FELIX AND THE IMPACT OF NON-ZIONISTS ON

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY: 1923-1933

By

Jeffrey Lawrence Levin

Submitted to the

Faculty of the College of Arts and

Sciences of American University in

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy In

Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Date

2018

American University

Washington, D.C. 20016 © COPYRIGHT

By

Jeffrey Lawrence Levin

2018

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ii FELIX WARBURG AND THE IMPACT OF NON-ZIONISTS ON

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY: 1923-1933

BY

Jeffrey Lawrence Levin

ABSTRACT

This dissertation addresses the impact on the founding of the Hebrew University of the group of individuals known as non-Zionists. Using the personage of Felix Warburg as an entrée into the origins of this cohort, it argues that the Hebrew University, like the Yishuv itself, was based on a wide spectrum of adherence to orthodox . Rather, there were many contributors who felt less strongly inclined towards Zionism than did , and these individuals played a substantive role in shaping the course of the Jewish settlement in

Palestine

Felix Warburg, a naturalized American citizen born into a wealthy banking family, is a perfect example of how support for the Hebrew University, the Jewish Agency, and the Yishuv did not require one to advocate for the future creation of a Jewish nation-state. Prior to his significant involvement with issues in , the main focus of Warburg’s philanthropy was in alleviating the abhorrent conditions of Jews in the Soviet Union and of those Jews who had recently emigrated to the and badly needed assistance in acculturating to New

York City society. He was initially brought into the fold of the Hebrew University by Weizmann himself, who at the time was seeking American donors more than collaborators. However,

Warburg found an administrative skill that he had previously never displayed, and became a staunch advocate for any supporters of the Hebrew University who did not consider themselves to be Zionists.

ii In this way, the ongoing battles among the administrative factions of the Hebrew

University will be seen a microcosm of the ideological battles raging over how the Yishuv should function. Since there was considerable overlap between the Hebrew University Board and the Jewish Agency, this is not an arbitrary analogy: the same arguments appear in the minutes of both august organizations. This dissertation concludes that the contribution of the non-Zionists has been thoroughly overlooked in the previous historiography and that the robust debate

Warburg’s cohort and the Zionists, led by Chaim Weizmann, directly influenced the future of the

Hebrew University and of the Yishuv itself.

iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In this process of writing my dissertation, I have had the great fortune of working with a great number of people without whom I would have been unable to reach this point. I would like to thank the archivists at the American Jewish Archives, the Hebrew University, and the Central

Zionist Archives for their knowledge, insight, and help in locating relevant materials. They made the onerous process of archival work much simpler and more straightforward, and for that I am most appreciative.

To the brilliant educators from whom I have had the joy to learn and to work alongside at

Commonwealth Academy, thank you for your skill, your dedication, and for pushing me to think about how to teach and talk about history every day. You have made these years enjoyable and personally and professionally fulfilling.

To my classmates and professors at American University and the School of

Economics, thank you for challenging me day in and day out to present my arguments more clearly and succinctly, and to assess the literature from perspectives I might not otherwise have considered. My skills as a historian owe much to these seminars, and for that I am grateful.

To my committee, and especially to my Chair and advisor Michael Brenner, thank you for the hours you spent reading the multiple drafts of this dissertation, making suggestions, and forcing me to think deeply about my analysis. You inspire me to be a better historian, writer, and thinker. The success of this paper is due largely to your advice, and for that I am thankful.

To my friends, especially those who preceded me down this path and showed me that this task was not insurmountable, I’m honored to have you in my life. Thank you for the inspiration, the laughter, and the many years of friendship. To my family, who has stood beside me throughout my many years of graduate school, I could not have finished without you. Grandma

iv Marcy and Grandma Joyce, thank you for your endless love. I wish my grandfathers, Mort Levin and Richard Nathanson, were here to read this dissertation. I know they would have been proud.

Mom and Dad – you have supported me and encouraged me to follow this dream from the moment I articulated this desire. Andrew and Scott, you were consistently optimistic for me, even while possibly finding my unending discussion of the minutiae of Israeli history tiresome.

And, most importantly, to Meghan and Mason, thank you for being the lights of my life and my reasons for being. Mason, being your father is the greatest joy I have ever experienced.

Meg, you have been my unfailingly loving, empathetic, and steadfast partner for this entire process. I love you. This, like everything in my life, is dedicated to you.

v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iv INTRODUCTION ...... 1 CHAPTER 1: SOURCES, METHODOLOGY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY ...... 15 CHAPTER 2: WARBURG BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY ...... 29 CHAPTER 3: IDEOLOGY: FELIX WARBURG’S NON-ZIONIST VIEWS ...... 47 CHAPTER 4: THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT ...... 63 CHAPTER 5: A JEWISH UNIVERSITY? ...... 73 CHAPTER 6: FIRST APPROACHES BY THE UNIVERSITY ...... 82 CHAPTER 7: WARBURG’S INCREASED INVOLVEMENT ...... 98 CHAPTER 8: YEAR 1 ...... 111 CHAPTER 9: THE AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY ...... 126 CHAPTER 10: THE UNIVERSITY EXPANDS ...... 134 CHAPTER 11: EARTHQUAKE ...... 152 CHAPTER 12: BACK ON SOLID GROUND ...... 166 CHAPTER 13: RIOTS ...... 179 CHAPTER 14: RESIGNATION ...... 197 CHAPTER 15: AFTERMATH ...... 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 226

vi INTRODUCTION

The founding of the Hebrew University in , against all odds, remains a triumph of logistics, administration, and philanthropy. In a territory controlled by the largest imperial power in the world, blessed with few pre-existing structures and little by way of natural resources, Jewish leaders from around the world managed to overcome their profound and manifest differences of ideology in order to further the cause of Jewish national regeneration.

The university, which over the ensuing 91 years has become a leading center of the academy not only in the Middle East but in the world, required the devotion of many men and women who might not otherwise have found much if any common ground.

The university opened in 1925 with dignitaries from around the world in attendance at the dedication ceremony on Mount Scopus, a site that remains controversial well into the 21st century. During the first academic year, the university enrolled only graduate students; an undergraduate program would not appear for several years.1 The curriculum was largely practical in nature, revolving around engineering and the sciences, with many leaders hoping that the university might be able to produce scientific academics capable of assisting in the remarkable undertaking that was the Yishuv.

This opening period of the university’s existence, when the continued functioning of the school remained very much in doubt, was certainly not without its fair share of discord among the administration. Judah Magnes, the first Chancellor of the Hebrew University, was a different kind of Zionist from Chaim Weizmann, who had been the driving force in getting the institution off the ground, though Magnes was a consistent supporter of the University project from the

1 Hagit Lavsky, “Introduction,” in Assaf Selzer (ed.), The History of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Who’s Who Prior to Statehood: Founders, Designers, Pioneers (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2015), 5.

1 beginning.2 Many of the benefactors who comprised the university’s Board of Directors were constantly at odds with one another, sniping in personal letters about various perceived slights.

There was an evident divide between the administration’s European, Palestinian, and American factions.

Among this American contingent was Felix Warburg, a 54-year-old who had emigrated to the United States in the late-nineteenth century from , where he was born. As a member of the eminent Warburg banking family of Hamburg, he gained easy entry into the upper echelons of the Jewish financial cohort in . As his wealth and corresponding influence grew, so too did his interest in Jewish causes both within New York and around the world. He invested considerable sums into enterprises that focused on helping new

Jewish immigrants to the United States as well as into foundations established in order to aid the

Jewish population of Eastern European countries affected by .3

Despite this evident desire to better the lot of his fellow Jews worldwide, Warburg himself had peculiar feelings regarding the Jewish settlement in Palestine. He certainly did not disapprove of the development of the land by his coreligionists and contributed actively to this cause. Where he drew his ideological line in the sand was regarding the future political situation of Palestine. Unlike Weizmann and much of the leadership of the Hebrew University, Warburg aligned himself with the non-Zionists among the university’s supporters, who did not seek to actively impede the Yishuv, but neither supported the notion of a future Jewish nation-state in

Palestine.

2 Jehuda Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Zionist Leader (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 394. 3 See, for one example, the depiction of Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, as explained by Daniel Soyer in “Brownstones and Brownsville: Elite Philanthropists and Immigrant Constituents at the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, 1899-1929,” American Jewish History 88, No. 2 (June 2000).

2 On the Zionist ideological spectrum, the non-Zionists were situated somewhere between the firm Zionists of the Weizmann and Ben-Gurion mold and the anti-Zionists who opposed the formation of or sought to undermine any potential Jewish state. Some Jewish anti-Zionists opposed the Jewish state on religious grounds, believing that this would be usurping the right of

God to bring Jews back to the Holy Land on God’s own. These ultra-Orthodox men felt that the

Judaism practiced by many of the settlers was woefully insufficient and was unworthy of this sacred land. They actively allied themselves with the enemies of the Yishuv, much as their twenty-first century ideological descendants do today. Other anti-Zionists, however, opposed

Zionism not because of any religious argument but because they felt it threatened the success of

Jews in their current countries.4

In this fraught environment, one might reasonably expect that the university project, ambitious and overreaching even in the best of times, would fail after a short period of optimism.

Expecting an institution of higher education to thrive in a country that lacked many of the basic

4 There exists a substantial literature regarding anti-Zionists of both the ultra-Orthodox and assimilationist varieties. Aviezer Ravitzsky argues that, for ultra-Orthodox Jews, Zionism represented an existential threat right from the very beginning. (Aviezer, Ravitzsky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism, trans. Michael Swirsky and Jonathan Chipman (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).). They felt that Zionism was affront on two counts: it usurped God’s rightful place to return Jews to the Holy Land while simultaneously promoting an offensive Jewish secular identity. The umbrella term “ultra-Orthodox” incorporates such fringe groups as the Neturei Karta, whose beliefs Norman Lamm describes as “extreme” and perhaps even “reprehensible.” (Norman Lamm, “The Ideology of the Neturei Karta: According to the Satmarer Version,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 12, no. 2 (Fall 1971), 38-53.). The transnational Agudat organization, which moved operations to Israel in 1919, was another of the extreme anti-Zionist Orthodox groups whose descendants still wield considerable power in modern Israeli politics, as Rebecca Kook, Michael Harris, and Gideon Doron argue. (Kook, Rebecca, Michael Harris, and Gideon Doron, “In the Name of G-d and Our Rabbi: The Politics of the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel,” Israel Affairs 5, no. 1 (Autumn 1998), 1-18.) On the other hand, Alain Dieckhoff asserts that the largely Western Jews who considered themselves part of the “intelligentsia” opposed Zionism as an archaic and unnecessary construct that would set back centuries of Jewish attempts to become more than just an oppressed minority. (Dieckhoff, Alain, The Invention of a Nation: Zionist Thought and the Making of Modern Israel, trans. Jonathan Derrick (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).). David Myers’ article tracing the early-20th century origins of modern anti-Zionism agrees with Dieckhoff’s thesis, stating that many Jews in Western Europe did not feel the call to abandon their prosperous and steady lives for the uncertainties of the Yishuv. Myers, David N., “Can There Be a Principled Anti-Zionism? On the Nexus between Anti-Historicism and Anti-Zionism in Modern Jewish Thought,” The Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 1 (March, 2006), 33-50.)

3 necessities of a modern society was an act of faith of the highest order. The Mount Scopus location itself presented logistical difficulties, as this required developing infrastructure in East

Jerusalem that did not yet exist. One could hardly ask for a less-promising set of circumstances in which to open a new university.

In order to have any chance of success, it stands to reason that the university’s administration would have to be on the same page. In fact, during the early years of the Hebrew

University’s existence, this was not the case. There was near-constant internecine warfare between the Weizmann-aligned Zionist group on the Board of Directors and those who preferred the non-Zionist approach exemplified by Louis Marshall and Cyrus Adler.5 This dispute— ostensibly over a nationalist ideology—routinely spilled over into debates about the proper course for the development of the school’s academics, with each side seeing the university as an avatar for the Zionist project itself.

Caught in the middle of this situation was Felix Warburg, who though a late-comer to the

Hebrew University enterprise, nonetheless jumped in with both feet and took a highly active role in the administration. While he did not put aside his personal conviction entirely, he proved an able mediator in the polarized atmosphere. His close relationship with Judah Magnes certainly played a role here, but it seems more that Warburg keenly felt the need for the university and devoted himself whole-heartedly to easing the path to success as much as possible.

The story of the Hebrew University, one of success in the face of overwhelming odds, encompasses the entirety of early-twentieth century Jewish history. Its setting in Palestine brings into the conversation the complicated, multi-faceted ideology of Zionism. The proponents of

5 Hedva Ben-Israel, “Politikah al Har Ha-Tzofim B’Tkufat Ha’Mandat,” in Hagit Lavsky (ed.), Toldot Ha’Universitah Ha’Ivrit B’Yerushalayim: Hit’atzmut Akademit Toch Ma’avak Leumi (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009), 4.

4 Zionist development in Palestine, even those who supported the Yishuv unconditionally, did not all agree about how best to accomplish the Zionist objectives. Some leaders wanted to move quickly in the direction of a Socialist Utopia, whereas others sought a more religiously-oriented state. Still others saw coexistence within a multinational political body as the most feasible path in the long term.

These disputes would eventually appear within the conversation about the types of academics that the university should offer. Should the Hebrew University be a font of Jewish cultural knowledge? Or should the major goal lean toward the sciences, with the hope that graduates would later help with the practical development of the Yishuv? The Board of Directors had to grapple with these significant issues repeatedly—and heatedly—in the first several years of the university’s existence. In meetings in New York, Jerusalem, London, and elsewhere around the world, the various bodies responsible for overseeing the academic and fundraising efforts of the Hebrew University came together to try to form some consensus out of the discord.

The history of Felix Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University is that of a man who took advantage of his privileged position in society to work hard for the benefit of a cause in which he believed strongly. Always a believer in working for the cause of Jewish culture, he built upon his previous work with Jewish immigrants to America in assisting with the opening of the Hebrew University. For well over a decade, he shaped the direction of the university, participating in decisions about the academics, fundraising, and the expansion of the campus itself.

The Hebrew University remains today a symbol of modern Jewish cultural expression.

As a world-renowned institution, it has grown far beyond its modest beginnings to have a global reach. This success is due largely to a group of dedicated men and women who worked tirelessly

5 for the cause, even when hope was dim. Felix Warburg, who never held a faculty position or even lived in Palestine, was among these leaders whose stories have thus far disappeared from the historical record, despite having played an integral role. Without his leadership in the United

States, it is entirely possible that the university might not have been able to develop its Mount

Scopus campus, thus preventing it from offering more academic programs. The growth of the university would have been stunted from the beginning.

Through his story, it is possible to see an evolution in the mindset of American Jewry towards the Yishuv. At the time, many American Jews felt that they had little reason to pay attention to the developments in Palestine. Certainly they had feelings for Jerusalem as their ancestral homeland, but the United States offered a sense of religious freedom and possibility that made any thoughts of emigration absurd.6 The notion of leaving a country that had so welcomed—relatively speaking, at least—a Jewish population that had become accustomed over the centuries to pervasive, government-sanctioned persecution would likely never have occurred to the vast majority of American Jews.

However, Warburg, himself an immigrant to the United States, was uniquely placed within the Hebrew University administration to understand the thought processes of both

American and European Jews and help mediate between these two oft-fighting groups. Though he was himself a liberal Jew, his father-in-law—the eminent Jewish banker Jacob Schiff—ran a strictly Orthodox household. Warburg aligned himself with the non-Zionists, but he was not so dogmatic in this regard that he was unable to work with devoted Zionist leaders such as Chaim

Weizmann.

6 Melvin Urofsky, American Zionism From Herzl to (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1976), 75.

6 This dissertation will unfold roughly chronologically. It will begin with Warburg’s earliest involvement with the university project, which occurred well after planning had already begun. Extending through the tumultuous period leading up to the 1925 opening of the school, I will analyze Warburg’s efforts in the context of his previous philanthropy as well as contrast it with his somewhat more muted administrative work with educational organizations in the United

States. In this regard, his efforts in the academics of the Hebrew University represented his most significant endeavor in this field; in most other occasions, Warburg was content to raise funds, but played little meaningful role in shaping the direction of the organization.

During the decade after 1923, when Warburg’s correspondence indicates he first became involved with the Hebrew University, and 1933, when Warburg began lightening his workload, he attended or hosted countless meetings related to the university. He wrote thousands of letters and cables to his associates, informing them of sundry goings-on with the university or, as in a not-inconsiderable amount of the correspondence, gossiping about fellow leaders. He made multiple arduous trips to Palestine to view the progress of the university, becoming enthralled with the land, people, and progress of the Yishuv. Yet, Warburg has received little to no notice in the previous historiography of the Hebrew University. Historians nearly always mention him only in the context of his cohort of fellow non-Zionists, which minimizes the actual impact he had on university life and academics. That Warburg was a complicated individual from a very well-known banking family only makes him that much more interesting a historical figure.

Lack of Zionist Affiliation

Felix Warburg aligned himself closely with the non-Zionists, Jewish leaders who neither supported nor actively opposed the Yishuv, but rather sought to encourage Jewish development

7 while remaining agnostic about the possibilities of a future Jewish nation-state in Palestine.7

They viewed themselves more as “citizens of the world,” which obviated the necessity for a state founded entirely for Jews.8 After all, if Jews could thrive elsewhere, what need was there for

Zionism? This set of beliefs put the non-Zionists in immediate conflict with the Zionist leadership that dominated the development of the Yishuv. Throughout the early years of the

Hebrew University, the Zionists and non-Zionists repeatedly engaged in name-calling, attempts to undermine one another, and outright hostility.

It is impressive, therefore that the university was ever able to get off the ground in the first place. Voluminous correspondence among the university leaders demonstrates that meetings of the Board of Directors constantly ended in acrimony, as accusations flew back and forth between the two camps. Warburg positioned himself as somewhat of a moderate non-Zionist, much less prone to emotional outbursts than were his associates Cyrus Adler or Louis Marshall.

In one letter to Adler, Warburg wrote of the Board that it was ideologically in “the typical taste of Joseph, all colors of the rainbow being represented.”9 The prospect of reconciling such different points of view seemed dim.

In tracing the history of Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University, this dissertation will also recount the conflict between the Zionists and the non-Zionists, which dominated the last decade and a half of Warburg’s life. Though Warburg remained a close friend of Chaim Weizmann’s until just before his death, their friendship existed only outside official matters. In Board meetings and in other official capacities, Warburg and Weizmann were foes, situated on diametrically-opposed positions and constantly at battle.

7 For a more detailed analysis of the beliefs of non-Zionists, see Chapter 3. 8 Farrer, The Warburgs, 96. 9 Letter, Warburg to Cyrus Adler, August 7, 1924 (AJA, Warburg Papers, 214/5). The descriptive language in this quote is reflective of much of Warburg’s correspondence; his letters tended to be anything but boring.

8 One can—and should—easily see the Warburg-Weizmann rivalry as a metaphor for the heated rivalry between the Zionists and non-Zionists that raged until the mid-1930s, with the future of the Hebrew University caught in the middle. As we analyze Warburg’s contributions, we will see that his fluctuations in influence correspond directly with the relative success that

Warburg, Adler, Marshall, and others had in pursuing a non-Zionist agenda in the face of overwhelming opposition. This constant friction between Zionists and non-Zionists has received its fair share of historical attention. In fact, most scholars whose works devote any notable level of attention to the non-Zionists define this group by its opposition to Zionism, rather than by laying out what specifically Warburg and his cohort wanted to achieve in Palestine.

In the literature, non-Zionists appear frequently as being inextricably linked with the

United States’ financial prowess during the 1920’s. Naomi Cohen, for example, writes that the distinction between Zionists and non-Zionists in the United States was much less clear among

American Jews than it was between Americans and Europeans, due to Jews of all stripes tending to support development in Palestine, regardless of nationalist intent.10 A bigger issue is that scholars of Israeli history, and even those focusing on the Mandatory period, tend to downplay the role of non-Zionists as comparatively unimportant.11 However, this fallacy seems to stem from historians knowing how the story ends, so to speak. 12 During the 1920’s, while Zionism

10 Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist Idea (Ktav Publishing House, 1975), 33. 11 There does exist a body of literature, mostly from scholars such as Stuart Knee who wrote during the 1970’s and 1980’s, that uses the term non-Zionism to imply that this group of individuals espoused a set of firm ideals akin to those of organized Zionism. In my view, this perspective is not borne out by the individuals in question and only makes the question of why Warburg’s cohort opposed Zionism more opaque. See also Naomi W. Cohen’s 1951 article “The Reaction of Reform in America to Political Zionism,” and Robert Wistrich’s “Zionism and its Jewish ‘Assimilationist’ Critics” for imperfect attempts by scholars to define “non-Zionism” as a particular ideology. Naomi W. Cohen, “The Reaction of Reform Judaism in America to Political Zionism, 1897-1922,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 40, no. 4 (June 1951), 361-394; Robert Wistrich, “Zionism and its Jewish ‘Assimilationist’ Critics,” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 2 (Winter, 1998), 59-111. 12 Anita Shapira, the eminent historian of Israel, not only neglects to mention non-Zionists as playing any role in the development of Palestine, but she wrongly conflates this group with anti-Zionists, as seen both in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities who bore the brunt of the suffering during the 1929 Arab Riots and in more assimilationist

9 always retained the upper hand among the supporters of the Jewish settlements in Palestine, non-

Zionists represented a mainstream opposition that attracted its fair share of adherents in the

United States and Western Europe. This dissertation aims in part to correct this error of the historiography, suggesting instead that non-Zionists were from a fringe group populated by rich

Americans in New York City. They played a large role in the development of a number of major institutions that survive today, including the Hebrew University.

From this point, to consider the Hebrew University project’s early years as an analogue for the schism within the Yishuv leadership takes but a relatively small intellectual leap. Those men and women who achieved prominence within the political life of the Yishuv tended towards an ideological alliance with the Weizmann cohort. Non-Zionists, already a minority, faded even further from prominence as the 1930’s progressed. Likewise, the Hebrew University became a bastion of Zionism, offering philosophical and material support to the Zionist movement, especially as the Yishuv progressed towards the War of Independence in 1948.

American Jewry vs. World Jewry

The non-aligned vs. Zionist debate was not the only dichotomy within the Jewish community that the opening of the Hebrew University exposed. Perhaps even more significant was the divide between the relatively wealthy, acculturated Jewish community in the United

States that had never dealt with widespread persecution and that of Eastern Europe, where Jews had not always been welcomed with open arms.13 As discussed above, the experience of living in

circles (see footnote 4, above). See Anita Shapira, Israel: A History, trans. Anthony Berris (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), 79. 13 A quick note on terminology. As used in this dissertation, to become acculturated means to adapt one’s lifestyle and socialization to new surroundings, as was necessary immediately for new immigrants to the United States. Assimilating, on the other hand, requires actively becoming part of the broader society, rather than just within the enclave of immigrants in which these individuals typically lived. See Herbert J. Gans, “Acculturation, assimilation and mobility,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 1 (January 2007), 152-164.

10 the United States wrought a skepticism towards the ideals of Zionism and a feeling that perhaps a

Jewish nation-state in Palestine was unnecessary. Life in the United States had never required a religious struggle, and as a result many American Jews—even those who were immigrants themselves or second-generation Americans—could not grasp the necessity of Zionism.

It is important to note that there existed a wide variety of American Jewish groups, and each did not view Zionism and the Yishuv identically. During the early 20th century, the expanding American Reform Jewish community tended to express somewhat more ambivalence towards Zionism than did more observant strands of the religion. One potential reason for this phenomenon is that many Reform Jews had immigrated to the United States and become so thoroughly acculturated as to ascribe less importance to the development of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. On the other hand, American Jews represented a much more monolithic entity when it came to supporting the European and Eastern European Jews who faced immense hardship and persecution in the wake of World War I.

Within the university, the split between American leaders and European leaders manifested itself in different ways. The Board of Governors, on which a number of American men served, was still largely comprised of men based either in Europe or in Palestine itself.14

While this did not create problems when the whole Board was meeting together, the distance between the East coast of the United States and Europe, to say nothing of Palestine, did make remaining in constant contact with one another difficult.

It also made attendance at all Board meetings a challenge even for those men, like

Warburg, for whom a transatlantic crossing did not represent an insurmountable financial burden. Warburg did not attend the first meeting of the Board of Governors, held on April 12,

14 Or multiple locations, given that nearly all of these individuals were quite wealthy and could afford comfortable housing in more than one city.

11 1925, but had an auxiliary meeting with only him and Magnes in attendance nine days later, at a luxe hotel in Naples, Italy.15 He was unable to attend the second meeting, held in Munich in

September of the same year, when resolutions caused some trouble among American Jews and indirectly facilitated the creation of the American Advisory Committee, which would become

Warburg’s most lasting contribution to the Hebrew University.

The American Advisory Committee (AAC) was formed in part to organize the fundraising and other support operations taking place in the United States on behalf of the

Hebrew University. This body, which within five years would change its name to the American

Friends of the Hebrew University—by which name it is still known today—grew much more quickly than anyone could have imagined. As will be discussed later, the AAC’s contributions to the University’s annual budget were, by the end of the 1920’s, greater than any other single group, including the Zionist Organization. As one might imagine, the growing realization of the power of the American Jewish community did little to settle the roiling tensions between the various ideological and geographic factions vying to shape the direction of the University in their image. American Jews, whether Zionist, non-Zionist, or unaffiliated with either party, had made their mark on the prospects of the Yishuv and, given their significant economic capacity, made themselves invaluable to the Board of Governors.

In addition to providing detailed analysis of Felix Warburg’s contributions to the Hebrew

University project in the school’s early years, this dissertation will analyze how the infighting among high-ranking members of the Hebrew University’s administration reflected a broader disagreement within organized Jewry about the purpose of the Yishuv. This discord took many forms: there were arguments about whether the University was sufficiently Zionist in character

15 Magnes to Ginzberg, April 22, 1926 (HU 6 10/I)

12 or, from the other side, whether it had ventured too far down a Zionist ideological path. There was a constant tension between American Jews and those based in Europe; this stemmed partially from economic power and partially because the American Jewish experience had been so fundamentally different from the millennia of persecution European Jews had endured.

This dissertation will argue that Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University provides a microcosm of the debates and challenges that faced world Jewry in the decade before the Nazis came to power. Warburg, with roots both in Europe and the United States, is an ideal protagonist for the story of Zionist development. His relationships with a range of individuals meant that he corresponded with the major personages within Zionism and within non-aligned

Jewish organizations as well. Through these letters, and Warburg’s own words, we can see how these two competing groups shaped the University into the renowned, inclusive institution of today.

Felix Warburg’s experience with the Hebrew University project will be a lens through which to investigate questions of what role—if any—a university should play in supporting an explicitly nationalist aim. Through his interactions with eminent Jews from communities across the Western World, I will assess whether the idea of the university as a unifying force for the

Jewish nation was ever realized with the institution on Mount Scopus or if the rancor involved with the administration thereof further rent Jews into different camps. The first few years were so beset with ideological spats that this is still an open question, even given the manifest success of the University in the ninety-two years since it opened.

The Hebrew University, as a twenty-first-century institution, has truly earned its worldwide reputation. The dream of Weizmann and Martin Buber has been realized; the

University stands as the apogee of Jewish cultural nationalism and is where many young Israeli

13 men and women aspire to matriculate after their military service. It was able to reach this lofty position because of the hard work of men and women from across the world, who believed in different versions of Jewish life in Palestine, came from different backgrounds, and inevitably argued and disagreed with one another constantly, all in the service of the same goal. Felix

Warburg, a lesser-known but profoundly important protagonist in the saga of the Hebrew

University, helped mold the University and ensured that it would be a welcoming place for all students, regardless of Zionist identity, national origin, or background.

14 CHAPTER 1: SOURCES, METHODOLOGY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHY

Sources

Auspiciously, the vast majority of Felix Warburg’s papers from the period in question reside in the American Jewish Archives in Cincinnati, OH. These contain his voluminous correspondence with the other leading players in the Hebrew University project, including such luminaries as Weizmann, Magnes, and Louis Marshall. Through these letters and other documents, I have been able to paint a portrait of Warburg’s increasing involvement with the

Hebrew University, with worldwide Zionist operations, and eventually with the enlarged Jewish

Agency that functioned as the de facto government of the Yishuv.

Additionally, a thorough investigation of Warburg’s writing presents a perfect window into his personality. Though other scholars have been quick to describe Warburg’s extroverted and jovial nature, the language that he used in writing with close friends and associates deepens that picture substantially.16 Despite English being his second language, Warburg possessed an exceptionally evocative writing style in the language, often using humorous innuendo or figures of speech to lead his addressee to his point. Warburg continued to correspond with family members, most notably his Hamburg-based brother Max, in German. Warburg’s skill in correspondence comes into play when attempting to color portrayals of his interactions with close friends, as in these letters the typically politic Warburg loosened his tongue and released the vitriol he hid out of necessity during various Board meetings.

Another major trove of documents on which this analysis is based came from the archives of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. This archive contains official papers relating to the

16 In particular, of course, is ’s work on the entire .

15 Board of Governors, fundraising, and, crucially, the origins of the American Friends of the

Hebrew University. These papers allowed me to gain critical context for the hard work that

Warburg was doing. While they provided less of an insight into Warburg’s perspective or mindset specifically, the resources at this archive allowed for crucial understanding of the profound logistical effort that it took to build a university campus on Mount Scopus from scratch. Many secondary sources gloss over the day-to-day exertions that this undertaking required, and thus this archive provided much-needed additional information.

At the Central Zionist Archives, also in Jerusalem, I found reams of files relating to the

World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, and how the Hebrew University fit in with these massive bureaucracies. This information helped me understand the incredible breadth of efforts that Zionists had underway in Palestine, of which the Hebrew University was but a relatively small part. Not all of these undertakings came to fruition with nearly the level of success of the

University, but nonetheless my research at these Archives provided me with another way of adding context to my narrative of Warburg.

Fortuitously, many of the individuals who play significant roles in the development of the

Hebrew University attained such an elevated stature in life that their papers were collected, bound, and published. In particular, the writings of Magnes and Weizmann, which I was able to access without archival travel, deepened my knowledge about their respective relationships with

Felix Warburg. With Weizmann especially, the ability to see his responses to Warburg and the somewhat wistful tone of their final letters, exchanged near the end of Warburg’s life, depict two men who had fought many battles but still retained a grudging respect for one another.

I based my analysis in this dissertation largely on the letters and correspondence that I was able to find in my archival work, using secondary sources to add color and, crucially,

16 context to the narrative. While the majority of the documents I consulted either come from or were sent to Felix Warburg, a good number solely referred either to other individuals, building projects, or other tangentially-related topics. Very little of the archival work provided sufficient details to cover the broader geopolitical context, the history of the relationship between the various factions of American Jewish leaders, or other topics allowing this dissertation to be situated within the broader literature about Mandate-era Palestine. In many ways, much of the narrative that follows takes the appearance of a limited biography of this time period in Felix

Warburg’s life. On some level, this is certainly accurate, but rather than merely following the activities of one man, with little to no outside context to help understand whether or not these events occurred in a vacuum, I endeavored to bring in outside secondary sources that fill in the gaps in a narrative that would otherwise appear one-dimensional.

Methodology

This dissertation also assesses the successes and failures of the group of individuals who considered themselves to be non-Zionists through the lens of a partial biography of Felix

Warburg. While the scope of this dissertation did not allow for or require a full treatment of

Warburg’s life, the analytical tools I used came from this genre of historical writing. This necessitated an understanding of biographical methodology in order to balance the twin goals of developing a more nuanced analysis of the early years of the Hebrew University and depicting one particular individual’s development from a philanthropist to a bona fide leader in his own right.

Unlike many other forms of historical writing, biography virtually necessitates a chronological narrative and, while that certainly helps in organization, it also means that there

17 has to be a much greater focus on a single, long-form narrative thread holding the analysis together. I am indebted in this regard to the work of several biographers, and especially to Robert

Caro, whose multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson has provided a welcome template for how to address a narrow portion of an individual’s life.17 For a much deeper dive into a relatively short period. While this approach has limits—missing some larger context, for example—it allows A number of other “popular”—though well-cited and exhaustively- researched—biographies provided stylistic and methodological inspiration, most notably the works of Ron Chernow and David McCullough.18

An interesting, if unexpected, source of guidance came from the introductions to the various volumes of the bound editions of Chaim Weizmann’s papers. Since these documents are arranged chronologically, the essays that precede each different volume address Weizmann’s life and his activities during a relatively short period of time. In addition to providing valuable information, the style in which the different scholars wrote about the discrete time periods helped me coalesce the way in which I wanted to address the potential pitfalls of jumping into an individual’s life-in-progress.

This dissertation does not solely reflect a biographical methodology, however. I am indebted to previous scholars of international Jewish life for demonstrating how to write a transnational Jewish history that underscores the dramatically different circumstances in which worldwide Jewry found itself in the early 20th century. In particular, Michael Meyer’s book

17 See Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Path to Power; The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent; The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate; The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power. In addition, his contributions to William Knowlton Zissner (ed.), Extraordinary Lives: The Art and Craft of American Biography were particularly helpful. 18 Chernow’s The Warburgs has been referenced extensively throughout this dissertation, but his Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Titan offer valuable insight into how to craft a lengthy narrative about a topic with which people might have a cursory familiarity, but which in reality offer a much greater opportunity for analysis of an entire region, movement, or epoch. McCullough’s Truman remains one of the works that had the greatest impact on me and my interest in biography as a historical methodology.

18 about the development of Reform Judaism does an excellent job of presenting a clear narrative while allowing for lengthy digressions to explain the situations in different countries.19 David

Myers’ Re-Inventing the Jewish Past, about which I write more significantly below, offers a similar template for tracing the development of an idea and then analyzing its impact from a variety of different geographical perspectives.

In writing a history of Felix Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University, it was necessary to merge these styles in such a way that two, parallel storylines remained constant throughout: a more limited, personal history of Warburg’s activities, and the broader development of the Hebrew University within the context of the British Mandate. I took from the biographical methodology the technique of arriving at broader conclusions through an in-depth look at one individual, allowing me to consistently place Warburg at the center of events much larger than himself. From the transnational histories of 19th and 20th century Judaism, I learned how to better construct a narrative that encompasses the much broader geopolitics without being overwhelmed by them. This dissertation reflects a combination of both methodological approaches.

Historiography

In this dissertation, I will challenge several entrenched notions prevalent in the historiography of the Yishuv. I will address the ways in which the literature has treated the development of the Hebrew University, focusing on the ways in which the Zionist Organization has routinely seemed like an impenetrable force, achieving its goals in Palestine by sheer good intentions. In reality the experience of the Zionists, especially in the early years of the

19 Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity: A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

19 University, was much more tempered by the wills of other, non-aligned groups who have faded somewhat from the literature. As a result of many non-Zionist leaders failing to receive their historical due, the narrative surrounding the Hebrew University has been incomplete.

I will also address the multifaceted literature about education in Palestine in general. This topic has appeared in the works of scholars from a tremendous breadth of historical disciplines, from Ottoman History to historians of nationalism, from researchers in Western European political history to those who focus on the changing nature of Judaism. I will situate the discussion of the Hebrew University’s place within contemporary Israel in the broader context of the literature about higher education in Israel more broadly. Though the Hebrew University was the first university to open its doors in Palestine, it was most certainly not the last, and this begs questions of why this brainchild of Chaim Weizmann is different from the others.

This dissertation will engage with and augment the extant historiography about the

Hebrew University itself and, more broadly, the purpose of universities in supporting nationalist movements worldwide. In particular, the discussion of geography’s role in developing different conceptions of Judaism as well as the role of Zionism owes much to the work of David N.

Myers. His Re-Inventing the Jewish Past provides an ample methodological and theoretical framework for understanding why Jews from Western Europe and Germany viewed Zionism with more skepticism than did Jews from Eastern Europe.20 Myers’ model, on which I base much of my analysis not only of the geographic differences within organized Judaism, is also my point of entry to analyze the Zionist vs. non-Zionist debate that forms the backbone of this dissertation.

As regards the historiography of the Hebrew University, the five-volume series edited by

Hagit Lavsky and published in Hebrew remains the sine qua non of scholarship on issues

20 David N. Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)

20 broadly relating to the University, from conception to today. This collection of essays is, undoubtedly, the most thorough investigation of the origins and formation of the University, though it is not only published work that attempts a history of that institution. The work of Eva

Telkes-Klein, who traces the early years of the University largely through the professors employed therein, also offers an interesting way of conceiving of the ideological development of the University.21 This dissertation will mimic this approach in a number of ways, but will focus less on the academic staff and almost exclusively on the administration, who made the early decisions about the University’s direction.

The Hebrew University has been the subject of more historical treatment than simply that collection alone. In 1939, the University itself put out a study of its first decade-and-a-half of existence.22 This book will be invaluable for the specific minutiae of university life, such as the names of the professors involved in teaching each course and other administrative details such as these. The short, five-page historical introduction does not cover any ground that other historians have not assessed more completely, but it is a nice overview. While acknowledging that any book published by the very institution about which it provides information must needs be biased to some extent, the bare facts that it offers outweigh the potential downsides of any bias.

The Hebrew University’s status as a flagship accomplishment of the Yishuv era, combined with its continued importance to Israel, makes studying its origins a unique entry to understanding how the differing political and religious viewpoints from the 1920’s and 1930’s led to the Israeli political culture of today. A university, by its very nature, reflects the society in which it exists and shines a light on what that society finds important. The discussions and

21 Eva Telkes-Klein, L’Université hébraïque de Jérusalem à travers ses acteurs: La première généeration des professeurs (1925-1948) (: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2004). 22 The Hebrew University Jerusalem: Its History and Development (Jerusalem: Haaretz Press, 1939).

21 compromises that the university’s Board of Governors had—and that went on behind the scenes in the correspondence between the members—help scholars understand the character of the

Yishuv and its relationship to the broader Jewish world.

This dissertation will draw heavily upon the existing literatures about the 20th-century

Jewish populations in the United States, Western Europe, and the Russian Empire as it metamorphosed into the Soviet Union. In her essay, regarding the development of American

Jewry into a body capable of flexing its religious and financial influence, Naomi Cohen’s work has been of particular importance. She discusses how American Jews adopted and adapted

Zionism to fit their unique set of circumstances. In American Jews and the Zionist Idea, for example, she writes of American Jews’ recognition that Zionism could increase the status of

Diaspora Jewry in their home countries.23 In this conversation, Cohen also interacts with the work of Arthur Goren, another leading scholar of American Jewish History who has written substantially about the increasing politicization of American Jews in the early-20th century.

My work adds to this historiography through an analysis of how Warburg, initially a largely apolitical individual, came to be a strident advocate the beliefs of his fellow non-

Zionists.24 Due to the unique climate in which American Jews existed, they could choose the degree to which they supported Zionism without relying on it as a potential escape valve.

Warburg’s conflict with eminent American Zionist leaders such as Stephen Wise, who himself had to battle the more pragmatic European Zionist leadership, will appear throughout this dissertation to contextualize the setting in which Warburg’s fundraising efforts succeeded.

This disagreement with Wise was dwarfed by the feud between Brandeis and Weizmann that threatened to derail the entire Zionist agenda. Brandeis, as a leading American Jew and

23 Naomi W. Cohen, American Jews and the Zionist Idea (New York; Ktav Publishing House, 1975), 12. 24 See discussion of the beliefs of non-Zionists in Chapter 3.

22 future Supreme Court Justice, represented a significant threat to Weizmann’s plans for a university based on a European Zionist hegemony. Ben Halpern, renowned scholar of Zionism, wrote A Clash of Heroes, which explains and contextualizes this disagreement.25 At its core, these two men shared a similar conception of Zionism and its role in Palestine, but they differed in the process that this upbuilding would require. Halpern describes Weizmann and his cohort as using more emotional appeals to secure funding and in decisions regarding appropriations, while the Brandeis group tended more toward hard facts and reason.26

The subject of Jewish education in Palestine has engendered a considerable amount of scholarly attention over the years. Undoubtedly David Myers’ work on the Institute of Jewish

Studies represents a historiographical high-water mark, but his book synthesizes the efforts of many previous historians. Joseph Bentwich, for example, wrote a 1965 monograph about Israeli education that includes lengthy, detailed chapters about education in the pre-independence period.27 He traces the origin of the Hebrew University back to 1882, and then to an idea Herzl proposed to the Sultan in 1901 and, though this may overstate the historicity of the University project, it does underscore that Weizmann, Buber, and Feiwel were building on an existing understanding that the future Jewish state would need educational, as well as cultural, religious, and practical, institutions.28

David Myers’ work, referenced above, builds upon Bentwich’s analysis and overlays a much more detailed explication of Jewish education in the Yishuv, its purpose, and the struggles that early Jewish education in Palestine faced. Most crucially, he lays out in detail the history of

25 Ben Halpern, A Clash of Heroes: Brandeis, Weizmann, and American Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). 26 Halpern, 237. 27 Joseph Bentwich, Education in Israel (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965). 28 Bentwich, Education in Israel, 26.

23 the Institute of Jewish Studies, which formed the cultural backbone of the Hebrew University and provided the University’s raison d’etre for those who believed that practical skill was the only version of knowledge necessary for the Jewish nation to survive.

A more modern analysis that connects the Mandate-period educational systems in

Palestine with its effects in modern-day Israel comes from the Hebrew Universitiy scholars

Barbara Okun and Dov Friendlander.29 In their description of Jewish education under the British

Mandate, funded by external sources and administered by the Jewish Agency, Okun and

Friedlander argue that this vastly superior system led to resentment and a lack of economic possibility for Palestinian Arabs that continues to today. This assertion can only lead one to the conclusion that the educational system set up by the Jewish Agency, including the Hebrew

University, played a direct, quantifiable role in determining the future success of the Jewish state.

It would be impossible to fully contextualize the Hebrew University without the previous scholarship about the early years of the Yishuv. Many historians from a wide breadth of historical methodologies have attempted to analyze the development of Jewish Palestine, a relatively short time period that nonetheless requires knowledge of the politics of both Ottoman and , as well as the economic conditions in which Jewish leaders sought to found the University.

Moshe Ma’oz has edited a volume specifically about Palestine during the Ottoman Period and, though much of the book’s span is of the time before large-scale Jewish settlement, a number of chapters therein are germane to this project.30 In particular, the essays by Kurt

29 Barbara S. Okun and Dov Friedlander, “Educational Stratification among Arabs and Jews in Israel: Historical Disadvantage, Discrimination, and Opportunity,” Population Studies 59, no. 2 (Jul., 2005), 165. 30 Moshe Ma’oz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1975).

24 Grunwald, Israel Kolatt, David Farhi, Jacob Hurewitz, and Alex Carmel are of substantial interest. Grunwald’s chapter assesses the Jewish schools founded by foreign organizations during the late Ottoman period, and thus goes into great detail about the actions of the Alliance and the

Hilfsverein.31 Grunwald traces the beginnings of philanthropic attention to the Jewish community in the Ottoman Empire to the Crimean War and its aftermath, in which Turkey “moved closer to the West, while the Eastern Question became a preoccupation of European diplomacy for decades to come.”32

This is a crucial point, which historians have too often glossed over: the European interest in the Jewish community of the Ottoman Empire did not exist in a vacuum. As Martin

Sicker writes, years of Ottoman neglect had made the Middle East ripe for exploitation from external forces, whether Arab—Egypt had a considerable interest in Palestine in the 19th century—or European.33 The Great Powers wanted to exert influence in Palestine, partially as a way of gaining a foothold in the Ottoman Empire which, by this point, was already likely to collapse sooner or later. Grunwald’s essay here dovetails nicely with one by Mordechai Eliav. In his essay, Eliav pulls no punches, writing that Germany was “striving to strengthen her position in Palestine [and] viewed the Jewish community as a faithful support for her policy of increasing the Germanization of Palestine.”34 German-Jewish organizations such as the Hilfsverein helped in this regard, which set up an inevitable conflict with the other major European powers that had interests in the Middle East.

31 Kurt Grunwald, “Jewish Schools Under Foreign Flags in Ottoman Palestine,” in Moshe Ma’oz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1975), 164-174. 32 Ibid., 165. 33 Martin Sicker, Reshaping Palestine: From Muhammad Ali to the British Mandate, 1831-1922, 3. 34 Mordechai Eliav, “German Interests and the Jewish Community in Ninetenth-Century Palestine,” in Moshe Ma’oz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1975), 423-441.

25 While the organized Jewish community in Germany played a comparatively small role in the development of the Hebrew University, the literature about groups such as the Hilfsverein helps underscore that Zionist meetings were not the only way in which Jews around the world sought to affect life in the Yishuv. The Hilfsverein had considerable success in developing the early educational system in Palestine, molding it in the shape of Germany’s system, and the

Technion remains today one of the leading institutes of technical education in the world. This literature provides much-needed context for the conditions in which European Zionists focused on the Yishuv and building the university.

