hoped would testify to Jewish unity, became the property of the Hilfsver-
ein. The outbreak of the war precluded further progress, but so eager was
Schiff to implement the project that in 1919 and 1920 he offered to pur-
chase the school and turn it over to the Zionist Organization. As it turned
out, the latter preferred to deal directly with the Hilfsverein. Meantime, in
reaction to the language war, the Zionists determined not to yield on He-
brew. A plank in the 1918 platform of the newly created Zionist Organiza-
tion of America (ZOA) read: “Hebrew, the national language of the Jewish
people, shall be the medium of public instruction.”^87
Zionism, more than any other issue, set Schiff off from the masses. A man
who often flouted critics, particularly from the immigrant ranks, he ac-
knowledged the need to backtrack on Zionist issues in the dispute with
Schechter, in the interchange with Aaronsohn, and again in the second
round of the language war. Personal power and his passion for Jewish unity
figured in his retractions, but he could disregard neither his own feelings
about Palestine nor the attraction of Zionism for ethnic-minded American
Jews. Just as Zionism had survived Herzl’s death and was unlikely to disap-
pear, so too was Schiff becoming more hard-pressed to maintain the line
between non-Zionism and political Zionism.
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 hardened the banker’s opposition
to Jewish nationalism. Extreme nationalism in any form, and that included
political Zionism, brought only harm. He explained sharply to a fellow
philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald: “I consider allNationalism, if carried to
the extreme a curse and a danger. It is, for instance, the extreme national-
ism of the different European peoples that has brought on the deplorable
conflict now raging in Europe; and if we, as Jews, insist that we are a na-
tion, we are steering into most dangerous waters.” Jewish nationalist ef-
forts could ensure neither the happiness of Jews nor of mankind. To offset
the impact of articles in journals that favored Zionism, he arranged with
the editors of the powerful Outlook to print an anti-Zionist piece by Rabbi
Samuel Schulman. The latter planned to explain the “viciousness” of Zion-
ism, and Schiff was prepared to underwrite the fees as well as the cost of
distributing more than six thousand copies. “Whither are we drifting?” he
asked despairingly. Were he but ten or fifteen years younger, he mused, he
would fight more vigorously against the secular nationalists and the harm
they were causing American Jews.^88
Non-Zionism suited Schiff better than anti-Zionism. It flowed naturally
from his sense of ethnicity, that is, his deep belief that he was bound to and
responsible for his fellow Jews throughout the world. Louis Marshall, one
who held similar convictions, commented privately about his friend: “A Jew
of Mr. Schiff’s calibre, who is born unto his people only once in a generation
In Search of a Refuge 187