Chapter 3: I choose Palestine
"The first Palestinians I ever encountered were Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, who was to become Israel’s second president; Ya’akov Zerubavel, a well- known Labour-Zionist and writer, and David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Zvi and Ben-Gurion came to Milwaukee to recruit soldiers for the Jewish Legion in 1916, soon after they had been expelled from Palestine by the Turks and ordered never to return. Zerubavel, whom the Turks had sentenced to prison, had succeeded in escaping but was sentenced in absentia to fifteen years of penal servitude.
I had never met people like those Palestinians before nor heard stories like those they told about the Yishuv (...which had by then been reduced from some 85,000 to only 56,000). This was my first clue about how terribly it was suffering from the brutality of the Turkish regime, which had already brought normal life in the country to a virtual standstill. They were in a fever of anxiety about the fate of the Jews of Palestine and convinced that an effective Jewish claim could be made to the land of Israel after the war only if the Jewish people played a significant and visible military role, as Jews, in the fighting. In fact, they spoke about the Jewish Legion with such feeling that I immediately tried to volunteer for it - and was crushed when I learned that girls were not being accepted."
"Slowly, Zionism was beginning to fill my mind —and my life. I believed absolutely that as a Jew I belonged in Palestine and that as a Labour-Zionist I could do my full share within the yishuv to help attain the goals of social and economic equality. The time hadn’t quite come yet for me to decide to live there. But I knew that I was not going to be a parlour Zionist —advocating settlement in Palestine for others —and I refused to join the Labour-Zionist Party until I could make a binding decision."
"Right after the war, when anti-Semitic pogroms broke out in the Ukraine and Poland (those in the Ukraine being largely the responsibility of the notorious commander of the Ukrainian army, Simon Petlyura, whose units did away with whole Jewish communities), I helped to organize a protest march down one of Milwaukee’s main streets. The Jewish owner of a big department store in town got wind of my plans and asked me to come and see him. ‘I understand that you intend to lead a demonstration down Washington Avenue,’ he said. ‘If you do so, I want you to know that I shall leave town.’ I told him that I had no objection at all to his leaving town and that I had every intention of going on with the plans for the march. However unwise he thought it might be, I wasn’t at all worried about what people would think or say. There was nothing for the Jews to be ashamed of; on the contrary, I told him, I was sure that by showing how we felt about the murder and maiming of Jews overseas, we would earn the respect and sympathy of the rest of the city."
"I think that it was while we were marching through town that day that I realized I could no longer postpone a final decision about Palestine. However hard it might be for those who were dearest to me, I could no longer put off making up my mind about where I was going to live. Palestine, I felt, not parades in Milwaukee, was the only real, meaningful answer to Petlyura’s murderous mobs. The Jews must have a land of their own again - and I must help to build it, not by making speeches or raising funds, but by living and working there."
"The Balfour Declaration —so named because it was signed by Arthur James Balfour, who was then Britain’s foreign secretary —was couched in the form of a letter addressed by Lord Balfour to Lord Rothschild. It came just at the time that British forces, under General Allenby, had begun to conquer Palestine from the Turks, and although in years to come the ambiguous way in which it was worded was to be responsible for virtually endless bloodshed in the Middle East, in those days it was greeted by the Zionists as laying the foundations at last for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. It goes without saying that the announcement filled me with elation. The exile of the Jews had ended. Now, the ingathering would really begin, and Morris and I together would be among the millions of Jews who would surely stream to Palestine."
Feminism
"Ben-Zvi often talked about a fourth member of their group, Rachel Yanait, who was later to become his wife. As I listen to him I began to think of her as typical of the women of the Yishuv, who were proving that it was possible to function as wives, mothers and comrades-in-arms, enduring constant danger and hardship not only without complaining, but with a sense of enormous fulfilment; and it seemed to me that she, and women like her, were doing more to further the cause of our sex - without the benefit of publicity - than even the most militant of suffragettes in the United States or England."
The journey to Palestine
"In the early spring, we bought tickets for the S.S. Pocahontas and began to rid ourselves of those of our meagre possessions that seemed unsuitable for the life we were now going to lead as pioneers. Despite everything we had heard and read about Palestine, our ideas of life there were somewhat primitive; we expected to live in tents, so I cheerfully sold all of our furniture, our curtains, the iron, even the fur collar of my old winter coat (because we rather unrealistically believed that there was no need for winter clothes in Palestine). The only thing we agreed to take with us, in fact, was our gramophone and our records. The gramophone was the kind you wound by hand —so it could be played even in a tent —and we would at least have music in the wilderness for which we were headed."
"In Milwaukee, we parted from my parents and Clara. It wasn’t an easy parting, although we took it for granted that eventually, when Clara finished her studies at the University of Wisconsin, they would all follow us to Palestine. Still, I felt terribly sorry for my parents —especially for my father —when I kissed them good-bye at the station. My father was a strong man and able to bear pain, but that morning he just stood there, tears rolling down his cheeks. And my mother —perhaps remembering her own voyage across the ocean —looked so small and withdrawn.
The American chapter of my life was closing. 1 was to return to the United States often, in good times and bad, and even to remain there for many months at a time. But it was never to be my home again. I took a great deal with me from America to Palestine, more perhaps than I can express: an understanding of the meaning of freedom, an aware ness of the opportunities offered to the individual in a true democracy and a permanent nostalgia for the great beauty of the American countryside. I loved America and was always glad to come back to it. But never in all the years that followed have I known one moment of homesickness or ever once regretted leaving it for Palestine."
"There we met up with a group of Labour-Zionists from Lithuania who had actually reached Palestine twice before but had been turned away. Now, they were going to try to enter the country again. We had never met ‘real’pioneers of our own age before, and we were very impressed by them. They reminded me of people like Ben-Zvi and BenGurion, though they were much younger. Compared to us they were so experienced and hardy and they seemed so sure of themselves. In Europe they had worked on training farms established by the Zionist movement and they obviously regarded themselves, not without reason, as being infinitely superior to us. They made it quite clear that we were ‘soft’, spoilt immigrants from the United States, members of the bourgeoisie, in fact, who would probably run away from Palestine after a few weeks. Although we were all bound for the same destination on the same ship, they were going to travel as deck passengers and wanted nothing to do with us. I could hardly take my eyes off them; they were everything I wanted and hoped to be myself —dedicated, austere and determined. I admired and envied them enormously and wanted them to accept us as comrades, but they were very aloof.
In a letter written to Sharnai from Brindisi, Yossel described the Lithuanians as they appeared to us. ‘Real Hercules,’ he wrote, ‘who are ready to build a land on just foundations with their backs. And not only a land but a new language..splendid human material which would be the pride of any people.’
When we boarded the ship that was to take us to Alexandria, I suggested to my companions that we give up our ‘luxurious’ cabins and join the young Lithuanians on deck: No one was very keen about the idea, particularly since deck passengers were not entitled to any hot meals and by now we were all looking forward to some decent food. But I pressed the point; I argued that, in fact, it was our duty as potential pioneers ourselves to start sharing the life of our fellow-Zionists as soon as possible and that our behaviour, even on board ship, would be indicative of our sincerity and ability to take hardships in our stride."