Spies in Palestine

by James Srodes

  Absalom Feinberg and Sarah, ca. 1914

  She did love Absalom. But he could show a burst of immature reckless anger at some perceived injustice and perhaps that caused some hesitation on her part. One can also speculate that Sarah measured any prospective husband against the image of her older brother Aaron and found Absalom wanting, at least for the moment. There was pressure on her to marry, nevertheless. It was both the duty of a young woman and also an avenue to achieve the independence of her own home. But not just yet.

  It was inevitable that Absalom would turn a speculative eye to Rivka. Small and delicate in contrast to her older sister, Rivka had a beauty of her own, bright red hair, a cheerful freckled face, and a quiet passivity that allowed Absalom to tease her more intimately than he would have dared with Sarah. Rivka had an agenda of her own, and why not? She was perhaps not as intellectually precocious as her older siblings but she was certainly intelligent and had a value all her own. In time even Sarah realized the focus of Absalom’s attentions were drifting. It began slowly. Absalom began writing romantic teasing poems to both girls, perhaps at first to nudge Sarah into making a final decision, but it became clear that Rivka was far more welcoming of his attentions.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Love and War

  1913–1914

  Sarah Aaronsohn and her husband, Chaim Abraham, in Baku, 1914

  After the Three Pashas’ assumption of power in January 1913, life at Zichron began to lurch from crisis to crisis and it seemed the Aaronsohns were often in the center of the turmoil. Even though Aaron had returned from his American triumph with money to build the Athlit station, he spent little time at the construction site, leaving the transfer of his plants at Founders Street and the construction of the main station house and library to his sisters. In addition to money for the Athlit project, Aaron had secured a commitment of steady contributions from the American Zionists to provide aid to the community organizations of Zichron Ya’akov and other villages in the region.

  This largesse often caused as much resentment among the recipients as it did grudging gratitude. To be fair, Aaron often was too often peremptory in the advice he offered along with the funds. He returned from one American sojourn with funds to build a fully equipped clinic for Zichron for the express purpose of finding ways to combat the malaria that was a constant health threat to the region. In choosing the clinic’s director, Aaron made a mortal enemy of the village’s long-time doctor, Hillel Yaffe, who had been a close friend and supporter. Doctor Yaffe had assumed he would be named director of the clinic and was shattered when Aaron imported a younger doctor from elsewhere without any thought of the impact. The fact that the younger doctor had done research on malaria counted for little with Yaffe and his supporters in the town.

  Moreover, during these prewar years, Aaron was often away from Zichron so he remained unaware of the resentment that was building against him. He embarked on a seemingly endless tour of European scientific capitals and return trips to U.S. speaking venues where he entranced audiences (and newspaper reporters) with his eloquence about the potential of Palestine and the destiny of the Jewish people.

  Earlier, in 1911, there also was some pointed comment when Aaron persuaded Alexander to go to the United States. News filtered back to Zichron that the twenty-three-year-old Alexander had filed the first papers needed to become a U.S. citizen and that he had been hired by Aaron’s mentor David Fairchild for an important job at the Department of Agriculture. Where Aaron had won notice for his impressive command of science and his vision for Palestine, Alex (as he liked to be called in America) was a charmer and soon became popular among influential Zionists in Washington and New York.

  With the same restless energy of his older brother, Alexander also began to churn out newspaper articles and magazine stories in such influential outlets as The Atlantic Monthly extolling the promise of Palestine and emphasizing Aaron’s early comparisons between the region and the booming farm climate of California. The articles were reprinted in Europe and made their way to Zichron village. Sentiment held that one Aaronsohn celebrity swanking about abroad was enough, two was too much.

  If the villagers had known about it, they would have been even more resentful at how high the Aaronsohn brothers were flying in American political circles. Both brothers had established solid contacts among wealthy Zionist supporters in Chicago and New York. Because both were frequently working with Fairchild at the U.S. Department of Agriculture building in Washington, DC, they began to circulate among a circle of ardent young American Progressives who had come to the capital to make their political fortunes.

