Louis Brandeis - Zionist Leader

Zionist Leader

Relatively late in life the secular Brandeis also became a prominent Zionist leader. He became active in the Federation of American Zionists in 1912, as a result of a conversation with Jacob de Haas, according to some. His involvement provided the nascent American Zionist movement one of the most distinguished men in American life and a friend of the next president. Over the next several years he devoted a great deal of his time, energy, and money to spreading the Zionist word. With the outbreak of World War I in Europe, the divided allegiance of its membership rendered the Zionist Organization impotent. American Jewry then assumed a larger responsibility independent of the Zionist Executive in Europe. The Provisional Executive Committee for Zionist Affairs was established in New York for this purpose on August 20, 1914, and unexpectedly, Brandeis accepted when unanimously elected to head the organization. As president from 1914 to 1918, Brandeis became the leader of American Zionism. He embarked on a speaking tour in the fall and winter of 1914-1915 to garner support for the Zionist cause, emphasizing the goal of self-determination and freedom for Jews through the development of a Jewish homeland.

Unlike the majority of American Jews at the time, he felt that the re-creation of a Jewish national homeland was one of the key solutions to antisemitism and the "Jewish problem" in Europe and Russia, while at the same time a way to "revive the Jewish spirit." He explained his belief in the importance of Zionism in a famous speech he gave at a conference of Reform Rabbis in April 1915:

The Zionists seek to establish this home in Palestine because they are convinced that the undying longing of Jews for Palestine is a fact of deepest significance; that it is a manifestation in the struggle for existence by an ancient people which has established its right to live, a people whose three thousand years of civilization has produced a faith, culture and individuality which enable it to contribute largely in the future, as it has in the past, to the advance of civilization; and that it is not a right merely but a duty of the Jewish nationality to survive and develop. They believe that only in Palestine can Jewish life be fully protected from the forces of disintegration; that there alone can the Jewish spirit reach its full and natural development; and that by securing for those Jews who wish to settle there the opportunity to do so, not only those Jews, but all other Jews will be benefited, and that the long perplexing Jewish Problem will, at last, find solution.

He also explained his belief that Zionism and patriotism were compatible concepts and should not lead to charges of "dual loyalty" which worried the rabbis and the dominant American Jewish Committee:

Let no American imagine that Zionism is inconsistent with Patriotism. Multiple loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent. A man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a loyal citizen of his state, and of his city; or for being loyal to his college.... Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so. There is no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry.

Early in the war, Jewish leaders determined that they needed to elect a special representative body to attend the peace conference as spokesman for the religious, national and political rights of the Jews in certain European countries, especially to guarantee that Jewish minorities were included wherever minority rights were recognized. Under the leadership of Brandeis, Stephen Wise and Julian Mack, the Jewish Congress Organization Committee was established in March 1915. The subsequent vehement debate about the idea of a "congress" stirred American Jewry and acquainted it with the Jewish problem. Brandeis’ efforts to bring in the American Jewish Committee and some other Jewish organizations were unsuccessful, but a year later, delegates representing over one million Jews came together in Philadelphia and formulated Jewish demands for submission to the Paris Peace Conference and elected a National Executive Committee with Brandeis as honorary chairman. On April 6, 1917, America entered the war. On June 10, 1917, 335,000 American Jews cast their votes and elected their delegates who, together with representatives of some 30 national organizations, established the American Jewish Congress on a democratically elected basis, but further efforts to organize awaited the end of the war.

Brandeis also brought his influence to bear on the Wilson administration in the negotiations leading up to the Balfour Declaration and the Paris Peace Conference.

In 1919 he broke on issues of structural organization and financial planning with Chaim Weizmann, the leader of European Zionism. Weizmann defeated Brandeis for power and in 1921 Brandeis resigned from the Zionist Organization of America, along with his closest associates Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Judge Julian W. Mack and Felix Frankfurter. He remained active in philanthropy directed at Jews in Palestine. In the late 1930s he endorsed immigration to Palestine in an effort to help European Jews escape genocide when Britain denied entry to more Jews.