majority and salvage some concessions, he insisted that the AJC, the best
agent for American Jewish unity, keep to its plans for an orderly confer-
ence. American Jews rightly expected activity on behalf of Jewish rights in
Europe, and if the committee abstained, others less qualified would take an
undesirable path. Nor did Schiff rule out compromise by the committee to
save the community from those he called “undesirable leaders.”^84
Meanwhile, reasoning that Brandeis was the only one who could call a
halt to the agitation, Schiff cultivated the new Zionist hero. At first he and
his friends had scant regard for Brandeis’s Jewish credentials and his
meteoric rise to national Jewish leadership. “It appears to me,” Schiff once
said, that “he should have become a follower for a while instead of an im-
mediate leader.” Now, however, he spoke highly of Brandeis, entertained
him at dinner, and denied having opposed Brandeis’s appointment to
Wilson’s cabinet in 1913. In warm support of the attorney’s nomination to
the Supreme Court, he let President Wilson know that Jews would be
highly gratified to see one of their own tapped for the high court.^85
It is very possible that Schiff also saw the appointment as a way of re-
moving Brandeis from Jewish affairs, thereby undercutting the Zionist
movement and shoring up leadership by the stewards. In a long letter to
Brandeis the banker wrote: “It will likely not be long before you will be
called upon to assume the high position for which the President has re-
cently nominated you, and as I take it, you will then no longer be able to
continue as leader of the Zionist and Nationalist movement in this coun-
try.” For the sake of communal unity, the letter also urged Brandeis to end
the clamor for a congress. Brandeis’s reply was noncommital; he men-
tioned neither the congress nor his retirement from Zionist activities.^86
As the movement for a congress rapidly gained momentum, Schiff con-
tinued to air his opposition publicly. Two themes resounded in his talks:
the un-American character of the congress and the need of communal
unity. On one occasion, however, the applause that greeted his pleas for
unity between the “yahudim” (German Jews) and the “yidden” (the eastern
Europeans) was offset by comments like that of the Yiddish Tageblatt,
which called the committee’s way of ignoring the masses the “unity of si-
lence” but the workings of a democratic congress the “unity of action.” In
March 1916, before the Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Society,
Schiff stressed the importance of seasoned leadership, and yet again in the
role of Moses, he likened the congress challenge and its dire consequences
to the biblical story of Korach’s rebellion against Moses.^87
A few days later the banker fired a stronger salvo. In an interview with
the Wahrheit, he focused on the evils of Jewish separatism. Instead of taking
on tasks for the benefit of America, advocates of a congress worked for self-
segregation, an attitude that he defined as “almost treason” to the principle
of American citizenship and loyalty to the country. By resurrecting the
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