Talk:Louis Brandeis/Archive 1

Archive 1

comments

I added some material on Brandeis during the New Deal, and his anti-big-business approach. RJensen Rjensen 00:30, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I find it difficult/impossible to believe that all of those references were used for this article. I didn't write it so I can't trim the list, but maybe someone who knows something should pare it down some. --djrobgordon 05:52, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. This article needs some major cleanup and re-formatting; I'll do it when I have some time tomorrow or soon. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 03:02, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

"Before his appointment to the Supreme Court, he was associated with the progressive wing of the United States Democratic Party, and published a notable book in support of competition rather than monopoly in business." Does anyone know what book that is? The American Pageant 12th edition (Kennedy, Cohen, and Bailey) says, "President Wilson's confidant, progressive-minded Massachusetts attorney Louis D. Brandeis, further fanned the flames of reform with his incendiary though scholarly book Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It (1914)," but I haven't looked at the book for myself, so I have no clue if it talks about competition and monopolies. --DVirus101 03:07, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

• Yep - read it, found it a hoot. Really the book just points out how much of the money people put in the banks is then used by those banks to do bad things, like helping their associated corporations try to squash fair competition and cartelize the markets. Brandeis was basically concerned with the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of corporate entities, and saw the banks as a facilitator of this trend. The notion seems quaint now. bd2412 T 14:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the "sunlight being the best disinfectant" is wrong - the article linked does not contain the text following the first sentence. http://www.law.louisville.edu/library/collections/brandeis/node/196 In Google searching the sentences after the first, only ten or so results yielded. I would suspect these results just used this article without checking the accuracy of the quote. I have changed the quote to reflect what is actually cited. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.253.117.182 (talk) 02:04, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I added an article discussing Brandeis under the "Shorter Mention" section I created since it seemed relevant to modern-day discussion of Brandeis but didn't seem to fit under any other sections of the article. I am not sure how to fix the column formatting. --Circus54 (talk) 23:15, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Selected Quotes

I think the 'Selected Quotes' section can and should be transwikied to Wikiquote. Any opinions, or should I just be Bold and do it? Firestorm 00:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

This is a pretty solid article but I think it ought to explain more clearly WHY President Wilson chose to elevate Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. I will try to add a sentence or two about that, as I edit it.

Andrew Szanton, 4/06

Brandeis Brief

The last two paragraphs in the Brandeis Brief section need to be moved to the Supreme Court section. They have nothing to do with paragraph above them or the heading of the section. Papercrab 15:50, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Brandeis Frankist Roots

Please pardon the novice question, but how might I verify the story about the bust of Jacob Frank being found in Brandeis' office after his death? I have read several biographies and have never heard of such a tale. Ravjoshua 21:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Brandeis parents

"His parents, Adolph Brandeis and Frederika Dembitz, both of whom were Frankist Jews, immigrated to the United States from their childhood homes in Prague, Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire)" should be edited as his mother, Fredericka Brandeis (Dembitz) was born on 15 November 1826 in Strzelno, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland (according to geni.com : https://www.geni.com/people/Fredericka-Brandeis/6000000009369957045?through=6000000009370198892#/tab/timeline). — Preceding unsigned comment added by E.Polti (talk • contribs) 15:35, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

It doesn's say "their native Prague, Bohemia", it says "their childhood homes". The link you provide does not tell us when his mother moved from Poland, and whether she grew up in Prague or not. Magidin (talk) 17:45, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

The Brandeis School

Located in Lawrence, New York this school was named after Brandeis, should this be added to namesakes? Yossi842

Bot-created subpage

A temporary subpage at User:Polbot/fjc/Louis Dembitz Brandeis was automatically created by a perl script, based on this article at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges. The subpage should either be merged into this article, or moved and disambiguated. Polbot (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Quotations

A large portion of this article is "According to..." and "[so-and-so] says..." This detracts from the subject matter of the article (Brandeis) and elevates his biographers at his expense. The article isn't a book-review comparison of biographies, it's about a person, but this gets lost in the forest of textual attributions.--Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 14:37, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Agree. It could be simplified for readability. Maybe you can trim a few sections as examples. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 16:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Efficiency Movement

Since the Efficiency Movement was just one aspect of his complaints against big corporations, the subject could use more descriptions supporting text without revising the section head. --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 21:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree; I though the section title head was a bit odd. Magidin (talk) 02:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Syntax issue

The following paragraph in the Louis Brandeis article is confusing: J. P. Morgan had "pursued a policy of expansion" by acquiring many of the line's competitors to make the New Haven into a single unified network. Acquisitions included "not only railways, but also trolley and shipping companies," writes historian John Weller.[19]:41-52 In June 1907, he was asked by Boston and Maine stockholders to present their cause to the public, a case which he again took on by insisting on serving without payment, "leaving him free to act as he thought best."

