Menahem Ussishkin

The Pittsburgh Tri-State Pinkas, 1947.

(Attributed to Z. Alroy.)

Within Menahem Ussishkin’s life span (1863-1941) many dramatic events and profound revolutionary changes occurred in the world. From the historian’s angle, these turbulent 78 years have witnessed a remarkable upward trend in the scientific, cultural, economic and political progress of the peoples that were the players in the world’s drama. Only one member of the human family has not benefited from the new development that was under way before the advent of Nazism: Jewry. Its status has not only not been improved, but has steadily been deteriorating. Two-thirds of the Jewish world population face today physical and spiritual extermination.

When Menahem Ussishkin saw the light of day in Dubrowna, Russia, in the year 1863, Alexander II ruled over All The Russias. Wilhelm I sat on the throne of Prussia. Napoleon III reigned over France. Victoria was Queen of England and the Dominions beyond the seas. Abraham Lincoln, having freed the Negroes, fought the Civil War for the principles of Emancipation. In Palestine, under the Sultan’s sovereignty, there lived but a handful of old and pious Jews who had come to the Holy Land to die there. In the United States the Jewish community numbered less than 250,000 souls.

The era of the Isms was then in its mere infancy. Only fifteen years had elapsed since Karl Marx and his associates had issued their Communist Manifesto. But in Germany, the land of Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Hegel, anti-Semitism, the forerunner of Aryanism and Hitlerism, began to raise its head in the garb of “scientific anti-Semitism.” The upper strata of West European Jewry, which had striven hard to persuade itself that the Emancipation, which had come painfully and slowly, really wrote “finis” to the Jewish Question, began to wonder whether this was really so.

In Eastern Europe the Poles were rising against the oppression of Czarist Russia. In Russia proper the Nihilists and the social revolutionaries were busily engaged in surreptitiously setting the stage for that process of revolt which culminated in the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Russian Jewry, 6,000,000 strong and a reservoir of Jewish life, tradition and culture, was in the throes of an inner severe crisis which resulted from the struggle between the traditionalists and the adherents of the Haskalah (Enlightenment). It was yet to experience the pogroms, the humiliations and the oppressions of the decades that were to follow. Its confinement to an official Czarist Pale of Settlement was yet to be enacted.

It was not a happy world into which Menahem Ussishkin was born and in which he grew to manhood. So oppressive was the life of the Jewish masses on the steppes of Russia and in the adjacent lands that the misery and hopefulness that hung over it produced among the more thoughtful and forward-looking leaders of the older generation a feverish desire for a radical change. Some joined the forces of the revolution that promised release. Others sought release through national revival in accordance with a pattern that had its living roots in the deep-seated traditions of the Jewish masses and its incentive in the ancient glories of Israel.

As a youth of 18 – then a student in the Moscow Technical Institute from which he later graduated as an engineer – Ussishkin was already engaged in founding a branch of the Chovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), the Palestine colonization movement which preceded Theodor Herzl’s Political Zionism. Stirred to the depth of his soul by the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1882 in Russia, he joined the Bilu (abbreviated Hebraic description of those who issued the slogan “House of Jacob, come, let us go!”), the first group of Russian Jewish students who abandoned their careers to take up the life of agricultural pioneers on the malaria-ridden swamps of Judea. To be admitted into the group it was necessary for Ussishkin to pay into its treasury an amount of 450 rubles. He pawned his gold watch to make the first payment, but when the day of departure arrived the leaders of the group found that only seven members could embark. There was not sufficient money to cover the traveling expenses from Odessa to Jaffa. Ussishkin, together with his schoolmate Tchlenow, who subsequently played an outstanding role as a leader of Russian Zionism, were left behind.

Thereafter Menahem Ussishkin’s life was wrapped up in ceaseless work for the realization of his Zionist idea. From 1891, when he paid his first visit to Palestine, to October 2, 1941, the day of his death, he was a vital factor in and a living symbol of Zionism and Eretz Israel. It is difficult, almost impossible, to conceive and to describe the development of Jewish and Zionist life in Europe and in Palestine without a full appreciation of Ussishkin’s predominant part in it. The saga of his labors, struggles, setbacks and achievements in the five decades is, indeed, inseparable from the story of Zionism and the upbuilding of Eretz Israel. His single-minded devotion to the cause and his unswerving loyalty to it have been universally recognized by friend and adversary alike. Admirer and opponent alike have concurred in conferring upon him the title of Zionism’s Man of Iron, a label which expressed the affection of his supporters and the respect of his opponents.