There is a substantial historiography of Great Britain’s relationship with the Middle East, and with Palestine in general. William Roger Louis, the eminent historian, wrote extensive political and histories of British Middle East forays, of which his The British Empire in the

Middle East is the most pertinent, despite the majority of the text focusing on a slightly later time period within the Mandate.35 Louis’ work set the standard, but in the three decades since its publication its methodology has become slightly dated in its reliance on political and top-down history; this does not diminish the overall value of the book, but rather points to the need to draw on other sources in addition.

In a recent overview of the expansion of the British Empire since the Glorious

Revolution, Susan Kingsley Kent writes that with the outset of World War I, Great Britain saw

“the demolition of the Ottoman Empire as an opportunity to grab up real estate they had long desired to control.”36 This, of course, led to the 1917 and the ensuing

35 William R. Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945-1951: Arab Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). It is also important to note here that Professor Louis, in his capacity as editor-in-chief of the Oxford History of the British Empire, has included articles on the Palestine Mandate in that edited volume. 36 Susan Kingsley Kent, A New History of Britain Since 1688: Four Nations and an Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 349.

26 century of discord. While Kent’s description of British intentions in Palestine during this period do not differ meaningfully from those of previous scholarship, the bluntness with which she explains that Great Britain never intended to uphold their conflicting promises to the myriad of

Middle Eastern nations goes some distance to moving the literature towards a more damning portrait of British imperial duplicity as a direct cause of continued tension.

Given that Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University occurred entirely during the period of British mandatory control of Palestine, Kent’s work and those with which she grapples are of considerable importance for understanding the geopolitical context. Ronald

Sanders published a magisterial history of British involvement in Palestine during World War I, with a relatively brief coda about the Mandate years themselves.37 Sanders’ book asserts what

A.J. Sherman, writing a decade-and-a-half later, would reinforce: the British had designs on

Palestine and the Middle East from well before the outset of World War I. The Balfour

Declaration was merely a natural outgrowth of this interest, despite the profound important role this document would later come to play.

James Gelvin, in his book that traces the history of the Modern Middle East, situates the

Zionist-Arab—and later Israeli-Palestinian—conflict within the context of the mandate, arguing that because Zionists accepted the terms of the mandate and developed institutions designed to take advantage of the mandate’s rules, the Yishuv flourished.38 The Arab populations, which

“accepted neither the Balfour Declaration nor the British mandate” did not do so, which led to the vast disparity in organization between the two communities. This analysis helps underscore

37 Ronald Sanders, The High Walls of Jerusalem: A History of the Balfour Declaration and the Birth of the British Mandate for Palestine (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983). See also A.J. Sherman, Mandate Days: British Lives in Palestine, 1918-1948 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 15.; Hadara Lazar, Six Singular Figures: Understanding the Conflict, Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, trans. Sondra Silverston (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 2015). 38 James Gelvin, The Modern Middle East: A History (3rd ed.) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 221.

27 the issues that led to the riots in 1929 and the precipitous changes in the Yishuv that these disturbances wrought.

Throughout this dissertation, the narrative will continue to refer to external events that affected the fundraising and administrative capabilities of the University leadership. The most notable of these was the White Paper issued in 1929 that so enraged the Jewish Agency that

Warburg and Weizmann resigned in protest, but even in light of the considerable autonomy granted to the Yishuv leadership, development plans constantly butted up against the needs of the British, creating an untenable friction.

The major contribution of this dissertation to the historiography stems from Warburg’s unique position as an American Jewish leader who did not identify with Zionism, as a proponent of Jewish education who took his own Judaism with a grain of salt, and as a naturalized

American who never entirely distanced himself from his German roots. This intersectionality, rooted in one individual, allows entrée into a breadth of literatures that too often remain divorced from one another. It is impossible to fully understand the history of Mandatory Palestine and the development of the Yishuv without a simultaneous assessment of the role that American Jewry played in this progress. Likewise Warburg’s involvement with Jewish organizations from across the spectrum of Jewish observance requires analysis of how these different strands of Judaism developed in the United States, the aspects of life in which they functioned monolithically, and in which there was significant disagreement. This dissertation will address the broad range of topics with which the fascinating life of Felix Warburg intersected. In doing so, it will not only provide a well-deserved historical account of the work of a lesser-known Jewish leader, but it will use the personage of Felix Warburg to help draw connections between these disparate fields of Jewish history.

28 CHAPTER 2: WARBURG BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY

Felix Warburg lived a charmed life. He was born into a prominent Hamburg banking family. He and his brothers—all five of whom achieved a significant level of success—were raised as Orthodox Jews, though all would become more religiously liberal as they aged. Jewish ethical values, indoctrinated within him from an early age, would come to define Felix’s future.

Though he did not personally adhere to the myriad requirements of strict observance, he never lost the sense of Jewishness that had been instilled in him through routine, repetition, and familial responsibility from a very young age.

Warburg grew up with his family in Hamburg, a port city whose increasing economic prominence Ron Chernow describes as being tied up with the rise of Kaiser Wilhelm II near the end of the 19th century.39 The five Warburg boys of Felix’ generation—Aby, Max, Paul, Felix, and Fritz—were raised alongside their sisters Olga and Louise in a setting of luxury. Their father, Moritz was a rich banker, though the major influence on the Warburgs’ adult characters growing up was Charlotte, their mother. She stridently pushed her children to achieve as much as they possibly could, inadvertently creating sons with “lively but driven” personalities, always itching to achieve as much as possible. In this regard, there is no doubt that Charlotte’s mothering was an unqualified success.

In Hamburg, the Warburgs belonged to the wealthy Jewish caste that continued to follow the outward forms of observant Judaism without necessarily internalizing the religious beliefs.

Moritz was the most ritually observant member of the family of his generation regarding the day- to-day practice of Judaism, ensuring that his wife and their staff kept a Kosher home and

39 Chernow, The Warburgs, 35.

29 attending services on Shabbat. His children, including Felix, relished the social component of practicing Judaism and the standing they enjoyed within the Jewish banking class. This sense of a cultural rather than religious Judaism would permeate the lives of all five Warburg brothers and would certainly inform Felix’ participation in Jewish relief efforts around World War I and with the Hebrew University project during the next decade.

An anecdote about Felix’s lack of stringent Jewish practice as a child is particularly illustrative, as it foreshadows the type of Jew into which he would grow. As a child, Charlotte’s father would come from to join his daughter and grandchildren in Hamburg, lead

Shabbat prayers, and later take the children for sausages.40 Likewise, as an adult, Felix felt no compunction about participating in Jewish ritual while simultaneously resisting serious observance of halakha and embracing secular life in the United States. Warburg did not see these two courses of behavior as in any way mutually exclusive; rather, he believed that to fully acculturate to New York, he had to slough off what he perceived as the onerous restrictions that

Jewish law placed on his life. A major component of this initiative would be following in a path set for him by his mother.

Charlotte, as part of her effort to raise children who could achieve at the highest level in life, insisted that her sons take seriously their educational endeavors.41 While Felix himself was, at best, an apathetic student, Felix’s brothers were much more academically-minded. Paul, who like Felix and Max was introduced to banking as a young man, took a more intellectual approach to the discipline and has been credited in the United States with conceiving of the Federal

Reserve System after his move across the Atlantic. Max took to the practical art of banking with

40 Chernow, The Warburgs, 28. Though Chernow does not provide this explicit clarification, we can reasonably assume that these were pork sausages, not chicken or turkey. 41 The Warburg sisters also received a measure of education, but the gender norms of the period did not require them to attend school to the same level.

30 much more skill than did Felix, and he remained in Hamburg throughout his life to steer the family business through the turbulent early-20th century. He would become a crucial connection between the United States-based Warburgs and those who still lived in a Germany with which the Americans were fighting a war. Though the fallout from World War I and the Versailles

Treaty, wedded to the rise of fascism and Nazism in the late-1920’s, had an inevitable negative impact on the relationship between American and German banking houses, the Warburgs never allowed geopolitical circumstances to sever their ties altogether.

Of the five Warburg brothers, the eldest, Aby, achieved the most acclaim. He eschewed the financial life that attracted his brothers, devoting himself instead to academia. As a result,

Aby was perpetually reliant on his brothers for financial assistance. Ron Chernow relates that in a picture of the five brothers taken a few months before Aby’s untimely death, Aby adopted a pose that reflected both his position vis a vis his siblings as well as the fact that his “ceaseless demands had always carried a tacit criticism of their business lives.”42 Regardless of the heights to which Felix, Fritz, Max, or Paul climbed, Aby felt that his pursuits reflected a higher calling.

It is clear that Felix felt none of Aby’s compunctions about a life in international finance.

Having moved from Hamburg to New York City in 1894, Felix was able to use his familial connections to embed himself within the Wall Street banking community. During this same period, Warburg married Frieda Schiff, whose father, Jacob Schiff, was very well-connected in

Jewish circles, and dutifully provided introductions for Felix. Through his marriage, Warburg was offered a high-ranking position within the eminent banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, where he began a career noted more for his extracurricular work than his aptitude for banking.43 The

42 Chernow, The Warburgs, 286. 43 Chernow, The Warburgs, 163. Chernow writes of Warburg that while Warburg said he spent 75% of his day on charity, and 25% on banking, this was “surely overstating the banking portion.”

31 merger-by-marriage of the banking firms of M.M. Warburg and Kuhn, Loeb & Co. “conferred on the Hamburg firm uniquely important standing within the German banking fraternity.”44 In this regard, he paled considerably when compared with the notable financial prowess of his brothers Paul and Max, as well as his cousin Siegmund, who was soon to rise to prominence in the United Kingdom.45 He had neither the interest nor the inclination to devote himself fully to his career, and as time progressed he spent at least as much time on his philanthropic pursuits as he did in his office at Kuhn, Loeb.

Felix, always the most jovial and easygoing of the Warburg siblings, nevertheless contained within him a considerable strain of seriousness, especially when addressing matters urgent to Jewish communities worldwide. A World War I-era profile of Warburg referred to his eyes “sparkling with fire, as he complained of the neglect of the American Jewish community toward the sufferings of our unfortunate brethren across the ocean.”46 Whereas he might have neglected his more prosaic banking duties, there was no doubt of his devotion to helping

European Jews who were negatively affected by the Great War.

In the years leading up to World War I, Warburg led the privileged life of a wealthy banker on the East Side of Manhattan. He was always immensely proud of the home he had had built at 1109 Fifth Avenue—which his widow would bequeath to the founders of the Jewish

Museum, now occupying the space—and once admonished his architect that recent changes had

“been made in the most clumsy fashion” he would less walk around the city than strut.47 Fond of

44 E. Rosenbaum and A.J. Sherman, M.M. Warburg & Co., 1708-1938: Merchant Bankers of Hamburg (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1979), 94. 45 Niall Ferguson’s book on the incredible life of Siegmund Warburg, High Financier, provides a fascinating look at another path that German-Jewish bankers could have taken during the 20th century. 46 “Felix M. Warburg Begins Another Campaign to Collect Another Sum of Five Million Dollars for the War Sufferers,” N. Zelowitz, American Jewish Archives, 168/7. 47 Warburg to Mr. Gilbert, 12/21/1916, AJA 168/17.

32 flashy suits and living like his American acquaintances, Warburg cut a striking and memorable figure.

By the time Felix Warburg first became involved with the Hebrew University, he had a long track record of philanthropy within the New York Jewish community. He was particularly noted for his support of organizations that supported the education of new immigrants to the

United States. Despite his elevated social status and laissez-faire approach to Jewish ritual observance, Warburg’s identity as an immigrant positioned him to understand the difficulties that new arrivals faced. He became a patron of the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, which sought to provide educational and community resources to those Eastern European Jews who had settled in Brooklyn, as well as the similar Educational Alliance, which was situated in Lower

Manhattan.48

Warburg’s growing need to assist his fellow Jews follows from a Western European, largely French, idea that developed in the early-nineteenth century. French Jews felt called to unite Jews worldwide, which in turn changed the notion of what it meant to be considered

Jewish.49 Post-Napoleonic France, in which Jews had by and large been granted full citizenship, has distinct similarities with early-twentieth century America. Warburg’s early life in Germany and subsequent emigration to the United States would have only reinforced this idea that Jews, regardless of background or denomination, needed to help other Jews whenever possible.

Derek Penslar’s work on the relationship between European Jews and philanthropy also acknowledges this Western European intellectual construct that those Jews who had, against long odds, managed to achieve a measure of economic success owed it to their religious brethren to

48 Daniel Soyer, “Brownstones and Brownsville: Elite Philanthropists and Immigrant Constituents at the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, 1899-1929,” American Jewish History 88, No. 2 (June 2000), pp. 181-207. 49 Lisa Moses Leff, Sacred Bonds of Solidarity: The Rise of Jewish Internationalism in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 236.

33 provide assistance wherever possible.50 Mostly he refers here to those Jews who struggled within the Russian Empire, but as geopolitical conditions changed and more of the European Jewish population emigrated to the United States and the Ottoman Empire, the specific needs of these groups demanded different actions. Aron Rodrigue argues that the formation of the Alliance

Israélite Universelle in nineteenth-century France and its work establishing cultural and educational institutions in the Ottoman Empire, came from this impulse.51

Likewise, Warburg’s work with these organizations seems to have come from a place of true belief in the responsibility of more fortunate Jews to help their struggling brethren, as he routinely put his reputation on the line to find funding or other material support. In 1911,

Warburg personally subsidized the “La America” newspaper, which newly-arrived “Spañol

Jews” used to communicate within their community in New York City.52 He was invested in the dual purpose of helping the immigrants acculturate in the United States and ensuring that they did not forsake their Judaism upon arriving in such a secular country. To him, helping these immigrants maintain a Jewish identity outstripped any need for adherence to one denomination over another.53

As World War I continued and the scope of the catastrophe facing Eastern European Jews became better known in the United States, Felix Warburg began to take more substantive action.

In letters to Louis Marshall, Warburg’s friend and a non-Zionist, Warburg lay out that the JDC

50 Derek J. Penslar, Shylock’s Children: and Jewish Identity in Modern Europe (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 101. 51 Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990), 52 Minutes of the Board of Directors of the Educational Alliance, November 13, 1911 (AJA, Warburg Papers, 160/17) 53 As Soyer notes, this became a problem within the Educational Society. The benefactors tended to promote more liberal forms of Judaism, but the Eastern Europeans who benefited from the programs came from Orthodox backgrounds. It is not hard to see how this dichotomy—between Western and Eastern Europe—presages the impending conflict between the Zionists and non-Zionists over the direction of the Hebrew University. Soyer, “Brownstones and Brownsville,” 183.

34 had been able to raise $12 million in 1918, of which $3 million went to Russia and $1 million was allocated for the Palestinian project.54 Given Warburg’s leadership role in the JDC, his possessing such a detailed accounting comes as no surprise, but the disbursement of funds begins to tell a different story.

Derek Penslar writes that the Joint was structured in such a way that “policy was made and most of the funds were provided by a narrowly circumscribed community of plutocrats…” that included Felix Warburg.55 In this case, as in much of politics, those with the most money were able to wield the most influence. Though Penslar points out that most of the administrative tasks were designated to “technocrats like Bernard Kahn,” one can infer that Warburg brought the lessons in the power of money to his work with the Hebrew University.56 It is interesting to note that Penslar draws an explicit distinction between organizations such as the Joint and its

European counterpart, the Jewish Colonization Association, which operated in this oligarchic and plutocratic fashion, and the somewhat more egalitarian Zionist Organization. Perhaps this difference in management styles explains some of the discord that existed on the Hebrew

University’s Board of Governors.

Given the situation in Eastern Europe, as well as Warburg’s manifest interest in alleviating the suffering of his Jewish brethren, it seems unusual that the relatively placid territory of Palestine should receive this amount of money. In fact, Warburg’s associates expressed similar confusion about this use of money. Louis Marshall wondered whether the JDC was overstepping its bounds in a way that would provoke the Zionist Organization, exacerbating the internecine warfare between groups that would prove detrimental to all parties.57 Given the

54 Warburg to Marshall, 1918 (AJA, 179/8). 55 Penslar, Shylock’s Children, 228. 56 Ibid., 227. 57 Marshall to Warburg, 10/23/1918 (AJA 179/8).

35 dire circumstances, that Jewish leaders could not agree on budget priorities did not bode well for the future, in which these decisions would have less dramatic consequences.

Warburg, never the most academically-inclined of his siblings, was often thought something of a dilettante, immersing himself neither in the minutiae of banking nor of the organizations to which he generously gave of his money. He considered himself proud to be an

American—he was naturalized in 1900—and sought to project an image of American success rather than a more stereotypically German austerity. In this respect Warburg, like many Jewish immigrants from Western Europe, did not want to support Zionism too ardently, for fear of appearing un-American.58

As the years passed after World War I and the need for immediate relief of the Eastern

European Jewish populations diminished, Felix’s philanthropic interests began to broaden once again. His attention had, for some years, by necessity been dominated by his position within the

Joint Distribution Committee. The collapse of the Russian Empire and the Russian Civil War, leading to the subsequent rise of the Soviet Union, had wrought disaster among the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe, and these individuals required all the assistance that the world could possibly provide. During this time, any of Warburg’s thoughts of Jewish education revolved around rebuilding ruined institutions in Eastern Europe or bolstering immigrant communities within the United States. He constantly fielded calls to contribute to this or that cause, typically agreeing and sending the requested amount.

This is certainly not to assert that Warburg’s work with the Joint was apolitical. Relief efforts, and especially those occurring within such a challenging geopolitical context, by its very nature implies some level of political interaction. As Steven Zipperstein has pointed out, the

58 Rafael Medoff, “Felix Warburg and the Palestinian Arabs: A Reassessment,” American Jewish Archives Journal 54, no. 1 (2002): 13.

36 work that the Jewish communities in the collapsing Russian Empire required “was a social reconstruction of a sort more ambitious and urgent that could ever have been predicted before.”59

The entire fabric of Russian Jewish society—which based its response to modernity largely on its relationship to the tsar—had fallen away. The Soviet Union expressed a profound anti-Zionism that, as Jonathan Frankel writes, served “as the primary euphemism for governmental

Judeophobia, making it possible in extreme cases for the Soviet media to reproduce the most violent attacks on Jewry…”60 Russian Jews thus found themselves at an inflection point. While many remained, either forsaking Judaism or adapting to Soviet conditions, a large number chose as a more palatable alternative.

Yuri Slezkine elaborates on the plight of Jewish Russians after the Soviet Revolution. He expounds on the paradox that even though many of the leading Bolshevik revolutionaries were

Jewish and even bore obviously Jewish names, their complicity in the terror perpetrated by Lenin actually increased the already-elevated public .61 This only exacerbated the anti-

Semitism wrought by the Civil War and led directly to many Jews’ needing to emigrate in order to seek more stability. Many followed in the footsteps of the previous generation and fled to the

United States, setting up enclaves of Russian immigrants in places such as the of New York City, while comparatively fewer chose Palestine as the natural site of their emigration.

Those Russian Jews that came to the United States did so with the expectation othat

America’s perceived freedom would bring them economic success and allow them to practice

59 Steven J. Zipperstein, “The Politics of Relief: The Transformation of Russian Jewish Communal Life During the First World War,” in Jonathan Frankel (ed.), Studies in Contemporary Jewry, An Annual IV: The Jews and the European Crisis, 1914-21 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 25. 60 Jonathan Frankel, The Soviet Regime and Anti-Zionism: An Analysis (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Soviet and East European Research Centre, May 1984), 2. 61 Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 127.

37 their Judaism freely. They did not count on the challenges they would face, nor on the profound divisions within even just the Jewish community in New York City. Certain organizations would provide aid to certain immigrant groups based on their religious affiliation, though by and large

Warburg avoided this petty denominational infighting as he and the groups he supported worked tirelessly to alleviate the crushing poverty many of these refugees faced on arriving in the United

States.

Many of these refugees sought to immerse themselves as quickly as possible into

American society. This drive to seem as acculturated as possible was certainly not unique to

Jewish immigrants from Western Europe during this period. America, and the immense possibilities that the country represented, brought forth this urge from the disparate groups arriving in America’s ports. For Warburg especially, the fighting between his adopted country and his homeland created an existential dilemma—as well as a literal separation from his

Hamburg-based family—that he struggled to reconcile during the war. As much as he had internalized American culture and considered himself a New Yorker, he could never quite distance himself from his German roots.

One area in which he had certainly changed, however, was in his religious practice.

Raised as an Orthodox Jew, he dispensed with many of the more onerous requirements of the religion. Part of this was due to a personal disdain for strict observance, though more importantly to Warburg as to many fellow Jewish immigrants, acculturating in the United States meant stripping away that which marked them as the “other.” The facility with which Western

European Jewish immigrants were able to do so led directly to the relatively low level of urgency they felt to support Zionism. American Jews, not having grown used to constant governmental persecution and the inescapable possibility that their rights would be revoked at a moment’s

38 notice, were understandably wary of the necessity of Zionism for themselves. Why should Jews need a new nation-state, especially one in such a geopolitically-fraught region as Palestine?

Couldn’t the Jews from Eastern Europe come to the United States, Great Britain, or Germany? It was not that American Jewry as a whole looked at Zionism disapprovingly, but rather with significant questions about its necessity.62

With the outbreak of World War I, Warburg’s life became considerably more complicated and his philanthropic efforts more urgent. Warburg’s German birth instilled in him an affinity for the country that could not be extinguished merely by choosing to reside elsewhere.63 However, as a naturalized American, he sympathized more thoroughly with the cause of the Western democracies opposing Germany. In some ways, his efforts on behalf of the struggling European Jewish population were an attempt to negotiate these dichotomous emotions by dedicating himself to the cause of European Jewry, which was caught in the middle of the war and was suffering mightily.

According to Stuart Knee, the origins of what developed into the perspective of the non-

Zionists stemmed from the leadership of the American Jewish Committee in the years before

World War I.64 The organization operated initially quite well within the broader context of

Jewish communal life, largely because Zionism existed then merely as an idea; Palestine was still part of the Ottoman Empire and the titanic shifts of World War I had not yet occurred. With

Sykes-Picot, the Balfour Declaration, and the beginning of the British Mandate, Zionists saw and

62 Nor, it should be noted, was there any body encompassing American Jewry as an organized whole. Much like broader American society, Jews adhered to a vast spectrum of belief, both about the utility of Zionism and all other religious concerns as well. 63 Chernow, The Warburgs, 182. 64 Stuart E. Knee, “Jewish Non-Zionism in America and Palestine Commitment, 1917-1941,” Jewish Social Studies 39, no. 3 (Summer, 1977), 210.

39 exploited a political opening, which in turn led to ideological warfare with non- and anti-

Zionists, including Warburg.

While certainly aware of the Zionist project in Palestine, Felix did not make Palestinian philanthropy his main focus by any means.65 One might describe his point of view regarding

Palestine as most akin to Louis Marshall’s: sympathy for the cause, but recognizing that many more pressing issues faced Jewish communities around the world. Judah Magnes, who by this time was more intimately involved with matters in Palestine, wrote to Warburg in 1914 of his difficulties in dealing with the Zionist leadership. Magnes, still more than a decade before assuming the Chancellorship of the Hebrew University, already referred to the infighting among leaders as akin to “sitting on a powder barrel.”66 Magnes’ lukewarm support for the Zionist leadership, combined with Warburg’s preexisting skepticism about Zionism generally, did not help push Warburg towards Palestinian issues.

After the war, in light of the emboldening effect that the Balfour Declaration had on the

Zionist leadership, the scope of the development of the Yishuv picked up pace dramatically.

Successive waves of Jewish immigration (aliyot) had swelled the Jewish population in Palestine, leading to the necessity for more advanced infrastructure. Entrepreneurs worldwide saw the nascent Yishuv economy as a potential new market, and the labor socialism brought to Palestine by the Eastern European immigrants that led to the rise of kibbutzim and moshavot would not become the dominant economic paradigm in Palestine until the end of the decade.67

Politically, the Zionism of Chaim Weizmann and his cohort dominated the decision- making process in the Yishuv, which irked Weizmann’s ideological rivals. From 1919, when

65 Medoff, “Felix Warburg and the Palestinian Arabs: A Reassessment,” 12. 66 Magnes to Warburg, July 9, 1914 (AJA, 166/9). 67 Jacob Metzer, “Economic Structure and National Goals—The Jewish National Home in Interwar Palestine,” The Journal of Economic History 31, no. 1 (Mar., 1978), 102.

40 Weizmann and Louis Brandeis engaged in a ruthless battle for control of the Zionist movement, many of the American Jewish leaders had allowed Weizmann nearly free reign regarding developments in Palestine.68 At the time, this split between American and European Zionists reflected the notion that American leaders took a more philanthropic view of assisting the

Yishuv, whereas for Weizmann, et al., it was a full-time occupation.69 As such, and despite

Brandeis’ victory, Weizmann became the hegemon within the Yishuv leadership.

Perhaps this victory of Weizmann’s was due, among other reasons, to Brandeis’ penchant for conflating Zionism and Americanism in a way that would have been off-putting to the non-

Americans within the Zionist Organization.70 The fundamental urgency of European Zionism, as exemplified by the existential crisis threatening a wide swath of the Jewish population, was felt much less deeply in the United States, and thus Brandeis’ approach was unlikely to endear himself to those Zionists who had personally suffered.71 Likewise, the fragmented nature of the

American Jewish leadership in this immediate post-war period gave Weizmann an opening to seize firm control of the Zionist Organization.

Among Weizmann’s rivals, there were Jewish leaders who considered themselves to be anti-Zionists, opposing even the notion of large-scale Jewish development in Palestine. These tended to be either religious leaders who saw the development of a secular nation-state as blasphemous or more acculturated Jews originally from Western Europe who saw a Jewish nation-state not as offensive but rather as unnecessary given the many other potential emigration

68 Jehuda Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 312. Though Brandeis actually won a 5-4 decision that supported the American view of Palestinian development, American leaders adopted a more hands-off approach to the issue that allowed Weizmann a nearly free hand to consolidate Zionist power. 69 Reinharz, Weizmann, 310. 70 Jeffrey Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 158. 71 As Rosen points out, the State Department’s urging of President Wilson to disavow the Balfour Declaration did not raise the stature of the United States within the European Zionist community. Rosen, Louis D. Brandeis, 169.

41 destinations. The battle lines, still visible in modern-day Israeli political discourse within the debate over how deeply religious the country should be, had been drawn.

In this context, the Hebrew University project began in earnest. Despite being founded as an explicitly non-partisan institution—though its output would certainly benefit Zionist development—fights would soon break out regarding the direction of the academics and the composition of the academic administration.72 Even at this time, though Warburg remained peripheral to the events in Palestine, expressed his concerns about the influence of Zionism (and of the English language, for that matter) on the development of the Yishuv.73

More pertinently, Warburg was a proponent of the Technikum in (the precursor organization to the Technion) as fulfilling the limited needs for postsecondary education in

Palestine.74 Perhaps his support for that institution stemmed from his German heritage, perhaps from another impulse, but whatever the reason, it is clear that Felix Warburg was not an early advocate for a Jewish university in Jerusalem. He did not disdain the idea outright; the concept of promoting a Jewish cultural revival appealed to Warburg’s sense of a modern Judaism.

Rather, it seems that Warburg did not see the necessity of building a university in this still- developing territory, given the plethora of other needs. He saw the possibility that vocational training and education could similarly regenerate Jewish culture. Thus, while such a culturally- focused institution would be nice, it did not promise a full and immediate return on the investment, and thus could be pushed off until a later time.

However, Warburg’s attention between 1919 and 1922 continued to be drawn to issues that required a much more immediate response. Fundraising for the efforts to rebuild ruined

72 Ben-Israel, “Politikah al Har Ha-Tzofim,” 1. 73 Warburg to Paul Nathan, Jan. 16, 1920 (AJA, 185/1) 74 Ibid.

42 Eastern European communities came to the forefront of Warburg’s philanthropic efforts during this time. Interestingly, he paid a disproportionate amount of attention to the needs of Jewish university students who had been stranded academically by the profound geopolitical changes wrought by the end of World War I and the signing of the . In one particularly wrenching appeal, the Association of Jewish University Students of Austria reported being overrun with students fleeing Russia.75

During this time, Warburg belonged to greater than his fair share of organizations and associations devoted to the cause of ameliorating the situation of these unfortunate students, disadvantaged through no fault of their own. However, most of his philanthropic work in this regard came through the auspices of his chairmanship of the JDC, where he constantly fielded letters and inquiries regarding the JDC’s ability to help. So numerous were these requests that in

1920, he and the European director of the JDC came to an agreement that in order to make the best use of funds, only those students already receiving assistance would benefit from the Joint’s money in the future.76

A brief glance through the mountain of inquiries that Warburg received during this period presents a picture of a man whose interest in educational matters was evident even to strangers and distant acquaintances. As early as 1910, Warburg’s correspondence was full of educational organizations writing either to ask him for money or to thank him for a previous donation.

Magnes himself repeatedly requested that Warburg contribute to a fund designed to offset the travel costs of various European scholars.77 This trend continued through the years of World War

75 Letter, Association of Jewish University Students of Austria to Warburg (AJA 186/12). The AJUSA reported that 2,205 students had come from Poland, 802 from Romania, 76 from the Ukraine, among myriad others. 76 Dr. Julius Goldman to Warburg, July 12, 1920 (AJA 194/1). 77 Magnes to Warburg, April 28, 1911 (AJA 160/28)

43 I and, as noted above, these efforts increased in pace and vigor after Versailles and the Russian

Revolution.

What should observers make of the fact that Warburg clearly focused so much of his attention, even in these years before his direct involvement with the Hebrew University, on matters relating to Jewish education? It might be nothing, a mere serendipity that this particular confluence of events presaged his work in Palestine. On the other hand, when taken together with the many previous instances of his interest in developing Jewish education and assisting immigrants, a clear and obvious pattern emerges.

Felix Warburg, without a doubt, lent significant weight to the importance of education for

Jewish immigrants and Jews worldwide. Perhaps this impulse stemmed from Charlotte’s early influence on him, but whatever the origin, a fondness for educational causes marked Warburg’s philanthropy for decades. In addition to his laudable work on behalf of those men and women who recently arrived in the United States and needed immediate assistance in becoming acculturated to the United States, Warburg demonstrated a pattern of giving attention to matters of Jewish higher education. Correspondence with Cyrus Adler, an opponent of Zionism and

Jewish educator who served as Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York

City, from 1913 indicates that the two men had engaged in detailed, pessimistic discussions of the state of Jewish higher education in the United States. Adler wrote to Warburg that “here in the Eastern part of the United States, higher learning and secondary Jewish education are in the main divorced.”78 The implication of this thought is that in Adler’s belief—and we can assume in

Warburg’s as well—young Jewish men and women would be better served if the connection between Jewish secondary and post-secondary education were more robust.

78 Adler to Warburg, Feb. 19, 1913 (AJA, 163/3).

44 Through his work with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Warburg fought hard to raise money to support the Jewish populations of Central and Eastern Europe. By the time the United States entered the war, it had become obvious that the most pressing need for

Jewish aid was in the former Russian Empire, where the Jewish population was experiencing profound persecution and displacement. At the same time, there was a significant amount of

German and Austrian students who had graduated from high schools but were no longer welcome in universities in their home countries. After World War I, Warburg began fielding requests from European Jews asking for assistance in obtaining entrance into any school of higher education that would accept them. Most of these students came from the former Russian

Empire and found no open positions in universities in Central Europe.

In 1920, Warburg received urgent letters from the Association of Jewish University

Students of Austria, indicating that the country’s universities were unable to deal with the rapid influx of students fleeing Eastern Europe.79 Until this point, there is no indication in Warburg’s correspondence of any notable interest in higher education, other than ensuring that his children all attended college. From this point, however, Warburg would devote an increasingly large proportion of his time to pursuits related to higher education, the most considerable of which was his involvement with the Hebrew University.

The fortuitous set of circumstances that coalesced into organized Jewry’s opportunity to found a nation-state also provided the opening for Chaim Weizmann to put into action his plan to advance the Zionist cause by opening a Jewish university in Jerusalem. Despite the university being officially non-partisan, there remains no doubt that its ideological orientation leaned

79 One letter indicated that Austria had received 2,205 students from Poland, 802 from Romania, 76 from Ukraine, and many others from discrete Eastern European nations that had been absorbed into the Soviet Union. AJA, Warburg Papers, 186/12.

45 towards the beliefs of Weizmann and his cohort rather than any other group of leaders. While the post-opening fights within the academic administration remained in the future, Weizmann’s canny understanding of the political situation positioned the Zionists well to advance their cause.

Once Felix Warburg and the rest of the non-Zionists became involved, the stage was set for considerable discord.

46 CHAPTER 3: IDEOLOGY: FELIX WARBURG’S NON-ZIONIST VIEWS

Before rushing headlong into a lengthy exposition of the complicated nature of Felix

Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University, it will help to situate him along the spectrum of Zionist ideology and illuminate the battles that Warburg fought repeatedly in administrative meetings, through transatlantic correspondence, and personally with other well- known Jewish leaders, without a clear understanding of the basis for these disputes would make full comprehension challenging, if not completely impossible. These issues are too complex to try to pick up on the fly.

First, one must assess the character of American Judaism during Warburg’s life. The significant waves of immigration that had affected so many other aspects of American life in the late-nineteenth century—and of which Warburg was a part—likewise brought changes in

American Jews. In the United States, Reform Judaism had flourished. Beginning in Europe— especially in Germany—it eschewed strict adherence to halakha in favor of modernizing religious practice. This represented a more progressive approach to religion, in line with the acculturationist goals of many Jews in Central and Western Europe and the United States.

Understandably, this liberality put this population of Jews at odds with those immigrants from Eastern Europe, who had an entirely separate notion of modernity. For Eastern Europe as a whole, the dominant late-nineteenth century intellectual development was socialism, which coexisted uneasily with the that was most common among the Jewish population. This group was hard-pressed even to consider Reform Jews as Jews at all. The abrogation of a need to follow the tenets of halakha literally and fully represented to many Jews a complete break with the traditions of the religion. For many Orthodox Jews, both in Eastern

47 Europe and throughout the rest of the diaspora, Reform Jews were at best an entirely separate religion; at worst they were sacrilegious and traitors to their fellow Jews.

Without undertaking a complete explication of the development of Reform Judaism, it may be instructive for the purposes of this paper to consider the origins of the movement and perhaps attempt to understand why Jews from these regions began to gravitate to more liberal forms of the religion. In Michael Meyer’s magisterial history of Reform Judaism, he explains that scholars have traced the first conceptions of a need to modernize Judaism to the 17th century, though it took the advent of the Enlightenment for these ideas to begin to coalesce.80 After the death of Frederick the Great, in 1786, German Jews saw an opening to better their lot in life, which in turn necessitated reconceiving the meaning of Judaism.81 As this population’s new form of Judaism took hold, it eventually spread to other Western European nations, which as a result of the Enlightenment were also starting to offer Jews a form of emancipation, prompting a rush to acculturate secularly.

Reform Jews did not respond to the parallel development of Zionism in the same way that adherents of more stringent denominations of Judaism did. Naomi Cohen argues that since

Reform Judaism viewed America as a promised land, they feared that “Zionism would endanger their position as loyal Americans.”82 While this trait was prominent among American Jews, it reflects a trend that also existed in Western Europe: societal acceptance largely trumped strict religious observance.

It is important here to analyze some of the cultural and political differences between the areas where more liberal forms of Judaism (Reform and Conservative) thrived as opposed to

80 Michael A. Meyer, Response to Modernity, 13. 81 Ibid., 17. 82 Naomi W. Cohen, “The Reaction of Reform Judaism in America to Political Zionism, 1897-1922,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 40, no. 4 (June 1951), 362.

48 maintaining age-old religious practice. The advent of Jewish emancipation, especially in Central and Western Europe (and the lack of many formal religious prohibitions in the United States from its founding), led eventually to the opening of the first Reform synagogues in Germany in the early nineteenth century.83 With no legal reason to maintain strict community uniformity, the rules governing Jewish practice naturally fell away in these countries, opening the door to interpretations of Jewish law that previously would have been viewed as heretical.84

Though the Reform movement began and flourished in Europe despite occasional interference from government authorities, it found a significant foothold once it crossed the

Atlantic and spread to the United States. Meyer writes that Reform Judaism “found an intellectual climate in America which was far more hospitable than in Germany, the land of its origin.”85 The population of German Jews, especially, that had settled in New York and in other large cities throughout the Eastern seaboard and Midwest was particularly amenable to non-

Orthodox approaches to Judaism. America’s more secular public sphere provided an ideal environment for this group.

This set of historical phenomena is what created the laxity of religious observance that marked Felix Warburg’s life. As previously mentioned, he maintained a habit of honoring the

Shabbat customs, but he also routinely ate pork and other non-kosher foods, and he certainly did not avoid secular life on Friday nights or Saturdays. Though he was raised Orthodox, his early and constant exposure to Western education, combined with his real-life experience in the rough- and-tumble world of international finance, led him to respect Jewish observance but not feel

83Jean-Paul Carvalho and Mark Koyama, “Development and Religious Polarization: The Emergence of Reform and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism,” University of Oxford Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series, July 2011, 10. 84 Barry E. Supple, “A Business Elite: German-Jewish Financiers in Nineteenth-Century New York,” The Business History Review 31 (no. 2), 162. 85 Meyer, Response to Modernity, 226.

49 bound by the strictures of halakha. He was a Jewish man, but more importantly a man of the world and an acculturated, naturalized American.

In the Russian Empire, this modernizing trend among the Jewish population took place much differently. As discussed above, Russia did not experience the Enlightenment the same way Western Europe did. Kenneth Moss has written extensively about how Russian Jews adopted modern intellectual life. While Jewish intellectual leaders used ideas of nationalism borrowed from Western Europe, this Jewish nationalism served more as a “response to modernity” rather than a part thereof.86 Part of this modernity was the development of Russian socialism, which both filtered down into the lives of many future leaders of the Yishuv and early

Israel and also led to a state-sanctioned crackdown on a Jewish nationalist life.

Russia certainly did not emancipate its Jewish population, leading Jewish community leaders to reinforce their devotion to Jewish practice as a bulwark against continuing, long-term, and government-approved persecution. David Engel writes about the history of pogroms in the

Russian Empire specifically, though he argues that acts of violence against the Russian Jewish population shared a number of characteristics with similar events that took place in the 19th century in Germany, Hungary, and elsewhere.87 Despite these similarities, there was no polity in the pre-Nazi world that exhibited such a significant, government-sanctioned policy of Jewish persecution as did the Russian Empire and its constituent countries. Certainly one of the best- known examples of the violence sanctioned by the Russian government was the series of

86 Kenneth B. Moss, Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 288. 87 David Engel, “What’s a Pogrom? European Jews in the Age of Violence,” in Jonathan Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt, Natan M. Meir, and Israel Bartal (eds.), Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 23.

50 pogroms in 1881. These riots marked the nadir for nineteenth century Russian Jews, a time period during which Jews had occasional reason for optimism.88

However, in a view that runs counter to much of the earlier historiography, Natan Meir argues that, though the actual physical violence routinely perpetrated against the Russian Jewish population contributed mightily to the mass emigration to the United States during this time period, the bigger factor was the constant threat of violence, or what he refers to as the “sword over their heads.”89 This view differs from existing scholarship in that it underscores the psychological trauma that derives from living in a polity in which circumstances could change immediately and drastically with little to no warning, potentially leaving the entire population destitute or worse. In Meir’s view, this near-total lack of autonomy in the early 20th century drove many Eastern European Jews to either the United States or Palestine, taking with them the

Orthodox Judaism in which they had been raised and the socialist ideas that had begun to— slowly—trickle through the Empire.

In the face of these significant, existential challenges, communities of Russian Jews turned inwards, relying on their shared cultural heritage and language (occasionally Hebrew, but most often Yiddish) in order to maintain a semblance of a secure life. After Kishinev, waves of

Russian Jews emigrated to the United States, Western Europe, or to the nascent Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Yishuv held a particular sway over Russian Jewry, leading one to reasonably trace the origins of political Zionism to Russia in the aftermath of the pogroms.

88 Michael Brenner, A Short History of the Jews, trans. Jeremiah Riemer (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 238. 89 Natan Meir, “‘The Sword Hanging over Their Heads’: The Significance of Pogrom for Russian Jewish Everyday Life and Self-Understanding (The Case of Kiev),” in Jonathan Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt, Natan M. Meir, and Israel Bartal (eds.), Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 112.

51 The Russian Jewish emigrants to the United States brought with them varieties of belief—both religious and political—that would shortly place them at odds with the more secular nature of the Jewish community in the United States. It would also compound the difficulties faced by the various philanthropic organizations to which wealthy Jews contributed money regularly. There were, in fact, some efforts on the part of the more established Jewish communities to avoid large-scale Jewish immigration from the Russian Empire, though these efforts achieved very little success, especially when these groups sought to “Americanize” or

“Westernize” these immigrants for whom such concepts were not only foreign but largely unwelcome.90 Additionally, the Eastern Europeans who immigrated tended to be escaping immense poverty and came to the United States with very little. The dichotomy between Western and Eastern European Jews here seemed to be at its most insurmountable.91

Another way to differentiate between the turn-of-the-century existence of Western and

Eastern European Jewry is to consider the varying levels of education to which each group had easy access. Keith Pickus notes that attending secular secondary schools had “imparted a cultural heritage alien to traditional Jewish society” upon young Jewish students in Germany at this time.92 At these schools, as in schools in France, the United Kingdom, and the Low Countries, students would have read Enlightenment thinkers and discussed and debated various philosophical methodologies, not merely the Talmudic education taught at yeshivot for centuries.

This exposure to secularism, and with it a glimpse at the benefits of acculturation, might explain why so many Western European and American Jews did not subscribe to the necessity of

90 Evyatar Friesel, “Jacob H. Schiff and the Leadership of the American Jewish Community,” Jewish Social Studies 8, no. 2/3 (Winter/Spring 2002), 64. 91 Keep in mind here that much of Warburg’s work for educational institutions in New York City during this period revolved around helping this immigrant population assimilate, an ambition in which he had considerable success. 92 Keith H. Pickus, Constructing Modern Identities: Jewish University Students in Germany, 1815-1914 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), 35.

52 Zionism. These children internalized the lessons taught at their secondary schools and, indeed, their universities, not dismissing their Jewish heritage but neither becoming beholden to some archaic understanding of what it meant to be Jewish.

By comparison, the mode of Jewish education in the Russian Empire during the late-19th and early-20th centuries was rather different. The Tsar preferred Jews to undertake their own education, with no government subsidy or support, which ensured that Russian Jews did not overpopulate local schools. As a direct result, Russian Jewish youths did not have the same easy access to the en vogue texts promoting Enlightenment thought and a secular approach to life as did their brethren in Germany, though there were some attempts at promoting a more assimilationist tack.93 As mentioned above, early-twentieth century Russian Jewish intellectuals had some familiarity with the philosophical trends in Western Europe, and they sought to develop a modern Russian Jewish culture in this vein.

In Lwów, for example, a cadre of maskilim sought to promote Jewish acculturation into broader Polish society, though the rabbis in these communities assailed them as anti-Jewish.94

While the maskilim did achieve some success in convincing the largely insular Polish Orthodox

Jewish communities to accept the possibility of substantive interaction with the non-Jewish world, this success was limited by a number of factors, including the government’s lack of desire to incorporate these individuals into their cities and an overwhelming resistance from rabbis and the blocs they controlled. Thus, the Jewish community in Russia looked to Zionism and making

Aliyah as ways to remediate their situation.

93 Shmuel Werses, “Jewish Education in 19th Century Russia in the Eyes of Mendele Mokher Sefarim,” in Glenda Abramson and Tudor Parfitt (eds.), Jewish Education and Learning (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994), 243-260. 94 Rachel Manekin, “The Debate over Assimilation in Late Nineteenth-Century Lwów,” in Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, and Stefani Hoffman (eds.), Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 125.

53 When circumstances forced these disparate segments of worldwide Jewish society into close proximity, the distinctions between their worldviews became glaringly obvious. Western

European-derived Jews tended towards viewpoints that did not promote Zionism (whether this meant those of non-Zionists, anti-Zionists, or another non-aligned position). Especially beginning with the time of the second Aliyah, in the early 20th century, the Russian Jews who emigrated to Palestine and the United States brought with them the form of Labor Zionism that dominated Yishuv/Israeli politics for the better part of a century. Arthur Goren is clear when he writes of the Russian-Jewish population that came to New York City in the early 20th century that their significant exposure to socialist ideas drove the ways in which they felt their community should be organized. In Goren’s words, the Lower East Side had developed a

“reputation as a habitat of a vigorous, young radical movement.”95

Of course, speaking of the intellectual and Zionist development of Jews from the Russian

Empire as if they represent some monolithic entity, each man with the same experiences and education, misses the profound diversity that existed. Ezra Mendelsohn, in his work on the development of Zionism in Poland at the end of the Russian Empire and during the first years of the Soviet Union, is clear that while there certainly was a segment of the Polish Zionist community that continued to adhere to Orthodox Jewish practice, there was a growing number that was more influenced by the advent of socialism than the .96 These discrete strands of

Polish Zionist operated as a cohesive unit, given that the ultimate aim for the vast majority of these individuals was to foment growth in the Yishuv.97

95 Arthur A. Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), 83. 96 Ezra Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland: The Formative Years, 1915-1926 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981), 35. 97 As in the difficulties in coming to an agreement that the Western European and American Zionists found throughout this same period, the union between those Eastern European Zionists who espoused an Orthodox Jewish viewpoint and those whose experience and education had radicalized them was rarely smooth.

