Trudy Gold
Other “Promised Lands”
Trudy Gold | Other “Promised Lands” | 06.09.22
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- Right. Good evening, everyone, and welcome again. And this is really a continuation of the session I began a couple of weeks ago on other Zions, because through Jewish history, through the times of the diaspora, there have been movements to come up with a solution to the Jewish problem. Sometimes from Jewish figures themselves, but not always. And I’m actually going to start now back in London with the Mansion House Committee. The Mansion House Committee was actually set up in 1840 at the, really at the summons of the Lord Mayor. And the city of London was a relatively philosemitic place. It had long been a great commercial centre. And for example, on the stock exchange, out of 124 stockbrokers, 12 were Jewish. And there had been Jewish aldermen, and of course, the famous Sir Moses Montefiore had been sheriff of London. So basically, there was a feeling of, and Moses Montefiore, of course, was an incredible philanthropist who travelled the world trying to deal with Jews who were being persecuted. And the first meeting of the Mansion House Committee was actually on the 3rd of July, 1840. And it was to protest against, about the Damascus affair.
The Damascus affair was an appalling incident where it really stirred up by the French and Austrian consuls. There’d been a blood libel in Damascus. The hatred of the Jews spread all the way to Constantinople. And in the end there was such horror, like in Constantinople, a whole yeshiva. A whole yeshiva was imprisoned. And the rabbi who was 83 was tortured. It was a horrible situation. And Sir Moses Montefiore, who was very much street seen as the Stutland of the world, of the Jewish world, he went to Damascus, and he obtained from the Sultan a fair man saying that in fact, the blood libel was a complete untruth, and it was whipped up. And in fact, this meeting was held in Mansion House. And, but the meeting I want to refer to is in 1882, when the Mansion House Committee held a big rally, because of the persecution of Russian Jews. The petition was signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cardinal Manning, by Charles Darwin, John Tyndall, 18 members of Parliament. And there were many, many meetings about the pogroms in Russia, 1881 to 1882. There was another big meeting in 1890 where 83 signatures, including the Archbishop, 19 peers and 27 members of parliament and representatives really, of every important profession. And the proposer of this petition that was to be sent to the Czar, Czar Alexander III was actually the Duke of Westminster. And this was the petition.
It’s the opinion of this meeting, the renewed suffering of the Jews in Russia from the operations of severe, and exceptional edicts, and disabilities are deeply disturbing as to be deplored and that in the last decade of the 19th century, religious liberty is a principle which should be recognised by every Christian community as amongst the natural human rights. And the letter, as I said, was sent to the Czar. He refused to see it, and it was in fact returned to the foreign office. However, what the meeting did was to collect 208,000 pounds. A Russia Jewish committee was established, and it was actually to supervise the transportation of Russian Jewish refugees from Brody to North America. The chairman’s was a Jew, so Julian Goldsmith. And what they wanted to do was to help found agricultural colonies in the Americas, both in Canada and in the USA. It’s interesting because they were worried that too many Jews would come to England. It has to be said German Jews, French Jews, Jews had already established themselves, were worried that this influx of an inverted commas, for foreigners, you the speaking Jews, would kind of upset the apple cart here.
Anyway, they, so this committee, they are sending aid to send Jews from Brody to escape Russia, but to settle in the Americas, in Canada and America. And of course at this time, Canada and America were advertising for Jewish immigrants. The Mansion House Committee. And can we see a picture of Mansion House? Those of you who know the city of London, if you’re rather loved, thank you. There’s Mansion house. But then let’s switch back to the map. So we’ve always got it as a reference, if you don’t mind, Laura. Can we just switch back to them? Yeah, anyway, they, the basic, one of the principles of the Mansion House Committee, and they also worked with the Jewish Board of Guardians, was to found agricultural colonies. This was very much the notion that we must turn Jews to wholesome pursuits. And those of you who heard me lecture before, I was talking about this sort of negative stereotype of the Jew, which was taken on by the Jewish establishment. But they did set up a location and information bureau, a labour registry, and they did set up evening classes in English, because there was another point that we, will help the Jews who’ve settled in England to lead the overcrowded cities, but those in America that they can already speak the language.
There was a real groundswell of hostility towards Russia, and it did gain quite a lot of momentum in Britain. And don’t forget that, at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, it was the British Prime Minister Israeli, who of course was of Jewish birth, who much of the work he did was to stop Russian Empire building. The French had a parallel fundraising committee. This was actually under Victor Hugo and one of the Rothschilds, Alfonse Rothschild. And they decided only to send able-bodied men to America, and enough money to return to Russia for anyone who wasn’t able-bodied. They didn’t want to create a situation where Jewish prejudice would follow them over the pond. And the Mansion House Committee would never do that. The Mansion House Committee completely disagreed with the French and didn’t want to repatriate. But by 1882, some 8,000 Jews had been sent to America by the Mansion House Committee. So it’s an interesting little diversion for you. This is a bunch of members of the city of London who are spending money helping persecuted Jews. But I want in our turn to an absolutely fascinating man. Actually, before I do that, I should mention some of the other settlements they set up. They helped fund Edenbridge in Saskatchewan, which is of course in Canada. And a lot of Jews went there from Lithuania via South Africa. And it was called, what was it called?
