“LOYALTY TO AMERICA DEMANDS THAT EACH JEW BECOME A ZIONIST"
Washington, D.C.: Zionist Organization of America, 1930s? Item #42468
No Date [1930s?]. 1st edition? (see below), single fold pamphlet, 8vo, [4] pages (2 leaves), with photo of Brandeis on cover. Reprints excerpts and quotes from the writings of Justice Louis Brandeis: "Written nearly a quarter of a century ago [in 1915], the message of Mr. Brandeis is just as timely and meaningful as though it were written today." The pamphlet includes no reference to Nazism or World War II, so this likely predates 1933, or at least the growing Nazi barbarism of the late 1930s. Brandeis (1856–1941), was a “U. S. Jurist, the first Jew to be appointed to the U. S. Supreme Court….When Woodrow Wilson was elected president in 1912 on a platform of the New Freedom, he turned to Brandeis for counsel in translating ideas of political and social reform into the framework of legal institutions. In 1916 Wilson nominated Brandeis as a justice of the Supreme Court, precipitating a contest over confirmation in the Senate that lasted more than four months…confirmation was finally voted on June 1, 1916” (Freund in EJ 2007). Remaining on the supreme court until 1939, Brandeis delivered more than 600 judgments, coining the term, the "right to privacy," and ruling against monopolies and in favor of workers’ rights and affordable life insurance. Outside the courtroom, from about 1910 on, he was a strong supporter of Zionism. “Brandeis’s desire to help Eastern European Jewry find a safe haven in Palestine was heightened by his contact in 1910 with Russian immigrant garment workers, whom he met while mediating a strike. He saw in these Jews a democratic spirit and idealism he had not expected. In 1913, Brandeis agreed to chair a Zionist meeting in Boston. Not content to be a mere figurehead, by 1915 Brandeis became Zionism’s leading public spokesman in America… By 1917, the American Zionist movement increased its membership tenfold to 200,000 members. The American Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, which Brandeis chaired, raised millions to relieve Jews who were suffering throughout war-torn Europe,” (from Feldberg’s “Louis D. Brandeis and American Zionism,” The Jewish Federation of North America). Founded in 1897, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), founded in 1897, the year of the Basel Zionist Congress, was the first Zionist organization in the United States, reaching its zenith in 1939 with support from Brandeis as it’s most famous advocate. SUBJECT(S): Jews -- Restoration. Juifs -- Restauration. Jewish question. OCLC lists 2 page copy with the estimated date of “1920s” (OCLC 236091221); it lists no copies anywhere of a 4-page pamphlet or of one appearing in the 1930s, as ours clearly does. Two pages may well indicate 2 leaves (a two paged pamphlet would actually just be a single-leaf broadside); the OCLC date may be accurate–or may just reflect the cataloguers not having read the context of “nearly a quarter century” having passed since the publication in of the 1915 remarks that are referenced. In any case, the pamphlet is quire rare from the period of growing Antisemitism in Europe and the growing Zionist movement in the US. Institutional stamps on cover, Good Condition Rare and important. (Holo2-160-39).
Price: $200.00