shortage of suitable candidates for the Conference’s executive committee, and one was quickly appointed.20 Goldmann was elected as president of the Claims Conference. From the beginning, the Claims Conference faced a difficulty that was to plague it throughout its early years. To be representative of world Jewry it would have to include geographically dispersed communities. But for the Claims Conference to meet the challenges of formulating claims and negotiating them with the Germans, executive authority would have to be vested in a body capable of meeting at very short notice. Members of the executive would therefore have to live within reasonable proximity of each other. An early attempt to overcome this problem was to create, beyond the executive committee, a presidium of four members based in New York and able to advise the Claims Conference president. In other words, day-to-day decision making was left entirely to American-based organizations. Eventually, however, the representative principle overrode considerations of efficiency and within six months leaders of the French and British Jewish communities were also appointed to the presidium.21 The Claims Conference appointed Saul Kagan as executive secretary to handle administration, and the daily affairs of the Claims Conference were largely in his hands. Kagan had worked with the U.S. Military Government in Germany (OMGUS) as chief of the Financial Investigations Department, and

240

Ronald W. Zweig

from 1948 to 1951 was director of Plans and Organization of the JRSO, the largest of the successor bodies. In 1951, Kagan returned to the United States as JRSO’s executive secretary (a post which he held continuously), and from October of that year he was also appointed to the Claims Conference. The Nazi destruction of the European Jewish communities resulted in increasing dependence of the Jewish world on American Jewry, both for material aid and for personnel and general organizational assistance. This trend was reinforced by the fact that by 1946 most of the Jewish DPs in Europe (circa 200,000) had moved to the U.S. zones of military occupation, where only American relief organizations and the Jewish Agency were allowed to operate. Kagan’s dual position within both JRSO and the Claims Conference, and the fact that for much of his working life Kagan’s office was only a few rooms away from the office of his counterpart in the JDC (Moses Leavitt), highlights the considerable cooperation and interdependence that existed within the Jewish world as the challenges of the postwar years in the fields of relief, resettlement, and rehabilitation were met. By the end of the 1940s and early 1950s the “civil service” of the Jewish world had become closely interlinked and largely Americanized. By the time the Waldorf-Astoria meeting had dispersed, the Claims Conference was established as an organization with the resources to continue. It had a president (Goldmann) and presidium, an executive, a committee of experts (New York–based) on the question of reparations and Jewish losses to the Germans, an administrative staff, and twenty-two member organizations that had resolved to pursue negotiations with the Federal Republic of Germany. Despite the impressive organizational structure, Goldmann often acted independently and without consulting even his senior colleagues. An example of his political manner was the secret meeting with Adenauer in December 1951 in London, prior to the start of the negotiations. Goldmann met the German chancellor to determine the seriousness of Germany’s willingness to pay reparations. He did so without the authority of the presidium, even though the presidium was at that time deliberating how best to determine Germany’s intentions without exposing themselves to the embarrassment of premature political contacts with the Federal Republic of Germany. Furthermore, Goldmann initially refused to give any account of his meeting (although eventually he was compelled to do so).22 The first task of the Claims Conference staff was to collate expert opinion on the nature and size of the demands to be presented to Germany and to initiate contacts with Bonn. During the winter of 1951–1952 (and right up to the start of the negotiations in Wassenaar in March 1952) opposing points of view crystallized on the claim. The organizations based in Europe and most actively engaged in the practical tasks of restitution and relief argued for as large and as detailed a claim as possible. The committee of experts in New York wanted a restricted, defined, and realizable claim.23


241

Neither an expanded claim for the individual victims, nor the continuing work of the successor organizations in reclaiming heirless property identifiable in the Western zones of Germany or in West Berlin, nor even the large Israeli global claim (for $1.5 billion) would restore all the plundered Jewish assets. Furthermore, none of these claims would provide enough funds to meet the continuing needs of the organizations outside of Israel who were active in relief work. Between 1933 and 1951, these organizations had spent some $1.1 billion on the victims of Nazism and were still obliged to find between $20 million and $30 million every year to maintain the minimum welfare services to Jewish refugees who had not yet been resettled by the time the Claims Conference was founded.24 Only a global claim, additional to that which Israel was preparing to present when the negotiations opened, would give the Claims Conference the means to aid those refugees who did not want to settle in Israel. Thus, shortly after the Waldorf-Astoria meeting, the Conference experts suggested that the Claims Conference would have to present its own global claim based on the heirless assets that could not be reclaimed by any other means. Although the JDC, the JAI, and the Israeli government had already decided in December 1950 that the Jewish organizations and Israel would present separate claims, no one envisaged that the organizations would want to present their own global claim. Such a claim might well clash with Israel’s global claim and limit the chances of success. Accordingly, in December 1951 Israel suggested a compromise formula which Goldmann put to the executive committee of the Conference. Israel agreed that if only one global claim was to be offered, then one-third of all funds obtained would be allocated to the various diaspora organizations. Of this 33.3 percent, 15 percent was to be spent outside of Israel and the balance (18.3 percent) to be spent in Israel by the organizations on their own welfare programs within the new state.25 Despite Goldmann’s endorsement of the Israeli proposal, the executive committee resolved that the Claims Conference would present its own global claim. However, it was generally agreed that such a claim would be subordinate to the main objective of improving individual restitution and indemnification, and to the global claim presented by Israel. The full executive committee, which met in Paris during February 1952, endorsed this position. In a final statement of its demands from Germany the Claims Conference global claim was defined in the following terms: “The West German government should pay to the Conference a commensurate share for heirless and unclaimed Jewish assets which accrued to Germany other than those which will be reclaimed by individuals and successor organizations.”26 In effect, the Claims Conference had resolved to go its own way. While the fullest degree of cooperation was maintained at all stages between the Claims Conference and Israel in formulating and negotiating the various claims against Germany, and later in allocating the reparations payments, by presenting its own global claim the Jewish organizations were ensuring a life for the Claims Conference after the negotiations were completed. It retained the option of playing a

242

Ronald W. Zweig

major role in the reconstruction of the Jewish world. This global claim, as it was eventually formulated, amounted to $500 million in 1952—approximately $4 billion in today’s values. In principle, the Israeli global claim and the global claim of the Claims Conference were based on entirely different premises. The Israeli claim was based on the cost of resettling and rehabilitating the 500,000 victims of Nazi persecution who had settled in Israel since 1933. The claim was based on outlays. Nevertheless, Jerusalem was concerned that reparations based entirely on outlays would appear to be an ex gratia payment, so the Israeli claim also made reference to the heirless Jewish assets still in German hands as the moral basis for payments to Israel. Similarly, while the Conference’s global claim of $500 million was based primarily on heirless assets (and represented only a small proportion of those assets) in its explanation of the global claim the Conference also referred to the past and anticipated future expenditures of the Jewish relief organizations.27 This latter point was of considerable interest to the German government. In 1950 the International Refugee Organization had transferred to the German government responsibility for the care of the 125,000 “hard core” DPs still in German territory.28 These 125,000 were the remnant of the gigantic postwar refugee problem and were largely persons who could not be resettled because they represented problems related to health, age, family composition, or occupation. Some 46,000 to 50,000 were still in DP camps.29 Although only a small proportion of DPs still in Germany were Jews, they represented a significant proportion of those still in camps, and in general the small remaining population of Jewish DPs presented particularly difficult social welfare problems. Two years after the West German government had been charged with responsibility for these people, the Claims Conference’s global claim offered a prospect that the Jewish world itself would help resolve at least part of the problem of “hard-core” refugees. On the Jewish side, the needs of the aid organizations were massive. Some estimated that up to 22,000 cases of serious mental or physical illness were found among the survivors of Nazism outside of Israel. Another 150,000 less serious cases would also need help.30 The magnitude of the human need the Jewish organizations faced was no less than that which the ministries of health and social welfare in a midsize state might have faced. The Claims Conference’s global claim would have to cover relief, rehabilitation, and resettlement expenditures not for one or two years but until the problem had been resolved. Given these facts, the global claim of the Conference for $500 million was a victory for the “minimalists” in the new organization and was considered to be significantly less than the Conference’s real needs. The Claims Conference presented both its global claim and the claim for individual restitution and indemnification during the first phase of the negotiations in Wassenaar. However, in accord with the priority which the Conference itself had established for the individual claims, and following the wishes of the German delegation, the negotiations first dealt with the individual claims.


243

In April, a deadlock developed in the parallel Israeli-German negotiations (also being conducted at Wassenaar). The Conference delegation decided to support Israel by suspending its own talks with the Germans until the latter conceded certain basic demands of the Israeli negotiating team. When this deadlock interrupted the negotiations major progress in negotiating the individual claims had already been achieved. On April 8, 1952, the leaders of the German and Conference delegations were able to release a document setting out the areas of agreement, which included twenty-one recommendations for the improvement of legislation in the field of indemnification and seven recommendations in the field of restitution. Nevertheless, an additional nineteen demands relating to indemnification and five relating to restitution had not been agreed upon when negotiations were suspended.31 Thus on June 22, when the talks were resumed, the Conference delegation faced the task of negotiating both the most difficult of the individual claims and the entire $500 million global claim. Before the negotiations began in Wassenaar, the executive committee of the Claims Conference had presented the Conference delegation with a clear statement of directives, the second point of which stated, “As a general rule the satisfaction of individual claims should have priority over the aggregate claim. In other words, if the satisfaction of the most pressing individual claims will appear impossible at the same time as the assignment of an aggregate amount, concessions should be made on the latter.”32 Faced with such a clear-cut statement of priorities, the Conference delegation was forced to make concessions on the global claim and on the interests of the Claims Conference itself in favor of reaching an agreement with the Germans concerning the interests of the individual victims of Nazism. But the Claims Conference’s global claim was not only linked to the question of individual claims. During the ten-week period that the talks were suspended, Goldmann, who had purposely refrained from participating in the Conference delegation at Wassenaar during the first phase of the negotiations, succeeded in overcoming the deadlock between Israel and Germany in direct, secret talks with the head of the German delegation, Dr. Franz Boehm (on May 23 and June 10, 1953). Goldmann managed to get a German commitment to a realistic offer of reparations to Israel, paid over a mutually acceptable period. At the same time, Goldmann conceded that the global claim of the Jewish organizations might be significantly reduced from $500 million to DM 500 million. It is not at all clear from the only existing record of the GoldmannBoehm talks whether Goldmann radically reduced the Conference’s claims as a means of convincing the Germans to make any payment at all on this claim. They had already indicated their unwillingness to do so, arguing that it overlapped with Israel’s global claim.33 The agreement with Israel may also have been a quid pro quo. Even if the latter was the case, Goldmann was acting entirely consistently with the will of the Conference because the organizations

244

Ronald W. Zweig

had resolved well in advance of the negotiations with the Germans that they would give priority to Israel’s claims as the needs of the fledgling state were very much greater than their own. Whichever was the case, when the negotiations resumed at Wassenaar on June 22, the Conference resolved to pursue its reduced global claim as soon as possible. Three days later, the leader of the Conference delegation, Moses Leavitt, executive vice chairman of JDC and the leader of the Conference’s negotiating team, pointed out to the Germans that although the $500 million claim had been presented at the start of the negotiations in March, no answer had been received.34 In fact, the Germans had shown little interest in discussing the Conference’s claim. At the June 25 negotiating session they asked for details both of the justification of the Conference global claim (the plundered heirless assets that could not be restituted through the relevant legislation) and of the current needs of the Jewish organizations in the fields of relief, rehabilitation, and resettlement of the victims of Nazism. After the German and Conference delegations had argued these needs one-and-a-half hours, Leavitt uncharacteristically lost his temper when the Germans asked for a full accounting of the expenditures of the Jewish organizations: We are spending about two or three and maybe four times per year as much as we can hope to get from a global settlement. There is no point in giving you details since you are not prepared to pay that amount. However, if you are prepared to pay we would gladly give you a detailed list. You will find that it will run into thirty or forty million dollars per year. Are you prepared to pay that amount for the relief of Nazi victims?35 The following day, the Claims Conference presented two documents to the Germans. The first showed the extent of the past and present activities of Jewish voluntary organizations in aiding the victims of Nazism in the diaspora, and concluded that as late as seven years after the war Jewish aid organizations were still spending between $26 million and $28 million each year outside of Israel.36 The second document set out the moral basis for the Conference claim—the extent of the unidentifiable heirless Jewish assets in Germany that had escheated to the Federal Republic.37 However, so as not to impede Germany’s capacity to pay individual claims or the reparations to Israel, the Conference agreed to Goldmann’s offer to the Germans to lower its own global claim to DM 500 million.38 The German reply, which had no doubt been anticipated since the Goldmann-Boehm meeting in May, was an offer of DM 450 million (payable in goods to Israel) to be allocated by the Claims Conference. An additional DM 50 million was set aside for allocation by the German government specifically for Christian converts of Jewish origins who were victims of Nazism. The Germans made clear in their reply that they did not accept the legal basis of


245

the Conference’s global claim (the unidentifiable heirless assets) and that they considered the fund to be a “hardship fund” to be used solely for the relief and rehabilitation of victims of Nazism in the narrowest sense, not for the repayment to any Jewish organization of funds expended on these items in the past or on cultural programs. Furthermore, the Germans linked the fund to a final agreement on the program of legislation designed to facilitate the payment of individual indemnification. They let it be known that the German cabinet had very nearly not approved the DM 450 million offer and that the Conference was close to having been turned down.39 In other words, there would be little point in the Claims Conference’s challenging the sum proposed. By defining the DM 450 million as a “hardship fund,” the German delegation explained that the intention was to provide the means for the Claims Conference to aid those who were unable to seek redress through the German courts. Thus the Conference would be able to relieve the German government of the burden of dealing with part of the hard-core refugee problem the International Refugee Organization recently passed over to it. The “hardship fund” also meant that the Conference would be able to deflect (from German welfare bureaus) the demands of those who were in need because of their suffering under the Nazis, but who had neither identifiable assets that could act as the basis of restitution or identifiable grounds for indemnification payments. The German negotiators considered the payment toward the global claim as a supplement to the legislative program for individual claimants in need. This view of the purpose of the payment was very different from the view of the Claims Conference. The Conference’s intention of providing relief, rehabilitation, and resettlement possibilities for the victims of Nazism went far beyond the German understanding of a hardship fund for individual claimants who had not received any compensation or those who might feel that they had been insufficiently compensated by the Federal Republic in their restitution and indemnification payments. As Leavitt later explained: The Germans tried to maneuver in such a way that the global sum of the Conference was to be used for unsuccessful claimants for indemnification and restitution, although they denied that that was their purpose. Time and time again they tried to couch the language in such a way as to make it possible for individual claimants, whether needy or not, to have a claim on the funds. I had to fight this concept strenuously over and over again.40 Throughout the second phase of the negotiations, the Conference fought for the principle of need as the principle guiding allocations of funds derived from their global claim. The argument was resolved when both sides agreed that the Claims Conference would allocate the funds to victims of Nazism “according to the urgency of their needs and [according to priorities] determined by the Conference on Material Claims against Germany.” The Jewish

246

Ronald W. Zweig

organizations won the right to determine policies and priorities, while the Federal Republic of Germany only reserved the right to receive a full annual accounting of the Conference’s use of the funds.41 This difference of opinion with the Germans was a serious obstacle in the negotiations at Wassenaar. However, as events turned out, the differences between the Claims Conference and the Federal Republic were more apparent than real. As the urgency of the relief needs of the Jewish refugees decreased through the 1950s, the Conference was able to take a very broad view of the proper uses of the DM 450 million, and significant funds were allocated to cultural and capital building projects. Although full details of the Conference’s use of the German payments were reported to the Federal Republic annually, the first annual report (for the year 1954) reached them only in 1956, by which time they had largely lost interest in the arguments at Wassenaar over the terms “hardship fund” and “needs.” By mid-August 1952 the size and purposes of the global payment to the Claims Conference had been agreed with the Germans. As the Bonn government had made clear that any payments would have to be in the form of goods to Israel, the Conference was obliged to reach an agreement with Israel on the conversion of the German goods into the foreign currencies that the Conference could use outside of Israel. This problem had long been foreseen. Ever since first talks on the nature of the claim each party was to present at Wassenaar, various proposals concerning the relations between Israel and the Conference after the conclusion of the Wassenaar negotiations had been under discussion. After the Conference resolved to present its own claim (despite Goldmann’s support in December 1951 for a united global claim together with Israel) an agreement was reached with Israel setting out the relationship between the two claims. The agreement made provision for two possible outcomes if the negotiations were concluded successfully with the Germans: that separate awards would be made both to Israel and to the Claims Conference, or that the Germans would make only one award on the global claims, to Israel. In both cases the agreement foresaw a certain reallocation of funds between Israel and the Claims Conference. In the event only one combined award was made and the second option was relevant, Israel agreed that of the total award the Germans made, one-third would go to the Claims Conference and two-thirds to Israel. Of the Conference’s one-third, 15 percent of the total would be made available in foreign currencies for Conference allocation outside of Israel and 18.33 percent would be made available for relief, rehabilitation, and resettlement work inside of Israel, to be allocated by organizations the Conference selected.42 The fact that the Germans were only prepared to make payments in goods meant that Israel and the Claims Conference were inevitably linked. Unless the Conference was prepared to become an independent marketing agent for German exports, only a link with Israel made the global payment to the Conference possible. Israel was prepared to absorb the commodities


247

Germany supplied and in exchange provide the foreign currency needed by the Claims Conference. The agreement between the Claims Conference and the Federal Republic was initialed at Wassenaar on August 22, 1952. The document consisted of two “Protocols” as the vague legal status of the Conference prevented the Federal Republic from signing a “treaty” with it. The first Protocol set out the agreement on individual indemnification. Protocol II awarded the Conference DM 450 million on the global claim. On the same day, an agreement was signed in New York between the Conference and the government of Israel, setting out that a sum of DM 517 million was to be made available to the Conference for expenditure outside of Israel. (This sum reflected the earlier agreement with Israel, guaranteeing the Conference at least 15 percent of the overall settlement. As Israel had negotiated a DM 3 billion reparations settlement, and the Conference only DM 450 million, the actual payment was 15 percent of both these sums combined.) The discrepancy between the DM 450 million awarded in Wassenaar, and the DM 517 million that Israel undertook in the New York agreement to pay the diaspora organizations meant that from the beginning an element of confusion existed concerning the actual size of the achievement of the Conference in negotiating the global claim with Germany in the source of payment and in the degree of accountability. Nevertheless, the Claims Conference had succeeded in achieving its two objectives during the negotiations: the commitment by Germany to make major improvements in the rights of individual victims of Nazism to restitution and indemnification, as well as the award of a global payment. These achievements were auspicious for the commencement of the next phase of the Conference’s existence. The Conference now transformed itself from a body established to negotiate with the German government into a body responsible for monitoring the implementation of the legislative commitment set forth in Protocol I, and allocating almost $12 million every year for the benefit of the victims of Nazism. Goldmann had played a key role in each stage of the events leading up to the success of the negotiations. He was instrumental in convincing the diaspora organizations of the need to deal directly with the government of the Federal Republic of Germany; he arbitrated the understanding between the Israel government and the organizations on their different claims; and he directly negotiated a way through the major obstacles to both final agreements between Germany and Israel and between the former and the Claims Conference. The negotiations ended in late August and were signed (in Luxembourg, hence the name Luxembourg Agreements) in September 1952. The success of their collaborative negotiating effort encouraged the diaspora organizations to maintain the umbrella organization created at the Waldorf-Astoria one year earlier, and themselves to allocate the funds that were expected from Germany rather than to hand them over directly to agencies active in welfare work. In November 1953 the Claims Conference was legally incorporated in New York, and one month later Israel handed over the first cash payment deriving

248

Ronald W. Zweig

from the diaspora share of the German transfer of industrial goods to the Israeli economy. The Jewish organizations now faced a new task—agreeing on principles of allocation for the significant amounts of money (averaging $12 million per year—in today’s terms, more than $100 million annually— for twelve years) that Germany was paying into Jewish public funds. Here, too, Goldmann’s role was both decisive and reflected his distinctive views on the future of the Jewish world. The task of allocating the Conference’s budget was a unique challenge. The funds the Conference received were the legacy of 6 million murdered Jews and could not be spent frivolously or unwisely. Awareness of this fact impinged on all operations of the Conference. Furthermore, despite the Conference’s early fear that the Germans would renege on their commitments and find some excuse for not paying the reparations they had committed to, the promise of an annual income of up to $12 million, which was not contingent on fund-raising or communal levies permitted the Conference to think in terms of ambitious long-term planning. If spent properly, the Conference’s allocations would have a far-reaching impact on the future of Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere. The Conference faced choices of major importance. Should the funds be used for the benefit of individuals or communities? If the former, should the money be spent on alleviating the immediate material needs of the survivors of Nazism or should it be devoted to their long-term rehabilitation? If the latter, should the Conference support grandiose capital projects or should the money rather be spent on cultural projects whose impact would not be immediately apparent but would, in the long run, contribute more to the revival of Jewish communal life than the building of concrete edifices? The choices were not mutually exclusive, and many projects were adopted that met multiple needs. Nevertheless, the three basic areas of need (welfare, communal reconstruction, and the cultural program) faced constant competition. Gradually, however, the demands of welfare relief programs declined as Holocaust survivors began to rebuild their lives. The progress made in the rehabilitation of European Jewry by 1956 made it possible for some American members of the Conference to raise the possibility of revising the previously accepted principle of not allocating funds for relief purposes to “donor” countries, that is, the United States and Great Britain. Goldmann strongly opposed the proposal, arguing that it would undermine the whole purpose of the Conference: The German funds were not given exclusively for individual victims of Nazi persecution. More than that the funds are to rebuild Jewish life, particularly on the destroyed continent of Europe. It would be easy for the Conference to fritter away the funds in this manner [relief in the United States]. . . . There is always a conflict between claims of individuals and the needs of the community . . . it was more important for the Conference to make a lasting contribution to Jewish life which was


249

destroyed by the Nazis, than to give large portions of its funds for temporary relief. . . . This is an easy position to take but it would result in Conference funds being eaten up without resulting in permanent achievement. This is a unique opportunity for the rebuilding of Jewish life which the Conference must take.43 Goldmann saw the reparations process (and the Claims Conference as its instrument) as a historic opportunity to do far more than just relieve immediate needs. It was the ultimate tool for reconstruction—to make good again that which had been destroyed. While Wiedergutmachung would never restore the lost 6 million, it could, if used wisely, allow for the reflowering of Jewish communal life in those countries the Nazis ravaged. By focusing on the long-term impact of reparations funds, Goldmann adopted a politically risky position. The path of least resistance, and of greatest popularity, was to disperse the funds for the immediate welfare needs of survivors. Arguing in favor of the broader needs of Jewish life at the expense of allocations to the survivors took real courage. The issue culminated with the anticipated end of those German payments negotiated at Wassenaar. Declining numbers of hardship welfare cases among the survivors, together with a significant revaluation of the German currency (in which the payments were nominated), meant that Conference could, in the 1960s, look forward to a time when the cultural and educational projects the Conference supported would get far more support. Referring to the future use of surplus funds, Goldmann told the Conference that he would: fight for excluding all relief from it. The moment you open a door to relief, I am afraid of the good heart of all Jews. Zedakah [charity] is a very dangerous thing with Jews: billions have been wasted on that. But what maintained a people is cultural life, and not hospitals. . . . If I had all the hundred thousand intellectuals buried in Auschwitz, I would rebuild the Jewish people. But if you go on and spend it for relief, then everything will become meaningless. I want to forbid it to ourselves, to tie our hands, because it wouldn’t change very much.44 As in so many of the debates over principle within the Claims Conference, Goldmann’s leadership proved decisive. The outcome of the debate in which Goldmann expressed himself so forcefully was the establishment of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture with funds that might otherwise have been squandered on additional welfare payments. Throughout the early years of the work of the Claims Conference, 1952–1966, Goldmann’s approach was almost always the policy the Jewish organizations adopted. Goldmann’s role in the reparations process was important even before he took over the WJC leadership. However, once he was appointed to leadership positions in both the JAI and the WJC he had the

250

Ronald W. Zweig

stature necessary not only to influence, but also to direct the course of events. He straddled the two worlds of Israel-centric Zionism and the diaspora communities and was instrumental in ensuring that the collaboration between Jerusalem and the largely New York–based voluntary organizations was relatively free of tension. He created the Claims Conference, laid the way for the negotiations even before they began (in his meeting with Adenauer), and produced the necessary compromise, which saved the negotiations from failure. Once the reparations funds began to flow into Jewish organizational coffers, Goldmann’s leadership allowed significant allocations to long-term capital expenditures as well as educational and cultural projects. This chapter has examined Nahum Goldmann’s contribution to the reparations, restitution, and indemnification process. His overwhelming importance to the success of this episode in modern Jewish history was self-evident to his own generation and needed no explication. The success of his leadership in all stages of the history of the Claims Conference was, in fact, the foundation of his prominence in Jewish public affairs in the years that followed. The quotation in this chapter’s title, “Reparations Made Me,” is an invention of this author. Nevertheless, it does reflect the importance of reparations history to Goldmann’s career. Ironically, the tensions between diaspora interests and those of the Yishuv/Israel, which marked the first attempts to deal with the restoration of Jewish material losses caused by the Holocaust, came back to hound Goldmann in his later career. Years after the reparations process had come to fruition (and before its revival by the WJC in the 1990s, under a different leadership), and due to political issues that had nothing to do with reparations, it proved impossible to straddle both sides of the divide.

Notes 1. Nana Sagi, German Reparations. A History of the Negotiations ( Jerusalem, 1980); Ronald W. Zweig, German Reparations and the Jewish World. A History of the Claims Conference, 2nd ed. (London, 2001). 2. Cf. for example the work by Bernard Joseph, Planning Committee of the Jewish Agency, “The Nature of the Postwar Jewish Claims,” Nov. 9, 1944, S35/2, Central Zionist Archives (CZA). 3. “Summary of the Proceedings of the War Emergency Conference,” Nov. 26–30, 1944, WJC Series A, 7/2, American Jewish Archives (AJA). 4. The Agency’s case was forcefully advocated by Dr. Siegfried Moses, “Report to the Executive of the Vaad Leumi,” (Hebrew) Apr. 9, 1945, S35/2, CZA. 5. For a discussion of the Allied response to Jewish claims for reparations, cf. Ronald W. Zweig, “Restitution and the Problem of Jewish Displaced Persons in Anglo-American Relations, 1944–1948,” American Jewish History, LXXVIII, no. 1 (1988): 54–78.


251

6. For the history of the Jewish Restitution Successor Organization, cf. Ruth Schreiber, “New Jewish Communities in Germany after World War II and the Successor Organizations in the Western Zones,” Journal of Israeli History, 18, nos. 2–3 (1997): 167–90; and Ayaka Takei, “The ‘Gemeinde Problem’: The Jewish Restitution Successor Organization and the Postwar Jewish Communities in Germany, 1947–1954,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 16, no. 2 (2002): 266–88. 7. Goldmann even informed his colleagues in the Executive Committee of the Congress that this would be the case. Minutes of Executive Meeting, July 11, 1945, WJC Series, A74/3, CZA. 8. Cf. Sagi, op. cit., passim. 9. Goldmann (NG) to Berl Locker, Feb. 21, 1950, S35/5, CZA. 10. Paper 21, June 26, 1952, Claims Conference Files (CC) 7016, Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP). 11. Different drafts of the Adenauer statement are in Z6/229, CZA. 12. Adler-Rudel to Kaplan, Feb. 28, 1951, CZA, Z6-229. Shalom Adler-Rudel was the head of the Restitutions Department of the Jewish Agency; Eliezer Kaplan was the Israeli Minister of Finance. 13. Goldmann speech to Ninth Meeting of Zionist General Council, Addresses, Debates, Resolutions, Zionist General Council Session May 7–15, 1952, Jerusalem, 1952, 182. 14. Draft text of invitation, Sept. 2, 1951, S35/221, CZA. 15. Shinar to Goldmann, Sept. 12, 1951; and “Draft Declaration to be Accepted Unanimously by the Jewish Organizations Conference to Be Held in October 1951 in Washington,” Z6/229, CZA. 16. Goldmann, Addresses, Debates, Resolutions, 183. 17. Jacobson to Leavitt, Oct. 8, 1951, Claims Conference General Files, JDC Archives, New York. 18. Protocol of the Waldorf-Astoria meeting, Oct. 25–26, 1951, CC 16600, CAHJP. 19. Cited in Lucy Dawidowicz, “The German Collective Indemnity to Israel and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany,” American Jewish Year Book, vol. 54 (1953): 475. 20. In mid-1952 the following were members of the Executive Committee: Leo Baeck, Noah Barou, Jacob Blaustein, Jules Braunschvig, Samuel Bronfman, Abraham Cohen, Sir Henry d’Avigdor Goldsmid, Frank Goldman, Nahum Goldmann, Israel Goldstein, Adolph Held, Moses Leavitt, Isaac Lewin, Irving Miller (list dated June 5, 1952, CC 6676, CAHJP). 21. The original members of the presidium were Jacob Blaustein, Israel Goldstein, Frank Goldman, and Adolph Held. Jules Braunschvig was invited to join the presidium in December 1951 and Barnett Janner in June 1952.

252

Ronald W. Zweig

22. “Comments and Proposals in Connection with Dr. Nahum Goldmann’s Recent Activities in the Name of the Claims Conference,” Dec. 31, 1951, RestitutionGermany Conference Material, 1953–1959, AJA. By January 1952, Jacob Blaustein’s advisors had concluded that “as a result of Goldmann’s unauthorized political activities, it has become a very risky and undesirable proposition for the AJC to stay on with the Conference”; “Outline of Discussion with Nahum Goldmann,” Jan. 9, 1952, ibid. Ironically, a few weeks later Blaustein himself met with the Chancellor Adenauer in London and other members of the presidium now complained that Blaustein was acting without the knowledge of the authorized bodies of the Claims Conference; Israel Goldstein to Moses Leavitt, Feb. 27, 1952, Israel Goldstein Archives, File 2501(b), CZA. 23. In the course of determining the size of a possible claim, Goldmann approached the largest Jewish organizations that had over the years aided Jewish refugees from the Nazis, requesting an estimate of their past expenditures. The Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds estimated that its constituent organizations alone had spent between $600 million and $800 million aiding the victims of Nazism; Israel Goldstein Archives, File 2501(a), Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds to Goldmann, Jan. 21, 1952, CZA. They were only one of a large number of philanthropic bodies involved in the resettlement of refugees. 24. Goldmann to Executive Committee, Dec. 27, 1951, CC 6676, CAHJP. 25. “Outline of Jewish Material Claims against Germany,” Feb. 13, 1952, CC 6676, CAHJP. 26. A detailed account of the Jewish material losses comprising the Conference’s estimate of the heirless assets is given in Sagi, German Reparations, 150. Cf. also memoranda on CAHJP, CC 7016, CAHJP. 27. Paper 21, June 26, 1952, CC 7016, CAHJP. 28. Louise Holborn, The International Refugee Organization (London, 1956), 41–42 29. Malcolm Proudfoot, European Refugees, 429–31. 30. Jacques Vernant, The Refugee in the Post-War World (New Haven, CT, 1953), 147. 31. Paper 21, June 26, 1952, loc cit. 32. Draft of Policy Directives to Negotiating Team, March 13, 1952, CC 6676, CAHJP. 33. Vogel, The German Path to Israel, “Report on the Discussion with Dr. Goldmann and the Members of the Israeli Delegation in Paris on May 23, 1952,” 49–53, and “Record of Conversation between Dr. Goldmann, Dr. Shinar, and Secretary of State Hallstein, Professor Boehm, Mr. Abs, and Dr. Frowein of June 10, 1952,” CC 16741, CAHJP. 34. Protocol of plenary session, June 25, 1952, CC, Master File, Working Paper 75, CAHJP. 35. Ibid. 36. “Memorandum of Past and Present Expenditures on Behalf of Victims of Nazi Action,” Conference Working Paper 77, June 26, 1952, CC, Master File, CAHJP.