  Washington on the eve of World War I was still a small city of neighborhoods separated by the government branches they served. Just as Capitol Hill drew members of Congress, so the newly trendy Dupont Circle area in midtown was a convenient walk for those who labored at the White House, the U.S. Treasury, or the ornate Second Empire building at Seventeenth and Pennsylvania Avenue that housed the War Department, State Department, and Navy Department.

  The Aaronsohns visited homes around Dupont Circle such as the mansions of Secretary of State Robert Lansing and nephews John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles, as well as the home of the sociable Assistant Navy Secretary Frank (as he was known then) Roosevelt. But they would have been most at home and were more frequent visitors at a bachelor’s boardinghouse on Nineteenth Street that had become known as the House of Truth.

  Boardinghouses offered not only rooms and meals, they also served as social centers where young men and women could gather in respectable settings according to their tastes. So there were residences for teetotalers, suffragettes, western ranchers, and others of special interests who had come to Washington to advance their causes.

  As for the house on Nineteenth Street, Felix Frankfurter, who later became a Supreme Court Justice, later recalled that, “It was Justice (Oliver Wendell) Holmes who gave the place its name, the House of Truth, to tease us because we all were so certain we were right. He also said we were the brightest minds and the fastest talkers in town. And we were.”

  And they were. Starting in early 1913 regular residents at the House of Truth included Frankfurter and Walter Lippmann, later the most influential political commentator of mid–twentieth-century American journalism. Also in residence were two British noblemen, Lord Eustace Percy and Philip Kerr, a Scottish marquis. Both Frankfurter and Lippmann had been supporters and advisers to former President Theodore Roosevelt and his gradualist form of Progressivism. But as Germany’s aggressions began to threaten America’s security, they and others had shifted allegiances to Woodrow Wilson and had come for jobs in the government. Because the two British diplomats shared similar views through their brand of Fabian Socialism, the House of Truth soon became a mecca for ambitious young Progressives of both sexes.

  Drawn by the all-night political debates as well as the supplies of that new cocktail, the daiquiri, and stacks of new records of that hot music called jazz, the young elitists mingled happily with Holmes, other justices, and Cabinet officers who dropped by regularly. On any given night the Aaronsohns could meet prominent figures such as Herbert Hoover, the beau ideal of the Progressives for his wartime relief efforts. The Dulles brothers, Roosevelt, and Herbert Croly, the editor of the influential magazine The New Republic dropped by regularly. The Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum one night scrawled with a piece of charcoal across the dining room tablecloth his plans for a mammoth design that later would become the iconic Mount Rushmore memorial in South Dakota.

  Aaron made his mark among these talented young strivers. He had the stature of his scientific discoveries, and he would have mesmerized fellow Jews like Frankfurter and Lippmann with his dreams of a democracy in the Mediterranean that would be a flourishing home for Jews of all nationalities to find haven. One of the frequent drop-ins, William Bullitt, then a news reporter and later an important U.S. diplomat, would say that Aaronsohn “was the greatest man I ever met.”

  So impressed
with Aaron’s dynamic presence were House of Truth regulars Frankfurter and Lippmann that they once arranged a dinner for him with former President Theodore Roosevelt. To great hilarity they watched as the normally loquacious Roosevelt was kept silent for an hour as Aaron held forth on land reclamation (a pet cause of Roosevelt’s) and the future of a Zionist Palestine.

  No one, not even Aaron in his most visionary mood, could foresee what awaited these youthful contacts six years later when all of them would meet again at the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference that brought an end to World War I. Percy and Kerr would be the chief foreign policy advisers to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Hoover once again would dominate headlines with his postwar refugee relief program. Lippmann would assist Wilson in drafting his famous Fourteen Points manifesto for world peace. Frankfurter would not only serve as a wartime aide to Ambassador Henry Morgenthau but also be a leader of the American Zionist delegation to Paris to urge the creation of a Jewish state. Their eagerness to help their old House of Truth friend Aaronsohn elevated him to critical influence at that conference equaling that of the costumed pleader for Arab supremacy in the Middle East, T.E. Lawrence.