54 The work of Mendelsohn and Rachel Manekin, who wrote about the development of

Zionism in Lwów, make clear that the Eastern European Jewish world was not the stereotype of shtetl-bound men and women, continuing to practice the same traditions as their families had for many generations. Rather, there was a legitimate and strong movement within these communities to interact with the outside world and incorporate modern intellectual movements into the

Talmud-based education in the Russian Empire. These maskilim saw the possibility for increased acculturation within Polish, Ukrainian, and Byelorussian society, and through this they could achieve a notable increase in the quality of Jewish life.

However, the forces that led to the mass emigration around the turn of the 20th century returned in the early years of the Soviet Union, forcing Jewish leaders to reconceive their relationship with the Polish state. Joanna Michlic writes about how this largely unexpected phenomenon “most disoriented” the advocates of a more secular Jewish life during this period.98

The rise in anti-Semitism that Jews saw during this period makes the idea of settling the

Crimea—for which eminent American Jewish leaders advocated in the mid-1920’s—even more difficult to understand.99

This same phenomenon was at play among the Eastern European olim in the first quarter of the 20th century. Russian socialism manifested itself in Palestine in the development of moshavot and kibbutzim. While many of these immigrants shed their Orthodoxy, a good amount arrived with the determination to live a secular life. However, regardless of the degree to which these men and women had internalized socialism, the deficiencies of the educational system in

98 Joanna D. Michlic, “The Culture of Ethno-Nationalism and the Identity of Jews in Inter-War Poland: Some Responses to ‘The Aces of Purebred Race,’ in Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, and Stefani Hoffman (eds.), Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 135. 99 See Chapter 8 for a thorough analysis of this ultimately doomed plan.

55 the Russian Empire meant that they as a whole lacked the Enlightenment-era intellectual background and, putting them at occasional odds with the Western-educated leaders involved in the Yishuv, and especially those involved with the Hebrew University.

While it may be rather simplistic to graft this West vs East dynamic onto the ideological battles to come within the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University, it is instructive to consider that the differences in educational background among these men might have driven some of these fights. It was not a matter of “uneducated” vs “educated,” but more a matter of the types of education that were available in various parts of the world.100 These individuals not only had a different perspective on the idea of Jewish nationalism, but on the world more broadly.

A third line of demarcation among groups of Jewish immigrants was the clear distinction on how they viewed the nature of the Zionist project in Palestine. For many, it represented the peak of national pride and hope: that Jews could govern themselves in a country dedicated solely to their existence. For others, mainly those who had less experience with direct government persecution and, often, had achieved considerable success in life, a Jewish state was unnecessary: there was more than enough space for Jews to lead their own lives in America or Great Britain.

They thought that to found a nation-state could also spark a significant backlash against their countries’ Jewish population. Better would be to acculturate more thoroughly into the liberal countries that were (relatively-speaking) accepting of so many immigrants.

This fertile mixture of different strands of Judaism, different national backgrounds, and differing opinions on religious observance made the American discussion about Zionism a multi- faceted conversation about how Jews around the world should interact with the modern world.101

100 Chaim Weizmann, perhaps the leading Zionist, earned his doctorate in chemistry; he was anything but uneducated. 101 Hedva Ben-Israel has an illuminating analysis of whether Zionism could even be considered a form of nationalism. Using the 20th-century European nationalism as counter-examples, Ben-Israel concludes that while

56 Many American Jews did adhere to a version of the Zionist ideology by a Jewish nation-state in

Palestine without ever intending to make Aliyah. They followed the largely Eastern European

Zionist leaders and believed whole-heartedly in this cause. Others, as has already been said, opposed Zionism on religious grounds. A small but significant minority, however, took a different approach to the development of Palestine.

Felix Warburg, born in Hamburg but a naturalized American citizen, belonged to the non-Zionist cohort of individuals who sought to help the settlement in Palestine without promoting Zionism as an ideology. Even to refer to this group as if it had a coherent school of thought, with uniform beliefs and a set membership, might be overstating the case. The men, largely born or living in the United States, who could generally be understood as part of

Warburg’s clique tended towards the new, more liberal forms of Judaism then emerging in

America and from Western Europe, and disdained what they considered the provincial nature of the Orthodox Judaism evident among the Eastern European immigrants to Palestine. These were broadly champions of acculturation whose backgrounds led them to understand that the Jewish immigrants to Palestine could co-exist with their Arab and Muslim neighbors without requiring each nationality to rule over a set territory.

Perhaps an important place to start with an analysis of this group is with the nomenclature. As stated above, the term “non-Zionism” is misleading and is not found in more recent scholarship about these individuals. Non-Zionists did not possess a body of theoretical literature underpinning the actions of the affiliated leaders. Nor did it have the administrative or organizational framework of the World Zionist Organization that would have permitted non-

Zionism exhibits many of the external characteristics of Hungarian or Czech nationalism, the ideological rifts that plagued Zionism from its start “distinguish Jewish nationalism from all others.” Hedva Ben-Israel, “Zionism and European Nationalisms: Comparative Aspects,” Israel Studies 8, no. 1, 103.

57 Zionists to affect change within world Jewry at a much greater level. As such, referring to non-

Zionism as an ideology on par with Zionism elevates the former far beyond what it deserves. It is better to conceive of non-Zionists as a movement reacting to Zionism, in that non-Zionists such as Warburg and Adler considered themselves only in opposition to the Zionist movement, rather than espousing specific aims.

Non-Zionists did not oppose the settlement and development of Palestine, nor did they object to the Jewish nature of this activity. They certainly believed in and actively supported numerous organizations working towards these aims, of which one of the most prominent was the Warburg-led American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Warburg himself repeatedly expressed a personal appreciation for the difficult work being undertaken to modernize Palestine and build the Yishuv. To non-Zionists, the perceived hegemony of the World Zionist

Organization was pushing out mainstream opposition and deleteriously affecting non-aligned groups’ ability to fundraise and carry out important rescue and construction projects for Jewish groups worldwide.

In addition, it is worth mentioning that none of these intellectual schools of thought was unique to the United States. In Palestine, a number of anti-Zionist groups emerged to oppose the

Jewish settlement largely on religious grounds. These differed from similar groups in the United

States and elsewhere because of their stated claim on Palestine as not only the Holy Land, but their ancestral home that Jews had never left. However, where differences begin to arise between these factions is in the purpose of the Yishuv. Practically, much of this distinction boils down to a disagreement over whether the Yishuv was to be the homeland for the Jews, or rather a homeland, implying that a population of Jews could succeed elsewhere in the world as well. At the time of the Paris Peace Conference, Warburg expressed this perspective quite succinctly,

58 appreciating that the Zionists had “owned up by stepping way back and are asking for nothing more than that the Jews should have the same rights in Palestine that they have in the United

States.”102 In other words, rather than advocating for a Jewish nation-state, they were agreeing

(at least in principle, in 1919) to accept equal rights in the Holy Land as a palatable alternative.

This mindset reflects the fact that many of these non-Zionists had not experienced significant persecution and had always maintained autonomy over the direction of their lives.

Though German Jews were, even in Warburg’s lifetime, subject to some restrictions on career and other important aspects of their lives, they could (and did) worship largely free of the worry that their Eastern European brethren felt. Many of the Zionist terms of reference fit “neither

Jewish realities in the United States, nor Jewish aspirations there.”103 American, or naturalized

American, Zionist leaders needed to conceive of new modes of connecting the development of

Palestine to the Jewish population of the United States in order to foment any large-scale interest from the public.

American Reform Judaism, in particular, expressed a notable opposition to the precepts of Zionism. As an organization, it was founded specifically to fuse “its theological precepts with

American principles, and the resultant compound was the base from which it derived its anti-

Zionism.”104 In other words, a purely American Judaism obviated the need for a separate Jewish nationalism, as Jews found in the United States the freedom of worship. Certainly Zionist leaders knew that to try to convince American Jews to leave the United States in large numbers to join the project of building up the Yishuv was a Sisyphean task doomed to failure.

102 Warburg to , January 17, 1919 (AJA, 184/17). 103 Evyatar Friesel, “American Zionism and American Jewry: An Ideological and Communal Encounter,” American Jewish Archives 40, no. 1 (1988), 6. 5-23. 104 Naomi Cohen, The Americanization of Zionism, 1897-1948 (Lebanon, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2003), 39.

59 How then did American Jews, who after all had almost no intention of leaving the United

States for a far more uncertain future in Palestine, convert to the Zionist cause? How did Zionists attempt to convert men such as Warburg, who tended to follow his father-in-law Jacob Schiff’s point of view that Zionism detracted from one’s hard-earned American citizenship?105 In general, cultural Zionism was the ideological milieu that most successfully attracted attention from a skeptical public. By asserting that the Holy Land—along with the United States—was to be an important center for the revitalization of Jewish thought and culture, they could sidestep the thorny issue of political Zionism and whether Palestine was eventually to be self-governing.106

Palestine could thus represent Jewish life, a new Jewish culture, and a Jewish academia without necessitating political self-determination. An interesting example of the ideological gymnastics that American Jews used to convince themselves that supporting Jewish settlers was not tantamount to supporting Zionism is the relationship between Jacob Schiff—Felix Warburg’s father-in-law—and the Yishuv. Initially an outspoken opponent of Zionism, he considered a

Zionist identity anathematic to considering oneself an American.107 Eventually, and in phases,

Schiff recognized the potential cultural significance of the Jewish settlement in Palestine, and though he never joined the Federation of American Zionists, he retracted some of his earlier statements that had expressed vitriolic disdain for Zionism as an ideology.108

Without extrapolating too much from the ideological arc of one individual, the accounts of many other American Jewish leaders of the early 20th century reflect a very similar trajectory.

While a number of these men initially expressed skepticism—if not outright disgust—with the idea of Zionism, most eventually warmed to the idea. Walter Laqueur recounts that from the

105 Friesel, “American Zionism and American Jewry,” 8. 106 Ibid., 10. 107 Friesel, “Jacob H. Schiff,” 68. 108 Ibid., 70.

60 First Zionist Congress, at which Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise denounced the whole idea of a Jewish state, American leaders had expressed ambivalence.109 Zionist leaders, in fact, “complained that their supporters were being systematically discriminated against,” during the early 20th century.110 Most American Jews at this time saw no necessity for the Zionist project, and turned their attentions elsewhere.

It was largely due to the interventions of more liberal American Jews that the ice broke.

This thawing of opinion came partially because of the increased success of the Yishuv. Whereas the idea of a Jewish settlement seemed foolhardy at the turn of the century, the progress made within the first two decades of the twentieth century served to convince many people of its viability.111 This recognition of promise led, among other developments, to an increase in the financial involvement of American Jewish philanthropists in various aspects of the Yishuv. As part and parcel of American Jewry’s reticence about fully embracing Zionism, Zionist fundraising in the United States was initially somewhat difficult. Coinciding with the massive waves of Jewish immigration, which themselves necessitated significant philanthropic attention from more-established American Jews, the early stages of Zionism faced an uphill battle to gain the financial trust of potential donors.

Several developments shifted the situation considerably. The end of World War I and the

Balfour Declaration changed the geopolitical circumstances of Palestine and offered much more optimism about the future success of Zionism. The Yishuv was thriving, bolstered by the second and third aliyot. Tel Aviv, founded just north of Jaffa as a solely Jewish city, had grown in the

109 Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism: From the French Revolution to the Establishment of the State of Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 2003), 394. 110 Ibid., 396. 111 Cohen, Americanization of Zionism, 62.

61 first ten years of its existence. Most pertinently for this project, Chaim Weizmann and the Zionist leadership had articulated a concrete plan for a university, to be built on Mount Scopus.

There would be vicious battles ahead regarding the focus, direction, purpose, and academic composition of the Hebrew University. Zionists, non-Zionists, and unaffiliated leaders would continually argue, snipe, and write disparaging letters about one another. The university project, despite providing a common goal, did not end internecine political warfare; if anything, these issues were exacerbated. However, the idea of the university did immediately succeed on one respect: it helped draw in American supporters, American money, and previously skeptical leaders, such as Felix Warburg.

62 CHAPTER 4: THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT

Before embarking on the narrative proper, it would benefit us to pause briefly and take stock of the geopolitical context in which this Zionist vs non-Zionist debate was taking place. It is important to remember that, in this case, much of the outside world neither understood nor cared much about this political debate among the settlers of a relatively small territory on the

Mediterranean Sea. To many observers, including many officials of the British Mandatory government, these somewhat-arbitrary distinctions did not matter.

Until Great Britain assumed responsibility for the Mandate as part of the Treaty of

Versailles, the Yishuv had taken advantage of the vacuum of leadership in Palestine that derived from the failures of the Ottoman Empire. The Jewish immigrants had done well to govern their developing territory and, despite significant objections from the native Arab population, the stability that the Jewish settlement brought to a backwards corner of a dying empire was welcome in a very uncertain world that was careening toward the disaster of World War I. That there was a small but notable contingent of Jewish soldiers who fought on behalf of the Entente

Powers against Germany during the war only helped bolster their renown.

With the issuance of Lord Balfour’s famous declaration in 1917, the idea that there might one day be a Jewish nation-state in Palestine akin to those being carved out of the medieval

European empires moved into the realm of the possible. With the agreement between the British and French to divide the Levantine regions of the soon-to-be-defunct Ottoman Empire into two spheres of influence, all of a sudden the fortunes of the Yishuv changed dramatically. Now leaders faced the prospect of working with an international power that had already declared its intention to support, at least in principle, the Zionist ideals. Optimism was high among the

Palestinian Jewish population that the British, who after all were the country who had conquered

63 the region112, would continue to allow nearly unfettered immigration, especially from the ravaged Jewish communities of Eastern Europe who faced an enormous crisis.113

And for a time, these hopes were fulfilled. For nearly the entire 1920’s, the British

Mandatory authorities allowed the Jewish leadership of the Yishuv a considerable measure of autonomy over their own affairs, submitting reports on the development of Palestine back to

London, but typically avoiding interfering with the activities of the Jewish Agency’s predecessor organizations. Naomi Shepherd credits the “tightly organized society” that olim had created for allowing most British attention in Palestine to turn to developing the Arab population.114 Even after 1923, when the League of Nations formally granted Great Britain the status of Mandatory power in control of Palestine, little changed but Palestine’s formal title. Palestine had gone from a backwater region of the failing Ottoman Empire to a conquered territory administered by the

British military to an officially-organized political unit managed by British civilian administrators.

Up to 1923, the story of the Yishuv and its political development occurred largely outside the orbit of Felix Warburg, except as it affected the scores of Eastern European Jews whom his

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sought to help. Warburg, however, was duly interested in the economic possibilities available in a largely untapped market. In a pattern that would continue for the rest of his life, Warburg the entrepreneur developed a number of businesses in Palestine, often incorporating investors from Western Europe in addition to the

United States. For example, the Palestine Economic Corporation, which counted upon its Board

112 Zara Steiner, The Lights That Failed: European International History, 1919-1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 103. 113 Ibid., 362. 114 Naomi Shepherd, Ploughing Sand: British Rule in Palestine, 1917-1948 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1999), 18.

64 such men as Louis Marshall, Bernard Flexner, and Samuel Untermeyer, described itself as being formed “to afford an instrument through which American Jews and others who are desirous of cooperating may be helpful in supplying capital and credit on a business basis to productive

Palestinian commercial, industrial, agricultural, and other kindred enterprises…”115 Ambitious wording, certainly. Later, the pamphlet makes clear that the purpose of the Corporation was “not philanthropic”; investors expected to see a return for their outlay of funds.

Of course, in this regard Warburg was aligned with the overall interests of Great Britain.

While the British provided lip service to the ideas of promoting self-determination and helping

Palestine to move toward full independence—as they would do in Iraq as per the League of

Nations Mandate—the goal in Palestine as in the rest of the British Empire was to extract as much economic benefit as possible, while also preventing rivals from achieving a foothold in the

Levant. In addition, British military leaders considered Palestine to be so vital to the defense of

British interests in the Mediterranean that they strongly opposed any change in the status quo after World War II, arguing that to withdraw from the region would have a profound deleterious effect on Britain’s ability to control their interests there and throughout the Middle East.116 While certainly some officials in Britain viewed the idea of a Jewish homeland favorably, there were at least as many who were agnostic, if not hostile, about the issue and a significant quantity who leaned toward the Arabs.

Britain’s Middle East policy focused most on ensuring a constant supply of oil, without which their growing army and navy could not function.117 Though nominally bound to uphold

115 “Statement of the Plan and Purpose of the Palestine Economic Corporation,” (AJA 216/7). It is also worth noting that, likely for tax reasons, the Palestine Economic Corporation was incorporated in Delaware. 116 Shepherd, Ploughing Sand, 7. 117 Anthony Clayton, “‘Deceptive Might’: Imperial Defence and Security, 1900-1968,” in Judith Brown and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume IV: The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 282.

65 the Balfour Declaration, the British, of course, truly sought only to increase their own capabilities through a modified extractive imperialism not dissimilar from their approach on the

Indian subcontinent, though with far less success. Both Arab and Jewish leaders needed to navigate a constantly changing tide of British policies to ensure that their respective faction ended up with the best possible outcome.

In reality, the British found themselves in a situation whose complexities they did not fully understand in a region to which they did not commit nearly enough resources to implement an India-style governing system. Britain’s economy, having been decimated by the war effort and further damaged by the loans they needed to repay to the United States, could not afford to maintain a nineteenth-century version of empire in Palestine. Instead, they tried a middle ground, sending troops to the port at Haifa while simultaneously allowing the populations largely to govern themselves. Despite periodic flare-ups of tension between the Jews and Arabs, this policy initially proved effective. For most of the 1920’s, as we have seen already and will continue to analyze further, for Palestine as most of the world the decade was a period of relative calm, only jarred back to reality in 1929.

Despite external geopolitical upheaval largely due to the change in governance from the

Ottomans to the British, Palestine maintained a general peace. Martin Gilbert recounts that after the British took control in 1922, the situation calmed until economic problems and a perceived religious provocation in 1928 led to Arab unrest.118 Laqueur echoes Gilbert’s view, writing that between 1921 and 1929, “the Arabs were relatively quiet, and there were regular political and social contacts between Zionist and Arab leaders in Jerusalem.”119 As the British found their footing in Palestine and took stock of the constantly-changing situation, largely the Jewish and

118 Gilbert, Israel, 57. 119 Laquer, A History of Zionism, 244.

66 Arab populations were able to restrain themselves from engaging in public skirmishes. Naomi

Shepherd writes of the British being able to “minimize the real clash of nationalist ideals between Arabs and Jews for more than a decade.”120

Of course, a lack of outright conflict on the scale of the 1929 Arab Riots should not be taken as an indication that the situation in Palestine was placid by any means. As Weizmann and the rest of the Yishuv leadership continued to encourage immigration to the Yishuv, as well as the wholesale purchase of Arab-owned lands, the two populations remained in a state of friction, though the British administrators, as well as the lack of a unified Arab leadership, helped somewhat to mollify the situation. The tension remained, but for this period of just more than half a decade, the threat of a major outbreak was minimized.

During this time of geopolitical changes and economic potential, Warburg also had to ponder his relationship with these competing parties involved. Unlike someone like Weizmann, he did not have a long-term preexisting relationship with Whitehall, and even if he did, a prolonged lobbying campaign would not have fit with his activities at the time. He had been tutored in the vagaries of international banking, but unlike his brother, Max, or his father-in-law,

Jacob Schiff, he did not take to this field with aplomb. He was much better at cultivating personal relationships and eventually leveraging these connections into business ventures that could be mutually fruitful.

Later, Warburg would draw on this same repertoire of interpersonal tools in his work for the Hebrew University. But as he slowly entered the fray, he continued to view Palestine in part as a moneymaking opportunity. Nor was he the only Jewish leader who would later receive acclaim for work in the Yishuv who thought of Palestine in this way. Chaim Weizmann, for

120 Shepherd, Ploughing Sand, 64.

67 example, recognized the country’s cultural and economic importance and potential, and sought to exploit both. In 1921, Adler and Julian Mack exchanged letters discussing Weizmann’s manifest interest in “the up-building of Palestine” in advance of his visit to the United States.121

Weizmann, whom one could never describe as cynical with regard to Palestine, understood that the Yishuv could serve a prosaic purpose while also representing the more ephemeral concept of

Jewish national revival.

The British Mandate occurred during the time of the greatest geographical expanse of an empire that had stood for three centuries. The Empire might not have been at its apogee of power by this point, but in terms of sheer size it had no historical match. In the aftermath of the First

World War, which left the rest of Western Europe devastated, Germany a shambles with an ineffective government, and Russia in the grips of the Communist Revolution, Great Britain wanted to maintain its status as the premier world hegemon in the face of a clearly ascendant

United States. As the League of Nations began its ultimately futile work from Switzerland, one of the most pressing tasks was deciding on the future of the former Ottoman Empire.

It goes without saying that many of the decisions the League made in this regard actually contributed to the lasting problems the region faces even a hundred years later. Great Britain, as the foremost Mandatory power, bears more than its fair share of responsibility for drawing borders erratically and illogically and grouping together incompatible parties. While in general the overarching plan was to use the Mandatory system to bolster British power in the Middle

East, successive governments in London continued to tinker with their Palestine strategy such that the result was a muddle of contradictory ideas confusing administrators and Palestinian residents alike.

121 Adler to Mack, March 21, 1921 (AJA 195/17)

68 Proof of this undisciplined approach to colonial governance is Britain’s reaction to the

1929 Arab Riots.122 In a sensible response, Great Britain ordered a holistic inquiry into the causes of the unrest, attempting to forestall a potentially far more serious repetition. As a result of this inquiry, Jewish immigration to Palestine was severely curtailed from 1930, absolutely enraging the Jewish Agency, which had been set up and was operating under a series of assumptions based on continuing population inflow. After a concentrated and intense public relations and lobbying campaign—led by Weizmann and including Warburg, both of whom had by then resigned from the Jewish Agency in protest—the MacDonald government attempted to quell the controversy by reinstituting an immigration policy largely equivalent to what was standard practice during the 1920’s.

From this episode, it is obvious that while the British had the broad strokes of an idea of how to govern Palestine, their constant uncertainty and fickleness bred a sense that neither the

Arabs nor the Jews had a steadfast ally in London and would thus need to take matters into their own hands. Since the beginning of the Yishuv, the Jewish settlements had largely financed themselves, through issuing debt, exporting goods, and most importantly by convincing wealthy

Diaspora Jews that Palestine represented a solid investment for their money. It soon became clear that the Jews would need to provide for themselves in other facets of society as well, leading to the Yishuv’s education system and the formation of an armed police service comprised in large part of British-trained former soldiers. As Britain dug in its heels at Haifa, the problems between Palestinian Jews and Arabs became further entrenched, leading inexorably to the nearly-80 year conflict we have today.

122 See Chapter 12 for a more detailed analysis of the events and the disastrous implications for the Hebrew University and the Yishuv as a whole.

69 A quick look at the worldwide financial situation during the time period of Felix

Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University will also help provide a framework for understanding how events unfolded as they did. Germany, from which Warburg had emigrated nearly thirty years previously, was in the grips of one of history’s worst cases of hyperinflation, caused in large part by the onerous conditions of the Treaty of Versailles. Though the German economy was subsequently restructured, this crisis affected the ability of German Jews, especially those working in the banking and finance industries, to contribute even to worthy

Jewish causes.

This opened the door for the United States, clearly an alpha world power on the rise in the wake of the destruction wrought by the First World War. The American Jewish population had swelled significantly during the era of Russian pogroms near the end of the 19th century, and it grew once again with the Russian Revolution, until the isolationist policies of the 1920’s slammed the gates shut. Wealthy American Jews, like Warburg, sought to sponsor causes supporting these new immigrants, helping them acculturate to a new and quite different social environment from their homeland. As a natural outgrowth of this, Yishuv-oriented groups saw an opening and started to turn to America as the major source of fundraising. The World Zionist

Organization already had a strong foothold in the United States, but it was really the rise to prominence of non-aligned groups such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, of which Warburg was a top leader, that added heft to the United States’ stature as the financial engine of the Yishuv.

Organized American Jewry was as prone to internecine sniping and discord as was the

European Jewish community. Despite this, the fundraising prowess of the United States meant that the Yishuv and its leaders were willing to accept the occasional family dispute in order to

70 keep the Americans on board. Additionally, many Americans rose to positions of prominence in

Palestine, including on the Jewish Agency and on the Board of Governors of the Hebrew

University. European leaders, even those with a more open-minded viewpoint towards the participation of American Jews in Yishuv project, did show some infrequent prejudice toward what they perceived as the parvenus of the United States, angering American leaders, but these rarely erupted into full-scale conflagrations.123

American Zionism, especially in the twentieth century, reflected a different notion of what it meant to support the Yishuv. Mark Raider succinctly describes the state of American

Jewry during this period by reflecting that among immigrants from Eastern Europe, there was

“no apparent conflict among belonging to a trade union, sending one’s child to a Talmud Torah, and identifying as a card-carrying Zionist.”124 The melting-pot nature of American society meant that even the most acculturated Jew could simultaneously hold in his or her had a number of competing philosophies, all of which affected his or her perception of Zionism.

Of course, within the ranks of organized American Judaism, the issue was not so simple.

During World War I and the immediate aftermath, a battle raged within the United States between two cohorts of Jewish leaders: one affiliated with Louis Brandeis, and one affiliated with Louis Lipsky. Brandeis, who had risen to international prominence, began to attract individuals, such as Felix Frankfurter and Julian Mack, who had once been aligned with

Lipsky.125 Lipsky represented to the Zionists the “downtown” contingent of Eastern European- born Jews, who had fallen out of favor within organized Zionism. Brandeis and Mack—two

123 See the discussion of how Weizmann, et al, routinely showed disdain for their American brethren in A. James Rudin, Pillar of Fire: A Biography of Stephen S. Wise (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2015), 283. 124 Mark A. Raider, The Emergence of American Zionism (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 2. 125 Deborah Esther Lipstadt, The Zionist Career of Louis Lipsky, 1900-1921, (unpublished PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 1977), 200.

71 close associates of Warburg’s—increasingly excluded Lipsky, and by extension Eastern

European Jews, from the decision-making of American Zionists.126 The Western European, largely wealthy, and successfully acculturated, came to dominate organized American Jewry.

In these conditions, and with the rise of the United States, the devastation in Western

Europe, and the profound upheaval in Russia that was an existential threat to Russian Jewry, the political arena into which Felix Warburg stepped upon beginning to work with the Hebrew

University in 1923 was vastly different from any he would have found even ten years previously.

American Jewry had never had this much power among Jews worldwide, and the leverage that the number and success of Jews in the United States would only increase moving forward. It was this unique confluence of events that opened the door for Warburg to rise to leadership positions in two of the Yishuv’s most important and longest-lasting institutions: the Hebrew University and the Jewish Agency.

126 Ibid., 304.

72 CHAPTER 5: A JEWISH UNIVERSITY?

In the discussion about the development of the Hebrew University, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the modern education system in Israel first began to form in the latter years of the

Ottoman Empire and that, despite the pronounced visionary aspects of Weizmann, Buber, and

Feiwel’s call for a Hebrew University, they were not the only individuals to whom the conception of an institution of higher education in Palestine occurred. The groundwork for an entirely separate school, which would over time morph into the Technion in Haifa, began well before the Hebrew University project had been explicitly articulated. In other parts of Palestine, various groups of both Palestinian and external origin, sought to increase the educational capacity of the region through means of religious or specialized vocational schools.

Though the majority of this dissertation deals solely with the Hebrew University, in order to fully understand the revolutionary aspect of this school one must first dive into the educational situation on the ground at the time of the opening of the Mount Scopus campus. Within the

Jewish community in Palestine, a system of primary and secondary education had developed during the centuries of Ottoman rule. Largely due to the outsize influence of external organizations such as the Alliance Israelite Universelle, Jewish Ottomans in Palestine were receiving education modeled on Western European countries.127 By the turn of the 20th century,

127 By the outset of World War I, the Alliance had established 183 Jewish schools in the Ottoman Empire, of which a sizable number existed in Palestine. Fatma Muge Gocek, “Ethnic Segmentation, Western Education, and Political Outcomes: Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Society,” Poetics Today, 14, no. 3 (Autumn, 1993), 524. It is important to note here that the purpose of the Alliance-funded schools was quite different to that of the Hebrew University. The Alliance’s form of philanthropy had a much more colonial context; French Jews sought to remake Palestine largely in their image. The Hebrew University and the Zionist-constructed primary and secondary educational system in the Yishuv revolved much more on a international Jewish nationalism.

73 this structure began to resemble Western education much more significantly, with a decreased emphasis on religious studies and more focus on secular matters.

A scholar of Israeli education, Joseph Ben-David, refers to the beginnings of higher education in Palestine to the “Zionist idea of national revival.”128 From the outside, this perspective makes historical sense, given that various Zionist organizations sought to use education to further their cause. However, more recent evidence proves that analysis like Ben-

David’s misses the considerable breadth of opinion among University leaders regarding the purpose of the Hebrew University. Zionists did not—and do not—have a monopoly on the ideological orientation of an educational institution. One might even reasonably argue that this variety ensured that, as public opinion regarding various issues facing the Yishuv waxed and waned, the school remained on solid footing.

Jacob Landau goes further than does Gocek, arguing that the success of education in the late-Ottoman and early-Mandate periods was due solely to the diligence of the Jewish organizations undertaking work in Palestine, rather than any notable policy enacted by the

Ottomans.129 Arieh Saposnik, writing more than a full generation later, argues that the Hebrew

University stemmed directly from the unique Jewish culture developed under Ottoman rule.130

European aid groups had begun this work in earnest well before Herzl and his colleagues articulated anything approaching a cohesive Zionist ideology. The success that the olim in the

128 Joseph Ben-David, “Universities in Israel: Dilemmas, of growth, diversification and administration,” Studies in Higher Education 11, no. 2 (1986), 106. 129 Jacob M. Landau, “The Educational Impact of Western Culture on Traditional Society in Nineteenth Century Palestine,” in Moshe Ma’oz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1975), 499. 130 Arieh Bruce Saposnik, Becoming Hebrew: The Creation of a Jewish National Culture in Ottoman Palestine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). This work also contains a vivid depiction of the Milhemet ha-Safot, a dispute over the intended language of education in the Yishuv. See the next chapter for a fuller depiction of this argument.

74 early-20th century had in fostering a culture of education built directly on the work of organizations such as the Alliance.

Of course, members of the Alliance and the Hilfsverein had their own, not-always- altruistic reasons for supporting education in Palestine.131 Zosa Szajkowski neatly outlines the reasons behind the multitude of national groups splitting from the Alliance in the decades after the original group’s founding.132 In the article, Szajkowski makes a few very crucial points that have a significant impact on one’s understanding of the structure of the Alliance itself. First and foremost, the members of the organization brought with them their own national interests, which they sometimes put ahead of “general Jewish interests.”133 Certainly this serves to explain in part why the multi-national nature of the Alliance could not last.

Szajkowski’s article underscores a crucial point about the Zionist movement in the 19th century: until very late, one did not exist, at least not in the form it would take later. While various groups might have had a stated interest in the welfare of Jews, especially those in Eastern

Europe, there was not one unifying organizational umbrella that connected all of them. In fact, as the turn of the century neared and the Alliance broke apart, the world of Jewish aid organizations actually became more fragmented; the Alliance begat similar national groups in Europe, and all of these now overlapped with the World Zionist Organization, which had held its first Congress in 1897.

Simultaneously, this continued development of Zionism as a mainstream movement with an organization seeking to substantively modernize Palestine along Jewish nationalist lines, the

131 The Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden was the rough German equivalent of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. It sought to develop Palestine in such a way that it served German-Jewish interests. The organization was responsible for founding the Technion in Haifa in 1924. 132 Zosa Szajkowski, “Conflicts in the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Founding of the Anglo-Jewish Alliance, the Allianz, and the Hilfsverein,” Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 1/2 (Jan-Apr., 1957), 29-50. 133 Ibid., 29.

75 idea of using education as a tool for ideological purposes began to occur to various leaders. In many ways, this stemmed from the earlier proponents of a cultural nationalist revival, such as

Ahad Ha’am, who saw education as a very effective method of helping to foment a more modern

Jewish culture, never abandoning the millennia-old traditions but incorporating into them ideals of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. His journal, Ha-Shiloah, was the most tangible manifestation of this perspective, which would be one prong of the impetus for founding the

Hebrew University.134

While Weizmann crisscrossed the Jewish world, raising awareness and funds for his project on Mount Scopus, the German Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden focused its efforts on growing the technical institute in Haifa. This school represented in many ways the other current of thought regarding the necessity of higher education in Palestine: for cultural or physical regeneration? Likewise, should the culture of the Jewish community Palestine derive more from the experience of Western or Eastern European Jewry?

While the Technion considers itself to have opened in 1924, the school that began operations then bears little similarity to the world-renowned school of technology of the 21st century. In reality, it was little more than a glorified secondary school, building on the German mode of education and seeking to contribute to the technical development of the Yishuv rather than the cultural regeneration of the Jewish people as a whole. Ruth Liba, augmenting the sparse literature about the Technion, writes that even the opening ceremony of the Technion, held two months before that of the Hebrew University, was considerably modest in scale as compared with the grand celebration in Jerusalem in April 1925.135

134 Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past, 34. 135 Ruth Liba, Technologiyah v’umah: hitpatkhot ha-Technion b’t’kufat ha-Yishuv, 1917-1948 (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Haifa, 1999), 106.

76 Neither the relative scope of the opening ceremony nor the financial straits later in the decade that would force the Technion strongly to consider merging with the Hebrew University affects the broader conversation about where the Hebrew University fits in with the Jewish nationalist project. Weizmann was clear that the University needed both a practical and a cultural component, whereas the Technion sought to address only half of those issues.136 This forward- looking approach ensured that the Hebrew University became an integral part of Yishuv society, inextricable from the Jewish Agency apparatus and, later, the government of Israel.

The Hebrew University had an administrative structure that functioned somewhat- differently from the universities on which it was modeled.137 The Board of Governors, comprised of the Zionist and non-Zionist leaders, made large-scale and long-term decisions about the direction of the university, such as which programs to add. On the other hand, beneath the Board of Governors, Yaacov Iram writes that faculty held powerful roles in some matters of administration.138 This meant that the university was able to attract powerful researchers from around the world by giving them significant say in how their individual programs were to function.

Other universities, coming onto the scene much later, addressed the complexity of Jewish and Palestinian/Israeli society in different ways. Tel Aviv University, which was founded after the State of Israel came into existence, mirrored the approach of the Hebrew University to an

136 It merits mentioning that World War I, and the resulting worldwide negativity towards Germany, had a considerable deleterious effect on the Hilfsverein’s fundraising, and thus hampered the development of its constituent organizations, including the Technion. 137 Ilan Troen argues German universities were the most important as Yishuv and Israeli leaders founded their own universities. S. Ilan Troen, “Higher Education in Israel: an Historical Perspective,” Higher Education 23, no. 1 (1992), 47. 138 Yaacov Iram and Mirjam Schmida, The Educational System of Israel (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 63.

77 extent, emerging as a constituent administrative entity of the city of Tel Aviv.139 Cohen asserts that the establishment of Tel Aviv University marked the moment at which Israel could sustain the funding for a university on its own, without needing to rely heavily on influxes of money from overseas groups.140 This meant that the country’s internal politics had become more important to the higher education in Israel than those of the various factions who had for decades sought to use universities as part of a proxy war for ideological dominance in the Yishuv and the early years of Israeli independence.

Tel Aviv and its university represent an interesting development in the history of the

State of Israel, as the city itself was established in the 20th century in the mold of the more secular Jewish identity then emerging. The cultural nationalism of Ahad Ha’am owed much to

Jewish religiosity, but filtered through the secularizing lens of the Enlightenment. Tel Aviv, like its university, was an explicitly nonreligious entity, serving a largely Jewish population but without the distinctive religious markers that for generations had marked Jewish institutions worldwide.

In many ways, Tel Aviv University represents the opposite of Bar-Ilan University, established in nearby Ramat Gan within a year of the opening of Tel Aviv University. Bar-Ilan, from the outset, was a haven for religious Zionists who eschewed the cosmopolitan lifestyle of

Tel Aviv and wanted a more traditional experience in conjunction with a Western-style university education.141 Menachem Klein explains that by the 1950’s, Israeli students who wanted to attend a university in Israel had but three options: Hebrew University, the Technion, and the Weizmann Institute. All of these for the most part functioned as part of the state and saw

139 Uri Cohen, “Academic, Media, and the City: Civic Discourse Preceding the Establishment of a City University in Tel Aviv,” Israel Studies 12, no. 2 (Summer 2007), 122. 140 Ibid. 141 Menachem Klein, Academia, Dat, v’Politikah (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1998), 16.

78 the research they produced as helping the State of Israel to function.142 While this was certainly helpful to a developing nation, it left a considerable population underserved.

This discussion is echoed by Michael Heyd and Baruch Schwartz, who ask about Israeli education, “Where is the religious aspect?”143 While most of this edited collection focuses on issues relating to the heavily religious Jewish population of Israel—and worldwide, as it also discusses yeshivot in New Jersey, of all places—this introductory chapter situates Israeli religious education within the broader context of a state that from the outset wanted to tamp down the overt religiosity of centuries of Jewish life to create something more modern.

Interesting to note in the coming analysis of the fight between Zionists and non-Zionists over the direction of the Yishuv is that neither side promoted a particularly religious polity. Each wanted to cultivate the Jewish nature of Palestine without enacting policies that would dissuade either olim looking to immigrate or donors who did not espouse Orthodox Jewish views.

The Hebrew University promoted a Jewish nationalism, not a French-Jewish nationalism or a German-Jewish nationalism. It was aimed at as broad an audience as was practical, given the profound logistical challenges that the founders faced and their goals for the school. Though there was never an explicit exclusion of non-Jewish students, the insistence on using Hebrew as the language of instruction provided an inherent barrier to entry for anyone who had no previous

Hebrew experience, meaning non-Jews.

This, of course, was deliberate. The retaking of status, displayed by the newfound ability to mark another group as the “other,” was one of the major Zionist accomplishments of the early twentieth century. After centuries of, at best, begrudging admission to European universities, at

142 Ibid., 26. 143 Michael Heyd and Baruch Schwartz, “M’vo,” in Tamar Elor, Immanuel Etkes, Michael Heyd, and Baruch Schwartz (eds.) Hinuch v’Dat: Simchut v’Automatya (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2011), 1.

79 which Jews had to study in another nation’s language, Jews would finally have an institution of higher education to call their own. One consequence—unintended or otherwise—of the decision to make the Hebrew University an institution for the Jewish population of Palestine is that it deepened the division between the olim building the Yishuv and the Arab inhabitants of

Palestine, whose prospects for a future integrated with the broader world was constrained by a profound lack of resources. Not that this was necessarily the fault of the Zionist leadership, whose interest in the outlook for their Arab neighbors was related solely to assurances of a peaceful life, but it is interesting to note that the foundation of the Hebrew University was not without some deleterious ramifications.144

To fulfill the vision set forth by Weizmann, Buber, and Feiwel, the Hebrew University had to be exclusive in some ways. It needed to further the intellectual development of the Jewish nation, and if in doing so that helped the physical growth of the Yishuv, that was even better.

The Hebrew University aimed to right centuries of academic persecution at the hands of

European countries that had long banned Jews from higher education. In this regard, it was wildly successful. Jews in the Yishuv had a place to study, to learn, and to develop a modern

Judaism in their national language.

Clearly this notion appealed to Jewish leaders from across the spectrum of Zionist thought and from throughout the Jewish world. Individuals from the United States, where Jews had never faced the same level of educational blacklisting that marred the European Jewish experience, came aboard the Hebrew University project, providing financial, logistical, and administrative support. Most of these individuals were already grandees in the Zionist community who would have been expected to back the project regardless. However, the

144 See the article by Okun and Friedlander for a strong analysis of the way in which education in the Yishuv, from primary through tertiary, affected the course of economic development for the discrete segments of the population.

80 possibilities presented by the University appealed to others as well. At this point, Felix Warburg entered the scene, setting the stage for the events of the next decade.

81 CHAPTER 6: FIRST APPROACHES BY THE UNIVERSITY

Five years after construction at the future Hebrew University site on Mount Scopus began, planning for the academic functions of the university was well underway. Chaim

Weizmann, a trained chemist very familiar with often-fraught nature of these types of discussions, led the group responsible for these procedures. These individuals had to determine the scope and level of academic programs that the university would initially offer, the language of instruction, the connection between the university and the Yishuv, as well as myriad other seemingly-insurmountable issues.145 Needless to say, this task at times seemed nearly impossible.

A major component of the problems vexing the project was a chronic lack of sufficient funding. Financiers and philanthropists from around the world continued to funnel money into the Yishuv, but these funds went to a variety of institutions and programs. The University had access to some of this incoming money, but needed to rely on the fundraising savvy of

Weizmann, Magnes, et. al in order to maximize their intake. With European Jewry (as well as much of Europe in general) stretched thin, attention out of necessity turned to the United States as a potential financial savior.

For Magnes, who was working on behalf of the Hebrew University well before Warburg, one of his most notable contributions in the years before the official opening was his access to the American philanthropists. Magnes had met Warburg—as well as Louis Marshall, Magnes’ brother-in-law, and Jacob Schiff—in New York City. These three men “formed a powerful

145 With regards to the language of instruction, this dispute follows from the earlier Milhemet ha-Safot, which was a significant dust-up between proponents of German as the language of education in Jewish Palestine and those who felt that the revitalized Modern Hebrew more accurately reflected the goals and ambitions of the Yishuv. Arieh Bruce Saposnik’s Becoming Hebrew: The Creation of a Jewish National Culture in Ottoman Palestine contains a vivid depiction of this event.

82 triumvirate of supporters and admirers.”146 Though they considered Magnes’ Zionism to be an issue, these three men felt from the beginning that he was an able administrator and someone with whom they could work. Magnes played a leading role in the JDC and American Jewish

Committee during World War I, bringing him into even closer contact with Warburg. By the time Weizmann prepared to travel to the United States to meet with potential donors, including

Warburg, Magnes had already established a positive reputation that would lend the university credence in Warburg’s mind.

Felix Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University project did not mark the first attempts to promote fundraising from the United States. Eminent academics including Albert

Einstein had sought to spark interest among American Jewry from the beginning of the 1920’s, inviting wealthy individuals to dinners and galas. In 1921, Einstein wrote to many potential donors, requesting their attendance at a “small gathering” in order to “consider ways and means of organizing in [the University’s] support.”147 While Einstein received many responses declining to attend this event, for a multitude of reasons, the fact remains that the Hebrew

University was even then desperately seeking support from the ranks of American Jews.148

Chaim Weizmann fixed his attention squarely on the United States during this period.

American wealth, especially that of the German-Jewish bankers thriving in New York City, represented in Zionist minds such a profound opportunity that Weizmann began to make annual trips across the Atlantic. Understandably, one of the first individuals whom Weizmann contacted in the United States was his old friend, Felix Warburg. There is no indication that Warburg had

146 Arthur A. Goren (ed.), Dissenter in Zion: From the Writings of Judah L. Magnes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 17. 147 Einstein to Peter J. Schweitzer, May 9, 1921 (CZA, L12/111). 148 Weizmann also deliberately cultivated Western European and British Jewry for the same purpose, which can plainly be seen in a form letter from the Secretary of the University’s General Fund, sent on June 28, 1921 (CZA, L12/66).

83 paid any attention to the developments on Mount Scopus prior to 1922. Through various channels and as a result of a number of interconnecting interests, he was certainly abreast of the extent to which the Yishuv was developing, but the minutiae of this project do not yet appear in his letters.149

As previously noted, Warburg in his philanthropy displayed a marked interest in issues relating to Jewish education worldwide. Not averse to the development of the Yishuv, Warburg seems a natural fit for a leading fundraising role in the nascent Hebrew University project. In a letter to Louis Marshall in early 1923, Warburg explicitly states that, while he was focusing the efforts of the Joint towards educational institutions in the United States, it was not impossible that given the right conditions “the educational interests abroad would be included in these efforts.”150 Warburg clearly understood that American Judaism neither could nor should dissociate itself entirely from external developments and, as such, American Jews had a responsibility to play a large role.

