Just how Alexis Sheftel found himself among the revolutionary exiles in London remains something of a mystery, but it’s possible that his dedication to the printing business may have had its roots in Ukraine, the country of his birth.
One of the most active presses in Sheftel’s hometown of Kiev and Berdichev was the ‘Sheftel Printing Works’, owned and managed by respected Yiddish and Talmudic scholar, Haim Jacob Sheftel (R. Chaim Ya’akov Sheftel). Over the years the company’s customers would include theatre-critic and cultural activist, Nakhmen Mayzel, and playwright David Pinski, a prominent Labour Zionist who would relocate to New York from Berlin in the early 1900s.
Born in Mogilev in 1872, Pinski had been using his ‘radical’ newspaper The Jew Militant to bolster the Zionist cause. Among those who would publish his works upon his arrival in New York was A. M. Evalenko, the man who the revolutionary Sherlock Holmes, Vladimir Burtsev, would investigate as a possible Tsarist agent. [1] The first of his plays he published was the aptly named Isaac Sheftel (Ayzik Sheftel). Published in US English in 1907, the play follows the fortunes of its hero Isaac Sheftel, a genius inventor who pits himself against his unscrupulous factory boss in a desperate bid to empower the workers. Another play, Family Tsvi in 1904 had been written in the wake of the Kishinev pogrom, and called for Jews not to passively accept the violence against them.
Pinski would become a regular contributor to David Shapiro and Herman Bernstein’s Der Tog newspaper operating from Lower East Broadway. After completing his doctorate at Colombia University and getting involved in the New York Jewish Worker’s Movement, Pinski and Jacob Massel, would team up in a new commercial venture with Meyer M. Aronson: the Pinski-Massel Press. And in light of Aronson’s proximity to Alexis Sheftel, it’s entirely possible that the young compositor from Hastings played a role in some of its earliest production activities in 1914.
It was an interesting partnership. Like his cousin Meyer Aronson, Meyer Mordechai Aronson would join Sheftel at the Glory of Israel Hebrew Institute back in Brownsville in Brooklyn. His partner, the Kletsk-born Jacob Massel, was likewise involved in similar charitable endeavours at the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Assisted by his close friend Herman Bernstein, Massel would play a prominent role in organizing and supporting the massive influx of refugees fleeing Tsarist Russia and arriving at Ellis Island. It would prove to be a noble and lifelong endeavour.
Who was Jacob Massel?
Massel was an immigrant himself, having arrived in New York from Glasgow sometime in March 1903 around the time of the Kishinev pogrom. By 1917 he was living on 54th Street in the Borough Park district of Brooklyn, placing him within a few minutes stroll of his publishing colleague, Meyer Mordachai Aronson at 1524 50th Street and Trotsky’s friend Ludwig Lore on 55th Street. According to Kenneth Ackerman’s book, Trotsky in New York 1917, Trotsky had disembarked from the train at 54th Street on the first of his visits to Lore and his partner Lillian. [2]
On arriving in New York, Massel quickly got immersed in the city’s raft of educational and pro-Labour Zionist groups. On one occasion in January 1911, Massel and the Society was involved in a loud and clamorous protest against government proposals to introduce more rigorous educational testing as part of its new immigration procedures. A crowd had gathered in East Broadway to hear the Society’s chief advisor, Jacob H. Schiff express his firm conviction that it was better to have an immigrant who was willing to work, than a man who could read and write but possessed nothing in the way of honesty or work ethic. Supporting him on the platform that day were co-directors Arthur Concors and Jacob Massel. The address was followed by an appeal by Nathan S. Jonas of the Brooklyn Federation of Jewish Charities for an increase in donations. [3]
The Manchester Zionists
In spite of his lightning entry into New York’s substantial asylum projects and a long and respected list of colleagues, friends and patrons, practically nothing about Jacob’s early life is known. There are a handful of references made in The Maccabæan journal to a ‘Mr. Jacob Massel of Glasgow’ and an ‘Isaac Allen of New York’ delivering a series of lectures in June and July 1903, but his activities prior to his arrival from Glasgow remain unclear. There is certainly no one by the name of Jacob Massel in the various censuses recorded in Britain during this period. In fact, the only evidence we have of anyone in his immediate family is an older cousin of Jacob’s in Manchester, the letterpress owner and writer Joseph Massel.
According to a lovingly managed entry on the Internet’s Geni heritage website, Joseph Massel, a printer, translator, poet and pioneering Zionist activist was the son of Jacob’s Uncle Avrohom, a Lithuanian, also known as ‘Symon’. Massel had arrived in Manchester in 1882. According to his obituary in the Manchester Guardian in September 1912, Massel had arrived in England in 1882 where he quickly set-about publishing a number of original works and a collection of ambitious translations, among them Milton’s ‘Samson Agonistes’, Henry Longfellow’s ‘Judas Maccabaeus’ and Edward FitzGerald’s ‘Omar Khayyam’. [4]
One of the very first companies to publish his poems and stories on Joseph’s arrival in England was London-based publishers, Greenberg & Co, the producers of The Jewish Chronicle. Interestingly, it was the Jewish Chronicle’s St Petersburg correspondent who was the first to accuse the Russian Government of complicity in the notoriously bloody events in Kishinev in 1903. [5] The scenes they described were horrific. Quoting the St Petersburg Jewish newspaper, The Friend, the Chronicle reported how eyewitnesses had found one body with nails driven through its temples. Another was disembowelled, the gaping wounds being filled in with feathers. Many others had had their tongues ripped out and women had had their breasts cut off. Had the Jews been in receipt of the warnings relayed to Chief Lopukhin and the Police, the worst of the violence could have been minimised, the Chronicle added.
