Judah L. Magnes: An American Jewish Nonconformist

By Daniel P. Kotzin

Judah L. Magnes (1877-1948) was an American Reform rabbi, Jewish community leader, and active pacifist during World War I. In the 1920s he moved to British Mandatory Palestine, where he helped found and served as first chancellor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Later, in the 1930s and 1940s, he emerged as the leading advocate for the binational plan for Palestine. In these varied roles, he actively participated in the major transformations in American Jewish life and the Zionist movement during the first half of the twentieth century.

Kotzin tells the story of how Magnes, immersed in American Jewish life, Zionism, and Jewish life in Mandatory Palestine, rebelled against the dominant strains of all three. His tireless efforts ensured that Jewish public life was vibrant and diverse, and not controlled by any one faction within Jewry. Magnes brought American ideals to Palestine, and his unique conception of Zionism shaped Jewish public life in Palestine, influencing both the development of the Hebrew University and Zionist policy toward Arabs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Release date: Aug 17, 2010
• ISBN: 9780815651093

Book preview

Judah L. Magnes

MODERN JEWISH HISTORY

Henry L. Feingold, Series Editor

Dr. J. L. Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew University.

Judah L. Magnes

An American Jewish Nonconformist

Daniel P. Kotzin

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 2010 by Syracuse University Press

Syracuse, New York 13244-5290

All Rights Reserved

First Edition 2010

10  11  12  13  14  156  5  4  3  2  1

Frontispiece: Zionist activities in Palestine. Dr. J. L. Magnes, chancellor of the Hebrew University. G. Eric and Edith Matson Photograph Collection. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-matpc-02663.

∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

For a listing of books published and distributed by Syracuse University Press, visit our Web site at https://press.syr.edu.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8156-3216-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kotzin, Daniel P.

Judah L. Magnes : an American Jewish nonconformist / Daniel P. Kotzin. — 1st ed.

p. cm. — (Modern Jewish history)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8156-3216-0 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Magnes, Judah Leon, 1877–1948. 2. Zionists—United States—Biography. 3. Rabbis—United States—Biography. 4. College presidents—Israel—Biography. 5. Zionism—United States. 6. Jewish-Arab relations—History—1917–1948. I. Title.

DS151.M225K68 2010

320.54095694092—dc22

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Chana and Noah

Daniel P. Kotzin is assistant professor in the Social Science Department at Medaille College in Buffalo, New York.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. A Jewish Boy in California

2. The Making of an American Jewish Dissenter, the Making of an American Zionist

3. The Unconventional Rabbi

4. The Nonconformist American Jewish Leader

5. The Nonconformist American Jewish Pacifist

6. The Chancellor of the Hebrew University

7. The Binationalist

8. The Zionist Conscience

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Illustrations

Judah L. Magnesfrontispiece

Following page 168

1. Magnes with the Oakland High School baseball team, 1892

2. Magnes at his home in Oakland, Calif., ca. 1892

3. Magnes as a student at Hebrew Union College, 1890s

4. Rabbi Judah Magnes in Tannersville with New York Jewish leaders, ca. 1908–9

5. Magnes with refugee scholars at the Hebrew University, 1930s

6. Magnes with German Jewish refugees at the Hebrew University, 1930s

7. Faculty of the Hebrew University, 1930s

8. Magnes with Henrietta Szold in Egypt, ca. 1940

9. On a kibbutz with Henrietta Szold, ca. 1940

10. Magnes with two Arab men and a Jewish man, ca. 1940

11. Magnes with American students at the Hebrew University, ca. 1946–48

12. Judah and Beatrice Magnes, ca. 1948

Acknowledgments

THIS BOOK BEGAN as my dissertation, and I was fortunate to have a committee of exceptional scholars to direct my work. I want to particularly thank my dissertation advisor, Thomas Bender. His faith in me, support, and guidance has been invaluable. My deep appreciation goes to the other members of my dissertation committee, Paul Baker, Hasia Diner, David Reimers, and the late Arthur Hertzberg for their assistance and useful comments. Matthew Mark Silver also made some very helpful suggestions. I owe much gratitude to Moses Rischin, Jonathan Sarna, and Michael Gabriel for their enthusiasm for this biography and their constructive suggestions. I want to also express my appreciation to Ilana Levy, Yael Lekach, and Ilse Cornwall who aided me in translating some material from Hebrew and German.

I cannot imagine better environments for research than the archives I visited. I would especially like to thank Hadassah Assouline and her staff at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem, where I did most of my work. The well-organized archive and friendly staff created the ideal environment for extensive research. Tova Gazit and Aaron Kornblum at the Western Jewish History Center aided me immensely. I would also like to thank the archivists at the American Jewish Archives and the American Jewish Historical Society for their help.

My family has encouraged me throughout my studies. A special thanks goes to my parents, Lynn and Ted Kotzin, for their support. I also want to thank Sara Kotzin and Fumi Onuma, Barbara and Bernie Schafer, Jane Gassner, and Joe Kotzin, all of whom offered continuous enthusiasm for my project. My cousins Hanna and Yasha Vizanski provided me with a home away from home while I was conducting research in Israel. My grandparents, Lee and Harold Gassner, sparked my interest in American Jewish history with long stories about their youth in Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. My grandfather died just before I began research on Judah Magnes, and my grandmother died before I completed writing this book, but their integrity and profound commitment to learning always remained with me and inspired me.

I also owe thanks to my friends Rebecca Budner, Mike Campbell, Lissa Cobetto, Tricia Kelleher, Ken Kirchhoffer, Elena Michelson, Gary and Jody Millspaugh, and Brad Williams.

Finally, this book is dedicated to my wife, Chana, and my son, Noah. When I proposed to Chana in Jerusalem, even as I was beginning my research on Judah Magnes, she probably did not realize how much he would occupy our home. For her love and friendship, compassion and understanding, and willingness to break away from her own research to discuss ideas and read chapters, I am eternally grateful. Noah is just learning to read, and probably will not get round to looking at this book for a while. Nevertheless, his life and his love for life have inspired me more than he can possibly know.

Judah L. Magnes

Introduction

AN ECCENTRIC, SELF-RIGHTEOUS IDEALIST with intense moral certainty, Judah L. Magnes relied on his conscience for his beliefs and his actions. His story is that of an American Jew creating a public life for himself based upon ideals—ideals developed out of his conception of what it meant to be American and what it meant to be Jewish. How Magnes integrated these two identities provided the mold with which he sculpted his life as an American Jewish nonconformist.