  Back home in Zichron Ya’akov, Aaron’s neighbors would have been dismayed to learn of these friendships in the making and what they might mean for their futures. At that moment, however, they had more pressing worries. Since Zichron had become one of the most prosperous of the old Rothschild villages, it became a natural target for the young evangelists of the Second Aliyah who demanded laboring jobs in the vineyards and fields in place of the Arab laborers. These young firebrands (including, briefly, David Ben-Gurion) were quite emphatic in criticizing private property ownership and urging communal decision making for the main commercial efforts—the stores, the winery, and vineyards. They made no secret that they wanted to replace the Arab laborers as a start to expelling Arab neighbors from their own villages nearby, and ultimately from Palestine itself.

  These tough, new arrivals had several advantages over the earliest pioneers. Their movement had been partly sponsored and organized by the now dominant Zionist Organization founded by Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann. Many of the émigrés had belonged to political parties back home such as the Polish Jewish Socialist Workers Party, Poalei Zion, and they quickly formed expatriate branches in Palestine. They had a fixed ideological vision of what they wanted to create that jarred sharply against the customs of the first farmers.

  Violence was inevitable. The sons of the earliest pioneers resented the swagger of the new men and mocked their often clumsy farming techniques; the newcomers sneered at the young villagers for being ignorant rustics. Fights erupted at dances. Then it got worse as Arab farmers retaliated indiscriminately against their former employers and persecutors alike. Arab watchmen who used to protect livestock and fields at night from random Bedouin pilfering now turned to stealing cows and sheep. The older Jewish farmers were at first unwilling to escalate with reprisals. The custom of the time allowed a farmer to reclaim his stolen stock in an elaborate charade where apologies and a token bribe would be offered. Not so the new arrivals who formed watch groups of their own, bolstered by arms secured from European allies.

  As these clashes had increased throughout 1911 and 1912, Aaron and whatever influence he might have brought to bear was gone from Palestine. David Fairchild had secured a $300-a-year stipend for Aaron as a consultant and organized a schedule of speaking engagements in the U.S. and Canada to groups of scientists and farmers interested in the farming techniques he had put in place at Athlit.

  While he was away, the elders of Zichron mistakenly put their faith in the reform pledges of the new Ottoman government to restore order. But in villages where the more radicalized new arrivals had taken control, these tough new men took matters into their own hands. Led by members of militant groups such as the Socialist-Zionists Poale Zion from Poland, armed groups named Ha-Shomer (literally, “Watchmen”) began to arm themselves. At first, the Ha-Shomer sought only to replace the Arab guards who had protected commune flocks and crops at night. But by 1913, the groups had expanded into a defense force for the commune movement that assumed the law enforcement role of the now war-distracted Turkish government. Unsurprisingly, the Watchmen ignored the raids on Jewish villages of the early pioneers, with special scorn for towns like Zichron Ya’akov and Hadera.

  The vulnerability of these towns did not last long. Early in 1913, Alexander returned from America laden with equipment to produce motion pictures and the equally popular stereopticon photographs that produced a three-dimensional picture of exotic places and major public events for home viewing. He intended to produce for American and European audiences a compelling vision that would prompt greater support for returning Palestine to its Biblical prosperity. But once he arrived he was appalled at how unsafe Zichron and the nearby villages had become.

  In Absalom he found a similar impatient and reckless soul. Without Aaron being there to counsel and possibly restrain them, the two set out to organize their own defense force. Starting with young friends from Zichron, the two gathered an initial force of sixty young men from the surrounding region. They named themselves the Gideonites, after the Biblical Jewish victor over the Midianites. They differed at the start from the Ha-Shomer, who had first started out on foot unarmed and with the intention to use the minimum force against theft. But the Gideonites had their own horses and arms. More, they joined as a brotherhood, with a sworn oath of secrecy and a pledge to match violence done to them with greater retaliation.

  Soon the Aaronsohns used contacts among the merchants of Haifa to secure a greater stock of arms. Once the arms were secured members their initial aim was modest enough. Whenever Arab villagers harmed Jewish settlers or their property, there would be swift reprisal. Turkish protection would no longer be relied upon. But the Gideonites did not think of themselves as challengers to Turkish rule. At least not at first.

