When American Jews Fought over the Balfour Declaration

One-hundred years ago, Rosh Hashanah came early, just as this year. On the eve of the holy day—September 5, 1918—the New York Times published the text of a letter from President Woodrow Wilson to Stephen S. Wise, a prominent Reform rabbi who also served as vice-president of the Zionist Organization of America. In the letter, the president effectively announced his approval of the November 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British government had expressed its history-changing commitment to “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

This marked Wilson’s first public endorsement of the Zionist project. A year earlier, he had privately conveyed his support for the move then being contemplated by the British cabinet, but he did not publicize it at that time, and at no point in the ensuing ten months had he spoken officially on the subject. In sending his letter to Rabbi Wise, and authorizing the Times to publish it on a date deliberately timed to coincide with the onset of Rosh Hashanah, the president was making a gesture that would significantly advance the Zionist cause both domestically and internationally.

In the American Jewish community, however, the letter triggered an uproar, one that would play out in the pages of the Times and elsewhere for days to come. Thereby hangs a historic tale, an updated version of which may be playing out again today.