Avukah

American Jewish students of the 1920s were not particularly interested in Jewish affairs, let alone in Zionism. Most were beleaguered

enough by the sheer effort to survive in the academic universe and to improve their lot. The socially conscious among them preferred a cosmopolitan stance. Who needed Zionism when democracy promised liberty and justice for all? If the world, at least the United States, were turned into one big community, then distinctions between Gentiles and Jews would wither away—and with them the "Jewish question." Identity formation also played a part: most students were either first-generation Americans or had been brought to the United States as young children. Zionism's emphasis on the national component of Jewishness was experienced as a barrier to full integration in America. Also, Brandeis's dramatic walkout after the Split left Zionism associated with immigrant culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that Jewish organizations on the American campus were rather anemic and that the Intercollegiate Zionist Association was practically defunct.

In Palestine, the leadership of the Yishuv was assessing how best to develop a socioeconomic base for a future Jewish state. In the unfolding Arab-Jewish dispute it was less likely that Britain would actively support the Zionist cause, and the rise of Fascism in Europe made the prospects of forging alliances on the Continent unlikely. Eyes turned to the United States. Its growing Jewish population could provide financial and political support; its government, instrumental in delivering the Balfour Declaration, could be of substantial help in the international arena. In the spring of 1925 a delegation traveled to the United States "to arouse interest among our youth in Zionism."^[56] Two active Zionists, Max Rhoade, a young Washington lawyer, and Joseph Shubow, then a graduate student at Harvard University and later a noted leader of the Boston Jewish community, met with the Palestinian delegation. They formed a new Zionist student organization—Avukah (Torch)—aimed at organizing Jewish support for Zionism on American campuses.^[57] In Chicago a student from Palestine, Yitzhak Chizik, volunteered to establish an Avukah chapter.

Chizik's family was a household name in the Yishuv. His parents were among the first pioneers to settle in the Galilee. His sister, Sarah, died in the battle of Tel Hai, a battle that instantly turned into the foundational myth of Israeli nationalism, underscoring the Zionist quest for peaceful coexistence with the Arabs as well as the Jewish determination to fight and die for the homeland.^[58] It would soon become clear that the Chiziks' sacrifice for the homeland made a strong impression on Simon.

Chizik, a hard-core Labor Zionist, enlisted Simon in Avukah, and Simon soon became chairman of the local chapter. Among the other members were Arthur Goldberg (later a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court),

then a student at the Northwestern University School of Law, and his wife, Dorothy Kurgeans. After Simon had immigrated to Palestine, Goldberg took over as chairman of Avukah. At their meetings the members discussed Zionism, its meaning for American Jews, and its social and political platform. Dorothy remembered the debates as "feverish and abstractly intellectual, above and beyond my grasp." Chizik introduced the group to Labor Zionism: the idea that Jewish liberation would fail if Jews confined themselves to the professional class. The secret of liberation was in the "conquest of labor"—the development of an educated, socially conscious Jewish working class. Jews should leave the ranks of the bourgeoisie—or abandon their aspirations to join the ranks—and become farmers or industrial workers.^[59] Simon had already been exposed to Labor Zionist ideology during his brief sojourn in Tel Aviv, but only now did he begin to give it serious thought. So far, and under his father's tutelage, he was concerned mostly with the political and cultural theories of Zionism. Through Avukah he came to encounter the tension between his father's liberal Zionism and socialist Zionism, advocated by Chizik, and he found many of its aspects appealing. They fit well with the Progressive ideology he had supported in American politics.

As chairman of the Chicago chapter, Simon persuaded his comrades to dedicate the summer of 1927 to "an analysis of American youth and its 'Zionist potentialities'" and to the "history of the Palestine Youth movement," with "specially prepared papers." A proposal was drafted to enable American Zionists to partake in the concrete activity of Labor Zionism, even if they were unwilling to immigrate to Palestine. A nine-page report, authored by Simon, was published in an impressive format by the Chicago chapter and submitted to Avukah's national headquarters in New York.^[60] Simon and Chizik hoped that the national leadership would adopt the project and channel Avukah's resources to its implementation.

The project sought "to establish between ourselves and Palestine a living liaison." "Palestine youth has decided to attach to the soil," Simon stated in the report, "since they have found in agriculture the medium for the assertion of their individuality." Avukah should assist a group of high-school graduates in Tel Aviv to form a kibbutz, or kvutzah (small communal settlement): "Engagement to aid the youth of Palestine in colonizing the land will bring us into definite contact with them for the next few years. The precise plans of the colony, the choice of its site, the evolution of its social forms, the composition of its personnel, and the various and manifold details that are involved with colony-making—all these will demand our joint attention."

The pamphlet had two distinctive characteristics, revealing Simon's state of mind at the time. Substantively, it was a pragmatic, level-headed approach to American Zionism, sidestepping as improbable the expectation that American Jewish youth would personally partake in "the conquest of labor." At the same time, the idea of a transatlantic partnership, in which decisions would be made "jointly," assured a high level of meaningful involvement in "colonization." The gist of the project was the effort to avoid the alienation likely to follow when one partner (the Yishuv) worked, while the other (the American Jews) paid. But the pamphlet also had an air of restlessness, a youthful defiance of authority, a demand for action to combat stagnation. The condition of the young generation, in both the United States and Palestine, was painted in gray: "apathy," "indifference," "standstill," "disintegration," and "staleness" described the members of Avukah. "Dissatisfied," "disgusted," "constrained," and "discouraged" were the sons and daughters of the Yishuv. Both were turned off by their parents' generation: "Our wholly different training, . . . varied experience . . . make up, contrasts sharply with that of the adult Zionists. . . . We should be stifled or lost in the meeting room of our parent organization." The pamphlet asserted that the youth of Palestine similarly felt that their "training and experience . . . [had] equipped them with an outlook on life that . . . broke too fundamentally with the . . . weltanschauung of the adult colonists." Settlement in existing colonies would be as stifling as sitting in the meeting room "of our parent organization": "existing colonies . . . have either swallowed them up, or forced them out . . . leaving them dissatisfied with life as a whole."