Warburg’s correspondence with his close associates, including Judah Magnes, prove this point quite clearly. In June 1923, Magnes responded to Warburg from Jerusalem with a warm, handwritten letter that may be viewed as a mission statement for how Magnes and Warburg viewed the role of American Jewry. When Magnes wrote that “the operational bonds…between

American Jews and the rest of Jewry should not be broken but on the contrary should be strengthened through Jewish education and Jewish culture,” he might well have made explicit his reference to the Hebrew University.151 Though Warburg viewed a number of leading Zionists

149 It is of interest to note that despite the Hebrew University not appearing in Warburg’s correspondence, he was regularly communicating with Chaim Weizmann throughout this period. 150 Warburg to Louis Marshall, May 11, 1923 (AJA 213/7). 151 Magnes to Warburg, June 1, 1923 (AJA 213/6).

84 unfavorably, he was not completely closed to the idea of working with other organizations for the mutual benefit of Jewish Palestine.152

This potential for recruiting a well-known philanthropist who was aligned with the non-

Zionists meant that Weizmann needed to call upon all of his considerable skills as a salesman.

As an opening salvo in his attempt to bring Warburg aboard the university project, Weizmann sent Warburg a bound copy of his addresses regarding the subject “as a token of his appreciation and esteem.”153 On one hand, perhaps this speaks to the value that Weizmann placed on his own opinions and abilities; this maneuver demonstrates that he certainly did not lack self-confidence.

On the other, it shows that Weizmann’s instincts for how best to reach an individual who may be initially reticent to help were quite solid.

Despite Weizmann’s best efforts, however, Warburg was not initially convinced that the university was the best use of his limited funds.154 Ideological objections aside, he took no issue with developing the Yishuv, but preferred to focus his funds on places where they could do the most good. Eastern Europe Jews not only had not recovered from World War I, but now had to contend with the Communist regime, which itself was no friend of the Jews. Helping these individuals, whether abroad or having immigrated to the United States, made the most sense to

Warburg. Even so, Warburg agreed to a meeting with Weizmann in early 1923.

152 In a letter to Magnes from early 1923, Warburg lamented that “so many hands, nominally working for the benefit of Palestine, there and elsewhere, are not clean.” This appears to be a reference to Chaim Weizmann and the rest of the Zionist Organization, whom Warburg treated with barely-concealed disdain. While Warburg stopped short of outright accusing the Zionist Organization or Weizmann of misusing funds, he was not shy about voicing his opinion that the Zionists were prone to allocating funds ideologically, rather than focusing on doing the most good for the Yishuv. Warburg to Magnes, January 22, 1923 (AJA 213/6). 153 Emmanuel Neumann, Weizmann’s secretary, to Warburg, July 20, 1923 (AJA 213/10). 154 Warburg wrote to Magnes that though “the problems of Palestine are complicated and disappointing, their radius is small, while the terrible conditions all over the world, with its unchristian spirit, is [sic] most distressing.” Warburg to Magnes, January 22, 1923 (AJA 213/6).

85 Warburg provided a detailed recapitulation of this meeting in a letter to Louis Marshall.

After first describing the meeting as “very pleasant,” Warburg continues by outlining his perspective regarding spending money on projects in Palestine.155 While expressing his opinion that no funds should go towards any organization espousing a particular ideology, he acknowledged that he knew of one man whom he trusted to run an educational body in Palestine:

Judah Magnes.

Magnes, already a leading figure in American Jewish life due to his involvement with the

Kehillah in New York City, was an expert at walking the tightrope of differing ideologies present regarding Zionism. Even though he made Aliyah in 1923, he in no way intended this as a dismissal of the benefits of Diaspora Jewry.156 Magnes did not view Zionism as the be all and end all of Jewish involvement with development in Palestine. Additionally, and more pertinently,

Magnes was an academic of some renown. His background in communal organizing, his ideological moderation, and manifest interest in matters of Jewish education made him the ideal candidate, in Warburg’s eyes, to take a leading role in the University.

This admission represented a significant step towards easing the path towards, if not reconciliation, then an agreement between Warburg’s non-Zionists and Weizmann’s Zionist

Organization to work together for joint projects. The recognition that common ground existed between these two movements—which, of course, themselves represented a huge breadth of ideologies—paved the way for increased cooperation with regards to the development of the

Yishuv. All parties involved desired to increase the odds of the Yishuv’s success, as this would in turn be a major boon to world Jewry.

155 Warburg to Marshall, May 11, 1923 (AJA 213/7) 156 Goren, Dissenter in Zion, 29.

86 After the British assumed responsibility for Palestine in 1923, the Yishuv leadership needed to foster a strong working relationship with London. Weizmann, renowned in Britain for military benefits of his chemical research, understood British politics and was ideally situated to lobby the Mandatory authorities on behalf of Zionism. As a matter of fact, he had led the Jewish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, advocating there for the rights of the Jewish population in Palestine.157 He was comfortable in London society and could maneuver to have audiences with high-ranking officials who had direct influence over Britain’s policy in Palestine.

Given Weizmann’s background, the Zionist Organization could not have created a better ambassador for their movement than him.

In this geopolitical context, the meeting between Warburg and Weizmann—which secured an opening donation of $10,000 for the university—seems fairly momentous.158 No minds were changed, neither man weakened his ideological backbone, but some common ground had clearly been reached. Weizmann could now tentatively count on support for the university project from some wealthy American Jews who did not identify as Zionists. Warburg had financially committed himself to the cause, which was as good as an endorsement.

However, Warburg had to contend with dissent behind the scenes, as the cohort that he had cultivated among like-minded individuals in the United States continued to express significant misgivings about the direction of the Yishuv and the degree to which the Zionist

Organization displayed autonomy thereon. In July 1923, a mere two months after Warburg and

Weizmann met face-to-face about the project on Mount Scopus, Cyrus Adler wrote to Warburg, opining that even the formidable Magnes would not be a sufficient bulwark against the

157 Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History, rev. ed. (New York: HarperPerennial, 2008), 41. 158 Warburg to Weizmann, May 11, 1923 (AJA 213/23).

87 increasingly Zionist nature of the Yishuv.159 To consign any undertaking to the Zionist leadership was, to Adler and his associates, anathema.

This indicates that neither Warburg nor Magnes had been able to soften the opinion of those more intransigent non-Zionists. Adler in 1922 had pessimistically written to Warburg claiming that it would be “a generation or more before there is anything approaching a

University in Palestine,” advocating instead for building up the infrastructure in a non-partisan way.160 While Adler referred in part to the sheer magnitude of the idea, he also did not want to cede any ground to the Zionist Organization, which by then was well into the process of usurping authority from the Joint.

Warburg, meanwhile, did not address the idea of the university in nearly the depth that

Adler did in 1922 and 1923, instead focusing on his primary role as the leader of the Joint

Distribution Committee. He continued to field requests for funding that tended to appeal to his desire to keep Palestine nonpartisan.161 As part of this, several times investors approached him about potential business opportunities that a relatively untapped market such as Palestine afforded a talented entrepreneur. Often these prospectuses appealed to Warburg’s preference to lend his financial support to Jewish causes, using language such as “for the future good of the business it must be purely Jewish….”162 Whether or not Palestine was to be a Jewish nation- state, it was still clearly to be mostly for the benefit of the Jewish population.

159 Adler to Warburg, July 18, 1923 (AJA 209/11). 160 Adler to Warburg, January 18, 1922 (AJA 208/6). 161 One letter from the Keren HaYesod is particularly instructive here. In March 1922, Warburg received a request for funds imploring him that this foundation was “one in which Zionist and non-Zionist alike can help. It relates strictly to the upbuilding of Palestine as a Homeland for the Jews.” The phrase “homeland,” as used here, might have raised some eyebrows among the more vocal non-Zionists. 162 Les Grands Moulins de Palestine to Warburg, June 20, 1922 (AJA 208/18).

88 Warburg did not accede to all requests of this nature. Despite the long-winded163 address of Harry Fischel, an associate and fellow member of the Executive Board of the Joint

Distribution Committee, in favor of allocating funds to the Palestine Development Corporation,

Warburg still declined to invest.164 This shows that Warburg did not simply want to use Palestine as a way to earn money quickly. He wanted his money and his administrative ability to help build something in which he could be proud and which would last. Warburg’s support for educational and acculturationist organizations within the United States and elsewhere is testament to this characteristic.

With regard to his philanthropic efforts, these still revolved largely around Jews around the world, rather than focusing solely on encouraging development in Palestine. Here it is important to note that Warburg supported organizations from across the Jewish denominational spectrum. He was an invited guest at a groundbreaking for a new building at the Hebrew Union

College, the eminent New York seminary for Reform Judaism.165 Warburg’s work with the

Educational Alliance in New York City, which sought to provide educational opportunities for the Eastern European Jewish individuals who had just arrived in the United States underscores his respect for Orthodox Judaism as well.166

As 1922 turned to 1923, Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University was about to become significantly more intense. Though it would be more than another year until he would make the trip to Palestine that would prove to be so edifying, Warburg was finally acknowledging the reality that, regardless of political affiliation, the Yishuv was not a temporary

163 The text of the speech, as prepared for delivery, was quite lengthy and technical. (AJA 208/18). 164 Warburg to Fischel, January 26, 1922. (AJA 208/18). 165 Invitation to Warburg from the Building Committee of the Hebrew Union College for an event on December 7, 1922 (AJA 202/2). 166 As do the numerous ways in which Warburg allowed the Orthodoxy of his father-in-law to continue to govern many aspects of his life, despite no considerable religious devotion on his part.

89 development to be dismissed. Especially with ultimate authority in Palestine now residing in

London rather than Istanbul, the geopolitical tides were shifting. Warburg wanted to put himself in the best position to thrive in this new, postbellum age.

Until 1922, Warburg’s decision not to work with the Yishuv in any significant context sprang largely from his ideological and political objections to the Zionist leadership, which at the time was busy consolidating its role as the official administrative body of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. Though Warburg repeatedly made clear that his reticence came not from any antipathy towards Jewish settlers but from a personal uncertainty about the necessity of a Jewish nation-state, he still positioned himself in opposition to the Zionists. This decision, made from a genuine ideological position, nonetheless complicated his efforts to help structure and organize the Hebrew University.

Furthermore, Warburg expressed significant misgivings about the wisdom of attempting to construct nearly from nothing a Jewish community surrounded by an Arab population that mistrusted the intentions of the Zionists. In 1922, he had referred to the “arrogance of Jews displayed…in some quarters towards the Arabs” and recognized the potential for this to “cause the Jews the loss of the advantage which the British Mandate held out….”167 And, of course, the riots in 1929, followed by decades of on-and-off violence, would eventually prove Warburg’s concerns to be well-founded. However, despite all of Warburg’s prescience and ideological opposition, he nonetheless became a major patron of the Yishuv and of the Hebrew University itself.

In analyzing the beginning of Warburg’s work with the Hebrew University, it merits pointing out that this was not even the first university in Palestine to receive tacit sanction from

167 Speech, Felix Warburg to the Judaeans, January 15, 1922 (AJA 202/2).

90 him. The institution that would morph into the modern Technion was founded in Haifa by the

Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden, a German-Jewish communal organization, before the official opening of the Hebrew University.168 In fact, by the time Chaim Weizmann gave his speech to the Eleventh Zionist Congress in 1913 regarding his perception of the necessity of a Jewish

University in Palestine, it was already possible to see the beginnings of the Technion, though it was still then in its developmental phase and called the Technikum.

Several possible reasons exist for why, despite a dalliance with the Technion project in

Haifa, Warburg became so much more deeply enmeshed in the administrative work of the

Hebrew University than he ever was with the Technion. On a practical level, Warburg was not an active member of the Hilfsverein, having moved to the United States when the group was still in its infancy. In addition, though the Zionist Organization and the Hilfsverein certainly cooperated on a number of logistical matters, they maintained a low-key rivalry in the Yishuv in the years before World War I, with German Jewish leaders shut out in many respects from key decisions.169 The subsequent dispute over the language of the Yishuv occurred outside

Warburg’s attention; during this period, Warburg’s attention was focused on matters in the

United States rather than external events.170

Second, World War I and its outcomes dramatically affected the relationship of Germany and German organizations with the rest of the world. Though the organizational models of both the Technion and the Hebrew University owed much to their German counterparts, the

168 Carl Alpert, Technion: The Story of Israel’s Institute of Technology (New York: American Technion Society, 1982), 1. Jacob Schiff, more involved with German-Jewish affairs than Warburg was, played a notable role in the creation of the Technion and its predecessor institutions. It seems that higher education became something of a family tradition. 169 Lilo Stone, “German Zionists in Palestine before 1933,” Journal of Contemporary History 32, no. 2 (April 1997), 172. 170 This fight, known in Hebrew as the Milhemet ha-Safot, or Language War, came from the fact that each language connoted a different aspect of early-20th century Jewish life.

91 geopolitics of the early 1920’s had made the German language and culture unpalatable.171

Warburg never felt as if he lost his German identity entirely, despite living in the United States for more than the last forty years of his life. However, as the leadership in the Yishuv shifted to reflect the massive Eastern European immigration, the focus of outside philanthropists and investors moved to causes promoted by these individuals.

Perhaps the most important reason for Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew

University over the Technion is the former’s focus on cultural regeneration rather than on providing practical assistance to the development of the Yishuv. From the beginning, Chaim

Weizmann intended for the university to be a “cultural center” of the Jewish people.172 Warburg throughout his life had a demonstrated affinity for any programs that sought to accomplish this very task; he fully supported the idea of a Jewish culture as distinct from national Jewish cultures in the United States, Germany, or Russia.173 Thus, despite the manifest political and ideological reservations that Warburg expressed, in this vein the support for the Hebrew University project was certainly not anomalous in his career.

As previously mentioned, the May 1923 conversation between Warburg and Weizmann, which resulted in a détente of sorts but swayed neither man to an opposing position, opened the door to Warburg’s participation.174 From this point forward, the tenor of Warburg’s correspondence with his close associates regarding the university changed to be somewhat more optimistic about the university’s prospects for success. If nothing else, this meeting caused

171 Troen, “Higher Education in Israel: an Historical Perspective,” 49. 172 Chaim Weizmann, “A Jewish University for Jerusalem,” speech, 8 September 1913, published in Barnet Litvinoff (ed.), The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. I, series B (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1983), 101. 173 Magnes to Warburg, June 1, 1923 (AJA 213/6). 174 As an example of the extent to which Weizmann viewed this meeting as a victory for the Zionists, see his letter to his wife in which he related that the meeting went well and that “every opposition broken down.” Weizmann to Vera Weizmann, May 12, 1923, Meyer W. Weisgal (ed.), The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XI, series A (January 1922-July 1923) (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1977), 311.

92 Warburg to reiterate that, though he viewed “any political organization by the Jews for the Jews in Palestine” to be worthy of contempt, the concept of revitalizing Jewish culture through increased education was important.175

What should we make of the fact that Warburg was willing to cast his lot in on the university project with men whom he openly disdained, or of his early donation of $10,000?176 It is certainly true that this did not mark some sort of political conversion. Warburg continued to espouse the same mistrust of organized Zionism well into his—and, indeed, after—his involvement with the Hebrew University. Nor should this initial donation be taken to mean that

Warburg had shifted his focus entirely to issues in Palestine. A cursory glance through his correspondence for the rest of the 1920’s demonstrates that even as the university on Mount

Scopus came to dominate more of Warburg’s time, he did not neglect institutions in the United

States.177

By the time of Warburg’s meeting with Weizmann, the Zionists and other organizations had been actively developing Palestine for over two decades. They had modernized the infrastructure and set the territory on a path towards self-sufficiency. Where once there had been doubt and skepticism of the capacity of the land, now there was optimism that Palestine could sustain the ever-larger populations making aliyah to join earlier settlers and the historical residents. Within this growing population and the organizations supporting it, education emerged as an unlikely source of ideological conflict, as various groups jockeyed to position themselves as the rightful educators of the Yishuv’s young and young adult residents.

175 Warburg to Louis Marshall, July 12, 1923 (AJA 213/7). 176 Warburg to Marshall, May 11, 1923 (AJA 213/7). In 2017 dollars, this would be $143,149. 177 As a case in point, Warburg—perhaps through his association with Cyrus Adler—continued to sit on the Library Building Committee of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. (AJA 221/9).

93 Once Modern Hebrew had overtaken German and Yiddish as the official language of the

Yishuv, schools across the territory used it as the means of instruction. Of course, one ramification of this decision was that students who then reached university age could not continue their studies in their native language, having to seek college education elsewhere. The

Hebrew University aimed to step into this void, offering degree programs taught in Hebrew.178

For the first time, Jewish students would have a body of academic literature in their national language.

The choice of Hebrew over Yiddish was a factor that helped attract Warburg to the project. He, like many people, viewed Yiddish as the regressive language of the shtetl, whereas the Modern Hebrew revived by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was forward-looking.179 In choosing

Hebrew over Yiddish and German—which had certainly become unfavorable after World War

I—both the Yishuv generally and the leadership in retrospect of the university made a more inclusive choice, despite the initial issues it produced in finding qualified professors who were capable of lecturing in the language.

In fact, though the use of Hebrew would eventually prove to be a worthwhile choice, it presented some significant logistical issues at the outset. First of all, the administration had to find students who were both academically fluent in Hebrew and were willing to risk spending their graduate studies at an institution that had only begun to exist. The University likely could have eased students into a bilingual program of study—making professors’ lectures easier as

178 It is important to note here that initially, and for the first several years of its existence, the Hebrew University was a solely graduate-level institution. 179 Warburg to Adler, December 1, 1924 (AJA 214/5).

94 well—and gradually phased out any non-Hebrew instruction. This plan would have aligned with the ways in which many new nation-states handled their structural language concerns.180

Of course, to allow the educational use of different languages would have undermined the cultural nationalist aim of the university from the outset. Weizmann wanted the university not only to be a place of teaching and learning, but together with the Jewish National Library, to be a repository for a newly-created national body of academic literature. In 1913, Weizmann had been effusive in his support for the idea of a Jewish intelligentsia in Palestine. He wrote of his hope that the university would eventually develop “a number of Jewish intellectual forces.”181

Professors, lecturers, and students would publish their research—in Hebrew. This emphasis on

Hebrew, evident even in the name of the university, hamstrung the university’s ability to attract and retain qualified students, as the secondary education system in the Yishuv was not as robust as organizers perhaps had hoped.

Education in Palestine, like most of the infrastructure and development projects, relied on support from Jewish communities around the world. This certainly was the explanation for

Chaim Weizmann’s 1923 tour of the United States, which he described as “almost beyond human endurance.”182 However, in the process of trying to connect the Yishuv with the outside world, Warburg, Marshall, and other non-Zionists wanted to make sure that the Zionist leadership did not try then to meddle in affairs that should be the purview only of the United

States.183 It is clear that Warburg’s growing enthusiasm for this project extended only so far as he saw the Yishuv as worth developing in parallel with the American Jewish community, not as

180 Joshua A. Fishman, “National Languages and Languages of Wider Communication in the Developing Nation,” Anthropological Linguistics 11, no. 4 (April 1969), 113. 181 Weizmann speech on university project, 1913 (CZA Z3/310) 182 Weizmann to B. Feiwel, J. Cowen, and I.A. Naiditch (May 15, 1923), Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XI, series A, 312.Weizmann’s tour took him across the United States, where he took countless meetings in an attempt to develop interest and a fundraising base among a skeptical population that fought him most of the way. 183 Weizmann to Marshall, May 17, 1923, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XI, series A, 314.

95 part of one singular whole, and certainly not part of one whole controlled by the Zionist

Organization.

This potential sticking point, upon which many future issues would hinge, sprang from a few different places. Most pertinently, non-Zionists in the United States were particularly attuned to any potential power-grabbing behavior by the Zionist Organization, and were especially wary of Chaim Weizmann.184 Under no circumstances did non-aligned American Jewry want to subordinate their communal autonomy to the auspices of the Zionist Organization. Jewish education in the Yishuv was designed to foment self-sufficiency, both in terms of developing the land, but also in developing a national culture. In the United States, as in Western Europe, a robust culture already existed.

Perhaps this insistence on maintaining and promoting American Jewish culture in the

United States and a distinct culture among the Jews of Palestine is ironic, given the extent to which many notable American Jewish philanthropists encouraged new immigrants to adopt an acculturated approach to religious life. As mentioned earlier, the disconnect between the largely religiously liberal donors and the Orthodox immigrants created considerable tension in the

Jewish immigrant community in New York City.185 Eventually this tension resolved into a multidenominational American Jewish community, but this process took a period of time.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that a similar process needed to occur in the

Yishuv, and that with time these relatively minor disputes would fall away in the face of the much more significant problems that were to come. But in 1923, both Warburg and Weizmann came away from their meeting in Philadelphia with the understanding that each had made his

184 See, for example, a letter from Cyrus Adler to Judge Julian Mack, in which he euphemistically describes “elements among the Jews” with whom he was “unwilling” to work. Adler to Mack, March 21, 1921 (AJA 195/17). 185 Soyer, “Brownstones and Brownsville,” 183.

96 case regarding Zionists vs. non-Zionists quite clear and that future involvement would occur with all reservations known. That these men, who would each play a large role in the early years of the Hebrew University, could agree on the purpose of the school but so little else about the

Yishuv augured poorly for their ability to function as a unified whole moving forward. Of course, this analysis comes with the benefit of almost a century of looking backward. At the time, much of this would have been invisible.

As 1923 wore on, Warburg’s correspondence reveals a much greater interest in the university project. Prior to the meeting with Weizmann in May, the major advocate for the

Hebrew University among Warburg’s associates was, unsurprisingly, Judah Magnes. He wrote regularly, impressing upon Warburg that “every group and community has a central building with the exception of the Jews.”186 Magnes’ letters tended to focus on the ways in which the university would help develop Jewish culture around the world and the connection with

Warburg’s previous philanthropic interests. Though Magnes could not yet have known tha the would become Chancellor, he clearly understood that if the University were to succeed, it would be an incredible opportunity for world Jewry.

186 Magnes to Warburg, March 16, 1923 (AJA 213/6).

97 CHAPTER 7: WARBURG’S INCREASED INVOLVEMENT

While 1923 brought Felix Warburg into the fold of the Hebrew University, it was not until the following year that he dove headfirst into the administrative work that was required. He had spent the second half of 1923 in much the same way as he had spent the previous decade: writing letters about various Jewish issues back and forth with associates. In the latter half of the year, planning began for what would be a formative experience in Warburg’s personal and professional lives: his 1924 tour of Palestine. This trip exposed Felix to the manifest successes that Jews had had in developing the land, and would affect his mindset on a number of other issues.

But in 1923, as his attention had not yet turned fully to matters related to the university, he continued to attend to various other issues facing world Jewry. For example, Louis Marshall kept Warburg abreast of his brother Max’s continuing efforts to combat the rising anti-Semitism in Germany during this period.187 Max was positioned perfectly to have a first-hand account of how the tidal wave of anti-Jewish sentiment that was soon to break over Germany was affecting the lives of upper-class Jewish Germans. Much as World War I had aggrieved Felix as a Jew, as an American, and as a German, developments surrounding the rise of National Socialism would continue to vex him for the rest of his life.188

With the turn of the calendar to 1924, it seems that Warburg’s latent organizational energy began to find a strong outlet in the functions of the university committee. Perhaps this may be best exemplified by the fact that in the short time in which he had been involved with the

187 Marshall to Warburg, Dec. 14, 1923 (AJA 213/7). 188 Warburg died in 1937, and thus was spared the details of the horrors perpetrated by his native country on his coreligionists.

98 university, he had made sufficient impact to be named to the Board of Governors.189 Not only was he added to the Board, but there was language added to the memorandum specifically referencing Warburg’s attendance at the Board meetings leading up to the composition of an official university constitution.190

A cynic—or perhaps someone who had observed Weizmann’s previous interactions with his ideological opponents—might suspect that the inclusion of such a prominent non-Zionist on the Board of Governors was the result of ulterior motives. Rather than having Warburg out of sight, potentially directing his non-Zionist forces to oppose the designs of the Zionist

Organization, Weizmann might have supported this arrangement in order to keep a close watch, lest any machinations undo years of hard work. Perhaps this was the case, but a closer look reveals that Warburg was always intended to play a substantive role.

In late 1923, Weizmann wrote to his associate Berthold Feiwel, indicating that he had fielded a proposal from Warburg, among others, in which they would continue to raise funds independently of the Keren Hayesod, but that these funds would merge at a later date.191 Again, the possibility that Weizmann was merely maneuvering various pieces into place to best serve his goals cannot here be completely dismissed. But there may be another reason. Of all the non-

Zionist leaders with whom Weizmann had to battle continuously over various details, both small and large, it is clear that Felix Warburg represented his strongest opposition.

Weizmann’s respect for Warburg’s political ability was clear from his correspondence with Feiwel. According to Weizmann, “every piece of abominable gossip is brought to

[Warburg], he knows every little intrigue which is going on in Palestine.”192 However, given that

189 “Administration of the University,” 1924 (AJA 215/3). 190 “Administration of the University,” 2. 191 Weizmann to Feiwel, December 14, 1923, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XII, series A, 61. 192 Weizmann to Feiwel, December 21, 1923, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XII, series A, 76.

99 Warburg’s opinion “carries great weight…not only with non-Zionists, but also with the

Zionists,” converting Warburg to the University cause was a significant coup.193 Warburg was not only a well-known philanthropist whose money and interest in Jewish education were manifest, he also understood how to function within the fraught political scene endemic to

Jewish communal organizations at this time.194 Perhaps Warburg was not an ideologue along the lines of Adler, but he represented a much greater rival for Weizmann, and was a man whom others would follow.

In many ways, assembling the Board of Governors was akin to forming a Parliamentary government. Weizmann could not achieve his aims entirely alone, so he needed to form a governing coalition with men with whom he could work. Warburg could wrangle the non-

Zionists in a way that would allow fundraising and academic planning to progress apace and would not force anyone to abandon his deeply-held beliefs about the purpose of the Yishuv.

Though the Board would continue to be riven by bitter disputes and rivalries, Weizmann’s 1923 trip to the United States had successfully brought on board the individuals without whom the final stages of university planning could not commence.

This trip had distinct echoes of the first excursion Weizmann made to the United States that he made with the explicit intention of raising funds for the Hebrew University. Jehuda

Reinharz asserts that Weizmann at the time ascribed such a high level of importance to the university project that he enlisted Albert Einstein to accompany him on the Atlantic crossing in order to lend his considerable prominence to the enterprise.195 This fits both with Weizmann’s intention to create in Palestine a self-sustaining polity but also with his scientific and somewhat

193 Weizman to Feiwel, December 21, 1923, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XII, series A, 76. 194 And, indeed, even today as well. 195 Reinharz, Chaim Weizmann, 361.

100 technocratic instincts. Weizmann would not have turned to the famous German botanist Otto

Warburg in the early stages of planning if he did not keenly feel the potential scientific benefit of the university for the Yishuv.196

For his part, Warburg’s view of Weizmann had not changed meaningfully. He respected

Weizmann’s accomplishments, and the two men were friendly on a personal level, but a barely- hidden layer of antipathy led to continual mistrust and feelings of persecution. Particularly illustrative of this point is the extensive correspondence between Warburg and Adler in which the two close associates and ideological allies spoke more freely about their perceptions of the rifts within organized Jewry. 197In one description, Warburg wrote to Adler that the Board was full of almost irreconcilable opinions, though he did express a fervent hope that the Board could continue to function smoothly nonetheless.198 While from context it follows that Warburg intended this comment as an aspersion on the heterogeneous nature of the Board, one could just as easily assert that a diversity of opinions gave opportunities to groups that might otherwise have been shut out of the conversation entirely.

Warburg was less prone to paranoia regarding the Zionists than Adler was. Cyrus Adler, a well-established academic who served as the President of the Jewish Theological Seminary, had years of experience navigating the treacherous politics of Jewish organizations. He recognized that the Zionist Organization not only had the motivation and ability to take over what was intended to be a joint cause, but that they had already started moving pieces into place to do so. In a letter to Warburg from mid-1924, Adler recounted a conference with the Zionist

196 Dr. Warburg was not a close relation of Felix’s. 197 Warburg and Adler had met through their joint work with the American Jewish Committee in New York City during the first decade of the twentieth century. Though Adler worked more closely with Jacob Schiff, he and Warburg found themselves ideologically aligned with regards to the growing influence of Zionism in the United States. David G. Dalin, “Cyrus Adler, Non-Zionism and the Zionist Movement: A Study in Contradictions,” AJS Review 10, no. 1 (Spring 1985), 55. 198 Warburg to Adler, August 7, 1924 (AJA 214/5).

101 leadership from which he was returning, saying that “as usual, the Conference resulted in a compromise and about 50% of our advice was taken.”199 Looking past the sardonic tone of the writing, we can certainly deduce that though Adler was by this point working on the university project with the Zionist leadership, he maintained his previous misgivings.

These debates would remain at a simmer throughout most of 1924, as the progress of building up Mount Scopus hit full speed and focus of the Board of Governors began to shift from fundraising for the physical spaces the university would occupy to organizing the academics of the University itself. A document circulated among Trustees of the university explained how the

Board would raise and disburse funds and, among other tasks, how they would select suitable faculty members. Cyrus Adler, perhaps due to his experience leading an institution of higher learning, suggested that professors be appointed for one year only, which would increase the likelihood of other universities permitting faculty to obtain a second appointment.200 According to Mr. Haffkine, an eminent microbiologist and Zionist whose work on vaccines preventing plague and cholera earned him plaudits from around the world. this suggestion was generally dismissed, because the Board would want to assess the “real suitability of scholars who will be preaching doctrines from the eminent platform of the School.”201

It takes only a very small leap of faith to understand that the “doctrines” to which Mr.

Haffkine alluded were likely most closely aligned with those of the Zionist Organization. This would account for the opposition to the plan proposed by Dr. Adler, who would certainly not have used a platform at the school to espouse those same precepts. However, given the context, this relatively minor dispute only echoes what has previously been acknowledged here and by all

199 Adler to Warburg, July 28, 1924 (AJA 214/5) 200 W.M. Haffkine, “Suggestions Referring to the Organisation of a School of High Jewish Learning in Jerusalem,” July 31, 1924, 3. 201 Ibid.

102 parties involved at the time: ideological disagreements had not disappeared, but everyone involved in the university project had the same general aim and would work together to achieve it. The non-Zionists recognized as a token of good faith—or canny politics—that the Zionist

Organization had consented to include non-aligned Jews in comprising the Jewish Agency that would manage affairs in Palestine under the auspices of the British Mandate.202

Simultaneously, a much more significant event in the history of the Hebrew University was moving from the planning stages to reality: Warburg and his wife were going to travel to

Palestine to see conditions throughout the Yishuv. Never having visited Palestine, Warburg’s knowledge of the situation derived exclusively from letters, published accounts, and conversations with associates. In making the arduous journey to Palestine, Warburg would be able to assess for himself the progress being made by various business, agricultural, political, and educational institutions.

As such a significant donor to the Yishuv in general and the Hebrew University in particular, the outcome of this visit had the potential to change the fortunes of the Jewish settlement in Palestine in a profound way. Weizmann himself was quite anxious for Warburg’s visit, as he wanted to show Warburg the best side of Palestine. In a letter to Frederick Kisch, in

Jerusalem, he suggested that if Palestine “impresses him [Warburg] more or less favourably that he will be ready to be very helpful, and his help means a great deal.”203 Weizmann needed

Warburg not only to enjoy himself—while positive, personal enjoyment was likely beside the fact—but also to see that the Yishuv had become productive and was worthy of a further investment of time and money.

202 Louis Marshall, Cyrus Adler, Horace Stern, and Herbert Lehmann to Warburg, January 24, 1924 (AJA 216/17). An analysis of Warburg’s participation in this enlarged Jewish Agency plays a significant role in Chapter 11. 203 Weizmann to Kisch, December 6, 1923, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XII, series A, 54.

103 Before fielding the accusation of making too much of a relatively minor event, it is worth considering that Weizmann continued to reference Warburg’s visit to Palestine and the potential ramifications thereof throughout the months of January and February, until Warburg returned to the United States. References to Warburg’s journey appear in letters to Louis Marshall204, Lewis

Strauss205, and Sir Herbert Samuel206, among several others. An insignificant event would not appear in letters as frequently as Warburg’s visit did in Weizmann’s. Certainly Weizmann felt that this could be a turning point in the fortunes of the university.207

Warburg’s personal correspondence, while voluminous with post-trip reminiscences, is surprisingly succinct on the topic of the upcoming transatlantic voyage. His most significant concern dealt with the conference to be held in February 1924 regarding the participation of non- aligned (i.e., non- and anti-Zionist) Jews in the formation of the Jewish Agency for Palestine.

Warburg opted not to sign his name to a letter indicating his approval of the conference’s decisions, given that he would be absent.208 He did not want to have his imprimatur attached to a document he would not have a chance to read prior to publication.

On the surface, this is quite a reasonable decision for Warburg to make. The idea of lending even tacit support for ideas that he would not be able to review for weeks would have opened Warburg up to the possibility that the conference came to conclusions in opposition of what he felt would ultimately benefit himself and the university. Should he want to approve of his associates’ plans, he would have ample opportunity to do so upon his return to the United

204 Weizmann to Marshall, January 20, 1924, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XII, series A, 103. 205 Weizmann to Strauss, January 22, 1924, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XII, series A, 109. 206 Weizmann to Samuel, February 6, 1924, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XII, series A, 120. 207 This is a sentiment that would later in 1924 be echoed by Magnes; see below. 208 Marshall to Warburg, January 26, 1924 (AJA 216/3)

104 States. Pushing that decision down the road did nothing to encumber his freedom of choice on the matter.

However, the possibility remains that there is another reason why Warburg not only did not approve of the use of his name without his presence but also declined to move the date of his trip in order to attend the meeting: his personal convictions about the Yishuv in general and the

University in particular seemed to be diverging from the rest of the non-Zionists’. His increasing involvement with the University had drawn Warburg into more frequent contact with the factions controlling the development of Palestine and, while he maintained his disdain for the politics of their leaders, he could see for himself that the Yishuv was beginning to flourish.

While in Palestine, Warburg toured “18 Jewish colonies” and came away with an exceedingly favorable impression of the country.209 He was able to report that the accomplishments of the Yishuv in a relatively short period of time were unbelievable.210 The economic possibilities of Palestine were obvious even to the most casual observer, as agriculture, infrastructure, and other construction-based industries were even then growing mightily.

Warburg would certainly seek to use his business connections and the entrepreneurial skill he had cultivated as a banker to help Palestine achieve its productive capacity, but this would not be the area of Palestinian life in which his trip would have the largest impact.

In his statement upon returning to the United States, Warburg reserved his most lavish praise for “the development of Jewish educational opportunities” in the Yishuv.211 He continued by referencing both the scientific utility of Jewish national education, but also the cultural benefits that the community would derive from it. Education in the Yishuv, in Warburg’s

209 “Felix Warburg on Palestine” (AJA 216/17) 210 “Statement of Felix M. Warburg,” (AJA 216/17) 211 “Statement of Felix M. Warburg” (AJA 216/17)

105 estimation, would be a boon to all segments of society, providing the Yishuv with academics trained in a variety of fields who could diversify the settlement’s cultural sphere.

With the benefit of nearly a century of hindsight, modern observers can easily understand that the positives associated with the Hebrew University vastly outweighed the challenges involved with getting the project off the ground. One understated aspect that the university helped to bolster was the use of Hebrew as a modern, academic language when only a half- century before Hebrew had been the language of Tanakh, rabbinic literature, and liturgy rather than daily communication. To ensure the continued success of the university and provide qualified students, the Yishuv had to develop and foster a robust primary and secondary educational system.

In a report to Judge Mack from 1922, Elisha Friedman warned that without more adequate development of the school system in the Yishuv, parents would have to send children elsewhere “in order that they might be prepared for college.”212 This situation would obviously not suit the cultural nationalist aims of the Yishuv, so the development of a more comprehensive system of secondary education became a priority. Given Warburg’s reaction, it seems likely that the establishment in Jerusalem of a Hebrew-language university was a catalyst for the further and necessary growth in the Jewish educational system.

Another aspect of the Hebrew University’s success that merits discussion is that while the university project-- and the Yishuv in general—was dominated by the Zionists, the planning and administrative work of the early years brought together a number of individuals who had vastly differing conceptions of the purpose of the Yishuv. The university’s Board of Governors was the most tangible manifestation of this diversity of approach to Zionism. While the work of the

212 Elisha M. Friedman, “Memorandum to Judge Julian W. Mack,” December 24, 1922, 2 (AJA 213/10)

106 Board after the opening of the University will be the subject of a later chapter, the importance of this body is such that its composition deserves some analysis.

According to a 1924 document, the Board was to consist of: Albert Einstein, Ahad

Ha’am, Chaim Nachman Bialik, Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolow, Alfred Mond, Felix

Warburg, James de Rothschild, and Judah Magnes.213 This group is roughly half-filled with

Zionists, with the remainder coming from the various other factions. In terms of national origin, the Board spans the globe, with men of Eastern European (Weizmann), Western European

(Warburg, Rothschild), and American heritage (Magnes).214 There is strong participation from the humanities (Bialik) and the sciences (Weizmann). On the surface, the composition appears to be as representative as possible, given a set of very challenging requirements.

From the perspective of someone observing Felix Warburg’s growing involvement with the Hebrew University project, perhaps the most noticeable aspect of the Board is that none of

Warburg’s close associates in the United States (Marshall, et al) was included. Warburg—and

Magnes, who had a nearly-impossible task as the incoming university Chancellor—were left to carry the torch for American non-Zionists. Weizmann’s admiration and respect for the gravitas which Warburg carried within his cadre of associates is clear not only from the way in which he described Warburg in letters, but also perhaps that he considered Warburg sufficiently powerful a figure to maintain the non-Zionists’ ideological influence alone.

Evidence of Warburg’s rising esteem within the university project organizers is that they included his name among a list of high-level individuals who would contribute to a special

213 “Administration of the University,” 3 (AJA 215/3). In addition to Einstein, Ha’am, Bialik, Rothschild, and Magnes, Sokolow and Mond are less well-known. Sokolow was Polish-born author and a major Zionist leader, while Mond was a British philanthropist. 214 Perhaps the omission of any representatives from the southern hemisphere reflects a bias on the part of the committee, but more likely it reflects the realities of Jewish communal life around the world at this time.

107 edition of the New Palestine to be issued in late March or early April 1924. His contribution was to be “an article or interview on the duty of American Jewry in helping to develop in Palestine a center of Hebrew learning.”215 That Warburg was asked, alongside Einstein, Magnes, Ahad

Ha’am, and other luminaries of the Jewish academic world to compose a piece for this issue only underscores the fact that, once he had made clear his intention to support the University fully, he was taken seriously in this aim. In addition, this underscored that his profile among other

American Jews was on the rise.

By mid- to late-1924, he was deeply involved in issues such as selecting professors and various components of the academic programs that the university would soon offer. The university, which was not to begin offering undergraduate degrees for some time, had to recruit professors to lead graduate students’ research. Because of the professional risk and uncertainty surrounding accepting a position at the Hebrew University, many of the professors who came did so out of a fervent Zionist belief. Warburg was thus not blind to the reality that the Zionists were by necessity to continue to play a leading role; he merely wanted to ensure that their preeminence did not become dominance.

This fear was echoed in August of that year, when Magnes reported that the construction process on Mount Scopus had left no room for the Institute of Jewish Studies, which was to form the backbone of the cultural nationalist rationale for the university’s existence. Magnes wrote that “in the new buildings that are being erected there is no space provided for the Jewish

Institute – it is all for the Chemical Institute and the Uncrobiological [sic] Institute.”216 Likewise,

Magnes expressed his concern that Weizmann had been adding more individuals to the Board of

215 “Proposed University Number of the New Palestine” (AJA 215/3) 216 Magnes to Warburg, August 19, 1924

108 Governors—all of whom shared his Zionist beliefs—without consulting Magnes or anyone else.217

Whatever the politics of the Board’s composition, it forced Warburg into taking a much more prominent role in the planning and administrative work of the university. In a letter to

Magnes, Warburg asks for clarification about “by what authority…additional people being appointed by Dr. Weizmann to the Administration Committee.”218 Likewise, in a letter to the

British Zionist Norman Bentwich, Warburg bemoaned the appointment to the General

Committee of “Zionists of the old type.”219 Warburg was clearly already chafing at what he perceived as undue Zionist influence on the Committee and, by extension, on the university itself. He did not want to see his money spent by an organ of the Zionist Organization; nor did he want to devote his time and energy into a project that would devolve (from his perspective) into a propaganda piece for those promoting the idea of a nation-state.

Outside of the University, Warburg continued to facilitate the fundraising efforts of the

University. He frequently used his contacts within the American Jewish community to make connections with University administrators, who would then contact those individuals with a request for funds.220 This resulted in larger sums being raised from the United States, which in turn helped the University move towards its April 1925 opening date.

1924 ended with Warburg’s stature undoubtedly on the rise, even considering the lofty opinion that Weizmann held of him at the year’s start. Because of the structure of the university, which allotted considerable authority within the Board of Governors to individuals whose

217 Ibid. 218 Warburg to Magnes, September 4, 1924 (AJA 215/3) 219 Warburg to Bentwich, September 3, 1924 (AJA 220/1) 220 See, for example, the letter from Magnes to a Mr. Rosenbloom lauding the “privilege” that professors would feel in working at a university devoted to Jewish issues. August 21, 1924 (AJA 215/5).

109 fundraising ability was laudable, he had become a major player on the administrative side of the university project, helping see construction over the finish line and expressing detailed views about faculty appointments and which programs the university should offer. In addition, his trip to Palestine at the beginning of the year had drawn positive press attention to the successes of the

Yishuv and served to bring even more non-Zionists into the university fold. As Magnes put it in a letter in late December, the project “would have been dragging on for years and years unless

[Warburg] had stepped into the breach.”221 With the turn of the year, and the momentous opening of the university, Warburg would become even more indispensable.

221 Magnes to Warburg, December 27, 1924 (AJA 215/3).

110 CHAPTER 8: YEAR 1

In the history of the Hebrew University, 1925 represents the moment at which

Weizmann’s seemingly-impossible dream became a reality. On April 1, 1925, the campus on

Mount Scopus opened with a massive ceremony featuring speakers and attendees including

Arthur Balfour, whose 1917 declaration gave hope to the Zionist movement. It was a time for celebration, a culmination of years of work by a group of diverse individuals from around the world. The Hebrew University was poised to support the Yishuv culturally, technologically, and nationalistically.

Despite this joyous atmosphere, the administration of the Hebrew University was still riven with ideological infighting and passive-aggressive sniping. Chaim Weizmann, sensing the public relations coup that the successful opening of the University represented, sought to press the advantage of the Zionist Organization and push the university in that direction.

Simultaneously, the non-Zionist faction, with Felix Warburg at the forefront, resisted

Weizmann’s machinations and tried to force the agenda of the university in a direction that supported Jewish development but not any nationalist aim. It was, to say the least, an uneasy mix of personalities and beliefs.

Even before the university opened, Warburg was expressing uneasiness about the perceived Zionist bent of some of the professorial appointments.222 He saw the potential for the school to be used for Zionist causes and wanted to use every ounce of his influence to avoid that outcome. In reality, Warburg was caught in a bind. In recognizing that the Hebrew University would be a force for positive development in the Yishuv, he also had to acknowledge that

222 Warburg to Magnes, November 9, 1924 (AJA 215/5).

111 opposing ideological groups might be able to hijack the institution for their own gains. This dilemma drove many of the decisions that Warburg would be forced to make in the second half of the 1920’s.

Nevertheless, Warburg spent the first few months of 1925 assisting with the complicated logistical planning for the opening celebration of the Mount Scopus campus. As might be expected, a major component of his work dealt with appeasing and placating fellow American

Jews who felt uneasy about the Zionist Organization’s domination of Yishuv planning. Cyrus

Adler, in particular, wrote to Warburg expressing his displeasure with the composition of the

Jewish Agency. To him, only a reorganization of the Agency would “be satisfactory to those of us outside who feel that a religious spirit ought likewise be present in Palestine.”223 This expression of religious fervor makes sense coming from a leader of the Conservative

Movement’s rabbinical seminary, but in the correspondence between Adler and Warburg, speaking of displeasure with the Zionists in these terms, the religious note is atypical. Appealing to Felix Warburg’s religious nature seems to be barking up the wrong tree, as though he made religious ritual part of his life—partially to appease his observant father-in-law, Jacob Schiff—he rarely displayed any true belief in most of the tenets of the religion outside philanthropy. It was a means of cultural connection and a way to define a community, but Judaism’s rites and rituals did not hold the greatest value for Warburg.