253

37. “Considerations in Support of Conference Claim,” Conference Working Paper 78, June 26, 1952, CC, Master File, CAHJP. 38. Protocol of Fifteenth Plenary Session, July 16, 1952, Conference Working Paper 115, CC, Master File, CAHJP. 39. Leavitt to Kagan (in New York) July 16, 1952, CC 7021, CAHJP. 40. Leavitt to Seymour Rubin, Aug. 16, 1952, CC 7022, CAHJP. 41. Papers on CC 16700, and footnote message Goldmann to Kagan, on circulated letter March 27, 1952, CC 6676, CAHJP. 42. Untitled Conference Working Paper 66, June 23, 1952, CC, Master File, CAHJP. 43. Speech by Goldmann, Summary of Board of Directors meeting, January 1956, Israel Goldstein Archives, File 2516, CZA. 44. Protocol of February 1961 meeting of the Committee for the Utilization of the Post-1964 Funds, CC 14909, CAHJP.


11

( Nahum Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum Dina Porat

T

he fourth meeting of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) plenary, which took place in Stockholm in August 1959, determined:

in recognition of the distinguished life-long leadership of Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the [WJC], in contemporary Jewish life and in particular appreciation of his statesmanlike contribution to the unity of world Jewry, the preservation of its cultural heritage, the protection of its rights and the strengthening of its links with Zion and Israel, the fourth plenary of the [WJC] resolves that an institution bearing his name be established in Israel and serve as a living expression of the cultural and spiritual bonds which link Jewish communities in the diaspora to Israel.1 This decision was an expression of the high regard in which Goldmann was held, first and foremost, as a leader struggling to preserve a dynamic lifeline between Israel and the Jewish diaspora. Having led the WJC since its inception in 1936 and helped to engineer the retributions Israel and Jews worldwide received from Germany, Goldmann was honored by having his name attached to a proper

255

256

Dina Porat

and respected institution in Israel, which was dedicated to Jewish heritage and tradition, as he advocated over his lifetime. The question, how did this place evolve, and whether it expresses the wishes of its initiators, should be addressed, then, in relation to Goldmann’s involvement in the building of the house “bearing his name” and in the decisions that shaped its contents and structure. Three elements provide useful angles for examining this question: his practical role in developing the actual building, including fund-raising, his role in the choice of the institution’s contents, and the ideological debates he was engaged in, especially with David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister. Following the 1959 Stockholm decision, several suggestions were made to realize building the new institution. Yona Ettinger, a well-known public figure and Tel Aviv businessman—and a close friend of Goldmann—suggested dedicating a building in Tel Aviv for the WJC offices. Goldman, wary that such a move would be construed as self-aggrandizing, perhaps even at the risk of promoting himself and his activities at the expense of the WJC, suggested instead establishing a place dedicated to a respectable representation of Jewish life in the diaspora. Moreover, while he certainly favored the idea of a building bearing his name, his principled appreciation of Jewish peoplehood and the desire to create a permanent institution that reflected this stance was nevertheless of paramount importance to him. This position fueled the debate between him and Ben-Gurion regarding the role of the diaspora vis-à-vis the Jewish state, a debate to which we shall return later. George Wise, the first president of Tel Aviv University and another close friend of Goldmann, responded to the idea of creating such an institution by proposing its inclusion in the fledgling university’s development strategy and offering to share expenses and coordinate efforts in this regard with the Tel Aviv municipality. This plan was also influenced, in part, by the escalating rivalry between the senior Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the very young one in Tel Aviv. Wise was joined by Dr. Michael Landau, an activist in the Tel Aviv branch of the WJC, and by Yosele Rosenzaft, head of the Bergen-Belsen survivors association. In the mid-1950s construction began on the campus, funded by several sources, before discussing the principles or worldview according to which the museum would evolve. In the meantime, a smaller institute was established nearby, a research arm initiated by Professor Shlomo Simonsohn, then head of the Department of Jewish History, intended to be an integral part of the larger institution. It was equipped with a library, an archive, and research rooms. This infrastructure set the stage for a fruitful synergy that later emerged between the two institutions.2 In 1968 the “house” was already there—big and empty. Not coincidentally most of the building was completed after the June 1967 war, which so effectively forged Jewish identification with Israel—indeed, by then a diaspora museum seemed to be more necessary than in previous years. An endless array of meetings and consultations ensued, continuing for about ten years, both in Israel and abroad, in search of the proper name and purpose for the new insti-

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 257 tution. Goldmann participated in all the meetings that took place while he was in the country, regarding them as a matter of utmost importance. Until 1973 Meir Weisgal, a close associate of Goldmann and a man imbued with a talent for originating initiatives, served as president of the institution’s first association; Goldmann was named honorary president. Goldmann subsequently replaced Weisgal, and the president of the state of Israel, Zalman Shazar, now became the honorary president. At this juncture discussions began regarding the proper name for the institution, resulting in “Beit Hatefuzot (The House of the Jewish Diapora)—The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora.” It was thus to bear Goldmann’s name as decided in Stockholm, despite the lone opposition of Aryeh Dulzin, then secretary of the Jewish Agency, who was also appointed the institution’s vice president to avoid additional political trouble).3 The term “diaspora” (tefuzah in Hebrew) was selected over that of “exiles” (in Hebrew, galuyot), because it carries a more positive connotation, one that fitted the museum’s goal: to emphasize the diaspora and its Jewish communities as a wellspring of culture and traditions, while “exile” connoted suffering and destruction, or perhaps a divine punishment for the chosen people’s sins, as the prophets predicted. Having been elected president, Goldmann participated in the general meetings of the association’s directors. After Beit Hatefuzot opened in 1978, he continued to participate in the institution’s stewardship through the Directors’ Council. He actively participated in the council’s debates—even chairing most of the meetings between 1972 and 1976—and he was instrumental in fundraising, especially in Germany through the instrumentality of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. He thus helped to create a network of Friends of Beit Hatefuzot associations abroad, while working to acquire collections for the museum, produce documentaries and features on Jewish life, and tamp down the political tensions that intermittently arose among the museum’s original designers and various committee members. He also strove to prevent the establishment of an institution to be named Beit Wohlin (The Wohlin House) in nearby Givataim, outside of Tel Aviv, that threatened to emerge as a potential competitor. With respect to Beit Hatefuzot’s leadership, Goldmann insisted on the right of appointing all seven members of the Directors’ Council. In the event, a compromise was reached in this regard by the municipality of Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv University, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Ministry of Finance, the United Jewish Appeal, the WJC, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica Foundation (represented by Goldmann). It was duly decided that each would have a representative on the council. This outcome, which enhanced Beit Hatefuzot’s position as a national enterprise and one of Israel’s premiere museums, reflects the scope of support for the concept of Beit Hatefuzot as well as the vast reach of Goldmann’s personal and official contacts and his singular ability to engineer financial and moral cooperation between the Jewish state and the diaspora.4 Goldmann’s involvement in the practical affairs of Beit Hatefuzot was crucial to the institution’s development. It was a very personal involvement, in

258

Dina Porat

which questions of status and prestige, presidency and appointments, played a key role. The success and well-being of an enterprise named after him mattered a great deal to him, and he did not want to take the chance of letting others assume too much responsibility. His deep involvement in the planning of Beit Hatefuzot—from the museum’s exhibits to its activities—also had significant national and international implications because the institution itself stood at the intersection of very basic issues of Israel-diaspora relations. Goldmann’s principles are therefore a basis for the understanding of the concept behind such a diaspora museum. Two years before the Stockholm decision, during the Zionist gathering of 1957 in Jerusalem, a serious public confrontation took place between David Ben-Gurion and Goldmann. The issue was the definition of the diaspora, its essence and character, after nine years of statehood. Goldmann claimed that the diaspora was indeed an unfortunate historical fate, but that the suffering of the Jews did not contradict the value and importance of Jewish history and creativity during the previous 2000 years. Ben-Gurion could hardly contain his anger when replying: I cannot share Goldmann’s glorification of the diaspora. Each of us admires the Jews for withstanding their suffering, but the exile in which Jews lived and still live in, is in my view a miserable, poor, destitute, doubtful experience, nothing to be proud of. On the contrary—it should be negated by all possible negations. The glorification of the exile cannot go hand in hand with Zionism.5 Goldmann was speaking on this occasion about the diaspora in the past tense because so much of it had been already destroyed in the Holocaust and the future of many Jewish communities worldwide now seemed bleak in the late 1950s. Moreover, his logical analysis of Jewish history conflicted with his emotional dislike of the diaspora because of two reasons: first, the aesthetic one—for with time, he believed, Jews became talkative and noisy and conspicuous—and second, one of anxiety and apprehension, that is, his dim view of the homeless diaspora Jew, the wandering Jew, who lived a miserable, dangerous, and often painful existence. Ben-Gurion, on the other hand, was adamant and had no inner conflicts. He flatly asserted that exile is a state of mind and cannot be accepted. He refused to grant the exile and the state the same status and importance in the future existence of the Jewish people. The exile cannot exist without Israel, claimed Ben-Gurion, while the opposite is possible. Goldmann’s response: The diaspora is an equal partner and the state is but an instrument. BenGurion’s retort: The Jewish state is a precious instrument. Goldmann: When national states come to an end, the world will go on without them. The only point they could agree on was that the diaspora was a continuing phenomenon. They also recalled, perhaps to avoid a public relations crisis, the summer of 1950 agreement between Ben-Gurion and Jacob Blaustein, then president

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 259 of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which acknowledged the Jewish community in the United States as an “elder sister” (and not a diaspora community) and declared an end to Israeli attempts to convince American Jewish youngsters that Israel should be their new home.6 Was the Stockholm decision, taken two years after this sharp debate in Jerusalem, in essence a declaration of support granted to Goldmann by WJC members in addition to other followers and admirers? Was it their way to express an opinion regarding the Ben-Gurion–Goldmann dispute? Although this was not explicitly stated, quite possibly the participants in that fateful WJC meeting wished to underscore Goldmann’s position on the diaspora and to support his intellectual and historical insight. An appreciation of Goldmann’s power of analysis came not only from the WJC circles. For example, in an homage marking the fifth anniversary of Goldmann’s death, the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote about Goldmann’s personality and thinking, referring to their discussions in the early 1940s. “His views originated in deep thinking,” he wrote. “He was extremely dedicated to these views, and in my opinion, many of them were quite valid.” With respect to the issue of the Jewish diaspora and its representation in Israel, Berlin quoted Goldmann, who lamented the tendency of many Israeli youngsters to view their past as an heroic story—namely, as a drama unfolding from the time of the ancient warriors Bar-Giora and Bar-Kochba and reaching into the present modern age through the Zionist pioneering activity of Labor leader Yosef Trumpeldor and the Haganah, as if the hundreds of diaspora years never existed. He also deplored the tendency to eliminate the Holocaust from the new Israeli national identity, as if this part of Jewish history were made only of subjugation and martyrdom, and had little or no bearing on a free, proud, and self-confident modern Jewish identity. Such a collective psychological repression, claimed Goldmann (according to Berlin), was itself a kind of barbarity, for civilized people should fully know their origins and past.7 Berlin remembered many enjoyable encounters with Goldmann whom he used to meet while serving as a British official in Washington, D.C., during World War II. He recalled Goldmann’s central ideas, ones that were often raised in their intimate conversations: Those Jewish martyrs, who chose to live as Jews, were no less heroic than those who struggled for the establishment of Israel and gave their lives for its sake. He [Goldmann] opposed the notion that only in Israel can Jews enjoy full human and civic rights, and that the loyalty of diaspora Jews to Israel comes before their claim to such rights in their respective countries. Such notions were in his eyes a denial of the whole Jewish tradition, the Bible and the prophets, the Babylonian Talmud and its commentators, the Golden Age in Spain, and should be held as historically, morally, and politically unacceptable to free individuals.8

260

Dina Porat

This summary of Goldmann’s ideas leads us right into the heart of the issue of the structure and ideational thrust of Beit Hatefuzot. The first design concept, implemented once the building was completed in 1968, was a museum in which the interior space would be divided among various diasporic Jewish communities. Each exhibit was to present the history and characteristics of a specific group, its traditions and cultural achievements. Meanwhile, the visitor, passing from one exhibit to the next, would thus gain a full picture of the history of Jewish civilization. Beit Hatefuzot’s fund-raising campaign thus originated at the outset among the landsmanshaftn (mutual-aid societies) created by many European Jewish refugees abroad, especially in the Americas, with Goldmann encouraging friends and acquaintances to contribute generously to the cause. Against this backdrop, a formal agreement was reached whereby out of each dollar raised by the landsmanshaftn 90¢ would go to the Jewish state, and 10¢ for the building of Beit Hatefuzot. This dual strategy, which promised to be an additional channel for raising funds for Israel, was established with the blessing of Pinhas Sapir, then minister of finance. After a short while, however, it became clear that such a fund-raising strategy would lead to endless repetition, and that it lacked any synthesis of themes or a binding leitmotif. At this point a series of consultations began, lasting for a number of years, until the beginning of the 1970s, when a solution was finally found. Goldmann remained very active and involved in the ensuing consultations, in part, out of dedication to the basic idea of Beit Hatefuzot because he felt committed and responsible for the funds raised by the landsmanshaftn, and, no doubt, owing to his determination to prove just how wrongheaded were the Zionist dogmas against which he battled.9 The core of Beit Hatefuzot’s first team included Goldmann; Yeshayahu (Shaike) Weinberg, formerly director of the Chamber Theatre and whose father came from Goldmann’s shtetl; Shlomo Simonsohn, who was appointed chief historical councilor and rector of Tel Aviv University; and the indefatigable Meir Weisgal, the longtime personal assistant of the late Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president. A distinguished group of authors, thinkers, historians, and designers was also approached for their input. Their recommendations represented a broad spectrum of views. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and acclaimed author, proposed creating a model of his Polish hometown, Sighet, as it appeared on the eve of Nazi invasion of September 1, 1939. The museum guides, he suggested, would be dressed according to the prewar fashion as if working and laboring in their respective workshops, schools, and businesses, thus acquainting the visitor with the lost treasures of the Jewish people. Ben-Zion Dinur, a leading Israeli historian and former minister of education, suggested a different thematic approach. He argued that the longings of the Jews for the Land of Israel over the course many generations should serve as a leitmotif for the museum as a whole, thus also advancing the Jewish state’s agenda of Zionist education. Yet another view came from Salo W. Baron, a distinguished historian at Columbia University in New York City,

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 261 whose work was dedicated to the exploration of Jewish culture and religion as an integral component of the history of human civilization. Baron insisted on a strictly scientifically based model. In fact, Goldmann personally sought out Baron’s advice during one of his many trips to New York, as well as the assistance of Stephen Kaiser at the University of California at Los Angeles. Kaiser pointed out an additional obstacle to the creation of the museum’s exhibits— the dearth of relevant historical objects and Judaica artifacts, many of which were either lost over the centuries or pillaged and destroyed by enemies and host societies more powerful than the vulnerable diasporic Jewish communities themselves. Carl Katz of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art suggested a creative solution to this dilemma. He recommended that Beit Hatefuzot itself undertake the replication of significant historical objects, thus enabling the museum to illustrate the full panoply of Jewish civilization since time immemorial. Such a notion worried Kaiser and others who feared the end result would be a “Jewish Disneyland.”10 A clear consensus was not reached. Meanwhile, the meetings and debates went on, encompassing a broad range of issues: How should a balance among the periods be maintained? Among geographic regions? Between Jewish communities and leaders, Ashkenazi and Sephardi? Between suffering and heroism, disasters and creativity? Between Israel and the diaspora? What is, if indeed one exists, the definition of Judaism and of the characteristics of Jewish history? And if the relations between Israel and the diaspora change, should the exhibition be changed accordingly? Many participated in the deliberations and voiced their opinions, and Goldmann insisted on three main elements: (1) the contribution of Jews, as individuals and as a group, to world culture and science and to humanity; (2) the generations-old longings for Zion; and (3) a lively representation of the diaspora—not a tombstone. The other problems under discussion, concerning mainly the scientific and/or artistic basis of the exhibition, interested him to a lesser degree.11 Weisgal convinced Goldmann to meet Abba Kovner, the poet and partisan, in his kibbutz, Ein Hahoresh. By that time Kovner had already designed the museum in Yad Mordekhai, which became an immediate success when it opened in 1968. Emphasizing both the Holocaust and the 1948 War of Independence, the museum concepts developed by Kovner later had an impact on the development of the Yad Vashem museum in the early 1970s. In 1970 Kovner was awarded the Israel prize for his literary and life work. But Weisgal and Goldmann did not know by that time that Kovner, who grew up in Vilna, the Jerusalem of Lithuania, between the two world wars, already had in his mind’s eyes a kind of a “Vilna model” that was directly relevant to their deliberations. He witnessed in Vilna a vibrant Jewish community, as varied and heterogeneous as any community could possibly be—political parties, movements, and ideologies of the whole social and cultural spectrum, education systems ranging from the far left to religious orthodoxy, press and literature in several languages, artistic creativity, libraries, and scientific institutes. Despite the differences among its

262

Dina Porat

sections, Jewish Vilna constituted one unified community with proper institutions and leadership—one overarching framework for many an opinion. “The dispute,” wrote Kovner, “is a cornerstone of Jewish culture.”12 Neither did they know that he had already tried, as a founder and later commander of the ghetto multimovements underground to implement his Vilna model when the Germans invaded Lithuania in 1941. Or that when they left liberated Vilna toward the end of 1944, he and the survivors he led southward founded an apolitical, nonpartisan entity into which survivors of all political hues could be accepted. Furthermore, in the Gvati Brigade during the 1948 War of Independence, he fostered tight contacts among newcomers from all over the world. In short, Kovner ceaselessly strove to create unified frameworks in which every Jew could be different.13 A few years after the state was established, Kovner, always imbued with a strong sense of mission and responsibility for the public he felt so much part of, took a leave from his kibbutz and family for a number of months and embarked on a visiting tour of the Jewish communities in the diaspora. He wanted to know whether “this state has a people? . . . What was left of the Jews abroad, in quantity and quality, and do they really wish for a national existence?”14 During his travels, especially in the 1950s, the idea of establishing a visual enterprise crystallized in his mind: a pluralistic and inclusive representation of the treasures of the Jewish communities lost over time due to immigration, totalitarian regimes, assimilation, and the Holocaust. He wished for the multidimensionality of worldwide Jewish life to be equally included in such a presentation. He firmly believed such a portrayal would enrich contemporary Jewish life and constructively promote Zionism. Little did he know that the same idea was being debated somewhere else. He even possessed an idea similar to Wiesel’s, namely, to have a ship outfitted with a full size shtetl on board sail around the world. Thus, when Goldman and Kovner finally met, the timing was unusually auspicious for both sides. Initially, Goldmann and Kovner seemed to be polar opposites. Goldmann was a man of the world, urbane, handsomely dressed, keen on enjoying what life had to offer, a key component of the Jewish establishment and at home in the large communities and cities where Jews resided worldwide. By contrast, Kovner, a kibbutznik, with sandals and a ubiquitous tembel hat, was a seldom smiling Holocaust survivor, antiestablishment to his core. In fact, however, Goldmann and Kovner had a lot in common regarding the basic questions of Jewish existence. The immediate rapport struck between them was later reflected in the plans they developed for Beit Hatefuzot. First, Goldmann and Kovner were both born in Lithuania, and had, as many Litvaks do, a very strong sense of belonging to a special brand of Jews, one that shaped their self-confidence as individuals and as Jews. “Self-confidence, lack of complex when handling contacts with the gentile world . . . a whole and undoubted Jewish awareness, without any need to apologize,” were the treasures Goldmann acquired in Lithuania.15 Goldmann was actually raised in his

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 263 grandparents’ home in Visznewo before leaving for Germany at age six with his family, which continued to foster contacts with Eastern European Jews. Both imbibed from their childhood environment an enormous admiration for the Jewish religion, especially for Judaism’s ancient traditions and customs, for the annual cycle of life and rhythm that a Jew lived and experienced across generations. Both appreciated the role Judaism played in binding the nation together, despite the geographic dispersion. Indeed, they both advocated the potential role tradition could still play, not necessarily for observant Jews, but rather for socialist, secular, Zionist Jews in the postwar era. As early as 1947, in a lecture delivered at Yad Vashem, Kovner spoke about “the glue of tradition” that deteriorated with the advent of secularism and universal ideologies long before the Holocaust so that once the soul of the divided people was murdered, later murdering its body was much easier. Goldmann, on the other hand, wrote about the “Jewish religion as contents and as a way of life, without which no Jewish people would have survived.”16 Like Kovner, he too possessed an intimate knowledge of Jewish traditions and sources, which he first acquired in his grandfather’s home. Their common origins and the profound impact in this regard are reflected in Beit Hatefuzot’s permanent exhibit. The museum does not merely present visitors with the cultural riches of Jewish life in nineteenth and twentieth centuries (that is, prior to the Holocaust) but also the museum stresses the times Jews were held together by the power of tradition and a majority of Jewish communities still adhered to the ancient cycle of Jewish life. It is not, and certainly was not meant to be, a tombstone erected in memory of an obliterated past, but rather an expression of a contemporary quest for a new sense of unity that might serve as the basis of a renewed commitment to peoplehood. Kovner always strove to build a common framework for all Jews and the Holocaust only strengthened his resolve in this regard. Meanwhile, Goldmann worked for a common Jewish framework in which the fledgling Jewish state and Jewish communities abroad would find equal terms of reference and coexistence. A second meeting point between Goldman and Kovner was their attitude to the negation of the diaspora, as advocated by formal Zionism, and first and foremost by Ben-Gurion. Interestingly, both Kovner and Goldmann considered this conundrum from a distinctively Zionist point of view, each regarding himself as a zealous Zionist. Worth noting, too, is their disparate personal approaches: Goldmann served as president of both the WJC and of the World Zionist Organization (WZO); Kovner was a founding member of a kibbutz in Israel. Both asserted that it was in Zionism’s interest and for the sake of its future that the diaspora should not be negated. They argued there was no immanent contradiction between their Zionist views and their acceptance of the diaspora’s legitimacy, but rather that such views were complementary. They posited that canonizing a text or a ceremony takes a very long time in the history of a human society. Therefore, Zionism, still in its very first stages, should do better than disregarding the treasures created before it came into

264

Dina Porat

being. Instead, it should use such treasures, integrate them into its orbit, and generate a new synthesis to enrich Jewish life in Israel and abroad. Kovner, for example, succeeded in integrating into his kibbutz—a thoroughly socialistatheist community—slowly but steadily, a communal Passover seder, a wedding ceremony, the recitation of kadish over one’s grave, and mishloakh manot on Purim. The latter innovations on traditional forms were fashioned in accordance with the highly secular outlook of the new state, yet they retained more than a hint of traditional Jewish values and attitudes. Goldmann thus placed a premium on the idea that Zionists should respect the diaspora, particularly its manifold cultural, artistic, and scientific contributions to the world at large. By doing so, he asserted, one actually pays respect to oneself, to one’s own roots and origins.17 Indeed, Beit Hatefuzot’s permanent exhibit portrays, with the utmost sensitivity, a blend of Jewish and Zionist holidays as well as the longing for Zion as a source of Jewish creativity in the diaspora. This brings us to the third point of confluence between Goldmann and Kovner. Both maintained the Jewish people and hence Jewish history are unique and that Jewish life’s most important feature is the emphasis on continuity. Although they did not meet until the 1970s, both had previously expressed their philosophical disdain for the classical Zionist view of Jewish life that sliced history into three parts; that is, (1) Jewish history before the exile, (2) the black hole of the diaspora culminating in the catastrophic destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis, and (3) Zionism. This ideological stance, transmitted to Israeli youth through the state’s education system, was dubbed “from Tanakh to Palmakh,” namely from biblical times to the Zionist campaign to create the Jewish state. As noted earlier, Goldmann went so far as to tell Isaiah Berlin that the attempt to wipe out one’s roots was equal to a denial of Jewish history as a whole, a “kind of barbarity.”18 Jewish civilization, he asserted, was built layer by layer, one on top of the former, with the former contributing to the next. Similarly, when Ein Hahoresh celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, Kovner turned the dining hall into a shore, reached by a ship on whose deck stood kibbutz members, all of whom were once newcomers from eleven Jewish communities. In this way, he illustrated the point that those who immigrate to Israel are not reborn on arrival. Each individual carries a name, a language, and a culture that need not be abandoned—treasures that will enrich the new Jewish society-in-the-making. There are no new beginnings, Kovner asserted, because starting from the beginning means losing one’s past, which is the source of the individual’s and the collective’s identity.19 In early 1971 Kovner was formally approached and asked for his opinion about the creation of Beit Hatefuzot. He immediately produced a plan, but it was speedily dismissed by Professor Simonsohn, a man of very clear words, as a somber and depressing chronicle of suffering. When Kovner himself solicited the youngsters of Ein Hahoresh for their opinion of his plan, they answered that one Yad Vashem is absolutely enough. Next, Kovner devised another plan based on the concepts he had so successfully used at Yad Mordekhai.

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 265 The new plan was approved in principle and a team of architects (Dora Gad and Rafi Blumenfeld), a painter (Dani Karavan), and a historian (Dr. Elie BenGal) elaborated on the details together with Kovner. Goldmann maintained an active interest and presence in the planning meetings, but once he was certain Kovner shared his views he did not interfere with the actual development of the exhibit and instead concentrated on practical activities related to the building of the museum. In the final analysis, the process resulted in a full-scale realization of the Goldmann-Kovner concept of Israel-diaspora relations and the nexus between Jewish and Zionist history. Upon entering the exhibit space, the visitor is immediately confronted with an inscription on the wall facing the staircase, which speaks about a nation dispersed among the gentiles, in various locations and for many centuries— “and they are one family.” This is a primary message visitors carry throughout their stay: the unity of the Jewish nation, across time and space. Once visitors pass the forlorn display of Roman soldiers burning and looting the Second Temple, they face numerous frames filled with changing photographs of faces of Jews of every age, color, and expression, adorned by a variety of head attire. The faces keep changing, thus telling visitors that very different people can live together in one frame, in unity but not in uniformity, much as Kovner experienced his youth in Vilna before the war. As visitors proceed, they reach the first gate, the family gate. Here the holidays and family ceremonies, from the brit [ritual circumcision] to the kadish [mourner’s prayer] are presented, in their traditional as well as their new Erez Israeli version. The wall bears yet another inscription: “There is no Jew lonely in his holidays.” In other words, Jews do not live alone and they do not create alone; they are individuals, but constitute part of a public community. As well, the wider community belongs to each individual, because each contributes to its texture and makeup, and likewise each can always depend on the community for support, not only on holidays. Thus, Judaism is depicted as a public culture, not a repressive social framework, but rather fertile ground for enriching the individual with centuries-old traditions and treasures. This narrative continues to unfold as visitors move through the museum: from the family gate they enter the community gate where the amazing variety of institutions in a Jewish community are demonstrated, from a mikveh [ritual bath] to a hevrah kadishah [burial society], from the heder [traditional Jewish school] to bikur holim [visiting the sick], and so forth. Next is the martyrological column that cuts vertically through the house’s three floors. In other words, the individual, equipped with the strength acquired at home and in his or her immediate environment, can now face the community’s suffering: the column looks like a cage, a prison, or a camp, surrounded by metal wire, with a faint light— intended to symbolize the eternal hope of redemption—beaming from within. Next to the column a large book, “the Scrolls of Fire,” depicts in fifty-two chapters (parallel to the number of weeks in the Jewish calendar, which is based on the lunar cycle) the suffering of the Jewish people in exile. On the adjacent wall,

266

Dina Porat

a large inscription speaks about the Holocaust, squarely assigning blame for European Jewry’s destruction on the Germans and their accomplices, and conspicuously refraining from implicating the Jews themselves, their leadership, the Yishuv, and the communities of the free world. “Locked in the ghettos they defended their souls, and the world stood by, silent.” The message here is clear: It was the very soul of humanity for which the wartime Jewish resistance fought, for enduring values and for human dignity. Respect for the diaspora is here at its utmost. The Holocaust is not depicted as a source of shame. Rather, the Jews who perished and the survivors are to be commended for their moral strength. Visitors leave the latter space and enter the gates of “faith” and “creativity.” They are thus informed that the Jewish individual, forged by family and community, emerges out of suffering with an even stronger faith in Judaism and with the sensitivity and inducement required to be a creative member of Jewish society. Faith is demonstrated by several exquisite models of synagogues from around the globe, including several historic buildings the Nazis destroyed. Creativity is meanwhile depicted on all levels, from the era of the Mishnah and the Talmud through generations of rabbinic commentaries, and finally to modern secular authors, poets, scientists, and Nobel prize laureates, a vast array of cultural achievements by a numerically marginal group of people. Next comes, as it is called in Hebrew, “the gate of existence” (or in English, “Among the Nations”), which depicts thirteen stations on the long road of history, recalling the biblical journey from Egypt to the land of Canaan. At each station, a Jewish community is depicted living among a host society and creating its own profile, sometimes under better or worse conditions, until another Jewish center arises at the next station. Following this journey, visitors arrive at the “gate of return,” which concludes the exhibit with the return to Zion. Visitors, having passed seven gates (again a symbolic number) reach the last inscription: “Remember the past, live in the present, trust the future.” Visitors thus leave the museum presumably with the knowledge that Jewish history comprises a long chain of events, innovations, and ideas, and no one is permitted to separate its links, not even the modern Zionist movement. In May 1978, at Beit Hatefuzot’s inaugural ceremony, which coincided with the state’s thirtieth anniversary, Kovner asserted that “if the Jews will draw from their past knowledge of and love for their heritage, they will have the strength to open the gates of their future.”20 This is, in fact, what Goldmann himself proclaimed, especially in response to criticism that Beit Hatfeuzot might become a monument to a dead past. Interestingly, when Kovner returned home following the inauguration, he wrote to himself that the exodus out of Egypt started when God told Moses to tell the Israelites, “I am hath sent me unto you” (Exodus 3:14). Written in the present tense, the English translation of the biblical phrase actually misses Kovner’s point. In other words, using an imperative form, the phrase suggests that God does not reside where a person says, “I was,” nor where he or she says, “I am.” Rather, if we still can say, “I’ll be, in the future tense, we still have a spark of the creator in us.”21

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 267 Goldmann’s role in establishing Beit Hatefuzot was clearly substantial. Viewed from the perspective of biography, the role that the museum itself played in his life is also worth considering. In 1978, when Beit Hatefuzot opened to the public, Goldmann was eightythree years old. Except for a small out-of-the way street named for Goldmann in Jaffa, the museum was at that time the only place bearing his name in Israel. Moreover, the museum stands at a major entrance to the campus of Tel Aviv University, in the very center of the country, and the exterior wall, which faces the campus entrance, bears a large bold inscription with his name. He died in 1982, having witnessed the museum’s early success. Hundreds of thousands of visitors flocked to Beit Hatefuzot in this period, making the museum one of “the three musts” of a visit to Israel (together with the Western Wall and Masada). This success helped him to swallow an otherwise bittersweet pill because his many important political achievements did not win him recognition by any of Israel’s top leaders. Meanwhile, the museum bearing his name was very much a result of his own efforts, and it brought him a lot of satisfaction. He was pleased by Professor Simonsohn’s assertion that two to three visits to the museum—in elementary and high school and during the army service—are enough to immune an Israeli youngster against that “black hole,” the negation of the diaspora.22 This then was a mission satisfactorily and successfully accomplished, a living embodiment of the principles he held most dear, and a dramatic statement of Jewish uniqueness and continuity as well as a summary of his decades-long public service on behalf of the Jewish people. Beit Hatefuzot was indeed the third in a line of cultural enterprises Goldmann initiated at different stages in his life. The first was a Jewish encyclopedia, an idea his uncle, Abraham Shalkovich (Ben-Avigdor), conceived. Only after his uncle’s death in 1924 did the “Eshkol” association, which Goldmann and Dr. Jacob Klatzkin established in Berlin, embark upon its publication in Hebrew and German at the same time. Two Hebrew volumes and ten in German appeared between 1928 and 1934, before the Nazi regime put an end to the project and destroyed 40,000 unsold volumes. This short- lived effort was an important and innovative achievement. The editorial board, which Klatzkin headed, enlisted scholars and intellectuals of the highest niveaux gathered in post–World War I Germany, and they helped to transform the orbit of the encyclopedia into an important cultural lodestar. They managed to publish both comprehensive entries, which were essentially extensive monographs on basic topics, as well as very short ones. “The novelty brought by the ‘Eshkol’ encyclopedia,” claims an entry in the Israeli Hebrew encyclopedia, “is the new and original elaboration of entries, whose writers and editors did not rely on the former English Jewish Encyclopedia as others did.”23 Moreover, this was an attempt to fulfill the Zionist thinker Ahad Haam’s challenge, first sounded in 1894, for an encyclopedia that would be “a treasure of Judaism,” dedicated to the “thorough knowledge of all aspects of Judaism during the generations, from the view point and taste of the modern