In the course of his lifetime, which spanned from the late nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century, Magnes witnessed dramatic changes and developments in American Jewry, the Zionist movement, and the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine). In various ways, he was very much a part of these developments, taking important leadership roles. In America, he worked as a Reform rabbi and Jewish communal leader. In Palestine, he was a founder and the first chancellor of the Hebrew University. With fervor, he fully engaged himself in American Judaism, American Jewish political and organizational life, the Zionist movement, and Jewish culture in Palestine. His ability to move easily between opposing Jewish groups attracted many. His charismatic personality roused audiences. His passion operated as a magnet, drawing to him with enormous admiration Jews and non-Jews from various backgrounds and interests.

Throughout his life Magnes also took on the role of critical Jewish intellect, most infamously during the 1930s and 1940s as the leading Zionist proponent for a binational plan for Palestine. As such, he raised issues with which Jewish leaders were uncomfortable, offered a moral voice even when moral issues seemed irrelevant to political circumstances, and consistently took a divisive stand. That he so often spoke out against those with whom he worked reflected his adversarial personality, his incessant need to stand out. Magnes’s independence, aloofness, and sententious attitude operated as repellents, antagonizing Jewish leaders and Jewish communities uncomfortable with his activities.

Thus, Magnes’s life is full of contradictions. His idealism and charisma attracted followers. His stubborn dissent pushed people away. The conceptualization of Magnes as an American Jewish nonconformist offers an understanding of this complex individual and his contradictory public life.

On a personal level Magnes also had his admirers and detractors. For some, like Gershom Scholem, a professor at the Hebrew University during Magnes’s tenure as chancellor and president, Magnes was a role model of internal courage because he insisted on being a free man and refused to be intimidated by the public. When Magnes’s political adversary David Ben-Gurion was asked which American Jewish leader he regarded most highly, he replied Magnes because he was almost the only one who came to live in Palestine. Others found Magnes to be dismissive and haughty. Rabbi Marcus Friedlaender, who boarded with the Magnes family in Oakland for a time, wrote very unfavorably about Judah Magnes after meeting up with him years later. The adult Magnes, Friedlaender complained, was condescending and cold.¹ Magnes could impress, but he could equally quite easily offend.

Sometimes attractive, other times irritating, Magnes was both accepted and rejected by Jews in America and Mandatory Palestine. When Jewish communities needed someone to unify Jewish factions or raise money for Jewish causes, he won leadership and influential positions. When his activities potentially compromised the aims of Jewish groups or leaders, when he challenged the status quo, Magnes was dropped as quickly as he was embraced. His failures were many and reveal a man who stubbornly maintained his political positions while asking others to compromise theirs, who ran his institutions in an autocratic fashion, and who constantly dismissed his opposition. His unwavering independence often brought him against more powerful forces, dooming him to frustration and failure.

I am more a talker than a writer, Magnes once explained to his wife, Beatrice.² Consequently, while he expressed himself through speeches, pamphlets, and short articles, he never published any distinguished works. The Jewish public did not see his vision, only his politics; Jews therefore responded to his political position and not his ideas. Even while Magnes spent the last nineteen years of his life refining his binational plan for Palestine, intended to construct a peaceful cooperative relationship between Jews and Arabs, the ideological basis on which it was based remained latent within the specifics of the plan. Whereas Martin Buber, another leading proponent of binationalism, expressed his ideas as being firmly based on his religious humanism and philosophy of dialogue, Magnes’s ethical-liberal Zionist ideal remained undeveloped.³ Magnes admitted that his binational plan was not a blueprint ready for implantation. Rather, he maintained that he publicized his plan in the hopes that others would develop it. But few were interested in such a radical proposal.

As one searches to understand Judah L. Magnes, one cannot ignore Arthur Goren’s comment that it is difficult to find a unifying theme for his [Magnes’s] public life.⁴ Throughout his life Magnes lived in several worlds simultaneously, was influenced by a variety of intellectual traditions, and participated in a diverse array of social movements.⁵ To date, scholars have not arrived at a consensus on how to characterize him. In Zionist history and studies of the Arab-Jewish conflict, Magnes is often portrayed as the naïve binationalist. Though his ideological and mediating roles are discussed, the American influences on his ideas and activities tend to be ignored. In American Jewish history he is remembered for both his successes and failures in organizing American Jewry.⁶

While there are some excellent biographies written about Magnes’s contemporaries,⁷ scholars have noted that a full-fledged biography of the controversial pacifist and Hebrew University president awaits.⁸ There is biographical material, but it is incomplete and disparate. A collection of articles about Magnes edited by William Brinner and Moses Rischin, for example, reveals Magnes’s multifaceted character, but it does not offer a coherent understanding of him. In all fairness, though, as Rischin explained in his introduction, the collection was intended to provoke interest so others would follow it up.⁹ This book is an answer to that call.

To understand Magnes’s complexity, this biography will focus on his American and Jewish identities as the driving forces that shaped his ideas and activities both in America and the Yishuv. The interaction, discord, and synchronization of these two forces, amid dramatic historical change for both America and the Jewish people, reveal a man struggling to conceptualize what it means to be a modern American Jew. Most prominently, as a result of this tension and throughout his public life, Magnes constantly straddled the lines between Jewish leader and critical Jewish intellect, between devotion to Jewish institutions and individual autonomy. In his public life, he never figured out how to strike the balance between these two roles, perhaps because he placed little importance on finding that balance.

This biography is the story of how an American Jew immersed in American Jewish life, Zionism, and Jewish life in Palestine emerged as a rebel against the dominant strains of all three. By contextualizing Magnes’s life, this book seeks to understand not only what made Magnes unique, but also to explore what in the American Jewish experience made it possible for such an extraordinary individual to emerge.

Even when he won important leadership positions, Magnes did not aspire to be a distinguished Jewish leader. Instead, his public life revolved around actively involving himself in the central issues of the Jewish world. He genuinely wanted what was best for the Jewish people and for Jewish institutions to be effective. For himself, he imagined being a part of a large social transformation of Jewish life. At the same time, he was profoundly aware that his dissent created enemies, caused rifts, and disrupted important projects. Prepared to be disliked, even hated, Magnes continued throughout his life to take unpopular public positions on controversial issues based on his conceptions of American values and Jewish ethics as well as his pride in the Jewish people. A great admirer of the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, he devoted himself to principled self-reliance in all his Jewish activities. He sanctimoniously acted with relentless and single-minded energy on what he believed to be the correct path for the Jewish people, constantly projecting his individual autonomy. Ultimately, Magnes placed his individual conscience as the primary vehicle for his actions, with the goal of establishing his idealistic vision of the Jewish people. Anything less would have been a violation of his sense of self as an American Jew.

