“Never a dull infinitesimal during the bygone year!!” wrote Leopold Meyer, president of Congregation Beth Israel of Houston, Texas, successful May 1944. In and among the accustomed chatter successful his yearly study (“Mr. and Mrs. Isaac S. Brochstein and Mr. and Mrs. Sam Brochstein complimented the Congregation with 2 beauteous fern boxes, which appropriately adorn the Temple Altar”) was a struggle truthful vitriolic that, successful the mediate of a satellite war, it landed Beth Israel successful the pages of Time mag and The New York Times.
This was not wherever Beth Israel liked to be.
The Greek columns connected its facade, southbound of downtown connected the country of Holman and Austin Streets, proclaimed the stability— the unimpeachable correctness—of 1 of the city’s astir enduring institutions. Beth Israel was a flagship of American Judaism, its origins stretching backmost to 1844, erstwhile Texas was inactive an autarkic republic. It was arrogant of its presumption arsenic the oldest temple successful Texas and the largest congregation successful the South. Its rabbi, Dr. Henry Barnston, had served for forty-three years. Its committee was drawn from the aforesaid captains of industry—bankers, retailers, security men—who would person occupied specified positions successful immoderate akin synagogue. These were not people—this was not a place—that went looking for trouble.
Yet occupation had recovered Beth Israel. In mid-1943, the congregation was riven by a ungraded truthful aggravated that for months it relegated adjacent the astir shocking reports from Nazi-occupied Europe to the interior pages of the Jewish newspapers. The contention went to the bosom of what it meant to beryllium Jewish and what it meant to beryllium American, and created a schism that reverberated for a generation. It took its astir fervent participants by surprise. The cause, arsenic ever, was Zionism.
The congregation was riven by a ungraded truthful aggravated that for months it relegated adjacent the astir shocking reports from Nazi-occupied Europe to the interior pages of the Jewish newspapers.
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On September 7, 1943, Beth Israel’s Board of Trustees approved a azygous leafage of “Basic Principles.” These—which would soon gain its authors comparisons to Adolf Hitler, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Spanish Inquisition, and which would beryllium called the Jurenberg Laws, reminiscent of the Nuremberg Laws—included 7 points.
They proclaimed the unity of God. They vowed to usher successful a messianic property of brotherhood, alternatively than awaiting a idiosyncratic Messiah. They asserted the spiritual equality of women and men. They embraced the motivation halfway of the Bible portion rejecting rules that “regulate diet, priestly purity, dress, and akin laws…which contiguous are wholly unsuited, unnecessary and overseas to the beliefs and observances of progressive Judaism successful modern America.” They said that Hebrew, chartless to astir congregants, should for the astir portion springiness mode to English truthful that supplication would not go a “soulless form.” They promised to “help our co-religionists whenever and wherever the request whitethorn arise, adjacent arsenic we indispensable assistance each mankind that whitethorn beryllium successful need, successful accordance with the principles of our faith.”
In American Reform synagogues, this was boilerplate. So, until recently, was the 2nd of the 7 principles, the paragraph that unleashed the controversy:
We are Jews by virtuousness of our acceptance of Judaism. We see ourselves nary longer a federation but we are a spiritual assemblage and, therefore, we expect neither a instrumentality to Palestine nor a restoration of immoderate of the laws concerning the Jewish State. We basal unequivocally for the separation of Church and State. We are neither a nation, a nationality nor a race. Our religion is Judaism. Our federation is the United States of America. Our nationality is American. Our emblem is the “Stars and Stripes.” Our contention is Caucasian.
No existent subordinate would beryllium obliged to subscribe to these principles. Any caller subordinate indispensable either judge them or, successful lawsuit they could not, go “associate members,” who would bask afloat entree to the temple’s religious, social, and acquisition services—everything but the close to vote.
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In September 1943, these principles provoked outraged howls. The outrage was not unpredictable. There had ever been tensions among American Jews, and these, successful Texas, had a circumstantial character. The halfway Texas Jewish families traced their origins to Western Europe. Their ancestors had entered the United States done Southern ports, particularly New Orleans and Galveston, which gave them a antithetic governmental and taste predisposition from those who had entered done the East, and supra each done New York. Their spiritual predisposition was different, too: Far much truthful than successful the North, Southern Reform congregations rejected thing that smacked of Orthodoxy.
From the precocious nineteenth century, Jews poured into the United States. In a azygous decade, from 1910 to 1920, the Jewish colonisation of Texas doubled. By 1940, it had grown astir different 50 percent, to astir 50 thousand. Those who arrived successful the 1900s had precise antithetic cultural, political, and spiritual backgrounds from the older Texas Jews. They were much apt to talk Yiddish—and, arsenic persecution of Jews accrued pursuing World War I, they were much apt to beryllium Zionists. In the discourse of Texas, these differences mightiness not person mattered, since the Jews, similar different citizens of the fast-growing state, were adept astatine absorbing immigrants. But by 1943, determination was a much urgent context.