The sentence beginning "In June 1907" should read: "In June 1907, Brandeis was asked by Boston and Maine stockholders ... " The pronoun "he" could refer to J.P. Morgan.

Suekamm (talk) 00:31, 7 March 2012 (UTC)suekamm 3/6/2012

 Fixed --Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 02:32, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

Added text

I have added text that I (mostly) wrote for Citizenium, at texts. It is allowed by the CC by SA 3.0 license at Citizendium. Rjensen (talk) 05:12, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

cambridge?

Under law school, it is said that Brandeis went to Harvard, but the quote says that the best time of his life was at cambridge. Is this supposed to be there? 74.105.218.152 (talk) 20:52, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Harvard University is located in the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Magidin (talk) 03:33, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Alice Goldmark-Brandeis

His wife, Alice Goldmark, was a niece of the composer Karl Goldmark (her father, Dr. Joseph Jakob Goldmark (1818-1881), was a brother of the composer; their father Ruben Goldmark (1798-1868)'s genealogy may be seen here.) Schissel | Sound the Note! 00:42, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

Brandeis Elementary School in Louisville

In this article it is stated that Brandeis Elementary School in Louisville is named after him. This is not the case. It is actually named after his cousin Albert, as is stated in the Wikipedia article for the school: [1].

136.165.33.155 (talk) 15:26, 29 July 2015 (UTC)Scott Campbell

Removed. Magidin (talk) 16:23, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Zionism

Does anybody else find this subsection a little distastefully worded? Maybe it's the modern lens of the ADL having an effect on me, but while reading this I couldn't help feeling uncomfortable. Especially since Zionist has become a type of informal insult in modern parlance. I'm going to try and update it without obscuring any facts. --Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:04, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

@Shibbolethink: what do you find distasteful about this section? If there are portions that you think are controversial, then I think it may be worth having a discussion about it before making any bold changes. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 18:36, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Regarding this edit ("Death and legacy: until the Brandeis Frankfurter stuff is more legitimized, I think this is too fringe to be on WP"): the source was published by Oxford University Press, which has a reputation for high editorial standards, so you need to properly justify dismissing the content as fringe and so deleting it out of hand. Show that is the case. Note that the source received a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association.     ←   ZScarpia   09:41, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

yes that section is POV and out of place. I added a non-controversial version: Once on the Court, Brandeis kept active politically but worked behind the scenes, as was acceptable at the time. He was an advisor to Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal through intermediaries.[39] Many of his disciples held influential jobs, especially in the Justice Department. Brandeis and his Felix Frankfurter often collaborated on political issues.[40] - Rjensen. 11:48, 11 June 2016‎

Do either of the sources support the "as was acceptable at the time" addition?     ←   ZScarpia   17:20, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

An opinion piece from the New York Times commenting on the material written about by Bruce Murphy: NYT - Judging Judges, and History, 18 February 1982.
Also see: Sarah Schmidt, The Parushim: A Secret Episode in American Zionist History, American Jewish Historical Quarterly 65, Dec (1975), pp121-39.     ←   ZScarpia   21:54, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

• Re commentary to Legacy section: "Brandeis and his ally Felix Frankfurter engaged in extensive off-the-bench political activities, including ones connected with Zionism, which were concealed."

The statement has a few issues which should be fixed: What political activities? If they were concealed then how do we know about them? And what was the connection to Zionism? Was there anything about their friendship and private or public conversations that should have legally been made public? The added statement that "those activities may have established a dangerous precedent" is both conjecture by a single writer about all these unknown activities. In any case, if an editor is going to post an implied conspiracy theory without any facts, why add it to a Legacy section? --Light show (talk) 22:53, 11 June 2016 (UTC)

@ZScarpia: I don't think there's enough consensus amongst experts that this "set a dangerous precedent," which is the only reason this content should be in the "Death and Legacy" section.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 04:57, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