268

Dina Porat

Jew, who wishes for national revival.”24 It was young Goldmann’s first serious attempt to conflate Zionism and Judaism as one entity. The association he was part of conceived a publication in Hebrew and German that examined Judaism from the angle of cultural Zionism as preached by Ahad Haam. Goldmann and his close elder friend and associate, Klatzkin, traveled to the United States in 1925 to enlist financial support for their enterprise, but they returned empty handed. Goldmann next managed to persuade the wellknown Jewish banker, Jacob Goldschmidt, who resided in Germany, to fund the project for several years. This was Goldmann’s first successful attempt to raise money from magnates who otherwise showed little interest in Jewish public life. Deploying considerable personal charm, Goldmann’s capacity for artful persuasion was already evident in this early phase of his career. He next made the acquaintance of a host of Jewish and non-Jewish personalities, including Albert Einstein, and maintained these contacts throughout his lifetime.25 These experiences were to prove very useful in the future, including his last major project—building support for the establishment of Beit Hatefuzot. Following World War II, Goldmann tried revive and complete the German-Hebrew encyclopedia project. Efforts in this regard began in the late 1950s and ultimately paved the way for the Encyclopaedia Judaica, a sixteenvolume work published in 1971 in English in Jerusalem. Goldmann, satisfied with the result, including Encyclopaedia Judaica’s stature as the premier academic reference work in the field of modern Jewish studies, noted, “The notion of a comprehensive Jewish encyclopedia that would make the knowledge of Judaism accessible to the Jewish and the gentile world, and also record the Jewish contribution to world culture had been advocated by many Jewish scholars and thinkers of the previous generation”—and, it might be added, by a long line of editorial activists of the twentieth century.26 The second of Goldmann’s major cultural innovations was the establishment in 1964 of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, of which he served as president until his death. The foundation was created with $10 million of German reparations funds following discussions in which Goldmann persuaded German chancellor Konrad Adenauer that the Holocaust was not only a matter of physical annihilation, but also an attempt to eradicate Jewish culture and civilization. The foundation’s mandate was therefore to reconstruct “Jewish cultural life around the world after the Shoah.”27 Located in New York City, the foundation continues to this day to support research, education, documentation, and publications in Jewish studies with a special emphasis on work concerning the Holocaust. Originally, Goldman had even higher hopes as to what the foundation might accomplish, including the formation of a cultural parliament of the Jewish people. He had in mind, perhaps, the Jewish cultural center in Berlin that flourished when the aforementioned encyclopedia project first began. Although the foundation has not yielded a plenary as once Goldmann envisioned, it has nevertheless accomplished much of its original mandate as a center of intellectual and scholarly activity, including academic

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 269 consultations, public symposia, and support for a wide variety of educational and cultural enterprises. Over time, it published thousands of books and monographs of Jewish interest in dozens of languages, including many designed especially for Eastern European society before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, thousands of scholarships and fellowships have helped artists, writers, and researchers to complete their creative and intellectual works. Other services were rendered to communities in distress, especially those lacking in Jewish knowledge and consciousness, and hundreds of young leaders were trained in communal and educational service. According to Jerry Hochbaum, the foundation’s executive vice president, Goldmann envisaged the tension currently evident between the preservation of Judaism as a unique culture and the Jews’ integration into modern society.28 Indeed, since the opening up of the Soviet regime in the 1990s, this has emerged as not only a Jewish concern, but also a worldwide dilemma accentuated by millions of Jewish immigrants flocking to richer Western countries. The third of Goldmann’s major cultural projects was, of course, the creation of Beit Hatefuzot. The encyclopedia, the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the museum share a common theme: the preservation and promotion of Jewish culture and its uniqueness. These institutions are no doubt great achievements, especially when viewed as a triad, although they are often overshadowed by Goldmann’s accomplishments in the political and diplomatic arenas. Yet assuming that he did not pay, and with hard currency, for his lifestyle and for his principles regarding the present status of the Jewish communities vis-à-vis the Zionist one would be a mistake. As for the question of style, he possessed no fewer than seven passports, but an Israeli one was not among them. He was a lavishly living wandering Jew, changing his mind and viewpoint when he saw fit, a striking opposite to the austere clearcut dedication most Zionist leaders of the day preached. As for moral principles, to which he adhered rigorously, they made him a frequent critic and even sometimes an outspoken opponent of Zionist and Israeli policies. He insisted on the equal status of the world’s Jewish communities vis-à-vis the modern state of Israel, and he moreover asserted the diaspora’s essential role in Israel’s ongoing development and survival. He declaimed the national and religious rights of Jews wherever they reside and not only their right to immigrate to Israel. He argued that one could remain a faithful Zionist and still live in the diaspora. He asserted that Israeli policies should take diaspora Jewish communities into account and support them, culturally and socially, so that they do not assimilate. In short, his identification with the diaspora was at least as strong as with the Zionist movement—a stance that earned him not only a position as a gadfly but the sharpest and most searing of public criticism, as if he were somehow neither zealous nor loyal enough to the Zionist cause. He never became a minister in an Israeli government. For that matter, no evidence suggests he was considered for such a position, at least not formally. David Ben-Gurion, his major opponent, would never have tolerated him as a

270

Dina Porat

partner in the fledgling state’s government. Indeed, his eighty-fifth birthday was celebrated outside of Israel, without the presence of even one of the country’s chief representatives.29 To be sure, Israeli society—even in the 1950s— included critics with even stronger antiestablishment views than Goldmann. Not one of them, however, aroused such passionate criticism as Goldmann, nor were they branded as diaspora Jews or with the epithet of being a “shtadlan” [court Jew]. In the final analysis, the role Beit Hatefuzot played in Goldmann’s life was a crucial and significant one: it was the embodiment of the ideas he fought and paid for with his life’s work.

Notes 1. On the Stockholm decision, see the Goldmann files, file 1969–April 1971, Beit Hatefuzot Archive (hereafter BHA). 2. Based on interviews by the author in the summer 1998 with Shlomo Simonshon and Michael Landau’s widow as well as Zvi Jabets, Daniel Carpi, and Aharon Openheimer, who were consulted in the early stages of researching this piece. 3. The Goldmann files, file 1969–April 1971, BHA. Yosele Rosenzaft contributed 90,000 IL for the purchase of the land. The United Jewish Appeal established an office of fundraising for landsmanshaftn. Additionally, expenses were shared by the Tel Aviv municipality, Tel Aviv University, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Israeli government, and the WJC. Goldmann also raised funds through the Judaica Foundation and the Claims Conference. 4. See the Directors’ Council files, April 1971–December 1976 and May 1978–July 1983. See especially the 22.5.1979 meeting protocol. The preceding description of the debate as reflected in written sources is but a short summary. Apparently, especially according to oral testimonies, appointments were a far more complicated matter. 5. Cited in Yosef Gorny, The Quest for Collective Identity (Tel Aviv, 1990), 115–16 (in Hebrew). See also Aharon Alperin, Nahum Goldmann (Tel Aviv, 1978), 54–64 (in Hebrew), and Yeshayahu (Shaike) Weinberg, “Nahum Goldmann’s Jewish Historiosophy,” BHA, no date. 6. Gorny, Quest, n. 5, 64–74. 7. Isaiah Berlin, “Nahum Goldmann: A Tribute”, Gesher 116: 33 (Summer 1987): 73–78 (in Hebrew). 8. Ibid., and Weinberg, “Nahum Goldmann’s Jewish Historiosophy,” n. 5. 9. Administration files 1968–1972, BHA. See especially Directors’ Council meeting, 17.5.1972; and an interview by the author with Dr. Eli Ben-Gal in summer 2003. 10. Dina Porat, Beyond the Material: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner (Tel Aviv, 2000), 336 (in Hebrew). 11. See Goldmann’s remarks in the Directors’ Council meeting on 17.5.1972 (BHA); also based on an interview by the author with Vitka Kovner in summer 1998.

Goldmann and the Establishment of the Diaspora Museum 271 12. Abba Kovner, “The Dispute: A Corner Stone of Jewish Culture,” in Beyond Mourning, ed. Muki Tsur (Tel Aviv, 1998), 225–33, (Hebrew). 13. Porat, Beyond the Material, ch. 2. 14. Abba Kovner at the Hakibbutz Haarzi Council in Kfar Menahem, 26.11.1961, Moreshet Archive, Givat Havivah, D.2.234. 15. Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann (Jerusalem, 1972), ch. 1; Alperin, Nahum Goldmann, 7. 16. Abba Kovner at the first Yad Vashem conference in Jerusalem, 13–14, 7.1947, Yad Yaari Archive, Givat Havivah, 9.8.3–95. Nahum Goldmann, On My People’s Roads ( Jerusalem, 1968), 91–92 (in Hebrew). 17. See Nahum Goldmann, A Generation of Destruction and Resurrection ( Jerusalem, 1966), especially parts two and four (in Hebrew). Porat, Beyond the Material, ch. 3. 18. Isaiah Berlin, “Nahum Goldmann”; Nahum Goldmann, On My People’s Roads, 114. 19. Porat, Beyond the Material, 349. 20. Abba Kovner, On the Narrow Bridge: Essays (Tel Aviv, 1980), 208–209 (in Hebrew). 21. See Abba Kovner’s files in the Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh archive. 22. Based on an interview by the author with Simonsohn. 23. The Hebrew Encyclopedia ( Jerusalem, 1959), vol. 4, 646–47; Alperin, Nahum Goldmann, 18–19; Nahum Goldmann, Autobiography, ch. 7; Jacob Draenger, Nahoum Goldmann (Paris, 1956), vol. I. Most of the volume concerns the encyclopedia. 24. The Hebrew Encyclopedia ( Jerusalem, 1957), vol. 1, 31–32. Is it a coincidence that Klatzkin is mentioned in this introduction and Goldmann is not, especially when one considers that the volume was published in 1957 at the time of the BenGurion–Goldmann debate? 25. Alperin, Nahum Goldmann, 18–19. Nahum Goldmann, Autobiography, ch. 7. 26. See n. 23. 27. Dr. Jerry Hochbaum has served as executive vice president of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture for many years. See Board Briefings, dated Jan. 27, 2003, BHA. 28. Ibid. 29. Interview by the author with the late Dr. Israel Miller, president of the Claims Conference, in the summer 1999.


12

( Leadership of Accommodation or Protest? Nahum Goldmann and the Struggle for Soviet Jewry Suzanne D. Rutland How long must we plead For the bound to be freed From the chains that oppress and degrade? How long? How long? How long? How long must we wait While the hour grows late And our brothers grow faint and afraid? Too long! Too long! Too long!*

I. Goldmann’s Strategy ne of the major issues facing World Jewry from 1948 until 1988 was the plight of the Jews in the former Soviet Union (USSR). In May 1967 a resolution of the Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO), a worldwide body Dr. Nahum Goldmann created in 1958, stressed that “the survival of the Jewish people in the USSR has become the greatest and most

O

*Student ballad from the 1960s as quoted in The Unredeemed: Antisemitism in the Soviet Union, ed. Ronald Rubin, p. 271.

273

274

Suzanne D. Rutland

critical problem of World Jewry in the diaspora and calls for the utmost efforts being made for their salvation as Jews.”1 Although several important works have been written about the campaign for Soviet Jewry between 1953 and 1970, an analysis of the issues and conflicts relating to the policies of World Jewish Congress (WJC) and its president, Nahum Goldmann, has not been undertaken. In a 1978 study of ethnic leadership in the United States, the political scientist John Higham argued that there were two main approaches: leadership of accommodation and leadership of protest.2 This period saw a strong conflict over the best tactics to follow in the campaign. Goldmann believed in the policy of accommodation but other Jewish leaders, especially from the student movement, opposed this approach and advocated a policy of protest. By 1968 the actions of Soviet Jewish activists themselves had made it clear that the best approach was worldwide protest to focus attention on the plight of the Jews under Communist rule. When Communism came to power, the official policy was to eliminate all religious practice from the public sphere and in this Judaism suffered equally with Christianity and Islam. However, the Soviet Union supported the different ethnic nationalities and their languages and cultures so that initially Yiddish schools and culture flourished. When Stalin gained total control of the USSR in 1928, he implemented a policy of anti-Semitism, and most Yiddish institutions were closed. After Germany declared war in 1941, Stalin again started to foster Yiddish culture, and he supported the creation of the state of Israel in 1947 and 1948. The revival of officially sponsored Soviet anti-Semitism began at the end of 1948 and early 1949 when every Jewish organization in the Soviet Union, including the Jewish anti-Fascist Committee was closed down. This reflected a sudden change in Soviet policy because, after the Nazi invasion of 1941, the Soviet Union had encouraged the reestablishment of Yiddish culture. The Soviet Union had supported the establishment of the state of Israel at the crucial United Nations vote in November 1947 and was one of the first countries to recognize Israel after its declaration of independence in May 1948. Some argued that one reason for Stalin’s abrupt change was Israel’s refusal to become a Soviet client state in the Middle East.3 Goldmann argued that Stalin only supported the creation of a Jewish state to remove the British influence from the Middle East.4 The first news of the reemergence of government-sponsored anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in Eastern Europe began to filter through to world Jewry in July 1949. In 1951 reports surfaced of the persecution of Hungarian Jews and in 1952 stories arose of further persecution of Jews in the Soviet Union. The Prague “show trials” also took place in 1952 when several Czechoslovakian leaders, many of whom were Jewish, including Rudolf Slansky, Walter Clements, and Eugene Lobl, were charged with various “crimes” against the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Finally, in January 1953 nine doctors, six of whom were Jewish, were arrested, accused of plotting to kill Soviet Jewish leaders, and of having murdered leading Communist figure, Zhdanov, and an obscure army officer, Shcherbakov, in 1948 and 1945 respectively. The American Jewish Joint

Leadership of Accommodation or Protest?

275

Distribution Committee was also implicated in these murders. The last years of Stalin’s regime aimed at the ruthless suppression of Jewish and Yiddish religious and cultural life together with the liquidation of Jewish artists, writers, and intellectuals. The murder of Solomon Mikhoels in 1948, a leading figure in Soviet theatre, clearly demonstrated this policy. Following Stalin’s death in 1953 many believed his anti-Semitic policy would come to an end and initially this appeared to be the case. The accusations against the doctors were withdrawn and Jews who had been imprisoned or exiled to Siberia were released. Some families of Jewish writers who were killed during the Stalinist period received compensation. The USSR reestablished diplomatic relations with Israel. Khrushchev appeared to have ended the excesses of the Stalinist era. Experts later claimed that the worst excesses against Jews were a result of the policy of Lavrentiy Beria, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Stalin. Visitors to the Soviet Union stressed the extent to which conditions for Jews had improved.5 From 1953, Goldmann campaigned to improve the position of Soviet Jewry. At the third plenary assembly of the WJC held in August 1953 in Geneva, Goldmann stressed that although the Jews of the Soviet Union did not face physical death, they were facing spiritual annihilation.6 Throughout the 1950s he continued to raise concerns about the position of Soviet Jews, as well as highlighting the difficulties faced by the Jews of Poland and Romania. The position Goldmann took was a policy of accommodation. He was consistent in his assertions that the Soviet Union had no official policy of antiSemitism and that Jews enjoyed full civil rights.7 He also stressed that the campaign to improve the position of Soviet Jews had to be kept completely separate from the Cold War. He believed that efforts should be made to create a representative body through the federation of synagogues in the USSR and that Yiddish publications and cultural life should be resumed. He was keen to ensure that a delegation of Soviet Jews would again be present at meetings of the WJC, and at the Geneva WJC Assembly of August 1953 he expressed regret that the Jews of Eastern Europe were “sealed off from the rest of the Jewish people” despite efforts of the WJC because he believed, “This division must be regarded as a great misfortune. The unity of the Jewish people is the basic condition for Jewish survival.”8 Goldmann consistently worked to create links between the WJC and Soviet Jews. In 1955 Professor Harold J. Berman of Harvard University spent a month in Moscow. At the request of the WJC, he met with Moscow’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Schliefer, who offered to send an official invitation for a WJC delegation to visit the USSR.9 Schliefer died suddenly a year later and this invitation was not forthcoming. Goldmann continued to persist in trying to invite a delegation from the Soviet Union to WJC plenary meetings. In January 1959 Goldmann, with United States executive member, Maurice Perlzweig, visited the Soviet Embassy in Washington to see if representatives of Soviet Jewry could attend the Stockholm Plenary Assembly planned for August 1959. At another meeting in

276

Suzanne D. Rutland

February in New York, Goldmann was optimistic about the results, but the head of the WJC Israeli executive, Aryeh Tartakower, was less hopeful.10 In July 1959, in response to the invitation the rabbinical leadership (the rabbis of both Moscow and Odessa) sent negative replies, explaining that they could not participate in political activities because the WJC supported Israel and was “Zionist-orientated.” At the end of his letter, Rabbi Dimant of Odessa stated that “we regret that you attempt to draw us into the sphere of activities of your organization.”11 Goldmann was concerned that a policy of protest would have negative repercussions for Soviet Jewry, and he remained firm in this position from 1953 until 1968 when he was overtaken by events. He believed that the correct approach was quiet diplomacy, and he feared that public criticism of the Soviet Union would undermine any chance of success. On August 20, 1954, the Jerusalem Post published an interview with Tartakower about attempts to send a WJC mission to the USSR. Goldmann wrote a strong letter to Tartakower stating: You know very well, or you should know, that by making such a request public most of the chances, slim as they are anyhow of getting the consent of the USSR, are nearly lost. On the other hand, such an announcement must be very harmful in the USA so that by making it public the whole thing only has a negative effect without knowing if there is any chance to send a delegation. At the same press conference Rabbi Nurock announced that I want to see Mendes-France and you also know that this interview should be held unofficially and without publicity. It is not the first time that the Israel Executive makes publicity which is harmful. . . . I wish the Israel Executive would be more restrained in matters of publicity.12 This letter was indicative of Goldmann’s policy and concerns over the subsequent years. He wished to work through prominent left wing personalities, such as Mendes-France, and Soviet ambassadors to gain entry to the corridors of power in the USSR. In 1956 he tried to organize a meeting with Yugoslav leader, General Tito, to discuss Arab-Israeli relations and Soviet Jewry, but this did not eventuate.13 Goldmann and his supporters were also concerned with having a negative effect on Soviet Jews whose leaders insisted that there was no discrimination against Jews in the USSR. In July 1956 Moscow’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Schliefer, insisted that “antisemitism is regarded as punishable by law” and that Jews have enjoyed “full freedom since the Revolution.” Yet, during this interview the rabbi was described as being “in great trepidation throughout the interview . . . trembling with fear when referring to equality of citizenship.”14 With the Suez crisis of 1956–1957, the position of Soviet Jews deteriorated and at the WJC executive meeting held in London in May 1957, Goldmann


277

advocated a change of policy. He noted that since 1953 there had been a few small improvements, such as the publication of the first Hebrew prayer book since 1917, the establishment of a “so-called yeshivah,” the arrival of a few rabbinical delegations and the holding of a few Yiddish concerts. However, unlike other Communist countries, such as Poland and Romania, emigration had not been permitted and the improvements were minimal. Goldmann presented the Communist explanations for the lack of Jewish life—the fact that Jews were not concentrated geographically and that most Russian Jews were assimilated and not interested in maintaining Judaism. However, he rejected these arguments and stressed that the younger generation had become more Jewish than their parents in response to the Stalinist anti-Semitism. In his opening address he stated that: We have become aware of this problem more and more in the last few years. We did not deal with it so much publicly as we hoped that it will be possible with the leaders of the Soviet Union to bring about some solution to the problem. . . . I think that the time has come when Jewish organizations and certainly the World Jewish Congress, speaking for the many communities, should not hesitate any more to put the problem of Eastern European and especially Soviet Jewry before the world as maybe the major Jewish problem of today.15 Goldmann felt very concerned that, after the loss of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, an additional 3 million Jews in the Soviet Union might be lost due to inaction on the part of world Jewry. In a press release issued after this meeting the WJC made a pledge to “secure the survival of East European Jewry as a distinctive group. . . . We shall neither rest nor relax until the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe have been brought back into the mainstream of Jewish life, and Israel has been made secure with the help of all Jews, including Soviet Jews.”16 In 1957 in response to growing evidence of Soviet anti-Semitism, the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs created an unofficial, secret committee to assist Soviet Jews. Spearheaded by Shaul Avigur and Binyamin Eliav, they recruited a small group to create an awareness of the situation in the West. This group included Uri Ranaan, who was associated with the Fletcher School of Diplomacy in Washington, D.C.; Meir Rosenne (Rosenhaupt), who was originally from Romania and had completed his doctorate in law in Paris in 1957 for the French branch of the operation; a well-known author, Emanuel Litvinoff, in London; and Ada Sereni, widow of Enzo Sereni, a well-known Italian socialist Zionist leader figure who died during World War II.17 In 1958 Avigur also involved a young Australian Jewish leader from Melbourne, Isi Leibler. They decided that Israel’s direct involvement should be kept secret because of the strong proSoviet Union feelings of many left-wing Jews in Israel and the diaspora, as well as the sense that Israel was experiencing enough problems in the United

278

Suzanne D. Rutland

Nations because of the Arab-Israeli conflict and should not alienate the USSR leadership further. Goldmann was approached and agreed to be a member of this secret committee and that Rosenne would work out of the WJC offices in Paris. Litvinoff worked out of his own office with his activities being funded through Philip Klutznik. Eliav initially was stationed in Washington, but in early 1960 Nehemiah Levanon of the Israeli Foreign Office replaced him. Levanon had been posted to the USSR in the early 1950s and had worked secretly for Soviet Jews until he was expelled in 1955. In early 1960 Ranaan, who was working out of the Consulate General in New York, organized for Moshe Decter to open an office there with funding again coming through Israel. An agreement was signed whereby Decter was “to assume responsibility for the processing and dissemination of documentary and other factual materials relating to the status of Jews in the Soviet Union . . . [it being] indispensable that the operation should convey an image of objectivity and independence to the utmost degree.”18 Decter agreed to accept this assignment, and he opened an office in neutral space with the name Jewish Minorities Research Bureau. He continued to work actively for this project throughout the 1960s. When negotiating the agreement, Goldmann stressed that “he was not writing as President of the Jewish Agency but as a member of the committee which deals with the problems on which you will work.”19 During the 1960s both Litvinoff and Decter entered into detailed correspondence with Liebler of Australia. Despite Goldmann’s cooperation with the Israelis and his apparent change of tactics, key figures of the WJC continued to advocate silent diplomacy and to oppose open protest by Jewish groups. In 1959 there were a series of arrests of Romanian Jews and an ongoing internal debate developed as to how to react to this situation. In November 1959 Alex Easterman submitted a letter from leading non-Jewish figures for publication in the London Times criticizing the sentences passed against the Romanian Jews.20 Goldmann supported this move and wrote to Easterman that the letter was “an excellent piece of work” and that he was sure “it will make some impression on the Rumanians.”21 On the other hand, Maurice Perlzweig in New York stressed the importance of keeping quiet while diplomatic negotiations were continuing. He was highly critical of the American Jewish Congress (AJC), which was planning to denounce the Romanian government. He stated, “There are some people who like to conduct diplomacy at the top of their voices. This method may be very satisfying for its practitioners, but it does not work either with the Russians or the Romanians. Of that we have had tragic proof already.”22 In this period, Perlzweig complained that he felt as if he was being “assailed . . . by diametrically opposite pressures.” Following Goldmann’s policy, he believed that the WJC should not become involved in the global conflict and that they had to show “a certain restraint in the ideological field, and to do so in the interests of those whom we are trying to help.” He wrote extremely


279

critical letters to Goldmann and other members of the executive about various plans of the AJC in 1959 in relation to Soviet Jewry. For example, he referred to a meeting of the AJC Commission on International Affairs in April 1959 at which Will Maslow, executive director of the Congress, “made it quite clear that he was opposed to our policy of restraint and negotiations, and that he was proceeding on the old lines of attack.”23 In addition, the AJC published a pamphlet about the situation written by Solomon Schwartz, who had been a member of the Kerensky administration which, Perlzweig felt, was “like a red rag to the Soviet bull.”24 Perlzweig claimed that the AJC had agreed that he could see a draft, but in the end they published the pamphlet without consulting with him.25 Perlzwieg also felt that Goldmann’s efforts to meet with Khrushchev during his visit to Washington in 1959 failed partly due to the publicity the AJC had given to this issue.26 In Paris, Rosenne was experiencing problems with the WJC representative, Armand Kaplan, and at the end of 1959 he decided to move out of the WJC offices to the offices of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency ( JTA). Tensions between him and the WJC personnel increased in early 1960. In March 1960, Khrushchev planned to visit Paris, and Rosenne decided to prepare a brochure and booklet on the situation of Soviet Jewry, to be published in the name of the French WJC branch just before Khrushchev’s planned arrival. Rosenne consulted closely with Goldmann about these two publications, but when they came out Kaplan claimed that they had been published without WJC authorization.27 During the early 1960s the situation of Soviet Jewry continued to deteriorate as a result of official, state-sponsored anti-Semitism. In 1960 matzah baking was prohibited in Kiev, Odessa, Kishinev and Riga and the supply of matzah continued to be a problem in subsequent years.28 Synagogues continued to be closed and by 1960 not a single Jewish school was still open. AntiSemitism became more open in the press, and anti-Semitic articles were published throughout the Soviet press. In 1964 the Ukrainian book, Judaism without Embellishment by Professor T.K. Kichko, was a clear example. From 1961 to 1963 a high proportion of Jews were among those sentenced to death for economic crimes, even though Jews only constituted a tiny proportion of the total Soviet population. Blood Libel charges, false accusations that Jews killed non-Jews and used their blood for ritual purposes, were even leveled against Jews in the Muslim states.29 These led to physical attacks against Jews in Margelan in September 1961 and Tashkent in May 1962.30 In 1960 in the face of this growing persecution, Meir Rosenne, working closely with close friend and colleague Shaul Friedlander, decided that an international conference should be convened in Paris with leading intellectuals, writers, artists, scientists, and above all “men of spiritual standing . . . to appeal to the Soviet leadership about the ominous situation of Jews in the Soviet Union.”31 Goldmann agreed that this conference could be held under his chairmanship, together with Daniel Mayer, president of the French League of Human Rights and former Socialist Labor Minister of France. Initially the conference was

280

Suzanne D. Rutland

planned for July 22–23, 1960, but several key figures were not able to attend at that time, so Goldmann decided to postpone the conference until September 15, 1960, to allow more time for planning. He also wrote to key figures unable to attend asking them to send letters of support for the project. In early September, just before the conference was to start, Rosenne received a telegram from Levanon, instructing him to stop all preparations for the conference because Goldmann had received a telegram from the USSR telling him that if the conference was held, Romania would stop all Jewish emigration to Israel. Rosenne believed that canceling the conference at the last minute would be an enormous mistake, and he flew to Geneva where Goldmann was staying at the time to try to persuade him to change his mind. After failing to ascertain the exact source of the information from the USSR, Rosenne sent a telegram stating that he had no proof of the Soviet request and that canceling the conference would do more damage. The following day, Yediot Akhronot announced that Ben-Gurion had insisted that the conference take place. The headline of the article read, “Under pressure from BenGurion, Goldmann decided to keep the conference going.” This article was picked up throughout the Israeli and European media.32 On September 15, 1960, the conference took place with fifteen countries represented, spanning four continents including Africa. The array of participants was most impressive, including key figures in the world of letters, art, science, and politics. Care had been taken to invite only people from the left of the political spectrum who were not antagonistic to the Soviet Union because the organizers did not want the conference to be seen as part of the Cold War. After the conference, a statement was issued stressing the dispassionate nature and the lack of partisanship of the gathering. It stressed that after the destruction of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis, one-third of the Jewish people, the Soviet Jews, consisting of 3 million, were “the largest surviving Jewish community in the continent of Europe. Their well-being is surely therefore the joint responsibility of our civilisation.”33 The statement pointed out that all aspects of Jewish cultural life had been repressed and requested that the Soviet Jews should be allowed the same rights as other minority groups in the Soviet Union. In October 1961 Litvinoff organized another successful symposium in London, further highlighting the plight of Soviet Jews.34 Subsequently, Goldmann produced two “interim reports” for those who attended the Paris Conference, one in July 1961 and another in September 1963, stressing the increasing problems facing Soviet Jews, especially in the light of the death sentence introduced for economic crimes. In his 1961 report, he stressed: The situation of Soviet Jewry has, for many years, been a “forbidden” subject. Breaking the wall of silence, beginning open discussions and exchanges of opinion can contribute a great deal towards fostering a rethinking, eventual improvement and positive solutions, of the situation.35


281

Goldmann also continued to work with Moshe Decter to enlist high-flying figures, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to support of the campaign for Soviet Jewry.36 At the same time, Goldmann continued to try to establish direct contact with key figures in the Soviet Union through secret diplomacy. In this, the WJC was singularly unsuccessful, despite the fact that Goldmann kept opposing further open demonstrations because it might undermine these secret contacts. Goldmann consistently tried to give the impression that he was having secret talks with top Soviet leaders, but in fact this was not the case. Throughout this period, the only Soviet figure WJC leaders were in contact with was Aaron Vergelis, editor of Sovetish Heymland, a Yiddish newspaper established in 1961 with the aim of fostering Yiddish culture. In December 1963 Kaplan had an extensive meeting with Vergelis in Paris, which he reported in detail to Goldmann and these contacts were ongoing.37 However, Vergelis was an apparatchik of the Soviet regime who played a key role in its counterpropaganda campaign by denying that there was any discrimination against Jews in the USSR.38 He was considered by many to be a traitor to the cause of Soviet Jewry. Goldmann’s concerns about offending Soviet leaders led him to make press statements that still seemed to underestimate the severity of the problem and which caused controversy. For example, in February 1962 he made a statement at Lydda Airport, Israel, on his way to a meeting in France, which seemed to imply that the situation of the Jewish minority was no different from that of other minorities. He later issued a statement that he always criticized the Soviet Union for not extending the same rights to Soviet Jews, but he also stressed, “The problem of the Jews in the USSR is not the problem of antisemitism in the accepted sense of persecution and loss of civil rights.”39 Goldmann’s assessment of this was based on information provided to him by the WJC personnel and not through first-hand sources. By 1962 the campaign for Soviet Jewry began to move away from Goldmann’s sphere of influence. In November 1962, largely through the efforts of Isi Leibler who had continued to work with Avigur, Australia was the first country to raise the issue of Soviet Jewish and the abuse of human rights at the United Nations. Decter was highly complimentary of this result, writing to Leibler that “Australia’s recent, marvelous U.N. intervention was of great value and significance.” It was unprecedented in that this was the first time that the problem of Soviet Jewry was discussed at the U.N. on an official governmental level.40 This Australian resolution influenced the Israelis and other countries to continue to raise the matter at the United Nations. In March 1963 Leibler represented Australia at the Zionist General Council in Israel and noted a “tremendous undercurrent against the old Goldmann line,” but that Goldmann made his toughest speech yet in relation to Soviet Jewry. He again commented on the importance of the Australian resolution in relation to Soviet Jewry and that the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs had a detailed knowledge of the steps that led to this resolution.41

