Schiff, Jacob Henry

(1847–1920)

   US banker and philanthropist. Schiff emigrated to the United States from his native Frankfurt, Germany, at the age of eighteen, and found a job in a New York brokerage firm. Within twenty years his remarkable financial acumen had made him head of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, one of the most important private investment houses in the country, involved in the financing of the rapidly expanding American railroad system, and in profitable loans to many governments. Through his great wealth, philanthropy and devotion to Jewish affairs, Schiff was regarded as the most influential Jew in the United States.

   He had come from a traditional home, and contributed generously to many institutions of Jewish education and culture. He felt a keen sense of responsibility for oppressed Jews elsewhere, and especially the victims of Russian pogroms. His hatred for the czarist regime extended to blocking American loans for Russia, and helping to raise a loan for Japan at the time of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904. He had a long-standing treaty between the United States and Russia abrogated, because of Russian refusal to accept the passports of American Jews. Schiff was opposed to Zionism, which seemed for an American Jew like himself to be both irreligious and unpatriotic. Only in 1917, at the time of the BALFOUR Declaration, did he come around to believing that Jewish immigration to Palestine should be supported, and a cultural and spiritual centre developed there for the Jewish people.