His was a simple faith in Israel and in the Land of Israel. Yet no man’s faith could be more profound. So deeply rooted was it that no storm could shake it, much less uproot it. In the annals of Zionism, there are many interesting [stories about] his lifetime, all of which would involve one in writing a condensed history of Zionism and Palestinian development during fifty years. The man became a legend even during his lifetime. There is the story about his rallying to the call of Theodor Herzl and then bitterly opposing him on the issue of Uganda versus Palestine. There is the epic of his struggle, together with Weizmann, for a Hebrew University idea; there is the intricate story of the relationship between Ussishkin and Weizmann; there is the epic of his great influence upon the masses of Russian Jewry prior to and during the World War; there is the dramatic scene of Ussishkin’s plea in Hebrew before the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference in Paris; there is the interesting and instructive part played by Ussishkin in the controversy of national versus private capital of 1921; there is the story of his determined fight against the partition plan. But, above all, there is the epic of Menahem Ussishkin’s everlasting contribution to the resettlement of Eretz Israel – the contribution which he made as the World President of the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (the Jewish National Fund).

In the twenty years during which he presided over the Keren Kayemeth in Jerusalem and directed the activities of our Palestine Land Fund, Menahem Ussishkin became the Keren Kayemeth of the Keren Kayemeth. After a fruitful, long and stormy Zionist career, he had been chosen at the age of 60 to head and direct that instrumentality for Palestine Land Redemption which Theodor Herzl created at the Fifth Zionist Congress and which had made but meager progress up to that date. We of the Jewish National Fund who had the great privilege of close and intimate collaboration with Menahem Ussishkin for, alas, too brief a period, are perhaps able to appreciate more fully the true significance of his contribution and the sterling qualities of his inspiring leadership.

In retrospect it appears that the twenty years that had elapsed between the founding of the Keren Kayemeth and the assumption of its leadership by Menahem Ussishkin were merely a preliminary measure for the new advance that was to follow.

The stage for the new advance was set at the London Conference of 1920 which restored to the Keren Kayemeth its original character as that of a Palestine Land Fund which is to collaborate with its sister fund, the Keren Hayesod, which was entrusted with the task of serving as the fiscal instrument of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the colonization fund of the Zionist movement.

How great is the progress that has been made since that turning point? Great as it is, it was not satisfactory enough for Menahem Ussishkin. The extent of the advance must be measured, however, against the background of the events that crowded that eventful twenty-year period between the San Remo decision to award the Mandate over Palestine to Great Britain and the outbreak of World War II. The entire development of the Jewish National Home in the course of the two decades is inconceivable without the land foundation which Ussishkin and the Keren Kayemeth laid. His first large-scale accomplishment for Geulath Ha-aretz – a purpose to which he had been singularly devoted even while other phases of the movement occupied his attention and energies – was the purchase of the first extensive land tract in the Valley of Jezreel. It was a venturesome enterprise which was opposed by some but which has been proved in the light of history as the act of a great man of vision and action.

Superficially, it may appear that the task which was entrusted to Menahem Ussishkin when he was called to the presidency of the Palestine Land Fund was a job calling for administrative skills only. Actually, the implementation of the Geulath Ha’aretz program, as a national enterprise which is based upon the principles of national land ownership and social justice, is predicted upon consideration[s] of much greater scope than ordinary real estate transactions, which are based on business and financial considerations alone. In the truest meaning of the term, the task was that of nation- and homeland-building, requiring high talent and inexhaustible energies in properly evaluating and coping with historical, political, strategic and psychological elements and phases of the complex Palestine problem. Only a man of great stature, whose roots have struck deep into the core of the Jewish soul and soil, could be equal to the task. Ussishkin proved his great capacity to perform the historic mission which he undertook at an age when most people might be inclined – and justifiably so – to rest on the laurels of their past achievements.