A pacifist and idealist, an agitator and dissenter, Magnes’s ideas and activities were not characteristic of American Jews during the era of his public life, or any era for that matter. Rather, Magnes occupies a singular place in American Jewish history. An ardent Zionist, he left America with his family and moved to Palestine in 1922 at a time when very few American Zionists were willing to take such a bold and uncertain step. Throughout his life, in both America and Palestine, he dared to publicly take extremely unpopular and contentious positions. He courageously refused to compromise his stances and retreat into silence. Consequently, he continuously moved between the center and periphery of Jewish life in the United States and Mandatory Palestine.

Nevertheless, Magnes operated as a Jewish leader and critical Jewish intellect engaged in the process of discovering how to be an American Jew and how the American Jewish community should function. In his various postures, he ensured that Jewish public life was vibrant and diverse and not controlled by any one dominant strain within Jewry. Despite his failures, and despite his transient residence between the center and periphery of Jewish life, his life depicts the heterogeneous and contested nature of the modern American Jewish experience. Magnes was an American Jewish nonconformist who, with all his contradictions, was emblematic of the American Jewish experience during the first half of the twentieth century.

Throughout his adult life, Magnes confronted the major issues facing modern American Jews and attempted to resolve the dilemmas they faced by reinventing Jewish identity and Jewish communal life.¹⁰ A study of Magnes’s life reveals the entire process of reinvention, with both the ideological and experiential elements upon which it was based. Magnes was a nonconformist in his times, but as a man of his times he also embodied the struggle to be an American Jew.

In his public activities Magnes drew on several strands within American Jewish culture, negotiated between American Jewish subgroups, and incorporated American progressive ideas. In the process, he reconceptualized American Jewish life based on a Jewish national ideal not only as a response to assimilation and fragmentation, but also as a means of overcoming the fear and intolerance that afflicted the American Jewish community.¹¹ Magnes forged a Jewish national ideal that incorporated American progressive notions of pluralism, democracy, and nonpartisanship with cultural Zionism to reconstruct American Jewish public life. He then employed American progressive organizational strategies as the tool for that construction.¹² His activities in American Jewish organizational and political life were a product of his progressive Zionist ideal and reveal a larger agenda: Magnes was trying to fashion American Jews as an ethnic group wherein diversity was possible within a construct of Jewish solidarity. That Magnes’s efforts to realize this vision were contested by other progressive Zionists demonstrates how the interplay of American progressivism and Zionism, and its relation to American Jewish politics, produced a gradation of incongruous expressions.

Similarly, as Magnes sought to redefine Jewish public life in America, he also engaged in a public debate on the American Jewish conception of America itself. In carving out his image of Jewishness in America, Magnes presented to Jews a pluralistic mold of America into which Jewish distinctiveness could fit. But Magnes’s efforts were again highly contested and thereby illuminate the fierce struggle among American Jews to define what it meant to be Jewish in America.

Magnes’s ideological outlook evolved by the time he moved to Palestine, and his conception of the Hebrew University and binational plan clearly reflect this. The events surrounding the First World War and Magnes’s experiences during that time period served as a transformative moment in his ideological development. He emerged into the postwar era deeply concerned about the dangers of nationalism and its affects on minority rights. At issue for him were the limits of liberalism regarding tolerance and what this meant for the Zionist movement. Magnes responded to these concerns and experiences by forging an ethical-liberal Zionist ideal. He based this on his cultural Zionism, Reform Judaism, and American progressive ideals that combined ethical universalism with Jewish particularism within a pluralistic framework. Magnes offered an alternative discourse for Zionism. To substitute Zionist claims to power that made tolerance necessary, he offered a language that emphasized the prestige, the liberal and ethical reputation of the Jewish nation to stand for the equality of all nations based on democratic principles. His belief in the superiority of the Jewish nation based on its values, which had to be preserved at all cost, permeated his words and deeds in Palestine.¹³ Zionist policy toward Arabs, Magnes maintained, should be a policy that went beyond tolerance and encouraged Arab national autonomy in equilibrium with Jewish national autonomy. Magnes intended the Hebrew University to act as a crucible to forge a Jewish national culture based on his Zionist ideal and proposed a binational state to be its political realization. Magnes’s binational plan and mediating efforts with Arabs were thus extensions of his Zionist ideal: he wanted to change the objectives of the Zionist movement and challenged Zionist leaders to confront the moral problems of their nationalist objectives. As Joseph Heller has aptly argued, under Magnes’s leadership, the Ihud association was ideologically within a Zionist opposition against Ben-Gurion.¹⁴

In analyzing Magnes’s Jewish national ideal, then, the relation between his Zionism and his American democratic ideals will be discussed at length. Magnes was just one of many American Zionists who infused their Zionism with American progressive ideals. But American Zionists during the Progressive Era understood the terms democracy and Zionism very differently. This helps explain why Magnes so radically differed from many of his American Zionist contemporaries. Magnes was neither an apologist ready to appease the Arabs, as some historians have portrayed him, nor an advocate for sacrificing Zionism to the ideals of democracy.¹⁵ Rather, he must be understood as an ardent American Zionist whose conception of Zionism and democracy were indivisible and combined to form a unique response to the Arab-Jewish conflict; for Magnes, the Zionist program would only be achieved once there was pluralistic democracy in Palestine.

Magnes’s uniquely American Zionist vision had important implications when he moved to Palestine in 1922, where he remained for the next twenty-six years of his life. While there is also the tendency among scholars to minimize the significance of Magnes’s life in Palestine by portraying him as an idealist bound by rigid theories who tended to ignore changes wrought with time,¹⁶ this biography questions the characterization of Magnes as naïve. Instead, it presents him as a transmigrant who at once fully immersed himself in Jewish public culture in Mandatory Palestine while always identifying himself as an American.¹⁷ A number of scholars have taken a transnational approach to show how Americans have attempted to translate, with various degrees of success, their American experiences and ideas to Israel. As S. Ilan Troen explains, the inability of Americans to apply their experience is significant because it serves to highlight distinctions between the two societies.¹⁸

Conceptualizing Magnes as a transmigrant enables us to understand him as someone who adjusted to his new world in a syncretic way by adapting the values of American institutions as he negotiated through the values and institutions of the Yishuv. During the years that he physically resided in Mandatory Palestine, Magnes occupied a transmigrant space within overlapping spheres where he operated as a migrant from America who at once maintained his ideological and personal connections to America while being neither fully integrated nor completely separate from the Yishuv. Ideologically, his American ideas and experiences played a central role in his life in Palestine, while the activities that consumed his life focused on cultural and political issues central to Jewish life in Palestine. Nor was Magnes completely isolated in Palestine. That he formed important alliances with a small group of German Zionists living in the Yishuv speaks to the ways in which his American ideals and experiences were to some extent translated in meaningful ways across national boundaries, albeit to another marginalized group of immigrants.¹⁹

Magnes, as we will see, actively involved himself in the Yishuv during the twenty-six years he lived in Mandatory Palestine, but he remained very much an American Jew. Ideologically, his goals and activities were motivated and shaped by American progressive notions of democracy, pluralism, and nonpartisanship. American Reform Judaism, with its emphasis on ethics and universalism, also influenced his thinking. This biography will analyze Magnes’s influence on the Yishuv as an American Jew. But it will also examine the ways in which, coming as he did with an American identity and perspective, he encountered difficulties realizing his ideas in Palestine. Despite the oppositional stances he took, Magnes brought American ideals to Palestine. However much they were contested in Palestine, his American-inspired ideas shaped Jewish public life in Palestine and influenced both the development of the Hebrew University and Zionist policy toward Arabs, although in different ways.

