Jewish nation” helped as well to placate the critics of Zionism. Moreover,
in a letter to millionaire Julius Rosenwald, Schiff played up the financial
benefits of a reconstructed Palestine, one that would help solve the Jewish
problem in Europe and thereby lessen the economic burden on American
Jews. The specter of a Jewish state that haunted the anti-Zionists was neu-
tralized by the banker’s very choice of words. “Center” or “homeland” or
even “commonwealth” ignored statehood and hinted rather at an essen-
tially benign and acceptable refugeeism largely for the benefit of eastern
European Jewry.^120
More farsighted than others, Schiff may have well understood that non-
Zionist contributions to the development of the yishuv were qualitatively
different from other philanthropic gifts. Whether or not earmarked for ec-
onomic and cultural purposes, they helped to build the infrastructure of a
Jewish center, if not a state. Nevertheless, he assured the anti- and non-
Zionists that British sovereignty over Palestine had made Jewish statism a
dead issue. Those nationalist leaders who continued to delude their follow-
ers into believing that the “chimera” of a Jewish state “is on the eve of real-
ization” were out only—and here again Schiff was sensitive to the issue of
leadership—to maintain their power.^121
Speaking to the Zionists at the same time, Schiff denied that Palestine
would be merely an asylum for the refugee emigrants from eastern Europe.
He continued to depict a center of spiritual creativity and an opportunity
for a Jew “to live under conditions which, freed from the materialistic in-
fluences of the western world, will make it possible for him to develop to
the full those qualities which have enabled the Jew to make such valuable
contributions to the highest assets of mankind.” Nor did he completely
rule out the possibility of a Jewish state in the future. Rather, he adopted a
wait-and-see attitude. Writing for the Nation,he stated that “after the pop-
ulation of Palestine shall have become overwhelmingly Jewish, the Jews ac-
tually there can determine for themselves what kind of government to
choose.”^122
Not fully acceptable to either side, Schiff’s compromise boiled down to
a give-and-take by both groups. If the Zionists suspended their political
goals, they could secure the financial help of the non-Zionists for the reha-
bilitation of Palestine and thereby more easily construct the base of a state.
If the anti- or non-Zionists contributed to the physical restoration of the
land and thereby to a haven for prospective European emigrants, they
saved money and, more important, they had the Zionists’ assurance that
the prospect of a state “cannot be realized for many a decade.” As Marshall
put it to one AJC member, “Neither you nor your children nor your
children’s children will live to see the formation of a Jewish sovereign State
in Palestine. I do not, therefore, see any occasion for excitement.” Were
the two groups to unite, Schiff optimistically predicted that the inhabitants
The World at War 233