appended an important condition to his donation. He stipulated that con-
trol would rest primarily with Nathan in Berlin, but he demanded, for the
sake of Jewish unity, that the board of directors (curatorium) include mem-
bers from other countries. He himself did not serve on the board, but the
Americans he suggested, non-Zionists for the most part, were men who
usually deferred to his wishes: Louis Marshall, Cyrus Adler, Julian Mack,
Solomon Schechter, Julius Rosenwald, Mayer Sulzberger, Samuel Strauss,
and Schiff’s son Mortimer.^76
With authority divided among various lands and parties and with the
growth of imperialist pressures in the Near East, clashes over the Tech-
nikum were inevitable. During the “language war” of 1913–14 the Ameri-
can directors, who were usually consigned by the Europeans to a subordi-
nate position in multinational deliberations, were very much involved. The
issue—should Hebrew be the official language of the Technikum—was
fought mainly in Europe and Palestine and pitted Zionists against non-
Zionists. Germany, seeking to strengthen its foothold in the region,
pressed the Hilfsverein to insist on German; France and England worried
lest their influence decline. The World Zionist Organization divided, and
the press throughout the Western world reverberated with charges and
countercharges from prominent Jews. Within the yishuv, teachers boycot-
ted schools; and when a decision was reached to recognize German instead
of Hebrew, students and parents staged demonstrations.^77
By the time the Americans took up the matter, the issue had become far
more than the language of instruction. A bitter controversy now raged
between the Zionists, who proudly looked upon the rebirth of modern He-
brew as their weapon against “senseless assimilation” and the so-called
cringing ghetto spirit, and the non-Zionists, who were horrified by Zionist
tactics in the dispute. Each side took its expected stand in letters to Schiff
and in articles and speeches, many of which were reproduced in the secular
press. Widely publicizing the rift, Paul Nathan printed a scathing attack on
the Zionists in which, according to a report in the New York Times, he lik-
ened their tactics to pogroms.^78
Caught between the European directors and the American curators,
Schiff attempted to balance the multiple variables—the yishuv’s need for
the protection of a great power, the lack of appropriate instructors and
textbooks for instruction in Hebrew, the Technikum’s reliance on funds
from many groups, and the force of Jewish public opinion in Palestine and
elsewhere. He sympathized with the Hebraists^79 although he saw the need
of Arabic, Turkish, and Western languages, but the question of language
was secondary to him. In close contact with Nathan and Judah Magnes, he
was appalled primarily by the behavior of the Zionists (and he singled out
in particular the prominent leader of the militants, Dr. Shmarya Levin) in
Germany and in Palestine who resorted to extremist and “reprehensible”
184 Jacob H. Schiff