Though debatable if Friedrich Nietzsche was anti-Semitic, no one debates that the Nazis used his writings to create the most lethal ideological brew in history - one leading to world war and the annihilation of 6 million Jews.

In the late 1800s there arose to prominence a highly influential German philosopher by the name of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Historians debate how much his writings represent anti-Semitism. On one hand, some of his writings express negative views about Judaism. On the other hand, he was also anti-Christian. In fact, he had worse things to say about Christianity than Judaism. As an atheist he was adamantly against all religion.

At the same time, some of his writings contain repudiations of anti-Semitism. He even went so far as to break off from his publisher for being an anti-Semite and wrote a sharp letter to his sister for marrying an anti-Semite and having anti-Semitic views.

Be that as it may, Nietzsche’s philosophy became a cornerstone of Nazi ideology, particularly his idea of the Übermensch, the Superman. As the Nazis interpreted it, certain races – the Aryan, Germanic race, specifically — were entitled to rule, dominate, lord over and enjoy the fruits of this world more than others. Combined with Darwin’s idea of the Survival of the Fittest, the Übermensch philosophy became a license to conquer, kill and enslave all the non-Germanic races, especially the lowest and most dangerous of them, the Jewish race.

Nietzsche’s writings were also used to paint Judaism as the root of all evil. Nietzsche pointed out that the despised Christian religion had its roots were in Judaism. Ideas such as “Love thy neighbor,” “turn the other cheek,” “be charitable” contradicted the idea of the Survival of the Fittest and the Übermensch. It was for the weak. Again, historians debate the depth of Nietzsche’s animosity toward Judaism; they claim it was really Christianity that he was attacking. But no one debates that the Nazis interpreted his ideas to mean that Judaism was a virus that infected the world. Christianity — and even worse for the Nazis: Communism — was nothing more than a front for Jewish ideas meant to suppress the strong, Germanic spirit.

German 19^th century anti-Semitism found echoes is some very strange places. The great German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883), who had a fixation with German and Pagan mythology, was a rabid anti-Semite – and his wife was worse. Some of the otherwise greatest people in Europe subscribed to the vilest racial theories.

The anti-Semitism was not confined to France or England. Henry Adams, one of the famous and influential social commentators in the United States, said he lived only in the wish to see the end of “infernal Jewry.”

Barbara Tuchman’s book, The Proud Tower, is a portrait of the world before the First World War, 1890-1914. The chapter called, “Give Me Combat,” discusses anti-Semitism in Europe at the end of the 1800s. In about 50 pages she provides a remarkably clear idea about the ground swell of anti-Semitism that enabled civilized Europe a few decades later to exterminate six million people without much protest. The way she paints it, the anti-Semitism was so strong and virulent that it was almost a foregone conclusion that it was going to happen.

Her book is well worth reading to anyone who wants to understand the real roots of the Holocaust – roots that still need to be understood in today’s world.

One of those little realized facts is that the destruction of European Jewry did not begin with the Second World War. It began with the first one. The genocide of six million Jews, which occurred in the 1940s, was the terrible end of a tragedy which began with the First World War.

It is ironic that statements before the war foresaw a time of lasting peace, perpetual advancement and an unceasing march toward utopia. Europe believed it lived a charmed life. War was a thing of the past. The new technological advances would usher in a period of unequalled prosperity.

We have a hard time understanding their optimism. Even though we live in a world of much greater technological progress we are beset with doubts. After the bloodiest century in history, we know what type of uncertain world we live in. They did not. They felt that the world going to get better and better.

Even as words of optimism poured out of the mouths and pens of Europe’s intellectuals and pundits, however, the signs of a terrible storm rapidly approaching on the horizon were unmistakable.

The Russian Bear

The coming of the war was highlighted by a few events that shook Europe and had a profound effect on the Jews as well. The first was the Russo-Japanese war of 1905.

Russia was the sleeping giant of Europe. Churchill said, “Woe to the one that wakes the Russian bear.” However, Russia was backward militarily and owned an empire too vast to control. Russia’s military and industrial strength lay in the west, but it had claims in the east, specifically in Manchuria and ports on the Pacific Ocean. Japan, though, was a burgeoning power and also laid claim to some of the same land and ports.

When war came, the Russians were ill-prepared. They had to transport their army and its supplies army across an entire continent, and the only way to do so was one railway: the trans-Siberian railroad. It created a supply nightmare. On top of that, their equipment was poor and their generalship awful.

The Russian army sustained a terrible drubbing. Worse, the Japanese sank the entire Russian fleet at Port Arthur in Manchuria. In the peace that was negotiated Russia was forced to cede to Japan great chunks of territory, which threatened to eliminate them as a Pacific power.

When the Russian soldiers returned home they were extremely discouraged. They realized that they were led by poor generals, had bad equipment and that hundreds of thousands of their brethren in arms died needlessly. In their anger, they helped ignite a revolution against the Czar in 1905.

There had been threats of revolution in Russia ever since the Czar had been assassinated in 1881. Now the threats would become realized.

Jewish Revolutionaries

Jews were very heavily represented by all the revolutionary organizations. In the same party as Lenin was a young Jewish man by the name of Julius Cedarbaum, who was known through his revolutionary alias, Julius Martov. He came from southern Russia where the pogroms were very common and particularly brutal. Early in life he decided that he would devote himself to the revolutionary cause. Organizing revolutionary cells, he was caught, sent to forced labor in Siberia and eventually escaped.

Lenin would head the group that would become known as the Bolsheviks, meaning the “majority.” Martov would come to head the group known as Mensheviks, meaning “minority.” In reality, it was the opposite. Martov represented the majority of the communist party whereas Lenin represented the minority. Among their differences, Lenin was much more exclusive. He did not want to give any power to the people. Only an inner cadre of revolutionaries could run it, in his view. Martov and the Mensheviks were much more tolerant and liberal. For that reason they did not really stand much of a chance against the likes of Lenin.

In Lenin’s wing of the party was another revolutionary, a Jew by the name of Leib Bronstein, who became known to the world as Leon Trotsky. He also came to Marxism as a reaction to terrible anti-Semitism. Born into a traditional family, Trotsky was an example of a Jewish revolutionary originally educated in the yeshivas of Eastern Europe. Succumbing to the pressures of the time, they left the fold and became inflamed with Marxist zeal.

Trotsky was also arrested by the Russians, sent to Siberia and eventually escaped. He lived for a while in New York City, drinking tea on the Lower East Side and arguing the cause of Marxism. It all looked very harmless. However, when the Communist Revolution exploded in 1917 it was appropriately described by the title of a book by journalist John Reed, The Ten Days That Shook The World.

The revolution of 1905 was put down by the Czar and his secret police in six months. Hundreds of people were executed and thousands were exiled and tens of thousands were sent to Siberia. Other thousands escaped.

Defections from Judaism

This period saw a large defection of Jews from traditional views and ways of life. The as-of-yet untried Marxist theories inspired in people belief that the world was going to get better once capitalism and government were destroyed. That belief found a strong echo in the Jewish street.

With that belief came the bitter hatred of religion. Marx had said that religion was the opiate of the masses. Religion, in his opinion, made people docile with the belief that even if things were unbearable in this world there was a better world awaiting them. In Marx’s thinking, however, revolution could not come without things being unbearable.

For the first time in centuries the Jewish street was filled with groups who purposely set out to destroy the Jewish religion and who equated it with all of the evils and shortcomings of their society. The Jewish labor unions in Poland and Russia would purposely make their banquets on the night of Yom Kippur when Jews were fasting. They purposely desecrated the Sabbath and trampled other traditional Jewish values.

The inner turmoil and outer unrest caused by the failed revolution in 1905 resulted in a new wave of migration among Eastern European Jews. Hundreds of thousands came to the United States. Ironically, many of them became capitalists instead of communists. The one “ideal” they kept was hatred of the Jewish religion.

The unraveling of Jewish life in Russia benefited the Zionist movement. With everything disintegrating, the only alternative, the Zionists said, was to leave for Palestine and start over. In the nine years before the First World War, from 1905-1914, approximately 15,000 Jews came from Eastern Europe to Palestine. Approximately 3,000-4,000 of them were hard-core revolutionaries. Most of them went to the kibbutzim, which were then being formed, and introduced a communal life based in part upon idealism and in part upon a complete disregard and distain for their Jewish heritage.

Their viewpoints became the dominant ones in the pioneer communities. Therefore, it was they who would have the power as the fledgling Jewish state developed.

The Effects of Urbanization

For centuries, the Jewish people in Eastern Europe had basically been a rural people. Unlike the Jewish population in the United States, which is almost exclusively urban and suburban, the Jews in Eastern Europe had lived in small towns and farms.

