how courageous he was in exposing the Zionist menace. Enjoying a good
fight, he did not permit the differences in opinion to mar his friendship
with Schechter. No doubt he was troubled more by the criticism of two
close friends, Marshall and Oscar Straus. The former, Schiff’s right-hand
man and a non-Zionist, defended Zionist achievements and denied the
charge of un-Americanism. The latter spoke warmly of Zionist idealism,
which he likened to the idealism of the American founding fathers. Surely,
they would not have found any incompatibility between Zionism and patri-
otism, Straus wrote. Although Schiff took the criticism of friends seriously,
he never showed any concern that his views might weaken his power over
the community. Again his approach reflected confidence in his personal
leadership and his assumption of the superiority of the established Jews
over the Zionists among the immigrant masses.^67
Despite the fallout of the controversy with Schechter, Schiff continued
his tirade against Zionism publicly and privately. Now he aimed his argu-
ments specifically against those Zionists he respected. “We should rather
seek to get back to Judaism than back to Judaea,” he told the president of
JTS. Unlike some non-Zionists, Schiff also disputed the value of a relig-
ious center in Palestine. Since biblical days, he wrote to Friedenwald, at-
tempts to centralize religious authority had failed: “We do not want aJew-
ish centre, but Jewish Centres and the more of these we can establish, the
less we shall be threatened with stagnation or anarchy of belief.... Be it
only the prayer of the lone Jewish settler on the plains of Dakota,... there
is there a more efficient Jewish Centre than you will ever be able to estab-
lish among a civilization, which represents the past and among surround-
ings, which are paralyzing to human ambition.” Nor did he drop the
charge that Zionism worked against Jewish integration into American so-
ciety: “Go to the Public Library of this City, the dwelling place of so
many thousands of those who in recent years have come among us, and the
Librarian will tell you—as he has told me—that the Yiddish literature is
devoured by throngs of young coreligionists, who frankly aver that a pub-
lic school education is a secondary necessity, but that they must first pre-
pare for the coming Jewish State.” True, conditions were bad for Euro-
pean Jews, but a Jewish state was not the answer. Schiff’s usual optimism
and religious belief made him confident that the situation would improve
without Palestine, “for lo, the guardian of Israel sleepeth not, nor doth he
slumber.”^68
Several months later, Schiff visited Palestine. Surprising for one who
was an avid traveler and who visited Europe and other continents countless
times, it was his first and only visit. Shocked by the halukkah system (the al-
location of monies raised abroad for Orthodox Jews who spent their days
in study) and its abuses, he called for drastic reform. Instead of permitting
Jews in Jerusalem to lead “lives of idleness” while they were supported by
In Search of a Refuge 181