• The reason I'm involved here is my objection, as noted above, to the removal ("Death and legacy: until the Brandeis Frankfurter stuff is more legitimized, I think this is too fringe to be on WP") of material cited to a book published by the Oxford University Press and written by a Pennsylvania State political scientist which won a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association for being, in the editor's opinion, fringe. The source obviously qualifies as a reliable source and removal of the cited material needs a better founded rationale.
• I have no objection to the material being moved elsewhere in the article. In fact, I tried to move it myself but was blocked.
• If editors feel that all the activities carried out by intermediaries over a period of decades should be listed, they should do the donkey work of digging it out. Just because they aren't listed is not a reason for removal of the material, nor for templating it. The NYT opinion piece discussing Bruce Murphy's book lists an example of direct action by Brandeis, a threat to use "judicial war unless the Roosevelt Administration stopped promoting, by his lights, big corporations." The piece by Sarah Schmidt from the American Jewish Historical Quarterly mentions Brandeis's use of members of the Parushim, a secret Zionist fraternity, to carry out "special missions" for him.
• Similarly, if they want to find out the answer to the question, "If they were concealed then how do we know about them," they should go and read up on it. How do we know about other concealed activities? I suppose records tend to be left and those from whom the activities haven't been concealed talk.
• It is claimed that Brandeis's activities broke ethical standards, not that they were illegal. Note the following from the NYT opinion piece (which I'm referring to because I don't have access to Murphy's book itself): "the revered jurist making secret arrangements to stay active politically, despite his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1916"; "for a quarter of a century Brandeis kept his protege and intimate friend Felix Frankfurter on an annual retainer to promote ... political, social and legislative programs the Justice could not ethically espouse on his own"; " the prolonged, meddlesome Brandeis-Frankfurter arrangement violates ethical standards"; "its covert nature shows that the principals understood this - or at least that they thought the public did."
• The following text has been added to the article: Once on the Court, Brandeis kept active politically but worked behind the scenes, as was acceptable at the time. Which sources justify the statement that Brandeis's activities were acceptable at the time? That is contradicted by what the NYT piece, and by extension, Murphy, wrote. Note that the NYT piece says that Brandeis made "secret arrangements to stay active politically, despite his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1916." When Brandeis was appointed to the Supreme Court, he had to officially resign, as required by the rules, from all his formal affiliations, from his place on the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs down to membership of private clubs. It's fairly obvious that it was not "acceptable" for appointees to then covertly continue activities they had just officially resigned from.

    ←   ZScarpia   20:01, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Is the purpose of your research above to include more details for the article? If so, what added commentary are you suggesting be added, and in which sections and in what context? It's appreciated that you're explaining the topic on the talk page. --Light show (talk) 20:32, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

The purpose of the above is to explain why it is unacceptable for material cited to Murphy's book to be deleted out of hand and also to question whether a statement made in material added elsewhere in the article which also relates to Brandeis's extra-judicial activities is properly sourced. It is acceptable to me that the material cited to Murphy's book is edited or moved, but not just eradicated.     ←   ZScarpia   21:01, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

The question is whether political activities done privately were acceptable in terms of judicial ethics of the 1920s and 1930s. yes according to Learned Hand. Hand "Thought it appropriate for a federal judge to offer private advice, as he so frequently did with Theodore Roosevelt, so long as there was no prominent public identification with the cause." See Gerald Gunther (2010). Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge. p. 202. ISBN 9780199703432.

@ZScarpia. That didn't actually answer any of those questions, however. In any case, there seems to be nothing about the text that relates to his Legacy section, and thereby seems off-topic. It's also speculative ("may have") even if someone besides you says so. But the so-called "activities" that they "tried to conceal" is so general it almost becomes meaningless. For instance, if they as friends discussed a political topic between themselves, were they allowed a right of privacy, or were they obligated to publicize their private discussions? Is that's what's meant by "activities?" Personally, I like knowing secrets. There's even a Beatles song about that. But without some context, the added text as a statement has an emptly factoidal quality, even if sourced.--Light show (talk) 22:32, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

The position in 1920s-30s was a) public identification with a political cause was unacceptable. b) private discussions and urgings in favor of a policy were ok. http://books.google.com/books?id=2tfQCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA202 Rjensen (talk) 22:37, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Obviously, we're talking about activities that sources see as unethical, not just friends having a private political discussion. I'll repeat, I don't mind the material being moved, edited or augmented, but I do mind it being deleted out of hand. And I do mind that somebody should write that Brandeis's activities were acceptable at the time, when no source has been supplied which supports that.     ←   ZScarpia   22:46, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

Whatever the commentary added, it needs to have context and be within a relevant section. For instance, why did you put it in Legacy? I believe that if an editor wants to promote a "conspiracy theory" about Supreme Court justices, it should rely on more than general terms such as "secret," "concealment," "unethical" or "dangerous precedent," without any actual substance. It should also be accurate. The NY Times clip you linked to said that Marbury v. Madison a hundred years earlier may have set the precedent. --Light show (talk) 23:23, 14 June 2016 (UTC)

• It was not me who wrote the text nor placed it in the Legacy section. I would be perfectly happy for it to be moved and the reference to precedents deleted. However, as the source is a good one reliability-wise, I'm not happy that the material sourced to it is simply just deleted. It would be acceptable to me for the text to be amended or augmented, though.
• Books written by academics, published by the OUP and winners of awards from professional bodies tend not to be propagating conspiracy theories.
• If the content breaches Wikipedia policy, state how. It's not good enough to simply delete material cited to a good-quality reliable source just because you feel that material on a dead Supreme Court justice should meet further subjective standards of your own.

