Jacob Schiff

Um, then it, you know, the, the Reds became, as, as the British said, um, oh, I f- there was a prime minister at the time who said, uh, "Trotsky is the only statesman in Russia."

I'm looking at this and I'm thinking that, um, we should stop right here because we're gonna start talking about American involvement in this and get into Jacob Schiff, and this is probably a good time to, uh-

Ah

... to stop.

This financial pressure from the Americans, the reporté, the repertoire concludes, is a continuation of a policy that has led them to break our trade agreement in 1911.

But of course, to that was added the massive deportations of Jews undertaken in the meantime.

Jacob Schiff, who had spoken so harshly of Russia in 1905, now declared to a French parliamentarian sent to America, we will give credit to England and France when we have the assurance that Russia will do something for the Jews.

The money you borrow from us goes to Russia, and we do not want that.

So, for example, after World War I, right, which America got involved in for Jewish reasons, with Woodrow Wilson, who was heavily indebted to Jews.

He had plenty of money coming in from Jacob Schiff and other Jewish bankers from Wall Street.

Well, after the Balfour Declaration was...

It wasn't Schiff also funding the communism and stuff? Yes, the Bolsheviks.

First

of all, that's precisely what I was going to get into.

When Jacob Schiff was a big backer of what Joe Wilson saw, or these other Wall Street bankers, Cohen was one.

But what got America involved in the World War I was the Balfour Declaration, which was

Just as there were varieties of Zionism, religious, cul- cultural, political, and otherwise, so too non-Zionism.

Banker and philanthropist Jacob Schiff was a territorialist who invested substantially in Jewish life in Palestine.

Dr. Cyrus Adler, the president of JTS, was a Messianist deeply suspicious of secular nationalism.

Louis Marshall, the eminent constitutional lawyer and communal statesman, opposed Zionism for American Jews while becoming one of the central advocates of practical investment and refuge in Palestine.

The vulnerability of the pre-state Jewish population in Palestine, the rampant antisemitic conspiracies being propagated by Henry Ford, the plight of world Jewry after the Johnson-Reed Act of '24 slammed shut America's gates of immigration, none of this was lost on them.

Jewish concern came first.

Jacob Schiff, banker, philanthropist, and outspoken critic of political Zionism, gave the extraordinary sum of $100,000 to establish the Technion in Haifa and responded generously to appeals for the Jews of Palestine.

By 1929, in the wake of Arab-Jewish riots, Park Avenue Synagogue had established a Palestine relief fund.