It had a very strange name. It was called Edenbridge, Yeden Bridge over Jews Bridge. And at its height, it had a post office, a school, and a synagogue called BET Israel. The first resident was a Jew called Max Goldeen. After 1888, they did sponsor various farm colonies. Most of them were really utopian ventures, later on to be funded by Baron de Hirsch, who I’m going to talk about later. And we know that in some of those cabins up in Canada, it was the local Indians who taught them how to make cabins. Quite a few of those Jews, they tried the farming, but many of them came back to the cities. In fact, there was a really, in, there was a really bad incident in 2002 incident, which again threw the Saskatchewan colony into the limelight. David Hanoluku, who was the president of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians and chief of, he was chief of the Canada-Wide Association of First Nations. He said the Holocaust was a way of getting over a disease. And without it, Jews would’ve owned the Goddamn world. It was very much denounced. And as a response, his, the First Nations attended the Holocaust commemoration.
But this was a point I made in my previous lecture, unfortunately, other victim people. There is this trend to see Jews as themselves as persecutors. Anyway, Hermann Landau, who was another Anglo Jewish financier, he was an extraordinary character. He helped resettle Jews in Canada. And he sent, he paid for families to go to a place called… And amongst them was, Ezekiel and Mendel Bromfman, they of course didn’t say, but stay very long and became the, well, I don’t need to tell you what happened to them. They of course became the founders of Seagrams, which is such an incredible, such an incredible endeavour. So this is interesting. These are Jews being sent on by other Jews to America and to Canada mainly, you could make the case a lot of it’s out of self-interest. Yes, they want to help the persecuted brethren in Russia, but they don’t want to rock the boat back home. Now I want to move on to a fascinating character called Laurence Oliphant. And I need to say also that both in Britain and in America, there was amongst the Christian communities, the evangelical Christian communities, a feeling of wanting to help the Jews, but for them, they want to help the Jews return to Palestine. They had their own agenda, which I’ll come onto in a minute. Now, Laurence Oliphant, he was a real British adventurer.
You know, Napoleon said the English are, the British are a nation of shopkeepers. They’re also a nation of adventurers. And I think in many ways it’s very much summed up by Oliphant. Those of those of you who are listening who are South African, he was actually born in the Cape Colony. He was the only child of Sir Anthony Oliphant, who came from the Scottish landed gentry. His father was the Attorney General of the Cape. Later he was appointed chief justice of Ceylon. You see, this is the height of the British Empire, where these individuals, minor aristocracy or upper middle class, they have important positions throughout the whole empire. Now, when he’s chief justice of Ceylon, he’s actually credited with bringing 30 varieties of China tea from China to Ceylon and Laurence, the son works as his father’s private secretary. He was a very bright man, he’s a very religious man. He travelled extensively, good writer. And his first book was Journey to Katmandu in 1852. He had an incredibly exciting life, Oliphant. He went back to the UK to study law, and he then travelled to Russia, where he wrote a travel book called The Russian Shores of the Black Sea. And that of course, evokes terrible feelings about when you, all you’ve got to do is to consider what’s actually going on in Russia at the moment.
That’s the area he was travelling in. He then decided he doesn’t want to go into the law, he’s going to join the diplomatic service, and he becomes the secretary to Lord Elgan. This is for your, the Canadian students. He was during the negotiations of the Canadian Reciprocity Treaty in Washington. He was there during these negotiations. And then in 1861, we found him as the first secretary of the Jewish of the British ligation in Japan. And there was a nighttime attack on the ligation. He was very brave. His pistols were locked up. So he went out there with a hunting whip to fend off the attack. He was badly hurt. So he’s returned to England, and it’s at this stage, he had a great social conscience within the confines of his background. And he entered parliament. He also wrote a satire on England called Piccadilly. It was huge success. He become, he’s part of high society. He accompanied the Prince of Wales. Later, Edward the seventh, on a visit to Corfu. And in 1863, the Times sent him as a journalist to Poland to write about the Polish uprising, which we will be dealing with later on in the course. He then started his own journal, it’s called The Owl. He then falls under the influence of a spiritualist prophet.
This is Victorian England, this is America. There’s all sorts of, look, you’ve got to remember industrialization was a real burden to many of these characters. And they were looking for some sort of spiritual reawakening, realisation in the dusty industrial cities of America and Britain. And he falls under the spell of this prophet, a man called Thomas Lake Harrison, back in 1861, he’d organised a small community called the Brotherhood of New Life on Lake Erie. Later on, mainly through help from Oliphant’s mother, he transfers it to Santa Rosa in California. It was a spiritualist community that, but they also concentrated on working on the soil, and it was about prayer and mysticism, et cetera. Anyway, 1867, Oliphant finally leaves parliament to foreign, to follow Harris. He lives there for several years. He actually engages in manual labour himself. He has a utopian vision of the world. He’s a real idealist. He’s also, he comes back to become the Times correspondent during the Franco-Russian war. He remains in Paris for quite a few years. And of course, you can just imagine he’s a journalist in Paris. What an extraordinary time to be in Paris in the 1870s after the Franco-Russian War, the period of the third Republic. He married in 1872, very religious Christian.
The two of them returned to Santa Rosa. By 1876, he’s disillusioned, he returns to Britain and his wife stays behind for a while. And it’s at this stage that I need to bring politics into it because 1878, the 1878, of course, the Congress of Berlin, to stop Russian ambitions in the Middle East, he devised a plan called the Gilead. And he believed that Britain should plant an agricultural colony in Northern Galilee. He remember, he is a restorationist. He is a fundamental evangelical. He was one of those characters in this dark world of industrialization who wanted the second coming of Jesus. For the second coming of the Messiah, the Christian Messiah, you need, of course, the Jews to be settled back in their own land and that they should be converted. Anyway, he published an article in The Times, which says this, many of the refugees wish to settle in Palestine, where differently their religion and way of life could be safeguarded. As a result of that, the Mansion House Committee draughts him on their committee. And with the accreditation of the British government, he decides to go out to Palestine, to Lebanon, the people he wants to meet in Lebanon. And also he’s going to talk to the Turkish authorities.