    ←   ZScarpia   09:07, 15 June 2016 (UTC)

I notice that material in the Nominated to the Supreme Court section is cited to Murphy's book, as well as the material in the Legacy section (there are actually two separate citations to the book). What I would propose is that the disputed text in the Legacy section is deleted and that in the Nominated to the Supreme Court section amended to more properly represent the contents of Murphy's book (The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices).     ←   ZScarpia   12:16, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

In the Zionism section, it says, "As president from 1914 to 1918 Brandeis became the leader and spokesperson of American Zionism." I think the dates should be checked. Brandeis had to resign his official political role on becoming a Supreme Court justice. From that date, he could well have officially been "honorary" president, but probably not the president.     ←   ZScarpia   12:22, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Re Frankfurter, I prefer the wording in the Murphy wikipedia page. We should adapt it.

"Professor Murphy's first book, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices, published in 1982 by Oxford University Press,[4] was the subject of a front-page story in the Sunday New York Times.[5] The book contained details about the financial relationship between Justice Louis D. Brandeis and then-Harvard law professor Felix Frankfurter. While on the Court, Brandeis provided Frankfurter with funds to promote a variety of political reforms. The book sparked a national debate about the ethics of extrajudicial activities by Supreme Court justices. It received a Certificate of Merit from the American Bar Association."

Mostly, what it doesn't do, is pass judgment on the nature of the activities themselves. We should not be in the business of writing legal scholarship, only portraying the facts. I don't believe it's a fact that most legal scholars condemn Brandeis for the Frankfurter activities, so we shouldn't portray it that way.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:05, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the last paragraph. As even the title of Murphy's book suggests, though, it is a fact that Brandeis did carry out "secret political activities" (and that on an extensive scale over an extended period of time). The article should outline that, albeit without adopting a judgemental or condemnatory tone.     ←   ZScarpia   16:01, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

This bio isn't the place to add book reviews. The paragraph reads like promo from the back of the book. --Light show (talk) 18:24, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

References to Brandeis relating to Zionism in "Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict" (2015) by John B. Judis:

Page 126.8 / 970 of the electronic edition:

"Although Sykes had helped negotiate the agreement with the French that bore his name, he had been talking regularly for over a year with Aaron Aaronsohn, a Palestinian Jew who worked as a spy for the British. Aaronsohn, a legendary figure who had already helped win the American Louis Brandeis over to Zionism, convinced Sykes to favor a Jewish Palestine under British rule. ... Balfour visited Brandeis, a confidant of Wilson’s whom the president had appointed to the Supreme Court. Brandeis told Balfour that Wilson would support a British protectorate. He also learned from Wilson’s advisor Colonel Edward House that the United States would oppose the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty. Balfour and Lloyd George decided to ditch the French and go ahead with British plans for backing Zionism."

Page 338.7 / 970:

"After he resigned his positions with the movement, Brandeis exercised leadership over American Zionists primarily through a group of protégés, friends, and disciples that was dubbed the “Parushim,” after the Hebrew for “Pharisees,” .... ."

Page 348.6 / 970:

"He would be proposing to do to Palestine exactly what he objected to Russians doing in Finland or Germans in Alsace-Lorraine. And the results would be similarly tragic .... What Brandeis said about Palestine and Palestinian democracy continued to conflict with his liberal opinions on American politics and economics."

Page 350.6 / 970:

"In a letter to Wilson, Brandeis warned him that France might insist on the Sykes-Picot agreement, which would “defeat full realization of the promise of the Jewish homeland.” And he urged Wilson to hold out for a Palestine that “on the North … must include the Litani River and the water sheds of the Mermon. On the East, it must include the plains of the Jaulon [Golan] and the Hauron [Hauran].” One State Department official commented, “The frontiers proposed by Justice Brandeis would double the size of the Palestine agreed to under the Sykes-Picot treaty and bring the northern frontier right up to Beirut and Damascus.” But Brandeis cabled Balfour that the absence of these lands would “cripple [the] Jewish homeland project.” ... In a letter to Julian Mack in 1930, he wrote that “the Revisionists are right in the essence of much of what they ask … Transjordan must become a part of Palestine.”"

Page 352.9 / 970:

"Brandeis accepted the specious view—promoted by Zionists in Palestine — that the riots were instigated by wealthy Arab absentee landlords and implemented by Bedouins under “the cover of religious fanaticism.”"

Page 366.3 / 970:

"Brandeis and his circle were not, of course, the only American Zionists to express illiberal views about Palestinian Arabs."