Within weeks though, its view had changed and the newspaper was obliged to retract its statements and issue a full apology. In June it was to write that they had it from sources close to the Tsar that he had been “acutely affected by the terrible scenes” and left “heartbroken” by events at Kishinev. It was further informed that the influence of certain “fanatical advisers by whom the Tsar is surrounded” had been greatly weakened by the consequence of the response. [6] We now know that a major deception had been played. Hidden-forces operating within Imperial Russia had forged the document attributed to von Plehve which alleged that the Police had been given ample warning and instructed not to interfere.
The relationship between Joseph and his cousin Jacob is an interesting one. In fact, Jacob’s relocation to New York may have been brought about in part by Rabbi Richard Gottheil of Manhattan, a long time associate of his cousin who had left his native Manchester to lead the American Federation of Zionists in New York. At an address at the Derby Hall in Cheetham Hill in 1900, Gottheil and Massel would propose a resolution to bring the Manchester Zionist movement under the management of the American federation. [7]
Joseph Massel, born Yoysef Yechezkel Mazl in Vilna in 1850 had left his position as a mining executive in 1887 to become a leading member of a movement in North West England pressing for support and funds to help bolster the small yet dignified Chovevei settlers in Palestine from the movement’s base on Cheetham Hill Road. His youngest son Simon, the firm’s compositor, was born in Edinburgh in the mid-1880s. Like his father, the older siblings were born in Russia.
Belarusian chemist Chaim Weizmann, who would go on to be the very first President of Israel, and who was also living in Manchester at this time, was also a close friend of Joseph and his family. Joseph was in fact the first person to meet him off the train upon his arrival in Manchester from Berlin and Switzerland in 1904 (Chaim Weizmann: The Making of a Zionist Leader, Jehuda Reinharz, 1985). There may be some evidence to suggest that the work performed by Massel and Weizmann in Manchester had a favourable impact on Israel supporter, Arthur Balfour who spent the best part of twenty years as Conservative MP for Manchester East at the time the pair were active. Balfour’s constituency, which took in the deeply radical boroughs of Openshaw, Longsight and Ardwick, would almost certainly have brought him into contact with the Jewish intellectuals in the colonies north of the city.
Whilst Weizmann later described his landing in Manchester as an almost random occurrence, he really couldn’t have arrived in a better place. In the early 1900s Cheetham Hill was the seat of activism, it’s sprawling Polish and Ukrainian colonies every bit as passionate as those in Hackney and Whitechapel.
Weizmann certainly wasn’t new to politics. His sister Mashe and brother Schmuel were members of the Socialist (but anti-Zionist) Bund movement. His sister Minna, on the other hand, became a spy for Germany in Egypt, then under British rule. In Geneva he would engage in fractious arguments with Lenin, Trotsky and Plekhanov over the various routes open to Russian Jews in pursuit of self-determination. Whilst Weizamann, a life-long democrat, rejected the religious elite that kept the Jewish proletariat from prospering, his one true objective was in empowering Jewish culture and building a national homeland. By contrast, the three Marxists in the Weizmann family naturally rejected Zionism as a separatist response to anti-Semitism. More worryingly still, it was a distraction from class struggle. For Lenin, harnessing the energy of the world’s angry Jewish students would be better served by directing it at armed insurrection against the Tsar rather than through some fanciful promised land. Jewish Nationalism and pride threatened the Communist International. For Trotsky and Lenin, the Promised Land extended well beyond the borders of a small contested territory on the south eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
The role played by Massel’s friend and brother-in-arms Weizmann shouldn’t be underestimated. Despite or perhaps even because of his first-hand knowledge of Lenin and Trotsky in Geneva, Winston Churchill would later describe him as one of Britain and America’s most formidable allies in their post-war battle with Lenin’s Soviet. Warning the world of Trotsky’s schemes for ‘a world-wide communistic state’ under Communist Jewish ‘domination’, Churchill applauded the work being done by Weizmann’s Zionists: “The struggle which is now beginning between the Zionist and Bolshevik Jews is little less than a struggle for the soul of the Jewish people”. [8]
It was, however, a startlingly contradictory appeal to say the least. The American Jewish World was quick to see Churchill’s article for what it was; a “most mischievous anti-Jewish screed” that had been conceived to serve some crude political objective. It was a bizarre situation indeed. Churchill was clearly out to destroy Bolshevism using the support of the very people he thought to be behind Bolshevism: the Jew. The trick he played on the reader was to make the Jew responsible for the Bolshevist movement which was, he alleged, very obviously a world-wide Jewish conspiracy. Only by repudiating Bolshevism could they ever hope to clear their name. The Jews were in the process of destroying the world, and it was only by concentrating all their mischief in Palestine that they could ever hope to redeem themselves. Bolshevism and Zionism, he insisted, were totally irreconcilable.
[1] ‘Russian Red Calls Evalenko A Spy’, New York Times, September 4, 1909, p.7
[2] Trotsky in New York, 1917, Kenneth D. Ackerman, Cataputt, 2016
[3] New York Times, January 23, 1911, p.5
[4] Manchester Guardian, September 7, 1912, p.10
[5] New York Times, May 16, 1903, p.1
[6] Manchester Guardian, June 12, 1903, p.6
[7] Manchester Guardian, August 20, 1900, p.6
[8] ‘Zionism versus Bolshevism’, Winston Churchill, Illustrated Sunday Herald, Feb 8, 1920