Beginning in the middle 1800s, the process of urbanization and industrialization reached Russia and Poland and changed the face of society. For the first time, there were mass migrations to the cities. Included in those migrations were Jews.

Jewish migration also contributed to the undoing of centuries of religious life. City life and factory work proved more than many of them could bear. The great Jewish metropolises of Eastern Europe served as a rallying point for the de-Judaization of the Jews.

At the same time, urbanization increased anti-Semitism. As anti-Semitic as the Russians and Poles were when the Jews lived in the rural areas, they were more so when Jews came to the city. All of a sudden they encountered high concentrations of Jews. It was one thing to live in a little town and see maybe 20-40 Jewish families whose ancestors lived there for centuries. They were not a threat. But it was another thing to see hundreds and hundreds of Jews coming out of synagogue in Warsaw. It was overwhelming to the non-Jews. Jews became terribly visible all of a sudden. Warsaw alone had 300,000 Jews. Lvov had 100,000. That served to intensify the already existing anti-Semitic feelings among the local populace.

In short, the inner structure of Jewish life began to fall apart with the process of urbanization.

The Powder Box of Europe

In 1910, there was an outbreak of war in the Balkans, which had been controlled by Turkey, the Ottoman Empire. Called the “sick man of Europe,” the Ottoman Empire had long been disintegrating and could not control any of its holdings. That is how little countries like those in the Balkans – e.g. Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria — could break away.

Immediately upon attaining their independence, though, these Balkan countries celebrated by fighting among themselves. The Balkans is a composite of many ethnic groupings, none of whom like each other very much. It was called the “Powder Box of Europe.” The Europeans always worried that conflict there would ignite a larger conflict, which it did eventually. That was how the First World War began, as we will learn.

The Austrians were interested in replacing Turkey as the empire ruling the Balkans. They wielded enough influence to put out the fire before it spread into a wider conflagration. However, the leader of Serbia already said in 1912 when he was forced to sign the peace treaty, “This is only the first round.” His words would prove prophetic.

All this had a tremendous impact upon the Jews. In a situation of instability, Jews are the first to be effected because they tend to be viewed as the archetypal outsiders. Therefore, volatile political situations put Jews at particularly great risk. Even today, it is the political stability of the United States – as much as political freedom – which allows Jews to feel secure and function.

In the time immediately preceding the First World War almost 80% of the world Jewish population lived in the areas that would be affected by it. If the war had taken place in the trenches of France alone it would have had very little impact upon the Jewish people. However, a great war raged as well on the eastern front. Germany, Austria, Turkey fought bitter, pitched battles against Russia. And that is the part of the war that really ravaged Jewish communities and changed the face of Jewish history forever.

In short, as the world flung itself headlong toward “The Great War” the Jewish world was disintegrating. It was a time of great flux. The center was giving way. Nothing was stable any longer. When the shock of the war would hit this already destabilized society it would shatter it completely.

The Zionist movement, however, was never monolithic. It had many factions, differing ideas and unique personalities. The greatness of Herzl was that he was able to hold his movement together in its early years in the face of such diversity.

The early Zionist congresses, from 1897 to 1903, formed the crucible of the movement. They were the places where these contentious battles were fought. These battles never really ended. A great deal of what was a battle back then is still a battle among the Jewish people today.

Two Views of the National Jewish Homeland

Herzl came from the Western world. He was an assimilated Jew. He saw the necessity of a Jewish homeland as a practical idea. Therefore, to him, it did not necessarily have to be a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

Herzl never imagined that the wealthy Jews of Germany, France and England would move to Palestine. He never imagined that the deeply assimilated Jews, like himself, were going to move to Palestine. Rather, he saw the Jewish national homeland as the place where destitute and poverty-stricken Jews would be able to settle and rebuild their lives.

In this definition, the Jewish national homeland would be in effect a dumping ground for people who couldn’t make it in Europe.

Those who opposed Herzl initially called themselves the “Democratic Fraction.” These were primarily Jews of Eastern European descent. They did not see the Jewish national homeland in the light he saw it. They saw it as attracting the best and most talented of the Jewish people. It was where the Jewish people would realize their age-old ambition of being “a light unto the nations” of the world, as a realization of the prophetic dream of the return to Zion.

Those were two diametrically opposed views of what the Jewish state was supposed to be. In retrospect, those views not only still exist but have never really been reconciled and exist today.

Uganda

In 1903, the British foreign office, almost as a whim, offered Herzl the opportunity colonize the British East African colony of Uganda. If the Zionist movement would accept it England would support it and even provide some necessary financing.

England had an ulterior motive, of course. They were jockeying with Germany for control of Central Africa. Germany even had a claim to part of Uganda. By putting Jews there the British hoped that they would thereby solidify their claim.

Herzl thought it was a splendid idea. Destitute Jews across the globe could settle in Uganda, develop it agriculturally and industrially, have autonomy and be protected by the British army and navy. It would become a jewel in the crown of the British Empire at the same time it served his agenda for the Jewish people.

In perfect hindsight, his scheme was so naïve and far-fetched that it is hard to believe it came from a person as astute as Herzl.

Herzl was shocked at the vehemence of the opposition when he proposed the Uganda option at the Zionist Congress in 1903. He never truly comprehended the depth of the Jewish religion and what the Eastern European Jews were really about. He was astounded and even frightened at their reaction. Because of that he took it personally. He took it so personally that he got up in front of the Zionist Congress and announced that if Uganda was not adopted he would resign and leave the Zionist movement altogether.

His statement caused many of the delegates to panic and vote on behalf of the Uganda proposal, even though they otherwise opposed it. They felt that if Herzl left the movement the blow would be far greater than the movement could then stand. He was the glue that held it together. They were afraid to imagine what their movement would be without him.

Herzl would be dead within a year – and the Zionist movement would continue, even flourish. But at the Zionist Congress of 1903 they were afraid to risk it.

The Uganda proposal was adopted by a very narrow margin. The narrowness of the margin, and the fact that Herzl’s health immediately began to fail, guaranteed that it would never come to fruition. It was stillborn.

Chaim Weizman

The head of the opposition to Herzl was the Democratic Fraction and its leader was Chaim Weizman (1874-1952). He was born in Russia and educated in Pinsk and later Berlin. He came from a traditional Jewish home and had a traditional Jewish upbringing. All of his life he wavered between the ancient traditions and the modern world. He never synthesized them. There were times that he was very Jewish and there were times when he was not. At the end of his life he became an observant Jew again.

He is almost a tragic figure. Even though he is the person who guided the Zionist movement during 30 turbulent years from 1915 until 1945 and ended up being the first president of the State of Israel, he was in effect discarded at the end. And he felt that he was discarded.

Weizman was elected to the First Zionist Congress, but did not attend. From the Second Zionist Congress forward, however, he attended every one. He was an astute politician, great organizer, a fine speaker and a strong personality. He was the counterforce to Western, assimilated Zionism.

Here is an excerpt from his autobiography, called Trial And Error:

We were not revolutionaries. We were a struggling group of young academicians without power and without outside support. But we had a definite outlook on life. We did not like the note of eloquence and pseudo-worldliness, which characterized official Zionism. We did not like the dress suits and frock-coats and fashionable dresses of the West.

The formalism of the Zionist congresses made a painful impression upon me, especially after my visits to the wretched and oppressed Russian Jewish masses. Actually, it was all very modest, but it smacked to us of being artificial and extravagant. It did not speak to us of the democracy, simplicity and earnestness of the Jewish people. We were uncomfortable with it.

That captures the relationship between the Eastern European Jews to Herzl’s Western European Jews. In the official annals of Zionism it was down-played because it showed an enormous split on a fundamental level.

Culture Clashes

The second split in the Zionist movement had to do with “culture,” which was generally a euphemism for religion. Did the Zionist movement have anything to say about Jewish “culture”? In other words, was it supposed to be a practical movement to try to save Jews physically and not mix into Jewish spiritual life? That was Herzl’s idea. The first four Zionist congresses adopted resolutions that Zionism was neutral on all matters of Jewish culture. Zionism will never do anything against the Jewish religion – but it will never do anything for the Jewish religion either. Herzl was not interested in defining a “Jewish state.”

The Russian Jews objected to that for reasons stemming from the first difference. They were making a utopian state, one that was to be “a light unto the nations” and restoring the messianic era. It would be the model for all states. Therefore, it had to be infused with Jewish culture.

But, what was the definition of Jewish culture? The Haskalah and left-wing Socialist-Marxists had a definition completely opposite of religious Jews. To the former, religion was the “opiate of the masses.” The solution lay in the destruction of Jewish religion and rituals. To the masses of Jews, though, to have a Jewish state without Judaism was worthless.