However, Warburg was demonstrably cognizant of how his relationship with Orthodoxy might appear and took pains to avoid seeming “irreligious,” as he put it in a letter to Cyrus

Adler.224 The university was, after all, to be a Jewish institution, and to be seen as opposing the drive towards a Jewish identity could easily be misconstrued as a lack of faith in the basis of the

223 Adler to Warburg, February 12, 1925 (AJA 217/7) 224 Warburg to Adler, February 24, 1925 (AJA 217/7)

112 university’s existence. Also of note in this particular letter to Adler is the gossipy tone that

Warburg adopted when addressing the Zionist Organization’s appointment of a Dr. Kaplan, a

Ukrainian diplomat who, after making Aliyah in the post-war turmoil, represented various socialist and labor groups, a political affiliation that certainly did not endear him to the staunchly conservative Warburg, to represent the group at the dedication of the university.

Warburg’s writing to his close associates was frequently playful, including personal asides and informal word choice. In this situation, writing to Adler, Warburg wondered whether the appointment of Dr. Kaplan might “start tongues wagging” and implied that, if this were somehow embarrassing for the Zionist Organization, that would only be to his benefit.225 This is certainly not the language that Warburg used when addressing dignitaries from whom he was trying to extract a favor or a concession, nor reflective of his diction when writing to Weizmann, an opponent whom he knew well and liked. Rather, this is the writing of two men fighting on the same side of a battle in which the odds were stacked against them.

In April 1925, the dedication of the Hebrew University took place in the campus on

Mount Scopus. Many dignitaries—Jewish and Gentile—attended the ceremony and joined in celebrating what was certainly a massive accomplishment. After the festivities subsided and the guests returned home, however, the real work of running and managing a university began. The university still required massive influxes of funding in order to continue the necessary construction projects, the academic structure had not yet been finalized, and the administration still had to grapple with its divisions of ideology and approach.

Eleven days after the dedication ceremony, the Board of Governors of the Hebrew

University met to address some of these profound issues. In his opening remarks, Weizmann

225 Warburg to Adler, February 24, 1925 (AJA 217/7)

113 magnanimously ceded responsibility for the university, undertaken “heretofore mainly by the

Zionist Organization” to the Board of Governors.226 There’s no subtext, no subtlety in this remark. Weizmann was clearly dismissing the efforts of anyone not affiliated with the organized

Zionist movement.227 Weizmann’s comment put Magnes in the difficult position of having to offer his appreciation to the Zionist Organization while simultaneously avoiding the perception of having minimized the assistance of other, non-affiliated groups.

This dilemma of Magnes’ was even clearer in the debate about whether the Hebrew

University should receive funding directly from the Palestine Zionist Executive, which de facto acted as the state government for the Yishuv in accordance with the terms of Britain’s mandate for Palestine. This arrangement, uncommon in parts of the world, was common among English universities.228 Weizmann, as one might expect, expressed his preference that this should be the case. Magnes, on the other hand, worried that this question was one “affecting the whole structure and policy of the University” and the potential for political meddling in academic affairs meant that the idea was a poor one.229 Magnes wanted to ensure a separation between the

PZE, which governed most aspects of life in the Yishuv, and the Hebrew University.

Warburg’s absence from this meeting likely affected Weizmann’s decision to advocate for a closer relationship between the Jewish Agency and the administration of the Hebrew

University little if at all. Nothing Weizmann said constituted a binding resolution, but merely the opinion of one man—albeit one whose words carried the connotation of having the force of the

Zionist Organization behind them. More important at the first post-dedication meeting of the

226 Minutes of a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University, April 12, 1925, 1 (AJA 220/6) 227 This task was facilitated because Warburg and Magnes were absent from this meeting, only able to attend the auxiliary Board meeting in Naples, Italy nine days later. 228 Minutes of a meeting of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University, April 12, 1925, 10 (AJA 220/6) 229 Ibid.

114 Board of Governors of the Hebrew University was the adoption of a resolution that might seek to allay, rather than exacerbate, non-Zionist fears of a hostile takeover of the University by the

Zionist contingent on the Board.

In choosing professors for academic appointments at the University, the Board would be required to “seek information and advice from authorities in the field under consideration.”230

The Board would not have the ability unilaterally to make politically-motivated hires even if

Weizmann or another member wanted to force the issue. This speaks in many ways to Warburg’s fears from late 1924 about Weizmann’s authority to make appointments on a whim. The new requirement for the Board to consult a group of outside experts mitigates this possibility entirely.

It was at this time that Warburg began his most substantive effort on behalf of the

University. He, along with fellow American donors, created the American Committee of the

Institute of Jewish Studies.231 David Myers has written extensively about this institution, discussing its unique place within Zionist ideology and tracing its origins back farther than merely the First Zionist Congress. According to Myers, “Zionist and non-Zionist alike felt a kind of paternalistic attachment to” the Institute of Jewish Studies.232 The Institute, which formed the backbone of the cultural nationalist rationale for founding the Hebrew University in the first place, fell into an awkward gap between various different conceptions of the Yishuv. Unlike the scientific disciplines championed by , the Institute of Jewish Studies did not promise to help develop the land of the Yishuv in any meaningful, tangible capacity.

Rather, as Myers argues, the Jüdische Hochschule of which Weizmann, Buber, and

Feiwel wrote in 1913 and which became the Institute of Jewish Studies was more to constitute a

230 Ibid., 13. 231 The Institute of Jewish Studies formed a major component of the Hebrew University. 232 David N. Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 55.

115 “meeting place for Jewish scholars who were denied professional acceptance by a European university.”233 This assertion underscores why the impetus for the Hebrew University came from

Europe-based Jewish leaders; in America, the proscription against Jewish professors was much weaker and, as in many other matters relating to Jewish life, American Jews enjoyed greater freedom of choice than did their European brethren.

Though Jewish professors enjoyed the ability to work in the United States free from governmental persecution, this did not mean that their situation was always perfect. Lewis Feuer recounts that the first Jewish professor at an American institution, J.J. Sylvester, took up the post of mathematics professor at the University of Virginia only after his religion disqualified him from an appointment at Cambridge.234 He did not last long in the position, but this illustrates that despite the overt anti-Semitism displayed by many members of the academy, the United States remained even in higher education a beacon of hope for European Jews.

Of course, as we have seen, this in no way meant that American Jews forsook responsibility for the upbuilding of Jewish education in Palestine. The American Committee of the Institute of Jewish Studies—in many ways a forerunner of the American Friends of the

Hebrew University that marks Warburg’s most significant and lasting contribution to the Hebrew

University project—represents one such example of American Jewry’s involvement with the developments on Mount Scopus. This group would exert influence on the University using the most powerful instrument available to it: the potential for withholding future donations. In June

1925, Warburg wrote a letter to Magnes relating views of the American Committee. Perhaps the most important of these was the insistence that all academic nominations “be subject to

233 Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past, 45. 234 Lewis S. Feuer, “The Stages in the Social History of Jewish Professors in American Colleges and Universities,” American Jewish History 74, no. 4 (June 1982), 432.

116 confirmation on the part of the Board of Governors of the University.”235 Despite this issue nominally having been addressed in the first post-dedication meeting of the Board of Governors,

Warburg two months later still felt it sufficiently pressing to send the Chancellor of the

University a letter.

From this point, two separate issues become clear. First, the major sphere of ideological conflict within the administration was shifting towards the hiring practices of the university.

Now that the Hebrew University was a reality, with a campus and a functioning academic program, previous battles over what the university should become at the later date of its opening became moot. Warburg could see a potential for the University, officially a non-partisan institution, to slide slowly into Zionism, and he wanted to ensure that the first domino to fall was not the faculty. Though with the benefit of nearly a century of hindsight this sounds like unfounded paranoia, at the time this fear was all too real and the specter of an all-encompassing

Zionist entity dominated the non-Zionist discussion.

The second, and somewhat more important, issue that the June 1925 letter from the

American donors indicates is that this coalition of individuals was going to start flexing its power and influencing the development of the school. Without a doubt, the most significant contribution of this American contingent in the early days of the University was its formation of a unified group that would wield its potential donations as a policy tool. As we have seen previously, Weizmann himself understood that the continued success of the University relied on fundraising from the United States. Once American Jews understood this as well, their ability to mold the University’s program increased considerably.

235 Warburg to Magnes, June 8, 1925 (AJA 220/4)

117 Emblematic of Warburg’s instinct to bring more American Jews into the fold of the

University is a letter he sent to Jacob Lit, a wealthy lawyer from Philadelphia, in June 1925.

Warburg’s language in this letter is not the familiar, lighthearted tone that so frequently appeared when he would write to Adler or Magnes, but rather the formal tone of an individual addressing a respected person with whom he might not be fully acquainted. In the letter, Warburg presents the

University as being “open to Jews and non-Jews alike,” though its ultimate goal would be to keep young graduates interested and involved in Jewish affairs.236

From this, it is possible to glean the outlines of Warburg’s perception of the University’s aim. Unlike many individuals for whom the University was to be a font of Jewish culture,

Warburg sold the idea of the University as being more broadly applicable. While certainly a majority of the school’s output would be either Jewish in nature or would speak to the logistical needs of the Yishuv, it was not to be solely for the benefit of Jewish culture. In the context of the non-Zionist insistence that Palestine should represent the only possible home for a revived

Jewish nationalism, or rather one of several locations that would be acceptable, this mindset makes sense. The preeminent academic institution in a country should speak to the needs of all inhabitants, regardless of religious or political affiliation.

It is also important to remember that these disputes between factions within the Board of

Governors were occurring behind the scenes of an institution that was responsible for educating students, who were in Jerusalem and conducting research. Esther Stein-Ashkenazi writes that these students, embarking on a new academic adventure, formed a student union prior to the official opening of the university.237 This offered these researchers an opportunity to develop a

236 Warburg to Jacob Lit, June 9, 1925 (AJA 220/4) 237 Esther Stein-Ashkenazi, “Argonei ha-Studentim b’Universitah v’p’ilotam b’tkufat ha-mandat,” Hagit Lavsky (ed.), Toldot Ha’Universitah Ha’Ivrit B’Yerushalayim: Hit’atzmut Akademit Toch Ma’avak Leumi (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009), 369.

118 collegial atmosphere and is an example of how the Hebrew University sought to shape itself in the mold of similar institutions around the world.

The separation on the Board of Governors between non-Zionists and the Zionist leadership only continued to deepen. By June 1925, Warburg was complaining to Magnes of

“intentionally unfair” actions of the American Zionist Organization, acknowledging ruefully that

“as long as that organization exists we must be prepared” to handle that situation.238 One suspects that Warburg’s letter did not give Magnes any new information; as Chancellor of the

University, Magnes would already have been intimately aware of these profound divisions. Only two months into the school’s existence, the infighting among Board members was increasing precipitously.

A more interesting development of this time period is that Warburg was not initially in favor of a separate United States-based organization designed to assist with fundraising for the

University.239 At the time, he felt that to intentionally divide the school’s finite resources based on national origin would neither help the University succeed nor help bridge any geographically- based divides that might exist. Keeping in mind that this letter came only 22 days prior to the letter to Magnes asserting demands on behalf of the American donors, one has to wonder what occurred in the interim to change the mind of a man who appeared so set in his beliefs.

One component of British rule in Palestine that would have a dramatic effect on the way in which the Yishuv was governed was their insistence that their Mandate required that there be a unified body of Jewish leaders with which the British could deal. After years of domination on the part of the Zionist Organization, this edict from the British was seen by non-aligned groups

238 Warburg to Magnes, June 5, 1925 (AJA 223/11) 239 Warburg to Magnes, May 18, 1925 (AJA 223/11)

119 as requiring participation from across the ideological spectrum.240 Understandably, many of these bodies expressed some reticence to work with their rivals, though inevitably they all realized that voluntarily excluding themselves from the PZE would only hurt their cause and embolden other groups.241

Louis Marshall, in announcing the formation of the Organization Committee of non-

Zionist bodies within the United States, wrote to Warburg to ask for his support in, essentially, working with the Zionist Executive on the Jewish Agency.242 This expanded Agency would, in essence, fulfill the edict from the British to form a unified body of Jewish leaders who would have day-to-day responsibility for managing the Yishuv. The language in which Marshall wrote to Warburg is interesting, in that it ascribes to the Zionists a much greater level of willingness to cooperate than the correspondence of other non-Zionists—specifically Adler—has shown. In response to Marshall’s letter, Warburg indicated his approval of the assortment of non-Zionist groups Marshall cobbled together to form their part of the Jewish Agency and accepted his designation to the Committee.243

Much as Warburg recognized the necessity of working with Zionists on the Board of

Governors of the Hebrew University so that the project had the greatest chance for success, non-

Zionist bodies across the world agreed to work with the Zionists in the Jewish Agency in order to facilitate the development of the Yishuv and to exert as much influence as possible. Worth remembering is that the Zionists outnumbered their opponents and had amassed much more

240 Given that the Zionist Organization had been cooperating with the British since the beginning of the decade, its leaders had no such compunctions. Despite the ZO’s dominance of the relationship with Britain, other scholars have also pointed out that there was a multitude of avenues of communication open between the British and the Jewish population in Palestine. For a good overview, see Taysir Nashif, “Palestinian Arab and Jewish Leadership in the Mandate Period,” Journal of Palestine Studies 6, no. 4 (Summer 1977), 113-121. 241 Mark Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2nd ed.) (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), 194. 242 Louis Marshall to Warburg, June 27, 1925 (AJA 223/12) 243 Warburg to Marshall, June 29, 1925 (AJA 223/12)

120 political capital. Continuing to fight as the underdog, the non-Zionists had to pick and choose their battles.

One place in which the non-Zionists, led in this matter by Warburg, felt it necessary to make a stand was when the Zionists tried to subordinate the Technion leadership to the Zionist organization. In September, Warburg received an urgent letter from the Technion’s leadership, explaining that the "Zionist Executive was of the opinion that the Zionist Executive should endeavour to have the Haifa Technical Institute controlled and financed by the Board of

Governors of the Hebrew University.”244 Warburg, a donor to the Technikum as well as a member of the Hebrew University’s Board of Governors, was appalled by this.245 He and his cohort found this to be a significant overreach by the Zionist Organization and, though they had not invested nearly as much time or effort in promoting the Technion as they had the Hebrew

University, still valued the Haifa institution’s autonomy.

As 1925 progressed, the small skirmishes between Zionists and non-aligned groups continued apace. The sniping eventually became so pronounced that prominent Jews began publishing fervent op-eds in newspapers decrying this behavior. The rabbi of Congregation

Shearith Israel in New York City published an essay entitled “Let Us Have Peace,” which underscored that the manifest similarities between Zionists and non-Zionists were much more numerous than the differences between the groups. Rabbi Pool argued that they “had almost achieved peace in American Jewish life when this blighting controversy broke out.”246

Anyone who donated money to a non-Zionist affiliated group—such as those listed by

Louis Marshall in his letter to Warburg from June 1925—and did not also donate money to

244 Haifa Technical Institute to Warburg, September 15, 1925 245 Warburg had recently increased his personal donation to the Hebrew University from $100,000 to $500,000. (AJA 223/20) 246 Rabbi Pool, “Let Us Have Peace,” November 1925, 2 (AJA 223/20)

121 organizations falling under the Zionist umbrella expressed a clear worldview about the place of the Yishuv in organized Jewry. Philanthropy had become a political act. Likewise for those in the opposite position. In Warburg’s case, though the vast majority of his donations to the Yishuv went to bodies with which he either agreed or worked on the Board, he recognized that political disagreement did not preclude positive action, so he did not eliminate the possibility of donating through a Zionist-affiliated organization as well.

However, when he did so, or when he found out that the money he had given to a particular recipient had supported decisions with which he personally disagreed, he did not hesitate to assert himself. In September 1925, the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University met for the first time since April in Munich. At this meeting, which Warburg could not attend but gave Judge Mack his proxy, the Board addressed the organization of the University’s academic function. Of particular note, the minutes indicate that the Board approved the formation of an

Academic Council, which would advise the Board on matters of personnel decisions.247 Even though the Board as a whole still retained the final approval on the hiring of professors, this added layer of bureaucracy created yet another place for various political factions to exert their dominance. Given that there was considerable overlap between the two levels, fear of a Zionist takeover was not unfounded.248

Warburg, along with the like-minded American donors with an interest in the Hebrew

University, then met later in the year to issue more formal resolutions. Interestingly, this meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Advisory Committee of the Hebrew University

(AAC) began with Felix Warburg reading the minutes of the meeting of the Board of Governors

247 Minutes of Meeting of the Hebrew University Board of Governors, September 23-24, 1925, 8 (AJA 220/6) 248 For example, Weizmann was a member of both the Board and the Provisional Academic Council.

122 in Munich.249 Given that the AAC sought to support the University, and indeed that several members of the AAC also sat on the Board, to enter these minutes into the official record of the

AAC was a sensible decision. The following discussion included lengthy summaries of the

Munich meeting, given by Judge Mack and “endorsed” and extended by Mr. Sokolow.250 These largely replicate the official minutes, but within the editorial comments given by each man, one might glean areas in which the AAC and the Zionist Organization were not operating hand-in- glove. In particular, the text of Mr. Sokolow’s address to the meeting offers good insight. He rhetorically inquires of the men present regarding the University, “What is it to be? In what way is it to exist?”251 Sokolow explicitly tied the structure of the University to the British Mandate, wondering aloud whether they should have to “adapt…a little to the ideas of University arrangements in England.”252

He continued, reflecting that geopolitical and other circumstances might require the administration of the University to be held outside Palestine, if for no other reason than logistical expediency. Even Albert Einstein, himself an ardent Zionist, agreed that the idea of administering the University from another location—London, Vienna, New York, or elsewhere—might be in its best interests. The University would operate fully in Jerusalem, but in order to best work within the Mandatory framework, the administration would be headquartered elsewhere, at least to start.

While perhaps this might benefit the members of the Board, for whom repeated travel to

Palestine would be challenging and impractical, the suggestion to house the administrative

249 Minutes of Meeting of the Executive Committee of the American Advisory Committee of the Hebrew University, December 16, 1925 (AJA 220/6) 250 Ibid., 3 251 Ibid. 252 Ibid., 4.

123 apparatus of a national university outside the country, in a time well before instantaneous communication, would be self-defeating. The only reason why this would help the members of the AAC is if meetings were held in New York City, a development that given the composition of the Board seems unlikely. Devoting such a large proportion of the meeting to this scheme seems an unusual choice, given the vast amount of issues at hand.

More pressing, and more pertinent, is Warburg’s statement of opposition to the dual presidency of Weizmann and Einstein.253 At the beginning of the University’s existence, the plan was to grant both Einstein and Weizmann the title of President, with the functions of the presidency split between the two of them. Warburg came out strongly against this proposal, as he saw it granting avowed Zionists overwhelming power over university decisions. Despite reassurances from Mack that this situation would last only until the University had settled into routine academic activity, Warburg’s opposition merits analysis. This statement fits perfectly into the paradigm of Warburg’s activity with regard to the University: whenever he saw that the

Zionists were once again attempting to consolidate power, he would issue a statement or express his displeasure in written form to one of his close associates.254 Often this statement would serve simply to have his opinion entered into the record, with little optimism for actual change, given the composition of the Board.

For the Hebrew University, 1925 was a momentous year. The University opened with a impressive dedication ceremony on Mount Scopus and began admitting students. On the administrative side, the Board of Governors made substantial progress towards codifying rules and regulations not only for the academic programs but for fundraising and navigating the

253 Ibid., 5. 254 As in Weizmann attempting to hire professors without Board approval, adding a layer of bureaucracy to the process, etc.

124 political realities of the Yishuv. Given the nascent nature of the University, that many of these regulations were in flux is understandable, if not expected. Moving into 1926, the University would have to begin grappling with what it wanted to become and who would lead the way.

125 CHAPTER 9: THE AMERICAN FRIENDS OF THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY

With the University established and in operation, it is now necessary to understand the organization that would form the basis of Felix Warburg’s most lasting contribution to the

Hebrew University. As has been repeatedly mentioned, Warburg identified most closely by the point as an American. He was an American citizen and had raised his children to love American style and American society. While Warburg’s Germanness never completely disappeared, certainly World War I and the estrangement from his native country that resulted from it had the effect of blunting Germany’s cultural hold on him.

Under Warburg’s leadership, the AAC developed into a multi-faceted body that sought to support the activities of the Hebrew University through fundraising, publicity (or outright propaganda, as will be discussed later), political actions, and any other method members conceived of. At the very first meeting of this group, Warburg described its aim as helping the

American members of the Board to do their job as best as possible by marshalling the considerable resources of the United States for the cause.255 Given that there was not an overwhelming amount of Americans on the Board in 1925, the task of providing them with assistance was not taxing. In fact, the actual functions of the AAC quickly outgrew these modest ambitions, as the group started managing nearly all American fundraising for the Hebrew

University and supervising the activities of related, but smaller, organizations.256

Despite the group’s continuing success, it was not a foregone conclusion at the outset that it would be able to last as a fundraising body distinct from those institutions within organized

Jewry that had a much longer history of positive results. The Zionist Organization of America,

255 “The Aims and Functions of the Advisory Committee to assist the American Members of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem,” 1 (AJA 220/7) 256 For example, the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee, which will be discussed below.

126 for example, was much better-known, with more resources, an established organizational structure, and a track record of providing a return on an investment.257 Likewise, groups like the

United Palestine Appeal sought to alleviate a specific crisis, and thus its appeal for funds going to Palestine had a different focus.

By comparison, asking Americans to ante up for a university more than 5,000 miles away, and which did not yet admit undergraduate students, was a harder sell. The beginnings of the campaign looked much like any other fundraising campaign with a singular focus. The overlap between the list of potential donors compiled by the AAC and that of other American

Jewish groups was significant.258 Even during a decade of unprecedented American economic expansion, the monies that wealthy Jewish Americans had for philanthropic causes was not limitless, and convincing them that the Hebrew University represented a strong use of the money was challenging.

Much like for many other Jewish communal organizations active in the United States at the time, and indeed in the years since, fundraising for the Hebrew University consisted of a mixture of direct, personal appeals by lead fundraisers and larger-scale dinners and galas designed to attract attention from a wider pool of potential donors. Since the Hebrew University was but one of a number of deserving potential outlets for philanthropic donations, Warburg and the AAC needed to work hard to convince an initially-skeptical population that the university was a solid use of money. Anecdotes and speeches by those individuals who had traveled to

Jerusalem and seen the development on Mount Scopus were particularly helpful in this context.

257 While this was often a moral return on investment—meaning a donor saw his or her money put to good use, without receiving a payment, occasionally this could refer to a corporation in Palestine offering dividends to investors. 258 The AAC’s list even denotes which committee member was assigned to a specific donor candidate. Minutes of Meeting of American Advisory Committee of the Hebrew University, December 16, 1925 (HU 21 97/I)

127 The initial, informal gathering of the AAC, held in June 1925, was a relatively small affair. Meeting at the Midday Club in New York City, Warburg oversaw the discussion among only ten men total, including himself and Magnes. According to the minutes, the men decided on whom to appoint secretary (either Elisha Friedman or Dr. Kaliski) and treasurer (either

Unterberg or Wertheim). After then dividing up into various committees (law, finance, building, etc.), the meeting adjourned without either bringing forward or adopting any resolutions.259

The outcome of this meeting could have applied to nearly any new organization, regardless of purpose or affiliation. With seemingly little rancor, individuals accepted their new responsibilities and agreed on this particular delegation of roles. Perhaps this collegial spirit was due to this gathering being an informal, and undersized, group as compared with the members who would attend the first official meeting six months later. In general, these ten men departed the Midday Club with a general knowledge of what was expected of them, but without a strong impetus to begin the work immediately.

When the group met in Warburg’s office on December 16, 1925, they had significantly more information to discuss. The University had been operational for a number of months, and during time the administrators had been able to assess their preparation and what still was required, especially as it came to fundraising. As mentioned earlier, it was at this meeting that

Chaim Weizmann began what Warburg perceived as an effort to diminish the potential impact of the non-Zionists on the Board of Governors.260 While Weizmann later blamed the near-total absence of Americans in attendance for this disconnect, lasting damage had been done.

259 The attendees included: Warburg, Magnes, Abraham Flexner, Bernard Flexner, Cyrus Adler, Jacob Billikopf, Emmanuel Libman, E. Untermeyer, James Marshall, and Frederick Warburg. Minutes of the Meeting of the Advisory Committee, June 12, 1925 (AJA 220/7). 260 See Chapter 6 for a more in-depth discussion of the Munich Conference and its fallout.

128 In the interim between the two meetings of the AAC, Warburg had also received a lengthy letter from Magnes in which he lay out in excruciating detail the budget that he had prepared for the 1925-26 school year.261 In addition to describing each of the departments slated to open in the University’s initial academic year, including their administrators, Magnes explained the level of fundraising he and the University would require in order to function as designed and cover outstanding debts. Despite Weizmann’s assertion that the University only owed £5,000 on its buildings, Magnes’ auditors had found that the school in fact owed

£12,000.262

As a result, Magnes asked the American contingent to provide the school $100,000, which “ought to be possible upon the basis of promises made.”263 In asking for this money,

Magnes hoped to see American influence on the future of the University increase, and the easiest way to ensure that taking place was to increase the financial stake of American Jews.264 One can surely extrapolate from Magnes’ own words that he was turning to the nascent AAC as a potential savior of the University’s finances and driver of the University’s direction. Of course, this meant that the AAC needed to have direction, specific goals, and a leader with the administrative knowledge to achieve these aims.

Luckily, the AAC had in Felix Warburg a man who was gifted in his ability to operate in the fraught world of organized Jewish philanthropy. The relationships that he had developed within the upper echelons of American Jewish society—mostly, but not exclusively, in New

York City—prepared him for this undertaking as well. Even a cursory glance at the agenda for

261 In closing the letter, Magnes wrote that he was “disgusted with [himself] for having done it,” meaning for having written in such overwhelming detail. He also advised that Warburg “make someone read it into a gramophone and then gather the Committee for the performance.” Magnes to Warburg, November 3, 1925 (HU 21 97/I) 262 Ibid., 12 263 Ibid., 1 264 Ibid., 12

129 this first full meeting of the AAC reveals that the organization was sure to significantly expand the scope of its duties and responsibilities in the coming year. Far from appearing newly-formed,

Warburg had already shaped the AAC’s bureaucracy into familiar groupings, with separate divisions for finance, publicity, administration, and budget.265 This speaks volumes about

Warburg’s aspirations for the AAC and his assumptions that the United States would rise to the occasion and support the Hebrew University sufficiently to warrant the creation of this affiliate body of the University itself.266 At this time, in late 1925, for Warburg to presume that American

Jews would continue to give was not a stretch of the imagination; this was a time of prosperity for the country as a whole, and the wealthy Jewish bankers operating largely in New York City flourished. This financial success led directly to significant philanthropy, including copious amounts to the Yishuv and to the Hebrew University.

A crucial aspect of the discussion at this first meeting of the AAC was that this body needed to avoid stepping on the toes of the myriad other organizations seeking to raise funds for development in Palestine. The upcoming campaign needed to be “managed in such a way as not to interfere with either the Joint Distribution Committee campaign for $15,000,000, or the

Zionist Organization campaign for $5,000,000.”267 First, these amounts indicate both the ambition that Jewish fundraisers showed during this time period, but also the considerable financial strength that the United States had begun to display. That the AAC felt it could ask for money on top of the $20 million for which other, related groups had already started campaigns is staggering. Second, we can see that, at least in 1925, there was noticeable coordination between

265 Minutes of Meeting of the American Advisory Committee of the Hebrew University in Palestine, Wednesday, December 16, 1925 (HU 21 97/I) 266 The United States was not the only country to set up its own national group in support of the University; Poland, the United Kingdom, and others did so as well. The United States was merely the largest and represented by far the greatest proportion of financial contributions. 267 Minutes of Meeting, December 16, 1925, 6.

130 these different organizations. They each knew what the others were doing, and understood that that trying to duplicate the efforts of the others would only hurt everyone. There were significant ideological differences, as well as different aims, but in general the twin goals of raising up the struggling Jewish populations in Eastern Europe and Palestine trumped any of these more insignificant disagreements.

The AAC continued to expand its work under Warburg’s leadership as the University found its footing in Jerusalem. This association, originally one of a number that were set up to support the actions of the University, had quickly become the most indispensable of the national groups around the world established to facilitate fundraising within a single country. As will be shown later in this narrative, Judah Magnes came to rely heavily on the AAC and on Warburg when faced with the unforeseen challenges that affected the University’s ability to function throughout the 1920’s. American money, much as Weizmann had understood when recruiting

Warburg, was the essential component of the University’s budget.

Meanwhile, the AAC absorbed a number of smaller, more specialized American organizations that also sought to help the university project. One of these, the American Jewish

Physicians’ Committee, aimed to assist the Hebrew University in establishing a hospital—which would eventually become Hadassah Hospital—and a medical school. The AJPC, before merging with the AAC, had entered into its own agreement with the Zionist Organization to purchase land on Mount Scopus to be used for the hospital, as well as continuing to contribute to the University itself.268 When it became clear in 1927 that the AAC was much more powerful, the AJPC graciously agreed to enter the AAC’s umbrella, though it continued to operate with relative autonomy.

268 Israel Wechsler to Magnes, June 10, 1925 (HU 19 88/1)

131 In late 1926, Warburg and Weizmann had both appeared at a dinner at New York City’s

Hotel Biltmore in support of the AJPC.269 The dinner successfully raised money for the AJPC, but the headline is that this relatively minor organization convinced Warburg and Weizmann to attend. One suspects that the presence of these two men helped to facilitate the fundraising. It also shows that Warburg’s mastery of the American fundraising scene extended to these organizations with which he was not even officially affiliated. In just a short time, Warburg had become of one the most important American Jewish philanthropic leaders.

Warburg and Weizmann’s joint appearance at this dinner at the Biltmore was noteworthy

It underscores that the disagreements between Zionists and non-Zionists within the Board of

Governors did not necessarily have to bleed over into the broader work of Jewish philanthropy.

Leaders of all stripes could, when it suited them, work together. Yehuda Bauer outlines that from the beginning of World War I to the time of the expansion of the Jewish Agency in 1929,

American Jews were able to contribute $78.7 million “to help Jews overseas”—and this was only through the auspices of the AJC; the value of American philanthropy soars when one considers all the organizations involved.270

Warburg continued to shepherd the AAC into its position of prominence throughout the rest of the decade and into the 1930’s. The Committee eventually morphed into the American

Friends of the Hebrew University, a change of nomenclature designed to align the organization with other, similar groups worldwide (English Friends of the Hebrew University, Polish Friends, etc.).271 Though Warburg stepped away from day-to-day operations in the early 1930’s, his son,

269 AJA 227/6 270 Yehuda Bauer, American Jewry and the Holocaust: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1939- 1945 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981). 271 This name changed was proposed as early as the end of 1925, though for a few years, the terms AAC and AFHU were used virtually interchangeably in correspondence. I have chosen to refer to this organization only as the AAC, to facilitate understanding for readers.

132 Edward, continued much of his work, and the AFHU continues to be the largest international support organization for the Hebrew University today. Among Warburg’s numerous accomplishments as an active proponent of the Hebrew University, without a doubt the AFHU remains his most enduring.

133 CHAPTER 10: THE UNIVERSITY EXPANDS

To expect 1926 to be a more significant year in the history of the Hebrew University than

1925 would be unreasonable. After all, there was no dedication ceremony to plan and execute, nor the first meetings of any institution of higher learning to celebrate. The Board of Governors had already held multiple meetings and had established the working framework for how the school would function and would continue to grow. Fundraising efforts were well underway, and though this would later bring forth significant discord between various factions on the Board of

Governors, the University was slowly finding its footing. In terms of excitement, 1926 had no chance but to be a letdown after the year that came before.

However, as sometimes happens, the developments of 1926 mean that the year was at least as significant. After the years of effort to build the university, the hard work of actually running it began in earnest. Several departments had already begun operating, including the

Institute of Jewish Studies—the component of the University that most closely stuck to the idea of the University as a place of Jewish cultural and academic revival—and the Department of

Microbiology. Students had begun enrolling, and they worked closely with the faculty whom the

Board of Governors had recruited to join the Hebrew University for varying lengths of time while on leave from other academic appointments.

Simultaneously, and with massive implications for the development of the University, the

Jewish Agency for Palestine was coming into existence as the main quasi-governmental body for the Yishuv. In addition to regulating life within the Jewish settlement in Palestine, it would liaise with the British Mandatory authorities and disburse the funds raised from within and outside the

Yishuv. Of course, the University, along with the rest of the public educational institutions fell

134 under the purview of the Agency, which meant that for non-Zionists, it was imperative to ensure sufficient non-Zionist representation on it in order to counter Zionist influence.

Within the University Board, Warburg’s focus at the beginning of the year was charting out the best campaign to attract the public into donating to the University. The Chairman of the

General Fund of the Hebrew University, David Kaliski, was understandably interested in how

Warburg would begin approaching the new year’s fundraising. By February, Warburg was still delaying, because he had been anticipating a visit from Weizmann, which had been postponed indefinitely.272 Weizmann’s trip to the United States would presumably lead to public events and speaking engagements, for which Warburg could sell tickets, and to construct a fundraising campaign prior to having all those details would be premature.

As it turns out, Weizmann would not make the trip to the United States until the end of the year, and so Warburg turned his attention to other matters related to the Hebrew University.

Chief among the issues concerning him was his perception that Zionism had continued to spread throughout the University in a way that was starting to escape his ability to control. Though his mistrust of Zionist intentions had been well-established over the previous few years, the

September 1925 Board of Governors Meeting in Munich, at which much of the American contingent was absent, truly set a match to the kindling. Despite Albert Einstein’s later, somewhat lame attempt to mollify Warburg by asserting that the leaders present had “regretted” the absence of American men, the resolutions adopted there alarmed Warburg, Marshall, and their cohort.273

272 Warburg to Kaliski, February 17, 1926 (AJA 227/6) 273 Einstein to Warburg, February 18, 1926, author’s translation from German (AJA 227/8)

135 Mostly, Warburg’s concern revolved around Zionist leaders beginning to make public assertions, which Warburg referred to as “Zionistic hot air explosions.”274 It was one matter to address the ideological rift within Board during Board meetings, but to issue statements publicly ran the risk of inducing a perception among potential donors of a less-than-unified Board. This sort of uncertainty could choke off the funding keeping the University afloat. Any ambiguity on the party of the University as to its politics would hamstring the work of the Board and relegate the school to the status of a “little local institution,” rather than having the “world-wide interest and support” that it deserves.275

Given the rancor that soon followed, as well as the turbulent personnel issues that the

Board faced in 1926, it is important to keep in mind that during this period the personal relationship between Warburg and Weizmann continued to be courteous. These two men shared an evident mutual respect, despite their considerable differences in political belief, ideology, and temperament. In March, after having postponed his trip to the United States, Weizmann wrote to

Warburg—from a resort in Italy—expressing regret for the “turn which events have taken in

America.”276 While passing the buck by blaming “a series of causes for which I am certainly not responsible,” Weizmann’s desire to maintain an open working relationship with Warburg is obvious.277

Warburg responded in kind, calling the deterioration in the relationship between the

Zionist and non-Zionist factions “unfortunate,” and recognizing that Weizmann did not need to be bothered with all details at all times.278 In the letter, Warburg lay out for Weizmann the issues

274 Warburg to James Becker, May 3, 1926 (AJA 229/7) 275 Warburg to Einstein, January 29, 1926 (AJA 227/8) 276 Weizmann to Warburg, March 1, 1926 (AJA 227/7) 277 Ibid. 278 Warburg to Weizmann, March 31, 1926 (AJA 227/7)

136 plaguing the American delegation; specifically, the strong opposition to Warburg’s fundraising campaign that Dr. Stephen Wise expressed. Wise, a fervent Zionist, objected to the goals of

Warburg’s campaign and had begun working to actively undermine Warburg’s work on behalf of the Hebrew University.279

Stephen Wise was, in many ways, akin to Judah Magnes. Both men eschewed Orthodox

Jewish observance, developed an academic reputation through research in the United States, and held strong opinions about how the development in Palestine should progress. Wise’s Zionism excluded him from the staunchly anti-Zionist Hebrew Union College, which was at the time the only American seminary ordaining Reform rabbis, and thus he opened the Jewish Institute of

Religion and hired many eminent scholars of Jewish issues.280 This Zionist affiliation, of course, placed him in direct conflict with many American Jewish leaders, like Warburg, with whom he might otherwise have found a common cause in the Hebrew University project.

Unfortunately, the hypothetical benefits of such a union were never to be realized, as the deal to enlarge the Jewish Agency to include non-Zionists such as Warburg incensed and infuriated Wise.281 Wise’s low opinion of Warburg can be summarized in his statement that he would “give one thousand Warburgs for one Bialik,” asserting that the financial largesse provided by American leaders could never reach the level of importance of the poetry Chaim

Bialik composed.282 This harsh assessment, regardless of its veracity, certainly scuttled any possibility that the staunchly Zionist Wise could continue to work with the Weizmann-led

Zionists, who were willing to set aside ideological purity in the name of cooperation for the

279 According to Warburg’s account, Wise “preferred one Bialik to a thousand Warburgs,” Warburg to Weizmann, March 31, 1926. 280 A. James Rudin, Pillar of Fire: A Biography of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2015), 208. 281 Ibid., 286 282 Quoted in Rudin, Pillar of Fire., 286.

137 Yishuv. For Weizmann, the ends justified the means, whereas Wise would never abide those ends.

Obviously, this now represented the biggest potential impediment for American non-

Zionist involvement with the Hebrew University. The AAC only had power if it could wield the potential for declining donations; if that amount of money raised annually declined, so too would

Americans’ influence with the Board of Governors. The increased activity by the Keren

HaYesod brought with it the significant possibility that that foundation, with its Zionist alignment, would become the preeminent funnel of American funds to the Hebrew University.

From their letters, it is clear that both Warburg and Weizmann understood the stakes, and wanted to deescalate the situation as best as possible.

Contemporaneously, the American Advisory Committee continued its work with regards to ensuring that funds raised for the University from American donors were to be used in an acceptable fashion. The AAC produced a lengthy, detailed elaboration of the purpose of the committee, as well as an interpretation of the University’s history and its goals within the

Yishuv.283 One of the most notable proposals in this document was to create research institutes to handle the practical needs of the Yishuv, as a complement to some of the important but less practical cultural components of the University.284 This focus on the utility of the University corresponds with many of these individuals’ interest in Palestine as a potential investment opportunity in addition to a labor of love.

Weizmann recognized that while he had a somewhat-tenuous political ally in Stephen

Wise, in order to maintain any semblance of harmony within the administration of the

283 It is worth noting here that the AAC traced the origins of the Hebrew University idea to an idea of Hermann Schapiro, from roughly forty years prior to the opening of HU. While Schapiro may indeed have had this idea, to consider the modern Hebrew University as following in a direct line from Schapiro is a stretch at the very least. 284 American Advisory Committee, “The Hebrew University, Jerusalem,” 3 (AJA 227/8)

138 University, he needed to reiterate to Warburg and Warburg’s associates that the united front was a crucial cog in the University machine. He cabled Warburg from Jerusalem, saying that the

University was “dependent on [the] United Front,” and that Wise’s attacks put it in jeopardy.285

Circumstances had reached such a low point that Marshall and Warburg jointly cabled

Weizmann, asking for his help in wrangling the Keren HaYesod. Appealing to Weizmann’s not- insignificant ego, the two men refer to Weizmann’s “dignified methods” as well as implying that only he would be able to salvage the situation.286 That Marshall, who only a month later would break with the University project altogether because of difficulties with the Zionist leadership, found it necessary to call upon Weizmann to help control the situation speaks volumes about the seriousness of the situation within the organized Jewish community in the United States. Stephen

Wise’s machinations had made Warburg’s position as an ambassador for the Hebrew University untenable.

At the same time Warburg was seeking a measure of reconciliation with Weizmann, he was openly complaining about the actions of the Zionist leadership to undermine the United

Jewish Campaign. Julian Mack recounted Warburg’s grievances in a letter, writing that Warburg asserted that Zionists “have actually and physically disturbed meetings held in the interest of the

United Jewish Campaign.”287 This does not sound like the whining of a man whose previous supporters have begun abandoning him. The use of physical force rather than just political coercion was an escalation in tension that it seems neither Warburg nor Weizmann was prepared to countenance.

285 Cable, Weizmann to Warburg, April 3, 1926 (AJA 227/7) 286 Cable, Warburg and Marshall to Weizmann, April 5, 1926 (AJA 227/7) 287 Julian Mack to David A. Brown, April 6, 1926 (AJA 227/7)

139 This anecdote makes it clear that the dispute between Zionists and non-Zionists within the Board of Governors was not merely a minority group seeking to usurp power. Rather, there were very clear differences on the purpose of the university and the correct use of the funds being raised. Chaim Weizmann clearly saw the university as an instrument of Zionism, with the

Institute of Jewish Studies as the core of a Jewish national revival whose end goal would be the establishment of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine. Warburg and his associates who considered themselves to be non-Zionists agreed with the necessity of a university as far as its utility for

Jewish culture, but stopped well short of placing the institution within the Zionist paradigm.

This manifested itself in a number of ways. Even though the Hebrew University attracted faculty in its early years largely by granting these eminent researchers considerable freedom within their individual programs, the Board of Governors still made the overarching decisions regarding the development of new schools, how to direct the funds raised from Europe and the

United States, and how the university was incorporated within the broader Yishuv administrative structure. Moshe Lissak and Uri Cohen write about the struggle between the university and the

Yishuv, arguing that the faculty of the university wanted considerable autonomy—if not complete independence—from the Zionist Executive that was running the Yishuv at the time.288

This gels with the argument made by Yaacov Iram and Mirjam Shemida, who discuss the power that the faculty held. They assert, in fact, that this power “prevented the emergence of effective academic administrative leadership.”289 Partially this was the result of the political squabbling between the Zionists and non-Zionists on the Board of Governors, which complicated the issue of the university’s finding a clear direction. The academic additions to the university

288 Moshe Lissak and Uri Cohen, “Ha-universitah ha-ivrit c’mercaz ha’lufei b’yishuv ha-yehudi,” in in Hagit Lavsky (ed.), Toldot Ha’Universitah Ha’Ivrit B’Yerushalayim: Hit’atzmut Akademit Toch Ma’avak Leumi (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009), 90. 289 Iram and Shemida, The Educational System of Israel, 63.

140 vacillated between those that had a practical application for the Yishuv as a whole—benefitting the Zionists—and those that had a more cultural purpose, from which Jews of all political affiliations would benefit.

The matter was further muddled by the fact that, as far as Americans prepared to donate to the Yishuv knew, the Hebrew University was worthwhile but far from the most immediately critical recipient of funds. Warburg received a telegram in April relating that matters in Palestine had deteriorated as a result of the massive influx of Polish immigrants “arriving penniless.”290 In the face of such overwhelming poverty, Zionists and non-Zionists alike were urged to turn their attention to this crisis rather than continuing to donate to the Hebrew University in large amounts. There is no doubt that this was certainly a rational approach to a significant crisis.

However, Warburg and Weizmann needed to, tactfully, continue to attract financial attention from various American groups and individuals, while simultaneously addressing the existential threat posed by Rabbi Wise’s opposition to Warburg’s efforts. In the period between meetings of the Board of Governors, and between meetings of the AAC, the ability to tap into a large donor base in the United States was the role that Warburg was best suited to play for the University. In response to Weizmann’s request for urgent funding on behalf of the tragic Polish immigrants, making Aliyah with nothing but their clothes and their families, Warburg and Marshall asked why all United Palestine funds, which they controlled, needed to be funneled through the

Zionist-held Keren HaYesod.291

On the face of the situation, it certainly appears that Weizmann was attempting to use the plight of unfortunate immigrants to wrest control over a large cache of funds from the hands of

Warburg and Marshall. Weizmann, who had been in Palestine and then waylaid in London by a

290 Telegram, Loeb to Warburg, April 16, 1926 (AJA 227/7) 291 Telegram, Warburg and Marshall to Weizmann and Kisch, April 21, 1926 (AJA 227/7)

141 general strike, replied to the two non-Zionists with a lengthy letter laying out the dire economic situation in Palestine and continuing to blame “fractions in the Movement which have been, and still are, working against the whole plan.”292 This continues Weizmann’s personal trend of engaging in political battles among his ostensible allies—after all, Warburg and Weizmann were both working for the benefit of the Hebrew University—while refusing to accept any blame for the breakdown in understanding and in communication.