282

Suzanne D. Rutland

In October 1963 a major conference on the status of Soviet Jewry was held at Carnegie Hall, New York. This was the precursor for the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ) held in Washington in April 1964 with twenty-four Jewish organizations joining together to highlight the plight of Soviet Jewry. The AJCSJ continued to operate as a separate organization to coordinate the campaign for Soviet Jewry. Its founding members rejected the policy of quiet diplomacy. Goldmann himself did not attend the first AJCSJ conference, but Dr. Perlzweig was present and his role was controversial. During the conference Perlzweig told a reporter of the Communist Yiddish paper, Morgen Freiheit, that both he and Goldmann had tried to prevent the conference being held. President of the American Jewish Congress, Dr. Joachim Prinz, described this statement as “outrageous.”42 In response Perlzweig told Prinz that the reporter had misquoted him, but he did not regret what had happened. He later wrote to Kaplan, his WJC colleague in Paris, that: The Morgen Freiheit, the only Communist daily that exists here, interpreted my presence as an observer of the American Jewish Conference as part of our effort to prevent the exploitation of the Jewish issue for Cold War purposes. They grossly exaggerated what I did, and attributed views to me which I did not express. But these exaggerations and distortions were all designed to show that Dr. Goldmann and the WJC are opposed to the use of the Jewish situation in the Soviet Union as a weapon in the Cold War.43 Perlzweig wrote further that the WJC should continue to approach the Soviet authorities independently from the other Jewish organizations because they “are much more likely to listen to us than others whose associates they suspect.”44 Goldmann continued his efforts for quiet diplomacy and, as key historian of this period Yaakov Roi has written, he “never gave up hope that he would be invited to the USSR to discuss the lot of Soviet Jewry with the leadership of that country as the plenipotentiary of Western Jewry.”45 In 1964 Goldmann opposed the AJCSJ’s decision to meet with President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He wrote, “Demagogic speeches and exaggerated resolutions may do a lot of harm.”46 In New York, Moshe Decter’s policy of active protest later led to clashes with WJC figures and in 1965 Perlzweig complained that Decter’s agitation was “making the situation worse for Soviet Jewry.”47 Perlzweig also continued to believe that the only approach was quiet diplomacy and in May 1965 he again wrote to Goldmann, “I am convinced that we are moving, however, slowly, towards a dialogue with the Soviet Union,” and he stressed that “any resolution we may adopt should be free of any involvement in the Cold War.”48 Again, in 1966 Aryeh Tartakower, WJC representative in Israel, wrote to Goldmann about a cordial meeting with the Soviet ambassador, stressing that it was not in Israel’s interests to follow an anti-Soviet position.49


283

In the meantime, the AJCSJ moved ahead in 1965 with their campaign of protest, holding two major events in early June 1965—a rally at Madison Square Garden on June 3 followed by a vigil in Washington on June 4, 1965. On June 10, 1965, in keeping with his opposition to open protest, Goldmann responded with a strong and controversial press statement featured on the front page of the New York Times. He criticized those who accused the Soviet regime of being anti-Semitic or denying Jews their civil rights and claimed that “accusations are being made against Russia which are not justified, and which can only delay the solution of the problem, and even harm Soviet Jewry.”50 This statement led to worldwide press coverage of the issue. In London, S. Levenberg of the Jewish Agency, sent a telegram in which he wrote: The Jewish world is deeply disturbed at the present controversy which gives the impression that there is a breach in the united Jewish front around the problem of Soviet Jewry. I urge Dr. Goldmann to make clear that no such breach exists; that there is complete unanimity regarding the fundamental issues. There could be various views regarding methods, but these are matters to be discussed in private; public discussion regarding such delicate problems is both unnecessary and harmful.51 The matter was also raised at an Israeli cabinet meeting and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol subsequently sent a telegram to Goldmann asking for clarification. In response to these criticisms, Goldmann strongly defended his position. He wrote to Eshkol that he would explain all when they met and, in an additional statement to the JTA, he stressed that he had simply repeated what he had been saying for the last ten years and that he “did not know what all the excitement was about.”52 Some papers defended Goldmann. In a major editorial, the London Times claimed: Recently there have been loud protests in the west about the condition of Soviet Jews. . . . But if, as seems likely, Moscow’s gesture is a response to foreign opinion it is more likely the product of some quiet talks that the World Jewish Congress has been having with the Russians. . . . If Soviet Jews want a position in Soviet society similar to that of the Orthodox Church, it does not help to constantly show them as the “ward” of American and other western organizations. A quiet, diplomatic approach to the Russians is more likely to be effective. Using this method, the World Jewish Congress has been trying to bring about the creation of a central body to represent Jews of the Soviet Union. . . . It has been said that religion is like a nail and the harder you hit it, the deeper it penetrates. The same may apply to Soviet antisemitism, which should certainly be hit—but the blows have to be carefully aimed.53

284

Suzanne D. Rutland

The Jewish Pictorial Voice argued that one could disagree with Goldmann but “the storm of indignation against him which broke out, first in American and later in Israel, was entirely unjustified.” The paper referred to Goldmann’s vast experience and long record in diplomatic negotiations and argued that more restraint should have been shown in criticizing his statement.54 Renowned Jewish violinist Isaac Stern, who undertook his third concert tour of the Soviet Union in July 1965, also supported Goldmann’s stand. He wrote to Julius Schatz of the AJC that “what I have said may sound pragmatically cold, but I do assure you that I have thought a great deal and do feel strongly about it.”55 In October 1965 Goldmann invited Levenberg to chair the WJC political commission. Perlzweig wrote a strong letter of concern about this decision because of Levenberg’s public dissociation “from your last important effort to create a climate conducive to negotiation.”56 Perlzweig again presented arguments in favor of secret diplomacy and expressed his concerns about the negative effects of public demonstrations. At this time, a resolution was introduced at the United Nations condemning ideologies such as racism and fascism. An effort was made to include anti-Semitism, which led the Soviet Union to also add Zionism to the list. In the end, both anti-Semitism and Zionism were excluded, but Perlzweig expressed the fear to Goldmann that “this marks the opening gun in a Soviet campaign to reply to the use of the United Nations as a platform from which to attack the Soviets on the Jewish question.”57 The 1966 publication of Eli Wiesel’s Jews of Silence further highlighted the problems facing Soviet Jewry. He later told a Toronto audience, “I went to Russia drawn by the silence of its Jews and I brought back their cry. What torments me most is not the ‘Jews of Silence’ I met in Russia, but the silence of the Jews I live among today.”58 In response, Goldmann criticized public campaigns on the basis that the existence of 3 million Russian Jews could be endangered. Eli Wiesel replied, “How can we be sure that our complaints and protests will not have harmful results for them? . . . Only the Russian Jews themselves can answer that question and they do: “Keep calling! Awake public opinion.”59 Despite Wiesel’s message of the need for more open protest, Goldmann continued with his chosen track. On November 10, 1966, he called a special meeting in his hotel suite for a small group of key players, including Jacob Robinson, Wexner, Rabbi Kaufman, Jacques Torczyner, Rabbi Karasick, Minkoff, Rabbi Israel Miller, Maurice Perlzweig, Gerhardt Riegner, Rabbi Levovitz, Rabbi Blank, Rabbi Weiss, Will Maslow, Rabbi Brickner, and Hellman. At this meeting Jacob Robinson was the main speaker, and he presented the various dilemmas facing Soviet Jewry. This was followed by general discussion with Goldmann; in his concluding statements, again stressing that he was in contact with Soviet officials, he maintained, “you cannot expect a big power to act under a lot of public propaganda.”60 Goldmann noted that stopping all public protest immediately may not be possible, but he hoped that if the Jewish leadership recognized the need to keep quiet for a few months, they should do so.


285

Goldmann’s policies had a strong influence on others. For example, in Canada Saul Hayes, executive director of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), believed that he had to maintain Goldmann’s policies because the CJC was a WJC affiliate. In 1961 Rabbi Stuart E. Rosenberg was granted a tourist visa to visit the USSR, the first such visit by a Canadian Jewish leader. Again, Hayes was cautious because of Garber’s support of Goldmann. As Hayes expressed, “They want to deal quietly with Moscow behind the scenes and not pull the bear’s tail.”61 On Rosenberg’s return, he wanted to initiate an activist campaign but was prevented by the CJC conservative approach.62 Rosenberg approached Canadian prime minister, John Diefenbaker, who supported his request to express his opposition to Soviet policy. In 1964 the Canadian Jewish leadership was still divided over the best tactics. CJC President Michael Garber of Montreal downplayed the level of persecution of the Jews in the USSR.63 He still believed the best approach was private discussions, and he continued to support Goldmann’s policies and was highly critical of those who advocated a policy of protest.64 In January 1965 Garber wrote a strong letter to Goldmann in which he was highly critical of both the Israelis and also those American Jews who claimed to be experts on Soviet Jewry. He stated: While their puppets do not know that the strings are in the hands of the Israeli government, it is nevertheless in the interests of the Israeli government, if it wants to gain Russian favour, to call off its private cold war. I feel that the Soviet authorities know who is spark plugging this whole messy business.65 Garber went on to stress to Goldmann that Israel should withdraw from the campaign for Soviet Jewry, so that it can return to “its original high standards.”66

II. Diaspora Opposition to Goldmann One of the strongest critics of Goldmann’s policy in the diaspora was the Australian Jewish leader, Isi Leibler. In November 1962 Australia was the first country to raise the issue of Soviet Jewry and human rights at the United Nations, as a result of the lobbying of Melbourne Jewish leaders, Maurice Ashkanasy and Leibler. Ashkanasy served as president and vice president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the representative body of the community, for a twenty-year period from 1948 to 1968, for most of the time alternating with New South Wales leader, Sydney David Einfeld. He worked closely with his young Melbourne protégé, Liebler. Following his success in having Australia raise the issue at the United Nations, Leibler worked assiduously at establishing contacts with members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and maintaining consistent contact with

286

Suzanne D. Rutland

key figures through telephone conversations and meetings. He was able to persuade Rex Mortimer, Communist leader and editor of the Melbournebased Communist paper, Arena, of the problems facing Soviet Jewry. Mortimer and his colleague Bernard Taft were influenced by the blatant anti-Semitism of the Kichko book. In 1964 Leibler published a booklet on the denial of human rights to Soviet Jews and Mortimer wrote an introductory letter endorsing the publication which was published as a foreword. Given this Melbourne record of consistent campaign and protest on behalf of Australian Jewry, a clash with Goldmann over the issue of tactics was inevitable. Already in April 1965, Leibler wrote an extremely critical letter to Litvinoff about Goldmann, referring to “his public statements minimizing Soviet antisemitism.” Leibler claimed that “if he persists in making this sort of public statement, he will shortly find himself in the dubious role of being quoted by Moscow spokesmen to rebut Western Communist criticisms.”67 At the WJC Executive meeting held in early June 1965 in Geneva, a clash between Leibler and Goldmann was reported as follows: Leibler whose published survey has attracted world attention, thrustfully advocated a header line in Jewish approaches to the Soviet Union in order to enlist support of non-conforming leftist circles. Dr. Goldmann, in turn, with a formidable display of forensic fireworks, insisted that his quiet diplomacy was the better course. In general, the consensus was that Dr. Goldmann won on points but Mr. Leibler’s perspicuity and tenacity was admirably commented upon. The encouraging thing about the lively exchange was that implication that new voices are beginning to be heard and new ideas to emerge.68 Following Goldmann’s June 10, 1965, press statement, Leibler was encouraged by Litvinoff to take up “an outspoken position.” Leibler responded, “I am at a complete loss as to what to do in Strassbourg.69 This meeting is Goldmann territory, but I will play it by ear.”70 However, he attacked Goldmann at the Strassbourg meeting held on July 13–14, 1965, when he claimed “shtadlonus [intercession] and private diplomacy used since 1956 have been abysmal failures as actual conditions deteriorated” and that the only approach was “a militant campaign designed to mobilise public opinion.”71 Leibler concluded his address with the following words: “And let’s not hear any talk about restraint. Principled, factual, well-documented approach, YES! But based on militant public campaigns, not on shtadlonus or silent diplomacy.”72 Goldmann’s response was highly critical, and he accused his detractors of “extreme naivety and even stupidity,” stressing his right to make decisions about tactics.73 Goldmann also accused the activists of undermining any chance he had of coming to an understanding with Soviet authorities. Commenting on this debate, the editor of London’s Jewish Chronicle wrote:


287

Dr. Nahum Goldmann might well believe that he was on the verge of an understanding with the Soviet authorities on the Jewish question, and that an understanding was torpedoed by open denunciation of Soviet practice. One is bound to approach such a view with an open mind and also with some skepticism. Such hopes have been harboured before.74 At this time, Leibler was a young man of thirty and he stressed that he did not intend to be “huzpedik” [impudent], but he felt from his experiences of negotiations with CPA members, understatements such as those Goldmann made “cut the feet from those raising the questions in left quarters.”75 He also claimed that Goldmann provided apologists of the Soviet regime such as Vergelis with ammunition. On his return to Melbourne, Leibler wrote that “so long as WJC meetings are democratic gatherings I will speak my mind and if the price will be to be showered with personal abuse, too bad.”76 He also noted that he had worked in harmony with the New South Wales representative at Strassbourg. Addressing the Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies (VJBD) he described Goldmann as follows: The President is completely omnipotent, not responsible to anyone for his pubic, political statements . . . everyone is terrified of antagonising Dr. Goldmann. Most horrifying question is that of succession. Goldman is over 70, yet one cannot conceive of a single person taking over from him, nor is any such person being cultivated for leadership. Consequently, with such an inverted base, the World Jewish Congress is in great danger of crumbling when Goldmann withdraws. Dr. Goldmann is, undoubtedly, World Jewry’s most outstanding spokesman. He is head and shoulders above all those surrounding him. He has a very sharp tongue—contempt for public opinion— a master of languages—so there is the problem of cult of personality. His main opponents are the Israeli press and the Jewish Chronicle.77 Leibler was supported in all this by the ECAJ president, Sydney Einfeld, from Sydney, and Maurice Ashkanasy, the Melbourne leader. After his August 1965 address to the VJBD he wrote to Litvinoff, “Australian Jewry will in the future be a real thorn in so far as Goldmann’s Soviet Jewry’s machinations are concerned!”78 At the WJC Plenary Session held in Brussels in August 1966, the debate over tactics in relation to Soviet Jewry continued with Leibler again being highly critical of Goldmann’s approach.79 The Jewish Chronicle described the debate as follows:

288

Suzanne D. Rutland

While delegates accepted Dr. Goldmann’s warning to keep the issue of Soviet Jewry out of the Cold War and avoid exaggerated accusations which cannot be substantiated, his cautious approach was challenged by some delegates. Dr. Goldmann said that while others liked to beat the drum, he himself preferred to play the flute. One of his most persistent critics on the Soviet issue, the Australian Mr. I. Leibler, complained that the Congress President’s role was not to play one instrument but to conduct the whole orchestra. To which Dr. Goldmann retorted: How can I be the conductor when I have no assurance that my baton would be followed.80 The paper described the conflict as being a conflict between “hawks” and “doves,” and noted the Israeli Knesset member Arie Eliav as a hawk who “invited himself to a meeting of the American delegation to speak up for those who preferred the ‘drum.’”81 The tensions between the Melbourne Jewish leadership and Goldmann reached a peak in a series of letters between November 1966 and February 1967. In November 1966, Ashkanasy resumed the ECAJ presidency. He wrote a letter to Goldmann expressing his concern about Soviet Jewry, advocating action in relation to Communist parties across the world. He outlined Australia’s successes including Leibler’s publications of his correspondence with the CPA and a recent statement by CPA leader Rex Mortimer and urged the WJC to do likewise. Goldmann’s response was that they were taking action, but that they had to “do it very discretely without any publicity about it otherwise the Communists would refuse to do anything.”82 Ashkanasy replied expressing a sense of disappointment with Goldmann’s letter and stating that he was not aware of any action taken by the WJC in regard to Communist parties, and that USSR representatives often quote Goldmann himself to defend their policies.83 Goldmann’s reply was short, again stressing the need for secrecy and stating, “You know we differ on this matter, and it is no use continuing the polemics in correspondence.” Ashkanasy rejected this criticism and wrote to Goldmann, “we shall not desist: with those who think as we do, we shall go forward.”84 On February 14, 1967, the Melbourne ECAJ executive wrote a six-page letter outlining all their criticisms of Goldmann’s policies, which they circulated to all WJC and COJO members. They stressed that: We consider that we must face up frankly to the fact, as we believe, that the reason for this state of affairs is to be found in Dr. Nahum Goldmann’s views as to how this problem should be approached. We believe that at this vital stage his overall assessment and tactical approach to the question of Soviet Jewry is not in accord with that of leading international and regional Jewish bodies, and that his attitude is harming the cause of Soviet Jewry and can no longer be ignored. . . . Dr. Goldmann


289

apparently believes that the most effective manner in which to influence Soviet policy in this area is by discreet appeals to Soviet ambassadors and behind-the-scenes activities with leftist groups. . . . But we maintain that this will not be achieved by exclusive reliance on behind-the-scenes diplomacy. Any success is the result of the overt pressure which has been and is being exerted on Russia . . . brought about largely by individuals like Mr. Emanuel Litvinoff in England and institutions like the American Jewish Conference in the United States.85 The various members of the WJC reacted to this letter with very strong criticism. Easterman described it as “the most outrageous of all the many examples of Jewish behaviour in public affairs” and suggested that Goldmann should call for the disaffiliation of the ECAJ from the WJC.86 A few days later, Gerhardt Riegner, WJC executive director, wrote a formal response, defending Goldmann’s record on Soviet Jewry and deploring the ECAJ letter and approach.87 Prinz, chairman of the WJC Governing Council, also wrote to the ECAJ criticizing their action, claiming that Goldmann’s views were “so thoroughly distorted as to falsify them.”88 Canadian leader Garber also supported Goldmann and his executive director Saul Hayes wrote in relation to what he called “L’Affaire Russe” that he shared the same views as Garber.89 Garber then circulated to others, including Decter, an extremely critical letter about the Australians. Decter later wrote to Leibler telling him that Garber was a man in his 70s, a successful attorney who “regards himself as one of Dr. Goldmann’s chosen instruments in the WJC.”90 Avraham Abba Cohen, the president of Maoz, an organization formed in 1964 to promote the cause of Soviet Jewry, was one of the few who came out strongly in support of the Australian position.91 At the WJC Governing Council held in Jerusalem in July 1967 following the Six-Day War, the issue was debated further and this was followed by written correspondence in late 1967 and early 1968. During the same period conflict between the English Jewish student leadership and the WJC in Great Britain also came to a head. In February 1967, Soviet premier Alexey Kosygin visited London and the community met to discuss the correct tactics in response to this visit. Key members of British Jewry were in favor of holding a public meeting of protest during the visit, a proposal that Alex Easterman of the WJC strongly opposed. At the meeting held to discuss the proposal, Easterman, supported by the Chief Rabbinate, AJA, Agudah, the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women (AJEX), and the National Council of Jewish Women, managed to postpone any decision on the matter until another meeting was called. As he wrote to Goldmann, “this practically means that a public meeting can no longer by arranged for lack of time.”92 At this meeting the British Board of Deputies decided it would hold a special meeting during the visit and would send a memorandum to Kosygin. Board President S. Teff also tried through Harold Wilson, to speak to Kosygin at the official reception for him, but he did not succeed.

290

Suzanne D. Rutland

In contrast to this conservative approach, the Universities Committee for Soviet Jewry decided to hold a rally, convening at Hyde Park and marching the mile to the Soviet Embassy to present a memorandum. Approximately 1,000 students joined this deputation, representing Jews, Catholics, and Anglicans including clergy. They were led by Gordon Hausmann, a law student, and a small delegation of the students was received by the third secretary of the embassy to whom they submitted their memorandum requesting improvements in the situation of Soviet Jews and reunion of families. The students stressed that their protest was based on humanitarian not political concerns.93 The students also participated in a debate on BBC television in which political opponents of the USSR were also represented. In addition, 280 members of parliament (MPs) signed a letter on behalf of Soviet Jews. All these events were widely covered in the British press. Subsequently, Easterman wrote to Hausmann, congratulating the students on the success of the demonstration but criticizing them for participating in the BBC debate with political opponents of the regime.94 Hausmann and Michael Hunter responded, expressing surprise at Easterman’s criticism. With regard to the march, they wrote: In view of your approval of our March, we take it that this indicates a fundamental change in the policies of the [World Jewish Congress]. During previous discussions, when we attempted to persuade the community to adopt our views, we met only with opposition from your colleagues and we are glad to have it from yourself, that is to say, on the highest authority in Congress, that there blows a “new wind” regarding Soviet Jewry.95 In response, Easterman denied any change in WJC policy, stressing the fact that the WJC was the first to organize a public forum in Paris in 1960, but that they believe the need to work “through political and diplomatic channels.”96

III. Goldmann and Israel There was also constant tension between Goldmann and the policies advocated by Israel, both through Lishkat Hakesher and Maoz. In the 1950s, the Israeli leaders decided to keep a low profile in regard to Soviet Jewry because they were concerned that an Israeli connection might be detrimental to the movement.97 After 1962 the Israelis decided they should play a more open role. This change of policy was partly because the Soviets had indicated they suspected the role being played by Israel and partly because of the effectiveness of the Australian move at the United Nations. In 1962–1963, Yoram Dinstein, a distinguished lawyer and professor at Tel Aviv University, presented the arguments in support of open Israeli intervention and he also had an


291

impact in the changed policy, with Israel consistently raising the issue at the United Nations. However, the Israeli government was still reluctant to support broader protest. In reaction to this conservative position, Maoz developed the slogan “Let my people go.” Maoz leaders believed the Soviet Jewish campaign should focus on emigration and did not believe the Soviet government would agree to grant religious and cultural rights to its Jewish community. In July 1964 they organized their first demonstration in Israel and in December of that year produced their first newsletter in English. Goldmann continued to refuse to change his tactics, even though the policy of moderation was not working. A Maoz statement asserted: For years, Dr. Goldman [sic] has taken every platform and opportunity to acclaim that there is no antisemitism against individuals in Russia and that there is only collective discrimination. As it is impossible to believe that he is unaware of the real plight of Russian Jewry, people in the know interpreted this unfathomable attitude as a diplomatic stratagem to make himself into a “persona-grata” in Moscow, so that he would be invited to Russia for negotiations to bring about the redemption.98 In April 1965 Maoz organized a petition signed by 97,000 people, urging the Knesset to discuss the issue of Soviet Jewry. It continued to attack “the alleged obstructionism of Dr. Nahum Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress, in blocking vigorous efforts for Soviet Jewry.”99

IV. Conclusion In a December 1966 press statement, Kosygin referred publicly to the possibility of permitting the reunion of family members in the Soviet Union and Israel. This led to an unprecedented response of Soviet families applying for emigration visas to Israel. The 1967 Six-Day War, combined with the trickle of Soviet activists leaving for Israel, gradually made Goldmann’s position irrelevant. In 1970 Goldmann opposed the idea of convening an international conference on Soviet Jewry, a concept that led to the first Brussels Presidium in February 1971. Goldmann believed the Soviets would never permit significant emigration and that world Jewry should focus on campaigning for religious and cultural rights, rather than family reunions. Others, including the Jewish Agency, “advocated an all-out struggle for emigration.”100 By the early 1970s, the demands for emigration were clearly meeting with a successful response and the only way forward was to continue the policy of protest. Much has been written about the divergent approaches of ethnic leadership between the policy of accommodation and the policy of protest. In his

292

Suzanne D. Rutland

discussion of the Soviet Jewry campaign, William Orbach has described these divergent approaches as follows: Some elements stress quiet diplomacy and shtadlonus; others emphasize public protest. Often this distinction derives from differing Jewish perceptions. The European Jew, perceiving himself as part of a corporate entity, reacted as one of a community to the political authorities. In discussion with government officials, many traditional American Jewish organizations attempt to represent the Jewish community qua community. Many younger student groups to the contrary, possibly as a result of their experience in civil rights campaigns, view themselves as Jewish individuals, who are also part of a larger constituency, and therefore engage in public protest.101 In hindsight, that the policy of quiet diplomacy was not going to succeed is surely a commonplace observation—while the Soviet Union did in fact respond to open, public protest. Meanwhile, Goldmann remained firm in his convictions and was not prepared to change his position, even when the established leadership in both the United States and Israel had changed their orientation.

Notes 1. ECAJ Minutes, May 17, 1967. 2. John Higham, Ethnic Leadership in America (Baltimore, MD, 1978). 3. See Dr. Emery Barcs, “Stalin turns to Antisemitism,” Daily Telegraph, Jan. 15, 1953. 4. Z6/2060, Speech 1957, Nahum Goldmann Papers, Central Zionist Archive (hereafter CZA). 5. Professor Harold J. Berman, “Memorandum,” strictly confidential, from M. L. Perlzweig, Oct. 11, 1955, Z6/926, CZA. 6. Official Communique, no. 1, Aug. 4, 1953, Z6/751, CZA. 7. See Nahum Goldmann, The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann: Sixty Years of Jewish Life (New York, 1969), 334. 8. Official Communique, No 1, Aug. 4, 1953, Z6/751, CZA. 9. Memorandum, strictly confidential, from M. L. Perlzweig, Oct. 11, 1955, Z6/926, CZA. 10. See Minutes, Jan. 14–19, 1959, Coordinating Committee, New York, Feb. 19, 1959, World Jewish Congress Executive Meeting (American Branch) and Feb. 27, 1959, Israel Executive of the World Jewish Congress, Tel Aviv, “WJC Minutes and Reports 1959,” Z6/1963, CZA.


293

11. Letters translated from the Russian Rabbi Judah Leib Levin, Moscow, July 16, 1959 and Rabbi Dimant, Odessa, July 18, 1959, “WJC 1959,” Z6/1961, CZA. 12. Nahum Goldmann to Aryeh Tartakower, Aug. 25, 1954, Z6/858, Goldmann Papers, CZA. 13. Nahum Goldmann to Stephen Pollack, World Jewish Congress, London, Aug. 9, 1956, “WJC—Great Britain 1956,” Z6/1127, CZA. 14. Report by Mrs. Saeger, Deputy Mayor of Southwick and member of the British Labor Party, after a three-week visit to the USSR in July 1956, “WJC—Great Britain 1956,” Z6/1127, Goldmann Papers, CZA. 15. Opening address, World Jewish Congress Executive Meeting, London, Apr. 29–May 2, 1957, “Speeches 1957,” Z6/2060, CZA. 16. Press release, “The Jews of the USSR and Eastern Europe: A Major Problem of Our Day and Proposals for its Solution,” by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, May 1957, “Speeches 1957,” Z6/2060, CZA. 17. Telephone interview by the author with Meir Rosenne, Jerusalem, Jan. 14, 2004. 18. “Confidential Memorandum of Understanding,” in “Soviet Jewry, 1959–1960,” Z6/1334, CZA. 19. Nahum Goldmann to Moshe Decter, Mar. 18, 1960, “Soviet Jewry, 1959–1960,” Z6/1334, CZA. 20. This letter was published on Nov. 27, 1959, with signatures from Lord Pakenham, Dr. Donald Soper, Anthony Wedgewood, MP, Bertrand Russell, Lord Boothby, and Philip Toynbee, “WJC—Great Britain, Apr.–Dec. 1959,” Z6/1973, CZA. 21. Nahum Goldmann to Alex Easterman, Dec. 2, 1959, “WJC—Great Britain, Apr.–Dec. 1959,” Z6/1973, CZA. 22. Maurice Perlzwieg to Anselm Reiss, World Jewish Congress, Tel Aviv, Sept. 21, 1959 and Reiss’s reply, Oct. 7, 1959, “WJC 1959,” Z6/1961, CZA. 23. Maurice Perlzweig to Nahum Goldmann, Apr. 6, 1959, “WJC 1959,” Z6/1961, CZA. 24. Maurice Perlzweig to Nahum Goldmann, Mar. 10, 1959, “WJC 1959,” Z6/1961, CZA. 25. Perlzweig to Goldmann, Apr. 6, 1959 and Sept. 18, 1959, “WJC 1959,” Z6/1961, CZA. 26. Maurice Perlzweig to Nahum Goldmann, Nov. 18, 1959, “WJC 1959,” Z6/1961, CZA. 27. Interview with Meir Rosenne by the author, Jan. 14, 2004. 28. Harry Schwartz, “Soviet Restricts Matzot Output,” New York Times, Mar. 20, 1960, “Conference on Soviet Jewry—Dr. Goldmann Dossier, 1960,” Z6/1339, CZA. 29. See, for example, the accusation in Kommunist, Aug. 9, 1960, published in Buinaksk, Daghestan.

294

Suzanne D. Rutland

30. Both these cities are in Uzbekhestan. 31. Letter from Nahum Goldmann to Jayaprakash Narayan, India, Mar. 15, 1960, “Conference on Soviet Jewry, 1960,” Z6/1337, CZA. 32. See the envelope of newspaper clippings compiled by Meir Rosenne, “1960 Paris Conference,” Z6/1337, CZA. 33. “Statement,” Sept. 15, 1960, “1960 Paris Conference,” Z6/1337, CZA. 34. “1960 Paris Conference,” Z6/1337, CZA. 35. “First Interim Report,” July 1961, in “Soviet Jews 1961,” Z6/1882, CZA. 36. See correspondence dated May 14, 1962, “Russia 1961–1962,” Z6/2180, CZA. 37. See Armand Kaplan to Nahum Goldmann, Dec. 11, 1963, Z6/1242, CZA. 38. Yaakov Roi, The Struggle for Soviet Jewish Emigration, 1948–1967 (Cambridge, England, 1991), 245. 39. Newspaper clippings, Z6/2179, CZA. 40. Moseh Decter to Isi Leibler, Dec. 17, 1962, “Soviet Jewry, 1950–1962,” Isi Leibler private archive, Jerusalem (hereafter ILPA). 41. Handwritten notes by Isi Leibler regarding the Zionist General Council Meetings, Mar. 18–26, 1963, ILPA. 42. Joachim Prinz to Nahum Goldmann, Apr. 9, 1964, Z6/1168, CZA. 43. Maurice Perlzweig to Armand Kaplan, Apr. 22, 1964, Z6/1168, CZA. 44. Maurice Perlzweig to Armand Kaplan, Apr. 25, 1964, Z6/1168, CZA. 45. Yaakov Roi, Struggle, 197. 46. Petrus Buwalda, “They Did Not Dwell Alone”: Jewish Emigration from the Soviet Union, 1967–1990 (Baltimore, MD, 1997), 39. 47. Maurice Perlzweig to Nahum Goldmann, Feb. 25, 1965, Z6/1168, CZA. 48. Maurice Perlzweig to Nahum Goldmann, May 12, 1965, CZA. 49. Arieh Tartakower to Nahum Goldmann, Mar. 4, 1966, Z6/1175, CZA. 50. “Statement by Dr. Nahum Goldmann, President of WZO, Press Conference,” June 10, 1965, Z6/2079, CZA. 51. S. Levenberg, Jewish Agency telegram, London, 15.97/8, following Goldmann’s press statement, June 10, 1965, Z6/1159, CZA. 52. Jerusalem Post, June 24, 1965, Z6/1250, CZA. 53. The Times (London), July 30, 1965, “Goldmann on Soviet Jewry: Press Cuttings, 1964–1965,” Z6/1250, CZA. 54. Leon Wiesenfeld, “Russian Jewry before and after the War,” The Jewish Voice Pictorial, New Year Edition, 1965–1966, Z6/1250, CZA 55. Isaac Stern to Julius Schatz, July 21, 1965, Z6/1165, CZA.