In truth, those two definitions were never reconciled. Herzl was aware of that and wanted to avoid this war at all costs. He knew how deep the feelings ran. Therefore, he tried to have culture removed completely from the discussion.

Try though he did, it was an impossible task. From the fifth Zionist Congress onward, the Zionist movement set about to bring culture to the Jewish people.

Despite that, the issue was never solved. The story of the early Zionist movement was the story of trying to reach a consensus between elements as diverse as the piously religious and the atheist Marxist. It never happened.

Hebrew

When the early pioneers came there was a discussion as to what should be the official language. No one had given it any thought. Herzl originally proposed that it be French. Later, he agreed with the Kaiser that it should be German. In his mind, since it was going to be a modern state it had to have a modern language.

The Eastern European Zionists, on the other hand, produced a strong movement to make Yiddish the official language of the state. Of course, Yiddish would in effect have excluded a million Sephardic Jews. But that did not deter them.

The language, of course, ended up being Hebrew – and a new kind of Hebrew. That was due to the efforts of one man: Eliezer ben Yehudah (1858–1922). He wrote one of the finest dictionaries of Hebrew. Then he lobbied, traveled and persevered until he sold the idea to the masses that Hebrew should be revived and be the language of the new country.

Therefore, from about 1909 onward Hebrew became the de facto spoken language of Jewish pioneers.

The Creation of Religious Zionism

There were and still are three main viewpoints with religious Jewry regarding the Zionist movement. One sees in the accomplishments of Zionism the beginning of the process of redemption; it is the introduction, as it were, to the messianic age. Therefore, it not only has a purpose, but a positive purpose. Being part of that positive purpose is almost a commandment, according to this viewpoint.

A second group was represented by the ideas expressed by the fathers of the Mizrachi movement. It was founded in the early 1900s by Rabbi Jacob Reines, who had been a rabbi in Lithuania. A graduate of the prestigious Volozhin yeshiva, he was a renowned scholar, powerful speaker and great organizer. Though highly thought of, he was also controversial.

He purposely did not want to advance the cause of Zionism as having anything to do with the messianic era or the redemption of the Jewish people. He saw it only as a practical solution to a terrible problem, namely Jewish persecution to the point of destruction.

In short, it was Herzl’s idea of practical Zionism, but with an important twist. It was going to be a Jewish state as defined by Jewish tradition. He felt that this could be done, and that it would be done, only through cooperation with the Zionist movement, only by being part of the Zionist movement and pursuing its goals. For a long period of time the Mizrachi movement was popular, even among Eastern European religious Jews. Many Hassidic rabbis also supported it and were part of it.

The third opinion was that Zionism had to be opposed unequivocally because it was a secular movement that would secularize the Jewish people and diminish loyalty to Torah. It would substitute nationalism for religion. The method and depth of the opposition varied from group to group. But most of the great rabbinic scholars of the time opposed it.

This split within religious Jewry has changed little over time. The basic split still remains. But the battle lines were already drawn by 1906 or 1907. What kind of Jewish state? What kind of culture? What kind of religion? All of those questions were present then. All the problems that exist now can be found in the writings put to paper back then. Unfortunately, the answers then were not any clearer than they are now. It is a matter that is almost left for history to resolve.

One of the strange quirks in history is that Rabbi Salanter and the followers of his Mussar Movement were strongly influenced by Benjamin Franklin.

One of the strange quirks in history is that Rabbi Salanter and the followers of his Mussar Movement were strongly influenced by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin’s personal life leaves much to be desired. However, his ideas were extraordinary in many respects.

In the 1700s, Ben Franklin had published Poor Richard’s Almanac, which includes in it a great deal of philosophy. In it he listed 13 famous character traits, which he said are the foundation of a good person and a good society. Included on the list are such traits as thrift, honesty, silence, study, etc.

A Lithuanian Jew by the name of Menachem Mendel Lefin (also Menahem Mendel Levin — 1749–1826) had traveled west and studied in the universities of Germany and France. There he read the writings of Benjamin Franklin, and became greatly influenced by them. He wrote a book of Jewish ethics based on Franklin’s ideas, almost quoting him verbatim but never mentioning his name. It was as though it was his book.

Ohr Yisrael, “The Light of Israel,” is a biography of Rabbi Salanter and a philosophy of movement penned by his main disciple.

Rabbi Israel Salanter read his book and was very impressed by it. He subsequently published it in Kovno using his own funds. The book was republished by his followers a number of times. As late as the 1930s it was still being published by the Slobodka Yeshiva.

In our day, the book was translated into English by Feldheim publishers and one can even find posters of Franklin’s list in Jewish classrooms and on refrigerators in Jewish homes. It is ironic that one will not find these principles discussed or displaying in American school and homes; only in those of religious Jews.

There have also been a number of interesting books, theses and articles written about the relationship between the followers of the Mussar Movement and Benjamin Franklin. “Accept the truth from whoever says it,” is a principle in Jewish life. Indeed, that was what Maimonides responded when he was criticized for quoting Aristotle and the Greek philosophers. The bottom line is that if a person will live by those 13 principles he will be a better person and the world will be a better place.

From 1880 onward we see a continually mounting tide of anti-Semitism both in Eastern and Western Europe. This tide of anti-Semitism, which culminated in the Second World War and the destruction of European Jewry by Hitler, did not start with Hitler. It built upon 50 to 70 years of official government sanctioned anti-Semitism. In this new, racially-based anti-Semitism Jews had no place in European society. They were not to be tolerated under any conditions.

Jewish life was on the verge of destruction. The Dreyfus trial, the beginnings of the Zionist movement, vast emigration and the secularization of a large portion of the Jewish people all were motivated by the basic underlying force of anti-Semitism.

Kishinev Pogrom

There are two incidents that happened in Russia before the First World War that had a profound impact upon the Jewish people. The first was the infamous Kishinev pogrom of April 1903.

Kishinev is a town about 50 miles northwest of Odessa in Bessarabia. Around the turn of the century it had a Jewish population of about 25,000, which was large by Jewish standards. The Russian government had for many years pursued an official-unofficial policy of fomenting pogroms. It was unofficial in the sense that the government did not do any of the rampaging directly. It was official, however, in the sense that the police and the army would come into a town and announce that they were leaving for the next few days. That was a signal to the anti-Semites and thugs that they could destroy and plunder Jewish property and attack and murder Jews with impunity and without fear of consequences.

Sometimes the Russian authorities let it rage for a few hours and sometimes for a few days. Kishinev raged for three days. Golda Meir said that her first memory in life was the horrific pogrom of Kiev when her upstairs neighbor, a Jew, was nailed to the door of his apartment.

The Kishinev pogrom awakened in the world a reaction that Russia did not expect.

Compared to the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust, the number of Jews killed (142) and wounded (1500) in the Kishinev pogrom – to say nothing of Jewish businesses destroyed (2000) — may not seem particularly large. But this was the beginning of the age of photographs. The Vietnam War was an excellent example of how the media affected policy. The fact that it was televised into every home eventually forced the political and diplomatic withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam. In a similar way, the photographs of the Kishinev massacre were telegraphed and subsequently published in all the newspapers of the world. They drove home in graphic detail the terrible brutality of the Russians and ignited a stinging international reaction against them.

The Czar claimed the government had nothing to do with it and that he was going to investigate it. Only fools believed him. In actuality, no one was ever punished for the Kishinev pogrom. No item of Jewish property was ever returned. No compensation was ever paid to any of the victims.

The President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, officially protested to the Russian government over its behavior. This was the first time the United States ever did something like that. The catalyst for his protest was the growing influence of Jews in American political and economic life. Now there was a large Jewish population in the state of New York and Roosevelt was aware of that. Though we can assume he was sincerely disgusted at Russian behavior, to some extent he responded to pressure of Jews in America.

Three Reactions

The Kishinev massacre convinced the Jews in Russia more than ever that there really was no future and no hope for them there. The only hope lay in three areas.

To the secular Jews, the only hope was to overthrow the Russian government. Kishinev made more Jews revolutionaries than anything else. It wasn’t so much that the Jews believed in revolution, but that they knew that under the Czar there was no hope and things would never change. In order for the Jewish situation to change someone had to get rid of the Czar, his autocratic government and break the power of the Russian Orthodox Church. The only ones prepared to do so were the left-wing socialists, communists, anarchists and revolutionaries. That was their platform.