He believed that he could obtain funds from the Christians and other Christian sources because they were Arian groups and many of them had a lot of money. And they, there was one of them called the Church of God, of the Abrahamic faith. And basically he must enough funding to purchase land in Galilee. He also travelled to Romania where the Jews were being persecuted. In 1878, Israeli had refused to ratify Romanian independence until Romania gave civil rights to the Jews. They did on paper, but didn’t really, and he goes there. He remember, he’s an English aristocrat. He’s got the weight of the British Empire behind him. So he’s treated as a kind of king when he visits the Jews in Romania. And he then went to see the, he then won, had managed to have a visit with an in Constantinople with the Salton representative. And he tried to convince him that, that he should allow the settlement of Jews in Palestine, which would bring about the second coming of Jesus, which is the last thing that the, that the Ottomans wanted to hear. In addition, the ottomans were terribly suspicious of the British.
Don’t forget that Israeli had bought the Suez Canal. The British already had an expeditionary force in Egypt, the a, met Ali. In theory, the Egyptians were under the sovereignty of the Turks, but it wasn’t happening. So he’s suspicious of the British. And anyway, he thinks it’s a crazy idea. And it leads to the, the pogroms in Russia leads to Oliphant realising he’s got to do something. And now that he’s tied up with the Mansion House Committee, he and his wife, his wife has rejoined him. And with the black backing of the committee, he goes off to, he’s going to go to Russia. But on the way, he’s going to go to Vienna to meet up with various Jewish leaders, he meets up with Moses Lillian Bloom, who actually hoped that Oliphant was almost Messianic and he would help bring the Jews back to Palestine. His plan was published in Hamagid, turned him down. He’s believed that the Jews could help him raise money to buy land. And what he did, he and his wife, they settled in Palestine. They divided their time between the home on the German colony in Heifer, another on a Drews village in Mount Kamont. Can we see the next slide, please, Lauren? I’d like to see, yes.
He had a secretary called Naftali Herz Imber, who lived with him and his wife. He was a fascinating character. He was born in Galicia here to Orthodox parents. He was a, he was very dreamy, clever man. He wrote poetry very early on. He won a prize, the Franz Joseph Prize. And he basically becomes a nomad, bohemian, a traveller, a writer, 1882, he moves to Palestine to become Oliphant’s secretary. And actually Oliphant, who was terribly fond of him, he, as I said, he lived with him and his wife. They sent him to Beirut to learn watchmaking. And so then he could open a shop in Haifa. He, they settled, he settled in Jerusalem for a while. He had a big quarrel with Oliphant. And basically he became a world traveller. And he, of course is most famous for, he wrote the words of the Hatikvah. And he was actually some poems he published, and one of them became the Hatikvah. He also translated Omar Khayyam into Hebrew. He was fascinated by mysticism. I think that’s one of the reasons he became close to Oliphant. He died tragically, he degenerated into alcoholism. He actually married in Chicago. He married a Christian convert Israel Zangwill, who I’m going to talk about soon, knew him very well. And she described he, and he met the wife and described her as a Christian crank.
Anyway, tragically he died of alcoholism, and he was rein. He’s buried in Chicago, but no, sorry, he was buried in New York, but he’s reinterred in Jerusalem. And he was re, one of the books I was reading refers to him as the first Hebrew. He was referred to as the first Hebrew beatnik. But going back to Oliphant, he was very much in touch with the pioneers of the first Aliyah. And he directed, he actually gave money to the settlers. And he basically is very much regarded as crucial to the settlement of Ross Pimal. And whilst in the Palestine, he and his wife spent a lot of time writing esoteric literature. And, but you’ve got to remember, he’s got his own agenda. When he visited Russia, he was incredibly, he was visit, he was very much seen as a great hero. And he, in many Jewish homes, they had pictures of Monte Fiore, they had pictures of Herzl, and they also had pictures of Oliphant. He becomes very, very famous. December, 1885, his wife died. He was too ill to attend her funeral. And, but after her death, he still believed that she was in touch with him and inspired him to write more and more of these esoteric books. And he then goes on the move again, he goes to America.
He married Robert Owen’s granddaughter planning to return to Heifer, again, they’re waiting for the second coming of Jesus. But unfortunately for him, he, on route to England, he becomes very, very ill. And he actually dies in Twickenham in 1888. That’s for those of you in London who are listening. It’s fascinating. You know, we have a, we have listeners all over the world. We’re touching on so many of the places that Oliphant went to. He had an incredible obituary in The Times, seldom has been a more romantic or amply fulfilled career. Never perhaps a stranger, more contradictory personality. What was his aim? I think we have to say that his aim was, he believed in fulfilling prophecy and bringing on the end of the world. Some of the other books he wrote Episodes In the Life of An Adventurer, and of course, the Narrative of the Earl of Elgin’s Mission to China. And another word on all of this Christian philosemitism, it’s really about the return of the Jews to Palestine to bring on the second coming. Another character who was terribly involved in it, I forgot to bring a picture, I’m afraid, is the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury Anthony Ashley Cooper, Oxford educated son-in-law of the Duke of Marlborough.