The pamphlet concluded that a breakthrough was needed, to rescue that "inherent vitality" held captive by the adult world: "The time has come for something very tangible, which is right in front of our nose, that we may see and feel."^[61]

At the age of twenty-two, one year before he graduated from law school, Simon was asserting intellectual independence. He was no longer the teenager who would dutifully endorse his father's support of Weizmann in his editorial in The Herzlite or the college junior who had soared on the wings of his elders' dreams about a university that would create a culture "the like of which the world has never seen" (in his project, Simon deviated from Avukah's official policy, which made the Hebrew University the focus of its attention; his pamphlet alluded to the university only once as "other designs" not "so close and akin to our own spirit—as youth"). Simon was getting ready to be his own man, and Progressive Zionism suited him well, with its emphasis on self-expression and self-

fulfillment, on the value of the community, on practical, concrete objectives (agricultural settlement), and on the promise of a model society based on distributive justice. It separated his brand of Zionism from his father's and founded it on more socially sensitive grounds.

Yet the depressive tone of the pamphlet could also convey anxiety about the future. Chicago was Agranat's home, English was his language, and American culture was his natural habitat. In Palestine, he already knew from previous experience, he would be an outsider, slowly making new friendships and painfully trying to adjust. Unlike European Zionists, under whose feet the ground was burning and who therefore saw Palestine as a haven from persecution, Simon's Zionism was thoroughly idealistic. American anti-Semitism, though existent, was not a serious menace to his prospects in Chicago. The devil of pragmatism must have been whispering in his ear. Why go to backward, preindustrial Palestine when people his own age were leaving Palestine in "alarmingly swelling numbers"?^[62] Why join a Jewish community embattled by Arab violence and threatened by signs that Britain was cooling its support for the Jewish National Home? He, American-born, with a fine education and bright opportunities—why should he leave, when others would give anything to be in his shoes?

The Avukah project was an effort to lock Simon's American generation into a permanent, dynamic relationship with its peers in Palestine. Thus he would have the best of both worlds: he would fulfill Zionism while retaining his American ties. It may well be that this sense of urgency was the force that released the incredible energy and skill with which Simon promoted his project. With Chizik he raised funds at home,^[63] campaigned to make the project the "outstanding topic of discussion" in Avukah's Third Annual Convention in Pittsburgh,^[64] and lobbied frantically to secure support.

But they soon felt the cold shoulder of the national leadership. Max Rhoade, national president of Avukah, feared that fundraising could be demoralizing and poisonous to any prospects of true cultural endeavor: "Time enough for money raising after the college days are over," he wrote in his annual report presented at the Pittsburgh Convention of July 1928. Simon, anticipating opposition, devoted a special section of his pamphlet to "Possible Objections." But Rhoade was not persuaded: "The arguments of the cultural possibilities inherent in the project, while theoretically persuasive, are in practice an illusion. . . . [M]oney raising will reduce the cultural benefits to a vanishing point." Rhoade cleverly turned the ethos of Labor Zionism—individual self-sacrifice for the public good—against Simon's project: "Those Zionistically mature members who feel such a

great personal need for the Project, must simply sacrifice their feelings in favor of their duty to dedicate themselves . . . to the task of leading the 'educational work' per se for their immature comrades."^[65]

Simon and Chizik arrived in Pittsburgh ready to fight. The odds against them were great,^[66] but one development fed their optimism: in Chicago they had met with Chaim Arlosoroff, and the influential politician had promised to support the project at the national convention. That endorsement, they felt, would swing the delegates in their favor.

Seven years older than Simon, Chaim Arlosoroff was a rising star in the Zionist movement. A widely admired intellectual with a doctorate in economics, Arlosoroff's Zionist theorizing emphasized the centrality of Socialism in Jewish national revival.^[67] The Federation of Labor (Histadrut), established to provide the means for creating a productive infrastructure for the Yishuv, sent Arlosoroff to the United States to raise Zionist consciousness. In an effort to strengthen contacts with Jewish youth, Arlosoroff was made a member of Avukah's Executive Committee. During his visit to Chicago, Simon and Chizik enlisted his support for the project and hoped that his weight would tilt the convention in their favor.^[68]

In Pittsburgh, tensions rose as the assembly turned to consider the project. Simon spoke, then Chizik. The Boston chapter supported Chicago. New York was adamantly opposed. Then Arlosoroff rose to speak. Simon and Chizik were flabbergasted to hear him propose another project, uttering not a word about the proposal he had promised to endorse. Chizik, the uninhibited sabra, could not contain his fury, rose, and shouted, "Traitor!" Simon, reserved and polite, swallowed the defeat in silence. Fifty years later, Simon recounted the unforgettable events with great excitement. It was his very first political campaign and his first failure. Anger at having been let down by the charismatic, influential Arlosoroff mixed with bitter feelings of disappointment at seeing his project doomed and with regret that all of his efforts had been in vain. On the eve of his immigration to Palestine Simon was a sad young man. It was one thing to accept that there was no bridge between Washington and Pinsk. But no bridge between Chicago and Tel Aviv?