Magnes’s life in Mandatory Palestine and his perspective on the Arab-Jewish conflict provide an understanding of the uniqueness of the American Jewish experience. On the one hand, raised on the belief in the primacy of the individual and civil rights, Magnes saw the Zionist leadership’s policy toward Arabs in Palestine as unjust. On the other hand, the patterns of disputes between American Jewish subgroups and the ways in which they were resolved (even if only temporarily) provided the lens through which he viewed the Arab-Jewish conflict.²⁰

Magnes’s perspective meant that he experienced Palestine during the 1930s and 1940s in a way different from the Eastern European-born Zionists living there. Instead of seeking to increase Jewish power to confront the problems facing Jews, Magnes sought cooperative solutions. He had not experienced powerlessness or anti-Semitism in America, nor did he fear it. Instead, as he himself wrote in the early 1940s, he experienced an America that offered the possibility of men of all races and origins and creeds living together cooperatively as well as the opportunity for criticism. Thus Magnes defined himself in 1941 by stating that I am politically an American.²¹ Moreover, his experience in America during the First World War, when American nationalism seemed to destroy these very values, was the lens through which he later saw Zionist leaders. Consequently, he responded to the crisis in Palestine in a unique way. Magnes did not see the crisis facing Jews in Palestine as a problem of powerlessness. Instead, he saw the dilemmas and limitations of tolerance, the ambiguities of liberalism, that threatened his image of the ethical-liberal Jewish nation. His response, for example, to the historical developments in the 1930s was different from his adversary David Ben-Gurion. If, as Shabtai Teveth argues, by the late 1930s David Ben-Gurion now saw a world in which force, not justice, prevailed and thus now necessity demanded that he lower his moral sights,²² Magnes saw a world in which tolerance had also failed; and thus he searched for other means to limit the potential dangers of nationalism while still retaining the ideal of national self-determination. In 1937, Magnes explained himself to the Palestinian Arab educator and writer Wadi Tarazi: When I saw what the free exercise of nationality did these days to the great peoples such as the Germans, what it did to the Arabs, what it did to the Jews, I felt that Palestine could again become a holy land by exercising restraint upon the nationalism of both Jews and Arabs here. It would be good for both of us that we should have to think of each other and not ourselves alone.²³

A transnational perspective provides us with an understanding of Magnes’s response to the Arab-Jewish conflict as ideologically based on his American values and experiences—and that it was difficult for these values and experiences to have any meaningful translation into the dominant discourse within the Yishuv during the 1930s and 1940s. In dramatic contrast, Magnes’s American ideals and experiences in terms of his vision for and administration of the Hebrew University did translate in many meaningful ways to the Yishuv. That is not to say that there was not resistance to Magnes in University circles, for certainly there was. Rather, by comparing Magnes’s administration of the Hebrew University to his activities in Arab-Jewish relations, we see a dramatic difference in how they were received by the Yishuv, even though both efforts were profoundly influenced by his American ideas and experiences. Such a comparison reveals that Magnes was much more successful at adapting his American ideas to the Hebrew University than he was at adapting the same to Zionist politics in terms of the Arab-Jewish conflict. The explanation for this highlights the complexity of Magnes’s life as an American Zionist living in Mandatory Palestine, as it reveals that American ideas resonated well in some circumstances in Mandatory Palestine but not others.

Magnes’s relationships with Jews living in America also shaped his identity and actions while he resided in Palestine. Through his correspondence and political ties, as well as several visits to America, Magnes re-presented himself to the American Jewish community, from the rebel against American Jewry to the representative of American Jewry. His correspondence, political ties, and short visits also made America consistently immediate and real for him, not just an abstract idea or distant memory. When he lived in Palestine as one of a very few American Jews, maintaining a continuity with the American Jewish community enabled Magnes to affirm his personal identity as an American Jew.²⁴

In Palestine, as a representative of American non-Zionist interests, Magnes served as a transnational link between American non-Zionists and the Yishuv. While both Magnes and the American non-Zionists were ideologically concerned with Jewish life in Palestine, the non-Zionists departed from Magnes in their resistance to a definition of the Jewish people as a nation and the idea of a Jewish state.²⁵ Nevertheless, Magnes’s conception of Zionism was palpable for non-Zionists because he offered an alternative vision from mainstream Zionism that did not emphasize Zionism’s political objectives. In this way, Magnes and the non-Zionists were able to form a partnership across both ideological and physical boundaries. The relationship was mutually beneficial. Magnes provided American non-Zionists with the opportunity to participate in upbuilding the Yishuv without having to share Zionist aims or define the Jews as a national group. The non-Zionists, equally, provided Magnes with a source of financial, political, and moral support while he acted on their interests in Palestine. This is particularly true in terms of his activities regarding the Hebrew University and provides further explanation for his relative success in this endeavor. American Jewish money and moral support enabled him to shape the Hebrew University in significant ways, and without such connections it is unlikely he would have been able to exert as much influence as he did. Because of their political clout, Magnes’s links with American non-Zionists also played an important role in enabling him to become an oppositional voice Zionist leaders had to contend with when considering Arab-Jewish relations. Magnes’s connections across borders thus enabled him to emerge as an extremely influential figure in Mandatory Palestine.

1

A Jewish Boy in California

JUDAH MAGNES’S FAMILY, Jewish education, and California culture and society each played a significant role in shaping his identity.¹ During his youth, Magnes neither shed his inherited Jewish identity nor resisted the influences of the larger culture around him; as a young boy, the two worlds in which he lived were not mutually exclusive. In Oakland, he developed a strong sense of both his American and Jewish identities.²

Magnes was a child of immigrant Jews. His father, David Magnes, was raised in a Hasidic home in Przedborg, Poland. At fifteen, fleeing the Polish revolt against Czarist Russia, David Magnes arrived in the United States during the American Civil War. Joining his brother Abraham, David settled in San Francisco. Abraham, much older than David, had left Poland in 1849 and headed to San Francisco where he found many other Jews like himself searching for gold. In the decades following the gold rush, the San Francisco Jewish community flourished and established itself as the center of Jewish life in the American West. Many San Francisco Jews, including Abraham Magnes, earned themselves success in the retail clothing business. In 1880, with about 16,000 Jews living in San Francisco, it could boast the largest Jewish population in any American city besides New York.³ Several years after David Magnes arrived, he too established a business for himself alongside the other Jewish shops in the city, a women’s clothing store.