Again, another committed evangelical Christian. His dates were 1801 to 1885. He had a strong parliamentary commit, career supporter of the Duke of Wellington, supporter of palm. He was related to all of them. He was, can we see, no, we haven’t got a picture, sorry. He fought for reform, mental health reform. He was on a committee, his, how’s this for incorrect language, poor lunatics in the county of Middlesex and lunatic asylums, where tragically people were chained up naked. They slept on straw, poor treatment. He was also on the, he also believed in reform of the poor laws. And this is a quote from The Times, if there was one man in England more diverted to the interests of factory people, it was Lord Ashley, he hated the use of boys as Chimley Street. He was president, another name for you, of the Ragged School Union for Poor Children. But he believed in the imminent second coming of Jesus, the appalling squall of industrialization. You see, just as deep Jewish belief was that the, which I’ve talked about previously, that the Messiah will come when there’s a time of great suffering in the Christian world, the, Jesus will come again when there’s a time of great suffering in the world.
He was the president of Britain’s foreign Bible society. He was president of the Evangelical Alliance. He was, and he, he really wants the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land. And he writes about it in The Times. And it’s, of course, it was the conquest of greater Syria and gradual British involvement in the Middle East that made him think it could happen. But he was also president of the London Society for promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. This is the price. If you want to be restored to your homeland, you ha, because this will hasten the second coming. You must first convert to Christianity. We’ve got some, you know, Israel, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The Bible belt in America believes exactly this. But he did say this in 1883, in 1853, a country without a nation, he’s talking about Palestine, is a nation, a country without a nation in need of a nation without a country. He actually persuaded the foreign minister to set up a consulate, a British consulate in Jerusalem. And he was close. He was close also to George Elliot, who of course wrote Daniel Deronda. If you haven’t read Daniel Deronda, I really advise you to do so. It is a real proto Zionist novel. And at this stage it was becoming incredibly popular with Jews.
In fact, Henrietta Sold talked about the impact it made on her. It was translated into many languages. You’ve also got Walter Scotts Ivanhoe, Byron’s Hebrew Melodies, and of course you have Benjamin Israeli. So there’s quite a lot of philosemitism, or is it? And it’s for you really to make your minds up how you deal with it. So this is a promised land, but who is it promised to? This is a group of Christian fundamentalists who want to help the Jews return. And many of them are upper class Englishmen because it will hasten the coming of the Christian Messiah. I want to turn to a completely different kind of character now, one of the greatest philanthropists in the world. And that of course is the extraordinary Baron Maurice de Hirsch, who did more in his lifetime, I think, than practically anyone else, to help the cause of not just Jewish suffering, but suffering. He married and unfortunately his wife, his daughter died, his son died young and his wife left much of the fortune to charity. So he, who was he? He was, his father was a court Jew. His father was the banker to the house of… And was the first Jew to be ennobled in Germany.
And at 13, Maurice was sent to Brussels for schooling and then sent into the banking business where he marries into another great German banking family. He married Clara Bischoffsheim of Brussels, and of course her father was the founder of Bischoffsheim and Goldschmidt. And they played a pivotal role in financing the institutions during the early years of Belgium independence, Belgium became independent after a riot at the opera. And it was the Jewish banks that actually financed, you see, this was one of the problems. The majority of Jews were dirt poor in Eastern Europe. But you have these incredibly visible entrepreneurs who give the impression of Jewish wealth. Plus you add to that the negative stereotype of the Jew merchant team and money lending. Anyway, he becomes a director of the Bank of Belgium and was one of the founders of the National Bank of Belgium. And with his brother, he founded the bank, which developed into Paribas. His mother had been a member of the Goldschmidt family from Frank fir, sorry, the English branch, by the way, anglicised sized its name. And I suppose the most famous of the Goldsmiths was James Goldsmith, as so James Goldsmith and his son, Zach, of course, is a close friend of Boris Johnson, and of course Earl Spencer and is a member of Parliament. His wife. Can we see his wife? Yeah.
That’s Clara Bischoffsheim. She was a very accomplice linguist. She could write and speak French, German, English, and Italian. And as I said, the couple had two children, and the both of them ended tragically. Her uncle, Clara’s uncle Solomon Goldschmidt was president of the Alliance. So they’re at the centre of this interlinking related families. Some Sephardi, some Ashkenazi, who are of huge prominence in Britain, in Germany, in Holland, in Belgium, in France. These interrelated families. In fact, Hershey’s mother had been Caroline… also from a famous banking family. And their family descendants now run the Channel empire. And after his marriage, he works with the house of Bischoffsheim and Goldschmidt of Brussels, London and Paris. He amasses, a huge fortune, mainly by purchasing the working, the railway concessions in Austria, Turkey and the Balkans. He was known as Turkenhurst. She developed the railway network of the Balkans. This is industrialization where clever industrialists, clever entrepreneurs, people who think outside the box who are outside the hierarchy. One of the reasons I think that the Jews did become, out of all proportions of their numbers, successful in whatever other area they went into.
Don’t forget, 25% of all Nobel Prize winners have been Jewish is because they had to, that’s their history. You see the gap in the market being in the arts, the sciences, or you develop a great passion for helping people. So in what I was, when I was speaking in this before, I talked about how so many Christians thought that, their criticism of Judaism was, it was a religion of Dogma. Had they never read the prophets, is there a greater tradition of social justice? Anyway, he was also the, his most spectacular railway venture was the, the linking of Vienna and Constantinople. You know, this is the industrial age at its height. He lived most of his time in Paris in the Champs Elysées. He had a wonderful chateau. He had a residence in London, bathhouse in Piccadilly. He had a hunting lodge in Hungary. He had a string of race horses, which made him part of the set around the Prince of Wales. He was very close to him. He donated all his winnings to charity. Of course, he had a very famous meeting with Theodore Herzl, who he thought was delusional. He told her, so I’m quoting, we have too many intellectuals.