That, of course, was the war. Interspersed among the 553 pages of documents relating to the Basic Principles successful the Beth Israel archives are galore that notation to the events not yet known arsenic the Holocaust. These springiness an thought of what an mean American Jewish assemblage would person known, successful those years, astir those events. By 1943, overmuch was known, immoderate firsthand: Houston was afloat of refugees, among whom was my grandfather, a Berlin lawyer who had reached the United States 5 years before. Beth Israel collected the hopeless advertisements placed successful the nationalist newspapers.
From February and March 1943, for example:
Massacred By Foe, Ignored By Friend, A PEOPLE APPEALS TO THE CONSCIENCE OF AMERICA…
German Postal Authorities Now Use A Stamp Which Reads “Died successful the people of liquidation of the Jewish Problem”…TWO MILLION JEWS HAVE ALREADY BEEN EXTERMINATED!
THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN—Save the 4,000,000 remaining Jews of Europe by ACTION—NOT PITY!
These advertisements stressed the value of allowing Jews to immigrate to Palestine, a tiny state wherever determination was hostility to specified immigration. They did not accent the value of allowing Jews to travel to ample Western countries that could person absorbed them—Great Britain, South Africa, Brazil, Canada, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, for example—and neither did they stress, oregon so adjacent mention, the astir evident destination of all: the United States of America.
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The archetypal susurration of trouble, and the earliest papers preserved successful the archives, appeared successful Houston’s starring Jewish newspaper, The Jewish Herald-Voice, connected January 7, 1943. Titled “We Reject Zionism: An Anti-Zionist Leader States the Position of His Group,” the nonfiction was the enactment of a New York rabbi named Hyman Judah Schachtel.
Schachtel was thirty-five. He had been calved successful 1907 successful London, wherever his father, an opera vocalist from Kalisz, had been recruited by Oscar Hammerstein to articulation a institution helium was hoping would rival the Royal Opera House successful Covent Garden. Following his opera career, Schachtel’s begetter became a cantor and joined a granddaughter of Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, a rabbi of Grodno, aft whom the seminary of Yeshiva University is named. Unusually for a miss of her time, Schachtel’s parent had learned Hebrew and Talmud. Because of this background, Schachtel said, “I had precise small accidental to beryllium thing other but what I am.”
The household sailed connected the Lusitania successful 1914, a twelvemonth earlier a German torpedo sank the vessel and killed astir 12 100 people. At Ellis Island, a tragedy: The family’s nanny, nicknamed Silly Lulu, was turned backmost due to the fact that she was incapable to read. “I tin inactive spot her screaming and my brothers and I crying due to the fact that we wanted Silly Lulu to enactment with us,” helium would aboriginal recall.
Schachtel grew up successful Buffalo. He was a ginger who utilized to commune that helium would aftermath up with his brothers’ acheronian hair. “All redheads make an inferiority complex,” helium said. His begetter died soon earlier helium was ordained successful 1931, and past an aboriginal matrimony ended successful divorce. He past joined a younger woman, a pupil astatine Vassar named Barbara Levin. His affluent voice—“That’s what attracted maine to him successful the archetypal place,” said Barbara—rang with authority. He joined the West End Synagogue successful Manhattan, and was employed determination erstwhile the nonfiction appeared successful Houston.
In it, Schachtel rejected the Zionist thought “that we are Jews by contention and nationality.” It rejected the thought that Jews were homeless: “We American Jews are not homeless. The British Jews warring valiantly for Britain bash not respect themselves arsenic homeless. Nor bash the Russian Jews shedding their humor on the 2,000-mile front.” And helium took a agelong humanities view. “True, the past 2 decades person been bitter ones successful immoderate countries [!], but those decades were lone portion of a watercourse of past which successful the past period and a fractional has shown tremendous advancement successful the enlargement of freedom.” The problem, arsenic Schachtel saw it, was not homelessness; it was the denial of cosmopolitan quality rights. This was precisely what radical arsenic antithetic arsenic Edwin Montagu, Sadiq Saad, and Aaron Samuel Tamares had besides maintained. In the mediate of the war, Schachtel’s connection was optimistic:
For america to support that postwar Europe volition beryllium eternally and unchangeably hostile to the Jew is to telephone the objectives of the United Nations truthful overmuch poppycock and to connote that the satellite time volition lone transportation connected the evils of the satellite of yesterday. It is to judge a barren doctrine of defeatism to judge that portion the Axis volition beryllium defeated, the Axis ideology volition beryllium triumphant. It is to assistance Hitler NOW his triumph successful making Europe “Judenrein” (without Jews).
The documents bash not accidental wherefore this appeared successful The Jewish Herald-Voice, but a question was afoot to regenerate the seventy-five-year-old Dr. Barnston, Beth Israel’s long-serving leader. Though unanimously respected and resolutely opposed to Zionism, Barnston was aging. The committee tried to easiness him retired diplomatically, but helium refused. They tried to easiness him retired little diplomatically, suggesting that they mightiness spell nationalist with his shortcomings—“shaky transportation of sermons, mediocre health, and inability to gully a crowd,” according to the historiographer Hollace Ava Weiner—and adjacent showed him a surreptitiously snapped photograph that revealed the rows of bare pews astatine a caller service. The trustees feared that if thing happened to him, his heir apparent, Robert Kahn, would regenerate him, and it was known that Kahn had Zionistic inclinations. Conveniently from their constituent of view, Rabbi Kahn was thousands of miles distant successful the Pacific, serving arsenic a chaplain successful the U.S. Army. They were seeking a suitable replacement for Dr. Barnston earlier Kahn returned. They recovered Schachtel.
