4 - The Jewish Foundations

Summary

THE FUNDAMENTAL VALUES and principles that guided Hadassah were not formulated in explicitly ideological statements, and so for the most part must be traced through its publications and activities. Over the years, Hadassah's ideology was shaped by its leaders, who conveyed it to the rank-and-file members through the organization's publications, especially the official Hadassah Newsletter but also various other documents and pamphlets produced by the Education Department, and at the annual conventions. I use the term ‘ideology’ in this book to refer to the organization's ideas, values, and modus operandi, whether formulated explicitly or not.

THE ASPIRATION TO BE A BROAD ZIONIST MOVEMENT

We must build on our quarter million members until we have enrolled every Jewish woman in our communities.

Hadassah Annual Report, 1948/9

One of Hadassah's basic principles was that it should be a mass Zionist movement for American Jewish women: that is, ultimately every American Jewish woman should be counted among its members. That Hadassah was to be a popular, mass movement, and not an elitist one, was a matter of ideological principle, not of organizational tactics. In this, Hadassah was directly influenced by the outlook of the prominent leader of American Zionism (arguably the ‘Herzl of American Zionism’) and the man responsible for formulating some of its most fundamental concepts, Louis D. Brandeis (who was also the first Jew to be appointed as a judge to the US Supreme Court). Brandeis believed that every American Jew should be a Zionist, and that American Zionism must become a mass movement. The movement's members, he believed, were its major asset—both its main resource and its power base: the source of funds for Palestine, of ‘muscle with which to persuade governments’, and of ‘workers who would spread Zionist propaganda’. For Brandeis the Zionist movement was a financial and political means to realize the Zionist goals.

Brandeis's outlook became an integral and basic element of Hadassah's ideology. Its leaders, too, believed that it must not be a movement for the elite, for in that case it would not be able to gain wide public support. With the aim of helping every Jewish woman find her place in Hadassah, they did not impose excessive requirements, in terms of time, money, or personal qualifications, either on existing members or on new recruits.