That’s the Jewish problem. And he, whereas he we’re going to see that he helped so many Jews in trouble. He didn’t want a Jewish state. He was a citizen of Europe. He wore his Judaism quite lightly. He didn’t want the notion of nationhood, because what that is that going to do to acculturated people like him? Because all these families, they become great art collectors. They really enter into society on one level. How accepted are they? That’s a very interesting question because I was reading a biography of Bly Schroder, and of course he was ennobled by Bismarck. He saw Bismarck every day, he was his banker, and yet when his wife went to balls, the officers had to be bribed to dance with the Jew. So anyway, we know that Herzl did go to see Hirsch with 22 pages of notes urging for a political organisation to rally the Jews then rather than relying on philanthropy. And of course, Hirsch was absolutely furious with him, but he took a huge interest in the educational work of the alliance. On two occasions. He presented them with gifts of over a million Frans, and he regularly played their deficit. And remember, they’re already helping Jews in trouble. He gave to English causes, in 1891, he gave, he gave a hundred thousand to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. 1888, on the 40th anniversary of Franz Joseph, he donated 500,000 for the establishment of primary and technical colleges in Book of Vina, which was a large Jewish settlement. He founded the Jewish Colonisation Association.
Now this is important. This is where he really makes his biggest mark. And he founds it with a capital of 2 million pounds. And after his death, his wife gave a further donation of 7 million. And this is to help the Jews of Eastern Europe resettle in America and in Canada and in South America. And after his wife’s death, the capital increased by bequest to another 11 million. At the time, he had probably the largest charitable trust in the world. And after its death, it was man managed by the AJA in London and the Alliance in Paris. And what they did was they purchased large tracks of land in Argentina, in Canada, and in Palestine. Now, Palestine was to help Jews settle. It was not about Zionism. He also established all sort his, particularly the ICA or JTA. It established all sorts of mechanisms to help Jews who were suffering persecution, how to immigrate to America or Canada or South America, distribution agencies, technical schools, cooperatives, factories, savings and loan banks and model dwellings. He was a man of genius and he brought his organisational genius to the purpose of helping his people in trouble.
He cooperated with, or that’s Barron Horace de Gunzburg, who I’ll be talking about when I deal with Russia, Samuel Polyakov, you see, even in the reign of Nicholas the first, who I’m talking about next week, who was violently anti-Semitic, he still ennobled certain Jewish entrepreneurs. And they, so basically, Bachst was a professor of medicine, and Polyakov was secretary for, he set up this whole organisation to really teach skills, agricultural skills to Russian Jews. Also, he assisted large number of societies all over the world, connected with the relief and rehabilitation of Jewish immigrants. He, in 1881, he endowed half a million for benevolent trust in New York. And 1891, after his death, created the Barron Hirsch Fund, quote, for facilitating Jewish immigration to the USA and gave $2,400,000 for setting up agriculture and trade schools. And Jacob Schiff and Oscar Strauss were on the board, you see the interlinking. And later on we’ll be talking about people like Otto Schiff. And he worked, his wife was very, very closely associated with, and when he died, he left another 45 million dollars to the JCAA, in his, in all, he donated 100 million pounds in his lifetime.
And after his death, his wife, who must have been quite an extraordinary woman, she did donate money to his two illegitimate children to make sure they were safe. Now, let’s talk about the Jewish Colonial Association. And as I said, it’s to repatriate Russian immigration to America. And his notion was that Jew should establish agricultural colonies outside. So he also did everything he could to alleviate Jewish persecution. So he, what I want to talk about was Argentina. Now, back in 1889, a group of 824 Russian Jews arrived in Argentina and established a colony in Moises Ville already the JCA, Hershey’s Fund, owned 600,000 hectares of land, between 1906 and 1912, 13,000 Jews annually came to Argentina. Also, some of them by the way, came from the Ottoman Empire and Morocco. By 1920, mainly because of the work of Baron de Hirsch, there were 150,000 Jews in Argentina. And he develops this plan to bring Jews to the autonomous agricultural settlements. And of course, why did Argentina let him do this? Because they wanted the money.
They had vast, as did Canada. They had vast tracks of land that was empty, and they wanted to attract inst, they wanted to attract immigrants. And the Argentinians gave them constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. And as a result, there was huge settlement all over the place, including in the, there were 13 different settlements, including one in the province of Buenos Aires. However, many Jews eventually leave the settlements to settle in the cities where they were prohibited, by the way, from careers in government or the military. And many of them finished up, of course, as shopkeepers and as artisans. So the dream of agriculture, if you think about it, even, even the second Aliyah, did they take on board much of the, if you think about the antisemitic slur, that Jews cannot work the land. I mean, when they had a country of their own, they were pretty good at it as far as we know. But let’s move on to another man with a different vision. And that of course is Israel Zangwill who, and if you haven’t read Israel Zangwill, please give yourself the most amazing treat.