While the number of Jews with Polish backgrounds living in the United States prior to 1880 was not insignificant, the large majority of Jews immigrating to the United States during the period between 1820 and 1880 came from Germany and other Central European countries influenced by German culture, such as Prussia, Hungary, and Austria.⁴ Magnes’s maternal grandparents, Pauline and Jacob Abrahamson, after prospering in Prussia, sailed across the Atlantic in the 1860s with a later surge of these immigrants. The entire Abrahamson family disembarked in California and subsequently opened a department store in Oakland. Although Oakland Jews numbered less than 1,000, Jewish stores lined the Oakland business district.⁵

A quiet and observant Jew, Jacob Abrahamson followed traditional Judaism. He insisted the family keep a strictly kosher home. The domineering Pauline offered a direct contrast to her husband both in personality and interests. Pauline had an intense passion for German culture and made every effort to pass on her cultural heritage to the younger generation. For German Jews like Pauline, German culture, particularly the German language, was a sign of cultural sophistication. Pauline engendered in Magnes’s mother, Sophie, an adoration for German culture, which she passed on to her own children. Sophie placed particular importance on her children’s fluency in German. She also acquired her mother’s strong personality. Independent in thought and action, Sophie exhibited a clear mind and opinions of her own, opinions that she freely imposed on others.⁶

Sophie married David Magnes in 1874 and set up their home in San Francisco. On July 5, 1877, Sophie gave birth to her first son and bestowed him with the Hebrew name of Judah Leib Magnes, after David’s beloved father. Sophie gave her son the English name Julian Leon, but family and friends, including Sophie, simply called him Leon.⁷ Within several years, the family moved back to Sophie’s hometown of Oakland; and by the time Leon reached his teenage years, he had a younger brother, Isaac, and three sisters, Eva, Tess, and Rosalind. In Oakland the Magnes family lived the middle-class lifestyle that Sophie had enjoyed as a child. Her children were exposed to many forms of culture and made regular trips to the theater and opera. They also ate the finest cuisine, including French food, Sophie’s favorite.⁸

Leon adored his mother. He admired her intelligence and consulted her regarding a wide array of issues in both his personal and academic life. But it was his mother’s uprightness and sincerity, her courage to act on her own principles without question that made the deepest impression on Leon. Internalizing what he learned from his mother, Leon expected from himself only to do that which I believe right without fear.⁹

As a result of the positive environment he had at home, Leon developed immense self-confidence during his youth. Despite the arrival of four siblings, Leon always remained the pride and joy of the family. Both parents placed their highest hopes on their first son and consistently assured him of his abilities. Even as his brother Isaac sometimes exhibited jealousy, Leon’s siblings admired him and expressed loving support for their brother’s ambitions. Leon, moreover, exceeded all the expectations placed on him, excelling in school, athletics, and Jewish studies. Keenly aware of his intellectual abilities, however, Leon sometimes appeared patronizing and precocious.¹⁰

The Jewish atmosphere in the Magnes home reflected the practices and attitude of Reform Judaism. The Reform movement, which originated in Germany during the early part of the nineteenth century, represented an effort to modernize Judaism by challenging the authority of traditional religious law. The American Reform movement, though, really began to develop in the late 1850s when a surge of educated German Jewish immigrants poured into America. These immigrants included Reform-trained rabbis searching for pulpits. Secularly educated German Jews immigrating to America joined Reform rabbis with a desire to make concrete changes in Judaism. Meanwhile, many German Jews who had already settled in the United States perceived the Reform movement as a religious form of Americanization and embraced it as a means of adapting to American culture. As German Jews saw it, Reform Judaism offered them a means by which to minimize their differences from Protestant America and display American cultural and intellectual values within a Jewish context. Many synagogues slowly evolved into Reform as congregations insisted on implementing Reform practices and eliminating what they perceived as unnecessary and backward customs. By the 1860s and 1870s, organs, choirs, and mixed seating appeared in synagogues as part of an effort to integrate middle-class Protestant practices into Judaism. Many American Reforming Jews refused to follow the authority of religious law. All these efforts culminated in 1885 when nineteen Reform rabbis convened in Pittsburgh to establish the principles of the Reform movement. The Pittsburgh Platform tried to demonstrate the similarity between Reform Judaism and American ideals. Reform rabbis credited the Enlightenment, for example, as the source for both the Reform movement and American democracy. In addition, the Pittsburgh Platform presented Judaism as beneficial to American society, offering the Jewish sense of justice and righteousness to a modern world full of evil.¹¹

The Reform movement spread west fairly rapidly and had reached San Francisco by the 1860s. Oakland Jews, following the trend in the rest of the country, gradually proceeded toward Reform Judaism. In 1881, six years after they founded the First Hebrew Synagogue, Oakland Jewry hired Rabbi Meyer Levy as their first rabbi. Although trained at the Orthodox Jew’s College in London, Levy was flexible enough to incorporate the changes the more Reform-minded Oakland Jews wanted; an observant Jew, he also acknowledged some of the advantages of Reform Judaism. His willingness to compromise with his congregation showed him to be in many ways nondenominational. During the 1880s, a choir and organ music was introduced, and the minyan was no longer required for prayer. Although it appears there was little animosity between the congregation and Levy, he left Oakland in 1891. The congregation fully planted itself in the Reform movement two years later when it secured the services of the Reform-trained Rabbi Marcus Friedlaender.¹²

The Magnes family immersed themselves in the First Hebrew Synagogue and mirrored the congregation’s sympathies with Reform. Joining many Jews of the era, David and Sophie wanted to avoid any association with Orthodoxy and worked to integrate themselves into American society, and they perceived the Reform movement as the best way to maintain their Jewish identity in the United States without having to worry about anti-Semitism. In addition to moving toward Reform, David Magnes impressed upon his family the need to show that they were truly American. Fourth of July celebrations were very important to the Magnes family because, as David wrote in an apologetic tone, we Jews have certainly good cause to call this country blessed. We enjoy all the freedom religious and otherwise.¹³