The contention went to the bosom of what it meant to beryllium Jewish and what it meant to beryllium American, and created a schism that reverberated for a generation.
Though each effort was taken to marque Dr. Barnston’s departure look voluntary—the authoritative crushed was mediocre health—he was fired connected May 19, 1943. This was 4 months aft Schachtel’s portion appeared, possibly arsenic an audition. By his ain account, Schachtel was not looking for different job. As helium told it, Rabbi Jonah Wise, lad of Isaac Mayer Wise, called to accidental that a Mr. George Cohen of Houston—the proprietor of Foley’s, 1 of Houston’s astir prestigious section stores, arsenic good arsenic the brother-in-law of the synagogue’s president, Leopold Meyer—wished to conscionable him successful his suite astatine the Waldorf Astoria. The gathering went well. Schachtel visited Houston, with its notoriously blistery and humid climate, and was chauffeured from location to edifice to edifice successful specified a crisply air-conditioned bubble that helium reported to Barbara, successful New York, that the spot was “freezing.” The welcome, though, was warm. Still, helium was hesitant. “I loved New York City and couldn’t spot myself coming here,” helium remembered. “Whereupon immoderate of the outstanding colleagues of excavation successful the state called maine and said it is your work to bash this.”
The committee would not person dismissed Barnston without a acceptable replacement, and the notation to “outstanding colleagues” pressuring Schachtel to spell to Houston is simply a hint that the nationwide anti-Zionist campy considered it a precedence to support a synagogue arsenic salient arsenic Beth Israel from embracing Zionism. There is nary grounds that different candidates were considered. Schachtel had been progressive successful the American Council for Judaism, which led the complaint against Zionism successful the United States. He had helped to circular up signatures for an unfastened missive from American rabbis, and was described arsenic 1 of the caller group’s hawks.
This earned him the opprobrium of 1 of the leaders of the New York rabbinical establishment, Stephen S. Wise, who blocked Schachtel’s predetermination arsenic the caput of the New York Board of Jewish Ministers. In reply, sixteen rabbis walked out. This decision lone made Schachtel much disposable among the anti-Zionists. The American Council for Judaism was particularly salient successful the South, with its much integrated Jewish communities, and brought him to the attraction of the Houston congregation.
To the public, Beth Israel’s committee maintained that, pursuing Barnston’s resignation, they sought a antheral “becoming the value and dignity of Beth Israel,” 1 who “subscribed to the principles of the religion arsenic taught by Dr. Barnston for astir forty-four years, and from which the members of Beth Israel would brook nary departure.” The operation “principles of the faith” was codification for absorption to Zionism, and intelligibly understood arsenic such. Only 3 days aft Barnston’s firing, a congregant named Jacob L. Farb, whose letters would uncover a sensation for flamboyant metaphors, utilized the archetypal of the Nazi comparisons that would punctuate the pursuing months. “The deftness of the proceeding”—the firing of Dr. Barnston—“has each the ear-marks of a ‘blitz’ plainly marked ‘made successful Germany.’”
Two months later, connected July 14, Rabbi Schachtel was officially offered the job. On July 23, helium telegraphed his acceptance. In the meantime, a peculiar gathering was called for August 4, 1 that “likely volition ever beryllium recalled by the members of Congregation Beth Israel arsenic highly eventful, to accidental the least.” Some were upset astir Dr. Barnston’s departure; some, astir the nonaccomplishment to elevate Kahn. President Leopold Meyer noted that “for the archetypal clip successful the past of Beth Israel…there were hopelessly irreconcilable factions wrong our Congregation, and, shockingly, that a tiny conception of our rank was much devoted to National Zionism than to Judaism.” The dissidents knew well, Meyer wrote, that “if Rabbi Schachtel were elected, the decease knell of National Zionism wrong Beth Israel would beryllium sounded.” Rubbing it in, Meyer wrote that the “hopeless and helpless minority” went down to a “thunderous and ignominious defeat.” He added, “The full Jewish assemblage was decidedly aroused by the quality of the claptrap presented.”
Following the meeting, connected August 13, Meyer appointed a Policy Formulation Committee, nether the chairmanship of Israel Friedlander, laminitis of an important section bank, the Gibraltar Savings and Loan Association. On September 7, the committee approved the Basic Principles. After receiving a missive of protest, President Meyer summoned a wide gathering connected November 23. In beforehand of that meeting, letters, pamphlets, and articles started to alert astir the nation, debating the meaning of Judaism and the spot of the Jews successful America.
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From Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History by Benjamin Moser, published by Doubleday, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a part of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2026 by Benjamin Moser.
Audio excerpted with support of Penguin Random House Audio from ANTI-ZIONISM by Benjamin Moser, work the author. Benjamin Moser ℗ 2026 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.
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