Therefore, Jews became revolutionaries in great numbers during both of the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917. They were disproportionately represented. Though about 1% of the Russian population they were 15-20% of the revolutionaries. And in the leadership echelon they were even more disproportionately represented. There was a time that the higher echelon of the Bolshevik party in Russia was over one-third Jewish. That naturally brought about the other reaction that accused the Bolsheviks of being Jews and vice-versa.

The second reaction to Kishinev was the enormous strengthening of the Zionist movement. The movement may have originally been conceived, supported and led by Western European Jews but its membership came from Eastern European Jews. These secularized Jews looked at the Zionist movement with religious fervor. In effect, they took the belief and enthusiasm that Jews had in Judaism and transferred it to the cause of Zionism. They served it with the same dedication, tenacity and spirit. That is how they stood against all odds.

After Kishinev, the numbers behind the Zionist movement exploded. All over Eastern Europe Zionist cells grew. They even absorbed the whole Haskalah membership. A great deal of the Jewish socialist phenomenon was absorbed into the Zionist movement, though hardcore Jewish socialists like the Bund remained anti-Zionist to the bitter end, because they thought it was a diversion from the revolution that would overthrow the Czar and bring the rule of the proletariat to the entire world.

There was also now a strong push for religious Zionism, including great Chassidic rabbis. Most of the early religious Zionists, in fact, came from Chassidic backgrounds. Many great Chassidic rabbis, even if they did not pay it public support gave it private support.

The third response to Kishinev was the acceleration of the already accelerated pace of immigration of Jews to the United States. The situation in Russia was so desperate that parents sent children alone or husbands left their wives and family to travel to the New World in the hope of arranging for them to eventually come too.

The general, overall response to Kishinev can be summarized in one word: fatalism. Many Jews felt that nothing would help. All of the hopes of the 18^th and 19^th centuries for the betterment of the situation of the Jewish people were dashed. Therefore, a large element of the Jewish people became fatalistic — passive and willing to accept what was coming. They were not prepared to leave — for all sorts of reasons, including philosophic, religious, economic or physical. They were going to hang on no matter what and hope against hope that somehow they would ride out the storm.

Beilus

Compounding the fatalism was an event that occurred in 1911: the Beilus trial. It was not quite as famous as the Dreyfus trial, which began in 1894, but it was close. And in terms of infamy and the revelation of how deeply anti-Semitic the “civilized” world was it was comparable.

Before Passover in 1911 a non-Jewish child in Kiev disappeared. Unfortunately, children have been disappearing mysteriously since time immemorial. When non-Jewish children disappeared in the Middle Ages, especially before Passover in the spring, it often meant trouble for the Jews. They were blamed for kidnapping him in order to use his blood in a Passover ritual. By the 19^th century, most people – Jew and non-Jew — thought that this type of xenophobic behavior was a thing of the past. It could not happen in enlightened Europe.

But it did… in 1911 – and the Jewish scapegoat was a tailor named Mendel Beilus. A neighbor said that he saw him take the child. The authorities accused him of killing the child to use the blood to bake Passover matzah (unleavened bread).

In 1840, there had been a blood libel in Damascus. Syrian Jews were tortured and killed. There the Russian government protested to the Turks, telling them that it was a terrible thing how a civilized country could behave in such a way. Now they were the perpetrators.

The trial took place in 1913 amidst much publicity. The Russian government intended to use the trial as an example how they dealt with enemies, and reveal for all the power and truth of the Czar, the Romanoffs and the Russian autocratic system. But there was a great liberal element in Russia, and they rose to the defense of Beilus. Furthermore, the Dreyfus trial was still fresh in everyone’s mind and there was a cry throughout the world, creating a world climate of public opinion that put pressure on the Russian authorities. In the end, the court had to admit that it had no evidence to prove the guilt of Beilus and he was freed.

It was a terrible defeat for the Czarist government. But it was an even greater blow for the Jewish people. If such an anti-Semitic accusation could happen in 1913, then they were no better off than in the Middle Ages.

Pessimism

That is how the Jewish world looked immediately before the First World War. There was tremendous pessimism. In the pessimism, Jews gave up on many things. They gave up on their religion and they gave up on themselves.

The few idealists who remained were either very pious Jews, very secular revolutionaries or the Zionists. However, the great masses didn’t really have a commitment to any of these groups. They were drifting along without any direction. Their commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people was aptly described as a mile wide and an inch deep.

The coming storm that would be called the First World War would wash away those with shallow roots and change the Jewish world in Europe irrevocably.

Zionism was originally based on the religious impulses of the Jewish people. The masses saw it not as a secular movement but as a religious one – even though the movement became increasingly secular and even anti-religious. Nevertheless, the movement was popular because it touched a religious consciousness and the memory of the collective Jewish people.

Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the time referred to as the First Aliyah. Most historians identify five waves of immigration of Jews to the Land of Israel. The First Aliyah – the first of these waves — covers the period from 1881 to 1901. This 20 year timeframe preceded official Zionism, which Theodore Herzl inaugurated in 1897.

Those who immigrated called themselves after a verse that translates, “House of Jacob, let us get up and go” (Isaiah 2:5). In Hebrew, the first letters of the four-word phrase spelled B-I-L-U. Thus, those who were part of this movement were called Bilu’im (plural for BILU).

It is significant that its participants did not give their movement a non-descript, generic name such as The Jewish Society for Re-colonization of the Holy Land. They gave it a name based on a biblical verse. Even though theirs was in effect a secular movement, it was built upon a religious impetus and feeling. The verse summarized their entire philosophy: It was time to get up and leave the Diaspora, the Exile.

That is not to say that many Jews went to the Land of Israel. On the contrary, perhaps only 15,000-25,000 Jews went from 1881 to 1901. Nevertheless, the entire population at the time was probably less than 150,000 permanent residents. The arrival of 15,000 or more Jews represented a good 10% increase in population. It made an impression in a land that had been desolate for so long.

Arab Demographics

When people of the First Aliyah arrived in Palestine vast portions of the country were uninhabited. Palestine was a sparsely settled, poor, underdeveloped, barren, rocky, malaria-ridden, hot, dusty and inhospitable country – and that doesn’t say it all.

Today’s Israel has forests and trees. Each of those trees was planted by hand, one at a time. Under the Ottoman Turks, the country had only one forest left, near what is today the city of Netanya. That forest had even been mentioned in Josephus; it had survived 2,000 years. But the Turks cut down that forest during the First World War to build defenses against the invading British army.

The indigenous population consisted of Bedouin Arabs mainly in the southern part of the country and Christian Arabs centered around the cities of Nazareth, Bethlehem and Jerusalem.[1] Finally, there was a large portion of Muslim Arabs – of which there were two kinds. One was the peasant agricultural workers, called Fellaheen (or Fallahin). They tilled the soil mostly for absentee landlords who lived Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Arabia and Egypt.

They were serfs who lived under the worst of all possible conditions. They worked from dawn to dusk on harsh land without fertilizer and modern tools. They plowed with the same plow used in biblical times. One field could be held by four or five Fellaheen; none of them ever had more than four or five rows of a field. Whatever they could till for themselves they used to pay rent to the landlord.

This feudalistic system guaranteed that they would always remain poverty-stricken, uneducated and illiterate. It was a classic example of mistreatment of Arab by Arab, which has a long and unfortunate history, even to this day.

Then there were the town-Arabs. They lived mainly in Jerusalem, Hebron, Jaffa, Bethlehem and Nablus. They were storekeepers and merchants. Whereas the Fellaheen represented the lower class the town-Arabs were the middle class. They saw themselves and much more advanced than the Fellaheen and deserving of rights and privileges due to their station and class.

The town-Arabs are the ones that would feel most threatened by the coming of the Jews, even though the Fellaheen would mainly be the ones to take matters into their own hands in the upcoming battle against the Jewish colonizers. This was because their fellow Arabs, who exploited them, would paint the Jews as the scapegoat for their problems. Like today, the Jewish scapegoat drew attention away from the age-old terrible injustices Arabs committed against Arabs.

From Time Immemorial

When the people of the First Aliyah arrived they hired Arab laborers for all the agricultural processes that they were embarking upon. For instance, most of those who picked the vineyards were Arabs. They were paid a wage far higher than they could ever earn on their own.

That guaranteed that more Arabs would come to the country. Indeed, with every successive wave of Jewish immigration the Arab immigration doubled and tripled, because there was now opportunity that was not available anywhere else in the Arab world. Why should they stay in the squalor of Egypt, Syria, Jordan or under the absentee Arab landlords of Palestine?

The 15,000 or so Jews who arrived with the First Aliyah brought in with them almost 80,000 Arabs. In effect, the more Jews the more Arabs – except that the Arabs were geometrically increasing while the Jews were only arithmetically increasing. By the time the State of Israel was formed the Arab population was about two million compared to about 600,000 for the Jewish population.