  Rivka Aaronsohn

  By the fall of 1913, that last autumn of peace, another dramatic change occurred. Absalom broke the impasse with Sarah and proposed to Rivka, who quickly said yes. Sarah had little chance to come to terms with Absalom’s abrupt transfer of his affections. She could hardly protest, for it had been her reluctance that had driven him into her sister’s arms. Just as abruptly events far away from Zichron Ya’akov began to intrude on everyone’s awareness. There was so much to do and trouble was in the air.

  While the Gideonites at first had been able to ward off pillagers of the village crops and livestock with warnings, confrontations began to turn more violent as Arab villages once considered friendly were themselves being squeezed by Turkish officials and found it easier to retaliate against the Jews. Alexander and Absalom were now often away getting into skirmishes with the other Gideonites, leaving Sarah to do double duty at home and at the Athlit station. Rivka and her betrothal was a vexation to be dealt with later.

  In the spring of 1914, Sarah’s personal life was thrown into turmoil. What prospects there might have been for love with the dynamic Absalom Feinberg had dried up before her eyes. Her hesitancy had cost her a man she had truly loved. But it was clear that Rivka loved Absalom too and it was unthinkable that Sarah would object to the new betrothal. The spark between them when they first met now must be smothered.

  Absalom continued to be a permanent fixture at the Athlit station and in the Aaronsohn house in Zichron Ya’akov. He continued to be affectionate with Sarah. But Rivka now reveled in her triumph as only a younger sister can when she has spent her life in the shadow of siblings who are larger than life.

  Sarah felt conflicting emotions of disappointment and relief, but now faced a serious problem. By the traditions of the time, the younger daughter in a Jewish family could not marry until her older sister was wed. But whom would Sarah marry?

  Aaron offered a solution. He had a good friend in Constantinople, a wealthy merchant named Chaim Abraham. He was a pleasant man, not bad looking, a bit more than ten years older than the twenty-f
our-year-old Sarah. Abraham had often visited Zichron Ya’akov and had always made a good impression, so he was hardly a stranger. He also was a vocal supporter of the Zionist dream and spoke often of selling his prosperous import business and buying land to settle and develop near Zichron Ya’akov. Best of all, he wanted to marry, and his wife could look forward to a life of cosmopolitan luxury in a huge mansion in the Galata part of Constantinople. It was clearly to be an arranged marriage with no thought of romantic courtship.

  Indeed, some have speculated the match was merely a sham to permit Rivka to marry Absalom, and that after a respectable period Sarah and Chaim would dissolve their marriage and she would resume her life in Zichron Ya’akov. But that speculation ignores the scandal that a divorce would ignite in the community. Sarah would be the one shamed by the community and she most certainly would never find another husband.

  From left foreground: Rivka, Sarah, and Ephraim Aaronsohn. Left middle: Alexander and Shmuel Aaronsohn, and Sarah’s husband Chaim Abraham. Rear: Aaron Aaronsohn. (March 1914)

  More plausibly, the stark truth is that both Sarah and Chaim Abraham talked themselves into the match. Both wanted to marry someone suitable. Sarah liked him but certainly was not in love with the sedate, portly merchant. To Alexander, she tried a more lighthearted tone, “Rivka has written about the surprise I have prepared for you. I am glad she broke the news, for I find it hard to tell you. . . . I wish you were here to get to know the bargain I have chosen—a red-bearded Jew. How you will mock me!”

  For his part Abraham saw advantages in marrying into the Aaronsohn clan, with its prosperous interests in the developing lands around and the popular winery. When he and Ephraim sat down to discuss the dowry that would be Sarah’s wedding portion, Chaim at first balked at the father’s offer of a large tract of land adjoining the already flourishing vineyards. He preferred cash. But he had made promises about giving up his endless travels as a merchant and settling down nearby, and Sarah clearly assumed that after a brief adventure in Constantinople she would be returning to her homeland and family with her husband. She should have been warned when Chaim accepted the land portion as dowry with some grumbling. But she went ahead anyway.