Gandhi’s Jewish Best Friend, and His Failed Effort to Gain the Indian Leader’s Support for Zionism

In 1893, a young Mohandas Gandhi left India for South Africa, where he would remain for over two decades. There he made a number of Jewish friends and acquaintances, among them the Lithuanian-born architect Hermann Kallenbach. The two remained close friends until the latter’s death in 1945. Kallenbach was deeply influenced by Gandhi’s philosophy, but by the 1930s had also become a committed Zionist. Oren Kessler describes Kallenbach’s first visit to India, in 1937, where he visited Gandhi at the behest of Zionist leaders hoping to win support from one of the “great Asiatic civilizations.”