In any event, the Arab population of Palestine grew with the Jews. The vast majority had not been there for 1,700 years. And those who came in the modern era came in great part because of the Jews, not just coincidentally with the Jews.

The Problem no one wanted to Address

When the Bilu’im arrived they were faced with two problems: what to do with the Jews who were there already and what to do with the Arabs that were there already. They chose to ignore both problems. To a certain extent, the Zionist movement itself also ignored both problems. The matter was never really addressed.

However, the matter was addressed by Arabs, including this letter written on March 1, 1899, by a prominent 70-year-old Muslim Arab leader in Jerusalem, Yusuf al-Khalidi, to the Chief Rabbi of France (a non-Zionist):

In theory, the Zionist idea is completely natural, fine and just. Who can challenge the rights of the Jews in Palestine? Good Lord, historically it is really your country.

But in practice you cannot take over Palestine without the use of force. You will need canons and battleships. Christian fanatics will not overlook any opportunity to incite the hatred of the Muslims against the Jews.

It is necessary, therefore, in order for peace to reign for the Jews in Turkey [i.e. throughout the Ottoman Empire, which included Palestine] that the Zionist movement stop. Good Lord, the world is vast enough and there are still uninhabited countries where one can settle millions of poor Jews who may perhaps be happy there and one day constitute a nation. That would perhaps be the best and most rational solution to the Jewish question. But, in the name of God, let Palestine alone. Let it remain in peace.

This letter written in 1899 summed up the common Arab position: In theory, the land may be the Jews’, but in practice it cannot happen unless the Jews throw the Arabs out, and the Arabs were not about to let that happen.

Naiveté

The Jews of the First Aliyah period were still naïve about what Arab reaction would be. Perhaps the only way they could have accomplished what they did was because they were naïve.

A letter Theodore Herzl wrote captures the spirit of this naiveté. It was his response to the letter that Yusuf al-Khalidi had sent to the Chief Rabbi of France, who in turn had given it to Herzl. Here is what Herzl wrote:

The Jews are supported by none of the powers and have no military pretensions of their own. There need be no difficulty with the local population. Nobody is trying to remove non-Jews. The local population can only benefit from the prosperity that the Jews will bring.

Do you believe that an Arab who has a house or land in Palestine whose value today is three- or four thousand francs will regret seeing the price of his land rise five- or ten-fold? For that is necessarily what will happen as we Jews come. And that must be explained to the inhabitants of this country. They will become rich because of us. They will acquire excellent brothers just as the Sultan will acquire loyal and good subjects who will cause this region, their historic motherland, to flourish.

He meant everything he said, and was even correct, but it was extremely naïve. Today, the standard of living, life expectancy and literacy of the average Arab in Israel in the West Bank, for instance, is higher than almost every other Arab country in the Middle East. Yet, they are still very unhappy with the Jewish state. No amount of good fortune, medical care or educational opportunity has changed the demeanor of the Arab population toward the Jews. Herzl and the Jews of his time believed it would. In that sense, they were very naïve.

European anti-Semitism and an Inferiority Complex

The coming of the European powers to the Muslim world had a negative effect on the Arab-Muslim attitude toward the Jews – even before the Jews came there in significant numbers. It introduced the virus of European anti-Semitism into the Arab world.

The Jews never lived well under the Muslims, but persecution under the Muslims was relatively mild in comparison to the Christian countries. However, the virus of European anti-Semitism now spread to the Arabs when the European powers came to the area in the mid-1800s. It reached a pitch with the Dreyfus affair in 1894. More than anyone else, it was the French Church that introduced the idea of Western anti-Semitism to the Arabs via the French Church in what is today Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. The Arabs long had anti-Jewish feelings, but this now legitimized those feelings.

The First Aliyah also awakened in the Arabs the feeling of inferiority, which drove them to excesses to prove that they were not inferior. The success of the Jews pointed out the defects and the deficiencies of the Arabs. All of a sudden, the Arabs watched as the Jews drained swamps, built farms, created towns and hired the Arabs as laborers.

Feeling of inferiority combined with imported European anti-Semitism created a lethal combination that still exists today. The First Aliyah is what touched it off. The Jews dreamed naively that the problems of colonization would go away, but that Arabs always saw clearly that they would not.

The First Aliyah marks the first time that the problem was seen so clearly, expressed in such vitriolic terms and set the stage for all later development.

His presence at the trial would not only change him forever, but Jewry as well.

A Committed Assimilationist

Herzl was born in Hungary into an assimilated family. He had little knowledge of Jewish tradition, even though his grandfather apparently had been a traditional, observant Jew. Ideologically, Herzl was fully committed to the assimilation of Jews in Western European civilization. He believed that the only viable hope for the Jewish people was that Europe would slowly become more and more liberal, allow Jews to assimilate into their society and that the Jews would oblige them by assimilating.

It is not even possible to say that Herzl was a follower of Haskalah, because such followers had a strong Jewish background and were committed to some type of Jewish culture. Herzl was not even committed to a Jewish culture. He was committed to being a Viennese.

Misplaced Optimism

In Herzl’s view, life was going to get better and better for the Jews in Europe. He is a perfect example of 19^th century man. The great inventions and technological advances of the Industrial Revolution convinced 19^th century man that it was only a matter of time before science would unlock all the secrets of nature and the universe, and that all the great social problems which long plagued civilization would be solved as well.

By the middle of the 20^th century, educated people were aware that the optimism of the previous century was seriously misplaced. For every door opened there were five more closed behind it that no one even knew existed. By the late the 20^th century more than 100 million people had been killed by their own governments or war. That was almost the entire population of the world at the time of the Roman Empire. Therefore, modern man was jaded and cynical; he hopes for the best but expects the worst, preferring most of all not to think about it too much, settling for sports, television and mindless entertainment.

In the world of the 19^th century, educated masses were full of buoyant optimism. Theodore Herzl embodied this optimism. It was the part of the Austrian culture into which he was born. The benign Franz Joseph had been the emperor for 70 years. For all anyone knew, the relative stability and peace was going to continue that way forever. No one saw what was coming – that the century ahead would be the world’s more horrendous and bloodiest.

One of the great Talmudic scholars of the generation was a rabbi in Latvia, Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk. With profound vision, he wrote in his biblical commentary, “Woe to those who say that Berlin is Jerusalem. God will bring upon them a whirlwind.” In other words, they will be beset by such a terrible series of events that they will be forced to admit their Jewishness. In the end, their tragedy will be that they will have suffered all the pangs and punishments of being a Jew without realizing the rewards of being a Jew.

It was a poignant, sad but true prophecy regarding assimilated Jewry in Europe. In the next 50 years it would come to pass with such vehemence that no one at the time would have believed it. This and other signs will fall on deaf ears because it would be so incomprehensible.

Herzl’s Transformation

Herzl arrived at the Dreyfus trial and was exposed to the virulent anti-Semitism that existed in Paris. He could not believe the shouts of the mob, the open hatred, the cartoons in the newspapers, the comments from the political leaders, etc. Paris was supposed to epitomize progress, modernity and cosmopolitanism. The French Revolution had been founded on the motto, “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” It was the cradle of civilization. How could such a thing happen in Paris of all places?

As often happens such events shock Jews into an existential exploration of who they are. If the Dreyfus trial would never have happened, Herzl would have remained a famous correspondent without having any affect whatsoever on Jewish life. But, outside forces such as anti-Semitism thrust upon Jews a bitter realization. Then the choice becomes black or white. One drops his Jewish identity forever – converting or assimilating completely — or one is shocked into taking up his Jewish identity with a greater fervor than Jews brought taking their Jewishness for granted.

Herzl never became an observant Jew or a Jewish scholar. However, the Dreyfus trial created within him a single-mindedness toward what he called the Jewish problem.

“Normalizing”

Herzl’s reaction to the Dreyfus trial was instantaneous. He said that the Jews will never find a cure for anti-Semitism unless they “normalize” their situation. By “normalize” he meant that Jews needed their own state, army, flag, diplomats, etc. – Jews had to be a nation like all other nations.

Unfortunately, he also predicted that once that happened anti-Semitism would disappear. We today — long after the establishment of the State of Israel and the “normalization” of the Jewish people in Herzl’s terms — are painfully aware how off the mark he was about that.

In any event, with great optimism he established a platform upon which political Zionism was founded. The first part of that platform was that the Jewish people would have Jewish state on a piece of land somewhere in the world. Herzl did not necessarily say that it should be the Land of Israel. We will see that he was ready to take Uganda.