Page 368.8 / 970:

"One factor that may have encouraged this was the imperial mind-set with which many Americans and Europeans viewed Palestine’s Arabs. Herzl had displayed this mind-set in saying that Palestinian Arabs could be won over to Jewish rule by the prosperity that Jews would bring to Palestinians. More advanced peoples might covet self-rule, but primitives would be satisfied with bread on the table. Brandeis and his circle shared this view. Palestine’s Arabs, Wise wrote, “do not desire anything particularly except food. They are … in the depths of primitive life.” ... Americans, of course, didn’t have to look to Europe to acquire a hierarchical view of humanity that justified conquest. Americans had invoked the need to civilize savage races to justify Indian removal and Manifest Destiny. Brandeis and his circle viewed the Zionist settlers as “pioneers,” “pilgrims,” and “puritans” and the Arabs as “Indians.” The comparison was partly an apt one. America was the original settler colony where the immigrants displaced the native inhabitants and eventually established a state of their own. Brandeis saw it as justifying Jews displacing Arabs in Palestine. Until well after World War II, the rout of the Indians was seen as a triumph of civilization over savagery. In his Winning of the West, Theodore Roosevelt wrote of the Indian Wars that “the struggle could not possibly have been avoided. Unless we were willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghenies should remain an unpeopled waste, the hunting ground of savages, war was inevitable … It is wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker race.” Brandeis and other progressives saw the conflict between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine similarly."

    ←   ZScarpia   15:19, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

References to Brandeis and Zionism in "Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet" (2016, Jewish Lives) by Jeffrey Rosen are too frequent to list, but include:

Page 17.4 / 475 of the electronic edition:

"And as the leader of the American Zionist movement, he was the most prominent advocate of a vision of cultural pluralism that remains especially salient in an age of globalization and technological homogenization. His influence was so great in persuading Woodrow Wilson and the British government to recognize a Jewish homeland in Palestine that Jacob de Haas, Theodor Herzl’s American secretary, wrote that “the most consistent contribution to American Jewish history in the twentieth century has been that of Louis Dembitz Brandeis.”"

Page 72.6 / 475:

"It was natural that he should have been among the first in America to support Herzl in his efforts to build a New Palestine."

Page 300.4 / 475:

"Before 1910, Brandeis, like many upper-class American Jews of central European heritage, was skeptical of Zionism because of his concerns about “dual loyalties” and his support for melting-pot assimilationism. ... In the fall of 1910, Brandeis first met Jacob de Haas, the editor of the Jewish Advocate in Boston, who had been summoned with other local reporters by the public relations agent of the Savings Bank Insurance campaign. De Haas was the American secretary of Theodor Herzl, whose 1896 book Der Judenstaat had proclaimed the Jewish people’s need for a state of their own. ... After his interview with de Haas, Brandeis made his first recorded statement on Zionism: “I have a great deal of sympathy for the movement and am deeply interested in the outcome of the propaganda,” Brandeis declared in the Advocate. “I believe that the Jews can be just as much of a priest people today as they ever were in prophetic days.” ... Brandeis was especially receptive to Zionism in 1910, having been moved by his experience working with eastern European Jews on both sides of a cloak makers’ strike in New York earlier that year."

Page 305.3 / 475:

"Although Aaronsohn was strongly opposed to socialism, Brandeis was thrilled to learn from him that Jews were applying the principles he valued most — scientific agriculture and self-governing, small-scale democracy — in Palestine."

Page 307.7 / 475:

"In this essay, Kallen introduced an idea that Brandeis would later develop: that preserving a distinct Jewish identity in Palestine was the best way to preserve a unique Hebraic culture that could enrich both America and the world. As Kallen recalled of Brandeis much later, in a 1972 interview, “The important thing for him was that the proclaimed antagonism between Americanism and Zionist was a false claim — it didn’t have to be. . . . Because to begin with he believed that he could not be an American and a Zionist completely. Then he came to believe that he could, and that he would, and he did.”"

Page 310.1 / 475:

"“The most eagerly American of the immigrant groups are also the most autonomous and self-conscious in spirit and culture.” This insight helped Brandeis to reconcile two ideals — Zionism and Americanism — that he had previously found to be in conflict. For American Jews to support a Jewish homeland, he now concluded, would create better Americans and better Jews at the same time."

Page 317.4 / 475:

"Brandeis resolved to re-create “the perfect citizen in the perfect state” in Palestine. ... At the meeting, Brandeis was unanimously elected chair of the dauntingly named Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs. His response in accepting the chairmanship of the American Zionist movement was appropriately modest, and it distilled the evolution in his thinking over the past four years about the unique qualities of the Jewish people. “Recent experiences,” he said, “have made me feel that the Jewish people have something which should be saved for the world; that the Jewish people should be preserved, and that it is our duty to pursue that method of saving which most promises success.”"