David Magnes’s desire to be accepted by American society, however, did not negate his Jewish identity. Within the confines of the Magnes home, David imbued his children with an intense appreciation for Judaism. The Magnes family kept a kosher home and celebrated the major Jewish holidays. At family gatherings the joys of David Magnes’s traditional upbringing flowed forth in the form of Hasidic melodies. Leon was deeply moved by his father’s love for Judaism and became interested in Judaism at a very young age. He later told his father that I am a Jew with all my heart and soul . . . is due mainly to you. . . . When it comes to an understanding of Jewish matters, I know where to look for help and sympathy—to you. David Magnes was also very active at the First Hebrew Synagogue where he was both a trustee and chairman of the Sunday School.¹⁴

Thus Leon Magnes grew up in an American Jewish home unusual for the time. American Reform Judaism stood as the centerpiece, but behind lurked manifestations of a more traditional Eastern European Judaism, whether in the form of his maternal grandfather’s Orthodoxy or his father’s Hasidic memories. His Jewish education in Oakland reflected a similar combination of Reform Judaism with traditional Jewish underpinnings.

David Magnes wanted his son to have a rich Jewish education and sent him to the First Hebrew Synagogue for Bible and Hebrew instruction. There Leon came under the influence of Ray (Rachel) Frank, who taught Bible classes and later became the superintendent of the Sabbath School. An impassioned speaker and writer, in the 1890s Frank also spoke and published her views on Jewish issues. Often critical of Reform, she called for increased spirituality in the synagogue. In particular, she asked parents to stress the importance of prayer to their children. Shabbat, she additionally felt, would have more meaning if it were celebrated ‘Orthodox style.’ Her influence on young Leon was significant. He referred affectionately to his teacher as Aunt Ray, and his interest in Judaism was inspired by her. Even after he left Oakland for college, Leon continued to keep in touch with the teacher that so influenced him. Rabbi Levy, also deeply interested in Leon, saw tremendous promise in him and was convinced that he would later become a rabbi. With Levy and Frank’s enthusiasm and encouragement, Leon blossomed. Highly motivated, he displayed great proficiency in Hebrew and a keen understanding of the basic tenets of Judaism.¹⁵

Leon proved most impressive at his bar mitzvah in 1890, when he led a more traditional service than the congregation at the First Hebrew Synagogue was used to. For example, he read the entire musaph, an additional service uncommon at the time in Reform bar mitzvahs. His desire to do this shows Frank’s influence on Leon, Levy’s confidence in the young man, and also Leon’s own desire to depart from his more Reform-minded parents who tended to shun Orthodox practices. But while the service reflected Leon’s interest in the traditional Jewish prayers, his bar mitzvah speech espoused Reform ideals. Echoing the principles of the Pittsburgh Platform, he accentuated the value of Jewish ethics. The importance of a Jewish education, Leon argued, is for a Jewish boy to learn Jewish ethical teachings.¹⁶

Leon’s bar mitzvah made a sensation. The Oakland Tribune published his speech and praised him for his ease and grace.¹⁷ The news of Leon’s bar mitzvah quickly spread beyond Oakland. Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger, who headed the pulpit at the Bay Area’s most eminent Reform synagogue, Temple Emanu-El of San Francisco, learned of Leon soon after his bar mitzvah. In many ways a self-made man, Voorsanger was an immigrant from Holland who claimed to have been educated at a rabbinical seminary there, though he was never actually ordained. Nevertheless, the Emanu-El rabbi garnered for himself quite a reputation, becoming one of the leaders of the more radical wing of American Reform Judaism. Minimizing the rituals and legalism of traditional Judaism, Voorsanger felt the central value of Judaism was ethical monotheism. Similar to many Protestant clergymen in late nineteenth century America, influenced by Darwinism, he linked religion with the theory of evolution. He believed that Jewish ethics that stressed the need to solve social problems contributed to the moral progress of the world.¹⁸

Impressed by reports he heard from Rabbi Levy, Voorsanger invited Leon to study the Talmud under his guidance. Leon must have been very excited to have received Voorsanger’s invitation. The opportunity to study Talmud with the rabbi at Temple Emanu-El was at the time considered an immense honor indeed. The Talmud is essentially a compilation of Jewish Oral Law written by Jewish scholars up until the early Middle Ages. It consists of more than just dry legalistic writings and commentaries; rather, the Talmud flows with theoretical debates, legends, and philosophic musings. Ethics are a particularly important aspect of the Talmud; one section, the Pirket Avot (Ethics of the Fathers), is entirely devoted to narrative illustrations of ethical teachings.¹⁹ On many an afternoon, following a day full of classes at Oakland High School, Leon crossed the San Francisco Bay to meet with the Emanu-El rabbi. Voorsanger quite rapidly developed great respect for his young protégé and acted not only as Leon’s teacher, but also as his career advisor and friend.²⁰

Leon excelled at Oakland High School, the largest high school in the Bay Area, known for its academic excellence and preparation of students for university. Motivated by the school’s encouragement of personal development, Leon also actively participated in extracurricular activities. He was the star pitcher for the high school baseball team and assistant editor of the school newspaper. Interested in forensics, he joined the debating society at Oakland High School, an experience that provided him with the courage to fear no one. In addition to all these extracurricular activities, Leon eagerly explored his surroundings. California, he wrote, above all places, calls to a boy to come out of doors.²¹ Free spirited and adventuresome, with his friend Jack London he took excursions to the more seedy parts of Oakland, often hung around a local saloon and eagerly waited for his favorite minor-league baseball players to come outside. While little information is available on Magnes’s friendship with London, it seems to have had some affect on him. Toward the end of his life, Magnes recalled being inspired by London’s rebelliousness and passion for life. When jotting down his childhood memories, he highlighted Jack London’s burning eyes—as bright as the fires downstairs in the ferry boat.²²

During Magnes’s youth, the Bay Area experienced tremendous political turmoil. The onslaught of progressive reform transformed the political atmosphere in the late 1880s and 1890s. Irish-Catholic identity was institutionalized. Female solidarity gained political strength. Municipal structures were reformed. All of this happened in an increasingly contested public culture.²³ Unfortunately, the spotty material available on Magnes’s youth in California provides little information about how these changes affected him. We can probably assume that politics was often discussed within the Magnes home, but where his parents stood on the political debates or how the family experienced progressive reform is unclear.