Second, it did not have to have a Jewish culture; Western culture would be acceptable. Herzl never dreamed that the language his future state would be Hebrew. To him, whatever language was dominant at the time would be the language of his new Jewish state. He had in mind German or French.

In short, his idea of the Jewish state was not very Jewish. Nevertheless, to him just having a Jewish state would solve the problem of anti-Semitism. It would be a place where downtrodden Jews from anywhere in the world could emigrate to and find refuge.

Political vs. Practical Zionism

In 1896, Herzl published a pamphlet which electrified the Jewish world. Written in German, it was entitled, “The Jewish State.” In it he called for the creation of a Jewish state and the creation of an organization that would bring Jews there. He also called for the Jews throughout the world to lobby with the great powers to grant the Jews “a charter to have our state.”

There was a great difference between political Zionism and practical Zionism. The former felt that the only way the country would become Jewish was through a charter granted by the British Empire or a body like the League of Nations. Somebody outside the Jewish people had to grant them the right to have a country. That was the goal of political Zionism, beginning with Herzl.

Practical Zionism, who included among its adherents David Ben-Gurion, phrased it as follows: “It matters not what the Gentiles say. It only matters what the Jews do.”

He said that Palestine would become Jewish if enough Jews went there and started developing the land. It was not dependent upon having a charter. Therefore, the practical Zionists felt that the emphasis upon diplomacy and finding favor with governments was misplaced. All the efforts, money and talent should be poured into the practical up-building of the country.

This created a bitter feud within the Zionist movement. The State of Israel was created a little by both. It was created by a United Nations Resolution, but it was also created by the fact that there were 600,000 Jews living there who had built an agricultural and industrial base, as well as an army.

The First Zionist Congress

In 1897, Herzl convened the first World Zionist Congress to discuss how to implement this plan of obtaining a Jewish state and bringing Jews there.

Herzl opened the proceedings with the following declaration, “Today, I have founded the Jewish state. It will take you 50 years to see it.”

He was pretty close.

From the onset, control of the Zionist Congress lay in the hands of Western, assimilated Jews like Herzl. But the masses of delegates and the support for the movement was mostly from Eastern European Jews.

One has to understand that the Zionist movement was a minority within the Jewish people, and it was opposed by very strange bedfellows. First, it was opposed by the Reform, who looked at it as a terrible event. They were the most anti-Zionist of all, because they felt that somehow it compromised their position as good Germans or good Frenchmen or good Englishmen and raised the specter of dual loyalty. It was a frightening thing to them.

The second group that opposed Zionism was the Bund, the Jewish left-wing labor unions. The Bund in the 1890s and early 1900s was committed to world communism and the victory of the proletariat. They saw themselves as saving the whole world, whereas the Zionist Jews were worried about a little country. Therefore, they opposed political Zionism very strongly.

The third group that generally opposed Zionism was a large section of Orthodox Jewry. The majority opposed it for two main reasons. First, they felt that somehow it was a desecration in the belief of a supernatural coming of the Messiah. Second, they felt that nothing good could come out of a movement headed by assimilated, secular and anti-religious people.

Indeed, the secular leadership had a great deal to do with the alienation of most of Orthodox Jewry from the Zionist movement. Also, by this time, the Haskalah had taken control of the Lovers of Zion movement.

Even though the majority of religious Jews opposed the Zionist movement, a significant minority favored it. In 1902 Rabbi Yitzchak Yaacov Reines along with a few rabbis of Eastern Europe and even some Chassidic rabbis joined together to form what later would be called the Mizrachi Party, which was the religious Zionist section of the Zionist movement. They never were powerful enough within the Zionist movement to matter. But they were powerful enough that a religious point of view was always heard.

Herzl and Uganda

Herzl had a short and tragic life. He died in 1904 at the age of 44. He evidently had a weak heart and suffered from rheumatic fever.

In 1903, the year before he died, he met the Kaiser in Palestine in hopes of obtaining his help. When Herzl could not secure from the Kaiser the aid he hoped for, he spent about $50,000 in bribes to get an appointment with the Sultan of Turkey. However, he quickly saw that he wasn’t going to succeed with the Sultan either. Therefore, he turned to England. From then on, almost all the efforts of the Zionist movement would focus on England.

In 1903, the British foreign office proposed to give Herzl the territory of Uganda for a Jewish state. Herzl accepted and brought it to the Zionist Congress that year, the last congress he would attend. A very bitter battle ensued. Herzl wanted a Jewish state; whether it was in Palestine or not was secondary. The Eastern European Zionists wanted Palestine and nothing else.

Herzl said that he would resign if it was turned down. The Eastern European Jews opposed it to the end. Herzl won by a few votes and then died shortly thereafter. With his death the option of Uganda also died.

Despite his death, and conflicts from within his movement, political Zionism continued to gain momentum. It changed the face of Jewry. Its birth is really the beginning of the story of the Jews in the 20^th century.

Nevertheless, it proved to be every bit as, if not more dangerous and insidious – so much that it would eventually bring Hitler and the Holocaust.

The New Anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitism in Europe was long part of Christian culture. However, throughout the Middle Ages it was religious anti-Semitism. As bad as that was, the Jews had adapted and held no illusions about it. They even gathered strength from the fact that they were a minority religion in a culture that had no tolerance for minority religions.

Religious anti-Semitism was part and parcel of Jewish life in Europe from its inception. Jews were not happy with it, but they were able to adjust and deal with it because it was a given in life.

The new, post-Emancipation anti-Semitism – anti-Semitism based on race, not religion — signaled a radical change. Even though Emancipation had given Jews rights guaranteed by the government it was window dressing. In the arena of everyday life Western European culture was unable to deal with the phenomenon of the socially-rising assimilated Jew – the one who spoke his language perfectly, dressed like him, moved into his neighborhood, went to university with him and competed in business.

Ironically, the more assimilated the Jew became the more this type of anti-Semitism reared its head. To a great degree, the dominant culture was willing to tolerate Jews with long beards, fur hats, a strange language (Yiddish) and who were easily identifiable as Jews. But they were not willing to accept Jews who were clean-shaven, wore no special garb and spoke perfect German or French.

Lord Rothschild, from the House of Lords in England, was never able to take his seat in the British Parliament because he had to take a Christian oath, which he refused to take. He made a very telling comment summing up the matter: “It is not my particular religion they object to, but my particular nose.”

That was the new type of anti-Semitism. It was divorced from religion – even though religion was the root and antecedent of it.

Alfred Dreyfus

In 1870, France suffered an overwhelming defeat to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War. It was over a mere six months after it began. Two entire French armies surrendered en masse. Napoleon III was dethroned. It was the greatest debacle experienced by the French army.

In the decade following the shocking defeat, a disbelieving French public began asking how they could have lost. In their view they naturally had the best army and soldiers. Someone must have sabotaged our efforts. There must have been a spy who gave plans about the deployment of the French army to Germany.

In reality, the Germans did have such plans. That is how they were able to surround the French army in Sedan, and then encircle Paris. They had inside information. They had gotten the information from two spies on the General Staff of the French military. One was Lieutenant-Colonel Hubert-Joseph Henry. The other was a French Army major named Ferdinand Esterhazy. He was actually a Hungarian-born professional mercenary hired by the French, but secretly paid by the Germans. It was he who was most responsible for getting to the Germans all the key war plans of the French.

As the French reviewed and analyzed their loss, it became clear to a number of investigative journalists that somehow the Germans were informed in advance. Henry and Esterhazy realized they had to create a diversionary scapegoat to save themselves.

They looked over the names of people on the French General Staff for a man they could pin it on. Finally, they identified a 36-year old nondescript military professional in the French Army; a cold, officious officer with no friends. It was no coincidence that this very inconsequential person was also the only Jew on that staff. His name was Alfred Dreyfus.

Henry and Esterhazy leaked the information to certain papers, especially the far right-wing and anti-Semitic ones. This put the reporters on the trail of Dreyfus. Whatever evidence the reporters could not find, Henry and Esterhazy forged, including alleged secret memos to Dreyfus from the German General Staff.

Finally, in 1894, the matter came to the attention of General Auguste Mercier, who was the Minister of War. He originally felt that all the evidence was concocted. He knew Dreyfus could not have masterminded such a deception. However, he was under a lot of pressure from the press and the army, which now stood to redeem the honor it lost in the miserable defeat by convicting the spy responsible for it.

Before the trial began, Mercier changed direction and declared that the evidence against Dreyfus was beyond doubt; his guilt was absolutely certain. A wave of anti-Semitism swept France. It became a question of us versus them; of the army and French honor vs. the outsiders, anarchists, traitors and Jews. Pamphlets and articles were published saying things like, “Down with traitors!” and “Death to the Jews.”