Weizmann’s intransigence, and the manner in which he continued to avoid accepting personal responsibility, had an ongoing and considerably deleterious effect on Warburg’s ability to work on and for the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University. In an attempt both to solidify his political position and to shore up support, Warburg in March wrote a long letter to

Magnes. Most importantly, Warburg addressed the Munich meeting of the Board of Governors, held in early 1926, at which the non-Zionists’ share of the Board was diluted by the addition of more Zionist members. He reiterated his assertion that, in the Jewish Agency, Zionists and non-

Zionists should be equally represented, making the Agency much more representative of the

Jewish population as a whole.293

In addition, Warburg’s letter addressed more mundane matters of University administration. In order to ensure the University’s independence from either the Jewish Agency or the Zionist Organization, Warburg advised that “the Zionist Organization, other bodies and private individuals [should] turn over the property to the University.”294 His thought process in advocating for this action was clearly that within the Board of Governors, non-Zionists had some

292 Weizmann to Marshall, May 13, 1926 293 Warburg to Magnes, March 26, 1926 294 Ibid.

142 ability to affect the outcome of a situation, whereas they completely lacked this ability with property held by others.

It was not solely Warburg concerned by the potential dilution of non-Zionist influence.

Julian Mack also wrote a frank letter to Magnes, airing out his current grievances. In addition to echoing Warburg’s opinions—the two men already had spoken on the matter—Mack was anxious to ensure sufficient non-Zionist representation at the upcoming Board meeting, taking place once again in Europe. He implored Magnes to use his influence to help select, as the three

American representatives, at least two who would be able to make the trip abroad.295 This way, at least non-Zionists had a fighting chance to influence any resolutions the Board would pass.

Warburg, in the atypically sober and measured letter he sent Magnes, criticized some of the resolutions adopted by the Board of Governors in Munich, including giving the Board— partially comprised of academic faculty—responsibility for budgetary issues.296 Warburg rightly pointed out that this was not likely to be the best use of their limited time, and that the Board should remove faculty from participation in these issues. As he continued to assert his position— which we can assume reflects that of his ideological compatriots as well—one is struck by the change in Warburg’s approach to the university in a relatively short period of time.

When he was first approached to take part in the project, associates could rightly have seen him as something of a naïf. He respected the idea of Jewish education and had devoted time, money, and energy to supporting educational organizations, but he lacked both practical experience and a history of engaging deeply with any one issue.297 The deep, well-thought-out, and rational letter Warburg sent to Magnes indicated that he not only had internalized the Zionist

295 Mack to Magnes, June 25, 1926 (HU 21 97/1/I) 296 Warburg to Magnes, March 26, 1926, 2. 297 Including, it must be said his banking career. Unlike much of the rest of his family, Felix had little interest in banking and did not often put in the requisite time to excel.

143 vs non-Zionist debate, but he had familiarized himself with the administrative minutiae that running a functioning institution of higher learning requires. It is possible, therefore, to see this letter to Magnes as moment when Warburg took a tremendous, and much-needed, step forward in his career in academia.

In the late spring and summer, Warburg continued his fervent, solid advocacy on behalf of non-Zionist beliefs within the Hebrew University. He continued to exchange pleasant, if occasionally pointed letters with Weizmann, who had delayed his trip to the United States until the end of the year, but maintained a robust schedule of Palestine-to-Europe journeys. One letter emblematic of this challenging relationship begins with Warburg expressing his excitement for

Weizmann’s upcoming visit to the United States “not only for the pleasure of seeing you,” but also because “it is decidedly necessary to get your Zionist Organization into better shape.”298

These were not two unrelated thoughts, separated by pages in a lengthy missive; this was in the space of a single sentence!

With the conclusion of the Zionist Convention in Buffalo, NY fresh in his mind, Warburg asserted that the resolutions adopted there had harmed, rather than helped, the Zionist

Organization.299 Emmanuel Neumann, general director of the United Palestine Appeal, criticized non-Zionists for their actions over the previous year, as well as calling Louis Marshall out by name for his unwillingness to work with the Zionists cooperatively in the Jewish Agency.300

Such a personal attack did not inspire a spirit of unity among Marshall’s friends and associates.

298 Warburg to Weizmann, July 1, 1926 (AJA 227/7) 299 Ibid. 300 Emmanuel Neumann, speech at the 29th Convention of the Zionist Organization of America, Buffalo, NY, July 1, 1926 (retrieved from http://www.jta.org/1926/07/02/archive/future-of-jewish-agency-plan-discussed-at-zionist- convention-in-buffalo on June 8, 2017).

144 This kind of language should be expected, given the political nature of the event and of

Neumann’s speech itself, but it certainly was not helpful in deescalating tensions.

Weizmann delayed six weeks after receiving Warburg’s letter before replying in kind.

The letter was harsher than anything he had previously written, and heavily implies that the

Zionists, being so much stronger than non-Zionists in political power as well as sheer numbers, might simply decline to continue working with other groups.301 Weizmann’s major concern at the time was in responding to the “Crimea” venture proposed by Louis Marshall, which many

Zionists as well as other observers considered to be crazy. The proposal had caused difficulties between Zionists and non-Zionists for years, but this finally came to a head in 1926, when

Marshall essentially realized that the “disrespect” shown to him by Weizmann really indicated that Zionists dominated the Jewish Agency and non-aligned members were treated poorly.302

The “Crimea” plan, one of many possible solutions to the issue of Jewish persecution in the former Russian Empire, reflected both a moment of notable cooperation between Jew and

Gentile, as well as a situation in which underlying differences about the importance of Palestine as the future Jewish homeland came to the forefront. The American Jewish Joint Distribution

Committee, which had been the purview of Warburg and other non-aligned American Jewish leaders for some time took a leading role in promoting the venture in Crimea, along with other international organizations.303 From the get-go, therefore, this marked the idea of a Jewish settlement in the Crimean Peninsula as somehow running counter to the ideals of Zionism. In many ways, Eastern European Zionists understood this proposal to be a low-level attack on them

301 Weizmann to Warburg, August 19, 1926 (AJA 227/7) 302 Matthew Mark Silver, Louis Marshall and the Rise of Jewish Ethnicity in America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2013), 512. 303 Jonathan Dekel-Chen, “Defusing the Ethnic Bomb: Resolving Local Conflict through Philanthropy in the Interwar USSR,” in Jonathan Dekel-Chen, David Gaunt, Natan M. Meir, and Israel Bartal (eds.), Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2011), 187.

145 personally. Rather than emigrating from the Soviet Union to the Yishuv, Jews from outside the

Soviet Union would colonize land in the Crimean Peninsula instead.

Jonathan Dekel-Chen devotes a monograph to discussing the decision to proceed with the

Crimea plan. In Farming the Red Land, Dekel-Chen concludes that while hindsight tells us that large-scale Jewish settlement in the Crimean Peninsula during the 1920’s was doomed to failure, the reasons given by such well-established groups as the Joint had rational reasons for pursuing this course of action.304 At the time, the uncertainty and disruption surrounding the Communist

Revolution had largely subsided and, as Dekel-Chen writes, “serious Americans did business in the Soviet Union.”305 Of course, in trying to attract attention and raise funds for this endeavor, there is no doubt that this siphoned off some support for the ongoing Zionist project in Palestine, towards which most worldwide Jewish energy was pointing.

Weizmann also harshly criticized Warburg’s decision to support his friend in this folly, rather than devoting his energy to the Yishuv and the University, where (in Weizmann’s view) it would have made the most difference.306 Weizmann here referred not only to the significant fundraising needs of the Yishuv, but to the fact that Jews emigrating from the very land Marshall sought to develop for them arrived to Palestine ragged, penniless, and relying on Jewish Agency help to eat and survive. Weizmann was tacitly accusing Marshall, Warburg, and non-Zionists of a fundamental misunderstanding of the situation on the ground in Palestine; the American perspective on how to help Eastern European Jewry differed strongly from what was actually happening.

304 Jonathan Dekel-Chen, Farming the Red Land: Jewish Agricultural Colonization and Local Soviet Power, 1924- 1941(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 33. 305 Ibid. 306 Weizmann to Warburg, August 19, 1926, 2.

146 Weizmann concluded with his most salient point. He wrote that “it is only relief in

Poland whereas in Palestine we are building a future, which never will and never can exist in

Poland.”307 Relief in Poland, while crucial, well-meaning, and immediately necessary, could not replace the development of a homeland where such aid would never be required. This, of course, fits right in line with the purpose of the Hebrew University: Jews being able to control their own cultural future rather than having to graft a modified version onto another country’s national identity. With this letter, Weizmann clearly hit his mark and gave Warburg a number of issues to think about.

One of the major problems with which the members of the Agency struggled at this time stemmed from the connection between the development of the Yishuv and possibility for economic gain on behalf of financiers from abroad. The University was at its most basic level, a labor of love; donors did not intend to receive from the project any financial gain. This altruism did not extend—nor should it have—to Warburg’s involvement in more physical development of the Yishuv. Warburg, like many philanthropists of all ideological stripes, saw Palestine as something of an investment, and made decisions with his money accordingly.

In September, a couple of weeks after Weizmann’s letter to him regarding the situation with Marshall and the Crimea, Warburg wrote a letter to Magnes in which the distinction between the cultural utility of the Hebrew University and the potential for financial gain provided by various newly-incorporated industries in Palestine is quite evident. Warburg devoted the first half of his letter to recounting the developments in various industries in Palestine, and assessing whether or not they continued to merit funding. For example, “the demand for houses

307 Ibid.

147 for workingmen is not a very pressing one,” and thus he decided largely to abandon that scheme.308

But in the second half of his letter, Warburg truly explained what had troubled him about the Zionist Organization for some time.309 He, Marshall, and others who may properly be designated as non-aligned wanted to support plans promoting relief for new immigrants to

Palestine who need immediate assistance in order to incorporate into the society of the Yishuv.310

Warburg claimed that these plans appealed to him because “the Z.O. has never let it be known that anybody is not happy in Palestine….”311 In other words, Warburg recognized the importance of the Yishuv and supported most of its efforts, but felt that the disingenuousness of the Zionist

Organization represented a real barrier to success.

This gels with other comments Warburg had previously made regarding the manner in which the WZO conducted itself with respect to representing Palestine to external observers.

Weizmann routinely tried to sell Palestine in near-Utopian terms, neglecting to mention the obvious—and understandable—growing pains that the Yishuv was experiencing during the

1920’s. Certainly much of the Jewish population was thriving, but there existed a significant portion of the Jewish residents of Palestine during this period for whom making Aliyah did not lead immediately to a much better life.

The same dynamic played out routinely within the administration of the University.

Weizmann’s grandiose plans for the University—of which many would eventually be realized after years of hard work—caused friction with those members of the Board who recognized that

308 Warburg to Magnes, September 8, 1926 (AJA 227/8) 309 It is important to note here that his quarrel in this particular letter is with the ZO itself, not Zionism as an ideology, which was a different matter altogether. 310 Warburg to Magnes, September 8, 1926, 4. 311 Ibid.

148 trying to accomplish everything at once would only lead to failure, and that an approach of cautious growth would better suit the difficult circumstances in which the University was founded. Or, as Warburg put it in his customary colorful fashion, “I am afraid we have more frills and fancy chairs in the University than those in the fundamental fields.”312 The University, just slightly more than a year old, continued adding new departments and faculties, seemingly with little regard for developing those that already existed.

The situation in Palestine generally and in the University in particular were rarely more in sync than in these early days. Judah Magnes alluded to this fact in a letter to Bernard Flexner, in which he juxtaposed the conditions in Palestine to what was happening in the University.

Magnes, the Chancellor of an institution that he described as “still an infant in swaddling clothes,” nevertheless devoted the majority of this letter to the “crisis” in Palestine.313 While the

University needed him to ride out the numerous crises—most of which stemmed from the persistent internecine ideological warfare among Board members—the Yishuv had much greater needs than whether or not the Institute of Jewish Studies reflected a Zionist mindset or if it were more open to non-aligned ideologies.

Despite the continuing plight of Eastern European immigrants arriving to Palestine penniless and without significant prospects, the work of the University continued. In November,

Weizmann sent a lengthy letter to Judge Lehman, an associate and ally of the non-Zionist faction. Among other issues, Weizmann complained that the “American group”—meaning the non-Zionists, had caused him to have to appear before the League of Nations and the Mandatory authorities of Great Britain and explain why the Jewish Agency was less successful than

312 Ibid., 6. 313 Magnes to Flexner, August 26, 1926 (AJA 227/8)

149 expected.314 He expressed his displeasure at this turn of events but, at the end, praised the

National Conference for Palestine, at which event non-Zionists sheathed their daggers and adopted resolutions that Weizmann considered to be favorable to the future development of

Palestine.315

Lehman, as one of Warburg’s close associates, clearly shared this letter with him, prompting a quick response from Warburg to Weizmann. In the letter, though his tone belied his aggravation at having to wade once again into these waters, Warburg tried to be as conciliatory as he could. He begged Weizmann not to single out the American non-Zionists in front of the rest of world Jewry as the obstinate party. Using the metaphor of the shofar, a ram’s horn sounded in synagogues during the High Holidays, he expressed that “even the shofar has the tendency, though they blow it so sweet it comes out so sour.”316 In other words, the best intentions can lead to negative outcomes. Warburg feared at the time not only for the cooperation of Zionists and non-Zionists within the Hebrew University’s Board of Governors, but within the

Yishuv as a whole.

For Warburg and the Yishuv, 1926 was a difficult year. Having opened the school, the

Board had to decide quickly how to proceed academically while fundraising stagnated in the face of more pressing issues in Palestine. The problem of Jews emigrating from the Soviet Union, and especially from Poland, dominated the conversation within the donor classes of organized

Judaism throughout the Western world. While everyone understood intellectually that these needs were substantially more pressing than those of the University, from the correspondence it seems as if Warburg and the non-Zionists had their fundraising priorities straight in prioritizing

314 Weizmann to Lehman, November 17, 1926, 4 (AJA 227/8) 315 Ibid., 12. 316 Warburg to Weizmann, November 18, 1926, 1 (AJA 227/8)

150 these unfortunate but hopeful individuals. 1927 would settle some of these disputes, but the inherent disagreement over the purpose and nature of the University would arise once again, threatening to scuttle the progress that the University had made.

151 CHAPTER 11: EARTHQUAKE

Felix Warburg entered 1927 with some uncertainty about his continued participation with the Hebrew University. The constant battles with the Zionist Organization and Chaim Weizmann over ultimate control of the direction of the school had begun to wear on him, and the tone he used in letters even to his close friends belied this weariness. While Warburg’s writing was not shorn completely of the colorful language and effervescent tone that was his hallmark, the letters grew darker and betrayed a growing pessimism about his ability to ultimately influence the course of events within the Hebrew University.

As the year unfolded, it is evident that at some level this pessimism about future work with the Hebrew University—though rarely if ever about the future of the University itself—had infected a wide swath of high-ranking administrators. Most of these individuals who were beginning to see the possibility of extricating themselves from the University project were either avowed non-Zionists, non-aligned, or those who displayed something less than a full-throated endorsement of the tenets of Zionism as being applied in the Yishuv. The Zionist leadership had begun a successful consolidation of power within the University Board, which left Board members such as Warburg perennially fighting an uphill battle.

In addition, the Hebrew University would face challenges of an entirely unforeseen nature in 1927 when an earthquake rocked Palestine, causing some damage but forcing the administration to conduct a reckoning about how the University was run. This earthquake, which was significantly more damaging to other parts of Jerusalem and points further east, was in many ways a test case for how the University would respond to a crisis; the systems set in place during the rebuilding process would be sorely tested in the Arab Riots two years later. The Board of

Governors, while dealing with more mundane matters such as the gradual introduction of

152 teaching degrees, adding new departments, and personnel decisions, would also have to work together to craft plans for devastating external events.

At the beginning of the year, Warburg embarked upon a restorative journey “around the world” during which his ability to receive correspondence or participate in the decision-making processes of his organizations was severely compromised.317 When he returned, he encountered the same problems that plagued him and the AAC at the end of 1926. Non-Zionists, as well as

Americans regardless of political affiliation, were largely unable to push through any substantive agenda with the Hebrew University. The Zionists had nearly completed a silent coup d’etat.

A questionable decision by the Zionists that truly underscores the nature of the relationship of the Hebrew University to Zionism was that they tried to hold a meeting of the

Board of Governors during a Zionist Congress. Judge Mack was the first to recognize the profound conflict of interests this scenario would entail for any number of individuals, and immediately cabled Weizmann to register his complaints and alert Weizmann to the possibility that this would inflame negative feelings among non-Zionists.318 The mere idea that any Hebrew

University official not directly affiliated with the organized Zionist movement would find this move acceptable shows the extent to which the relationship had turned sour.

The situation was not uniformly bad, however. Even despite the obvious rancor between the groups, leaders on both sides purposefully reached out to try to maintain working relationships within not only the Hebrew University, but the much more significant Jewish

Agency as well. To this end, the letters exchanged between Weizmann and Louis Marshall at the beginning of the year indicate that all was not lost. Weizmann acknowledged that non-Zionists felt that some segments of Zionist society disdained their efforts to alleviate the suffering of the

317 Letter, Secretary to Mr. Felix Warburg to Thomas P. de Graffenried, esq., March 31, 1927 (AJA 231/7). 318 Cable, Mack to Weizmann, May 10, 1927 (AJA 232/11)

153 newly-arrived Polish Jews.319 In response, Marshall wrote of his appreciation for Weizmann’s

“message of friendship” and the recognition that all groups wanted what was best for the Jewish population of Palestine and around the world.320 This last point merits elaboration in the midst of this lengthy analysis of how the administration of the Hebrew University was insurmountably divided between different ideological factions. Especially given that 1927 would not prove to be the year that all parties agreed to work hand-in-glove with one another, the sentiments expressed by these two eminent men reflected the fact that, in general and with a few exceptions, the major players in these debates respected each other. This was a nice moment of détente in the midst of long battle.

Meanwhile, Felix Warburg continued his work for the University on two separate, but overlapping fronts. Throughout the year he split his focus between time spent directly with the

University, addressing matters of the Board of Governors, and with the AAC, fundraising and continually attempting to draw into the fold a new series of donors from whom he could extract lucrative pledges. These two strands of the same work both demanded considerable time commitments and skillfully navigating the strong personalities involved with the University and with Jewish communal giving in general.

Increasingly, as the year progressed, Warburg devoted more of his time to the AAC and matters in the United States than his administrative work directly with the University. From a purely logistical standpoint, this is understandable, as many Board meetings took place in

Europe, which required an expensive and time-consuming ocean crossing. Meetings of the full

AAC, as well as the Executive Committee, could take place in his office in downtown

319 Weizmann to Louis Marshall, January 17, 1927 (AJA 233/1) 320 Marshall to Weizmann, January 17, 1927 (AJA 233/1)

154 Manhattan. Matters could flit across his desk in the morning and receive attention before lunchtime without having to cable a response across the Atlantic.

This more robust attention to matters relating to the AAC did not go unnoticed by

Warburg’s associates. In a letter to Magnes, Elisha Friedman wrote that issues were being resolved much more quickly, thanks in large part to Warburg making a concerted effort to attend to them at a rapid pace.321 This, combined with the importance that Hebrew University officials placed on cultivating the relationship with donors in the United States, led to a notable elevation in the AAC’s stature among the myriad of organizations comprising the bureaucracy of a school that was, as yet, only two years old.

The report of the activities of Anita Pollitzer, the Director of the AAC at the time, provides a strong example of the ways in which the AAC’s role within the Hebrew University hierarchy had risen significantly. From its unspectacular beginnings two years earlier, the AAC had grown into an organization capable of sending its staff on the road to solicit funds, to purchase advertising time on radio stations, and have enough optimism about its future prospects for growth to investigate the legalities of establishing trusts to facilitate contributions from wealthy donors.322 The AAC had proven itself a worthy support system for the Hebrew

University, and much of the credit for this has to go to Felix Warburg, for heading the group and harnessing the power of American donors for use in developing the academic program on Mount

Scopus.

It is here that the line between Warburg the American Jew and Warburg the committed non-Zionist begins to blur. To ask for what purpose he put forth all this effort and spent huge sums of his own money on top of the money he managed to extract from fellow Americans is

321 Elisha Friedman to Magnes, April 23, 1926 (HU 21 97/I) 322 Report of Director, Covering Period June 15 to June 15, 1928 (HU 21 97/1/I)

155 fair. Wondering whether the goal of expanding the AAC had surpassed both promoting the

Hebrew University as a non-aligned institution and actively opposing a perceived nefarious

Zionist plot is reasonable.

As it turns out, and perhaps as may be expected as well, Warburg’s actions depict a man from whom this question does not provoke an easy answer. What is clear from his correspondence and his personal activities is that the proportion of time he spent on solely AAC work, as opposed to other forms of work for the Hebrew University, began to increase dramatically near the end of 1926. He maintained his status as a respected member of the Board of Governors—Zionists continued to feel as if they needed to consult with him before taking a big decision, as he was viewed as a major leader of the non-Zionists—but the minutiae of academic administration do not appear to have drawn his interest. Unlike many of the other

Board members, Warburg was not an academic, and until the University project fell into his lap, there is no indication that he ever considered the possibility of taking an administrative post such as this.

As part of Warburg’s around-the-world trip with which he began 1927, he spent time touring Palestine, which he had last visited three years earlier. He saw the substantial development of the University, as well as the new agricultural settlements that had recently been founded. In a statement as he left the country at the end of January, Warburg took the time to note that “the interest of America in Palestine is constantly increasing” and that he hoped a positive outcome to the ongoing Jewish Agency negotiations would only further this progress.323

This echoes a letter he sent to Weizmann only six weeks earlier, in which he outlined the logistical problems with having so many American agencies eager to support the Hebrew

323 Statement of Felix Warburg, via Magnes, upon leaving Palestine, January 31, 1927 (AJA 232/10)

156 University; there were so many that they were beginning to hold fundraising dinners on the same day, much to the chagrin of donors.324 This overlap led Warburg to take a stand and insist on spreading those functions out, in order to best raise funds without overplaying their metaphorical hand.

As 1927 continued and Warburg returned from his restful vacation abroad, he continued to position the AAC as the most prominent of the groups supporting the Hebrew University, as well as one of its most crucial sources of money. A quick glance at the budget proffered by

Magnes for the 1927-28 school year indicates that American Jewry, in fact, represented the largest segment of the University’s intake. The AAC’s contribution was almost exactly twice what the combination of Zionist organizations was expected to contribute.325 Though every year

AAC leaders privately expressed skepticism to one another about their ability to fulfill such lofty expectations, their continued success in doing so led Magnes—not prone to intemperate budgeting—to rely heavily on the organization as he prepared for each new academic term.

In July 1927, Magnes’ administrative and budgetary abilities were put to the test in the aftermath of a major earthquake, which flattened the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem, as well as and other largely Arab towns in Mandatory Palestine.326 Though the death toll was relatively low, the force of the quake meant that even buildings that remained needed reinforcements and some reconstruction. The British Mandatory authorities had more than enough resources to rebuild their own government buildings, but this represented for the Hebrew

University an unforeseen expense that required an all-hands-on-deck-style fundraising situation.

324 Warburg to Weizmann, December 16, 1926 (HU 21 97/II) 325 For the 1927-28 school year, the AAC was responsible for raising £28,350, while the Keren HaYesod and the United Palestine Appeal together only needed to provide £14,128. This does not even include the almost £5,000 from the American Jewish Physicians’ Committee, which would soon merge into the AAC proper. “Amended Budget of the Hebrew University for the Year 1927/28,” (HU 25 137/I). 326 Motti Zohar, Rehav Rubin, and Amos Salamon, “Earthquake Damage and Repair: New Evidence from Jerusalem on the 1927 Jericho Earthquake,” Seismological Research Letters 85, no. 4 (July/August 2014), 912.

157 Magnes, in the weeks immediately following the quake, cabled Warburg to insist on an extra $50,000 from the Americans in order to begin the restoration process to damaged

University buildings.327 Though the buildings on Mount Scopus did not suffer as badly as those in East Jerusalem or Jericho, in order to prevent a future catastrophe, they needed improvements to help withstand that force. Luckily, with Warburg’s help and leadership the AAC was able to meet this target and could maintain a strong streak of dependability for the University. The AAC had become the go-to when the University required quick influxes of funds, which was helpful in the face of a bit of a downturn in Zionist contributions.

In May 1927, Warburg cabled to Judge Mack information he had previously conveyed to

Chaim Weizmann. Owing to an “uncanny decrease” in collections, it had become imperative that the Zionist Organization improve in order to avoid “serious complications.”328 There exist any number of possible reasons for this downturn, including Weizmann’s absence from the fundraising scene to attend to one of the plethora of other pressing matters on his plate. The

British administration blamed the Yishuv’s financial troubles on a poor agricultural harvest, a drought in the South—an area that could ill afford to receive less rainfall than usual—and a

“shrinkage of voluntary subscriptions to Zionist funds by world Jewry,” which comprised a large percentage of the Yishuv’s operating budget in any given year.329 The magnitude of the downturn in contributions to the Zionist enterprise would vex Weizmann and Magnes moving forward, but Magnes had his attentions focused squarely on the University’s surviving through the next academic year.

327 Cable, Magnes to Warburg, August 7, 1927 (AJA 232/10). 328 Warburg to Mack, May 31, 1927 (AJA 232/10) 329 Report By His Britannic Majesty’s Government to the Council of the League of Nations on the Administration of Palestine and Trans-Jordan for the Year 1927 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1928), A3. The most notable reason for the precipitous decline in the ability of European Jews to contribute to the Yishuv was the after- effects of the post-WWI economic downturn.

158 At the end of May, Magnes underscored in a cable to Warburg the necessity of receiving the large sum of money that the Zionists were due to deliver before the end of June.330 The

University was in a holding pattern, awaiting the Zionists’ cash, and it appears as if the

Chancellor of the University trusted Warburg, a non-Zionist, to help speed along the process.

From this, one might easily deduce that in a relatively short period of time, Felix Warburg had become an indispensable member of the Board of Governors, despite his lack of academic administrative experience—or, to be frank, much of an interest in the day-to-day operations of the University. This fundraising prowess provided the Americans, and non-Zionists from around the world, with a seat at the negotiating table not only with the University but also with less trivial issues, such as the composition of the still-unratified Jewish Agency, which would govern the Yishuv under the Mandate.

With respect to the contributions of wealthy Americans such as Warburg to the Agency’s success, Weizmann hoped to use these individuals as a nearly inexhaustible method of raising capital to support the ever-optimistic building projects underway around the country.331 To jump from that assertion to the possibility that Weizmann saw the Agency, of which the Zionist

Executive comprised half of the leaders, as a way to coopt the criticisms that Warburg and the other non-Zionists had levelled at the Yishuv government since the earliest days of large-scale

Jewish immigration to Palestine perhaps ascribes too much nefarious intent to the leaders who sought to form the Jewish Agency. Either way it is clear that there was a sense of “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer” about the idea of the Agency in general.

Either way, the Agency would not fully come into existence for another two years, ironically almost immediately before the reality of the Yishuv would change forever with the

330 Cable, Magnes to Warburg, June 7, 1927 (AJA 232/10) 331 Anita Shapira, Israel: A History, trans. Anthony Berris (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2012), 140.

159 Arab Uprising in August 1929.332 Meanwhile, Warburg and the AAC continued to work diligently in the United States on behalf of the Hebrew University. During the middle of the year, as the Yishuv awaited the results of the Joint Palestine Survey Commission333, which would not be available in full until the middle of the next year, Warburg paused his ongoing fundraising campaign in order to make a better impression on the American public once they could say with certainty that the Yishuv was on a strong footing, politically, financially, and otherwise.334

During this pause, Warburg traveled to Europe, where he visited with numerous leaders of the Jewish communities of England and France. In London, Weizmann arranged a luncheon at the Savoy Hotel for Warburg and a few other luminaries.335 These meetings, and the trip across the Atlantic, allowed Warburg to drop for a moment his focus on American fundraising and attend more single-mindedly to issues relating to the University and the situation in the Yishuv.

Given Weizmann’s intense preparations for Warburg’s visit, it is clear that the Zionist

Organization in London viewed this as an opportunity to try to bridge the gap between Zionist and non-Zionist and enlist Warburg’s help in achieving this aim.

Unity was especially important during this period, as the whole of Palestine was suffering through a severe economic downturn, leading to high levels of unemployment and a general malaise. Philanthropists seeking to foster a cultural renaissance continued to contribute in large amounts in this kind of situation, individuals who saw Palestine as an investment in addition to a moral imperative began to get skittish. The Zionists had thus established the Joint Palestine

Survey Commission, eventually under the leadership of Sir Alfred Mond, to assess the state of

332 There is a strong argument that the demonstrated power of the non-Zionists during the 1920’s precipitated the necessity of adding these individuals to the enlarged Jewish Agency. For most of the decade, the body that acted as the liaison with the British—and thus de facto ran the Yishuv—was almost entirely Zionist in nature. 333 For a detailed analysis of the Report of the Joint Palestine Survey Commission, see the next chapter. 334 Magnes to Adler, June 15, 1927 (HU 21 97/II) 335 Weizmann to Sir Alfred Mond, June 3, 1927, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIII, series A, 274.

160 the economy and—hopefully—report back with optimistic news.336 The economic troubles of the

Yishuv hurt everyday people, Jews and Arab alike. New immigrants who came expecting to work but also to avoid poverty were in for a rude awakening. Communities that had relied on donations for survival suddenly found the fonts of money from abroad slowing from a torrent to a trickle.

For the leaders of the Hebrew University, the game plan was somehow to avoid defaulting on all financial responsibilities while also continuing to grow and run a functioning university in the middle of such significant upheaval. Simultaneously, despite the best efforts of leaders from both sides, the split between Zionists and non-Zionists was continuing to roil. In

May 1927, Weizmann repeatedly had to write to Warburg for “help” dealing with Louis

Marshall, who spent much of the year angry about how a gift of $10,000 was being misused by

Zionist leaders.337 Marshall’s complaint revolved around whether a Mr. Stein was following the stipulations that had accompanied this significant donation of his. The issue was bad enough to require Weizmann to ask Warburg to intercede in May, yet this continued at least through

November, when Weizmann and Marshall continued to exchange lengthy, spiteful letters.338

Warburg did, in fact, intercede with Marshall, but his letters indicate that he withheld his true feelings about how the Zionists had handled this issue until November. He wrote to Marshall and, without any salutation or pretense, wrote, “I am sorry that you still take letters coming from our Zionist friends so seriously. I do not...I treat it as one of those many exclamations which people on the public stage are apt to utter.”339 In other words, Warburg believed that the Zionists

336 Weizmann to Zionist Executive, February 6, 1927 Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIII, series A, 203. 337 Weizmann to Warburg, May 24, 1927 (AJA 233/1) 338 See Weizmann to Marshall, September 23, 1927; Weizmann to Warburg, November 11, 1927 (AJA 233/1) 339 Warburg to Marshall, November 22, 1927 (AJA 234/9)

161 on this point were pontificating to make a show of standing firm rather than from any deep belief in their correctness. This is emblematic of many of the outward displays of supposedly aggrieved partisans: much of the public bluster was for effect, while the personal letters exchanged reveal a much more civil and cooperative climate.

It is particularly indicative of the multiple layers of feeling that the Yishuv aroused in

Zionists and non-Zionists alike that Weizmann and Marshall, engaged in such a bitter dispute on one front, could simultaneously cooperate on the Joint Palestine Survey Commission, for which they jointly wrote the “Report of the Commissioners,” the next year. The Commission represented a nonpartisan effort to ensure the entire Yishuv stood on solid ground, and thus the ideological bickering that marked most of 1927 did not apply to this very important work.340 As both Zionists and non-Zionists wanted to see the Yishuv succeed as a political and economic entity, cooperation on Commissions such as this and, to a lesser and more troubled extent, the

Jewish Agency made perfect sense.

When it came to publicity for the Hebrew University, as we have seen, these ideological differences manifested in ways large and very, very small. In August, Zionists’ insistence on referring to the “Jewish State” or the “Jewish Government” caused an increased reticence among potential American, non-Zionist donors. As a result, Warburg had to write to Weizmann and ask for his help in reining in some Zionist leaders, and especially Menachem Ussishkin.341 The comparison between Warburg needing to write to Weizmann for help dealing with a rogue

Zionists and Weizmann doing the same to Warburg in order to fix problem with Louis Marshall is apparent at first glance. On an interpersonal level, therefore, 1927 was certainly a mixed bag.

340 The language in this sentence was not metaphorical; the Commission’s duties entailed, in part, conducting a land survey to literally see if the Yishuv stood on solid ground. 341 Warburg to Weizmann, August 24, 1927 (AJA 233/1)

162 Zionists and non-Zionists had moments of true cooperation, as with the establishment of the

Joint Palestine Survey Commission. But they also had a tendency to fall out over relatively trivial matters, which constantly led to breakdowns in communication and a frazzled Judah

Magnes frantically writing to one or the other of the factions’ leaders to extract from him a compromise.

Luckily, neither these squabbles nor the physical toll that the July earthquake took on

Jerusalem derailed Hebrew University. As the 1927-28 school year approached, the University was not only fully open but continuing to grow and prepare for the future. Magnes lay out in a

June letter his vision for what supporters of the University should rightly expect to witness over the next few academic years. In addition to gradually ramping up the number of taught courses offered, the University would soon begin offering programs in Education, Sociology, and more specialized hard sciences such as bacteriology or hygiene.342 Expanding in both of these directions at once would allow administrators to say honestly that the University supported both a Jewish cultural revival and the practical needs of the Yishuv. Evidence that the school was making progress on these goals helped facilitate fundraising, as donors were more likely to contribute to an institution with positive momentum.

During this entire period, Felix Warburg was among Magnes’ most trusted colleagues on the Board of Governors, as well as the most important of the American Jewish leaders involved with the University. A late-1927 editorial that ran in The American Hebrew referred to Warburg in glowing terms, calling him “one of those rare personalities called philanthropists” and noting that the editors would not be surprised “in the least, could the truth be ascertained, that Mr.

Warburg would prefer to be known as a lover of the arts and a patron of culture” rather than a

342 Magnes to Professor Brodetsky, June 5, 1927 (AJA 233/1)

163 wealthy donor.343 The editorial continues, suggesting that readers together “express [their] appreciation of Mr. Warburg while he is alive.”344

Though the newspaper asserts that all was well within the world of the Hebrew

University, both Warburg and Adler continued to express into late 1927 some pessimism for the future of the school in its current form, due largely to the ideological divide hamstringing the

Board of Governors. Adler understood that the pressure of constantly finding a middle ground between Zionists and non-Zionists might eventually lead Magnes to “throw up his task in disgust” and walk away from the project, leaving Weizmann and the Zionists in complete control.345 Obviously, this outcome would lead to an exodus of non-Zionist leaders from the

Board, and would push the University irreversibly towards a Zionist posture.

Warburg was not quite as negative, but he, too, recognized this possibility. In a letter to

Felix Fuld, he advocated keeping control of all American donations in the United States, because

“one could not foresee what might take place in Palestine…”346 Since at this point the political situation with respect to the Yishuv’s relationship with the British Government and with the

Arab population had not yet deteriorated to the level it would over the next three to four years,

Warburg here could only have been referring to the ideological relationship between his non-

Zionists and the Zionist Executive. Though he continued to have Magnes as a strong ally, and his relationship with Weizmann was fraught but still solid, Warburg knew that he had the leverage to insist on substantive representation for his cause.

While the editorial was clearly fawning, and cynics might surmise that it represented part of the AAC’s propaganda plan, it is also certain that the American Hebrew’s estimation of

343 The American Hebrew, New York, NY. 344 Ibid., 3. 345 Adler to Warburg, December 9, 1927 (AJA 232/10) 346 Warburg to Felix Fuld, December 2, 1927 (AJA 232/11)

164 Warburg’s importance to the Hebrew University was spot on. He spearheaded massive fundraising campaigns in the United States that allowed Magnes to budget even in the face of external challenges. Though the University Board was at some level dominated by Zionists from

Europe, these individuals could not operate the University without the help of Warburg, the non-

Zionists, and the AAC, which officially changed its name near the end of the year to the

American Friends of the Hebrew University to better align with organizations in other countries with similar aims.347 Since the next few years presented even more considerable challenges to the University and the Yishuv, Warburg’s consolidation of non-Zionist and American power continued to prove to be a difference-maker.

347 Press Release, American Friends of the Hebrew University, December 6, 1927 (AJA 232/1)

165 CHAPTER 12: BACK ON SOLID GROUND

As 1928 began, that the Hebrew University maintained a solid footing was due in large part to the support the University had received from the American Friends of the Hebrew

University and its leader, Felix Warburg. European funds had slowed to a trickle, leading

Magnes, Weizmann, and the rest of the Board of Governors increasingly to lean on donors from the United States to keep the University afloat. Though the Americans continued to meet the targets set for them, this task was more challenging given that Warburg deliberately paused fundraising campaigns for much of 1927 to allow the Joint Palestine Survey Commission’s work to finish.

It would still take half of the year until the full report of the Commission was published, but many of the individuals involved in establishing the Commission had moved onto other efforts in the interim. As with most years, the early months of 1928 were much less active, partially due to the negative effect of winter weather on transatlantic crossings. And though 1928 in general would be a welcome respite from the tumultuous previous year, the players did not know it yet would be a calm before several exceedingly difficult years to come. The subtle shifts in the relationship between Warburg and the Hebrew University, as well as that between the non-

Zionists and Zionists on the Board, would resonate going forward.

By far the most important development in 1928 was the release of the report of the Joint

Palestine Survey Commission. This was a body established by Zionists, non-Zionists, and other non-aligned individuals who wanted to ensure that the economic issues plaguing the Yishuv were surmountable and that the general prospects for future success were strong. Specifically, this survey was to aid the soon-to-arrive Jewish Agency in “future constructive work in

166 Palestine.”348 The overall aim was to help the Yishuv avoid the mistakes it had previously made and prepare for the future circumstances that might negatively impact the economy of Palestine.

One of the defining characteristics of this Commission is the four Commissioners: the Rt.

Hon. Lord Melchett (Henry Mond), a British Zionist; Lee K. Frankel, an American non-Zionist;

Felix Warburg; and , a German Zionist. From this, it is clear that the

Commission was intended to be as nonpartisan as possible, as all parties saw the benefit in ensure a strong Yishuv economy. The 50/50 split would render any complaints of partisan favoritism moot and would allow all leaders to use the results without the fear that any other party was attempting to take advantage of them. In addition to lengthy discourses on the quality of the soil in various regions in Palestine, and more pertinent for this analysis, were the discussions of the financial and educational sectors of the Yishuv. The Commission found that the Palestine Zionist Executive had, since October 1919, given £E12,708 to the Hebrew

University349, but that as a result of the Executive’s indebtedness was unlikely to be able to provide large sums to the University in the immediate future.350 Obviously, on its face this conclusion does not bode well, but what it represented an opportunity for Warburg and American donors to exert even more influence, while the Zionist Executive was focused on other matters and working towards finally establishing the Jewish Agency.

In terms of funding for the whole Yishuv, the Commission’s acknowledgement that the

United States might be expected to contribute $3,000,000 annually for each of the next five years—an amount equal to all other countries combined—echoed the pattern that we have

348 Report of the Joint Palestine Survey Commission (London: The Press Printers, Ltd., 1928), 13. 349 Ibid., 118 350 Ibid., 116

167 already seen with the Hebrew University.351 In the Yishuv as in the Hebrew University administration, the United States was expected to fill in gaps in funding. The Office Committee of the Hebrew University, meeting near the beginning of the year, recognized the “incalculable” importance of showing Magnes the level to which he could count on the same level of funding from the United States during 1928.352 Luckily, Warburg’s AFHU was operating at an elevated level and was more than capable of rising to the challenge.

For 1928, the organization had an operating budget (distinct from pledges to be used for particular causes) of $138,292, which includes money received from the constituent groups: the

American Jewish Physicians’ Committee, the Joint Distribution Committee, and the Zionist

Organization of America.353 Notable on this list is that the Zionist Organization of America, even though Warburg was not typically considered to be its supporter. Clearly the AAC had not surpassed the ZOA in importance within the United States, and the ZOA had an easy pipeline through which to funnel funds to the Hebrew University, so why then did American Zionists collaborate with the AAC to create one large pot of money?

There is no simple answer to the question, and of course this speaks to the nature of the

University project as a whole. While non-Zionist members of the AAC certainly objected to many if not most of the political stances taken by the ZOA, they all could agree about the

University’s importance and that supporting the development work taking place on Mount

Scopus was of preeminent importance. This in many ways echoes the rationale for the disparate groups cooperating on the Jewish Agency: though the disagreements between the different factions might be fierce and frequent, the consequences of this divisiveness would be much

351 Ibid., 148. This would be $42,749,826 in 2018 dollars (https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1928) 352 Minutes of the Office Committee of the Hebrew University of Palestine, January 10, 1928, 1. (HU 21 97/2) 353 Solomon Loewenstein, Report Given at Meeting of the American Advisory Committee, 2 (HU 21 97/2)

168 worse for the Yishuv overall, as it would deprive the Jewish community in Palestine of a measure of autonomy.

The other important conclusion from this atypical spirit of cooperation among different factions is that it certainly appears as if the defining feature that each found important, at least with regards the University, was their American roots. The AAC spoke for all United States- based associations seeking to support the Hebrew University, advocating on behalf of the individual donors as well as the interests of American Jewry as a whole. Sometimes this advocacy took the form of supporting logistics favorable to men and women who would have to travel from America. Sometimes this advocacy was more substantive, suggesting policies for the

University and its administration favored by the American population, regardless of how these were viewed by European members of the Board.

This rise to preeminence of the American group, at the expense of Europeans, was not without its difficulties. As Cyrus Adler observed, “any considerable American influence in the

University will always be resented by the Europeans.”354 University luminaries from Europe of course recognized the necessity of involving Warburg’s organization, but they still felt as if their plan had been coopted by these parvenus from across the Atlantic. This characterization was not fair to the Americans, but it must be said that the Americans did little to quell this growing jealousy from their European counterparts. Largely, their expectations of the University’s administration catering to American logistical and political needs began to grow.

Perhaps emblematic of this newfound American confidence in University matters was

Warburg’s response to Adler, in which he described the attitude of Albert Einstein towards the

American cohort as “unworthy” and “causing unnecessary trouble.”355 Even though Einstein had

354 Adler to Warburg, January 4, 1928 (AJA 237/2) 355 Warburg to Adler, January 5, 1928 (AJA 237/2)

169 not been, nor would continue to be, the easiest Board member with whom to work, this petulant response of Warburg’s, about perhaps the most world-renowned member of the Board, borders on the arrogant. This attitude is unlikely to have won the AAC any friends among European

Board members, even though they begrudgingly had to acknowledge its utility.

While the American/European split was playing out, a more significant change that could have affected Warburg’s relationship with the University irrevocably was being considered behind the scenes. Chaim Weizmann, never a great fan of Judah Magnes’, was pondering appointing a separate academic leader of the Hebrew University.356 Arthur Goren writes that this was not a one-time event, as “Magnes staved off repeated efforts to dislodge him. From 1926 to

1935 Einstein periodically resigned or threatened to resign…unless Magness was stripped of all academic functions.”357 Though Einstein was known for being somewhat difficult to work with, the pressure that the eminent physicist continued to apply to Magnes and to Weizmann cannot have been easy to resist.

Given the difficult situation in which Magnes found himself on a number of fronts, it is fair to speculate that Magnes might have appreciated having someone take on part of his responsibilities.358 However, to Adler, Warburg, and other Americans and other non-Zionists, this was yet another example of the Zionist Organization attempting to wrest control of the

University from a group they disdained. From their perspective, in the absence of any ability to steer the University’s direction by means of fundraising, Europeans were using administrative machinations to accomplish the same goal.

356 Adler to Warburg, February 6, 1928 (AJA 237/2) 357 Goren, Dissenter in Zion, 204. 358 In fact, Weizmann indicated as much in a letter to Albert Einstein. It appears that, on this regard, Weizmann was fully above board, but that did not ameliorate the negative impression this gave American non-Zionists. See Weizmann to Einstein, March 13, 1928, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIII, series A, 399.

170 While feeling simultaneously confident and undercut by the Europeans, Warburg and the

AAC dealt with the considerable rise in fundraising expectations driven by their past success.

Warburg complained that Hebrew University leaders including Magnes took it for granted that

“having said he would get a certain amount from these different cities, he can dispose of the matter.”359 This was an expression of concern that the success Warburg had previously had soliciting American donations was now expected, and thus Magnes and others could wash their hands of the issue and deal with other matters. If the money from Americans kept rolling in regardless of the situation, what incentive did the administrators have to attend to them closely?

