Page 180 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

The First World War and after

when the English Prime Minister Balfour made the famous
declaration for the Jewish homeland. I was already back in Los
Angeles then, and was swamped with Zionist work. I got publicity in
the papers, and telegrams by the dozen came from the headquarters
in New York to awaken the Jews to this great opportunity to start a
movement to Palestine. The mass of Jews did not respond to that
clarion call by Balfour. It was a matter of finances. A few years later,
English diplomacy reversed itself and put out the famous White
Paper, limiting emigration to Palestine and the purchase of land
there. Only a few pioneers ran the gauntlet of British guns and stole
into Palestine. Had the Jews grasped the moment and poured into
Palestine with the financial help of our wealthy Jews while Balfour
was in power, hundreds of thousands of Jews in Poland and Russia
would have been saved from the Nazi murderers.
After the Balfour Declaration had begun to stir the Jewish heart
and mind, I went before the Board of Education and asked
permission to use rooms of the Twenty-first Street School after
school hours as a place to teach Hebrew to the Jewish children in the
neighborhood. I got permission, and also the help of Israel Osman,
who volunteered to teach; but after all our efforts, we could not get
together half a dozen pupils willing to get a Jewish education. It was a
great disappointment to us Zionists. Again the Jews did not respond
to the great opportunity offered by the League of Nations. Although
we became very pessimistic about the future of Jews in such a
satisfied condition, we were not pessimistic about the outcome of a
Jewish homeland.
I was busy with Zionist work until nineteen-twenty, when I went
into the garage business. That meant doing repair work on
automobiles and wearing greasy and dirty clothes, which prevented
me from attending meetings on time—or not being able to be there
at all—and I had to give up my activities. The garage affair was quite
an incident in my life. I hoped to change my occupation from the
secondhand, specifically Jewish trade, to an American business or
trade which is respected and gives a man a living. Instead, I lost my
savings and retrogressed.
I never was interested in automobiles before, and did not know at
that time how to drive a car. Ben and I had bought an old ‘14 Ford
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