He wrote Children of the Ghetto, and he wrote Dreamers of the Ghetto. He wrote a volume of about, he wrote about 20 books. He was a playwright. He wrote a very interesting play in America called The Melting Pot. Very, very famous phrase, coined by him. So who was he? He was born in London to Eastern European immigrants. His father came from a Latvia, his mother from Poland. He was schooled in Plymouth and Bristol. And then he went to the Jewish Free School, which was the largest Jewish school in Europe. And he goes there at nine. And it offered both secular and religious studies. It also, and this is Jewish paternalism, it supplied food and clothes and healthcare for the children. He was incredibly smart. He excelled at school. There’s a house named for him now. And he, whilst he was taking a degree, he took his BA at UCL, which of course was known as the Godless Place in Gaer Street. He got a triple honours in English, French, and moral sciences while he was still teaching at JFS.
But he wanted to become a writer. And his works coined him the title Dickens of the Ghetto. He said the Jew is like a child who classed her dead child to her breast and will not let her go. He was dev, he himself was devoted to the story of the Jews. He was a proud Jew, but he wanted to escape the ghetto. He married a non-Jewish woman who was a feminist. He was a member of a group called the Kilburn Wanderers. I lived just around the corner from them, people like Solomon Shechter and Asher Myers, who was editor of the Jewish Chronicle, a group of in, of Jewish intellectuals who were trying to push intellectuality into Anglo-Jewry. An interesting story for another time. As a result, he’s writing a lot of articles, and as a result, he was asked by a JPS of America to write a novel. And that’s when he writes Children of the Ghetto. Dreamers of the Ghetto is the one I particularly love, it, he talks about Israeli, Aina, Lasal, Sabotage v Spinoza, all of whom are affected by the duality of the Jewish experience. Fascinating, because that is our story. His plot, The Melting Pot.
In The Melting Plot, it’s the story of David Moses who makes it to America after the Chisinau pogrom, his whole family have been murdered. And he dreams of a world where all the hatred will fall away. And when he’s in New York, he feels in love with a beautiful Russian Christian. And on the eve of the marriage, he realises her father was responsible for the pogrom. The father admits his guilt and the couple marry, and the place celebrates America’s capacity to absorb and grow the contribution of immigrants. In fact, Roosevelt, the uncle of the famous Roosevelt, who was also president, he praised the play because that was the America he dreamed of. The point was, by the turn of the century, there was anti-immigrant feeling. But the point is The Melting Pot. He wrote in it, America is God’s crucible, the great melting pot where all the races of Europe are melting and reforming.
Germans, Frenchmen, Irishmen, Englishmen, Jews and Russians into the Crucible with you all. In 1923, he was on the cover of Time Magazine. He was very much a socialist, interested, along with his wife, Edith Ayrton, in women’s issues. He was also a very close friend of Eleanor Marx, Karl Marx’s daughter. He and it was to his home, 24 Oxford Road, Kilburn, on November 19th, 1896 that Theodore Herzl arrived. And according to Zangle, Theodore Herzl said, help me realise the Jewish state. And of course, he does help. And he is a Zionist and he is a supporter of Herzl. And after the first Zionist Congress in 1897, he said this, by the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept, today by the waters of Geneva, Baal, by the waters of Baal, we will weep no more. He was very much a close friend of Max Nordal and Theodor Herzl, who in their own way were all what I call non-Jewish Jews.
Now, as early as 1902, Herzl’s negotiation with the Turks had proved futile. And he was lobbying the British for help. The Chisinau pogrom is really the push. If you know, if you remember, there’s a blood libel in Kishinev. It’s very much stirred up by Krushevan, who was a Russian agent of the Russian secret police and the editor of the local newspaper. And it happened, the blood lie, but it happened, of course, at Easter Pesa. And the Jews were accused of ritual murder. There was a pogrom that lasted for three days, even though Kishinev was a garrison town with 18,000 inhabitants. And this is, Zangwill wrote, the massacre has brought home the blind, to the blindest, the needs for a publicly and legally safeguarded home for our unhappy race. When you come to consider where this centralised home should be, you’ll find no place as practical as Palestine, at least for a start, its neighbourhood. And he said that to the Federation of American Zionists.
However, Joseph Chamberlain, who was also a very religious Christian, suggested in 1902, because remember the British have the largest empire in the world. And I’ve also talked about this tradition of philosemitism, and they actually suggested a Jewish colony in El-Arish, Egypt. But the British officials said, you can’t do that because you’d have to divert the water of the Nile. However, following the Kishinev pogrom, they offered, the British offered Gush Nagishi, which is a plateau in Kenya. And of course this is known as the Uganda offer. Now at the sixth Zionist Congress, Zangwill spoke in favour of it. He believed it could provide a temporary solution that Jews are suffering, Jews are being murdered. Nordal also spoken its favour and so did Herzl. And in in fact, Nordal was later shot at the Maccabee ball in Vienna in 1903 by a Jewish fanatical Zionist from Kishinev. And he wasn’t killed and, who shot him because of the stand he took about Uganda. And it was the Eastern European Jews who declined. They had the majority in the conference and they declined. And it was, Zangwill was very, very bitter because he believed that all the criticism that led to Herzl’s death.
And this is a speech he gave in 1905, after Hertz’s death, Herzl is dead. He worked for his people as no man ever worked for them since Judas Maccabees, his people called him Dreamer and Demagogue. And towards the end, men of his own party called him traitor and broke his heart. He worked for his people, they paid him his wages, and he has gone home. Now, I’m going to read to you his, the obituary that he actually made in Vienna at the funeral, the funeral, 3000 people came. Farewell, O prince farewell, O surely tried. You dreamed a dream and you have paid and lost, to save the people leaders must be lost by foes and followers be crucified. Yet is your body only that has died. The noble soul in Judah is not dust, but fire that works in every vein and pride reshape our life, rekindling Israel’s pride. So we behold the captain of our strife, triumphant in this moment of eclipse, death husband fixed him to immortal life. His flag upheld the trumpet of his lips. And while we weeping… garments, and next year we cry, next year in Jerusalem.