295

56. Maurice Perlzweig to Nahum Goldmann, Oct. 1, 1965, Z6/1168, CZA. 57. Maurice Perlzweig to Nahum Goldmann, Oct. 22, 1965, 3, Z6/1168, CZA. 58. As quoted in Wendy Eisen, Count Us In: The Struggle to Free Soviet Jews— A Canadian Perspective (Toronto, 1995), 22. 59. As quoted in Petrus Buwalda, “They Did Not Dwell Alone,” 39. 60. “Soviet Problems,” Nov. 10, 1966, 12, Z6/1492, CZA. 61. Wendy Eisen, Count Us In, 13. 62. Ibid., 16. 63. Moshe Decter to Michael Garber, copy sent to Isi Leibler, Dec. 4, 1964, ILPA. 64. Wendy Eisen, Count Us In, 12, 20. 65. Michael Garber to Nahum Goldmann, Jan. 11, 1965, Z6/1164, CZA. 66. Michael Garber to Nahum Goldmann, Jan. 11, 1965, Z6/1164, CZA. 67. Isi Leibler to Emanuel Litvinoff, Apr. 12, 1962, ILPA. 68. Highlights of the World Jewish Congress Executive, June 1965, ILPA. 69. Emauel Litvinoff to Isi Leibler, June 27, 1965, ILPA. 70. Isi Leibler to Emanuel Litvinoff, July 6, 1965, ILPA. 71. Isi Liebler’s handwritten notes on the meeting, July 13, 1965, ILPA. 72. Ibid. 73. Australian Jewish News, July 23, 1965. 74. Jewish Chronicle, July 16, 1965. 75. Notes on conflict with Nahum Goldmann, July 1965, ILPA. 76. Ibid. 77. Notes for address to Victorian Jewish Board of Deputies, Aug. 2, 1965, ILPA. 78. Isi Leibler to Emanuel Litvinoff, Aug. 4, 1965. 79. Handwritten notes, WJC Plenary Session, July 31–Aug. 9, 1966, Brussels, ILPA. 80. Jewish Chronicle, Aug. 12, 1966. 81. Ibid. 82. Nahum Goldmann to Maurice Ashkanasy, Nov. 14, 1966, Z6/1179, Executive Council of Australian Jewry, CZA. 83. Maurice Ashkanasy to Nahum Goldmann, Nov. 25, 1966, Z6/1176, CZA. 84. Nahum Goldmann to Maurice Ashkanasy, Dec. 10, 1966, Z6/1179, CZA. 85. Signed by M. Ashkanasy, M. Slonim, and Isi J. Leibler, Z6/1179, CZA. 86. Alex Easterman to Nahum Goldmann, Mar. 3, 1967, Z6/1179, CZA. 87. Gerhardt Riegner to Maurice Ashkanasy, Mar. 7, 1967, Z6/1179, CZA.

296

Suzanne D. Rutland 88. Maurice Ashkanasy to Joachim Prinz, Apr. 21, 1967, Z6/1176, CZA. 89. Saul Hayes to ECAJ, Mar. 24, 1967, ILPA. 90. Moshe Decter to Isi Leibler, May 29, 1967, ILPA. 91. Avraham Abba Cohen to ECAJ, Apr. 6 and 11, 1967, ILPA. 92. Alex Easterman to Nahum Goldmann, Feb. 1, 1967, Z6/1179, CZA. 93. Guardian, Feb. 13, 1967, Z6/1176, CZA. 94. Alex Easterman to Gordon Hausmann, Feb. 21, 1967, Z6/1176, CZA.

95. Gordon Hausmann and Michael Hunter to Alex Easterman, Feb. 28, 1967, Z6/1176, CZA. 96. Alex Easterman to Gordon Hausmann and Michael Hunter, Mar. 7, 1967, Z6/1176, CZA. 97. Yaakov Roi, Struggle, 228. 98. MOAZ Information Bulletin, no 1. (Dec. 1964), “Soviet Jewry 1963–65,” Z6/1242, CZA. 99. As quoted in William Orbach, The American Movement to Aid Soviet Jews (Amherst, MA, 1979), 30. 100. Yaakov Roi, Struggle, 59. 101. William Orbach, American Movement, 22–23.

13

( Goldmann’s Initiative to Meet with Nasser in 1970 Meir Chazan

ahum Goldmann took pride in being an independent thinker, one not bound by convention. He enjoyed his reputation as a devil’s advocate. At the same time, he was part of a long tradition of international Jewish shtadlanim [intercessors] who used their abilities, their sharp wits, and their intellect to cope with the obstacles that confronted the Jews.1 These two patterns of thought and action in which Goldmann excelled—nonconformism and shtadlanut [intercessionism]—were at the root of his initiative in March and April 1970 to meet with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser. This initiative was Goldmann’s last significant public act in the political arena. He was 75 years old at the time and the president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC). From a political standpoint, the Goldmann initiative came up in the interim between the Rogers Plan of December 9, 1969, which was supposed to be a solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict imposed by the major powers (but was rejected by both Israel and the Arabs), and the Rogers Plan that put an end to the War of Attrition on August 8, 1970. This chapter will describe the circumstances in which the idea of Goldmann’s mission emerged, examine the controversy over the mission in the government, and survey the public uproar that resulted from it. Underlying the chapter is the question of whether Israel missed

N

297

298

Meir Chazan

a genuine opportunity, heralded by Goldmann, to normalize relations with Egypt. Then-Prime Minister Golda Meir said in her blunt, straightforward manner that to describe the Goldmann initiative “as letting a chance for peace slip away is such an exaggeration, really, it’s like flying to the moon.”2 This chapter focuses on understanding the covert and overt aspects of the initiative. The basic assumption presented here is that Goldmann never expected to go to Egypt. His actions in March and April 1970 stemmed from this idea. Nevertheless, he did think he would be able to achieve his main goal—to trigger a public debate over Israeli foreign policy—even without setting foot in Egypt. Because he worked in the shadowy realm of politics, Goldmann was extremely careful, both at the time and years later, to obscure the details of the initiative and the identities of the people involved. Attributing this solely to his character, patterns of conduct, and mannerisms would be wrong. Goldmann acted in this way partly to make tracing his contacts difficult, but also to increase the confusion regarding the initiative on the assumption that vagueness would encourage people to focus on, discuss, and uncover every possible facet and angle of the subject. As usual, he did the manipulation very skillfully. From a research perspective, this makes describing and analyzing the affair difficult. Many works of interest have been written about the Goldmann initiative, among them books by Mordehai Gazit and Raphael Patai.3 But academic research on the period in general is still in its infancy, and not all of the relevant documentation is accessible. The Goldmann initiative was likened from the start to a rashomon, as Gazit puts it bluntly. This is evident in all types of sources on the subject. Therefore, deciphering it requires repeated cross-checking of information, some of which was printed in the press at the time with a slant of one sort or another. Before we look into the Goldmann initiative, a few details about the situation in Israel at the time are worth mentioning. The War of Attrition on the Suez Canal front was being waged in full force; the Americans had decided to suspend the sale of additional fighter planes to Israel; the Egyptians had received sophisticated SAM-3 antiaircraft missiles from the USSR and would soon receive MiG-23 fighters, flown by Soviet pilots; the government had approved permanent settlement in Hebron/Kiryat Arba; and the Cameri Theater was staging Hanoch Levin’s play Queen of the Bathtub. Israel had a national unity government headed by Golda Meir. Meir, whose appointment as prime minister after the death of Levi Eshkol had been described a year earlier as a “temporary solution,” had consolidated her political authority and caused the scornful whispers about “that frail old lady” to subside.4 The leading policymaking ministers were Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Foreign Minister Abba Eban, Minister without Portfolio Israel Galili, and Deputy Prime Minister and Education Minister Yigal Allon. Israel’s official attitude toward normalizing relations with the Arab countries was set forth by Meir: “To achieve peace, I am willing to go anywhere at any time to meet with an authorized leader of an Arab country, [and] negotiate with him based on mutual respect and equality and without preconditions. . . .”5

Goldmann’s Initiative to Meet with Nasser in 1970

299

I. StitchingTogether the Initiative Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Goldmann had refrained from expressing himself in public about diplomatic means of resolving the conflict between Israel and the Arab countries. Although he did threaten “to end my ‘Trappist’ period,” on the grounds that if Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon were allowed to make far-reaching proclamations, then he, too, as an ordinary citizen, could operate in his own way.6 Nevertheless, it remained merely a threat. He had even told Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in jest that silence was his main contribution to Israeli postwar policy.7 Goldmann continued speaking frequently with leading figures in Europe and the United States and expressed his views to them. Only when he saw fit to do so did he update Israeli government leaders about his political contacts. From time to time he was the target of venomous comments as a result, especially from Foreign Ministry officials, who had little patience for his independent moves.8 His opinions did not always remain behind closed doors. In April 1968, for instance, Goldmann became entangled in a web of denials after recommending to Senator William Fulbright, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that the United States press Israel to moderate its stance. Fulbright, under attack for anti-Israel views, defended himself against the accusation, incidentally divulging that he had had a discreet conversation with Goldmann. The latter denied having asked that pressure be brought to bear on Israel and even extracted a letter of apology from Fulbright.9 Foreign Ministry officials had predicted that Goldmann would manage to arrange such a denial and would continue his contacts without coordinating them with the Ministry—“at best throwing to us, after the fact, some grain that he calls a report.” In accordance with the Foreign Ministry’s recommendation, a message was sent to the U.S. Embassy in Israel stating that Goldmann did not represent the Israeli government, that he was not authorized to speak on its behalf, and that anything he said was solely in his own name.10 The Labor Party used Goldmann’s remarks to Fulbright as an excuse to thwart his reelection as president of the World Zionist Organization (WZO). An editorial in Davar stated that Goldmann had become “disoriented and [lost] his sense of proportion in his conduct with the Israeli public.” However, Davar stressed, it would not be among those throwing stones at Goldmann due to his political views. “On the contrary, at times his opinions can cool off hotheads and serve as a counterweight to people with radical tendencies who ignore the considerations of wisdom and the political situation.”11 Goldmann’s relations with Meir, who had been named prime minister following Eshkol’s death in March 1969, were beset by disputes and quarrels. She had been actively involved in the process that led to his ouster as WZO president, and even earlier the two had at times clashed publicly when Meir had been Foreign Minister. Nevertheless, their relationship was not devoid of closeness and appreciation. After she resigned as foreign minister, Goldmann wrote to her that despite their conflicts, “My heart was always full of admiration, and—if I

300

Meir Chazan

may say so—affection for you. You are one of the most outstanding and beautiful characters in the State of Israel, which unfortunately is not very rich in such characters.”12 While visiting Israel in the second half of 1969, Goldmann arranged with Meir that he would express his political opinions when the time came, but he promised to do so when in Israel rather than abroad.13 Goldmann started breaching his declared silence on political issues in early 1970. In an interview with Tom Segev in Al Hamishmar, he said that he planned to come to Israel for two months (March and April) and present his views. When asked why then, he replied, “I expect perhaps some developments that I don’t want to talk about.” Regarding the national unity government, Goldmann said, “As soon as Israel has to decide something, this government will explode. One of the factors that will lead me to speak, perhaps in March, or in the spring at any rate, is that I see this moment approaching. I want a public debate to start, and not only with professors but with the cognoscenti as well.”14 He was convinced, he added, that he would come under attack when he started expressing his opinion about Israeli policy, but “the lack of debate in Israel and conformism are hazardous both to political thought in Israel and to the country’s image abroad.”15 Goldmann decided to publicize an independent alternative on three topics: the essence of the Jewish state in the Land of Israel, the outline of an overall arrangement for the territories that had been captured, and an operative means of initiating political contacts. To promote these measures, Goldmann took three steps: 1. He submitted to Foreign Affairs an article that he had written two years earlier. The editor of the journal “was thrilled with it,” as Goldmann put it, and informed him in January 1970 that he was removing two articles from the March issue to make room for it.16 2. He asked Meir to summon the leaders of the Labor Alignment for an off-the-record conversation in which he could explain his views to them before presenting them in public.17 3. He wrote a series of articles on Israeli foreign policy and arranged to have them published in Haarez.18 In addition, Goldmann expected another development, as he hinted in his cryptic remark to Tom Segev: maturation of his secret contacts with people who had ties with Nasser. The idea of a Goldmann-Nasser meeting was nothing new. Goldmann had tried to meet with Nasser back in the 1950s. Among the people who had been involved in the preliminary attempts to arrange such a meeting were U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Goldmann’s assistant, Joe Golan. These efforts, made in May–July 1956, were abruptly terminated by the Sinai Campaign before picking up steam again in May 1957. This is not the place to expound on this subject, which deserves separate attention in the context of the secret contacts between Israel and Egypt in the 1950s. The exchanges concerning the content of the


301

meeting were especially fascinating. For our purposes, however, a few of the features of these conversations are significant because they came up again in similar form in 1970. First, the liaison on the Egyptian side was Colonel Sarwat Okasha, one of the Free Officers who had staged the coup in Egypt in 1952. Second, Nasser laid down certain conditions for the meeting: total secrecy beforehand, a decision on how to disclose the news afterward, and insistence that Goldmann come as a Jewish leader on a private visit and not as an official representative of the state of Israel. Third, Goldmann’s response to the Egyptian terms was, “Naturally, Ben-Gurion has to know about it.”19 Although these contacts led nowhere, what is important from our perspective is that a preliminary basis for clarifying the mutual benefit of such a meeting existed in the memories of the two main people involved in the contacts: Nasser and Goldmann. In the late 1960s, Goldmann met twice with President Tito of Yugoslavia, and they discussed the possibility of a meeting between Goldmann and Nasser. After the second meeting, on May 21, 1968, Goldmann came to Israel and reported on it to Eshkol, Dayan, and Eban. Goldmann’s record of the conversation makes no mention of a possible meeting between him and Nasser.20 He may have chosen not to include it in the document that he wrote, or alternatively, he may have been trying to promote such a process. In the wake of Goldmann’s report, Dayan wrote to him: Regarding the possible meeting in Berjoni [Tito’s place of residence], as I told you, if it were brought up for discussion in the government, I would support holding the meeting. On the other hand, if the matter is not discussed by the government and does not have its approval or the approval of the Prime Minister, if I were in your place I would not hold the meeting (and not only because of the claims that would be made but due to the essence of the matter).21 According to Goldmann, Eshkol told him, regarding a possible meeting with Nasser, “It isn’t simple. We have to see whether it’s serious. I don’t believe it is.” Around the same time, Goldmann was invited to Russia, too, and in this case Eshkol told him: “I not only agree that you should go—you should run. And it’s too bad that you only have two legs for that.”22 Both of these meetings remained on paper only. Nevertheless, Goldmann continued to focus on forming secret ties for the purpose of arranging a meeting with Nasser. One after another, Russians,23 the French Communist and culture expert Roger Garaudy, Eric Rouleau (the Middle East correspondent for Le Monde), and the Yugoslavian administration served as intermediaries. Garaudy, who visited Egypt in late November 1969, met with Nasser along with Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, editor of Al-Ahram. During their conversation, Nasser and Heikal praised Goldmann but expressed skepticism about his influence in Israel. Garaudy replied that Goldmann’s views had the backing of various Jewish and Israeli circles. On this point, however, Armand Kaplan told Goldmann that “this foolish Roger

302

Meir Chazan

Garaudy did not have the seikhel [common sense] to go through with it to the very end in proposing a discrete meeting between you and Nasser.”24 The possibility of the meeting was apparently discussed in an off-therecord conversation between Nasser and Rouleau, following an interview that Nasser gave Rouleau in mid-February 1970. A few days later, the Yugoslavian foreign minister brought up the subject in a meeting with Egyptian foreign minister Mahmoud Riad, while Tito was visiting Egypt on February 23–24. Riad presented the suggestion to Nasser, who “didn’t say no, but he hasn’t agreed yet either.” The Egyptian reply was delivered a few days later to the Yugoslavian ambassador in Egypt, who personally brought it to Tito. The Yugoslavian foreign minister then gave it to the Yugoslavian ambassador in Paris, who summoned Armand Kaplan, director of the French bureau of the WJC. Kaplan passed it on to Goldmann. The discussions to arrange the meeting through the Yugoslavian brokers involved no written documents.25 This factor contributed to the contradictory information regarding the terms for the meeting, which were to cause an uproar in Israel. To clarify matters, we have to distinguish between the beginning and the end of the contacts—between the initial terms set forth and the final version after modifications. The initial terms were as follows: (1) Goldmann’s meeting with Egyptian leaders was to remain top secret, and (2) Goldmann would have to come with a concrete, detailed plan and not just listen. In reply, Goldmann insisted that he first had to inform the Israeli prime minister and that he could only present his own views and could not be expected to bring a practical plan.26 On March 13, Goldmann sent a message to Golda Meir via the ambassador in France, Walter Eitan, saying that he had important information and had to meet with her urgently.27 Goldmann arrived in Israel on March 23 to present the initiative to Meir. Just before leaving France, he met with Nasser’s emissary, Ahmed Hamrush, who had been a member of the Free Officers’ group that staged the coup in Egypt in 1952 and was now the editor of the weekly Rose al-Youssef. In this conversation, Goldmann was given a direct invitation to meet with Nasser under the following conditions: (1) Nasser reserved the right to publicize the fact of the meeting after it took place; (2) Goldmann would visit as a private individual and not an official representative; and (3) the Israeli prime Minister would be informed in advance of the plan to invite Goldmann. Across the smoke screen that concealed the terms for the meeting at the initiative of both Goldmann and Meir, the two were in total agreement on this matter. Goldmann was careful at the time to obscure the connection between Hamrush and the invitation to Cairo; he portrayed their conversation in an almost folkloristic style—fifteen-minute meeting late at night after the opera. But eventually he admitted the direct connection between his meeting with Hamrush and the finalization of the terms of the invitation.28 In his memoirs, Hamrush consistently attributed the initiative for their meeting to Goldmann and downplayed the operative significance of their conversation. As usual with feelers of this sort, the parties presumably


303

agreed that as long as there was no mutual agreement on the terms of the trip, the invitation did not exist.29

II. Government Discussions of the Initiative On March 24, the day after he arrived in Israel, Goldmann met with Dayan and reported to him on the initiative. Goldmann had a warm relationship with Dayan, although he admitted that their views on Israeli foreign policy were radically different. He appreciated his contact with Dayan not only because of his charisma and personality, but also because of the opportunity it gave him to gain a deeper understanding of the “sabra [native Israeli] mentality.”30 That evening Goldmann spoke with Golda Meir, who was at a rest home in Motza. No minutes were kept of their meeting. Goldmann asked Meir to consult with her “kitchen cabinet” and not to bring the matter up at a government meeting. Dayan, whom Goldmann had brought along for support, said that if he were prime minister he would take responsibility for Goldmann’s trip and would not bring it up with the government. Meir retorted that was easy for Dayan to say because he was not prime minister. If he were, he would do what she was doing. She concluded ironically, “I’m more democratic than he is.”31 Goldmann told Meir that if she agreed to the initiative, he would refrain from having his articles printed in Haarez for the time being. Meir said she would give her answer in a week. Meanwhile, Goldmann reported on the initiative to Jacob Herzog, director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, and to the ministers Abba Eban, Pinhas Sapir, and Israel Barzilai. The large number of these meetings is surprising, considering that the initiative was supposed to be top secret. According to Eban’s count, Goldmann had shared information about the initiative to meet with Nasser with at least ten people before the government raised the subject for discussion.32 The implication is that Goldmann had already realized how things would most likely develop and decided that maintaining the secrecy of the initiative was pointless because he had little chance of carrying it out. He was focusing instead on laying the groundwork for the next campaign, which would follow a formal decision killing the initiative and leading to his main objective on his present trip to Israel—to present his political doctrine in such a way as to produce a widespread impact. Looking at things from a different angle, if the initiative for the meeting were really Goldmann’s main priority, we should consider whom he had to persuade to make the meeting a reality, insofar as it depended on the Israeli side. A key figure in this context was the junior coalition partner, Menachem Begin, without whom the national unity government could not make any significant move. Goldmann did not meet with him. Moreover, he declared time and again during the first half of 1970 that one of the major objectives of his actions was to launch a process that would lead to the dissolution of the national unity government. It was often said at the time that the Israeli government had a “don’t rock the boat policy,” that is, it tended to “decide not to decide.” This pattern was due in part to the balance of power in the government and to Dayan’s

304

Meir Chazan

fence-sitting and his frequent threats to bring down the government if its policy diverged from his views. This can be seen in the unwritten doctrine that reflected the little agreed upon by the leaders of the Alignment. The doctrine was based on a consensus that “the government will set its ultimate territorial conditions in negotiations, when there are negotiations with an Arab country” and that no “ultimate terms for peace” should be specified for now in the name of the government.33 As Meir herself stated at the Knesset on March 31, 1970, “At present the question of peace is academic.”34 Peace was not a political issue; it could be left to academia, since there was no negotiating partner on the Arab side. Thus the government did not have to decide on its political path for the moment. Foreign Minister Abba Eban played a central role in determining how Israel would respond to the Goldmann initiative and what forum would make the decision. Goldmann and Eban were on very good terms. According to Eban, aside from a few members of the government, there was no one with whom he shared secret contacts with Arab leaders and heads of state as often as Goldmann.35 Eban told Goldmann “several times that it would be impossible to refuse such a private invitation if it came from Nasser.” In his doorway, while escorting Goldmann out, Eban summed it up as follows: “No doubt the ‘lady’ won’t be happy with the matter,” but “[I don’t] see how she can refuse.”36 Meir vacillated for a few days regarding what forum should make the decision. On March 27 Eban wrote her a personal letter: Sending Goldmann with the approval of the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister is out of the question. There would be a huge, vigorous uproar in Israel. Therefore it seems to me that Goldmann should be given a choice: (1) If he wants to go as an individual, on his own responsibility, and announce that he has no authority to speak in the name of the government, it’s his responsibility. . . . (2) If the condition is that he have some backing from us, I suggest that the matter be discussed in the government or in a governmental forum, and that we not take M.D.’s [Moshe Dayan’s] advice (according to Goldmann) that the Prime Minister take the responsibility for deciding.37 Regarding the first option, Mordehai Bentov wrote, “Is it really hard to imagine how Dr. Goldmann would be publicly ‘lynched’ here if it became known that he was wandering around Cairo without having informed the Israeli government?” In contrast, Shabtai Teveth maintained that if Goldmann wanted to go to Egypt on his own private initiative, he could do so, but he had never been courageous and was afraid this time, too.38 Changing the focus to fear versus courage was a deliberate diversion of the debate to the realm of psychology. A quixotic move comparable to Abie Nathan’s flight to Egypt in 1966 would have turned Goldmann into an “Abie Nathan with top hat,”39 viewed as a moonstruck eccentric and shunted to the sidelines of Israeli politics. Despite the 1968 excerpt from Davar quoted earlier, Goldmann was not oblivious to


305

the limits to what was permissible and possible in Israeli politics. He avoided crossing lines that would make portraying him as a curiosity easy, and thereby ending his political career. Abba Eban, for his part, was not trying to evade accountability by keeping the responsibility for the trip off Meir and himself. He was afraid that, if they authorized the trip, the two of them would be lynched along with Goldmann. The main beneficiary would be Dayan, who ostensibly was in no way responsible for the matter, even if he knew what was going on. Eban was deterred by the prospect of entering a domestic political minefield, although what would be gained from sending Goldmann was not clear. Meir, who understood that the only sure thing that would result from the Goldmann initiative was, as Eban put it, “a huge, vigorous uproar,” chose to use the uproar to further her goals. She therefore chose to go along with Eban’s suggestion and let the entire government decide. The choice of the government as the forum for discussing the initiative meant that there was an explicit intent to torpedo it. Goldmann said in advance that government approval would kill the initiative. Such an overt, unmistakable deviation from one of the “noes” of the September 1967 Khartoum Conference (“no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it”) would entrap Nasser in the Arab world. As Mordehai Gazit pointed out, despite the ongoing War of Attrition with Egypt, a reliable means of communication with the Egyptian president was not a problem. For example, a few days after the disclosure of the Goldmann initiative, U.S. Under Secretary of State Joseph Sisco visited Cairo (April 10) and Jerusalem (April 14).40 Yigal Allon went even further, hinting that the Israeli government had had secret preliminary peace talks at that time. He made sure to have the London weekly The Observer report that he was Tito’s choice for a meeting between an official Israeli representative and Nasser. From another standpoint, the pundit who reported this, Lederer, was close to Goldmann. I have no additional information that might suggest a connection between these two potential meetings.41 Meir and Eban repeatedly stressed the existence of alternative pipelines for the exchange of messages with Egypt.42 Hence, our present information suggests that this issue was irrelevant to Israeli decisionmakers when they chose a forum to decide the fate of the Goldmann initiative. A discussion of the matter at a government meeting would rule out the “private trip” option advocated by Dayan because the government is inherently a public forum and anything brought up at its meetings, irrespective of its formal classification, automatically ceases being private. The real internal debate among Israeli policymakers was not over whether Goldmann should go, but over how to torpedo his trip. Dayan’s preference was to undermine the initiative. Absorption Minister Shimon Peres, Dayan’s political soul mate, outlined the practical means of doing so in the guise of “hawkish observers.” A “wise, complex” response, in his opinion, was to pass a classified internal resolution welcoming his trip to Cairo—despite reservations about Goldmann’s views and even though Israel does not consider him its emissary— in keeping with Israel’s declared stance that it would not let the slightest chance

306

Meir Chazan

for peace slip away. That same day, the resolution would be leaked to the New York Times. The next day, Nasser would deny having agreed to meet Goldmann, and thus Nasser, who had set a “brilliant trap,” would be seen as the one obstructing dialogue.43 In practice, the Dayan-Peres stance would turn the Goldmann initiative on its head and use it to block Goldmann’s efforts to conduct dialogue with Egypt. In this vein, Dayan told university students at the Cinerama in Tel Aviv on April 6, “If Dr. Goldmann had come and said he wanted to go as a private individual, no problem. But not on behalf of the government.”44 Goldmann, we should recall, had not asked to represent the government at all. In contrast to this approach, which tried “to kill the matter gently” and remove it from the political agenda as quickly as possible, Golda Meir wanted to give the Goldmann initiative lots of publicity to awaken the dormant debate and controversy over the possibility of dialogue with the Arabs. As she saw it, the public impact of failure to go and of the deliberate, public foiling of the trip was the dividend of the Goldmann initiative and of the articles he had authored. Pundits at the time noted the process but attributed it to public relations blunders and failure to weigh the issues thoroughly. The way Meir chose to direct the affair caused them to gaze in astonishment at the bizarre “resurrection” of Goldmann, who had been something of a “dead man,” politically speaking.45 This does not mean that Meir thought for a moment that Goldmann was a worthy emissary for a meeting with Nasser. In his memoirs, Goldmann conceded that he had tried, through his articles in Haarez, to elicit a “powerful debate.” In contrast, he attempted to downplay any direct connection between his articles and the initiative to meet with Nasser, because of which, “unexpectedly, the debate raged out of all bounds.”46 We will return to the meaning of the last part of this quotation shortly. Furthermore, Goldmann clearly knew that the timing of his article in Foreign Affairs would cause a scandal, and he understood that even if he did not go to Cairo, the invitation itself was enough to further animate the discussion of his political views. Despite the mutual recrimination and insults between Goldmann and Meir over the thwarting of the initiative, the two of them had a common goal: to put the question of how to end the War of Attrition and move toward negotiations with the Arabs on the public agenda. This was the essence of the Goldmann initiative. To remove all doubt, it should be stressed that professional politicians as skilled as Meir and Goldmann had no need to coordinate their moves explicitly, although of course we have no way of knowing what they said to one another in their private conversations. The common goal presented here is the result of study and analysis of their political views and moves at the time. In other words, the decision to pass on the verdict regarding the initiative to the government made the initiative Meir’s rather than Goldmann’s or Nasser’s. From that moment on, her actions dictated the public agenda. Meron Medzini found that Meir blurred the ideological differences between the Labor Alignment and the Gahal bloc and until mid-1970 worked at preserving the national unity


307

government.47 I believe that she took advantage of the Goldmann initiative to give the issue of peace talks a prominent place on the public agenda. While “doves” were gaining influence in the Labor Party, the Goldmann initiative served Meir’s purposes as a prelude to the exacerbation of the differences between the Alignment and Gahal and the breakup of the national unity government over acceptance of the Rogers Plan in August 1970. The government discussed the Goldmann initiative on March 29 at what was deemed a meeting of the ministerial committee on security affairs. Meir prefaced her remarks by saying, “I have a subject that I was thinking of bringing up with the committee, but I have reason to believe that it would be better brought up here.” She didn’t bother explaining to the ministers what that reason was. In a newspaper interview, she said it was the absence of Israel Barzilai, the permanent representative of Mapam on the ministerial committee. More likely, however, is that Meir—aware that the resolution would trigger a public debate—wanted to make sure that members of her government, whether from her party or from other parties, would not be able to claim ignorance or lack of involvement in the decision. Meir did not give the government an accurate, trustworthy report on the initiative. For example, she said that the Yugoslavian ambassador had contacted Goldmann “a week or ten days ago,” even though seventeen days had already passed since the initial information about the initiative had reached her office on March 18. Meir presented the conditions Nasser set for the meeting as follows: “First, Nasser doesn’t believe the matter will remain a secret and he will publicize the fact that he met with him. The second [condition is] that Dr. Goldmann go—and here the matter isn’t entirely clear to me—with either the approval or the knowledge of the Prime Minister or the government.”48 The discussion ended with a decision, made without a formal vote, on across-the-board opposition to the initiative. Except for the first sentence, Dayan drafted the resolution. Israel Galili added the first sentence after Dayan presented his proposal to the ministers. Galili believed that expressing a “positive response in principle” to the idea of dialogue with Egypt was important. This implies that, in Galili’s opinion, Dayan did not see much value in emphasizing this facet of the government’s stance.49 The government resolution, which remained classified, said: The government of Israel would comply with any sign of willingness on the part of the Egyptian president to meet to clarify problems vital to both of our countries, if each side determines its own representatives. For this reason, in response to Dr. Goldmann’s request that the government authorize his meeting with the president of Egypt, the government has decided to respond in the negative. The government does not empower him to fulfill this mission on its behalf—whether it is stated explicitly that he is representing the government or this is implicit in the fact that the Israeli government was asked and authorized such a meeting.50

308

Meir Chazan

Meir informed Goldmann of the resolution on April 1 and asked him to initiate the rejection of the invitation. She knew full well that Goldmann could not possibly do so because the other people involved in the contacts were liable to see him as all talk if he did. The preceding analysis suggests that Meir was not even interested in having Goldmann do as she asked. The next day, the first of a series of six articles Goldmann wrote on Israeli foreign policy appeared in Haarez. The articles were based on five assumptions: (1) the time factor was not working in Israel’s favor; (2) taking political initiatives to resolve the conflict with the Arabs was essential; (3) Israel should stop insisting on direct negotiations as a condition for dialogue; (4) Israel should strive for an official contractual agreement to end the state of war rather than a peace treaty; and (5) the feeling that Israel had no choice, which dominated the Israeli public scene, was incorrect. The most pointed assertion in Goldmann’s articles claimed, “We are no longer as pathetic as we were before the Six-Day War. We are not threatened with annihilation. We are an occupying power, even if our methods are more humane than those of other occupying countries.” He called for withdrawing from the entire Sinai region; making minor border adjustments in the Latrun and Kalkilya areas; letting the Palestinians in the territories decide their political future within the bounds of many practical restrictions on the exercise of the “right of return”; refraining from making a decision regarding the Golan Heights (because the Syrians did not want an agreement at the time); and keeping Jerusalem united without annexing it to Israel.51 On April 5, the government again discussed the Goldmann initiative, this time because of leaks to the press. At this meeting, Meir again mentioned the conditions set for the trip: “(1) Nasser will publicize it. (2) It must be with the knowledge or approval of the Israeli government. Here I do not know whether he said with the knowledge of the Prime Minister or with the knowledge of the government, but there is no difference between the two.” Meir adopted a formalistic approach here, as if every fundamental matter that reached her desk were presented directly to the government for its review and decision. In view of the leak, a decision was made at the meeting to publicize the government resolution.52 One sentence that ran completely counter to the mood and content of the remarks made at the two government meetings on the initiative was unencumbered by political maneuvering and did not reflect the power struggles and manipulations between ministers. Abba Eban said, “When I heard Dr. Goldmann’s story, I couldn’t react in a thought-out manner, because I found the idea so surprising and so astonishing.”53 It is in this context that we should understand how Israelis received the news broadcast on the Voice of Israel at 11 P.M. on Sunday, April 5. The government communiqué left out the last sentence of the resolution because it might have been interpreted as a personal affront to Goldmann. The following sentence was added instead, “According to Dr. Goldmann, President Nasser stipulated that such a meeting would take place with the knowledge and approval of the Israeli government and that its existence would be made public.”54 This baseless sentence had nothing to do


309

with the conditions set at the start, in the middle, or at the end of the contacts. Presumably, it was not inserted into the government communiqué inadvertently. Nevertheless, for the time being I have no information to indicate that this nonexistent condition was deliberately included in an attempt to goad Goldmann into a reaction that would intensify the public impact of the affair, as indeed happened in the days that followed.

