mission of the Jew, and I believe that somewhere there should be a great res-
ervoir of Jewish learning in which Jewish culture might be furthered and de-
veloped, unhampered by the materialism of the world, and might spread its
beautiful ideals over the world. And naturally that land would be Palestine.Having thus squared, at least to his satisfaction, a Jewish homeland with
Reform’s interpretation of a dispersed priest people, he developed the
theme in numerous letters. To Israel Zangwill he insisted that he wanted
Zion without any “ism.” To another friend he added his hope that “once
more ‘Jewish law and Jewish culture go out from Zion and the word of
God from Jerusalem.’”^109
A most revealing letter was written by Schiff to a rabid anti-Zionist
rabbi, David Philipson, of Cincinnati. The latter had warned that Schiff’s
April address would be interpreted to mean that Judaism was only a ghetto
religion unable to survive in free surroundings. Schiff’s answer again em-
phasized the disintegration of Jewry after their emancipation, not only in
Russia but also in France, Germany, and the United States. The Jews
needed a center in Palestine, he maintained, where a large Jewish popula-
tion would stimulate Jewish thought and learning throughout the world.
Doubtful now about the desirability of total integration, even in America,
he wrote:
Look at our Synagogues and Temples; they are becoming empty more and
more! My children and your children and almost everybody else’s children
may have some interest yet in our religion, because of the example of their par-
ents, but look at the third generation, with how little attachment for our relig-
ion they grow up, because their parents are even more indifferent than their
parents’ parents may have been in the religious education of their children.The banker could well have been describing his own family—the sketchy
Jewish education of his two children and their and their children’s progres-
sive alienation from things Jewish. Having reached the age of seventy in
1917, Schiff had grown more introspective, perhaps taking at least partial
responsibility for the drift of his descendants from Judaism. Not surpris-
ingly, he admitted later that his son did not understand his father’s “conver-
sion” to Zionism.^110
A slightly fuller version of the letter to Philipson appeared in the press.
There Schiff explained that religious motives underlay his support of a Pal-
estinian center rather than a state. Since 50 percent to 75 percent of the na-
tionalists had no interest whatsoever in religion, he doubted whether a
Jewish state established by them would advance the cause of Judaism.
Whichever version of the letter is accepted, Schiff’s focus on the continuity
of a vibrant religion and culture rooted in a Palestinian matrix not only
The World at War 229