Evidence of the University’s lack of interest in cultivating a mutually beneficial relationship with the Americans is the leaders’ repeated failure to keep the Americans in the loop regarding events. In August, the Office Secretary of the American Friends of the Hebrew

University had to write to Magnes to ensure that he sent copies of financial reports that had been promised in February, in addition to a copy of the minutes from the most recent Board of

Governors meeting, which took place in London.360 Magnes was a busy man, but to forget for six months to send Warburg a copy of the financial auditor’s report—an important document given the area in which the AFHU was most helpful to the University—makes it seem as if this were a deliberate slighting on the part of the Hebrew University administration.

While the AFHU engaged in a back and forth with Mount Scopus about submitting financial records, there was still considerable development work to undertake on the University and difficult decisions to take regarding how to spend the very finite amount of money available.

In May, Warburg convened a meeting at his office attended by Weizmann, Adler, Emmanuel

Libman, and Elisha Friedman. At this meeting, these men discussed a number of proposals for

359 Warburg to Adler, March 5, 1928 (AJA 237/2) 360 Julietta Kahn to Magnes, August 1, 1928 (HU 21 97/4/1)

171 University growth, including the previously-rejected idea of assuming responsibility and control over the Technion in Haifa.361 Weizmann was in favor of this idea, positing that it would offer courses in subjects not currently taught at Hebrew University without the added expense of hiring professors and building facilities on Mount Scopus.362 He also supported the University’s subsidizing of the Agricultural School in Rehovot, for many of the same reasons.363

When Weizmann sailed from the United States two weeks after this conference at

Warburg’s office, he wrote to Einstein to inform him of the progress made in America. Though

Weizmann had succeeded in convincing Magnes and Warburg to accept the appointment of an academic head of the University—provided this position did not reduce Magnes’ responsibilities to “a very small minimum”—the academic members of the Board then objected, scuttling (for the time) the idea.364 Weizmann agreed to establish a commission to look into the possibility of establishing an academic head for the University at some future point, but others would only agree if Einstein would assume the mantle of commission head, which Einstein was reluctant to do.365

The multiple, overlapping layers of interests at play in this situation underscore the exceedingly fraught nature of the Hebrew University in the school’s earliest years. Even on issues on which the non-Zionists and Zionists could agree that neither was trying to sabotage the other, a proposal might still fail because of practical opposition from a different segment of the

Board of Governors. While so much of the focus, deservedly so, goes to the ideological disputes between individuals, the anecdote about attempting to appoint an academic head in 1928 reminds

361 Minutes of the Conference on the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, May 21, 1928, 1 (HU 21 97/2) 362 Ibid. 363 Ibid., 2. This school would eventually be known as the Weizmann Institute of Science. 364 Weizmann to Einstein, June 6, 1928, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIII, series A, 461. 365Ibid., 462.

172 us that the Hebrew University was first and foremost a school, not a tool for pushing one political position or another. It does seem as if many of the leading players involved sometimes forgot in the heat of ideological battles why the University was established in the first place.

Meanwhile, the AAC continued its work to promote the vision of the Hebrew University to a skeptical American public. Though the 1927 earthquake and its related unforeseen expenditures slowed down the process of institutional development, a report on AAC activity sent to the Board of Governors in June 1928 made clear the solid financial position of the AAC, which now was a permanent office of the Hebrew University.366 The budget for the University was “only made possible by the consent of the American Advisory Committee, of which Felix

Warburg is chairman…”367 The AAC was beginning to diversify its efforts to promote the

University in the United States. In June, Mrs. Sol Rosenbloom delivered a laudatory speech live over the radio in primetime, describing the University as bringing “the benefit of Western experience to the East, and of Eastern understanding to the West.”368 Orientalist phrasing aside,

Mrs. Rosenbloom’s oration was a prime example of the rising profile of the AAC. She ended the speech by praising Warburg’s leadership of the group and giving listeners the address of the

AAC in New York City, inviting listeners to visit the office to learn more about the Hebrew

University and, hopefully, choose to make a significant pledge to the current fundraising drive.

The words that Mrs. Rosenbloom chose to describe the activities of the AAC matter less than the fact that the group had enough clout and financial resources to purchase this broadcast time. Warburg and his associates had maneuvered to a position of sufficient success, at least within the organized Jewish community, that it could undertake large-scale advertisements of

366 Report of the Activities of the Hebrew University: December, 1927 to May, 1928, 1 (HU 22 97/5/I) 367 Ibid., 6. 368 Mrs. Sol Rosenbloom, “Palestine – A World in the Making,” June 6, 1928 (HU 97/5/I). The document lists the speaker as “Mrs. Sol Rosenbloom,” rather than providing her actual first name, as was customary then.

173 this variety. The difference between a radio address and holding a number of well-attended dinners is the scope of access. With Mrs. Rosenbloom’s address, the AAC could reach Jews and non-Jews of every possible political persuasion and stimulate interest in the University project among populations that likely had not been exposed to it previously.

It is difficult to analyze the extent to which outreach efforts like this had a significant impact on the AAC’s fundraising. While it is true that the amount that the 1928-29 Hebrew

University budget expected the American contingent to contribute did rise, to assume that this was entirely due to wider exposure as a result of advertising. In a letter to Warburg in which he outlined the budget for the school year, Magnes wrote of the extra $20,000 he expected the AAC to raise that he had “no doubt that this is entirely possible with the organization that the

Committee now has.”369 Clearly the organizational efforts in corralling the disparate groups now contributing to the Hebrew University under the auspices of the AAC were paying off, as this recognition from the Chancellor of the University reflects. In fact, the letter from Magnes seems to be presenting these requirements almost meekly, proffering praise for the group’s success while simultaneously asking for money. He follows up the acknowledgement of the additional

$20,000 to be raised in the next year by adding to the AAC’s purview, placing the United

Palestine Appeal under Warburg’s control as well.370

These further responsibilities came with them an increased sense in the ability of the

AAC to enact changes organization members wished to see. At the next meeting of the Executive

Committee of the AAC, roughly six weeks after Magnes’ letter outlining his vision for the

University’s budget, Warburg opened the proceedings by asserting that “the matter of acceptance or rejection of Dr. Magnes’s proposed budget, so far as it affected the American Advisory

(1/א/Magnes to Warburg, August 16, 1928 (HU 21 97/4 369 370 Ibid., 3.

174 Committee, was open for discussion…”371 Under normal circumstances, when a university has an endowment and thus does not need to rely on year-to-year fundraising merely to cover operating costs, no support group would have the clout to potentially undermine a Chancellor’s or President’s budget. And in this case, the AAC chose not to exercise that power, but that they could have done so speaks to the stature of the AAC and the precarious position in which the

Hebrew University still found itself, three years after opening.

Part of the troubles plaguing the University was that, despite much closer cooperation between non-Zionists and the Zionist Organization of America in raising funds, there still existed behind-the-scenes conflict that threatened the AAC’s fundraising capability. In September 1928,

Magnes sent David Kaliski, Chairman of the Hebrew University General Fund, the same budget he had previously sent to Warburg.372 Kaliski responded unfavorably, arguing that Magnes had overrepresented the debt the United Palestine Appeal had accrued.373 A lunch meeting, hastily convened in an attempt to quell the discord before it grew beyond immediate control, ended cordially but with no resolution of how much the ZOA actually owed.

Sol Loewenstein, who had attended the meeting, recapped the events for Warburg in a letter written later that day. Assuming that Loewenstein provided Warburg with an accurate summary of the meeting, it appears that given that Kaliski was “unable to tell what proportion was collected of the amount desired,” much of the fault lay with the ZOA both for shoddy record-keeping and failing to meet its obligations.374 The AAC, under Warburg’s leadership, continued to provide the University administration with an accurate accounting of their

371 Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee of the American Advisory Committee of the Hebrew University in Palestine, September 26, 1928, 1 (HU 21 97/2) (2/א/Magnes to Kaliski, September 19, 1928 (HU 21 97/4 372 (2/א/Memorandum of Luncheon Conference, October 3, 1928 (HU 21 97/4 373 (2/א/Loewenstein to Warburg, October 3, 1928 (HU 21 97/4 374

175 fundraising, which allowed Magnes to place additional responsibility at their feet with the certainty these duties would be properly disposed of.

The Magnes-Kaliski disagreement continued through the rest of the year. When Felix

Warburg appointed Dr. Rosenau to the Action Committee and Rosenau immediately and enthusiastically took to his fundraising responsibilities, Kaliski disapproved and made this displeasure known.375 A meeting was hastily called in to try to defuse the tensions before they spiraled completely, causing disproportionate damage to the University’s ability to fundraise and function smoothly in the United States. At this meeting, the ZOA and the AAC were able to reach a détente, for which Warburg wrote to thank Kaliski and express his hope that

“nothing will interfere with the working out of the university and other Palestinian projects in which we are both interested.”376 On this front, at least, the storm winds had died down, which was lucky given there was a more significant storm brewing among American Jews that would threaten to derail both the Jewish Agency and the University. This was something of a pattern among these leaders: they would gradually ramp up the rhetoric used against one another until it became a crisis, and then a meeting would be held (often including Warburg or Weizmann) and the warring parties would return to their corners.

Chaim Weizmann, trying to relax in London after an extremely stressful 1928, wrote

Felix Warburg at the end of December to warn that “an Opposition group in America means to protest against the formation of the Jewish Agency…”377 Stephen Wise sought to scuttle the entire idea as a result of the inclusion in the Agency of individuals who did not agree with all tenets of Zionism. Despite Wise’s lack of success at the General Council meeting, his mastery of

375 Warburg to Rothenberg, December 20, 1928 (CZA CM 360/14) 376 Warburg to Kaliski, December 24, 1928 (CZA CM 360/14) 377 Weizmann to Warburg, December 28, 1928, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIII, series A, 523.

176 the press ensured a wide broadcast of his political views, which threatened to draw support away from those who wanted the Agency to succeed as the administrative body of the Yishuv.

Weizmann, in an unusual show of direct venom, asserted that Wise’s actions were surely “done at the instigation of Brandeis and Mack, who are furious that the Agency is coming off.”378

Brandeis’ specific complaint about the work of the Agency and the leaders of the Yishuv dealt less with the admission of non-Zionists to the Agency and much more with the touchy issue of national identity.379 Weizmann was, in Brandeis’ eyes, supporting various Jewish groups in

Eastern Europe that fostered independent forms of Judaism in each country, rather than working towards the idea, prevalent among American Jews, that “all Jews, wherever they might be, owed political and national loyalty to a Jewish peoplehood.”380 Many historians have asserted that by the time of the Jewish Agency, the Brandeis-Mack cohort retained a measure of cache but had passed its prime and was “unable, or unwilling to establish a working relationship with any other group.”381 The events of the next year would clearly prove that assessment to be accurate.

1928 was, in many ways, a transitional year for Felix Warburg’s involvement with the

Hebrew University. With the considerable help of the AAC, Magnes had steered the University through the problems caused by the 1927 earthquake and proceeded with expanding the academic programs offered on Mount Scopus. The American contingent, including the somewhat-uneasy alliance with the Zionist Organization of America, continued to lead the way in drumming up support for the University in the Diaspora. The AAC began to use its financial capabilities to flex its muscle in influencing decisions of the Board of Governors, taking the risk

378 Ibid. 379 Melvin I. Urofsky, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 2009), 535. 380 Ibid., 534. 381 Evyatar Friesel, “Brandeis’ Role in American Zionism Historically Reconsidered,” American Jewish History 69, no. 1 (September 1979), 57.

177 of alienating allies from Europe and around the world. More than ever, the Hebrew University project was inextricably tied together with the larger political issues taking place in the Yishuv.

The conversations that Warburg and Weizmann had typically blurred the lines between the two, given that the ideological and logistical dilemmas facing both were nearly identical. This trend would only deepen in 1929, with the formal founding of the Jewish Agency, more teaching programs at the University, and then the Arab Riots, after which time Jewish life under the

British Mandate would never be the same.

178 CHAPTER 13: RIOTS

In histories of the Yishuv under the British Mandate, 1929 is invariably marked as a moment of rupture, when the vague sense of optimism that the British Government would lean into the idea of creating a Jewish national home began to fade, replaced with a reality of restricted immigration and constant clashes with Arab neighbors. A year that began with the promise of the Jewish Agency exerting a measure of autonomy over the Jewish community in

Palestine ended with Lord Passfield beginning the process of creating a more circumscribed

Yishuv. By the end of the year, eminent Jewish leaders active in promoting the Hebrew

University and the growth of the Yishuv in general would reconsider if they still belonged in the movement, or if their ideological compasses had led them astray.

Before the troubles that would plague the second half of the year, the most pressing issue, when the new year dawned, was the dispute with the Brandeis-Mack-Wise axis about how to proceed with the Jewish Agency. In late December, as we have seen, Chaim Weizmann wrote

Felix Warburg an ominous letter warning of the potential danger to the Jewish Agency if Wise’s speeches and activism went unchecked by the Agency’s proponents. The Zionists would have a chance to reconcile at a meeting in Berlin at the beginning of the year, at which they could iron out the large differences between the factions before voting on the Agency’s structure. After the conference in Berlin, Weizmann wrote a very lengthy letter to Warburg in which he extolled the

“excellent atmosphere which prevailed,” indicating that Weizmann’s opponents had been placated to some extent.382

382 Weizmann to Warburg, January 11, 1929, 1 (AJA 252/6)

179 In Berlin, the delegates at the convention also had a detailed discussion about the composition of the Jewish Agency. The decision to divide the Agency, with Zionists claiming half of the seats and non-aligned individuals claiming the other half, had been taken at previous meetings. At the early 1929 gathering, the delegates agreed that the President of the Jewish

Agency should be the President of the World Zionist Organization. Weizmann explained that this made sense because the WZO would “enter the Agency as an organized body which has behind it a long tradition, and which has been gradually welded into a coherent whole.”383 The recent events about which Weizmann had previously been concerned contradict Weizmann’s assertion of a unified Zionist Organization. Given that the WZO had to contend with challenges from within as well as externally, Weizmann was pushing the limits of what could reasonably be considered an accurate assessment of the situation.

Meanwhile, Warburg and Adler were preparing to cross the Atlantic for a lengthy trip to

Palestine. Magnes expressed particular excitement to show these two men the University in action, as the campus had come quite a long way since Warburg’s last visit.384 These two non-

Zionists were undertaking this trip at an auspicious time for their cohort to press their advantage with regards the University. Despite the ZOA’s best efforts, they had not been able to meet their responsibilities for dues on which they had fallen behind. Ira Rubinow, the Executive Director of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote to one of Magnes’ assistants to explain that they had

“been as yet unable to make payments on behalf of the arrears of the UPA promised to the

Hebrew University for the year 1927-1928.”385

383 Ibid., 6 384 Magnes to Adler, January 14, 1929 (HU 11 26/III) 385 Rubinow to Kahn, January 24, 1929 (AJA 252/6)

180 Though Rubinow dismissed Magnes’ budget as not “very urgent,” the fact remains that while the ZOA was preeminent regarding issues of the Jewish Agency, they were quickly losing influence on the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University.386 Perhaps the dismissive attitude that Rubinow displayed in his letter was a lashing out, though it is true that the ZOA’s resources were stretched thin, and the Hebrew University was not the highest priority for how to spend donations. Warburg had maneuvered the AAC into this breach and attained for himself and his fellow non-Zionists a position of power and enough clout to prevent the Zionists from dismissing them outright.

In the spring, Warburg and Adler, along with their wives and various other individuals in their employ left the United States for a lengthy trip to Palestine. They would see the development in the Yishuv, assess how the Zionist program was progressing, and see the

University in action, as their trip coincided with an academic term. Magnes saw it as an opportunity not only to see close associates, but to impress upon these two leading American

Jewish leaders about the positive momentum of the University and the importance of continuing to work hard in its support.

Adler and Warburg were at the time keeping well abreast of the ongoing construction projects on Mount Scopus, as well as how the University was using American funds to pay for them. Prior to leaving for Palestine, Adler wrote Warburg regarding a potential future undertaking, about which he was skeptical of the high cost. He did note, with some evident satisfaction, that roughly $130,000 had been cut from the project, mostly out of ornamental aspects of the buildings that were not immediately necessary.387 While these men clearly had no problem spending money on the University and wanted to continue to add buildings, there was a

386 Ibid. 387 Adler to Warburg, February 13, 1929 (AJA 237/3)

181 strong desire to ensure that the significant sums being sent to Palestine were going towards useful causes rather than unnecessary ornamentation.

This is a sentiment that Warburg echoed in his speech at a United Jewish Appeal dinner on January 31. Warburg spoke of these donations not being “charity or philanthropy,” but rather

“patient investment carefully made.”388 Donors should demand to see a return on their investment, even if that return did not take a purely financial form. In other words, if the

University was not using the money in a manner that someone deemed to be appropriate, there would be no moral obligation to continue throwing donations down a perceived dark hole. The buildings on Mount Scopus should be aesthetically pleasing; excess and gaudy ornamentation was not necessary. Warburg and Adler were clearly on the same page.

So, in this mindset, Warburg and Adler set out for Palestine in the spring of 1929. Their itinerary was heavily detailed, with most days including a number of stops and tours. For example, on April 22 the group arose in Haifa after meeting with Dr. and Mrs. Weizmann the day before—and touring the Haifa Technical Institute—left the city at 9:30, spent time with Lord

Melchett before making their way to Degania and the Station from 3:30-5:00 and spending the night in Nazareth.389 One can safely assume that this tightly coordinated schedule was constructed with the involvement of Magnes and Weizmann, for whom this trip represented a great personal and professional opportunity. The obvious rapport between these men—despite the occasional dustup over this issue or that—has long been apparent through their correspondence, and the trip to Palestine provided a prime opportunity to deepen these relationships in person rather than through cables or letters.

388 Address by Felix M. Warburg at United Palestine Appeal Dinner, January 31, 1929 (AJA 252/6) 389 Itinerary of Warburg and Adler Family Tour (CZA S25/997)

182 The more tangible possible benefit to the Hebrew University and Yishuv was that

Warburg and Adler could see that the money they controlled on behalf of American Jewry had really made a noticeable difference. They could take these experiences, this appreciation for the successes achieved in the face of difficult circumstances, back to the United States and draw on this first-hand experience for their fundraising campaigns. For Warburg, this would be especially important, as he personally sought to dispel the prevalent notion that the Hebrew University was solely part of the Zionist enterprise.390 Prior to embarking on the journey, Warburg delivered a speech at the Unity Club in Brooklyn, in which he castigated American Jews who were still choosing to divorce themselves from the Yishuv. Writing to Warburg in the wake of the address,

Nathan Strauss, asserted that “the success [Chalutzim] have already achieved towards the upbuilding of the Holy Land should be entirely convincing.”391 While this sentiment is accurate, and helpful in the abstract, personal accounts would be even more compelling to the masses who had never, and likely would never, visit Palestine.

Warburg could not escape the specter of political squabbles, even while 5,000 miles away. On April 18, he received a cable from Louis Marshall while in Jerusalem. Marshall chose that particular moment, for reasons passing understanding, to write to Warburg regarding concerns he had over the concentration of power in the position of the President of the Jewish

Agency.392 Given that no decision needed to be taken at that time, Marshall’s choice to send the cable seems calculated to get to Warburg while the latter was with Weizmann, thus maximizing the potential benefit. In the grand scheme, Marshall’s complaint represented a fairly insignificant

390 Selekman to Warburg, January 30, 1929 (AJA 246/3) 391 Strauss to Warburg, March 5, 1929 (AJA 247/5) 392 Cable, Marshall to Warburg, April 18, 1929 (AJA 241/2)

183 difference of opinion, but it serves to illustrate the level to which Warburg’s personal stature, even apart from the AAC, had grown in the eyes of fellow Jewish leaders.

After returning from Palestine in the late spring, Warburg spent the next few months engaged in similar work to how he had spent the previous three years: raising funds for the

Hebrew University, shaping the nature of the University and the Yishuv away from Zionism and towards a less ideologically-orthodox character, and complaining with his close associates about the actions of other Jewish leaders. His experience in Palestine led him to write that his “faith in the Hebrew University [was] stronger than ever.”393 Clearly Warburg’s pessimistic attitude of the previous two years had subsided. In June, Magnes wrote to Warburg about his plans for the next institutes to open on Mount Scopus. These were to be more practically-minded, linking the output of the University closely with the future success of the Yishuv. Magnes wanted to open a

Graduate School of Sub-Tropical Medicine, to operate in conjunction with the new Hadassah

Hospital.394 The American Jewish Physicians’ Committee, a constituent organization within the

AAC, independently contributed £P3,202 to the project, and Magnes sheepishly asked that the

AAC fill in the gap of £P11,534, given that he had little optimism for the prospects of raising that kind of money from any other country.395

This letter followed ten days after a previous note from Magnes urging a “large attendance of the American members” at the upcoming Board of Governors meeting, in order to ensure that American interests were represented to the fullest possible extent.396 In a development that would resonate through the rest of the year and into 1930 and 1931, Magnes began to lean more noticeably in the direction of Warburg and the non-Zionists, which we will

393 Warburg to Dr. Alfred Friedlander, June 7, 1929 (AJA 246/3) 394 Magnes to Warburg, June 28, 1929, 1 (HU 11 26/III) 395 Ibid., 2. 396 Magnes to Warburg, June 18, 1929 (HU 11 26/III)

184 see served only to alienate himself from Weizmann, Einstein, and the other powerful Zionist members of the Hebrew University Board of Governors. Perhaps it was Magnes’ American background or a true ideological affinity for the non-Zionists, this trend would continue for the immediate future.

The summer of 1929—the calm before the storm—saw the implementation of the fully- functional Jewish Agency. Many of the same players who served on the Board of Governors participated in the lengthy process of constituting this body. The Agency, ratified at the meeting of the Zionist Congress that took place in Zurich in late July and early August, marked a momentous period of cooperation between Zionists and non-Zionists, the likes of which had rarely occurred previously.397 Under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann—now the President of both the Jewish Agency and the Hebrew University—this group would work with the British

Mandatory authorities to promote decisions that would most significantly benefit the Yishuv.

The Agency fulfilled one of the requirements of the League of Nations Mandate and simultaneously represented the potential for different Jewish ideological factions to function as a cohesive whole.

Felix Warburg was one of the American non-Zionist signatories of the Constitution of the

Jewish Agency.398 He addressed the Congress on August 11, speaking eloquently of a bright future for Palestine. Though the final establishment of the Jewish Agency had once appeared “far away and hazy,” this spirit of a unified Jewry would be one of the most significant in the history of the Yishuv.399 He also devoted the last full third of his speech to noting at length that this could not spell the end of the fundraising efforts, but rather that with the removal of the

397 Camillo Dresner, “Introduction,” Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, ix. 398 Along with Lee Frankel. 399 Felix Warburg, speech to the Jewish Agency Conference, August 11, 1929, 1 (AJA 240/8)

185 impediment of fraternal infighting, donors should increase their contributions, as development projects could pick up pace. The Jewish Agency, and specifically organizations from individual countries, would continue to prioritize funding for educational services, on top of what the

British Mandatory Government was providing for the Yishuv.400 This referred not only to the

Hebrew University, but also the public schools in Palestine that would eventually become the most significant pipeline of students to Mount Scopus.

The Jewish Agency marked the end of years of back-and-forth letters and conversations with the Zionist Organization, as well as those non-Zionists such as Louis Marshall, who preferred to take a hard line with respect to the Agency negotiations. As late as mid-July,

Marshall was sending pedantic cables to the Zionist Organization, urging the addition or subtraction of various words or small phrases that to him entirely altered the meaning of the

Constitution.401 Without shaming Marshall for clearly standing up for his beliefs and attempting to avoid a Zionist takeover of the Jewish Agency on his watch, it was this kind of small divisions that continued to threaten to bring down the Agency project as a whole.

Despite the best efforts of a small but vocal minority of leaders who opposed the Jewish

Agency, it came into being with the final ratification of its Constitution in mid-August 1929.

After its approval, Weizmann and Marshall—the President of the Jewish Agency and the

Chairman of the Council, respectively—met on stage and embraced one another.402 After all the internecine warfare, the letters back and forth across the Atlantic sniping and complaining about one party or another, and the stress for all individuals involved, a key facet of the Mandate for

400 Ibid., 5. 401 Cable, Marshall to Zionist Organization, London, July 9, 1929 (AJA 241/1) 402 Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (3rd ed.) (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 161.

186 Palestine was realized. An organized Jewish body was prepared to take responsibility for its own governance.

For Warburg and the University, this had little practical effect. The fundraising continued apace, with the AAC continuing virtually autonomously from the rest of the University’s support structure. Given that the meeting in Zurich occurred during a break between semesters, the Board of Governors could now fully turn its attention to planning for the upcoming 1929-1930 school year, which was on track to be the largest yet. The Board of Governors met in Zurich immediately following the Zionist Congress, an intelligent decision given the considerable overlap between the membership of both bodies. Though the University had accrued some debt, mostly due to large-scale building projects, the budget that Magnes presented at this meeting moved the University much closer to a deficit-free existence.403

Additionally, Magnes made clear that he would rely heavily upon the American contingent at the conference to provide an increased level of funding in order to pay for important, new programs he wanted the University to offer. As previously discussed, this only reinforces the impact Warburg had made on the University project. That Magnes would be so open about his intentions vis-à-vis the Americans in a gathering of the full Board of Governors speaks to how the center of financial power had shifted west. Despite this, the minutes of the conference reveal a largely united Board, engaging in substantive discussions about the future of the University in the wake of the significant achievement at the Zionist Congress the previous week. Little did they know that within a fortnight the situation would change dramatically and permanently.

403 Minutes of the Fifth Conference of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University, August 18-19, 1929, 5.

187 Martin Gilbert asserts that the riots sprang from two separate causes in the summer of

1929: the enlargement of the Jewish Agency and the resumption of Jewish prayers at the

Kotel.404 These, combined with the simmering tensions resulting from continued Jewish immigration to Palestine, made a volatile mixture. The British, though previously aware of the significant anti-Jewish sentiment being fomented among the Arab population, were caught flat- footed as the situation spiraled out of control. Though their colonial apparatus was able to regain order within a fortnight, the riots demonstrated the limits of British control.

On August 11, at the Zionist Congress in Zurich, leaders resolved that Jews have a right to pray at the Western Wall.405 While this was certainly not the only precipitating factor, this provocative decision inflamed tensions with the Arab community. Over the next nineteen days, riots would rage throughout Jerusalem and Arab sections of Palestine, most notably .

Jewish homes were razed, Jewish neighborhoods were desecrated, and both the Jewish and Arab populations suffered casualties. Caught entirely off-guard, the British Mandatory authorities reassessed how they had been handling Palestine and would over the next year conduct a thorough inquiry, followed by the issuance of a new plan for how they would regulate life within

Palestine. On all fronts, the Arab uprising necessitated a complete reevaluation of aspects of

Yishuv life that had long been taken for granted.

The Hebrew University, existing as it does in a largely Arab section of Jerusalem, was in a particularly vulnerable position when the riots began. During the time of the Zionist Congress,

Hyman wrote to Magnes that the situation was under control, though there was “a recurrence of shots fired on the University grounds during the last few nights.”406 The University had a police

404 Gilbert, Israel, 60. 405 Hillel Cohen, Year Zero of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, trans. Haim Watzman (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2015), xvii. 406 Hyman to Magnes, August 12, 1929 (HU 12 30/1)

188 presence that was offering assistance in dealing with these small-scale attacks, though this would turn out to be woefully inadequate to handle the situation as it began to deteriorate precipitously over the next several weeks. The University found itself as unprepared as the British were to function in the face of the unprecedented level of violence engulfing the Yishuv.

Two weeks later, after the worst of the fighting had dissipated and the British had more or less restored order throughout Jerusalem, Hyman wrote again to Magnes, this time with a lengthy recap of the events that had unfolded. After the incident Hyman had recounted in his letter of August 12, he had appealed to the British for extra supplies, which would allow the

University watchmen to control the campus more easily. His request was never answered, and by the time events began in earnest on August 23, the University was caught in the unenviable position of lacking the resources to defend itself while simultaneously being ignored by the

British officials.407

By a chance of fate, Felix Warburg had just arrived in London when the riots began. He wrote to his brother Max on the 26th, first expressing regret that this happened just after the show of Jewish communal loyalty and the declaration of good feelings towards Arabs that had been issued from Zurich.408 Felix also reported to his brother that the Prime Minister had been briefed, and though it was then quite late at night, the details trickling in from Palestine were “very bad.”409 In addition to reporting that Louis Marshall had taken ill and had his gall bladder operated on, Felix impressed upon Max that the most important task that fundraisers would need to convince potential investors that Palestine was a safe country “for the Jews,” though at the time this would be difficult.410

407 Hyman to Magnes, August 29, 1929 (HU 12 30/1) 408 Warburg to Max Warburg, August 26, 1929 (AJA 247/5), 1. 409 Ibid. 410 Ibid., 3.

189 Unfortunately, as the crisis deepened, the assistance offered by the British government faded away. By the second week of September, Warburg was receiving notice that the Cabinet only had one “warm friend,” Snowden.411 The British Government’s response veered wildly in these early days following the riots, reflecting the lack of clarity about the situation and confusion about where their priorities would lie moving forward. This, in turn, led to uncertainty within the Jewish and Arab populations about what to expect and how to rebuild and plan for the future. The University, about which Magnes had been cautiously optimistic only three weeks previously, now was thrown into disarray with an unclear path forward.

Behind the scenes, Weizmann was working his contacts in the UK Government to try to convince the British to come to the aid of the Yishuv and continue to act as a neutral arbiter in

Palestine. Weizmann wrote of one meeting he had with the Prime Minister at which he informed

MacDonald that worldwide Jewry needed to see “definite acts” on behalf of the Jewish community in Palestine in order to maintain faith that the British would defend Jewish lives.412

At this time, Weizmann was cautiously optimistic that MacDonald would come through, though within less than a fortnight, Weizmann was expressing his disappointment in the inaction of the

Labour Government.413 Given the documents that the Government would issue over the next year, Weizmann’s disappointment was well-founded.

On Warburg’s part, he was working on behalf of the University on a number of different levels when he received word from Cyrus Adler that Louis Marshall’s condition had taken a turn for the worse and he had passed away.414 Marshall had long been a polarizing figure, but he was also an eminent American Jewish leader the effect of whose loss would ripple throughout the

411 Cable, Spiegelman to Warburg, September 9, 1929 (AJA 247/5) 412 Weizmann to Warburg, September 5, 1929, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 15. 413 Weizmann to Warburg, September 24, 1929, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 49. 414 Cable, Adler to Warburg, September 11, 1929 (AJA 237/3)

190 upper echelons of Jewish communal life worldwide. Chaim Weizmann, who had frequently battled with Marshall before their recent reconciliation, wrote to Warburg that the Jewish

Agency would found Marshalliah, a moshav in Palestine named for Louis Marshall.415

Somewhat-stilted name aside, this does seem an appropriate way to memorialize a man who had worked tirelessly on his vision of a Jewish settlement in Palestine.

While Warburg certainly mourned the loss of his friend and associate, circumstances in

Palestine necessitated his continued attention to matters on the ground and ensuring that fears over the future of the University did not interrupt the flow of money from America to Palestine.

Here, the spirit of unity expressed so fulsomely in August would face its first real test. Just over a month after the riots, Warburg wrote to Magnes complaining about the general incompetence of the Zionist Organization at addressing the situation in front of them. Warburg described the Z.O. as “groping along from day to day without any real policy, trying to avoid difficulties as they bump into them…”416 While that assessment may not have been entirely fair—certainly

Weizmann put forth immense effort in lobbying the British Government for the assistance it should have provided as part of its Mandatory responsibilities—it does speak to the underlying tensions still extant even after the celebratory Congress in Zurich.

Throughout the post-riot emergency efforts to keep the University afloat, Warburg was in constant contact with Hyman, the leading University official who had been present during the unrest. In the immediate aftermath of the crisis, Hyman wrote Magnes a lengthy letter outlining his account of the events and underscoring the deficiencies in security that had compounded the problem for the campus. In addition to a chronological narrative, Hyman placed a majority of the blame firmly on the British leadership, who had removed weapons from all Jews, leaving the

415 Weizman to Warburg, September 20, 1929, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 39. 416 Warburg to Magnes, October 9, 1929 (AJA 251/3)

191 University “dependent on the whims of Police Officials and the availability of Constables to send.”417 The shifting allegiance of the British and the degree to which relying on them was no longer a valid solution meant that the connection with other countries—specifically the United

States—was even more important.

The situation with the British had devolved so quickly and significantly that there were legitimate fears Britain would throw off the mantle of the Mandate and allow all parties involved to fend for themselves.418 Rabbis across the United States were warning their congregants that it was only the increase of American funds that would safeguard the progress made in the Yishuv and prevent the possibility of the Palestinian Arab population overrunning the Jews. Warburg was at the forefront of this effort to maintain active funding, fielding such a massive amount of letters, calls, and cables from concerned laypeople and rabbis throughout the country that it strained Warburg’s ability to maintain positive correspondence with each one.419

In the immediate aftermath of the riots, much of the administrative work Warburg undertook occurred in connection with Mr. Hyman, the registrar of Hebrew University at the time and the highest-ranking individual who had a first-hand experience of the effects of the days of unrest on the campus. Hyman’s first account of the events, in a letter to Magnes, has already been described here, but his descriptive talents were put to good use by the AAC two months later. At the urging of Warburg and Selekman, Hyman composed a document explaining what transpired that the AAC could use as a public statement to assuage potential donors that steps

417 Hyman to Magnes, August 29, 1929, 4 (HU 12 30/1). A failure of British infrastructure in Palestine was also blamed by Warburg in a speech he was to give on behalf of American Jewry at a function lauding the British Prime Minister. In particular, the lack of efficient large-scale communication contributed to “the horrors” of the Riots. “Proposed Address to the Prime Minister, to be Presented by Mr. Warburg on Behalf of the American Jewish Deputation” (AJA 240/8). 418 The Inquirer, November 16, 1929, morning (AJA 237/3) 419 See a list of rabbis who had submitted complaints to Warburg regarding the Emergency Fund in Palestine, November 17, 1929 (AJA 241/2)

192 had been taken to prevent a future similar occurrence. In this letter, Hyman emphasized that the

“Winter Term [will begin], as scheduled, on November 18th, classes being held in the buildings on Mt. Scopus as under normal conditions” because of assurances the University had received from the Palestine Police.420 The language that Hyman used attempted to reinforce the notion that despite the problems at the end of August and the general misgivings surrounding the British authorities, the University would commence its normal business and no one should conceive of a reason to doubt the University’s future.

At the Hebrew University Convocation on November 18, Chancellor Magnes addressed the assembled guests and, in his welcoming remarks, discussed the recent events and the effect they had had on the University. Opening with an acknowledgement that this University term would begin under “melancholy circumstances,” Magnes continued by saying that he had personally taken responsibility for the campus and everyone—faculty, student, and visitor—who decided to come up to Mount Scopus.421 But as his speech built, he said that though he could not in good conscience have traveled to the United States to ask men and women for money before knowing the circumstances on campus, his present understanding allowed him to say honestly that the University remained on a solid footing and as a worthy recipient of American dollars.422

Warburg was able to use Magnes’ words and Magnes’ overarching sentiment and begin to craft a fundraising campaign around them. Given the challenging circumstances, Warburg attempted not only to maintain his current donor contacts, but increase the register of individuals and groups who had pledged money to the University. Unfortunately, outside of Warburg and a few close associates—Adler, Rosenau, and Loewenstein—very few of the AAC members

420 Hyman to Warburg, November 8, 1929, 3 (HU 12 30/1) 421 Address by Magnes at the HU Convocation, November 18, 1929 (246/4), 1. 422 Ibid., 3.

193 wanted to exert any part of themselves outside their checkbook.423 Partially this was due to the untimely resignation of Ben Selekman, who had served ably as the Director of the AAC for several years. But a much greater obstacle was that, in a grim turn of events, the Arab Riots that led to the University’s increased fundraising requirements coincided with the onset of the stock market crash and the Great Depression in the United States. Given that many of the major donors to Jewish Palestine relied on banking and the stock market for their wealth, their more limited means meant a much smaller pool of funds from which Warburg could draw.

After describing much of the membership list of the AAC as “dead wood,”424 Ms. Kahn’s report continued by ascribing much of the success of the AAC to the appointment of George

Hyman, who hailed from New York City, as the University’s Assistant Registrar.425 As evident by the close correspondence between Hyman and Warburg, the American connection enabled the

AAC to receive information before the general public, allowing for a more well-crafted public statement and more professional outreach. While endeavoring to maintain steady fundraising,

Warburg and his committee also strove to communicate more trivial goings-on from the

University to the public more frequently. Ms. Kahn related that once every week or, at worst, every other week the AAC put out a lengthy press release outlining the positive developments on

Mount Scopus since the last release.426

A lamentable aspect of Ms. Kahn’s report relates to the lack of female representation on the AAC, and in fact that the AAC had made little effort to recruit women into the upper echelons of committee leadership.427 Though there was clearly female leadership among

423 Juliette Kahn, “Report of Activities of American Office, Hebrew University in Palestine: October 1, 1929 to May 15, 1930,” 2. 424 Ibid. 425Ibid., 9. 426 Ibid., 8 427 Ibid., 11.

194 organized communal Jewry, both in the United States and abroad, this oversight likely hamstrung the AAC at a time when an injection of new blood likely would have had a positive outcome. American Zionism more broadly did have a number of energetic, talented women participating in the movement, but the AAC and the Hebrew University administration as a whole remained a male environment for some time to come.

The AAC was a key component in helping the University survive this challenging period without having to scale back on academic functions. However, perhaps because of the conditions in the United States, or because a number of individuals divorced themselves from the organization during this time, the AAC would not meet during the 1929-1930 academic year and would continue to operate on the previous budget.428 The Committee would pick back up the mantle of a more organized fundraising system in 1930, but for the time being it was left largely to the devices of Felix Warburg to conceive of how to maintain forward momentum.

The first half of 1929 was a time of profound optimism throughout organized Jewry worldwide. The successful implementation of the Jewish Agency after a rancorous gestation marked a very great accomplishment for the Zionists and non-Zionists. It became clear that compromise was a possibility and that nearly everyone was willing to place the Yishuv over personal ideological matters and work for the common good. With the Arab Riots, however, the mood changed dramatically and the University was once again thrown into chaos. The beginning of the Great Depression in the United States, the effects of which would affect the entire world economy, did not help matters. In 1930, the University would continue to move past the Riots and reassess its place in a Yishuv governed by a British power that now seemed much less inclined to assist the Jewish population. New British policy would severely curtain immigration

428 Sol Loewentstein, “Report of Activities of American Office of Hebrew University,” 1 (CZA A405/62)

195 to Palestine, in the guise of equality with the Arabs. The AAC would resume full activities, even in the face of the American economic crisis, and would soldier on under the stout leadership of

Felix Warburg.

196 CHAPTER 14: RESIGNATION

1930 brought further changes to life in the Yishuv. The University, still largely reliant on foreign students and professors to fill out their academic programs, would have to contend with the White Paper issued by Lord Passfield, advocating a drastic reduction in Jewish immigration to Palestine. Simultaneously, the university needed to solidify its footing on Mount Scopus after the uprising that rent the placid existence it had had in the four years since its opening ceremony in 1925. Chancellor Magnes had to walk a fine line between assuring everyone that the situation was under control and that the University required more security resources, the funding for which would have to come from the budgets for other programs.

Felix Warburg announced on December 23, 1929, that he was calling for an immediate meeting of the Administrative Council of the Jewish Agency, to be held on West 47th Street in

New York City on February 1-2, 1930.429 Prior to making this announcement, he had conferred with Weizmann, who agreed on the necessity of assembling the council as quickly as possible.

The Agency needed to coordinate their messages in order to ensure as smooth a transition back to normal academic function as possible. Warburg elaborated on the reasons for this meeting in a letter to Mr. Goldsmid, sent three days after the cable. He wanted to reassure the Council members from Europe that the perception that “the Americans were doing the life-saving work and the Continental people another piece of work” was erroneous, and that the American and

European cohorts continued to operate as a unit.430

While that was certainly true, a piece of Warburg’s letter to Goldsmid later expressed a much more pessimistic view of the current situation in Palestine. Warburg wrote that he did “not

429 Cable, Warburg to Members of the Administrative Committee, December 23, 1929 (AJA 247/6) 430 Warburg to Goldsmid, December 26, 1929 (AJA 247/6)

197 feel very much reassured about conditions in Palestine in regard to safety or other matters.”431

Despite the best efforts of Magnes, Weizmann, and others, this makes it clear that by this point leading Americans—even those who supported the Yishuv and the University wholeheartedly— had significant misgivings about Palestine that might lead them to reduce their funding. Given the importance of American contributions to the University, any considerable decrease in this amount could represent a death blow to the University.

Shortly after the new year, Warburg received a letter from Magnes in which the latter tried to assuage Warburg’s fears. In his reply, Warburg expressed that, though he still felt uneasy, that Magnes was “at least moderately confident with regard to the future” of the

University carried weight.432 Additionally, Warburg showed a noticeable understanding of the geopolitics of British rule in Palestine, remarking that the difficulties the British were having in

Egypt and India would make them wary of riling another Muslim population.433 The White Paper

Lord Passfield would issue later in the year follows directly in this line of thinking; the British began to take a more Realpolitik stance towards their possessions in the Near East and

Subcontinent. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that this was a profound mistake that, rather than solving intractable problems, only exacerbated them.

Despite Warburg’s call at the end of 1929 for a meeting of the Administrative Committee during the first week of February 1930, this never came to pass. While the reasons for the postponement remain unclear—Warburg blames Weizmann and the Zionists, Weizmann places fault on the logistical difficulties involved with scheduling a conference of that magnitude—the

Board of Governors of the University began to fall victim to the type of infighting that had long

431 Ibid., 2. 432 Warburg to Magnes, January 6, 1930 (AJA 256/6) 433 Ibid.

198 affected the Jewish Agency negotiations. Warburg and the AAC, representing a largely unified

American cohort, took one tack toward the challenges of rebuilding the University and the

Yishuv, while those from Europe, and especially the Zionist Organization, had other ideas. This dichotomy would give rise to a serious challenge to the cordial personal and working relationship between Felix Warburg and Chaim Weizmann, which extended back well over a decade.

It would soon become clear that, contrary to the picture of a unified Jewish front that

Warburg presented to Goldsmid at the end of 1929, a serious rift had arisen between Warburg and Weizmann. Weizmann responded angrily to Warburg’s intimation that the Zionists had willfully sabotaged the meeting of the Adminstrative Committee, saying that this attitude on the part of the non-Zionists could lead to the ultimate collapse of the Jewish Agency.434 Warburg’s cable had, in addition, advocated a more conciliatory attitude towards the Arab population, to which Weizmann responded that “the temper of the Arab leaders is such that their minds are utterly unprepared for any reasonable compromise…”435 The difference between Zionists and non-Zionists with respect to the Arab inhabitants of Palestine had not recently been the major sticking point between the two factions, though it certainly does reflect a noticeable impediment to reconciliation between the two ideologies.

Likewise, Weizmann took umbrage with the implication that since the formation of the

Jewish Agency, Warburg wanted Zionists to “obliterate themselves” and to stop working on behalf of their organization at the expense of a more united front.436 Weizmann categorically refused to do so, reminding Warburg that the Jewish Agency merely represented Zionists and non-Zionists working together towards a single goal—much like the Hebrew University Board of

434 Weizmann to Warburg, January 18, 1930 (HU S25/1422) 435 Ibid., 6. 436 Ibid., 8.

199 Governors—rather than an abrogation of political ideology altogether. Just because everyone had agreed to use the apparatus of the Agency as a means to governing the Yishuv did not mean that any and all differences had somehow evaporated overnight. To the contrary, proximity to one another in many cases actually exacerbated the latent conflicts.

Though Warburg and Weizmann once again managed to sheath their swords, nevertheless the problems in the Yishuv persisted.437 The 1929-1930 school year was roughly halfway finished, and the Board was paralyzed both by the magnitude of the work ahead of it and by the ideological schism affecting the Jewish communal organizations operating in the Yishuv.

The AAC was likewise uncharacteristically quiet, with Warburg seemingly unsure about how best to position the University to American audiences at a time when the University’s very survival, as part of the Yishuv, was in doubt and American donors feared for their financial futures. During Passover, Magnes once again brought up the idea of his traveling to the United

States in order to focus a new campaign “on a limited number of men” and giving each the hard sell.438

This strategy, to which Warburg tacitly acceded, made sense in the context of a changed

American financial landscape. Magnes, from whom this suggestion arose, was a true believer in this plan and pressured Warburg repeatedly to lend his full support.439 Most interesting in the series of letters that presaged Magnes’ 1930 trip to the United States is the degree to which he not only relied on Warburg’s support, but wrote using borderline-sycophantic language. Magnes, who was struggling through a difficult academic year on a number of fronts, praised Warburg’s instincts for fundraising and promised to make any changes to the list of targeted individuals that

437 See Weizmann to Warburg, January 21, 1930, for a much more conciliatory tone and an acknowledgement of renewed harmony. 438 Magnes to Warburg, April 14, 1930, 3 (AJA 256/6) 439 Magnes to Warburg, May 16, 1930, 1 (AJA 256/6)

200 he thought prudent.440 With the changing attitudes of the British Government forcing a reassessment on that front, the AAC and the United States in general represented something of a lifeline for the University as it awaited the report from Lord Passfield determining the next course of action in the wake of the riots.