III. Disclosure of the Initiative and the Public Campaign An editorial in Davar the day after the disclosure of the initiative said that the news “no doubt astonished the listeners.” This “is a vociferous development that did not fail to make an impression on the Israeli listener and will not fail to make an impression on the world.”55 Total rejection soon replaced the astonishment. The Israeli press gave wall-to-wall backing to the thwarting of Goldmann’s mission. Haim Gouri’s response was typical. Gouri described the “Goldmania,” as he termed the initiative, as the entanglement of “an old, publicity-hungry adventurer in an irresponsible delusion,” which was now shown to be “a deception of tremendous proportions, a grotesque fabrication.”56 The main criticism was directed at the way in which the government had tried to neutralize the initiative, creating the impression that Israel was not making every possible effort to achieve peace. Meanwhile, the totally incorrect claim was advanced that the pedantic, semantic distinction between the government’s “knowledge” and its “approval” of the Goldmann initiative had practical significance. In the political echelon, few people supported Goldmann. The ministers who sided with him were Israel Barzilai and Victor Shemtov of Mapam, Zorach Warhaftig and Moshe Haim Shapira of the National Religious Party (NRP), Moshe Kol of the Independent Liberals, and Pinhas Sapir of Labor. Their support was barely evident at government meetings, partly because the last three ministers were not at the meetings at the time due to travel and illness. Several Knesset members, the most prominent of them being Avraham Ofer, who represented the “doves” in the Labor party, also sided with Goldmann. Nevertheless, the government’s position, which enjoyed substantial backing, won a 61–5 majority in a Knesset vote on April 7. That evening, Goldmann attended a meeting of the Alignment’s political committee and Knesset faction, where Meir vehemently attacked him. The previous day, at a meeting of the Alignment Knesset faction, Meir had predicted: “I imagine demagogues will now say that peace was in our hands and the government missed the historic moment.” Now Meir resorted to demagogic claims of her own, flinging a challenge at Goldmann: Why hadn’t he come to Israel before the Six-Day War? She recommended “that he stay in Israel for a while, live our life, go down to the border settlements and outposts, and only afterwards

310

Meir Chazan

criticize us and preach to us.”57 A member of Kibbutz Maoz Haim, a border locality in the Beit Shean Valley, responded to the Prime Minister’s “attempt to stir up anti-Goldmann hysteria,” stating that many residents of border localities would be happy if Goldmann met with Nasser. Although the emotional, maternal approach that served Meir well in politics was powerful both morally and politically, he argued, focusing her motherly anxiety on the welfare of the soldiers’ bodies and souls, on fostering the aspiration for peace, and on “standing up proudly in-front of the ‘no choice situation’” would have been better instead of “vulgarly” appealing to emotions whenever she spoke of the outposts and border settlements.58 Following the government announcement, Goldmann launched a countercampaign in which his supporters released information about the “true” conditions set for the meeting, in a widely attended press conference and a series of media interviews.59 A lightning survey of the government resolution conducted on April 6 was presented to Yigal Allon and submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office for its review. The survey was to determine whether the possibility that Goldmann might be invited to Cairo had altered attitudes toward government policy or assessments of Israel’s relations with Arab countries. Interestingly, a comparison of each interviewee’s current answer with his or her answer in the past showed that, after the disclosure of the Goldmann affair, 34 percent had become more optimistic about Arab countries’ willingness to talk about real peace with Israel. Furthermore, 80 percent thought the Israeli government should accede to every initiative for peace talks proposed by Arab countries, although 62 percent believed the government resolution was correct and only 35 percent thought it was incorrect.60 For a brief time, Goldmann’s views seemed to be gaining popularity. Demonstrations were held outside the government buildings in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel by Hashomer Hazair, the New Communist List, Haolam Hazeh, and Mazpen.61 The government resolution was criticized in the foreign press, too. A New York Times editorial about the Goldmann initiative concluded with the following words: “Israeli officials have often said they are just ‘waiting for the phone to ring’ in order to regain negotiations. It is sad that, when Dr. Goldmann’s phone rang, the Israeli government declined to let him answer.”62 Six Israeli academics (Dan Patinkin, Meron Benvenisti, Shimon Shamir, Yoram Ben-Porath, Michael Bruno, and Amos Tversky) interviewed in Newsweek criticized the government policy. The Israeli ambassador to the United States, Yizhak Rabin, described in scathing terms the broad impact of such criticism by Israelis, “especially by what are called intellectuals.”63 Rabin maintained that only real action would demonstrate the vast gulf between Israel and Goldmann. He therefore called for the revocation of Goldmann’s diplomatic passport. Eban, worried about stirring up passions further over an ostensibly procedural matter, quickly assured Rabin that his suggestion would be considered but chose not to follow it.64 Meir suggested to Rabin that the embassy ask Marie Syrkin—the daughter of the socialist Zionist ideologue


311

Nahman Syrkin and, no less importantly, Meir’s biographer—to write an article in response to Goldmann’s article in Foreign Affairs.65 These moves demonstrate the effort made, especially in the Foreign Ministry, to divert the debate over Goldmann from the initiative for the meeting to the opinions printed in Haarez and Foreign Affairs regarding a Jewish-Arab agreement and the future of the state of Israel. This was in response to the furious reactions in certain Jewish circles to the thwarting of the meeting; the influential London banker Sigmund Warburg, for instance, briefly threatened to suspend his ties with Israel. The initiative for the meeting was described in Foreign Ministry correspondence as an episode that had been blown out of proportion and would be better forgotten. The main danger on the international level, in their opinion, was that Goldmann’s ideology—which advocated turning Israel into a protectorate, giving up sovereignty over Jerusalem, and withdrawing almost completely from the territories captured in 1967 in return for the vain allure of an agreement—would gain support. Eban even went to the trouble of explaining that “in fact, he [Goldmann] has the views of a radical pro-Arab. . . .”66 The Egyptian government issued an official announcement stating that the reports that Goldmann had almost been sent an invitation were fabricated and groundless. The fear that Nasser would try to gain propaganda value from the affair and depict Israel as opposing negotiations faded away. To Egypt, the gain was not worth the harm the country might suffer in the Arab world by being seen as deviating from the Khartoum resolutions. If Nasser was attempting, however slightly, to use the initiative for the meeting to signal a desire for coexistence with Israel despite being pressured to accept increased Soviet military aid, the message got across. Hamrush admitted having been in Paris, but naturally he denied having spoken with Goldmann. In his memoirs he recounted that, upon returning to Paris, he wrote to Nasser, describing the circumstances of the meeting with Goldmann, and the Egyptian president instructed him “to continue the contacts with Goldmann and to try to make friends with him.”67 Goldmann did his best not to “burn” Hamrush and the Yugoslavian ambassador in Paris, both so as not to jeopardize their political futures and for the sake of future ties with them or with other people who would know that he would not abandon those with whom he had secret contacts.68 Against this backdrop, we can also understand the aforementioned vagueness regarding the existence of a formal invitation from Nasser to Goldmann. To David Ben-Gurion, who doubted the authenticity of the initiative in view of the haze surrounding information about it, Goldmann wrote: You are familiar enough with diplomacy to know that one must not reveal names on such occasions. Incidentally, you, too, have mentioned several times an attempt on your part to meet with Nasser, and you never publicized the names of the intermediaries. Naturally, I told the Prime Minister the name of the statesman who initiated the matter and the name of Nasser’s friend who came to encourage me to

312

Meir Chazan

accept the invitation, saying how much Egyptian public opinion would welcome the prospect of such a visit. I added to Golda, and I announced publicly, that there was no promise to invite me, just willingness in principle, provided that I come as a private individual and that the Prime Minister of Israel be aware of it, since Nasser did not want to pledge to keep the matter secret.69 Nevertheless, at Ben-Gurion’s initiative—in an effort to delegitimate Goldmann—reports appeared in the Israeli and foreign press describing the lack of seriousness of peace signals that had come from Nasser in the past.70 BenGurion’s comments were not just statements of solid truth about the present; more important, they were intended as a means of molding the historical memory of such contacts and leaving in people’s minds a residue of untrustworthiness and lack of expectation regarding signals for dialogue coming from Nasser’s circles. This is not a post factum observation of the events or an analysis of the assessment of an experienced observer just before he left political life (BenGurion resigned from the Knesset about a month later). At government meetings about the Goldmann initiative, Peres insisted that a written invitation from an authorized source—Yugoslavian or Egyptian—be demanded. The justification he gave is more important than the demand itself: “Myths have power. . . . I know a myth will grow out of this. I know how many myths roaming around among us are unfounded.”71 In his remarks supposedly made by “hawkish observers,” Peres said the day after the government meeting on April 5: “There are several dangerous myths about negotiations in Israel’s brief history, and the most dangerous one of all was born yesterday.” He went on to explain that he was referring to the myth that Israel had turned down negotiations with Egypt by embarking on retaliatory action in Gaza and to contacts the Maltese prime minister mediated.72 For our purposes, the historicity of events in the 1950s is secondary. More important is a remark by Al Hamishmar journalist Benko Adar in reference to the events of 1954–1956: “there are those interested in transferring things that happened to the realm of myth, because the events of those years can teach us an important lesson for our times, too, as well as for the future.”73 Peres, who I believe had a good understanding of the common interests of Meir and Goldmann, explained that he was concerned mainly about “the impression that would form in Israel,” especially among the youth.74 His “concern for the youth” was really concern about the political doctrine that held that the issue of dialogue with the Arabs should not be put on the agenda and that, for the time being, maintaining the status quo would be preferable. Dayan, too, was engaged in this struggle for the minds of the youth, trying to prevent them from falling victim to the delusion that an opportunity for preliminary peace talks with Egypt had been lost. In an address to university students, Dayan expressed sorrow over the reported skepticism and unwillingness of “high school seniors and Goldmannists to volunteer for the IDF, to fight, and to do so with their hearts and souls.”75


313

Dayan was reacting to a letter to Golda Meir from fifty-six Jerusalem high-school students. The letter, written on April 8, stated: Madam Prime Minister, we, a group of high-school students who are about to be inducted into the IDF, protest the government’s policy regarding the Goldmann-Nasser talks. Until now we believed that we were going to fight and serve for three years because there was no choice. After this affair, it has been proven that even when there is another option, however slight, it is ignored. In light of this, we and many others question how we can fight an incessant, futureless war when our government is steering its policy in such a way that chances for peace are allowed to slip away. We call on the government to take advantage of every opportunity and every chance for peace. Give Goldmann a chance!76 Meir passed on the letter to Allon, who invited the students to meet with him. In his invitation, Allon expressed his concern about the suspicions that the government was letting a chance for peace slip away. However, he regarded their letter as “a faithful expression of our nation’s aspiration and of the government’s policy to achieve a sustainable peace treaty between us and the Arab countries.”77 Meir did not ignore the message in the students’ letter. Referring to the shock wave that it had caused, she said that Siah lohamim (published in English as The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk about the Six-Day War), Bertha Hazan’s remarks on the behavior of the children in the Six-Day War, and Yizhak Rabin’s speech on Mt. Scopus should be included in anthologies for youth and that every youngster should be familiar with them.78 The expressions of yearning for peace that appeared in journalistic interviews with the signers of what quickly became known as the “seniors’ letter” were hazy. The vast majority were inducted into combat units a few months later. A flood of letters and petitions from other teenagers, harshly criticizing the Jerusalem students’ attitude, reached the Prime Minister’s Office. Nevertheless, the “seniors’ letter” became a sort of political initiation rite for young Israelis, who from time to time discover politics and are almost astonished at its impact on the lives of individuals and society.79 “The Future of Israel,” a subject that could be expected to appeal to many young people, was the title of Goldmann’s article in Foreign Affairs, which appears to have been written in late 1967. His attempt to establish a different path for realizing the Zionist idea within the state of Israel failed. As usual when seeking to promote his views, he relied on his nonconformism. Before publication, Goldmann showed his article to five public figures—Henry Kissinger, Isaiah Berlin, Raymond Aaron, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Stan Rothman—and asked for their reactions. Their responses, he said, were “more than positive.” Kissinger, a member of the editorial board of Foreign Affairs, wanted the article published immediately in the quarterly, but Goldmann preferred to wait for a politically

314

Meir Chazan

opportune moment. The article, an analysis imbued with Ahad Haam’s “spiritual Zionism,” expressed doubt whether a Jewish state with the same structure and image as other countries was a genuine application of Zionism. Instead of relying chiefly on military force and political strength, Goldmann claimed, Israel’s existence should be accepted and guaranteed by all the nations of the world, including the Arabs, and safeguarded permanently by all of humanity. To achieve this goal, Israel would have to be a neutral state, and such neutrality could serve as the basis for a Jewish-Arab peace accord. At the time, Goldmann was pushing to be regarded as one of the leaders of the Zionist movement in its struggle for an independent state, along with Chaim Weizmann, Ben-Gurion, and Moshe Sharett. In a discussion in the Executive of the Jewish Agency about his views on the future of the Jewish state, Goldmann retreated somewhat, saying that he still advocated the existence of Israel as a sovereign state and did not propose that it be demilitarized. The neutrality plan was a vision for the distant future, he explained, after years of peace with the Arabs and a change in the political climate of the Middle East.80 Nevertheless, in his writings Goldmann continued to promote his vision of neutrality, despite time and again encountering chilly reactions in Israel and enraging many people, who questioned his loyalty to the state’s very existence. Meir set the tone, stating vehemently: “Not a trace of Zionism remains in him [Goldmann].”81 Goldmann spent the month after the disclosure of his initiative traveling around the country, expressing his views at dozens of conferences of party institutions, in rural settlements, in universities, and in urban lecture halls. As time passed, he encountered increasingly hostile reactions. Typical was Eliezer Livne’s judgment that, “Peace is too serious for pacifists to be permitted to deal with it.”82 Passions flared at Goldmann’s meetings. People waved signs, shouted objections and derogatory comments, and clashed violently. Sometimes meetings were even broken up. The final chord in the public debate over the Goldmann initiative was sounded by Israeli president Zalman Shazar, who defended Goldmann’s right to voice his opinion and compared him to Uriel da Costa.83 Goldmann also met with West Bank Arab personalities, including former ministers in the Jordanian government. In their conversation, the Arabs declared their willingness to permit Jews free access to the Western Wall in exchange for a return to the 1947 partition borders and recognition in principle of the refugees’ right to return to their homes. Reports on this meeting stated with some satisfaction that it had once again been proven that there was no one with whom to talk.84 Goldmann left Israel on May 7. Just before leaving, he expressed his satisfaction with the debate that had followed his presentation of his political views and summarized the affair surrounding the initiative in his typical manner, “Everything should have been kept in proportion and not exaggerated.” The warning against “exaggerations” that would portray Israel as not wanting peace was directed especially at Yoram Sadeh (the son of Palmah founder Yitzhak Sadeh), whose article alleging that “the moral basis for my being an


315

Israeli” had suddenly been wiped out had elicited widespread reactions.85 On a previous occasion, Goldmann had admitted: “I am by nature not one to bear a grudge. My life is not exclusively political. I would rather be at a festival in Salzburg. Read a good book. Politics is not my livelihood.”86 Goldmann continued coming to Israel from time to time for short trips. His contact person in Israel on political affairs was Yeshayahu Weinberg, managing director of the Cameri Theater,87 who also found himself in the eye of the storm due to the play Queen of the Bathtub, which premiered on April 17. One of its peak moments was the song “Promise,” sung by the defense minister, based on Winston Churchill’s well-known speech from World War II: I promise you blood and tears / and my word is a word / and if I promise you blood and tears / then everyone knows that it’s blood and tears / not to mention sweat. / Soon you’ll have it very bad / and my word is a word / and if I say it will be very bad / then you can be sure it will be very bad / and maybe even worse than bad. / You’ll keep living without the slightest hope / and my word is a word / and if I say you’ll keep living / then a few will really keep living / but don’t ask for what.88 Amnon Rubinstein recounted that on the night he saw Queen of the Bathtub, Moshe Dayan was in the theater. His presence was a way of challenging his detractors. In the scene in which the defense minister promises blood and tears and keeps his promise, many people in the audience stood up “to see how he was responding.”89 Two days before the premiere of Queen of the Bathtub, Allon told a writers’ conference that he was afraid it might be true that when the cannons roar, the muses fall silent. “And perhaps they fall silent amid this terrible noise, which destroys the still, small, creative voice. . . . Every work of art is a case of overcoming paralysis and the silence of the soul, and the sounds of war certainly do not help with this heroic task.”90 The biting satire closed after just a few weeks due to the fierce public outcry that its message evoked. What is relevant to our purposes is that the irate reaction to Hanoch Levin’s play reflected the dominant mood at the time when Goldmann was trying to point out a different direction in which he believed Israel’s relations with its neighbors should be rerouted. An apocalyptic political climate prevailed in Israel, in tense expectation of a dramatic military clash with the Soviet Union. The confrontation between Israeli and Soviet pilots on April 18 led to cessation of the Israeli bombings deep in Egypt. The “no choice” formula that had been repeated over and over again was evident, for example, in statements by the outspoken dovish professor Jacob Talmon about “willingness to fight to the last soldier.”91 While the Foreign Ministry was explaining to its emissaries around the world that their job was persuade Jewish figures to exert pressure on Goldmann so he would feel isolated in his stance,92 Goldmann continued to maintain secret political contacts. He met again with Tito and Hamrush. On June 9,

316

Meir Chazan

Hamrush again invited Goldmann to meet with Nasser, this time on a private visit with no preconditions. Goldmann told only Dayan about the invitation because the latter had advised him just before he left Israel to accept if he were invited for a visit of this sort. Although Goldmann’s purpose in writing to Dayan was to consult with him, Dayan refrained from giving advice and added: “You know all the considerations and you will decide what you decide.”93 We do not know why the trip never took place. In late June, Goldmann met with King Hassan of Morocco, who tried unsuccessfully to convince him to meet with Arafat.94 A year later, Goldmann brokered an attempt to arrange for Meir and Dayan to meet with their counterparts in Egypt, again with Hamrush’s assistance. The contacts ended in failure in late 1971 and were leaked to the press in February 1972. Goldmann did not give up. He asked Tito to suggest to Egyptian president Anwar Sadat talks over a separate agreement based on a withdrawal from the entire Sinai in exchange for demilitarization of the vacated territory, but to no avail.95

IV. Conclusion In the history of Israel between the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War, the Goldmann initiative is remembered as a fleeting episode, one of many public political storms. Meir, Dayan, and Eban left it out of their memoirs, whether intentionally or not. The initiative gave Goldmann an extraordinarily powerful public platform, which he had wanted as early as January 1970, as well as countless opportunities to express his opinions. The hostile public reaction is not only indicative of Israelis’ attitudes toward Goldmann’s views but, more important, is evidence of the rapid erosion of shtadlanut as a Jewish pattern of activity, especially for Jews living in Israel.96 In this context, the classic question of “what if” comes up: If the Israeli government had authorized Goldmann’s trip, would Nasser have actually extended the invitation? If so, what would have “come out of it,” as Goldmann put it? He himself thought there was a 50 percent chance that Nasser would really extend the invitation and “80 percent that nothing would come out of it.” On a different occasion he added, “I told Golda: I assume with 80 percent certainty that nothing will come out of it versus 20 percent that something might come out of it. I could have said 90 percent versus 10 percent that nothing will come out of it. But the gesture is important.”97 In other words, the meeting was important as a gesture, irrespective of what would be discussed at it, what would happen next, and whether it would pave the way to a peace accord. Moreover, Goldmann’s “extreme nonchalance” in his public appearances, and especially at the press conference that he called on April 8 to present his version of the affair, is salient here, too. The way Goldmann presented the matter, which touched a raw nerve for Israelis, left many of his listeners with “a heavy, bitter feeling, as if even he himself did not treat the matter with the solemnity and seriousness it deserved.”98


317

In the center of the stormy dispute was Goldmann himself. The question was whether his personal behavior and his views regarding a future political agreement and the character of the state of Israel disqualified him from faithfully representing Israel’s interests on such a life-and-death issue. Eliahu Sasson, who was considered an authority in this realm due to his experience with contacts with Arabs, believed that a meeting with Nasser could achieve an important goal: “ending the freeze between us and the Arabs and proving that dialogue between Israel and the Arab countries is possible.” Sasson added that despite Goldmann’s experience and achievements in international contacts, he should not be the first Israeli to hold such a meeting; the first person should be someone more solidly rooted in Israeli life.99 In addition, there was the question of whether Israel had too hastily torpedoed a peace mission, while adhering to the principle of direct negotiations with the Arab countries and insisting that the ongoing military conflict was due to the lack of an alternative and the absence of a partner on the Arab side. The idea of categorizing the initiative as one of the opportunities for peace that Israel let slip away is fundamentally flawed. The significance of the initiative is to be found elsewhere: in Goldmann’s willingness to sacrifice an ostensible opportunity to meet with Nasser for the sake of the interest he had in common with Meir, that is, in encouraging Israeli politicians and society to focus on options for peace with the Arabs as a vital step toward achieving peace. From this perspective, and on the assumption that politics is not just an arena for clashes between different stances, power struggles, fights over seats in the legislature, and insults but also a first-rate educational arena, the Goldmann initiative had valuable significance. It was meant in part to show Israelis that a meeting with the Arab leadership was possible and that practical guidelines for Jewish-Arab dialogue and understanding could be drawn. Moving to the perspective of today, it is worth mentioning that in the Knesset debate over the Goldmann initiative, Meir Wilner, the “untouchable” leader of the New Communist List, read out Yaakov Rothblitt’s “Song for Peace.”100 This was twenty-five years before the song became saturated with the blood of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin who was assassinated in 1995. After two wars and the signing of peace treaties with two Arab countries, the protest song that had been banned in 1970 turned into a canonical symbol for broad segments of Israeli society. In a discussion held in the Zavta Hall in Tel Aviv on April 22, 1970, Goldmann related that after the Six-Day War, at a French Jewish committee meeting, which had mobilized during the tense prewar days to raise funds, send volunteers, and express public support for Israel, one person proposed: Now let’s move to Israel. But a very important, big-name Jew, not a Rothschild, not a Zionist, but a man who had worked day and night to help Israel, got up and said, “Absolutely not.” He told his listeners: “I have a nephew. An assimilated Frenchman, doesn’t know Judaism.

318

Meir Chazan

Before the Six-Day War my nephew came to me and said, ‘I want to go to war.’ I replied, ‘All right.’” I knew he could be killed; no one knew that we would win in six days and he would be sent back home. But if that fellow came and asked me whether he should move to Israel, I would tell him absolutely not. Israel is a country worth dying for, but not worth living in.101 The Goldmann rhetoric appears here in its full glory. As a storyteller he was an artist. For the Israelis living in Israel, this sort of story did not obscure the fact that Goldmann himself chose to live abroad during the tense days of “waiting” just before the Six-Day War. That was not the whole issue. From Goldmann’s point of view, the anecdote that he used for illustration embodied the core of his attitude—an exilic attitude—toward the need for normalization of relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Goldmann never met with Nasser. The latter died a few months later. The political, public, and media drama that would have occurred had the meeting taken place remained one more of those elusive options that are again left in the margins of history. Due to the balance of power among the different players at the time, the initiative for the meeting could only be placed on the public agenda. Nothing more.

Notes 1. Chaim Herzog, “Shtadlanut vemediniyut,” Haarez, Apr. 10, 1970. 2. “Zevet Al Hamishmar besihah im rosh hamemshalah,” Al Hamishmar, May 10, 1970. 3. Mordehai Gazit, Tahalikh hashalom, 1969–1973 (Tel Aviv, 1984); Raphael Patai, Nahum Goldmann: His Missions to the Gentiles (Tuscaloosa, 1987). 4. Dr. H. Rosenblum, “Beshahor-lavan,” Yediot Ahronot, Apr. 10, 1970; Dan Margalit, Sheder mehabayit halavan (Tel Aviv, 1971), 83. 5. Minutes of Knesset meeting, May 26, 1970, Divrei haknesset, vol. 57, 1864. 6. Goldmann to Yaakov Herzog, Aug. 20, 1967, Central Zionist Archives (hereafter CZA), Z6/1148. 7. Yisrael Neuman, “Yesh alternativah, veyesh lehavhirah laam,” Davar, Jan. 2, 1970. 8. On the Foreign Ministry’s years-long hostility to Goldmann, see, for example, the cable from Moshe Bitan to Harman, June 24, 1965, Israel State Archives (hereafter ISA), government files, 6689/18/C. 9. Goldmann to Levi Eshkol, Apr. 5, 1968, CZA, Z6/1151; “Senator Fulbright: Doctor Goldmann bikesh sheef ‘al lemitun yisrael,’” Maariv, Apr. 3, 1968; “Doctor Goldmann: sohahti im Fulbright,” Maariv, Apr. 10, 1968. 10. Moshe Bitan to Foreign Minister, Apr. 4, 1968, ISA, Foreign Ministry files, 4155/6; Moshe Rivlin to Abba Eban, Apr. 15, 1968, ibid.; Michael Elitzur to Ambassador in Washington, Apr. 16, 1968, ibid.


319

11. Editorial, “Hasarat muamaduto shel Doctor Goldmann,” Davar, Apr. 9, 1968. 12. Goldmann to Golda, Feb. 14, 1966, CZA, Z6/1146. 13. Avraham Rotem, “Dayan ve-Eban hiskimu sheesa le-Nasser,” Maariv, Apr. 9, 1970; Goldmann, minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive, Apr. 29, 1970, CZA, S100/1073. 14. Tom Segev, “Hasagotav shel Doctor Goldmann al mediniyut hamemshalah,” Al Hamishmar, Jan. 9, 1970 (emphasis added). 15. Neuman, “Yesh alternativah.” 16. Goldmann, meeting of the Mapam secretariat, Apr. 22, 1970, Hashomer Hazair Archives, 63.90 (1); Goldmann, minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive, Apr. 29, 1970, CZA, S100/1073; Nahum Goldmann, “The Future of Israel,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 48, no. 3 (Apr. 1970): 443–59. The issue appeared in March but was dated April. 17. Goldmann to Golda Meir, Feb. 11, 1970, CZA, Z6/2394. 18. See Goldmann to Gershom Schocken, Feb. 11, 1970, CZA, Z6/2395. 19. See letters on this subject from Joe Golan and Nahum Goldmann, CZA, Z6/1612 (the quotation is from Goldmann to Golan, May 20, 1957). See also Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 207–20; Mordehai Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace: A History of the Israeli Peace Movement (Washington, 1996), 19–20. 20. For Goldmann’s records of his talks with Tito in September 1967 and May 1968, see CZA, Z6/2720. 21. Dayan to Goldmann, June 5, 1968, CZA, Z6/1151 (emphasis in the original). 22. Goldmann to Eshkol, Oct. 10, 1968, CZA, Z6/1151. 23. On the Russian involvement, see Gil Kesari, “Paris: Moskvah omedet meahorei haparashah,” Maariv, Apr. 7, 1970. 24. Kaplan to Goldmann, Dec. 5, 1969, CZA, Z6/2720. 25. Cable from Ron to Foreign Ministry, Apr. 8, 1970, ISA, 7054/19/A; Edwin Eitan, “Makor yodea davar beparis,” Yediot Ahronot, Apr. 8, 1970; “Gilui daat shel Goldmann,” Haarez, Apr. 24, 1970. On Kaplan’s involvement as a liaison between the Yugoslavian ambassador in Paris and Goldmann, see Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 226, 301, n. 60; for Riad’s version, see Mordehai Gazit, “The Goldmann Affair: An Invitation to Cairo that Never Was” in Israeli Diplomacy and the Quest for Peace (London, 2002), 86. Although Gazit disagrees, Riad’s presentation of the subject suggests that he was one of the Egyptian decision-makers who opposed the initiative. This alludes to the nature of the difficulties that Nasser had to contend with if he were to promote the process; it does not mean that the initiative was sheer nonsense. 26. Gazit, “The Goldmann Affair,” 79–89. With a synchronism strongly suggestive of an attempt at disinformation and an effort to protect sources and ties, two versions of the terms for the meeting were released on April 7–8, by two sources in Paris who were close to Goldmann and were in on the contacts, although how intimately they were involved in all the stages is not clear. According to Eric Rouleau’s version, printed in Le Monde, Nasser set three conditions for the meeting: that the visit be public, that it

320

Meir Chazan

be authorized by the Israeli government, and that Goldmann promise to present his personal opinions on making peace (Gazit, Tahalikh hashalom, 45, 51, n. 7). According to Armand Kaplan, who “secretly conveyed the following ‘true version’” to Ambassador Walter Eytan in Paris, the conditions were that the meeting remain a complete secret, that Goldmann come with the consent of the Israeli government, and that he bring a concrete proposal (cable from Ron to Foreign Ministry, Apr. 8, 1970, ISA, 7054/19/A). Kaplan also passed on the “secret” information to a Yediot Ahronot reporter in Paris, with the stipulation that his name not appear, although that he is the source is perfectly clear from the article (Eitan, “Makor”). During the debate about the Goldmann initiative in the Knesset plenum, Uri Avnery said he had spoken “a short time ago” with Eric Rouleau, who had told him that Nasser “was insisting that the Prime Minister be aware of Goldmann’s visit” (minutes of Knesset meeting, Apr. 7, 1970, Divrei haknesset, vol. 57, 1593). This contradicts what Rouleau wrote in Le Monde. Considering the variety of versions attributed to Rouleau, we can only conclude that information coming from him should be taken with a large grain of salt. 27. Exchanges of cables between Eytan and Dinitz (director of the Prime Minister’s Office), Mar. 13, 1970, Mar. 15, 1970, Mar. 18, 1970, ISA, 7054/19/A. 28. Goldmann’s testimony, in Yeshayahu Ben-Porat, Sihot (Jerusalem, 1981), 36. 29. For Hamrush’s memoirs, see Yossi Amitai, Mizrayim veyisrael—mabat mismol: hasmol hamizri vehasikhsukh haaravi-yisraeli, 1947–1978 (Haifa, 1999), 222–23. 30. Nahum Goldmann, Autobiography (Jerusalem, 1972), 286. The nature of Goldmann’s relationship with Dayan and the character of the two men can be seen from friendly letters that the two exchanged in the midst of the furor over the Goldmann initiative. On April 2, 1970, Dayan wrote to Goldmann: “Thanks a lot for the leather chair. You really shouldn’t have, but since you did, I’m enjoying it. In the Israeli context, I don’t think power corrupts but ‘seats’ definitely do—in all parties, in all governments, and among all age groups and countries of origin (including sabras). But if you’re going to be corrupted over seats, at least do it for a deluxe seat!” On April 26, 1970, Dayan sent Goldmann a Passover letter: “I spoke to you about antiquities from the region that are not glass vessels. Enclosed is a bronze axe found in northern Jordan. It belongs to the period of the patriarchs (though I’m not sure Abraham used it) and it was one of the four main weapons! The sword—for hand-to-hand combat. The spear—to be thrown from a distance. Bow and arrows (the artillery). And the axe—to split the helmet on the enemy’s head. I hope you find it interesting.” Goldmann replied on April 29, 1970: “I received your letter with the axe. Thank you very much for the lovely gift. I appreciate it for its value and also because it was given to me by you. If I decide sometime to do as you advise and collect antiquities, I will gladly take you up on your promise to advise me, and I promise to accept your opinions in this field without objection and without reservations.” CZA, Z6/2393. 31. Shlomo Nakdimon, “Goldmann: Nasser hiskim sheekanes bedarkon yisraeli,” Yediot Ahronot, Apr. 8, 1970. 32. Minutes of Knesset meeting, Apr. 7, 1970, Divrei haknesset, vol. 57, 1600. 33. Galili to Golda, Aug. 7, 1969, Yad Tabenkin Archives, Hakibbutz Hameuhad Archives (hereafter: YTA, HHA), Division 15—Galili, Box 32, File 4.