This was before the trial began. In such a climate, Dreyfus had no chance.

The day before Mercier was to decide if the evidence against Dreyfus warranted a trial, he re-examined the evidence and once more had his doubts. However, the next day there appeared in one of the leading papers in Paris that Mercier was in the pay of the Jews and therefore would not order the trial. In order exonerate himself from that accusation he ordered the trial. And not only did he order it, but he said he had proofs that cried aloud the treason of Dreyfus.

Trial of the Century

It was the trial of the century. Foreign correspondents came from all over the world.

The evidence against Dreyfus was extremely weak. There really was no evidence, and Dreyfus maintained his innocence throughout.

Meanwhile, Esterhazy and Henry had prepared what they called a “secret file,” which was a collection of total forgeries. When it looked like Dreyfus might be acquitted they submitted this file to the judges. Most significantly, it was never made available to Dreyfus, his attorneys or the press! It was only leaked in bits and pieces in order to sensationalize it.

On the basis of that “secret file” Dreyfus was convicted.

That set up another problem. Mercier was the one who had approved submission of the secret file. In other words, the army approved it. If there would be a retrial and Dreyfus would be found innocent it meant that the army was guilty and French pride would take an unbearable hit.

Indeed, Dreyfus would be tried a second time; and there would be other trials against Dreyfus supporters even until as last as 1906. In none of these trials was the “secret file” allowed to be seen by the defendants and their attorneys. The authorities claimed that the honor of France was at stake.

In a terribly humiliating ceremony, Dreyfus was found guilty and led through the streets of Paris where the mob shouted for his head amidst a stream of anti-Semitic epithets. His epaulets were torn off of his shoulders and in early January 1895 he was sent to Devil’s Island, which was a notorious penal colony off the coast of French Guiana (South America).

They expected him to die very quickly. Had he died within a year or two, as they expected, the truth may never have come out. However, Dreyfus lived through a bout with yellow fever, terrible malnutrition, heat and humidity, snakes and wild animals, etc.

Emile Zola

As he sat out his sentence, a French journalist named Emile Zola (1840–1902) felt an injustice had been done and began researching the matter. Three years later he published what became a famous article entitled, J’Accuse, meaning “I Accuse.”

Zola’s research uncovered the whole plot. He realized that Esterhazy and Henry were behind it all and that Mercier and the French military were part of the cover-up. It caused a tremendous sensation.

Now, there arose a group of people who came to support Dreyfus for various reasons –Dreyfusards, meaning “On the side of Dreyfus.” In reaction there also arose a group of anti-Dreyfusards.

Zola was accused of libel and brought to trial by Henry. It too was a national sensation. In the end, the jury was split 7-5 against Zola. In the atmosphere of the time it was a miracle that five people would vote for him. Although a hero in the eyes of many, Zola fled to England in fear of his life.

Political cartoons from the time show that his fears were justified. One of them, called “Allegory – the Dreyfus Affair,” depicted a mask of Zola, behind which stands a grinning, satanic caricature of a Jew with a big nose. Another cartoon showed Emile Zola coming up from a toilet, holding in his right arm a doll, which was Dreyfus. The caption said, “Truth rising from its source.”

The Long Road to Vindication

After Zola, attacks against the verdict continued from many sources. The evidence presented in the court of public opinion was becoming so overwhelming that it was obvious the trail led to the two schemers, Henry and Esterhazy. Their terrible plot exposed, Henry committed suicide and Esterhazy felt compelled to flee France.

Even this, however, did not yet acquit Dreyfus.

He was brought back from Devil’s Island to be retried by the French military court. However, he once more proved to be a terribly ineffective witness, and with the secret file of forgeries still not open to legal scrutiny, the second trial found him guilty again! The verdict came after it was publicly exposed that the case against him was a hoax and a sham from the outset. It caused such a furor that even the Queen of England, an ally, was compelled to send a telegram to the President of France asking how he could allow such a miscarriage of justice.

The court decided that it would sentence Dreyfus to the amount of years he had already served, in effect freeing him. They found him guilty, which saved French pride and the honor of the military, but by commuting his sentence to time already served they hoped to relieve the pressure being brought upon them.

However, there was a French politician by the name of Georges Clemenceau (184–1929), who later would rise to prominence as the French premier at the end of the First World War and one of the architects of the Versailles Treaty. He was a bitter, tenacious, feisty personality who took up the cause of Dreyfus. Finally, in 1906 – 12 years after the initial trial, and many years after Henry and Esterhazy had been exposed as the guilty parties – there was a commission of French army officers who exonerated Dreyfus.

They also restored him to the rank he would have had had he not be cashiered from the army, and he became a colonel. They further gave him all his back pay, a medal and reinstated him in the army, where he served without distinction in the First World War. He died in 1922, not understanding what happened to him or his place in history. He is certainly one of the most unlikely heroes. He didn’t see the forces that he unleashed – of which one of them was Zionism.

As for the French, they felt that their national soul had finally been cleansed. But it was illusory – at least from the standpoint of the Jews. The French did not understand the deep roots of the problem of anti-Semitism in their country; indeed, in all Europe. Dreyfus was only the tip of the iceberg. What happened to him would happen again and again – until it happened to all European Jewry. No one could imagine how powerful the whirlwind would be when it would come.

The Netziv, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin: While yet a teenager in his father-in-law’s house, the Netziv wrote a commentary that showed the Jewish scholarly world who and how great he was.

Reb Chaim Volozhiner headed the illustrious yeshiva in Volozhin until 1825. In fact, it was the prototype of all yeshivas today.

He had a son, Rabbi Yitzchak, who was called “Reb Itzele.” When Reb Chaim died, Reb Itzele became head of the yeshiva. When Reb Itzele died, around 1854-55, his son-in-law, Rabbi Eliezar Fried, became the head of the yeshiva, together with Rabbi Yoshe Ber (Yosef Dov) Soloveitchik (also known as the Beis HaLevi), a direct grandson of Reb Chaim Volozhiner.

Reb Itzele had a son-in-law, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, who would become famous and called by the acronym, “the Netziv” (which in Hebrew means “the Prince”). While yet a teenager in his father-in-law’s house, the Netziv wrote a commentary to the eight century classic Sheiltos d’Rabbi Chai Gaon, which was authored by Rabbi Hai Gaon, one of the greatest Jewish scholars in the post-Talmudic era, but very hard to understand, and, therefore never very popular. However, the commentary of the Netziv opened up the book, at the same time it showed the Jewish scholarly world who and how great the Netziv was.

Rabbi Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik. Rabbi Yoshe Ber was not only a true, rare genius, but also had great charisma (even though he lived a tragic personal life).

Rabbi Eliezar Fried died less than two years after his father-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner, which left open the question of who would lead the rabbinate and become the head of the yeshiva: the Netziv or Rabbi Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik. Rabbi Yoshe Ber was not only a true, rare genius, but also had great charisma (even though he lived a tragic personal life).

They decided that they would submit the matter to a Jewish court. There was no personal animosity between them, but for the sake of the yeshiva and its direction they realized that they had to submit the decision to an objective third party.

Four of the great Lithuanian rabbis came to adjudicate. One was a young rabbi who was just then becoming very well-known and later would become the Chief Rabbi in Lithuania, the great Rabbi Yitzchak Elchonon Spektor. He was then the rabbi in Novaradok. Also on the court were Rabbi Dovid Tevele Minsker and the Vilna Maggid.

Legend has it that one of the judges opened the proceedings with the following explanation. He had no difficulty delivering a sermon for any of the early chapters in Genesis, because in each there were clear heroes and villains: For example, Cain and Abel, Noah vs. his generation, Abraham vs. his generation, Isaac vs. his generation, Jacob and Laban. In each it was clear who the hero and who was the villain. However, he continued, when one came to the story of Joseph and his brothers it was very hard to speak, because both sides were heroic; both sides were correct.

In this court case, he said, both sides are right. That was his opening remark.

The final decision defied expectations: the Netziv would be the head of the yeshiva. Rabbi Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik accepted the verdict, and soon afterward he left Volozhin to become the rabbi in Slutsk and later in Brisk.

Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik had a son, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik¸ a child prodigy, who later became one of the great men of Israel. Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik married the granddaughter of the Netziv. Therefore, the families became one, and Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik became the next Rosh Yeshiva in Volozhin together with his grandfather.

It was the high point of this period, when Volozhin reached its peak in terms of quality of students, and when Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik developed his signature analytical approach to explanations regarding the Talmud and Maimonides, often referred to today as the Brisk approach. Offshoots of Brisk yeshivas exist all over the world to this day in the United States and Israel.

