A Study in American Jewish Leadership

4 Captivity and Redemption At War with the Czar Despite his grand vision of relocating millions to places west of the Missis- si ...

Although American Jews had risen to the defense of their foreign brethren ever since the Damascus Affair of 1840, their early me ...

Schiff’s tasks were self-assumed, and he plotted strategy with only a hand- ful of trusted friends. The creation of relief commi ...

of Minister Charles Emory Smith and to ask for an American protest against Russian policy. The stewards gained a respectful and ...

Events in the early 1890s underscored the urgency of disseminating ac- curate and sympathetic reports on Russian Jewish sufferin ...

More daring were Schiff’s attempts to stand by the anti-Russia cam- paign even in the face of American favors to the czarist gov ...

and quietly encouraged non-Jews arrayed against the czar. (At times Schiff also thought of underwriting a pro-Jewish press in Ru ...

was ranked as second only to J. P. Morgan. Increasingly, the banker became a familiar figure in Washington, often invited to dis ...

government answers that he found inadequate. Never did he accept any limits on the number of times he could approach the adminis ...

non-Jews and feature non-Jewish speakers.^21 Relying primarily on the government and on Christian public opinion, he and his ass ...

politics, he felt forced to seek support from the two major parties.^24 Over the next few years, however, the Jewish stewards fo ...

access to funds from abroad. At a private conference of leading New York bankers he dramatically announced that he had instructe ...

(1) the minister had to invite him directly and not merely imply that Schiff would be received, and (2) restrictions on Jewish v ...

with Russia. He, the foremost Jewish leader, had the self-assumed right to lobby as he saw fit with the agents of the czar. Had ...

and the charge that their revolutionary activities were responsible for any persecution was utterly false. As a reminder of Schi ...

well-intentioned, could effect any meaningful change. When a serious po- grom occurred that very same month in Bialystok, doubts ...

Whatever hopes Schiff entertained of Jewish liberation by the revolution- ary upheaval of 1905 in Russia were dashed by the wave ...

and trades were mobilized, and so were university students; Talmud Torahs were canvassed, and banks on New York’s Lower East Sid ...

shared news reports on daily developments from private, reliable sources; they arranged the complicated logistics of safely tran ...

dicted, Russia’s fate would be sealed. Although not fully convinced of the prime minister’s goodwill, he refused to stage an end ...