Page 319.8 / 475:

"With a high faith in the intelligence of the Jewish people, his goal was to create a democratic movement that would appeal to masses of Jews by reason rather than demagoguery. And the results of his organizing were striking. When Brandeis took over the Zionist movement in August 1914, the Federation of American Zionists had 12,000 members. Five years later, in September 1919, the number had swelled to more than 176,000. The dramatic rise of Zionism in the United States and across the world reflected the fact that the British had conquered Palestine and published the Balfour Declaration; in the United States, however, Brandeis’s organizational abilities, honed by his work as a reformer, helped him to rationalize the finances of the American Zionist movement and to transform it into a powerful influence in American Jewish life and politics. Brandeis was also a prodigious fund-raiser: during the same five-year period, the budget of the movement increased from a few thousand dollars to nearly two million. His motto: “Members, Money, Discipline!” To mobilize recruits and raise money, Brandeis had to create an intellectual argument for Zionism that overcame the claim that the movement encouraged a divided loyalty for American Jews."

Page p.322.2 / 475:

"The ambivalence of the non-Zionists and anti-Zionists also reflected fears that the U.S. Congress would limit immigration for disfavored groups. By 1915, there were strong laws and movements to limit immigration from eastern and southern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Charges of dual loyalty could have led to a backlash against Jewish immigrants. Brandeis, who was especially drawn to the idea of loyalty, neatly solved the problem of dual loyalty by concluding that American Jews could support Palestine without moving there, acting as loyal Zionists and loyal Americans at the same time. As early as the fall of 1914, Brandeis saw the consonance of Zionism and Americanism and approached President Wilson, who said he fully sympathized with Brandeis’s Zionist views. For the next several months, Brandeis traveled across America giving speeches to mobilize American Jews and convince them of their wartime responsibilities. In all these speeches, he described his own conversion to the Zionist cause, explaining, “My approach to Zionism was through Americanism.” As he put it, “In time, practical experience and observation convinced me that Jews were by reason of their traditions and their character peculiarly fitted for the attainment of American ideals.” ... Brandeis issued a series of statements in 1915 exploring the connection between Judaism and Americanism."

Pages 324.6, 327.0, 329.5 / 475:

"The previous month, Brandeis had delivered his most comprehensive statement on Zionism in “The Jewish Problem—How to Solve It,” a speech to the Conference of Eastern Council of Reform Rabbis in New York. He defined “the Jewish Problem” as posing two questions: “How can we secure for Jews, wherever they may live, the same rights and opportunities enjoyed by non-Jews? How can we secure for the world the full contribution which Jews can make, if unhampered by artificial limitations” imposed by anti-Semitism? He argued passionately that hyphenated group identity was important for the development not only of American ideals but also of individual self-fulfillment. ... “We recognize,” he continued, “that with each child the aim of education should be to develop his own individuality, not to make him an imitator, not to assimilate him to others. Shall we fail to recognize this truth when applied to whole peoples? And what people in the world has shown greater individuality than the Jews?” “Of all the peoples in the world,” said Brandeis, “the Greeks and the Jews” are “preeminent as contributors to our present civilization.” Drawing on Kallen’s ideas of cultural pluralism, Brandeis distinguished between a “nation” and a “nationality.” He declared, “[T]he difference between a nation and a nationality is clear; but it is not always observed. Likeness between members is the essence of nationality; but the members of a nation may be very different. A nation may be composed of many nationalities, as some of the most successful nations are.” The Jews, like the Greeks and the Irish, for example, shared “a community of sentiments, experiences and qualities” that made them a nationality, whether the Jews admitted it or not. Denouncing the ancient notion that the development of one people involved domination over another, Brandeis rejected the “false doctrine that nation and nationality must be made co-extensive.” This had led to tragedies caused by “Panistic movements,” used by Germany and Russia, as a “cloak for their territorial ambitions”; it also had led to the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany. Instead, Brandeis proposed “recognition of the equal rights of each nationality,” and he insisted that the Jews deserved the same right as every other nationality, or “distinct people,” in the world: “To live at their option either in the land of their fathers or in some other country; a right which members of small nations as well as of large, which Irish, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, or Belgian, may now exercise as fully as Germans or English.” In his call for “recognition of the equal rights of each nationality,” Brandeis found in Zionism his own best answer to “the Jewish Problem.” He wrote that “Zionism seeks to establish in Palestine, for such Jews as choose to go and remain there, and for their descendants, a legally secured home, where they may live together and lead a Jewish life, where they may expect ultimately to constitute a majority of the population, and may look forward to what we should call home rule.” And he envisioned mutual benefits for Palestine and for America, as Zionism warded off assimilationist tendencies among American Jews who decided to support the Jewish homeland but not settle there, preserving the individuality of the American Jewish community. By “securing for those Jews who wish to settle there the opportunity to do so, not only those Jews, but all other Jews will be benefited, and . . . the long perplexing Jewish Problem will, at last, find solution.”"