There occurred a mass migration that had not occurred in the Jewish world since the time of the expulsion from Spain. Then, in the 1490s, about 250,000 Jews left their homes on the Iberian Peninsula, most of those in 1492. Here we are talking about 2.5 million Jews leaving within a period of 30 years.

The Hidden Hand

Why didn’t it happen earlier? There are many reasons – but one all-encompassing one.

God presents Himself in history in a semi-logical fashion. In other words, there are seemingly natural reasons behind events. However, when one looks at the larger picture those reasons do not explain it properly. In actuality, a Hidden Hand has manipulated things.

The outward causes for this mass migration in Jewish life include the invention of the steam ship, the opening of the United States as a major country that needed immigration and the feeling that somehow the situation could be improved. All of those factors conspired to make Jewish immigration to explode in the 1800s.

Most came first to Ellis Island and settled in New York City. In 1880 there were about 80,000 in New York City. In 1910, there were 1.1 million Jews.

The place of the United States generally, and in Jewish history particularly, has yet to be written. We are still in the middle of it. However, from what we know of the past 100 years the United States is not only the exception to all rules of Jewish life in the Diaspora but a phenomenon that never before existed in the world.

The “Golden Age” of the Jews in Spain was nothing in comparison. It was not a Golden Age in comparison to the opportunities presented to Jews by the United States.

Pogroms

In 1881, Czar Alexander II was assassinated. The assassination unleashed terrible oppression. For various reasons, the Jews were disproportionately represented in the revolutionary parties. It was not hard to paint them as the scapegoat for all the ills of Russian society.

From 1882 on, there ensued a series of pogroms. Indeed, the word pogrom, which is Russian for “to destroy, to wreak havoc, to demolish violently,” came into the English language via Yiddish-speaking Jews. These pogroms were not merely spontaneous outbursts of mob violence against Jews, but destructions and killings orchestrated by the Russian authorities.

The Russians did not publicly announce they were organizing a pogrom. That was too crude even for the Czarist government. Instead, the police announced that they were not going to be in the vicinity on certain dates. That was a signal to anti-Semites and thugs alike that they could rampage without compunction; without fear of interference or repercussions.

Many times Jews fled in anticipation and never returned. Usually, there was nothing to return to. Many Jews stayed and paid the price, either through their lives, the ravishing of their women, the kidnapping of their children or the looting of their property – or all of those combined. Entire villages simply went up in smoke.

From 1882 onward, the pogroms had a pronounced effect on Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe. They are one of the great factors that caused immigration. The people sensed – and sensed correctly – that it was not just the random acts of hooligans and ruffians. It was a clear message from the authorities telling them that they were not wanted.

This Magic Land

The country that was open for Jews was the United States. The American Civil War had ended. The American Indians were being decimated and pushed off their lands. The continent was being opened. In short, America became the land of opportunity for Europe’s fleeing masses, not just Jews.

Irving Howe wrote World of our Fathers. A secular Jew, Howe writes about Jewish immigration from 1880 to 1910 as if Jewish religion didn’t exist or factor into the lives of the immigrants. That was the bias he had and had inherited from his father, a secularist-socialist Jew. Nevertheless, the book is marvelous in many ways.

Wisely, he told this story mainly through the memoirs of those who lived through the experience. Here is an excerpt from one Jew, written in 1891, about market day in her little town in Russia:

America was in everybody’s mouth. Businessmen talked of it over their accounts. The market women even made up their quarrels that they might discuss it from stall to stall. People who had relatives in the famous land went around reading their letters for the enlightenment of us less fortunate folk. Old folks shook their sage heads over the evening fire and prophesied no good to those who braved the terrors of the sea and the foreign gold beyond it. Yet everyone talked of it. But no one knew one true fact about this magic land.

That is a very representative memoir expressing how Eastern European Jews thought about America.

Great Waves of Immigration

The year 1882 marks the beginning of Eastern European migration to the United States. Jews actually came in four great waves.

• 1882 — following the pogroms that occurred in the wake of Alexander II’s assassination
• 1891 – following decrees that drove Jews out of Moscow and other Russian cities
• 1903 – following the horrific Kishinev pogrom
• 1905 — after the failed revolution against Czar Nicholas

There was a company in Bremen, Germany, called the Hamburg-America Shipping Line. It was directed by a Jew, Adolf Ballin (1857–1918), who was extremely successful in developing the business. He loaded to the point of overflow his company’s transatlantic ships with steerage class passengers. The fare from Bremen to New York was $33, which in 1900 was a lot of money. Yet, most of these ships were more than filled. He made a fortune for the company and himself.

Despite their enthusiasm, and their success most of the time, there were also terrible tragedies that occurred in the process. Many of the ports had doctors whose job was to inspect all the passengers for things like diseases such as tuberculosis and trachoma. If he found something wrong it was his job to not let the person to board.

Howe describes a heart-breaking scene. A Jewish family with six children made its way to Antwerp where a doctor inspected them. The youngest child, Faigeleh, had trachoma and the doctor refused to allow her on the ship. The family had already purchased their tickets, which were only good for this passage; it was their one chance to get out. What were they going to do with Faigeleh?

They felt they had no choice but to leave without her. She stayed behind, grew up in Antwerp and became a famous Jewish woman. But she never had anything to do with her family the rest of her life.

That was not a rare incident. Stories like this happened with regularity.

Those who Stayed

There were Jews who chose not to go to America. They can be divided into three main categories.

First were the deeply and truly pious and religious. They rarely went. A typical letter written to family remaining in Europe complained that in America there were Jews who ate food on Yom Kippur, did not observe the Sabbath and ate non-kosher meat. Religious Jews referred to the United States as the “treife medina,” the “unkosher country.”

Most of the Jews who came to America were under 40 and had a minimal commitment to Judaism, even though externally they may have looked the same as those in the Jewish Eastern European societies they left behind. As someone once phrased it, “Their commitment was an inch deep and a mile wide.” An inch deep was not enough to survive the jolting adjustment of coming to the New World. One had to really want to observe the Sabbath, eat kosher and give one’s children a Jewish education. One had to do so as a matter of conviction, not as a matter of convenience. Therefore, the most committed Orthodox Jews consistently resisted coming to the United States.

The second group that did not want to go to the United States was the Marxists, Socialists, Communists, etc. They were determined to build the paradise of the proletariat in Russia – especially after the Russian Revolution. People were willing to rot in the Czar’s jails and hang from his gallows to bring it about. They were not interested going to the United States, the capital of capitalism.

The third element was people of scholarship and wealth, who really could have made an impact. But the general rule in immigration is the one who has the most leaves the last. A person with everything, or at least quite a bit in comparison to others, does not move unless there are compelling forces motivating him. Even if the Messiah had come in their time they would have found it very inconvenient. They were gripped by a powerful inertia caused by their wealth, status or position.

However, the underclass and the young had nothing to lose. Therefore, they were the ones who came to America and gave American Jewry its stamp. And they brought with them a little vulgarity, tawdriness, brashness and roughness around the edges, which became part of the New York Jewish cultural caricature. The genteel, courtly European Jew was not going to stand in line and push his way into steerage; he was not going to undergo those privations.

Stemming Immigration

The open door policy in America did not last forever. It was gradually shut with each successive wave of immigrants.

Congress passed many laws aimed at limiting immigration from countries in Central and Eastern Europe, a euphemism for Jews and Poles. Since there were many more Jewish immigrants than Polish ones these laws were really aimed at Jews.

In 1882, an act was passed prohibiting immigration into the United States from anyone who was classified as a lunatic, idiot or someone unable to take care of himself without becoming a public charge. That last category covered a lot of people. It left wide open to interpretation a vast swath of humanity.

In 1891, they added to the act paupers, polygamists, persons suffering from a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease and persons whose tickets had been paid for by someone else. That excluded most individuals. The only way that people in Europe could afford it was if relatives sent tickets or money to them. This officially excluded many Jews.

In 1891, Congress passed another act. This prohibited the encouragement of immigration by advertising, which was how the shipping lines were so successful. They put up posters in Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Romanian and any other language that could attract passengers. Now anyone who had been attracted by a poster was officially prohibited from immigrating.

Entry in America was often dependent upon the caprice and whim of the immigration inspector. There were many ways to deny entry. Almost 20% of the immigrants were turned back for one reason or another. From memoirs of the time we know of one man who came back and forth 16 times until he was successful.

Finally, in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt said, “We should aim to exclude absolutely not only all persons who are known to be believers in anarchistic principles but also all persons are of a low moral tendency or of an unsavory reputation.” That eliminated many Jews.

Despite all the obstacles, Jews came in droves and changed the face not only of the Jewish world, but of the European world they left behind and the New World they were now citizens of.