There’s something else I want to read you and then I’ll talk about what happened to him after Herzl’s death. Injury is called Moses and Jesus. Injury, I saw two Jews that met by chance, one old stern eyed deep route, yet garlanded with living light of love around his head. The other young with sweet seraphic plants around went on the town, satanic dance, hung a piping wire at heart he bled… mournfully each said, nor ride the other straight, but looked to scums, suddenly from church and rolled out on an organ hymn from synagogue and loudly chanted air each with its prophets, higher claim instinct. Then for the first time met their eyes. Swift linked in one strange, silent, piteous gaze and dim with bitter tears of agonising despair. He’s such a wonderful writer in my view. Anyway, continuing with Zangwill. Zangwill creates the Jewish Territorial Association. He now believes the situation of the Jews is under Nicholas II, it is so dire that he needs to get territory anywhere. He went into partnership with a man called Lucien Wolf. He was actually in a Poland of political Zionism, but he did support the creation of a Jewish colony in the British empire.
Lucien Wolf was a really interesting character. He was a very, very important, he was a very important journalist. He came from wealthy Vietnamese parents who had settled in, who had settled in England. He became a writer for the Jewish world. He special, he then became an editor. He specialised in foreign affairs and in diplomacy, he became the assistant director of political. He had a very big career in journalism, and he took the name Diplomaticas. And it was the pogroms that sparked his interest in Jewish affairs. He really wanted to be an English aristocrat. He did, he wrote a supplement for the Jewish Chronicle called Darkest Russia. In World War I, by the way, he had a preference for Germany over Russia. He was a huge enthusiast for Jewish history. He believed in the past of the Jewish people. But what he wanted, as I said, and this is important, he wanted Jews to be Englishmen. And in 1887, he organised the Anglo Jewish Historical Exhibition, the first ever in England, which chartered Jewish immigration of Jews into Britain from the beginnings to show how useful they had been. And he, in 1893, he was one of the founders of the Jewish Historical Society.
But his books are mainly of the aristocracy. He had really pretensions of aristocracy. He did fight antisemitism and was one of those who later on exposed the protocols. But he was really, was he an assimilationist or was, I hate that word, acculturated, but you know what I mean. But he was violently against the Balfour Declaration and he was one of the main people behind the, at a letter written to The Times by the conjoint of the Anglo Jewish Association and the Board of Deputies saying how dangerous Zionism was and how dangerous the declaration was. But anyway, you, Zangwill worked with this man because they were both men of influence. And what they wanted to do was to persuade someone in the government to give the Jews a refuge in the, is somewhere in the British Empire. You see, that would be an acceptable to both of them. And they both believe that the government, they were worried that in Palestine it would become like Aliyah. Whereas with, if it’s within the terms of the British Empire, it would become a modern, hopefully democratic state. So they find, they found the Jewish Territorial Organisation and its charter aims of obtaining a last track date territory, preferably within the British Empire, to found a Jewish home of refuge, and Zangwill becomes the president. They did look for land in Galveston, in Alaska.
They even established contacts with the Portuguese government in Asia and Africa. But nothing worked. And it lasted until 1943. But it lost most of its power after the Board of Dec, after the Balfour Declaration and Zangwill’s death in 1926. So what I’m looking at is various individuals with their own purposes who are looking for a solution to the Jewish problem. You see how complex Jewish identity is? There’s two more I want to bring to your attention, but I’m not going to keep you because I see time is running out. One was of course that very strange Ho Chi Minh met up with Bangorian in, there you see Lucien Wolf, Ho Chi Minh met with Bangorian in Paris in a hotel. And he offered him a homeland in Vietnam.
But that’s another story. The other extraordinary story is a Russian autonomous region. called Birobidzhan in Manchuria. And that was to create a Soviet entity to, because Russia, after the revolution, when Stalin was rational nationalities, what is a nationality? Well, in Birobidzhan, the language of us to be Yiddish, there was to be Yiddish theatre, et cetera. So the Jews could have their own cultural entity. And it raised a lot of money from Jewish communists throughout the world and also from Jewish philanthropists. Julius Rose involved the huge American philanthropist help. But I will bring that story in when I look at Stalin.
So I think we better leave it there, if you don’t mind.
Q&A and Comments
And shall we see any, this is from Michael. Just back from a walk between lectures. Peter truly get overtime for a second presentation, huh? Valerie Cooper, the British Empire doesn’t seem to provide it a promised land. Stephen Massel, Uganda mandate Palestine, Cyprus places in Canada, even Manhattan in 1654. Sure. This is from Valerie. I have a wonderful book printed in 1892 of Laurence Oliphant, the Memoirs of the Life of Laurence Oliphant, his wife Alice Oliphant. A fascinating book. Yes, he was a character, wasn’t he? Thank you.
Faith, Sas Kachuwan. Hi, Harriet. My grandfather, who was trained as an operatic tanner and cantor was dispatched to Plum Cooley, a real place in rural Manitoba in 1904, having spent six years in London together with the Bronfman family. Subsequently, my other grandfather lived adjacent to Bronfman in Winnipeg, where it is said the Sammy will amount to no good. He’s always just this side of the law. The Bronfman from matriarch apparently went to jail so that their son could continue to run the boot licking business. Oh, that’s a lovely story.
