The Zionist Convention in Chicago
Summary Report of the Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Convention of the Zionist Organization of America
INTRODUCTION
IN sharp contrast to the wider aims and far-reaching anticipations of Pittsburgh, the Twenty-second Annual Convention of the Zionist Organization of America has inscribed itself upon the records of American Zionism as a convention of "internal affairs," of setting its house in order. At Pittsburgh claims were staked out and aims were outlined which went far beyond the present or the immediate future. In terms of space, Pittsburgh reached out to the Euphrates and Tigris; in terms of time, it went beyond the potential achievements of the next five years. While it did not attempt to legislate for a Jewish Palestine of the future, it adopted a libertarian set of first principles for legislative action.
Burdened with the tremendous responsibility of these sweeping anticipations, the Pittsburgh Convention could do no more and no better by way of providing domestic shelter for a unified movement in America than to build it a spacious house in the shape of a reconstructed organization, divide it roughly into compartments, and await the results which have been, for the first time, under authoritative discussion in Chicago.
The discussion pivoting around a twelvemonth of administrative and executive activities took up the better part of eleven sessions. The movement had grown, as if by wizardry, to tenfold its size of 1917. If, as several speakers observed, the Philadelphia Jewish Congress looked like a Zionist Convention, the Chicago Convention, in its unwieldy bulk, looked like a gathering of all American Jewry—and the seven hundred and fourteen delegates present, according to official authority, represented rather less than half of those elected. While this tremendous participation was a gratifying token of our national rebirth, it rendered the parliamentary management of the Convention somewhat difficult, especially during the sessions devoted to an airing of internal concerns of organization and administration, when all the reformatory talent of the movement clamored for recognition. That the Convention, in spite of its overgrown size and excitable temper, accomplished a great deal in the way of constructive work affords honorable testimony to the truly Jewish and Zionist public spiritedness of its participants.
It is obviously difficult, within the limits of these pages, to give a complete account of the Convention without doing some injustice to one phase or another of the Convention, considering that we have before us a stenographic report covering over five hundred closely typewritten pages. We shall, however, endeavor to give the reader as complete a picture as possible under the circumstances.
FIRST SESSION
SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SEPTEMBER FOURTEENTH
The twenty-second Annual Convention of the Zionist Organization of America, which will go down in the history of American Zionism as the largest Convention ever held, was opened in Chicago on Sunday afternoon, September 14th, at the Auditorium Theater. The Auditorium, which was profusely decorated with American and Zionist flags, was packed to the topmost gallery with over seven hundred delegates—less than half the number elected to the Convention—and with five times as many guests. Before Judge Julian W. Mack, President of the Organization, took the chair, Nathan D. Kaplan, of Chicago, introduced the Zimro Ensemble, a group of six artists from Russia, whose object it is to create a Temple of Music in Palestine. Befitting the solemnity of the occasion, they rendered a program of beautiful Jewish music which was received with great applause.
Following, Judge Mack formally opened the Convention and introduced Judge Hugo Pam to welcome the delegates in the name of the Chicago Zionists. Judge Pam opened his remarks by recalling the Convention of a year ago, the circumstances under which it met and then expressed the satisfaction of the Middle West in having the Zionist Convention meet in Chicago.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Judge Mack opened his presidential address with a brief review of the work done by the organization during the past year. He told of the heavy responsibilities with which the organization was laden. He said in part: "We come before you today in true democratic spirit and fashion to render to you our account for the doings of the past year, to ask of you approval in so far as our action may meet with
your approval; to ask of you absolution in case through error in judgment heart —because it was never an error of the —we have failed to meet your expectations.
". . . The three secretaries are going to render you their reports, and the reports of those associated with and under them. They will be presented to you in printed form. May I not say that the least that we can expect of every delegate to this Convention is that he or she shall read, consider and digest these reports, and then on the basis of the knowledge that you will have gained of our doings, of our motives during the past year, offer your criticism, and above all offer your constructive suggestions.
These reports are so detailed, so careful, that I need hardly say a word about the activities of the past year. They speak for themselves when you will have read them over, but perhaps as it was the first year of the new organization, just a word or two may not be out of place.
"The year started most auspiciously. I say a year ago the activities started most auspiciously, because it was just a year ago when that leader, not merely of this country, but of all humanity, Woodrow Wilson, in that fine New Year's letter to Dr. Wise, gave his public adhesion to and approval of the Balfour Declaration, and the Zionist work and aim. There followed soon after the Congress another Jewish gathering, not a Zionist Congress in form, but almost a Zionist Congress in fact, because again in the membership of that gathering it was evidenced beyond all question that, to put it mildly, nine-tenths of the Jews of America are Zionists.
"That gathering, however, typifies a better spirit of unity than had been evidenced in Jewry for many years, because, with very few exceptions, all of the leading organizations of the land were there represented. All of the Jewish interests of the land had their delegates at the Philadelphia