Page 331.9 / 475:

"“Every American Jew who aids in advancing the Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be a better man and a better American for doing so.” Far from causing a clash of identities, he concluded memorably, “there is no inconsistency between loyalty to America and loyalty to Jewry” because both American and Jewish fundamental law seek social justice and the brotherhood of man. On the contrary, “loyalty to America demands rather that each American Jew become a Zionist.” Brandeis argued, in short, that the Zionist ideals of democracy, individual liberty, freedom of religion, and progressive social values were entirely American and that, in fact, our “Jewish Pilgrim Fathers” would export Jeffersonian values to Palestine. He envisioned Palestine as a secular, liberal democracy ruled by ethical values of equality and social justice, and not by Jewish law. Although Jews would constitute a majority, in his vision, they would respect the equal political and civil rights of all inhabitants, including Arabs."

Pages 334.3, 336.7, 339.1 / 475:

"After the meeting, the New York Times, owned by Adolph Ochs, one of the German Jewish burghers who opposed Zionism, editorialized that the incident had embarrassed the court and called on Brandeis to resign from leadership of the Zionist movement. Brandeis responded by resigning his public offices on July 21, 1916, but did not diminish his behind-the-scenes activities. He continued to attend meetings of the Provisional Executive Committee and continued to be treated as the “silent leader” of the American Zionist movement, in de Haas’s memorable phrase. In April 1917, weeks after President Wilson had asked Congress to declare war against Germany, Wilson held a White House reception for Lord Balfour, the British foreign secretary. Balfour asked to speak privately to Brandeis and, after their meeting, declared, “I am a Zionist.” (Balfour had a lifelong interest in Jewish history, originating in his Scottish upbringing, which included rigorous Old Testament training from his mother.) On May 6, Brandeis reported to de Haas and Felix Frankfurter that he had had a forty-five-minute talk with Wilson in which the president assured the sitting justice “that he was entirely sympathetic to the aims of the Zionist movement, and that he believed that the Zionist formula to establish a publicly assured, legally secured homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, would meet the situation: that from the point of view of national problems generally, he approved and would support the recognition of the nationality.” Wilson added that he would make his views public at the proper time “and that his utterances under that head would be drafted by Mr. Brandeis.” Brandeis gave the administration a draft copy of the Balfour Declaration on Palestine in June 1917 — it came to the State Department from Brandeis, not from the British Foreign Office — and Brandeis was instrumental in persuading Wilson to endorse the declaration after wavering about whether the time was ripe. When Wilson received a final draft of the declaration, he passed it along to Brandeis for review, and the justice, after checking in with Stephen Wise, suggested a minor tweak in the language. Wilson then approved the Balfour Declaration, and the British Foreign Office issued it on November 2, 1917 ... . Until the end of the Wilson administration, Brandeis successfully persuaded Wilson to maintain his support for the declaration, over the vigorous objections of the State Department. Brandeis was gratified by the success of his Zionist efforts: in December 1917, after the British army captured Jerusalem without much bloodshed, Brandeis wrote to his mother-in-law: “It was sweet of you to send me congratulations on the Liberation of Jerusalem. The work for Zionism has seemed to me, on the whole, the most worthwhile of all I have attempted; and it is a great satisfaction to see the world gradually acquiescing in its realization.”"

Page 341.5 / 475:

"The convention, at Brandeis’s urging, eliminated the loose coalition of Zionist organizations known as the Federation of American Zionists and created a central body, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), that would focus on the economic development of Palestine rather than on cultural or religious issues. The new ZOA adopted the Pittsburgh Program, which Kallen drafted and Brandeis refined. It encapsulates their vision of a Jeffersonian homeland for Jews that would promote education, social justice, and democracy, and would protect the equal civil rights of all inhabitants, men and women, Jews and Arabs alike. ... In January 1919, de Haas, Felix Frankfurter, and other Brandeis acolytes sailed to Paris to attend the Versailles Peace Conference, where they presented the Pittsburgh Program to European Zionists."

Page 344.0 / 475:

"Still, Frankfurter managed at the Paris peace conference to secure letters from Prince Faisal and President Wilson supporting a Jewish settlement in Palestine. Wilson declared that the establishment of a Jewish homeland would be one of the two permanent achievements to emerge from the war. ... As the State Department pressured Wilson to abandon his support for the Balfour Declaration, Frankfurter urged Brandeis to come to Paris and Palestine to shore up support for the Jewish state. The justice set sail for London on the RMS Mauretania with his daughter Susan and Jacob de Haas, who had just come back from Europe, only to turn around for a return trip."

Page 346.4 / 475:

"Brandeis returned from Palestine more convinced than ever that the Jewish settlers were the twentieth-century equivalent of New England Puritans."

