Sokolow, Nahum

(1859–1936)

   Zionist leader and Hebrew writer. Sokolow was born in Russian Poland, taught himself Polish, Russian, German, French, English, Italian and Spanish, and read widely in all these languages. He became a man at home in two cultures: traditional Judaism and the cosmopolitan world of Europe.

   He became known first as a columnist on the Hebrew periodical Ha-Zefirah in Warsaw, then as its owner and editor. His articles covered current affairs, popular science, literary essays and poetry, in an erudite but popular Hebrew style. Later, he produced a series of literary yearbooks and miscellanies. His best- known serious work was the two-volume History of Zionism, 1600–1918, published in England in 1919, with an introduction by Lord BALFOUR. The centre of the Israel Journalists Association in Tel Aviv is named after him. At the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897, Sokolow came under the sway of HERZL’S magnetic personality, and he plunged into active Zionist work. For three years from 1906 he was general secretary of the Zionist Organization, under David WOLFFSOHN, Herzl’s successor. In 1911 he was elected a member of the Executive.

   After the outbreak of World War I, Sokolow came to London, and worked with WEIZMANN in the diplomatic activities that produced the Balfour Declaration in 1917. He carried out delicate contacts with representatives of the French and Italian governments and the Vatican, to prepare the way for the acceptance of the declaration by Britain’s allies. His audience with the pope was the first one given to a Zionist leader since Herzl. In 1919 Sokolow was a leading member of the Jewish delegation to the Paris Peace Conference and made the opening statement before the Council of Ten. In the post-war period Sokolow was chairman of the Zionist Executive. He presided over the biennial Zionist Congresses, and delivered to each of them an address surveying the world Jewish situation, as Max NORDAU had done in Herzl’s time. He travelled to many parts of the world on fund-raising missions. When Weizmann was forced to resign in 1931, after the PASSFIELD White Paper, Sokolow was elected president and filled the office for four years until Weizmann was re-elected. Sokolow was then given the title of honorary president of the Jewish Agency, and became chairman of its educational and cultural department. He died soon after, in 1936. Twenty years later, his remains were brought to Israel and reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

   Cultivated, dignified and tolerant, Sokolow was respected by all Zionist factions, and could use his influence as an ‘elder statesman’ to help smooth over internal conflicts. His position reflected his personality, which was friendly and accessible, but detached, philosophical and cautious. In the direction of the movement to which he devoted his life, his role was to inform and harmonize rather than to inspire and lead.