321

34. Minutes of Knesset meeting, Mar. 31, 1970, Divrei haknesset, vol. 57, 1485. 35. Goldmann to Eban, July 31, 1970; Eban to Goldmann, Aug. 11, 1970; Goldmann to Eban, Aug. 27, 1970, CZA, Z6/2393. 36. Goldmann to Eban, July 31, 1970, CZA, Z6/2393. 37. Eban to Golda, Mar. 27, 1970, ISA, 7434/11/A (emphasis in the original). 38. Mordehai Bentov, “Hashegiah hagedolah shel memshelet yisrael,” Yediot Ahronot, Apr. 17, 1970; Shabtai Teveth, “Mehumah al meumah,” Haarez, Apr. 9, 1970. 39. The phrase is taken from the title of an article by Shalom Rosenfeld, “Abie Nathan bezilinder,” Maariv, Apr. 10, 1970. 40. Gazit, Tahalikh hashalom, 49. 41. “Allon: Yisrael mekayemet gishushei-shalom sodiim,” Davar, Apr. 10, 1970; Nissim Kiviti, “‘Observer’: Nasser asuy lehipagesh im Allon—bizkhut Tito,” Yediot Ahronot, Apr. 12, 1970. 42. Minutes of Knesset meeting, Apr. 7, 1970, Divrei haknesset, vol. 57, 1572–73, 1586. 43. Dan Margalit, “Hamevukhah biyerushalayim,” Haarez, Apr. 7, 1970. Cf. the version that Margalit presents in Sheder mehabayit halavan, 89. For more on Peres’s remarks to Margalit under the code name “hawkish observers,” see page 312 of this chapter. 44. Avraham Rotem, “Dayan: Rak hamemshalah tikba mi meyazeg otah,” Maariv, Apr. 7, 1970. Dayan had expressed this opinion at the government meeting on the previous day, too. 45. See, for example, Aryeh Tzimuki, “Sharsheret shel mishgim taktiim beparashat Goldmann,” Yediot Ahronot, Apr. 12, 1970. Mordehai Bentov expressed this angrily, writing: “Many of our people are apparently complete idiots. The more capable they are of thinking for themselves, the less they understand government policy. They understand its official announcements even less” (Bentov, “Hashegiah hagedolah”). 46. Goldmann, Autobiography, 282–83. 47. Meron Medzini, Hayehudiyah hageah: Golda Meir vehazon Yisrael ( Jerusalem, 1990), 392. 48. Minutes of government meeting, Mar. 29, 1970, Meir Chazan’s personal archives (emphasis added). Golda called the part drafted by Dayan “the worst part.” “Maariv shoel—rosh hamemshalah meshivah,” Maariv, Apr. 20, 1970. 49. See also Ben-Porat, Sihot, 77. 50. Government secretary Michael Arnon to Prime Minister, Mar. 30, 1970, ISA, 7434/11/A. Arnon noted that “the aforementioned resolution was not included in the Government minutes due to its secret nature; it is being kept by the Government secretariat.” 51. Nahum Goldmann, “Mediniyut hahuz shel yisrael,” Haarez, Apr. 2, 1970, Apr. 3, 1970, Apr. 5, 1970 (the quotation is from here), Apr. 6, 1970, Apr. 8, 1970, Apr. 9, 1970. Goldmann advocated making Jerusalem autonomous, giving it a special administration,

322

Meir Chazan

ensuring a Jewish majority in the city, keeping the capital in the new part of the city, and instituting international supervision of the holy sites. 52. Minutes of government meeting, Apr. 5, 1970, Meir Chazan’s personal archives (emphasis added). Even though Goldmann was presumed to have been the one who leaked the affair, he consistently and vehemently denied this. See also Patai, Nahum Goldmann, 233, 237–38; Margalit, Sheder, 90–92. 53. Minutes of government meeting, Mar. 29, 1970, Meir Chazan’s personal archives. 54. “Hahodaah harishmit,” Davar, Apr. 6, 1970. 55. Editorial, “Drushah havharah meleah,” Davar, Apr. 6, 1970. 56. Haggai [Haim Gouri], “Hakoz vehakfafah,” Lamerhav, Apr. 8, 1970. 57. Minutes of Knesset faction meeting, Apr. 6, 1970, Labor Party Archives, 11–7–1; “G. Meir le-Goldmann: ‘Tehom beinkha umemshelet yisrael,’” Davar, Apr. 9, 1970. 58. Eyal Kafkafi, “Festival Goldmann: Mah omeret haverat Maoz Haim al parashat Goldmann,” Ramzor, 4 ( June 1970): 18–19. 59. For example, S. Nakdimon, “Goldmann: Ilu hayiti nifgash im Nasser,” Yediot Ahronot, Apr. 7, 1970. 60. “Seker bazak sheneerakh be-6.4.1970 beikvot hahlatat hamemshalah beinyan Doctor Goldmann, mugash lasar Yigal Allon,” Apr. 9, 1970, ISA, A/7054/19. 61. “Hamafginim karu: Tnu shans le-Goldmann,” Maariv, Apr. 9, 1970. On the activity of “peaceniks” at the time, see Bar-On, In Pursuit of Peace, 56–58. 62. Editorial, New York Times, Apr. 9, 1970. 63. Cable from Rabin to Foreign Ministry, Apr. 15, 1970, ISA, 7434/11/A; Arnaud de Borchgrave, “Israel: Criticism from Within,” Newsweek, Apr. 20, 1970, 12–14. 64. Cable from Rabin to Foreign Ministry, Apr. 13, 1970; cable from Eban to Rabin, Apr. 15, 1970, ISA, 7434/11/A. 65. Cable from Dinitz to Rabin and Argov, Apr. 14, 1970, ISA, 7434/11/A. 66. Cable from Aharon Remez, the ambassador in London, to Foreign Ministry, Apr. 14, 1970; cable from Eban to Rabin, Apr. 15, 1970; cable from Eban to Ambassador Eytan in Paris, Apr. 15, 1970 (the quotation is from here); cable from Dibon to Remez, Apr. 16, 1970, ISA, 7434/11/A. 67. Amitai, Mizrayim veyisrael, 223–24; Shmuel Segev, “Kahir: Hayediot al hazmanat Goldmann alyedei Nasser—beduyot umeshulelot yesod,” Maariv, Apr. 7, 1970; “‘Ahram’: Goldmann himzi et sippur hahazmanah alyedei Nasser,” Maariv, Apr. 8, 1970; “Hamrush: Lo nifgashti im Goldmann,” Lamerhav, Apr. 9, 1970. 68. Rouleau told Gil Kesari, Maariv’s correspondent in Paris, “The Egyptian who had contacts with Goldmann has nothing to do with the invitation,” Maariv, Apr. 8, 1970. 69. Goldmann to Ben-Gurion, June 9, 1970, CZA, Z6/2393.


323

70. For example, “Ben-Gurion: Hayu magaim sodiim im mizrayim,” Al Hamishmar, Apr. 28, 1970; a report in the Sunday Telegraph stating that in 1963 Nasser had suggested meeting with Ben-Gurion and then changed his mind. “Nasser hiziah pegishah le-Ben-Gurion—vehitharet,” Maariv, May 10, 1970. See also Margalit, Sheder, 89. 71. Minutes of government meetings, Mar. 29, 1970, Apr. 5, 1970, Meir Chazan’s personal archives (the quotation is from the second meeting). 72. Margalit, “Hamevukhah.” 73. Benko Adar, “Keshe-Nasser katav mikhtavim el ‘ahi Sharett,’” Hotam (supplement to Al Hamishmar), Apr. 17, 1970. 74. Minutes of government meetings, Mar. 29, 1970, Apr. 5, 1970, Meir Chazan’s personal archives (the quotation is from the second meeting). 75. Moshe Dayan, “Mul hakfafah harusit shenizrekah,” Maariv, May 8, 1970 (emphasis added). 76. Hashomer Hazair Archives, 21.7–95 (3). 77. Allon to the signers of the “seniors’ letter,” Apr. 16, 1970, YTA, HHA, Division 15—Yigal Allon, Box 21, File 4. 78. “Zevet Al Hamishmar.” Bertha Hazan’s remarks were published in Hahinukh hameshutaf, no. 6 (63) (Aug. 1967): 1. 79. Simcha Dinitz to Allon and Galili, May 3, 1970, YTA, HHA, Division 15— Allon, Box 21, File 4. 80. Goldmann, “The Future of Israel”; minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive, Apr. 29, 1970, CZA, S100/1073. 81. Golda, meeting of the Negev extension of the Beit Berl central ideological circle in the Labor party, Davar, Apr. 22, 1970. 82. Eliezer Livne, “Gishah mistit el hamoledet,” Haarez, May 7, 1970. 83. “Hanasi Zalman Shazar al hofesh hadibur,” Haarez, May 8, 1970. 84. For example, “Pegishat nikhbadim araviim im Goldmann nistaymah beakhzavah hadadit,” Davar, Apr. 29, 1970. 85. “Goldmann: Ein safek shehamemshalah rotzah beshalom,” Haarez, May 3, 1970; Avraham Rotem, “Doctor Goldmann: ‘amarti leishti: baalekh mathil leshaamem oti’ . . .” Maariv, May 5, 1970; Goldmann, minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive, Apr. 29, 1970, CZA, S100/1073; Yoram Sadeh, “Hitpakhut mehaemunah birezon yisrael beshalom,” Haarez, Apr. 19, 1970. 86. “Goldmann hayahid shelo hitragesh” (interview by Yehoshua Tadmor with Nahum Goldmann), Lamerhav, Apr. 10, 1970. 87. For example, Goldmann to Weinberg, July 26, 1970, CZA, Z6/2395. 88. Hanoch Levin, Malkat haambatyah in Mah ekhpat lazipor (Tel Aviv, 1987), 88. 89. Amnon Rubinstein, “Malkat haambatyah eromah,” Haarez, May 4, 1970 (emphasis in the original).

324

Meir Chazan

90. Allon’s words of welcome at the writers’ conference, Apr. 15, 1970, YTA, HHA, Division 15—Yigal Allon, Box 21, File 4. 91. [ Jacob] Talmon, “Meaz yatza matok,” Haarez, May 1, 1970; Yeshayahu Weinberg to Goldmann, May 17, 1970, CZA, Z6/2395. On the military situation at the time, see Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, The Israeli-Egyptian War of Attrition, 1969–1970 (New York, 1980), 151–59. 92. Cable from Gazit to Rabin and Argov, May 29, 1970, ISA, 7054/19/A. 93. Goldmann to Dayan, June 10, 1970; Dayan to Goldmann, June 14, 1970, CZA, Z6/2393. 94. The meeting was arranged through the mediation of Jean Daniel, editor of the French weekly Nouvel Observateur. Cable from the embassy in Paris to the Foreign Ministry, June 28, 1970, ISA, 7054/19/A. 95. Goldmann to Golda, Jan. 4, 1972, CZA, Z6/8680; Goldmann to Tito, Dec. 30, 1971, CZA, Z6/2720; Gil Sedan, “Golda Meir: isharti le-Goldmann,” Yediot Ahronot, Feb. 15, 1972. 96. A typical expression of this by a member of the Palestine-born generation is Yigal Allon’s statement that Goldmann should have obtained the Prime Minister’s consent “before going so far with his feelers and his shtadlanut.” Eliyahu Egers, “Reayon im segan rosh hamemshalah,” Davar, Apr. 20, 1970. 97. Rotem, “Dayan ve-Eban”; Goldmann, minutes of the Jewish Agency Executive, Apr. 29, 1970, CZA, S100/1073. 98. H. Yaad, “Goldmann mevater lelo krav,” Maariv, Apr. 9, 1970. 99. Yosef Harif, “Imut—haim zarikh hayah lehaskim she-Goldmann yisa le-Nasser?” Maariv, Apr. 7, 1970. 100. Minutes of Knesset meeting, Apr. 7, 1970, Divrei haknesset, vol. 57, 1588. 101. Conversation between Al Hamishmar editor Yaakov Amit and Nahum Goldmann, Zavta Hall, Tel Aviv, Apr. 22, 1970, ISA, 7054/19/A.

Contributors

(

Michael Brenner is professor of Jewish History and Culture at the University of Munich in Germany. His books include Propheten des Vergangenen: Juedische Geschichtsscheibung in 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert (2006), Zionism: A Brief History (2002), The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany (1996), and After the Holocaust (1995). He is editor and coeditor of numerous books including Emancipation through Muscles: Jews and Sports in Europe (2006) and the four-volume German Jewish History in Modern Times (1996–1998). Meir Chazan is a post-doctoral lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. He is editor of Israel, the Hebrew language journal of the Chaim Weizmann Institute for the Study of Zionism and Israel at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of Moderation: The Moderate View in Hapoel Hatzair and Mapai, 1905–1945 (2008) (in Hebrew) and coeditor of Citizens at War: Studies on the Civilian Society during the Israeli War of Independence (2006) (in Hebrew). A second volume of the latter will appear in 2009. Evyatar Friesel is professor emeritus of Modern Jewish History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of numerous studies of the political and ideological history of the Zionist movement as well as German Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is now working on contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe, especially in Germany. Yosef Gorny is professor emeritus and head of the Institute for the Study of Jewish Press at Tel Aviv University. His books include Between Auschwitz and Jerusalem (2003), The State of Israel in Jewish Public Thought: The Quest for Collective Identity (1994), Policy and Imagination: Federal Ideas in Zionist Political Thought (1993) (in Hebrew), Zionism and the Arabs, 1882–1948: A Study of Ideology (1987), The British Labour Movement and Zionism, 1917–1948 (1983), Partnership and Conflict: Chaim Weizmann and the Jewish Labor Movement in Palestine (1976) (in Hebrew), and Ahdut Haavodah, 1919–1930: The Ideological Principles and the Political System (1973) (in Hebrew). His recent book is A Cry

325

326

Contributors

in the Wilderness: The Jewish Press in Erez Israel, Britain, the USA and the USSR during the Second World War (2008) (in Hebrew). Dina Porat is professor of Modern Jewish History at Tel Aviv University, where she holds the Alfred P. Slainer Chair in Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, and serves as head of The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Racism and Anti-Semitism. She is the author of numerous scholarly studies of Zionist history, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust including The Blue and Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership and the Holocaust, 1939–1945 (Hebrew, 1986; English, 1990; Spanish, 2008), a biography of Abba Kovner (Hebrew, 2000; English, 2009), and Israeli Society, the Holocaust and it Survivors (2008). Her edited works include Avraham Tory, Ghetto Every Day: The Kovno Ghetto Diary (Hebrew, 1988; English, 1990, with Martin Gilbert). She is a member of Yad Vashem Advisory Committee and is the academic adviser of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Research and Remembrance. Mark A. Raider is professor of Modern Jewish History at the University of Cincinnati and visiting professor of American Jewish History at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion. His book-length study of American Jewish history appeared in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (2006). He is the author of The Emergence of American Zionism (1998) and coeditor of American Jewish Women and the Zionist Enterprise, with Shulamit Reinharz (2005), The Plough Woman: Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine: A Critical Edition, with Miriam B. Raider-Roth (2002), and Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, with Jonathan D. Sarna and Ronald W. Zweig (1997). He is currently working on a biography of Stephen S. Wise. Jehuda Reinharz is president of Brandeis University and the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis. He is the author of some one hundred articles and twenty books in various languages. His Jew in the Modern World is one of the most widely adopted college texts in modern Jewish history. His two-volume biography of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, has won many prizes in Israel and the United States and his book, coauthored with the late Ben Halpern, titled Zionism and the Creation of a New Society, was published in 1998 and reissued in a revised paperback edition in 2000. His latest books are A Fearless Visionary in the Land of Israel: The Letters of Manya Shohat, 1906–1960, coedited with Shulamit Reinharz and Moti Golani (2005), and Glorious, Accursed Europe (2006), coauthored with Yaacov Shavit, which analyzes the relationship of Jews to Europe from the eighteenth century to the present. His book Israel in the Middle East (second revised edition), coedited with Itamar Rabinovich, was published in December 2007.

Contributors

327

Suzanne D. Rutland is associate professor and chair of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney. She has published widely on Australian Jewish history; edits the Sydney edition of the Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal; and writes on issues relating to the Holocaust and Israel. Her latest books are The Jews in Australia (2005) and, with Sarah Rood, Nationality Stateless: Destination Australia (2008). She has received a major government grant with Professor Sol Encel to study the political sociology of Australian Jewry. In 2008 she was awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) by the Australian government in recognition of her service to higher Jewish education, as a historian and academic, and for her work in interfaith dialogue. Zohar Segev is a senior lecturer in the Department of Jewish History at Haifa University. He is the author of numerous scholarly works on American Jewish history including From Ethnic Politicians to National Leaders: American Zionist Leadership, the Holocaust, and the Establishment of Israel (2007) (in Hebrew). He is also coeditor of Israel in Diaspora Jewish Identity, with Danny Ben-Moshe (2007). Shlomo Shafir served as editor of Gesher: Journal of Jewish Affairs from 1974 to 2005. He is a member of the advisory board of Kesher: Journal of Media and Communications History in Israel and the Jewish World. He is author of Ambiguous Relations: The American Jewish Community and Germany since 1945 (1999), contributions to The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 2 vols. (2004), and, most recently, a historical essay on Helmut Schmidt’s relations to Jews and Israel in Jahrbuch fuer Antisemitismusforschung, vol. 17 (Berlin, 2008). Gideon Shimoni is emeritus professor at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he is a member and former head of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry. He was the first incumbent of the Shlomo Argov Chair in Israel-Diaspora Relations. His teaching and research focuses particularly on the history of Zionism and Israel and of Jewish communities in Englishspeaking countries, and his books include The Zionist Ideology (1995) and Community and Conscience: The Jews in Apartheid South Africa (2003). Ronald W. Zweig is the Marilyn and Henry Taub Professor of Israel Studies at New York University, where he also directs the Taub Center for Israel Studies. His books include The Gold Train: The Looting of Hungarian Jewry (2002), German Reparations and the Jewish World: A History of the Claims Conference (2001), and Britain and Palestine during the Second World War (1986). He is editor of the Electronic Edition of the Palestine Post, 1932–1950 (2000) and David Ben-Gurion: Politics and Leadership in Israel (1991), and coeditor of Escape through Austria: The Flight of Jewish Survivors from Eastern Europe, 1945–1948, with Thomas Albrich (2002), and Abba Hillel Silver and American Zionism, with Mark A. Raider and Jonathan D. Sarna (1997).


Index

(

Aaron, Raymond, 313 Abdalia, 178 Abramowitz, Leo, 87 Abs, Herman Joseph, 25–26 Acheson, Dean, 15–16, 161, 182–191, 215 Adar, Benko, 312 Addams, Jane, 144 Adenauer, Konrad, 23–28, 44–45, 207, 210–215, 217–222, 235–236, 238, 240, 250, 268 Aging and political leadership, 29, 155–156, 158, 174, 211 See also Ben-Gurion, Weizmann, and Stephen S. Wise Agricultural settlements, 67, 171 See also Kibbutz movement, Histadrut, Labor Zionism Agudah, 289 Agudat Israel, 18, 73, 238 Ahad Haam (Asher Zvi Ginsberg), 5–6, 28, 35, 66, 75, 76, 83–84, 86–88, 126, 267–268, 314 Ahimeir, Abba, 146 Akzin, Benjamin, 189–191 Al Hamishmar, 300, 312 Al-Ahram, 301 Allon, Yigal, 43, 298–299, 305, 310, 313, 315 Altmaier, Jakob, 212 American Jewish Committee (AJC), 34–35, 114, 115, 143, 158–159, 172,

185, 210, 212, 215, 216, 237, 259, 278–279, 284 See also Ben-Gurion, Blaustein American Jewish Conference (1943), 10, 37, 158, 160, 289 American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry (AJCSJ), 37–38, 282–283 American Jewish Congress (AJC), 8–9, 107, 152, 219, 220, 278–279, 282, 284 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), 217, 234–237, 240–241, 244, 274–275 American Socialist Party, 141 American Zionist Emergency Committee (AZEC), 10–11, 14–16, 32, 117, 130–133, 137, 157–158, 161, 172–174, 177–195 See also Neumann, Silver, Stephen S. Wise Amery, Leopold S., 134 Amsterdam, 46, 223 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry, 12, 132, 161, 170, 179, 183, 188 Anti-Communism, 215, 217 Anti-Fascist Resistance Fighters Committee (AFC), 221 Anti-Semitism, 28, 83, 111, 211 blood libel, 279 Central and Eastern Europe, 118, 143 physical attacks on Jews in Margelan (1961) and Tashkent (1962), 279 postwar Germany, 219

329

330

Index

Anti-Semitism (continued ) Soviet Union, 38, 274–275, 277, 279, 283–284, 286 United States, 115–116 Arab League, 11, 170–171, 190 Arab oil embargo, 222 Arab question, 39, 78, 126 Arab riots, 39, 128, 149–150, 154 Arafat, Yassir, 222, 224, 316 Arena, 286 Argentina, 237 Arlosoroff, Chaim, 143–144 Ashkanasy, Maurice, 285, 287, 288 Ashkenazi culture, 261 Association of Central European Immigrants, 209 Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women (AJEX), 289 Attlee, Clement R., 173, 183–184, 187, 189 Australia, 237–238, 277–278, 281, 285, 286, 287, 289, 290 Austria, 222, 234 Avigur, Shaul, 277 Bach, 95 Bad Reichenhall, 49, 224 Bahr, Egon, 221 Balfour Declaration (1917), 6, 83, 126, 127, 135, 160, 177 Balfour, Lord, 45 Bar-Giora, 259 Bar-Kochba, 259 Baron, Salo W., 105, 220, 260–261 Barou, Noah, 33, 210–212 Barzilai, Israel, 303, 307, 309 Basel, 34, 96, 107, 133, 161 Beethoven, Ludwig von, 95 Begin, Menahem, 41, 45, 223–224, 303 Beit Hatefuzot—The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, 255–270 Beit Shean Valley, 310 Beit Wohlin (The Wohlin House), 257

Ben-Aharon, Yizhak, 154 Ben-Gal, Elie, 265 Ben-Gurion, David, viii, 13, 15–17, 18, 23, 24, 28, 40, 43–44, 48, 64, 68, 73, 119, 131, 140, 144, 149, 171, 174–175, 219–220, 263, 269, 314 agreement with Jacob Blaustein and American Jewish Committee (1950), 216, 258–259 comparison to Roosevelt and New Deal, 142, 153–156 dispute with Goldmann over diaspora, 6, 34–35, 75–90, 256, 258–259 Goldmann’s Egypt initiative and, 301, 311–312 Goldmann’s secret mission in 1946 and, 176–178, 180–181, 187 as Histadrut leader, 80, 82, 153, 154 plight of Soviet Jewry and, 280 political relationship with Goldmann, 30–33, 135–136, 150–151, 160–162 reparations agreement with Germany and, 27, 213–214, 216–218 Silver and, 19–20, 132–134, 193 Weizmann and, 135, 156–157, 161–162 Benjamin, Walter, 104 Ben-Porath, Yoram, 310 Bentov, Mordehai, 304 Benvenisti, Meron, 310 Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 219 Bergen-Belsen Holocaust memorial, 44, 215 Bergen-Belsen survivors association, 256 Bergmann, Hugo, 102 Bergson Group, 120, 145, 146 Beria, Lavrentiy, 275 Berlin, 8, 95, 97, 100–101, 104, 219, 221, 222, 241, 267, 268 Berlin, Isaiah, 259, 264, 313 Berlin, Meir, 150 Berman, Harold J., 275 Bermuda Conference (1943), 114

Index Bevin, Ernest, 171, 192 Bible, 82, 95, 259 Biltmore Conference (1942), 4, 10, 14, 130, 132, 157, 173, 177, 181 Black Sabbath/Black Saturday (1946), 12–13, 171 Blank, Rabbi, 284 Blankenhorn, Herbert, 33, 210–215, 224 Blaustein, Jacob, 34, 216–217, 258 See also American Jewish Committee, Ben-Gurion Bludan Conference (1946), 170–171 See also Council of the Arab League Blumenfeld, Kurt, 66 Blumenfeld, Rafi, 265 Bnai Brith, 158, 172, 215 Boehm, Franz, 25, 26, 243–244 Bonn, 26, 211, 212, 215, 218, 219, 220, 222, 235, 240, 246 Brandeis, Louis D., 18, 110, 140–141, 143–144, 151–152, 155–156 Brandt, Willy, 44, 218, 220–223 Brenner, Michael, 95–106 Brenner, Yosef Hayim, 80 Breuer, Yitzhak, 73 Brickner, Rabbi Barnett, 284 British Board of Deputies, 289 British Foreign Ministry, 16, 114, 182, 187, 192, 194 British Labor Party, 11, 152, 171, 178 British Mandate in Palestine (1922–1948), 8, 13, 15, 25, 131, 149–150, 157, 161, 171, 174, 176, 184 British Petroleum Company, 216 Brodetsky, Selig, 179 Bruno, Michael, 310 Brussels, 105, 213, 220, 287, 291 Buber, Martin, 96 Buttenwieser, Benjamin B., 212 Byrnes, James, 182–183 Cairo, 45, 302, 304, 305, 306, 310 Cameri Theatre, 298, 315 Canaan, 266

331

Canaanism, 90 Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), 285 Central Conference of American Rabbis, 140, 161 Central Council of the Jews in Germany, 210 Chazan, Meir, 297–324 Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU), see Germany Christian Social Union Party, see Germany Christianity, 274 Churchill, Winston, 315 Clements, Walter, 274 Cohen, Avraham Abba, 289 Cohn, Oskar, 101–102 Cold War, 38, 212, 215, 220, 238, 275, 282, 288 Cologne, 219, 223 Columbia University, 260 Columbus Platform (1937), 144 Comité des Delegation Juives, 8–9, 102, 108, 130 Communism, 147, 212, 213, 236, 274, 277, 282, 285–286, 288, 301, 310, 317 Communist Party of Australia (CPA), 285, 287, 288 Conference of Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations, 36 Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Claims Conference), 23–27, 34, 46, 208–209, 213–214, 216–222, 233, 236, 239–250 heirless assets/property, 208–209, 234–235, 237, 241–242, 244–245 Copenhagen Manifesto (1918), 69, 101 Council of the Arab League, 170–171 See also Bludan Conference Crossman, Richard, 178 Crum, Bartley C., 161, 183, 191–192 Czechoslovakia, 274

332

Index

Davar, 299, 304, 309 Dayan, Moshe, 89, 298, 299, 301, 303–307, 312–313, 315–316 De Gaulle, Charles, 212 Decter, Moshe, 278, 281, 282, 289 Democratic Faction (World Zionist Organization), 66 See also Herzl, Weizmann Democratic Party (U.S.), 117–120, 141, 153 Der Blaue Reiter (artist group), 103 Diaspora-Israel relationship, 6, 31, 33–35, 36, 72, 217, 258, 265 See also Ben-Gurion, Goldmann Die Welt, 100 Die Zeit, 44, 223–224 Diefenbaker, John, 285 Dimant, Rabbi, 276 Dimont, Max, 72 Dinstein, Yoram, 290 Dinur, Ben-Zion, 260 Displaced Persons (DPs), 209–210, 234, 239–240, 242 Dobkin, Eliahu, 179 Dubnow, Simon, 35, 86 Dugdale, Blanche, 134 Dulzin, Leon (Aryeh), 223, 257 Easterman, Alex, 211, 278, 289, 290 Eastern European Jewry, 4, 76, 83, 114, 148, 260 East German Democratic Republic (GDR), see Germany Eban, Abba, 236, 237, 298, 301, 303, 304–305, 308, 310–311, 316 Eden, Anthony, 114 Egypt, 4, 40–41, 45, 190, 224, 266, 297–298, 300, 301, 302, 304–307, 311–312, 315–316 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, 222–223 See also Free Officers coup, Nasser, Sadat Ehrlich, Simcha, 223 Eichmann, Adolf, 105 Eichmann trial (1961), 220

Eilat, Eliahu (Epstein), 131, 160, 175, 178, 179, 185, 186 Ein Hahoresh, Kibbutz, 261, 264 Einfeld, Sydney David, 285, 287 Einstein, Albert, 22, 268 Eitan, Walter, 302 Elbogen, Ismar, 104 El-Husseini, Amin, 170 Eliav, Arie (Lova), 288 Eliav, Binyamin, 277 Emancipation as solution to the Jewish problem, 69–70, 84 contrast to postemancipationist status of Jews in New World, 141, 145 Jewish political rights in Central and Eastern Europe, 22 Encyclopaedia Judaica (1928–1934) (also: Jewish Encyclopedia), 8, 28, 70, 97, 100, 103–105, 127, 257, 268 Encyclopedia Israelit: Eshkol (1929, 1932), 104, 127, 267 Enlarged Jewish Agency, 6, 127, 128, 141; see also: Jewish Agency for Palestine Erhard, Ludwig, 45, 218, 219 Eshkol Publishing House, 104, 127, 267 Eshkol, Levi, 219, 283, 298, 299, 301 Ettinger, Yona, 256 Evian Conference (see also: Intergovernmental Conference on Refugees) (1938), 9, 10 Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), 285, 287, 288, 289 Executive Council of Australian Jewry, 238 Ezel (Irgun Zvai Leumi), 12, 171, 175 Fair Deal, 142 See also Truman Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), see Germany Fischer, Maurice, 212 Fishman, Rabbi, 179 Fletcher School of Diplomacy, 277

Index Foreign Affairs, 41, 300, 306, 311, 313 Four Powers, 21, 41, 212, 213 France, Pierre Mendes, 45 Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, 219 Frankfurt Zionist Organization, 96 Frankfurter Israelitische Familienblatt, 96, 97 Frankfurter Zeitung, 99 Frankfurter, Felix, 178 Free Officers coup, Egypt (1952), 301, 302 Freie Zionistische Blatter, 70, 97, 100, 102 Freies Judisches Lehrhaus (Frankfurt), 102 French League of Human Rights, 279 Freud, Sigmund, 22 Friedlander, Shaul, 279 Friends of Beit Hatefuzot, 257 Friesel, Evyatar, 3–59, 161, 169–203 Fulbright, William, 43, 299 Gad, Dora, 265 Gahal bloc, 306, 307 Galili, Israel, 298, 307 Galut/golah (exile), 28, 35, 46, 68–72, 75–90 galuyot (exiles), 257 See also Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, shlilat hagalut Garaudy, Roger, 301, 302 Garber, Michael, 285 Gazit, Mordehai, 298, 305 Gegenswartsarbeit (Zionist work in the present), 69–71 See also Galut/golah General Zionist party, 18, 69, 76, 128–129, 144, 149 Geneva, 7–9, 43, 49, 105, 107, 112, 130, 155, 175, 208, 215, 275, 280, 286 Gentiles, 4, 10, 45, 265 George, Lloyd, 45 German Jews, 22, 101, 102, 118, 143 German language and culture, vii, 5, 8, 22–24, 46, 64–67, 79, 86, 95–105,