Hindi, one of the Bronfman’s was found dead in a barn in… near Hersh, and was probably done in by the liquor runners connected to Al Capone. I heard that the Bronfmans were banned from going for years. Didn’t hurt their enterprise at all. Oliphant had a house in… in the Carmel Mountains. Yes. Is that the name? I knew it was Mount Carmel, thank you Adrian. You are always, Adrian is a very good guide in Israel. He’s a mine of information. Serena Kapinsky, the Chanel empire under Jewish Management.
Q: Wasn’t Coco Channel Nazi lover? A: Yes, she was, are the ironies of history, Serena. She put out, this is Judy. She put out the Channel perf, the Chanel perfume, number five with a Jew. She betrayed him to the Nazis so she could have full ownership. He got around it by entrusting the ownership to Gentiles. After the war, he continued to do business with her in spite of the betrayal. Now the Channel brand is owned by a conglomerate.
Q: Bernstein, why do I dislike the term court Jew? A: Because it’s kind of obsequious in a way. I think, one of my little particular fads, I suppose, Serena’s saying to me, court Jew sounds like token Jew. Some of my best friends are Jews. I know this one court Jew, so I can oppress the others. Yeah.
Q: Is it Victoria? Is it the modern version of the Last Supper painting on the wall behind? A: Oh, I didn’t know you could see it. Yes, I’m afraid it is. It’s a very naughty painting.
Hindi, a one room schoolhouse in cemetery still exists in Hersh, where my husband was born. We took the children there a number of years ago and found the tiny farmhouse where my husband and his siblings were born. His grandfather’s diary describes arriving late 1890s, and the freezing miners, 30 degree winters. My husband would tell the kids of having to go out to the outhouse when nature called no matter what the weather, droughts and depression made them leave farming and eventually moved to Winnipeg. Thank you for that, Hindi. This is the joy of having a group like this. We’ve had comments from Israel, we’ve had comments from Canada. We’re having comments from all over the world, I love it. Thank you. Carol.
Work kibbutz established in Palestine in the 19th century. Yes, Barry. It was the, the first kibbutz was 1906. They’re established by the second Aliyah. But of course, they also took on the notion of what it is to be a Jew. And it’s fascinating. But the second Aliyah, they prided themselves on being intellectuals who could do physical work. Oh, Jennifer, that’s a sad story. She said she had to miss the last half of the lecture to attend a memorial for my mentor. It was she who led me to, oh, Jennifer, I’m so sorry. And Jennifer also thanks me for introducing to Israel Zangwill. Jennifer read through his books, I mean, Dreamers of the Ghetto. Okay, I admit that I’d rather love these characters. Hyner, Israeli, Theodore Herzl.
Q: So they’re so interesting, but he just writes so beautifully and he, considering all the anti-Semitism of the time, how will these men able to marry non-Jews? A: Not everyone’s an anti-Semite, you know, I happened to point it out a lot, a lot. But these characters, they wanted to be part of the outside world. You’d never forget, look, anti, look, in Germany in the twenties, for example, intermarriage was running at 45%, which meant there were German families who were prepared to accept Jews.
Mozambique, Uganda, who suggested one? The British suggested Uganda and the Israel Zangwill, with the mo, with the Portuguese, tried to go for Mozambique, who suggested them and when? It, usually coincided with terrible events happening to the Jews in Eastern Europe. And don’t forget, if you think about the horror of the shoah, 1938, the Evian Conference, when the Germans were prepared to let the Jews go, you know, this is what we’re faced with. Hitler wanted a… (indistinct) Reich, Jews could get out of Germany as late as 1941. But you had to have somewhere to go to. And my German Jewish friends say to me very, very, very clearly that particularly after 1938, after Christal, there was not one Jew who wanted to remain in Germany. But you had no, it was so difficult to find places of refuge. And of course in the end, the Russian Jews always said it had to be Palestine. The Russian Jews who were much closer to their Jewish roots than people like, look, Max Nordal was married to an non-Jew, so was Zangwill.
Q: How Jewish was Theodore Herzl? A: It’s a very interesting question. He was a historic Jew. He, look, he would listen to Wagner when he wanted inspiration.
Oh, that’s interesting. Charles Bronnen sponsors the birthright programme, which is so important. This is, I remember the early years in the Warsaw Ghetto hearing a satirical song songbook about being sent to Madagascar. That’s from Rod. Now Madagascar was a terrible story. Madagascar, the French in 1938, the right wing French government had a plan to send Eastern European Jews living in France to that Madagascar, Eman played around with that idea, but it wasn’t in, it wasn’t controlled by Germany at the time. The Germans did look for other solutions for a while. So that’s, the Madagascar story is actually a very terrible one.
Q: May I ask for the title of the book on Oliphant that someone mentioned early? A: Do you, can you put it up please? Whoever, put it on again? Thank you.
Sam Kopolovich, yes. Let us not forget that Joseph in the Bible is the epitome of the court Jew, yes.
Q: Shelly Shapiro, what happened to the descendants of Moses Mendelssohn in the Shoah? A: I know that the Mendelssohn bank was closed in 1933. I think they got to America. They had been, that’s a very good question. I don’t know if any of them actually were caught by the Nazis. I don’t think they were.
You’re quite a few generations back. You had to prove you had no Jewish blood before 1800. Very interesting question, Shelly. Anyway, Lauren, I think that’s all the questions, Lauren.
[Lauren] Thank you so much, Trudy, thank you.
Thank you Lauren, for helping again and everybody take care. God bless.