larger society, but during the Progressive era, when Americans were adopt-
ing new devices to augment the political power of the common man, the
push for a democratic congress had become, as Brandeis asserted, a moral
issue and one that Zionists said could not be stayed. Frankfurter, one of
several prominent figures who resigned from the AJC on the congress
issue, explained the democratic imperative: “Democracy is not a political
fetish, but a ruling faith that the Jews in America must think their own
thoughts,... express their own will, choose their own leaders, if Jews in
America are ever to reach self-respect that entitles them to be heard and
the weight that will give them a hearing, here and abroad.”^75 Put simply,
elitism was no longer politically correct.
Marshall, now president of the AJC, and Adler handled the day-to-day ma-
neuvers of the committee, but they deferred to Schiff on strategy. The lat-
ter blamed the sensationalist Yiddish press and the Zionists for the serious
communal rift and for allowing the formation of a distinct “Hebraic” ele-
ment versus “those of us” whose primary attachments were American.
Since Palestine under Turkish control was now closed to Jews, the Zion-
ists, Schiff claimed, fixed on a congress for other objectives—to spread na-
tionalist propaganda and to put control of the Jewish masses and Jewish af-
fairs in the hands of Zionist leaders and their self-seeking followers. Not
only did they divert attention from the primary goal (i.e., rights for Euro-
pean Jews), but they compounded Turkish suspicions of Jews. By raising
the specter of dual loyalties, Schiff added, the proposed congress also
threatened to exacerbate anti-Semitism worldwide and thereby drive fu-
ture generations of Jews to abandon Judaism. The only legitimate congress
for Jews in the United States was the American Congress; any other would
be intolerable to Americans and was bound to weaken the well-being and
security of their fellow Jews.^76
At a meeting of the AJC’s executive committee, Schiff spelled out his
ever-present fear:
The question is now to be decided, and I am afraid decided in the affirmative
as to whether the Jews are a nation within a nation. The holding of a Jewish
Congress means nothing less than a decision in the affirmative, that we are
Jews first, and Americans second. If we are not Jews first, if we are Americans
of the Jewish faith or Jewish people only, we have absolutely no right to hold
such a Congress. The Congress means the establishment of a new govern-
ment, a government for the Jews by which the Jews are to be bound.... It
will be the darkest day for Jewry. We will become a people by ourselves. We
will become a compact mass of Jewish Americans, and not of American
Jews.^77216 Jacob H. Schiff