others, Zionists should depopulate Jerusalem of those “degraded” Jews
and insist that they do “actual work” elsewhere. Only then could they
hope to establish a “dignified” center in Palestine and restore “the honor
of the Jewish name.” Schiff made no mention of the Zionist pioneers or
their work, and he concluded hastily that Palestine could not hold any
more Jews.^69
Although some Zionists still tried to convert him, the American Israelite,
mouthpiece of Reform’s anti-Zionism, correctly if sarcastically summed up
Schiff’s intransigence: “Poor Mr. Schiff has lost all possible chance of ob-
taining a front pew in the temple of Jerusalem even if he should back up
such a request with his usual generosity.”^70
The Zionist Solution: Second PhaseShortly after his trip and until World War I, Schiff was a non-Zionist
rather than an anti-Zionist, a friend of the social, economic, and cultural
development of Palestine but an opponent of a Jewish state. In large meas-
ure his position reflected the influence of Solomon Schechter. True,
Schechter was an enrolled Zionist, but his emphasis on a Jewish homeland
primarily to infuse Jews throughout the world with religious inspiration
and cultural creativity impressed members of the seminary’s board. Just as
Schechter distinguished critically between Zionists and “Nationalists,” or
those who agitated solely for a secular state, so too did Schiff after 1907.
His quarrel was now almost entirely with the rigid non- or antireligious
statists rather than with the builders of a Palestinian Jewish center.^71 Very
possibly, Schiff’s change of heart was also prompted by a desire to undercut
the nationalists’ monopoly of Palestinian institutions and to augment
thereby the power of the antinationalists.
Without any explanation as to why he modified his earlier opinions on
the impracticality of Zionist work in Palestine, the banker grew increas-
ingly involved in Palestinian matters after the public dispute with Schech-
ter. In time, philanthropic contributions helped build a social infrastruc-
ture that would inevitably strengthen the call for and reality of Jewish
political autonomy, but even if Schiff foresaw that eventuality, it did not
deter him. By 1912 he described himself as sympathetic to cultural Zion-
ism, indicating thereby that he no longer rejected Palestine as a Jewish cen-
ter: “I have by no means become a Zionist, but I have learned to respect the
effort to culturally build up Palestine, so that it shall cease to be a pauper
refuge and that those who are drawn there by the longing for the land of
our forefathers may be enabled to gradually turn it into a Jewish cultural—
not into a National—center.” He was “devoted to Palestine,” he said, and
he desired to see its physical revival.^72
182 Jacob H. Schiff