After the end of therRiots, Sir John Hope Simpson was commissioned to conduct a thorough, nonpartisan inquiry into what caused the unrest. He investigated all facets of the

Palestinian economy and received reports from a number of interested groups, including the

Jewish Agency and the Arab High Committee. He submitted his report on October 21, 1930, which was coincidentally the same day that saw Chaim Weizmann’s (first) tenure on the Jewish

Agency come to an end as a result of changes in British policy. Though it was largely the White

Paper issued by Lord Passfield that would ultimately push Weizmann out, the changing tide of

British opinion paved the way for this occurrence.441

Passfield’s White Paper dramatically curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine and deleteriously affected the ability of the Jewish population to buy land.442 While not explicitly abrogating the Balfour Declaration, it was clear that the events of 1929 had spooked the British, and in their Realpolitik calculus, appeasing the Arab population offered the greatest chance for a positive outcome in Palestine than did maintaining the status quo. As the Government took these actions, it essentially undermined the Jewish Agency, which had just painstakingly reached an internal agreement about how to represent the Yishuv. This was, needless to say, disconcerting to both Zionist and non-aligned leaders.

440 Ibid. 441 Weizmann’s ignominious departure from the Jewish Agency, followed closely by that of Felix Warburg, will be discussed in depth at the end of this chapter. 442 G. Sheffer, “Intentions and Results of British Policy in Palestine: Passfield’s White Paper,” Middle Eastern Studies 9, no. 1 (Jan., 1973), 45.

201 John Hope Simpson undertook a very detailed survey of the land settlements in Palestine, which included compiling new demographic data about its inhabitants. He concluded that in the time between the last census, in 1922, and 1930, the Jewish population had grown by nearly

80,000—nearly doubling—while the Arab population had only added roughly 20%.443 Even though Muslims still vastly outnumbered Jews, this trend augured poorly for the future of

Palestinian Arabs, as they could easily see a situation in which the more urbanized and organized

Jewish population would seek dominion over the entire region, leaving Arabs backed into a corner.

Hope Simpson’s conclusions did not offer Arabs much optimism, for even though their sheer number dwarfed that of the Yishuv, the Jewish population had “every advantage that capital, science, and organization could give them,” and they had exploited these resources to their benefit in land ownership to the tune of nearly a million dunams of previously Arab-held land.444 Virtually from the beginning of large-scale Jewish settlement in Palestine, olim had found Arabs willing to sell their land to these seemingly-foolhardy Jews; in fact, supply almost always outstripped demand.445 Though Hope Simpson’s stilted writing style makes it impossible to assess whether he meant these sentences as a compliment to the abilities of the Jews or as an apology to the Arabs, either way he underscored the vast disparity in means available to the two different factions. The Yishuv and its myriad institutions received constant influxes of funds from external sources, whereas the Arabs could only rely on themselves.

443 John Hope Simpson, Palestine: Report on Immigration, Land Settlement, and Development (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1930). 444 Ibid., 142. 445 Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000), 273.

202 While American donors could and did come through on behalf of the University time and again, in 1930 the AAC did bring to Magnes’ attention some deficiencies in the University’s outreach that might have contributed to the stagnation of the committee. Scientists at American universities felt strongly that the Academic Council was not paying sufficient attention to the superlative Jewish scientific talent in the United States.446 With the tremendous number of universities in the country, each year a good number of these professors took sabbatical leave, during which time they might be free to engage their services on Mount Scopus for a semester or two, bolstering not only the academic staff of the University but the connection between

Palestine and the United States.

As Ms. Kahn wrote, this does appear to be a missed opportunity on the part of the

Academic Council, which unlike the Board of Governors was unduly skewed toward academics from Europe. This is an area in which the Zionist vs. non-Zionist divide was less important, as the Council under the leadership of Professor Einstein did not need to include a certain proportion of individuals from any one faction or one part of the world. Warburg could influence decisions about degree programs the University should offer and the physical development of the campus, but matters relating to hiring and firing were constitutionally required to go through the

Academic Council prior to a vote of the Board of Governors. This effectively locked out most of the American representatives and granted more substantial power to the European Zionists who were predominant on the Council.

This created an interesting dynamic within the University’s administration, given the extent to which Weizmann, like Magnes, relied on Warburg’s support. By March 1930, the

University was, in Weizmann’s words, “catastrophical [sic].”447 He believed that Warburg was

446 Julietta Kahn to Magnes, February 13, 1930 (HU 6 10/II) 447 Weizmann to Warburg, March 4, 1930, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 238.

203 “the only one to whom could turn [sic] in distressing circumstances.”448 Outright flattery aside, this prompts one to wonder whether Weizmann valued Warburg’s input from an administrative sense or if he merely saw Warburg and the AAC as a tool to use for his own ends. There is no doubt that among the individuals comprising the Board of Governors, to say nothing of the

Jewish Agency, Weizmann could find any number of men whose advice would be valuable in a time of crisis. Warburg’s unique position of wielding considerable financial power while serving in a prominent administrative role led men such as Weizmann and Magnes—men who could ask nearly any Jewish leader the world over for help—to rely on him to pull their organizations out of chaos.

For his part, Warburg understood the role he and the AAC were meant to play within the hierarchy of the Hebrew University. The European Zionists and allied academics drove the direction of the University’s research and instruction, while the Americans drummed up support in the U.S. and provided endless funding. In return, the Board would allow Committee members to have limited oversight of some University functions. In this capacity, Warburg served as the

Chairman of the Administrative Committee of the Jewish Agency, and this position did provide him with notable stature and authority within the University structure. Magnes wrote to Warburg as the Administrative Committee Chairman—as distinguished from their frequent, more informal correspondence—in February 1930 to explain yet another financial crisis in which the school found itself. Due to the construction of new facilities for the Chemistry and Microbiology

Departments, the University owed roughly £P20,000.000. Magnes expected the disbursement of

£P7,000.000 from the Agency, of which he had not yet received a single penny.449 Though

Magnes’ letter makes clear that he directed his ire most significantly at the Zionist Organization,

448 Weizmann to Warburg, March 5, 1930, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 243. 449 Magnes to Warburg, February 27, 1930 (AJA 256/6)

204 as it was that body that decided, in Zurich, to commit to these funds, Warburg’s position within the Jewish Agency had drawn him much closer to the Zionists and thus gave him some responsibility for ensuring Zionist monies were raised and spent as per the organization’s resolutions.450

What should we make of Magnes’ equating Warburg with the Zionist Organization, at least on an administrative level? Had Warburg become so embedded within the Jewish Agency that his manifest non-Zionist credentials no longer held any water? These hypotheticals beg the question of the extent to which historians of the Hebrew University can think of it as an entirely distinct entity from the Jewish Agency during this period. Given the two received funding from much the same sources, had substantial overlap in membership, and had to confront the same ideological disputes, this is a fair line of thought. Even if Magnes’ late-February letter to

Warburg were the only piece of evidence upon which a scholar wanted to base the assertion that the two organizations were one and the same, this would be enough to at least render the hypothesis worth analyzing more closely.

In fact, the University and its ultimate aim of helping to regenerate a Jewish national culture for a nation-state had always been an awkward fit for non-Zionists. While Warburg,

Adler, and their cohort did not object to the idea of a Jewish University out of hand, they disagreed with the University’s purpose as a function of disagreeing with the notion of Zionism itself. Warburg and Adler wanted to see the Yishuv succeed as a settlement and wanted to effect changes within the governing structure, so they came to the decision that it was worth the constant headaches. The good they could do for their cause far outweighed the negatives.

450 Ibid.

205 By 1930, however, though the line had begun to blur, one can clearly see the ideological space the non-Zionists had carved out for themselves within both the Board of Governors and the

Jewish Agency. One crucial point was the non-Zionists’ insistence that Jew and Arab needed to coexist within Palestine for the long-term, and to antagonize the Arab population unnecessarily would only cause a downward spiral.451 Adler understood that in order to create a democratically-elected government in Palestine, leaders would need a mandate from the entire population of the territory, not just either the Jews or the Arabs, and neither Magnes nor

Weizmann had received that mandate.452 To implement such a system without authority from all parties would inevitably lead to disaster and the domination of one faction over another.453

Warburg agreed with Adler, and asserted as such in a letter to Magnes. Perhaps naively, he advocated for a council to debate plans for all of Palestine so that “these recommendations by the joined committees will be made, not from the standpoint of Arabs, or Jews, or Christians, but from the stand point of what is good for Palestine.”454 This fits perfectly within Warburg’s non-

Zionist idea for a future Palestine in which Jews had autonomy over themselves, but which was not a Jewish nation-state where members of other religions were relegated to second-class status.

Palestine would no longer be under the rule—direct or otherwise—by an imperial power and, in keeping with its importance to the three Abrahamic religions, should be open to all, and to

Warburg any advocacy to the contrary was counter-productive.455

451 Adler to Magnes, July 27, 1930 (AJA 256/6). Of course, this should not be taken as an indication that non- Zionists wanted to appease the Arabs, especially in the wake of the devastating riots of 1929. On that issue, there was no space between the Zionists and non-Zionists. Adler and Warburg just wanted to avoid further problems by writing documents with deliberately inflammatory language. 452 Ibid. 453 Adler’s analysis was eerily prescient, not only light of contemporary Israeli history but nearly every former colonial property around the world. 454 Warburg to Magnes, July 28, 1930 (AJA 256/6) 455 As discussed later, Warburg gave a speech at Madison Square Garden in which he strongly advocated for a Palestine open to members of all religions.

206 These two letters, sent to Magnes on back-to-back days in late July 1930, mark another moment in which Magnes might have overestimated his support within the Yishuv leadership.

Warburg acknowledges that neither he nor any other member of the Board had any standing to

“muzzle” Magnes, but that he needed to tread lightly in order to avoid alienating a “very stubborn and unwilling giving public” with his remarks.456 Additionally, Warburg explicitly tied

University development with the Palestine Emergency Fund, reinforcing the notion that the

University was more or less a constituent organization of the Jewish Agency, given the school’s reliance on Agency funding. Especially given the challenging geopolitical situation, to think of the University as existing outside the framework of the expanded Agency fundamentally misunderstands the nature of Yishuv governance.

It was not just the possibility of intemperate phrasing during a speech that irritated non-

Zionists. Warburg particularly felt as if Magnes was leaning too heavily toward the British at the expense of the Jewish leadership, writing that perhaps the British felt him to be an easy mark.457

The British had since September been conducting a lengthy inquiry into what had occurred in

Jerusalem, and with the imminent publication of the recommendations for avoiding a repeat of this occurrence, it was important for Zionists and non-Zionists to present a united front without evident schisms the British could exploit. The Jewish Agency had only a very limited scope of ability to negotiate with the British, who de jure governed Palestine, and members needed to use all effort towards those discussions rather than relitigating the Zionist/non-Zionist divide.

Circumstances in the Yishuv, which had been slowly returning to normalcy since the end of August 1929, were about to change quite dramatically once again upwith the long-awaited issuance of Lord Passfield’s White Paper regarding the Arab riots and British control over

456 Ibid., 3. 457 Ibid., 2.

207 Palestine. Passfield’s document began with an admission that it was only intended to assess the future role of the British in Palestine, and an understanding that no single paper would satisfy all components of Palestinian society.458 In addition to a general explication of the complicated nature of Palestinian government, the most critical component concerned changes to the longstanding immigration policy. For an extended time, the British had complained about Jewish individuals entering Palestine on a tourist visa, and simply never leaving.459 Passfield “suspended the further issue of certificates for the admission of immigrants under the Labour Schedule…”460

Though Passfield couched this in the guise of alleviating the chronic problem of Palestinian unemployment, there is no doubt that this was intended to placate the Arab population that had for years expressed significant opposition to unchecked Jewish immigration.

This new policy sent shockwaves through the upper echelons of the Yishuv. Weizmann, who of all the prominent leaders felt he had the best relationship with Whitehall, took this as a personal betrayal. He wrote to Warburg that he had warned that Passfield was virtually forcing him into resigning from the Agency.461 The same day, he wrote to Passfield to plead with him, writing that the White Paper decisions “affect so vitally the rights and interests of the Jewish people” that to issue it with little regard for how this would shift the balance of power in

Palestine was short-sighted and would inevitably lead not to a cessation of hostilities, but a virtual guarantee of future conflict.462 To say that Passfield precipitated a crisis within the Jewish

Agency would be to vastly undersell its catastrophic impact.

458 Statement of Policy by His Majesty’s Government, October 1930, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the- passfield-white-paper (retrieved on July 6, 2017). 459 Shepherd, Ploughing Sand, 89. 460 Statement of Policy. 461 Weizmann to Warburg, October 20, 1930, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 389. 462 Weizmann to Lord Passfield, October 20, 1930, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 387.

208 The most immediate and most devastating response to the Passfield White Paper was the resignation of Weizmann and Warburg from the Jewish Agency in protest. Weizmann had threatened to do so in his letter to Passfield on October 20, citing the hugely deleterious impact of the immigration restrictions. On the 21st, he wrote to Warburg in intensely gloomy terms, beginning his letter with a disheartening sentence: “Have resigned, otherwise I and my policy would have been swept away without chance of its ever being resumed.”463 He encouraged

Warburg and Magnes to back his policy vis-à-vis the British Government, again to prove to

London that the leaders of the Yishuv represented a united group who could not be made to work under terms that truly tied their hands behind their backs. The era of British benign neglect of the

Yishuv had ended with a sweeping restatement of British authority.

Warburg took Lord Passfield’s document, an ill-conceived, negative, and cynical play by the British to shore up Arab support and avoid another potential uprising, less personally than

Weizmann did. Rather than the emotional terms in which Weizmann wrote to Warburg, Felix issued a press release reassuring the public that, despite his stepping down from the Jewish

Agency in protest, the work of the Administrative Committee would continue, and individuals such as Cyrus Adler would carry forth the baton for American Jewry.464 In carefully chosen language, the statement emphasized Adler’s preeminence on the emergency committee to be created, but also that Robert Szold, the Chairman of the Administration Committee of the Zionist

Organization of America, would participate. All groups would continue to be represented, so there was no need for panic on that front.

463 Weizmann to Warburg, October 21, 1930, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XIV, series A, 390. 464 “Statement to be Issued to the Public Prints Relative to the Organization of a Provisional Committee for the American Members of the Administrative Committee,” November 18, 1930 (AJA 256/10)

209 Behind the scenes, Warburg was experiencing considerable difficulty convincing fellow

American Jewish leaders to cross the Atlantic during the late autumn in order to confer with

British authorities about their new immigration plan. Felix Frankfurter, in what Warburg termed

“a grave mistake,” declined; so did Rutenberg.465 This was really a continuation of the pattern of

American Jewish disengagement with the Yishuv that had begun during the previous year and which the Riots and start of the Great Depression had exacerbated. Warburg had had increasing difficulty convincing donors that the Hebrew University was a worthy recipient of American funds; now that he had stepped down from the Jewish Agency, his influence was to wane even further.

This resignation had a more tangible effect than Weizmann’s did, however. Ron Chernow describes the loss of Warburg as an action that “nearly crippled the Jewish Agency finances,” which still had yet to recover from the catastrophic end to 1929.466 The Agency’s reliance on

American money had been a ticking time bomb for years; when the funds dried up, the bomb exploded and this detonation came close to ending the Agency’s idea of self-government entirely. Even given Warburg’s evident administrative and political ability, his most important contribution to both the Jewish Agency and the Hebrew University was always his facility for marshalling the financial potential of the United States in the interests of the Yishuv. When he stepped down from the Agency, this was lost.

As intertwined with the fortunes of the Agency, 1930 was a memorable year for the

Hebrew University for all the wrong reasons. The reductions of immigration the British were to set in place diminished the University’s ability to attract talented students and professors from around the world. With the resignation of Weizmann and Warburg, the University lost two

465 Cable, Warburg to Felix Frankfurter, December 8, 1930 (AJA 256/10) 466 Chernow, The Warburgs, 303.

210 leading and influential voices from the body entrusted to govern the Jewish segment of

Palestinian society. For myriad reasons, the donor pool from the United States had begun to dry up, which only exacerbated the problems caused by the Arab riots and the aura of uncertainty pervading the University. Moving forward, University officials would have to grapple with the new reality of Mandatory life, just as Warburg would begin to pull back from the more intense administrative work that had dominated his focus for years.

211 CHAPTER 15: AFTERMATH

By 1931, Felix Warburg had spent eight years intimately involved with the Hebrew

University. Though this obviously represents a much smaller investment of time than

Weizmann’s or Magnes’, the constant back and forth involved in navigating the treacherous waters of Yishuv politics had begun to wear on Warburg. He had his own interests and family to worry about and he was increasingly happy to leave the more mundane work to others.467 His relatives in Germany were beginning to see the rise of the frightening anti-Semitism that presaged the rise of Nazism and the end of the Hamburg Warburg banking firm for good.

What had not changed with the turning of the year was his relationship with Chaim

Weizmann. Despite its always tempestuous nature—the two men were as likely to exchange friendly letters to one another expressing affection for the other’s wife as accuse the other of subterfuge—Warburg continued to write to Weizmann frequently, using this correspondence as one way of maintaining his involvement with the Jewish Agency and Hebrew University. At a low moment in Weizmann’s life, he wrote to Warburg to say that the letters from Felix represented the only positive communication he received from non-Zionists, who largely blamed

Weizmann for the breakdown in the relationship with the British.468

Warburg, for his part, lobbied the British government hard to force a reconsideration of their policy toward Jewish immigration. In February 1931, Prime Minister MacDonald did issue a clarification of the British policy, which some have termed a “repudiation” of the Passfield

White Paper and a tentative victory for the Yishuv.469 Perhaps fearing for his domestic political life, MacDonald began reassuring the Zionist and Agency leadership that, as Prime Minister, he

467 Including his son, Edward, who during this period would begin to sit in his father’s place at Board meetings. 468 Weizmann to Warburg, February 3, 1931, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XV, series A, 107. 469 Chernow, The Warburgs, 303.

212 would continue to support the idea of parity between Jews and Arabs and would not allow the

Arab population to dominate the Jews, who now made up a majority of the urban population in many towns.470 While some of the Yishuv leadership were placated by MacDonald’s words, the tangible efforts of his Government undermined the Prime Minister, and the Yishuv was constantly left to wonder when the next restriction or new, hurtful policy would be issued from

London.

While this was certainly a victory for the type of lobbying that Warburg was undertaking, it did not measurably move the needle for fundraising in the United States. The AAC continued to represent the largest single donor to the Hebrew University—and American Jews never abrogated their responsibility to the Jewish Agency, even in the face of the Great Depression— and Warburg maintained his leadership position within the group he founded. Likewise, though his attendance at the roughly-annual meetings of the Board of Governors became less frequent,

Warburg kept his seat on the Board for the next three years, keeping abreast of developments on

Mount Scopus largely through his correspondence with Weizmann and Magnes.

At the July 1931 meeting of the Board of Governors, the members present at the gathering held once again in Zurich resolved to split the duties of the Chancellor and the

Executive, meaning Magnes became more of an academic administrator while the Executive handled issues of development and fundraising.471 From the standpoint of a more straightforward administrative structure, this was quite a sensible decision. In most universities, there is an individual or group of individuals responsible for overseeing academic functions while another

470 Shepherd, Ploughing Sand, 185. 471 Resolutions Adopted at the Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, July 21- 23, 1931 (HU Bound Minutes of Meetings)

213 cohort manages the financial decisions. This allows people to specialize in one area and avoids overloading one person, as happened with Magnes during the first few years of the University.

However, in the context of the recent personnel changes in the Jewish Agency and in light of the geopolitical circumstances, one could also view this as a way for the Zionists to reassert control over the University. Within the Agency, a vocal faction led by Vladimir

Jabotinsky had begun to advocate a much harder line towards the Arab population. Magnes was widely seen as favoring a rapprochement with the Arabs, and parlayed with Arab leaders

“without authority from any Zionist body.”472 This made him seem something of a loose cannon, and while paring down the responsibilities of the Chancellor was a sound administrative decision regardless of who held the position, certainly the idea of removing some power from Magnes had its proponents within the Yishuv bureaucracy.

In many ways, however, it was this rise of Jabotinsky and his advocacy of a much firmer position toward both the Arabs and the British Government that sped up Warburg’s stepping away from organized work within Palestine. As a non-Zionist, Warburg had time and again advocated for open lines of communication with the other inhabitants in Palestine, both from a moral standpoint and as a good Realpolitik strategy. As recently as 1930, Warburg had given a speech in front of a massive crowd in New York’s Madison Square Garden in which he simultaneously excoriated the British and supported the idea of assisting the fellahin, Arab laborers in Palestine.473

Jabotinsky, on the other hand, so thoroughly disagreed with the Zionist position toward the British that he withdrew from the Zionist Organization and began referring to the British as

472 Daniel P. Kotzin, Judah L. Magnes: An American Jewish Nonconformist (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2010), 242 473 Medoff, “Felix Warburg and the Palestinian Arabs,” 11

214 being anti-Zionist.474 While the Revisionists did not become a full-fledged party until 1933, their beliefs and the prevalence of their adherents within organized Jewry began pushing the Zionist movement rightward, alienating many members who favored a more liberal Zionism. This group included centrist Zionists, who viewed Palestine as a future Jewish nation-state existing alongside one for Arabs, and non-Zionists who did not agree with the characterization of the

Yishuv as a future Jewish nation-state at all. This latter group, of which Warburg was a part, thus became increasingly marginalized.

Despite the success of the negotiations with Whitehall that led to MacDonald’s backtracking on the Passfield White Paper, Warburg proceeded with his plans to withdraw from an active role in Palestinian issues. By mid-1931, only six months after his official resignation from the Jewish Agency, he had informed the Agency that he “intended to devote less effort to

Agency affairs” in favor of more domestic philanthropic endeavors.475 This did not mean a complete abandonment of all interest in the goings-on in the Yishuv, but rather that his days as an active administrator of the University or of the Jewish Agency had reached their natural conclusion as the political tides had shifted and the geopolitics became much more challenging.

After Warburg took the decision to step back, naturally his correspondence relating to the

University became less frequent as he required less detail on the minute-to-minute actions on

Mount Scopus. For example, in 1932 he and Weizmann—another exile from the Jewish Agency, but one who would continue an active role in Palestine—exchanged letters about the University that reflected a broader, less technically-detailed knowledge about current events. In June,

Weizmann wrote in impassioned language about several issues that concerned him, though he

474 Laqueur, A History of Zionism, 357. 475 Jerome M. Kutnick, “Non-Zionist Leadership: Felix M. Warburg, 1929-1937” (PhD Diss, Brandeis University, 1983), 312.

215 clearly did not possess a granular knowledge of any of them. He complained about Magnes’ ego running amok, the lack of clarity about what “biology” meant as a discipline476, and a perceived lack of respect from the Board of Governors for his scientific prowess.477 All in all, Weizmann comes across as a person complaining that former times and former colleagues were superior to those in charge now.

Meanwhile, Warburg busied himself with American domestic matters. A lifelong

Republican, he supported Herbert Hoover in 1932, much as he had in 1928. After Hoover’s crushing loss, Warburg reached out to President Roosevelt to thank the President for calling into a meeting held in Warburg’s honor.478 Given both that the president found time to make this call and that Warburg wrote to the president at his retreat in Warm Springs, GA, we can assume the

Warburg name still carried a measure of cachet; Felix had not lost his stature within the New

York community in which Roosevelt’s political career emerged.

Along with Weizmann, Warburg continued to understand that the political currents blowing in Germany augured poorly at best, and helped make a decision that certainly contributed to events much larger than the success or failure of the Hebrew University. In 1933,

Weizmann recognized that due to the rise of Hitler, perhaps Professor Einstein might not return immediately to Germany, and reached out to Warburg for the latter’s influence.479 Einstein did, in fact, confirm to a German publication that he had no intention of returning to Germany from the United States as long as circumstances proceeded as they did, which was clearly a prescient idea.480

476 While his point about the term “biology” encompassing a number of related disciplines, Weizmann’s wording sounds like an individual writing in a fit of pique rather than an eminent scientist making a valid linguistic argument. 477 Weizmann to Warburg, June 28, 1932, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XV, series A, 316. 478 Warburg to President Roosevelt (CZA 360/14) 479 Weizmann to Warburg, March 10, 1933, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XV, series A, 399 480 Footnote, Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. XV, series A, 399.

216 These were discrete activities on Warburg’s part, however. There is no evidence that he had the desire to reenter Palestinian political life or to continue exerting himself to raise the same elevated levels of money. He was not retired, nor resigned to a life of more modest ambition, but he no longer felt that he needed the cut and thrust of dealing with the issues constantly brewing within the Jewish Agency or the University. The difficulties of the previous 18 months seem to have caused Warburg to reflect and decide that he could be of substantial assistance to Palestine and to the University in general from the United States, without the pressure of constantly traveling abroad (except as he and Frieda so chose) to attend lengthy, contentious Board meetings. From this point, Warburg’s son, Edward, assumed many of his father’s roles within the

University project, including on the Boards of the American Friends of the Hebrew University and of the Hebrew University itself. Despite largely lacking Felix’s fundraising skill and personal magnetism, Edward would prove to be an able administrator during the decade that sadly ended with the outbreak of World War II and the disruption this brought to Jews in

Palestine, and, far more tragically, to Europe.

Felix did not live to see his native Germany, for which he harbored such affection even four decades after moving to the United States, perpetrate a genocide against his own people.

Warburg died on September 20, 1937, still a relatively young man of 66, but one who had filled his life to the brim with family, work, and the causes he held dear. Condolences poured in from luminaries like Magnes, Weizmann, Adler, and a wide range of men with whom he had fought, celebrated, and struggled for years. In November, the Hebrew University held a special memorial meeting for Warburg, at which Magnes gave an impassioned, heartfelt speech about his late friend, describing Warburg’s impetus for everything as “simply the love of human beings.”481

(פליקס ורבורג Judah Magnes, Speech at the Memorial Meeting for Felix Warburg, November 19, 1937 (HU 481

217 There is no doubt that Magnes, one of Warburg’s closest associates and a personal friend, accurately took the measure of the man with that sentence. The driving philosophy behind

Warburg’s philanthropy was to help those for whom assistance would have the greatest positive impact. From his early work with the Joint, through his efforts to help new immigrants to New

York City acculturate more easily, and through his more substantive involvement with the

Hebrew University and the Jewish Agency, Warburg displayed a notable desire to help the less fortunate among all people, but specifically among his fellow Jews. This guiding principle is what eventually led him to work so intimately with the Hebrew University during the school’s challenging early years.

As a non-Zionist and an American, Warburg had a unique position on the University

Board. Holding views about Zionism that differed substantially from those of many fellow Board members, Warburg was forced constantly to fight to ensure that those who believed as he did were not shunted to one side in favor of the University becoming merely an arm of the Zionist

Organization. With allies like Cyrus Adler and Louis Marshall, Warburg was able to make the views of his fellow non-Zionists more widely accepted within the University, and within the

Yishuv as a whole. Warburg forced other Board members to accept a more equitable distribution of Board memberships among the various geographies and viewpoints that comprised the group of people working together for the University’s success.

In the end, Warburg’s legacy to the Hebrew University encompasses a number of aspects, though perhaps his efforts to organize American fundraisers into the American Friends of the

Hebrew University, which thrived even after his passing and remains one of the largest organizations supporting the University today. The AFHU’s innovations in publicity for the

University, including the use of primetime radio broadcasts designed to reach a maximum

218 audience, allowed the successes of the University to reach a much wider population than the people who typically donated to Jewish communal causes.

Warburg had originally joined with the Hebrew University project at the behest of Judah

Magnes and Chaim Weizmann, who pitched him on the idea of this educational institution that would advantage the Yishuv. He saw the potential economic and logistical benefits that supporters of the Yishuv could derive from the programs Weizmann had planned in the natural sciences. Magnes’ belief that the Institute of Jewish Studies would form the basis of a Jewish cultural nationalist revival affecting Jews worldwide also helped convince Warburg that his involvement would not commit him to supporting Zionism as an ideology; the university would remain non-partisan.

Despite the profound conflicts that had marred somewhat his time on the Board of

Governors, Warburg for the rest of his life looked back with pride on his work with the Hebrew

University, continuing to espouse its value to worldwide Jewry. Thus, he viewed his effort driving fundraising in the United States, without which the university might very well have collapsed before truly even getting off the ground, as one of the high-water marks of his career.

He was gratified that through the intense dedication of his American cohort, the university survived the earthquake, the riots, and Lord Passfield. The university, and the AFHU, remain one of his most lasting achievements.

219 Conclusion

Felix Warburg was not the driving force behind the University. When Chaim Weizmann and Martin Buber issued their pamphlet calling for the university’s establishment, Warburg was still much more focused on his banking career at Kuhn, Loeb and other U.S.-based charity work than on the nascent Jewish settlement in Palestine. Like so many philanthropists, it took a time of catastrophe to awaken the latent instinct to help. In Warburg’s case, it was the crisis facing

Eastern European Jewry in the wake of World War I, which led to an interest in the Russian

Jewish immigrant community in New York City, and from there it is not difficult to draw a line to his work on the much larger-scale project on Mount Scopus. This represents a natural escalation of his work and his increasing attention toward causes supporting Jewish education.

When Weizmann and Magnes approached Warburg with the idea of assisting with raising funds for the Hebrew University, he might at first have seemed an awkward choice. Felix was never known for having a serious demeanor, tending instead to take a lighthearted approach toward his financial activities; he would donate lavishly but preferred to leave the administration and operations of these organizations to others. He certainly took a massive leap forward with his work with the Joint Distribution Committee, for which he rightly has received wide acclaim, but which in retrospect seems to have been a dress rehearsal for the near-decade he spent exerting himself on behalf of the Hebrew University and later the Jewish Agency. One of the major skills that Warburg learned during the time spent with the Joint was how to navigate tricky ideological and logistical challenges. Working on behalf of an oppressed and persecuted Jewish population that crossed borders and necessitated coordination on a multinational scale honed both

Warburg’s skills as an administrator and his ideological underpinning: he was more able to finely

220 articulate a non-Zionist mindset and was prepared to engage in the substantive debates that would form the basis of the early University and Agency meetings.

From the success that Warburg had marshalling the profound resources available in the

United States for the University, as well as for other projects for developing the Yishuv, we can draw several conclusions. First, the cadre of individuals involved in getting the University off the ground extends much further than many previous histories of the school have indicated.

Weizmann’s group’s vision drove the idea from the beginning, but the project required more than practical and organizational skills. By 1923, construction was well underway five years after the ceremonial laying of the cornerstone. However, it seems the original founders either underestimated the funding that would be required or, perhaps more cynically, realized that they would later need more money from the United States; either way, they convinced Felix Warburg to come on board.

Warburg was not, at the time, recognized as a top-level leader. He had some stature due to his philanthropic largesse and was well-known in these circles as a prominent non-Zionist, but in terms of the individuals whom one might in 1918 have guessed would emerge within the

Americans influencing the Yishuv, certainly Warburg would not have rated a high spot on that list. The men who were already involved were those whom historians of Zionism and early

Mandate-era Palestine identify and who have been the subject of much scholarship over the ensuing century. The story of the first years of the Hebrew University, fraught as they were with discord and near-catastrophe, would be incomplete without a full assessment of the contributions of non-Zionists, and especially of Felix Warburg. Warburg routinely acted as a mediator between the hardline Zionists and non-Zionists, typically saving his true feelings for a snarky remark in a letter to a very close friend.

221 The Board of Governors of the Hebrew University throughout the late-1920s and into the next decade confronted any number of issues regarding how to operate an institution of higher learning in a territory administered by another country, surrounded by an unfriendly local population. They faced these real-life issues head-on, but frequently became stuck regarding more trivial matters such as the proportion of Zionists to non-Zionists or whether the next meeting would be in Zurich, London, or New York City. On these matters, almost as much as in regard to the University’s financial situation, Warburg was of significant assistance. He maintained cordial relationships with all the major players from both sides, and while he might have been friendlier with some than others, there is no doubt that his ability to go between the two in order to achieve compromises was invaluable in ensuring the University did not collapse under the weight of its own ideological discords.

Another conclusion to take from the saga of Warburg’s involvement with the University is that the American Jewish community, which even among Zionists had a different understanding of the role of Palestine, had become not only a force to be reckoned with, but perhaps the driving power behind developments in the Jewish world. Partially this was a result of

Americans’ growing financial capability in the interwar period relative to the declining capacity of European Jewry. The necessity of American money has been discussed at length already, and requires no recapitulation here. Americans after World War I entered a period of prosperity and had the financial largesse to support causes in which they believed.

But the more important takeaway from this is that American Jews, with their more liberal, acculturationist nature, were now able to affect decisions on the direction of Jewish culture worldwide. Americans were certainly not the only group for whom a strict adherence to halakha no longer represented the Jewish ideal, but as the country with the largest Jewish

222 population worldwide, including a vast number of immigrants from throughout Europe, religious decisions made in the United States necessitated attention from the rest of world Jewry. In

Warburg’s case, this meant that non-Zionists, backed by a notable minority of the American

Jews, grew to play a role in decisions regarding how the Hebrew University and the Yishuv were governed. In many ways, American Jews had been viewed as the little brother until the end of the First World War, when the prosperity and cultural success of the country became more obvious. Warburg stepped into the fray in the Yishuv at exactly the right time to advocate for his adopted country and his beliefs.

A third conclusion apparent after analyzing Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew

University is how closely intertwined the University was with the Jewish Agency. This connection became even more apparent after 1929, when the Arab riots occurring immediately after the official formation of the expanded Jewish Agency shone a light on the necessity of tying the two institutions together. The problems that the University faced in the immediate aftermath were those of the Yishuv in miniature; the location on Mount Scopus placed the campus in more direct danger of further confrontation than did Jerusalem-based institutions housed further west.

The Jewish Agency, by the same token, now had to face the prospect of a more vocal Arab population and British authorities less inclined to uphold the Balfour Declaration.

Additionally, the overlap between the boards of the respective organizations makes it clear that, though the University was nominally independent, the sources of common funding— including from the Zionist Organization, which itself was drawing from a dwindling pool of donors worldwide—and the individuals involved in both projects contradict that assertion.

Warburg, Weizmann, and Magnes each played significant roles in both, which is borne out by

223 their frequent correspondence touching on the two subjects back-to-back. That these men represent different viewpoints toward Zionism cannot be an accident.

The Hebrew University, designed as a center of a Jewish cultural renaissance, aimed to represent all Jews around the world, regardless of national origin or denominational adherence.

Likewise, the Jewish Agency sought to represent all Jewish residents in Palestine, from the ultra-

Orthodox from Jerusalem to the secular, largely socialist residents of the twenty-year-old city of

Tel Aviv. To do so, and as part of the agreement to expand the Agency under the auspices of the

Mandate, leaders had to bring together representatives not only of Zionism, but other, non- aligned groups within organized Jewry as well. Given his stature within the Yishuv and within the donor class around the world, the choice of Warburg as one of the representatives of

American non-Zionists—along with his close associate Louis Marshall—stands to reason.

Warburg’s status had grown alongside his fundraising prowess and administrative skills; these same characteristics led Magnes and Weizmann to rely heavily on him during times of strife with the University.

The story of Felix Warburg’s involvement with the Hebrew University lasts, charitably, only a decade. Evidence of Warburg’s participation dates back only to 1923, by which point

Weizmann and others had already accomplished much. However, within this relatively short time period Warburg left an outsized mark on the University, working to ensure that its future was never in doubt. There can be no denying that his most lasting contribution was the AAC, which became the modern American Friends of the Hebrew University and still exists today.

This group raised awareness of a relatively obscure project located nearly 6,000 miles from the east coast of the United States and which taught in a language with which some, but by no means all, Jews were familiar.

224 The AAC was, nearly singlehandedly, responsible for maintaining the University’s finances during the aftermath of the riots, even in the face of the stock market crash and subsequent calamitous depression that swept through the United States and the Western world.

This was due to Warburg’s work at cultivating a donor list and putting the rest of the AAC’s

Board and administrative staff in the most advantageous position to promote the University’s successes. Felix Warburg, a leader in the early years of both the Hebrew University and the

Jewish Agency, made some of the strongest, longest-lasting contributions to both organizations, despite receiving far less public acclaim. The story of Felix Warburg in Palestine is the story of the Jewish world between the wars: optimistic about the future and cynical about the present; forward-looking but holding fast to a centuries-old tradition; and cooperative but stubborn.

World War II and the Holocaust brought about significant changes within the Yishuv and the relationship of Western Jewry to Palestine, but the first generation of Israeli leaders had the work of men like Warburg on which to build, for which they and their successors should offer thanks.

225 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Sources: American Jewish Archives (Cincinnati, OH): Jacob Billikopf Papers Jonah Goldstein Papers Maurice Beck Hexter Papers Felix Warburg Papers Stephen S. Wise Collection Zionist Organization of America Records

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Book Chapters: Ben-Israel, Hedva, “Politikah al Har Ha-Tzofim B’Tkufat Ha’Mandat,” in Hagit Lavsky (ed.), Toldot Ha’Universitah Ha’Ivrit B’Yerushalayim: Hit’atzmut Akademit Toch Ma’avak Leumi (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009), 3-86.

229 Clayton, Anthony, “‘Deceptive Might’: Imperial Defence and Security, 1900-1968,” in Brown, Judith Brown and Louis, Wm. Roger (eds.), The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume IV: The Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 280-305.

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230

Michlic, Joanna D., “The Culture of Ethno-Nationalism and the Identity of Jews in Inter-War Poland: Some Responses to ‘The Aces of Purebred Race,’ in Richard I. Cohen, Jonathan Frankel, and Stefani Hoffman (eds.), Insiders and Outsiders: Dilemmas of East European Jewry (Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 131-147.

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Journal Articles:

Ben-David, Joseph, “Universities in Israel: Dilemmas, of growth, diversification and administration,” Studies in Higher Education 11, no. 2 (1986), 105-130.

Ben-Israel, Hedva, “Zionism and European Nationalisms: Comparative Aspects,” Israel Studies 8, no. 1, 91-104.

Cohen, Naomi W., “The Reaction of Reform Judaism in America to Political Zionism, 1897- 1922,” Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 40, no. 4 (June 1951), 361-394.

Cohen, Uri, “Academic, Media, and the City: Civic Discourse Preceding the Establishment of a City University in Tel Aviv,” Israel Studies 12, no. 2 (Summer 2007), 121-144.

Dalin, David G., “Cyrus Adler, Non-Zionism and the Zionist Movement: A Study in Contradictions,” AJS Review 10, no. 1 (Spring 1985), 55-87.

Evans, Richard J., “Epidemic and Revolutions: Cholera in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Past & Present 120 (Aug. 1988), 123-146.

Feuer, Lewis S., “The Stages in the Social History of Jewish Professors in American Colleges and Universities,” American Jewish History 74, no. 4 (June 1982), 432-465.

Fishman, Joshua A., “National Languages and Languages of Wider Communication in the Developing Nation,” Anthropological Linguistics 11, no. 4 (April 1969), 111-135.

231 Friesel, Evyatar, “American Zionism and American Jewry: An Ideological and Communal Encounter,” American Jewish Archives 40, no. 1 (1988), 5-23.

Friesel, Evyatar, “Brandeis’ Role in American Zionism Historically Reconsidered,” American Jewish History 69, no. 1 (September 1979), 34-59.

Friesel, Evyatar, “Jacob H. Schiff and the Leadership of the American Jewish Community,” Jewish Social Studies 8, no. 2/3 (Winter/Spring 2002), 61-72.

Gans, Herbert J., “Acculturation, assimilation and mobility,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 30, no. 1 (January 2007), 152-164.

Gocek, Fatma Muge, “Ethnic Segmentation, Western Education, and Political Outcomes: Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Society,” Poetics Today, 14, no. 3 (Autumn, 1993), 507- 538.

Knee, Stuart E., “Jewish Non-Zionism in America and Palestine Commitment, 1917-1941,” Jewish Social Studies 39, no. 3 (Summer, 1977), 209-226.

Kook, Rebecca, Michael Harris, and Gideon Doron, “In the Name of G-d and Our Rabbi: The Politics of the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel,” Israel Affairs 5, no. 1 (Autumn 1998), 1-18.

Lamm, Norman, “The Ideology of the Neturei Karta: According to the Satmarer Version,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 12, no. 2 (Fall 1971), 38-53.

Lieberman, “Review: A Tragedy or a Comedy?” Journal of the American Oriental Society 104, no. 2 (Apr.-Jun., 1984), 315-319.

Maccoby, H, “Neusner and the Red Cow,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 21, no. 1 (Jun., 1990), 1-17.

Medoff, Rafael, “Felix Warburg and the Palestinian Arabs: A Reassessment,” American Jewish Archives Journal 54, no. 1 (2002): 11-36.

Metzer, Jacob, “Economic Structure and National Goals—The Jewish National Home in Interwar Palestine,” The Journal of Economic History 31, no. 1 (Mar., 1978), 101-119.

Myers, David N., “Can There Be a Principled Anti-Zionism? On the Nexus between Anti- Historicism and Anti-Zionism in Modern Jewish Thought,” The Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 1 (March, 2006), 33-50.

Nashif, Taysir, “Palestinian Arab and Jewish Leadership in the Mandate Period,” Journal of Palestine Studies 6, no. 4 (Summer 1977), 113-121.

232 Okun, Barbara S., and Dov Friedlander, “Educational Stratification among Arabs and Jews in Israel: Historical Disadvantage, Discrimination, and Opportunity,” Population Studies 59, no. 2 (Jul., 2005), 163-180.

Penslar, Derek, “Zionism, Colonialism, and Postcolonialism,” Journal of Israeli History 20, no. 2-3 (2001), 84-98.

Sheffer, G., “Intentions and Results of British Policy in Palestine: Passfield’s White Paper,” Middle Eastern Studies 9, no. 1 (Jan., 1973), 43-60.

Soyer, Daniel, “Brownstones and Brownsville: Elite Philanthropists and Immigrant Constituents at the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn, 1899-1929,” American Jewish History 88, no. 2 (June 2000), pp. 181-207.

Stone, Lilo, “German Zionists in Palestine before 1933,” Journal of Contemporary History 32, no. 2 (April 1997), 171-186.

Supple, Barry E., “A Business Elite: German-Jewish Financiers in Nineteenth-Century New York,” The Business History Review 31, no. 2, 143-178.

Szajkowski, Zosa, “Conflicts in the Alliance Israélite Universelle and the Founding of the Anglo-Jewish Alliance, the Vienna Allianz, and the Hilfsverein,” Jewish Social Studies 19, no. 1/2 (Jan-Apr., 1957), 29-50.

Troen, S. Ilan, “Higher Education in Israel: an Historical Perspective,” Higher Education 23, no. 1 (1992), 45-63.

Wistrich, Robert, “Zionism and its Jewish ‘Assimilationist’ Critics,” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 2 (Winter, 1998), 59-111.

Zohar, Motti, Rehav Rubin, and Amos Salamon, “Earthquake Damage and Repair: New Evidence from Jerusalem on the 1927 Jericho Earthquake,” Seismological Research Letters 85, no. 4 (July/August 2014), 912-922.

Bound Volumes of Documents: Weizmann, Chaim, “A Jewish University for Jerusalem,” speech, 8 September 1913, published in Barnet Litvinoff (ed.), The Letters and Papers of Chaim Weizmann, vol. I, series B (Jerusalem: Israel Universities Press, 1983).

Working Papers: Carvalho, Jean-Paul and Mark Koyama, “Development and Religious Polarization: The Emergence of Reform and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism,” University of Oxford Department of Economics Discussion Paper Series, July 2011.

Research Papers:

233 Frankel, Jonathan, The Soviet Regime and Anti-Zionism: An Analysis (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem: The Soviet and East European Research Centre, May 1984).

Unpublished Works: Kutnick, Jerome M., “Non-Zionist Leadership: Felix M. Warburg, 1929-1937” (PhD Dissertation., Brandeis University, 1983).

Liba, Ruth, Technologiyah v’umah: hitpatkhot ha-Technion b’t’kufat ha-Yishuv, 1917-1948 (PhD Dissertation, University of Haifa, 1999).

Lipstadt, Deborah Esther, The Zionist Career of Louis Lipsky, 1900-1921, (PhD dissertation, Brandeis University, 1977).

234