In line with the committee’s stand, Schiff and Marshall refused in Sep-
tember 1918 to join David Philipson in a conference for combating Zion-
ism. Schiff reaffirmed his new attitude toward Zionism, one that was “in
the best interests of our People. Greatly more than I did when I first
ceased my opposition to the Zionist Movement, do I feel now that the
creation of a Jewish Home Land is most desirable.” Opposition from the
“Grand Old Man of American Jewry,” as Philipson called him, allied with
other non-Zionists on the committee, put an end to the anti-Zionist
scheme.^128 In 1920, Schiff approved of the decision at San Remo to award
the mandate over Palestine to England. Henceforth, he said, it would be
easier to prepare Palestine as a Jewish homeland in conformity with the
Balfour Declaration.^129
The entire episode of Schiff’s flirtation with the Zionist organization until
his death is clouded by an element of make-believe. Not only were his con-
tributions as a non-Zionist just as important for the development of a state
as Zionist contributions, but the ideological differences that separated him
from the Zionists, especially the cultural Zionists, had little substance.
Only the payment of a shekel distinguished his stand from Schechter’s.
Even the political Zionists, the leaders from the Brandeis circle as well as
rank-and-file members, had long bent the tenets of Zionism in keeping
with an American setting. In theory they subscribed to the teachings of
Herzl and to the movement for a state, but most would have agreed that
Herzlian laws on how anti-Semitism mandated Jewish national separatism
did not apply to the United States. They welcomed the Balfour Declara-
tion for its approval of a national homeland in Palestine, but, as he wrote to
Mack, so did Schiff. Since hardly any Zionist would have denied the secur-
ity of American Jewry or posited the primacy of Jewish over American loy-
alty or requested national rights for America’s Jews, American Zionism
from its inception developed largely into a movement for the benefit of
Jews not fortunate enough to live in the United States.
Non- and anti-Zionists balked at both the theory of diaspora national-
ism and the definition of ethnicin broad political terms, but American
Zionists too invoked those ideas almost exclusively for eastern European
Jewry. Whereas the latter may have embraced Zionism as a personal com-
mitment, American Zionists scarcely thought of emigration to Palestine
as a serious option for themselves. True, among Zionists whose roots lay
in eastern Europe, where distinctions among ethnic groups were com-
mon, a keener sense of peoplehood prevailed than in the case of Jews like
Schiff who stemmed from western Europe. But even the Zionists were
spectators rather than active participants. In the calculations of the World
Zionist Organization as well, American Jews were primarily the ones who
236 Jacob H. Schiff