333

119, 127, 210, 214, 219–220, 223, 238–239, 266, 267–268 German reparations, 20, 32, 210, 217, 224, 268 See also Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Luxembourg Agreements Germanophilism, 77 Germany, 21, 27, 44, 207, 211, 213, 215–219, 221, 233, 237, 241–242 Christian Democratic Union Party, 213, 219 Christian Social Union Party, 213 East German Democratic Republic (GDR), 210–211 Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), 135–136, 210–211, 213, 215, 219, 220–221, 233, 236, 238, 240, 244–247 German-Jewish encounter, 22, 44, 215 Social Democratic Party (SPD), 207, 211, 212, 222, Trade Union Federation, 211 in the Weimar period, 67, 95, 102, 104 See also Ben-Gurion, German reparations, Goldmann Gerstenmaier, Eugen, 220 Globke, Hans, 213, 218 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 95 Golan Heights, 433, 308 Golan, Joe, 300 Goldmann, Nahum The Autobiography of Nahum Goldmann (1969), 30, 96–97, 100, 218 “The Future of Israel,” Foreign Affairs (1967), 41, 300, 313 Arabs and, 98, 128 Bad Reichenhall retreat and, 49, 224 Jewish martyrdom and, 259, 265 article on Thirteenth Zionist Congress in Der Jude (The Jew) (1923), 127 attitude to European ghetto, 22, 70, 81, 98–99, 266 attitude to ideological and political extremism, 4–5, 29, 36–37, 38, 84, 88, 133–134, 148, 215, 286–287

334

Index

Goldmann, Nahum (continued ) compared to Uriel da Costa, 314 Die drei Forderrungen des judischen Volkes (The Three Demands of the Jewish People) (1919), 69, 101 first impressions of Palestine, 98–99 Goldmann-Kovner concept of Israeldiaspora relations, 263–265 ideological and philosophical views of, 6–14, 22–23, 27–29, 34–35, 42, 63–73, 75–90, 95–105, 147–148, 150–151, 155, 175, 178, 208, 210, 215, 220, 222, 223–224, 237–238, 249, 258–259, 262–265, 268–270, 275–277, 282, 286, 301–302, 308, 310–311, 313–314, impact of Klatzkin and Krisis und Enscheidung im Judentum (1921), 7–8, 28, 69–73, 84, 100–105, 127, 267–268 Jewish identity and, 5, 64–65, 105, 256, 259 Lebanon War (1981) and, 224 Letters from Palestine (1914, 1982), 99 Mein Leben als deutscher Jude (My Life as a German Jew) (1980), 46, 96, 97, 100, 218, 223 on militarism, 67, 97, 99–100, 105, 224, 314, 316 political pragmatism and attitude to Revisionism, 147–148 religion and, 5, 64–65, 70, 88, 95, 269 shtadlanut (intercessionism) and, 48, 270, 286, 292, 297, 316 The Jewish Paradox (1978), 66, 72, 73, 75 See also colleagues, family members, friends, organizations, events, and places by name Goldmann, Rebekka, 5, 64, 96 Goldmann, Solomon, 5, 64, 96, 97, 100 Goldschmidt, Jakob, 44, 104, 268 Gompers, Samuel, 144 Goren, Aryeh, 145 Gorny, Yosef, 75–92

Gouri, Haim, 41, 309 Grady, Henry F., 174, 178 Great Britain, 8, 12, 21, 75, 118, 119, 128, 134, 149–151, 155, 157, 161, 171–172, 174, 175, 195, 248, 289 See also Balfour Declaration, British Foreign Ministry, British Labor Party, British Mandate in Palestine Gruenbaum, Yitzhak, 7, 68, 113–115, 120, 127 Gvati Brigade, 262 Haarez, 209, 300, 303, 306, 308, 311 Haavarah Agreement, 142–143, 148 Hadassah Women’s Zionist Organization, 107, 150, 157, 172, 178, 193 Hafradah (separation), 19 Haganah, 259 Halevi, Yehuda, 95 Hall, George H., 133, 178 Hallstein, Walter, 213 Hammarskjold, Dag, 300 Hamrush, Ahmed, 302, 311, 315, 316 Handerson, Loy, 189 Hantke, Arthur, 111–112 Haolam Hazeh, 310 Hapoel Hazair party, 7, 128 Harriman, W. Averell, 187, 189 Harrison, Earl G., 173 Harvard University, 275 Hashomer Hazair, 310 See also Mapam Hassan, King of Morocco, 316 Hatikvah (The Hope), 160 Hausmann, Gordon, 290 Hayes, Saul, 285, 289 Hazan, Bertha, 313 Hebrew language and culture, 5, 8, 46, 77, 82–84, 90, 95–96, 98, 100–101, 103–104, 146, 147, 257, 266, 267–268, 277 Hebrew prophets, 82, 257, 259 Hebrew Union College, 145 Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 34, 256 Hebron, 298

Index Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 67, 86, 140 Heidelberg, 65 Heikal, Mohammed Hassanein, 301 Hellman, 284 Helsingfors Conference (1906), 69, 110 Henderson, Loy W., 182, 186–189 Herzl, Theodor, viii, 42, 66, 75, 77, 89, 126, 144, 172 and Der Judenstaat (The Jews’ State) (1896), 42 Herzog, Jacob, 303 Heuss, Theodore, 44, 215, 219, 236 Higham, John, 274 Hillman, Sidney, 144 Histadrut (General Federation of Labor), 80, 82, 144, 153–154 Historiography, 87, 145 Hitler, Adolf, 118, 143, 155, 162, 222, 224 Beer Hall Putsch (1923), 103 Hitlerjugend, 222 Hochbaum, Jerry, 269 Hochschule fur die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 104 Holocaust, 20–21, 23, 44, 75–76, 87, 90, 109, 117–118, 132, 144, 146, 170–171, 173, 182, 207–208, 211–212, 215, 221, 224, 233–235, 248, 250, 258–263, 266, 268, 277 See also Claims Conference, German reparations, International Military Tribunal Holocaust survivors, 21, 221, 224, 234–235, 248, 262 Honduras, 105 Horkheimer, Max, 219 Horowitz, David, 212 Hungarian Jews, 274 Hunter, Michael, 290 Hutcheson, Judge, 183 Independent Liberal Party, 309 Institute of Jewish Affairs (IJA), 111, 208, 219 Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, 9, 114, 152

335

International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 209 International Refugee Organization, 242, 245 Inverchapel, Lord, 183, 185 Islam, 274 Israel Labor Party/Labor Alignment (Mapai), 17, 18, 45, 78, 131, 135, 154, 157, 175, 213–214, 299, 300, 304, 306, 307, 309 Israel Ministry of Finance, 257 Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel Prize, 261 Jabotinsky, Vladimir (Zeev), 18, 75, 77–78, 89, 129, 146–148 Jacob, Benno, 104, 105 Jaspers, Karl, 65, 220 Jerusalem, 8, 12, 19, 20, 24, 33–35, 43, 49, 68, 71, 72, 73, 81, 98, 105, 111, 149, 157, 170, 171, 174, 179, 209, 214, 216, 220, 222, 234, 242, 250, 256, 258, 259, 268, 289, 305, 308, 310, 311, 313 Jerusalem Post, 276 Jewish Agency Executive resolution on Palestine (August 5, 1946), 195–196, n. 1 Jewish Agency for Palestine/Israel, 6–13, 15–17, 19–21, 25, 29, 31, 33, 68, 110–111, 113, 115–116, 127–128, 130–135, 140–141, 151–152, 154, 160–161, 169, 172–181, 184–186, 188, 189, 191, 192, 193, 195, 209, 210, 216, 233–236, 240, 241, 249, 257, 278, 283, 291, 314 Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Soviet Union), 274 Jewish Chronicle, 286–287 Jewish Colonization Association (Baron de Hirsch Fund), 96 Jewish culture, 28, 103–105, 110, 217, 249, 257, 261–262, 268, 269 See also Hebrew language and culture, Yiddish language and culture

336

Index

Jewish Encyclopaedia (German), 70, 267 Jewish Encyclopedia (English), 267 Jewish Minorities Research Bureau, 278 Jewish National Home, 8, 47, 101, 127, 145, 149, 151, 173, 234 Jewish nationalism, 47, 66, 90, 101, 102, 141, 153, 161, 224, 265 Jewish Pictorial Voice, 284 Jewish question, 67, 284, 287 See also Emancipation, Zionism Jewish Restitution Successor Organization (JRSO), 21, 209, 237, 240 Jewish rituals, 264–266 Johnson, Lyndon, 282 Josephtal, Giora, 25 Judea, 149, 178 Kabbalah, 104 Kagan, Saul, 239 Kaiser, Stephen, 261 Kalkilya, 308 Kandinsky, Vladimir, 103 Kaplan, Armand, 279, 281, 282, 301, 302 Kaplan, Eliezer, 134, 181 Kaplan, Mordecai M., 72 Karasick, Rabbi, 284 Karavan, Dani, 265 Katz, Carl, 261 Kaufman, Rabbi, 284 Kaznelson, Berl, 144, 148, 150, 155 Keren Hayesod, 111 Kerensky, Alexander, 279 Khartoum Conference (1967), 305, 311 Kibbutz movement, 67, 75, 78, 81, 261–264, 310 Kichko, T.K., Judaism without Embellishment (1964), 279 Kiesinger, Kurt Georg, 218 Kiev, 279 King David Hotel, bombing of (1946), 12, 171, 175 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 281 Kiryat Arba, 298 Kishinev, 279

Kissinger, Henry, 45, 313 Klatzkin, Jacob, 7, 27–28, 69–71, 73, 84, 100–105, 127, 267–268 See also Galut/golah, Goldmann Klutznick, Philip, 215 Kohn, Hans, 102 Kohn, Leo, 175, 179, 186, 189, 192 Kol, Moshe, 309 Kosygin, Alexey, 289 Kovner, Abba, 261–266 See also Beit Hatefuzot, Goldmann Kreisky, Bruno, 45, 222 Kristallnacht (1938), 223 Krushchev, Nikita, 275 Kuster, Otto, 25, 26 Labor Zionism, 45, 67, 128, 140–144, 148, 149–156, 159–160, 162, 209, 223, 259, 299, 300, 306–307, 309 See also Ben-Gurion, Histadrut, Kibbutz movement, Mapai, and specific leaders and political parties Landau, Michael, 256 Landauer, Georg, 209 Landsmanshaftn (mutual aid societies), 8, 260 Laski, Harold, 178 Latrun, 308 Le Monde, 301 League of Nations, 7–8, 130, 131, 175–176 Leavitt, Moses, 25, 240, 244–245 Lebanon War, 224 Lederer, 305 Leibler, Isi, 277, 281, 285, 286–289 Lenz, Otto, 213 Levanon, Nehemiah, 278, 280 Levenberg, S., 283, 284 Levin, Hanoch, 298, 315 See also Queen of the Bathtub (1970) Levovitz, Rabbi, 284 Lewin, Isaac, 238 Likud party, 41, 223 See also Jabotinsky, Revisionism Linston, Joseph I., 134

Index Lipsky, Louis, 11, 110, 112, 130–131, 148, 158, 160, 172, 175, 186–187 Lishkat Hakesher (Liaison Office), Israel Foreign Ministry, 37, 290 Lithuania, 5, 21, 64, 69, 208, 261–262 Nazi invasion of Lithuania, 262 Litvinoff, Emanuel, 277, 278, 280, 286, 287, 289 Livne, Eliezer, 314 Livneh, Elijahu, 211 Lobl, Eugene, 274 Locker, Berl, 20, 233 London Conference, 133, 161 London Debt Conference, 25 Luxembourg Agreements (1952), also known as Luxembourg Treaty, 20, 26, 44, 47, 209, 214–215, 217, 222, 233, 247 See also Ben-Gurion, German reparations, Goldmann Madison Square Garden, 113, 180, 283 Magnes, Judah L., 73 Maimonides, 95 Mamlakhtiut (policy of state-building), 33, 80, 153–154 See also Ben-Gurion Maoz Haim, Kibbutz, 310 Maoz, 37, 289–291 Mapai (Mifleget Poalei Erez Israel; Land of Israel Workers’ Party), 17, 18, 78, 131, 135, 154, 157, 175, 213, 214 Mapam (Mifleget Hapoalim Hameuhedet; United Workers’ Party), 18, 307, 308 Marshall, Louis, 8 Marx, Karl, 22 Masada, 43, 267 Maslow, Will, 279, 284 Mayer, Daniel, 279 Mazpen (Israel Socialist Organization), 310 McCloy, John J., 215 MacDonald White Paper (1939), 131, 151, 152

337

MacDonald, James Ramsay, 128, 131, 135, 183 McNarney, Joseph, 209 Mead, James M., 183 Medzini, Meron, 306 Meir, Golda (Meyerson), 4, 39–41, 68, 89, 179, 222, 298, 302, 303, 306, 312–313, 316 Melbourne, 277, 285, 286–288 Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, 249, 257, 268–269 Mendes-France, 276 MiG-23 fighters, 298 Mikhoels, Solomon, 275 Miller, Rabbi Israel, 284 Minkoff, 284 Mishnah, 266 Mizrahi (Merkaz Ruhani; Religious Zionist Party), 5, 18, 76, 129, 157, 159, 160, 172 Monsky, Henry, 158 Montreal, 285 Montreux, 209, 215 Morgen Freihet, 282 Morgenthau, Jr., Henry, 19, 118 Morrison, Herbert, 174 Morrison-Grady Commission, 12, 174, 178, 179 Morrison-Grady Plan (1946), 13, 15–16, 132–133, 161, 169, 174, 179, 182–184, 186, 188–189, 194 Mortimer, Rex, 286, 288 Moscow, 220, 275–276, 283, 285, 286, 291 Moses, Siegfried, 209 Motzkin, Leo, 8, 66, 102, 110, 130 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 95 Murnau, 65, 95, 100–103 Murray, Philip, 144 Murray, Wallace, 160 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 4, 40–43, 224, 307–318 Nathan, Abie, 304 National Council of Jewish Women, 289

338

Index

National Religious Party (NRP), 309 National unity government of Israel (1967–1970), 41, 300, 303, 306, 307 Nazi Germany, 9, 109, 113, 142, 143, 162, 207, 238 Nazi war crimes, 219, 238 See also Germany, Holocaust, Holocaust survivors, International Military Tribunal Negev, 81, 82, 134, 174, 184, 188 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 300 Neumann, Emanuel, 19, 158, 178, 186–187 New Communist List, 310, 317 New Deal, 141–142, 156 See also Ben-Gurion, Roosevelt New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, 261 New York Times, 41, 178, 188, 193, 283, 310 Newsweek, 310 Niles, David, 179, 183–186, 194 Non-Sectarian Ant-Nazi League, 212 Non-Zionism, 6, 34–36, 68, 73, 104, 110, 127, 140, 143, 152, 156, 159, 162 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 212 Nurock, Mordecai, 209, 276 Observer, 305 Occupied Territories (Gaza, West Bank, Sinai peninsula), 45, 68, 222, 300, 304, 308, 311 Odessa, 276, 279 Ohrbach, William, 292 Okasha, Sarwat, 301 Ollenhauer, Erich, 211 Palestine labor movement, 67 See also Ben-Gurion, Kibbutz movement, Labor Zionism, Mapai Palestinian Arabs, 68, 190, 223, 224, 308 Palestinocentrism, 66, 105 Palmach, 264, 314

Paris Peace Conference (1919), 8, 69, 101, 130 Paris, 8, 9, 13, 15, 26, 38, 40, 43, 49, 69, 101, 107, 112, 115, 130, 132, 133, 169, 178, 183, 184, 186, 187, 192, 193, 195, 212, 234, 241, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 290, 302, 311 Partition proposal of 1937, 39, 163 of 1946, 14, 21, 39, 41, 143, 152, 177–178, 181, 194 See also Ben-Gurion, Goldmann Passaic textile strike, 144 Passfield White Paper (1930), 128, 152 Patai, Raphael, 63, 70–71, 73, 298 Patinkin, Dan, 310 Patterson, Robert, 185, 186 Peel Commission (1937), 149, 151, 184, 188 Peres, Shimon, 305, 306, 312 Perlzweig, Maurice, 275, 278–279, 282, 284 Phillips, William, 183 Pittsburgh Platform (1885), 144 Poalei Zion party, 129, 157, 172 Poland, 68–69, 114, 148, 155, 260, 275, 277 Politics See American Zionist Emergency Council, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionist Party, Stephen S. Wise, Weizmann, and specific leaders and political parties Pope Paul VI, 45 Porat, Dina, 255–271 Post-Zionism, 90, 224 Pragmatic Zionism, 79 Prague “Show Trials” (1952), 274 Prinz, Joachim, 219, 220, 282, 289 Progressive party, 18 Proskauer, Joseph, 115, 158–159, 185 Queen of the Bathtub (1970), 298, 315 See also Levin

Index Rabin, Yitzhak, 43, 222, 310, 313 assassination of (1995), 317 Raider, Mark A., vii–ix, 139–168 Ranaan, Uri, 277, 278 Rawidowicz, Simon, 72 Rehovot, 89 Reinach, Salomon, 97 Reinharz, Jehuda, 3–59, 125–138 Religious extremism, 37, 88 Religious tradition, 5, 8, 18, 37, 47, 64–65, 70, 76, 88, 95, 129, 149–150, 172, 208, 261, 269, 274, 291, 309 Reparations negotiations and agreements, 7, 17, 20–27, 32, 33–34, 44, 47, 79, 81, 89, 135–136, 193, 208, 211, 213–217, 219, 221, 224, 233–250, 268 See also Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Luxembourg Agreements Republican Party (U.S.), 119, 146 Revisionist Zionist Party, 17, 129, 134, 142, 146–147, 149–150, 159, 175, 237 Riad, Mahmoud, 302 Rickert, Heinrich, 65 Riegner, Gerhardt, 284, 289 Riga, 279 Robinson, Jacob, 21, 25, 111, 208, 284 Robinson, Nehemiah, 21 Rogers Plan (1969), 297, 307 Roi, Yaakov, 282 Romania, 113, 275, 277–278, 280 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 114–120, 141–142, 153, 182 See also Ben-Gurion, New Deal Rose al-Youssef, 302 Rosenberg, Ludwig, 211 Rosenberg, Rabbi Stuart E., 285 Rosenberg, Stuart, 285 Rosenne (Rosenhaupt), Meir, 277, 278, 279, 280 Rosenzaft, Yosele, 256 Rosenzweig, Franz, 102 Rothblitt, Yaakov, 317

339

Rothman, Stan, 313 Rouleau, Eric, 301, 302 Rubinstein, Amnon, 315 Rublee, George, 152 Rusk, Dean, 282 Rutland, Suzanne D., 273–296 Sacco and Vanzetti case, 144 Sadat, Anwar, 45, 222, 316 Sadeh, Yitzhak, 314 Sadeh, Yoram, 314 SAM-3 antiaircraft missiles, 298 Sapir, Pinhas, 260, 303, 309 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 313 Sasson, Eliahu, 317 Schaffer, Fritz, 218 Schatz, Julius, 284 Schliefer, Rabbi, 275 Schmidt, Helmut, 44, 46, 218, 222–223 Schocken, Gershon, 209 Scholem, Gershom, 104–105, 220 Schroder, Gerhard, 219 Schumacher, Kurt, 211 Schwartz, Solomon, 279 Sde Boker, Kibbutz, 75, 81, 89 Second Temple, 265 Segal, Louis, 209 Segev, Tom, 300 Segev, Zohar, 107–124 Sephardi cultura, 261 Sereni, Ada, 277 Sereni, Enzo, 277 Shafir, Shlomo, 207–231 Shalkovich (Ben-Avigdor), Abraham, 267 Shamir, Shimon, 310 Shapira, Moshe Haim, 309 Sharett, Moshe (Shertok), 18, 23, 26, 81–82, 116, 134, 157, 171, 214, 216–217, 314 Shazar, Zalman, 257, 314 Shcherbakov, Alexander Sergeyevich, 274 Shemtov, Victor, 309

340

Index

shilumim (reparations), 207, 212, 216, 218, 220, 222 See also Ben-Gurion, German reparations, Germany, Goldmann Shimoni, Gideon, 63–74 Shinar, Eliezer, 25 Shir leshalom (Song for Peace), 317 Shlilat hagalut (negation of the exile) 46, 69–70, 75–90 See also Galut/golah, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Klatzkin Shtadlan (intercessor), shtadlonus (intercessionism, Yiddish), shtadlanut (intercessionism, Hebrew), 48, 278, 286, 292, 297, 306, 316 Shylock, image of, 85–86 See also Anti-Semitism, Emancipation, Wandering Jew Siah lohamim (The Seventh Day: Soldiers’ Talk about the Six-Day War), 313 Siberia, 275 Sighet, 260 Silver, Abba Hillel, 10–11, 13–20, 28–33, 78, 130–136, 139–168, 215 as American Jewish leader and orator, 140–142, 159–160, 172 American Zionist Emergency Council, 10–11, 117, 130–131, 156, 158, 160–161 clash over Goldmann’s secret mission in 1946, 172–195 political realism and attitude towards partition, 14, 132–133, 149–156 pragmatic American Zionist orientation, 143–146 relations with Ben-Gurion, 19–20 relations with Goldmann, 11, 15–16, 29, 32, 135–136 Revisionism and, 146 See also American Zionist Emergency Council, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Neumann, Stephen S. Wise Simonsohn, Shlomo, 256, 260, 264, 267 Sinai Campaign (1956), 39, 82, 84, 86, 217, 300

Sinai peninsula territory, 308, 316 Sisco, Joseph, 305 Six-Day War (1967), 4, 38–39, 68, 86, 222, 289, 291, 299, 308, 309, 313, 316–318 Slansky, Rudolf, 274 Smith, Al, 144 Smuts, General, 45 Sneh, Moshe, 181 Snyder, John W., 185, 186, 191, 192 Social Democratic party (SPD), see Germany Socialism, 7, 18, 78, 82, 128, 129, 141, 142, 144, 222, 263, 264, 277, 279, 310–311 Socialist International, 222 Sokolow, Nahum, 128 South Africa, 237 Sovetish Heymland, 281 Soviet Jewry, 36, 37, 273–292 See also Soviet Union Soviet Union (USSR), 12, 21, 37–38, 208, 215, 217, 222, 269, 273–292, 298, 315 debate and differences regarding efforts to save Soviet Jewry, 274–276, 278, 280, 282–283, 284, 286, 288, 291 Jewish student ballad of the 1960s, 273 Israeli government policy and Soviet Jews, 290–291 size of Soviet Jewish community, 277 Soviet “Show Trials” (1953), 274–275 Soviet theatre, 275 See also Goldmann, World Jewish Congress, and specific leaders and organizations Spain, 81, 114, 210, 259 Stalin, Josef, 274–275, 277 Stern, Isaac, 284 Stockholm, 215, 255–259 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks Treaty (SALT II), 223 Strauss, Franz Josef, 217 Suez Crisis (1956–1957), 276 Swift, Jonathan, 139

Index Synagogue Council of America, 238 Syrkin, Marie, 310 Syrkin, Nahman, 311 Taft, Bernard, 286 Taft, Robert, 144 Talmon, Jacob, 315 Talmud, 70, 95, 100, 259, 266 Tartakover, Aryeh, 38, 276, 282 Taylor, Myron, 114 Teff, S., 289 Tefuzah (diaspora), 75, 257 See also Ahad Haam, Galut/golah, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Klatzkin Tel Aviv municipality, 256 Tel Aviv University, 256, 257, 260, 267, 290 Tel Aviv, 98, 256–257, 260, 306, 317 Territorial integrity/territorialism, 70–71, 77, 90, 148, 150, 178, 184, 304, 311, 316 Times of London, 283 Tito, 45, 276, 301–302, 305, 315–316 Torczyner, Jacques, 284 Trade Union Federation, see Germany Transjordan, 178 Truman, Harry S., 12, 15, 117, 119, 141, 142, 161, 173–178, 179, 182–183, 184–186, 187–189, 192, 194–195 Trumpeldor, Yosef, 259 Tsarist Russian empire, 15, 64 Tversky, Amos, 310 U.S. Congress, 115–117 U.S. Military Government in Germany (OMGUS), 239 U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 299 See also Fulbright U.S. State Department, 15, 114, 133, 161, 194 U.S.-British relations, 15 Ulbricht, Walter, 45, 221 United Jewish Appeal (UJA), 19, 151–152, 257

341

United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), 195 United Nations, 15–16, 17, 32, 111, 131, 134, 136, 160, 162, 169, 172–176, 193, 195, 217, 281, 284, 290–291, 300 United Palestine Appeal (UPA), 19, 151 Universities Committee for Soviet Jewry, 290 University of California at Los Angeles, 261 Urofsky, Melvin, 110 Ussishkin, Menahem, 18, 75, 77, 150 USSR, see Soviet Union Van Dam, Hendrick G., 220 Vergelis, Aaron, 281 Vienna, 105 Vilna, 106, 261–262, 265 Visznewo, Lithuania, 5, 96, 224, 263 Wagner, Robert, 118, 183 Wallace, Henry A., 182 Wandering Jew, image of, 67, 77, 80, 85, 105, 258, 269 See also Anti-Semitism, Beit Hatefuzot, Emancipation War of Attrition (1967–1970), 297, 298, 305–306 War Emergency Conference (1944), 208 War of Independence (1948), 86, 261, 262 War zones in Europe American, 21, 173, 209, 218, 240 British and French, 209 See also World War II Warburg, Sigmund, 311 Warhaftig, Zorach, 309 Washington, D.C., 11–16, 29, 31, 33, 43, 110, 115, 131–133, 151, 156–157, 160–162, 169–203, 211, 221, 259, 275, 277, 278, 279, 282, 283 Wassenaar, 25–26, 214–215, 242–244, 246–247, 249

342

Index

Weimar Germany, see Germany Weinberg, Samuel, 103–104 Weinberg, Yeshayahu (Shaike), 260, 315 Weisgal, Meir, 134, 158, 257, 260–261 Weiss, Rabbi, 284 Weizmann, Chaim, viii, 4, 10–11, 13, 21, 27–28, 68, 75–76, 89, 97, 107, 125–136, 151–152, 153, 157–158, 161–163, 178, 193, 314 relations with Goldmann, 3, 29–30, 125–136 attitude to American Zionism, 11, 174 as Jewish leader, 77–78, 140 power struggle with Ben-Gurion, 29, 144, 151–152, 157, 177 gradualism and political affinity for Britain, 149–150, 156, 161, 174, 177 fall from power in the Zionist movement, 3, 107, 162 Democratic Faction of World Zionist Organization, 66–67 German reparations and, 209, 211 Trial and Error (1949), 126 See also Aging and political leadership, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Silver, Stephen S. Wise West Bank Arabs, 314 Western Allies, 114, 214, 218, 234–235 Western Wall, 267, 314 Wexner, 284 White Paper (1939), 11–12, 14–15, 128, 131–132, 151–152, 170–174, 177, 181, 195 Wiesel, Elie, 260, 262 Jews of Silence (1966), 284 Wilner, Meir, 317 Wilson, Harold, 289 Wilson, Woodrow, 45, 141, 144 Wise, George, 256 Wise, Stephen S., 19, 27, 134, 139–168, 172, 175, 181 American Zionist Emergency Council and, 10, 130–133 World Jewish Congress and, 8, 10, 28, 107–120, 130, 208–210, 233

American Jewish leadership and, 140–142, 159–161 friendship with Goldmann, 181 antipathy to Revisionism, 146–147 pragmatic orientation of American Zionism and, 143–148 confrontation with Abba Hillel Silver, 29, 157–158 relations with Weizmann, 130, 153 See also American Zionist Emergency Council, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Weizmann, World Jewish Congress World Conference of Jewish Organizations (COJO), 36, 273, 288 World Jewish Congress (WJC), viii, 8–10, 19, 21, 23, 28–29, 34, 36–38, 40, 46, 48, 68–69, 81, 89, 105, 107–124, 130, 134, 140, 143, 150, 155–156, 208–211, 215–216, 219–221, 233–235, 249–250, 255–256, 259, 263, 274–279, 281–282, 284–290, 292, 297, 302 See also Goldmann, Soviet Jewry, Stephen S. Wise World War I (1914–1918), 4, 7, 8, 9, 67, 98, 99, 107, 112, 128, 143, 144, 153, 267, World War II (1939–1945), 11, 12, 22, 25, 67, 75, 81, 108–109, 113, 116, 118, 142, 170–171, 209, 234, 259, 268, 277, 315 World Zionist Organization (WZO), 13, 76, 111, 120, 136, 150, 219, 309 Wulf, Josef, 221 Yad Mordekhai, 261 Yad Vashem—The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 261, 263, 264 Yadin, Yigael, 223 Yediot Akhronot, 280 Yiddish language and culture, vii, 95, 103, 143, 148, 153, 274–275, 277, 281–282

Index Yishuv, 13, 18, 39, 67, 68, 75, 80, 131, 140–142, 144, 146, 148, 149–156, 162, 175, 177, 180, 192, 234, 250, 266 See also British Mandate in Palestine, Jewish National Home Yom Kippur War (1973), 40, 87, 222, 316 Zeirei Zion party, 129 Zhdanov, Andrei, 274 Zionism American Zionism, 8–11, 17, 19–20, 23, 28–32, 72, 107, 117, 132–133, 140–162, 172–173, 193, 208 as concept of unity, 34, 82, 89, 108, 144–145, 153, 155, 159, 255, 263, 265, 275 Brandeis’ pragmatic and apolitical sensibility, 110–111, 140–141, 143–144, 156 evaluation of Goldmann’s Zionist thought, 63–73 German Zionism, 66–67, 97–99, 100–103 gradualism as strategy and policy, 37, 83, 86–87, 149, 156, 181, 185 political Zionism, 157, 172 See also Ahad Haam, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Klatzkin, Labor Zionism, Revisionism, and specific Zionist leaders and thinkers Zionist Congresses First (1897), 34

343

Tenth (1911), 96 Thirteenth (1923), 6, 127 Fourteenth (1925), 129 Seventeenth (1931), 29, 107, 126, 128–129, 131, 135 Nineteenth (1935), 8, 140, 143 Twentieth (1937), 29, 150–151, 154, 178 Twenty-second (1946), 16–17, 133, 136, 161, 193 Twenty-third (1951), 20, 32, 34 Twenty-fifth (1960), 34 Twenty-seventh (1968), 34 Zionist Executive, 16, 19, 33, 133, 151, 157, 161, 171, 174 Zionist leadership See Jewish Agency for Palestine/ Israel, Ben-Gurion, Goldmann, Silver, Stephen S. Wise, Zionist Executive, and specific leaders, movements, and parties Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), 19, 141, 144, 149, 151, 153, 157, 161–162, 172, 193, 241 See also American Zionist Emergency Council, Silver, Stephen S. Wise Zionist Radical Party, 7, 127 Zlocisti, Theodor, 97 Zuckerman, Baruch, 209 Zweig, Arnold, 102, 103 Zweig, Ronald W., 217, 233–253


Nahum Goldmann: Statesman Without a State (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Nahum

The Body (Suny Series in Buddhist Studies)

Constructing Boundaries : Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine SUNY Series in Israeli Studies

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Islam in Iran (Suny Series in Near Eastern Studies)

Wars, Internal Conflicts and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Instructions to a Statesman

Female Ascetics in Hinduism (Suny Series in Hindu Studies)

Female Ascetics in Hinduism (Suny Series in Hindu Studies)

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

The Dao Of Rhetoric (Suny Series in Communication Studies)

Nahum Goldmann: Statesman Without a State (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Nahum

The Body (Suny Series in Buddhist Studies)

Constructing Boundaries : Jewish and Arab Workers in Mandatory Palestine SUNY Series in Israeli Studies

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Islam in Iran (Suny Series in Near Eastern Studies)

Wars, Internal Conflicts and Political Order: A Jewish Democracy in the Middle East (Suny Series in Israeli Studies)

Instructions to a Statesman

Female Ascetics in Hinduism (Suny Series in Hindu Studies)

Female Ascetics in Hinduism (Suny Series in Hindu Studies)

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

Statesman

The Dao Of Rhetoric (Suny Series in Communication Studies)

Recommend Documents