What we do know is that Magnes read the local press, especially William Randolph Hearst’s Examiner. That in itself is telling. As Philip Ethington has demonstrated, Hearst led the transformation of the print media in San Francisco in the late 1880s and early 1890s by creating a commercialized and sensationalistic form of journalism. By changing journalism, he changed his reader from a participant in the public sphere to a consumer with interests.²⁴ Two of Hearst’s writers, Ambrose Bierce and Arthur McEwen, were early muckraking journalists who offered a moral voice as they exposed corruption in big business and politics. Both men prided themselves on their independence of thought, which they believed essential to give credence to their moral position. Bierce’s column Prattle, which gained national fame for its cynicism and wit, lashed out at everything from business exploitation to venal politicians. In addition to working as Hearst’s editorialist, McEwen published his own weekly Letter, which advocated free expression. Willing to take the unpopular side when . . . the unpopular side was right, McEwen sought in his weekly magazine only to speak out truthfully. Although every aspect of passing or permanent interest concerned him, like Bierce, McEwen concentrated on exposing corruption in politics and big business.²⁵

During his teenage years, Magnes venerated Bierce and McEwen. In 1894, around the same time that McEwen began his Letter, Leon, then in his senior year at Oakland High School, started working as an assistant editor for the school newspaper, Aegis. Using the pseudonym Ambrose Arthur Bierce McEwen in deference to his heroes, Leon created a column called My Opinion that, like McEwen’s Letter, stood for free expression. While the young Magnes’s column did not discuss the larger social issues addressed by Bierce and McEwen, he did model himself after them in seeking to expose corruption and advocate reform on issues pertinent to his readers. In one article, he criticized the Oakland High School administration for abusing its authority. By condemning the administration, he hoped to mobilize the senior students to change the graduation ceremonies. Leon also made a moral indictment against the Calorina Student, a student paper of a local Baptist college, for its criticism of the University of California. Imitating Bierce’s cutting style, he reprimanded sectarianism. The slurs of the Calorina Student, he asserted, illustrated that denominational colleges did not tolerate difference or secularism.²⁶

Bierce and McEwen’s influence on Magnes went far beyond his columns in the Aegis. His columns, rather, reflected his developing persona, his individualism and moralism, reinforced by these two writers who provided models for individual public expression and action. During his teenage years Leon adopted their biting and sarcastic language, their supercilious styles, their unwavering commitment to asserting their own conscience. As he matured, he applied their styles to his own public activities. In his eyes, they were the best examples of what it meant to be an American, and he wanted to be like them.

Growing up in Oakland, furthermore, Magnes was exposed to the ethnic diversity that marked the Bay Area. During the last part of the nineteenth century, California functioned as a gathering place for migrants from all over the world. Between 1860 and 1900, the foreign born in California consisted of between one-quarter to one-third of the total population. In 1890, of the nearly three hundred thousand residents of San Francisco, one hundred twenty-five thousand were born outside the United States. Having migrated from across both the Pacific and Atlantic, Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Portuguese, Jews, Irish, Italian, French, and Hispanics all merged in the Bay Area.²⁷

European immigrants experienced relatively little prejudice in California; Jews and Irish, in particular, felt much more comfortable in San Francisco than in other parts of the country. Historians have demonstrated that white Californians bonded in their hatred against nonwhite immigrants, particularly the Chinese. Like many European immigrants, the Chinese came to California at mid-century in search of gold. But Chinese labor was also strategically sought by the railroad barons to divide their workers along racial lines. The racial hatred fostered by businessmen continued throughout the nineteenth century. As more and more Chinese arrived, white Americans perceived the Chinese as a threat to racial purity. Many white Americans involved themselves in a movement that sought to exclude further Chinese immigration. Their campaign proved successful in 1882 when Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act. Yet, even when the doors were closed, the racial hatred persisted against Chinese immigrants already in California. The leading progressive reformer in San Francisco during the 1890s, James Duval Phelan, retained his popularity by presenting Chinese and Japanese immigrants as a threat to American civilization.²⁸ In Oakland, city ordinances restricted businesses commonly owned by Chinese, such as laundry and outside vendors. This forced many Chinese to leave the area.²⁹

California Jews were no exception in expressing animosity toward Chinese immigrants. Rabbi Voorsanger was one of those most vocally opposed to them. Eager to acculturate Jews to American life, he felt threatened by the Chinese, who continued to hold tightly to their ethnic heritage. The Chinese, he wrote, belongs to the nonassimilative race. He cannot mix with Caucasians. Like ambassadors of foreign powers, wherever he goes, he brings China with him.³⁰

In contrast to his mentor, Leon’s respect for ethnic differences, high ethical standards, and determination to take personal responsibility compelled him to question the racial prejudice he saw around him. His brother Isaac recalled several incidents where white boys in the neighborhood expressed their bigotry, often violently, toward local Chinese children. Leon, quick to respond, courageously rose up in their defense. Deeply affected by the prejudice he witnessed against Chinese immigrants in California, in college he wrote about the economic and political discrimination against the Chinese. Later, as he developed his ideas of cultural pluralism while working as a rabbi, he explicitly stated that nonwhite ethnic groups such as the Chinese and Japanese should have equal rights with whites. Even while living in Jerusalem, towards the end of his life, Magnes painfully recalled the anti-Chinese riots in San Francisco during my youth.³¹

Even as he defended minority groups, Leon remained part of the mainstream culture in the Bay Area and continued to excel in many areas. Leon’s scholastic achievements in the Classical Studies program at Oakland High School won him the honor of graduating as valedictorian in June 1894. During his senior year in high school, Leon grappled with whether to pursue a secular or religious career. He had applied and was accepted at both the University of California at Berkeley and Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. Leon felt these options forced him to choose between his Jewish and American identities. In spite of his interest in Judaism, he did not foresee himself a rabbi and thus preferred the option of attending the University of California. Although not as religiously inclined as either her husband or her father, however, Sophie had designs for her son to become a rabbi.³² Knowing how deeply he would disappoint his mother if he chose an alternative career path, he decided to attend Hebrew Union College to follow the trail towards a rabbinical career. Leon’s brother Isaac later recalled, As much as mother hoped for it, Leon told me he wasn’t interested, he didn’t want to be a rabbi. I told him how very happy he would make [M]ama. So Leon decided he would go to Hebrew Union College but that he wouldn’t stay if he didn’t like it.³³

At the time, however, the Magnes family was experiencing some financial difficulties; David Magnes’s business had failed, and he was working as a clerk. To help pay Leon’s education expenses, Isaac dropped out of school and went to work. That Magnes’s family persuaded him to go to Hebrew Union College despite their money troubles reveals the extent to which his family devoted themselves to young Leon’s success. With the financial and moral support of his family behind him, two months after he graduated from high school, Leon boarded a train for Cincinnati on route to Hebrew Union College, the center of nineteenth-century American Reform Judaism.