Pages 353.6, 356.1 / 475:

"“As against the Bedouins, our pioneers are in a position not unlike the American settlers against the Indians.” Brandeis repeated his jarring analogy in a speech to a Palestine economic conference in November: “The situation reminds me of that in America, when the settlers who founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony had to protect themselves against the Indians.” One Brandeis critic, noting that this passage was excised from the ZOA’s collection of Brandeis’s speeches, charges that it shows Brandeis’s “imperial mind-set,” revealing the extent to which he and other American liberals “viewed the conflict through a mind-set developed over the prior two centuries to justify the conquest of one people by another.” The charge of imperialism is overstated: in the same speech, Brandeis repeated his long-standing demand for equal civil and political rights for Arabs, Christians, and Jews in Palestine. As he put it: “We should so conduct our affairs in Palestine that what we do shall inure to the interest of all the inhabitants of Palestine, Moslem and Christian as well as Jew.” He also renewed his call for “opening the co-operatives to the Arabs, of opening our labor unions to Arabs, of inviting Arabs to participate in our industrial enterprises and thus become more closely allied to them.” He stressed that Jews should learn the Arab language “so that we might familiarly visit them in their homes, as some Jews have been doing,” and predicted that “through our medical organization, through the elimination of malaria and other diseases we have done for the amelioration of the condition of the Arabs an extraordinary amount, considering the shortness of time.” ... Still, there is no question that Brandeis, with his romantic abstraction of the Arabs, failed to understand the power of both Arab and Jewish nationalism.

Page 358.5 / 475:

"Brandeis, continuing his questionable practice of lobbying sitting presidents on political issues, met with President Hoover at the end of October 1930, and reviewed the entire history of his involvement with the British, beginning with his talks with Balfour in June 1919, and ending with the “rude shock” caused by the Shaw and Passfield reports, with their “pernicious enmity” in recommending “the suspension of immigration.” In describing the meeting to Felix Frankfurter, Brandeis recalled, “I had been telling him of Jewish achievements in Palestine, of the benefits accruing to the Arabs generally; of the small body of Arab leaders responsible for stirring up the enmity . . . [and] the rapid increase of Arab population, through betterment of Arab conditions & seepage in from Syria & Transjordania.” Hoover mentioned “Transjordan possibilities for Arabs”; Brandeis added “also for Jews” and told the president of his complaint that “Transjordan had been excluded from Palestine territory; spoke of its fertility & possibilities.” Brandeis’s efforts throughout the 1930s to maintain the British commitment to a Jewish Palestine — one that he hoped would include Transjordan — were accelerated as anti-Semitism swept across Europe and the Nazi menace grew."

Page 363.3 / 475:

"In October 1938, Brandeis went to the White House to discuss the Palestinian question with President Roosevelt. During the meeting, he advocated the immigration of the Arab population in Palestine to Transjordan or Iraq. (This position was based on his belief that there was an influx of Arabs into Palestine, including Bedouins, who could be returned to their lands of origin.) As Brandeis wrote to Frankfurter, “F.D. went very far, in our talk, in his appreciation of the significance of Palestine, the need of keeping it whole and of making it Jewish. He was tremendously interested, and wholly surprised, on learning of the great increase in Arab population since the war, and on hearing of the plenitude of land for Arabs in Arab countries, about which he made specific enquiries.” Roosevelt floated the proposal to the British but later wrote to Brandeis that British officials didn’t agree that “there is a difference between the Arab population which was in Palestine prior to 1920 and the new Arab population.” As an American who lived in an age of immigration — in his lifetime, millions of Italians, Jews, and Poles came to the United States — Brandeis welcomed the idea of transnational migration. With progressive logic, he believed that since the Arab nationalities had many homelands, the Jewish nationality needed at least one."

Pages 363.3, 365.7 / 475:

"He envisioned a Jewish state that was democratic, secular, and cooperatively owned, a country whose economic success would be shared and embraced by the Arab minorities whose equal civil and political rights it would scrupulously respect. ... Brandeis’s idealistic vision never appealed to those immigrant Jews who were far more religiously and culturally Jewish than Brandeis and wanted a movement and a Jewish state that would be sectarian, ideological, and nationalistic rather than progressive, secular, and democratic. This charged division about the definition of the Jewish state continues to this day. As a progressive and a rationalist, Brandeis believed that once religious Jews were exposed to economic facts, they, too, would become progressive and rationalist. He did not anticipate, and would not have understood, the rise of Jewish fundamentalism that threatens Israel’s secular identity. And Brandeis’s other blind spot was his failure to anticipate or to understand Arab nationalism. His purely economic analysis of Jewish migration to Palestine assumed that a rising tide would lift all boats: through communal effort, swamps would be drained, the previously arid land would flow with milk and honey, and malaria would be eliminated for Jews and Arabs alike."

    ←   ZScarpia   16:27, 30 April 2022 (UTC)