The Jewish people in all parts of the world, including our own United States, have instinctively sensed the intrinsic value of the great leader and the urgency of his mission. Responding to his exhortations, pleadings and demands, the broad mass of our people has contributed in ever-increasing measure to the Jewish National Fund. Under his administration, the Keren Kayemeth was entrusted with new resources amounting to LP 5,100,000 or approximately $25,000,000. The bulk of this amount has not been the gift of the well-to-do, but the mite of those who have not been blessed with too much of worldly goods.

What has Menahem Ussishkin accomplished with the resources the Jewish masses have placed in his trust? Although the epic of Keren Kayemeth achievements during the past two decades is pretty well-known in a general way, it will be refreshing to glance here at but a few figures. When he took the helm, the Keren Kayemeth’s world income amounted to LP 667,000 or approximately $3,335,000. At the same time our national land holdings in Palestine stood at 19,000 dunams. Only a score of agricultural settlements existed on National Fund land at that time. On October 3, 1941, when Ussishkin’s mortal remains were carried for burial in Nicano’s Cave, Mt. Scopus, Jerusalem, the national land possessions had been brought by the Jewish National Fund to the formidable height of 550,000 dunams, and on these strategically located land tracts in Palestine’s four principal valleys there stood 81 Moshavim and Moshavoth, 70 Kibbutzim, 57 workers’ camps, 15 rural quarters, 16 urban quarters and 12 agricultural schools – the very backbone of the Jewish National Home and its bastions of strength and hope. This is not the record of a mere administrator’s job, but the achievement and the life work of a trailblazer, a man of vision and action, a statesman, a nation-builder whose memory will long be cherished.

What was the driving power behind this man of vision and action? His simple but unshakable faith; his long historic memory of what Eretz Israel meant to the Jewish people in the past and what it will mean in the future; his deep human sympathy for the suffering of the broad mass of Jewry and the recognition that the pattern offered by the Zionist idea is a way of salvation; and his anxiety for progress before it is too late. One need not delve into the numerous essays, programs, exhortations and reminiscences which this man of action wrote, although he was not a writer, to appreciate the magnitude of the force that drove him on. The key to his mind is found in the 38 recorded epigrams that were uttered by Ussishkin at critical periods in the life of the movement and of Palestine. They embody his testament to his people. He said:

“Do not say ‘we shall buy land in Palestine tomorrow’; tomorrow may be too late.”

“If the soil of Palestine will be ours a dozen (Lord) Passfields will not prevail against us; if not – a dozen Balfours will not help us.”

“Jewish capital may redeem the land of our fathers; Jewish intellect may build the Jewish homeland, but only Jewish labor has it within its power to make the land the permanent possession of the Jewish people.”

“When the People of Israel will redeem the Land of Israel, the Land of Israel will redeem the People of Israel.”

“When Eretz Israel went up in flames, the Jewish people went into Diaspora; when [the] Diaspora goes up in flames, the Jewish people must return to Eretz Israel.”

“I once told Professor Einstein: it is much easier for the Jewish people to produce a dozen Einsteins than a single genuine and efficient farmer.”

“Sentiment and reason are often at variance; Will is, however, supreme over both. There is nothing that stands in the way of the Will.”

Contrasted with the Jewish tragedy of 1941 and with the problems of Jewish homelessness that will confront Jewish leadership even after Nazism will have been crushed, the sufferings of Jews in the 19th century and in the first three decades of the 20th appear to have been relatively tolerable. When the practical phases of the Zionist program were being formulated by Ussishkin and his colleagues, the Jewish people needed a homeland but it could still count on a margin of safety in the Diaspora. Today, with two-thirds of the Jewish population of the world either homeless wanderers or slowing starving to death behind the barbed wires of the concentration camps and the ghetto walls, the vision of a Homeland is not an answer to a nostalgic prayer, but a stark and urgent necessity.

Because Menahem Ussishkin lived as he did, labored, fought and achieved as he did, the answer to the call of distress of the Jewish people can be given not in terms of a theory or an idealist’s exhortation, but as a practical method of salvation. This method rests on the firm foundation of an experience of sixty years of successful colonization and on the tangible assets of land and colonies. These colonies and the Jewish National Home which they compose have served as a laboratory for colonization and social progress and, in a world which is to be reconstructed on the basis of individual liberty and national freedom, will serve as an example of a modern design for Jewish living.