2

The Making of an American Jewish Dissenter, the Making of an American Zionist

LEON MAGNES came of age during a dramatic moment in American Jewish history. As Jonathan Sarna has shown, the end of the nineteenth century was a period of Jewish awakening in America. American Jews, particularly young Jews, critical of the assimilationist trends in American Judaism, experienced a crisis of beliefs and values. In response, a new Jewish culture emerged, one that advocated for revitalizing the Jewish religion. While many of the leaders of this religious awakening consisted of a small group of laymen from Philadelphia, Jews throughout America joined in this process of cultural renewal, including American Reform rabbis. For some Reform rabbis, in spite of the general Reform opposition, Zionism functioned as the medium through which they sought to transform Reform Judaism and revitalize Jewish culture.¹

During his college years in Cincinnati and Germany, and his return to Cincinnati upon completion of his Ph.D., Leon Magnes was very much a part of this cultural renewal process. By studying his rebellion against Reform Judaism and the development of his interest in Zionism, we explore the entire process of Jewish awakening through the life of one individual. Of particular focus will be the complex relationship between Magnes’s increasing disenchantment with Reform Judaism and his gradual movement toward Zionism.²

Hebrew Union College

On a sultry August day in 1894, Leon’s train traveled through Mill Creek Valley on the final leg of the journey into Cincinnati. At the southern bend of the river, in a natural basin on its banks, lay the heart of Cincinnati. Three large hills that rose up approximately three hundred feet surrounded the expanding metropolis. With a population of about three hundred thousand people, the Queen City spread into the surrounding hills, occupying over thirty square miles. When Magnes disembarked at the station, he walked through an overcrowded industrial downtown that featured factories, warehouses, and markets. Arriving in a residential neighborhood close to Hebrew Union College, Magnes found the house of Moses Mielziner, a Professor of Talmud and a friend of Rabbi Voorsanger. With Mielziner’s assistance, Leon arranged to rent a room in a local boarding house.³

Hebrew Union College (HUC) was a relatively new institution when Leon Magnes arrived in 1894, having opened its doors as America’s first rabbinical seminary only twenty years earlier. Housed in a mansion on West Sixth Street in the fashionable western downtown area, it stood just around the corner from the Plum Street Reform Temple, the largest synagogue in Cincinnati. In the club district, a short walk northeast of HUC, fancy restaurants, hotels, and specialty shops lined the streets. Close by, the famous Cincinnati Music Hall attracted world-renowned symphonies.⁴

By the 1890s HUC had acquired a reputable name. In its first fifteen years the scholarship at HUC had remained open to question. Only Moses Mielziner received much respect in academic circles. But when Gotthard Deutsch (History), Max Margolis (Hebrew), and Moses Buttenweiser (Bible) were hired in the early 1890s, the status of HUC rose considerably. The library had an extensive collection. The student population was about one hundred.⁵

The HUC president, Isaac Mayer Wise, was a leader of American Reform Judaism during the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Wise, who served as HUC’s president until his death in 1900, always maintained that HUC had no intention of imposing Reform attitudes on its students. Recognizing the need for unity in American Jewry, he emphasized that his rabbinical seminary aimed at consolidating American Jews. HUC graduates could work at any synagogue, Wise constantly maintained, because students focused their studies on Classical Judaism and concentrated on original texts. Biblical exegesis and the Talmud, for example, were core courses. To ensure that the Jewish texts were understood in their original language, Hebrew grammar was also a central component of every student’s study. Modern Biblical criticism, though, was forbidden.⁶

With that said, the HUC curriculum was clearly slanted towards Reform. Courses in Jewish history and philosophy reflected a veering away from a strictly rabbinical education. In addition, similar to many Reform rabbis arriving from Germany, HUC students received a secular university education to complement their Jewish studies. Students traveled daily to the suburbs to study at the University of Cincinnati, a small but rapidly growing liberal arts institution. When Magnes arrived in 1894 there were 892 matriculating students, twelve professors, and twelve instructors. Like HUC, the University of Cincinnati elevated its standard of scholarship during the 1890s. Witnessing the improvements, residents began to comment that amidst the soot and smoke of industrial Cincinnati, intellectual life had emerged.⁷

Most significant, HUC’s emphasis on homiletics indicated its attempt to prepare rabbinical students for Reform congregations. Nineteenth-century Reformers transformed the rabbinical role from an interpreter of law to a minister based on the Christian model. By the 1890s the sermon rather than the actual Hebrew service constituted the source of religious meaning for many Reform Jews. Reflecting these sentiments, HUC required its seniors to deliver sermons in the college synagogue. Wise regarded the sermons as examinations in homiletics. The student magazine at HUC also published articles that specifically focused on the topic of preaching.⁸

HUC’s location in Cincinnati also rooted the college in the Reform movement. More than fifteen thousand Cincinnati Jews, predominantly of Central European origin, integrated into the surrounding non-Jewish communities by dispersing themselves in the suburban neighborhoods on the hills overlooking downtown Cincinnati. Well established on the Hilltop, German Jews joined the Chamber of Commerce, civic organizations, and fraternal orders. German Jews also actively participated in Cincinnati politics. For example, the 1900 mayoral election pitted two Jews, Alfred Cohen and Julius Fleischmann, against each other. Cincinnati’s German Jews also led Reform efforts to Americanize Judaism. Many traveled several miles down the hill to the Plum Street Synagogue. Additionally, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), a national Reform organization, was based in the Queen City. Cincinnati Jews provided most of the financial and leadership support for the UAHC. Directly tied to HUC, the UAHC provided the majority of HUC’s funds and appointed its board of governors. Many members of the HUC’s Board of Governors also lived in Cincinnati, establishing a very close relationship between Cincinnati Reform Jewry and HUC.⁹

As the college president, Wise ran the college’s daily activities and presided over the faculty. Although directly responsible to the board of governors, because his position was unsalaried, he never felt beholden to them.¹⁰ Wise’s paternalistic role earned him the respect of the HUC faculty and students. Every year HUC students planned a birthday celebration for Wise, a celebration that was part of HUC tradition and larger in scale than the students’ own graduation festivities.¹¹

Leon felt very comfortable when he first arrived at HUC. The pervasive Jewish atmosphere very much appealed to him. Outside the classroom, HUC provided Jewish activities and programs for its students. A literary society met weekly. A student publication, the HUC Journal, came out monthly and addressed a host of Jewish topics. Jewish leaders from a variety of viewpoints were constantly brought in to speak to the students. Moreover, in addition to attending daily services, students opened and closed each class with a prayer. Every Saturday afternoon, after worshiping at a local synagogue in the morning, students attended the HUC service conducted by upperclassmen. In the intimate setting at HUC, faculty treated students as if they were part of an extended family. When he first arrived in Cincinnati, the faculty greeted Leon with warmth and made every effort to welcome him. Quite rapidly