4
Captivity and Redemption
At War with the CzarDespite his grand vision of relocating millions to places west of the Missis-
sippi, Schiff admitted time and again that the Russian Jewish question had to
be resolved in Russia. Relief for Russian Jews at moments of major crisis was
imperative, but it was at best a patchwork device of temporary value. Only a
radical change, indeed nothing less than equal rights for Russian Jews, could
break the pattern of persecution and suffering, and toward that end Schiff
waged a private war against czarist Russia from the 1890s until 1917.
Schiff’s war, which developed over time into an all-consuming passion,
was prompted by motives far deeper than any wish to be freed of respon-
sibilities for victims or immigrants. The banker repeatedly drew analogies
between the Russian situation and the biblical story of the Jews in Egypt;
subconsciously, he doubtless saw himself as another Moses. Insisting that
the Russians, like the Egyptians, feared the Jews, he read a modern meaning
into a verse from the Book of Exodus: “Here are a people abler than we; let
us take heed and suppress them lest they become our masters.” Like the
early Hebrews the Russian Jews were in bondage and cried for redemption.
Since Jewish law mandated the ransoming of captives and because Provi-
dence had wrapped him in the mantle of leadership, he keenly felt the duty
to rescue the modern-day captives. “I am grateful to God,” he wrote to
Baron Horace Guenzberg of Russia, “that He so placed me to be able to be
of some help to our coreligionists.” He empathized closely with the perse-
cuted, “those who, of my own flesh and blood, are being plundered, tor-
tured and murdered for no other cause, than that they are Jews.”^1 Indeed,
the struggle for Jewish liberation in Russia took on the emotional overtones
of a personal crusade, almost as if the czar were hounding him, Jacob Schiff.
The banker often quoted the Psalmist’s promise of divine help, and Schiff
took the Bible seriously, but for a man who was loath to admit helplessness
in any situation, the biblical promise did not consign him to passivity.
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