Eliezer ben Pinchas Shmuel, aka Herbert Louis Samuel (1870 – 1963), was the leader of the British Liberal Party from 1931 to 1935 and was the first nominally-practicing Jew to serve as a Cabinet minister, including as Home Secretary from 1931-1932 in the National Government of Ramsay MacDonald. He is perhaps best known, however, for his service as the first High Commissioner of Palestine (1920 – 1925) in charge of the administration of the territory, thereby becoming the first Jew to rule the Land of Israel in 2,000 years since the collapse of Shimon Bar Kochba’s revolt against Rome in 135 CE. The direction taken by British policy during Samuel’s term was critical in determining the future course of the Arab-Jewish battle for sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael.
Samuel’s ancestors were Ashkenazi Jews from what is today Western Poland and his parents were Clara (Yates) and Edwin Louis Samuel, a wealthy banker among the most prominent in the Anglo-Jewish community, who raised him in an environment of anglicized Orthodox Judaism. He married an observant Jew, his first cousin Miriam (Beatrice), in 1897 at the New West End Synagogue on St. Petersburgh Place, and they had three sons and one daughter.
Samuel was raised in an Orthodox home and, as he records in his Memoirs, his family “all observed conscientiously the dietary laws and other requirements of the Jewish faith.” While attending college in London and then Oxford, his mother sent him kosher meat by train from London but, in 1892, drawn to a rationalist and scientific humanism, he renounced all religious belief and advised her that he had abandoned the Jewish faith. Nonetheless, he continued to self-identify as a Jew; retained his Orthodox synagogue membership; and attended services on Yom Tov and other occasions. He provided a religious upbringing to his children, and, to please his wife he continued to observe kashrut, albeit for “hygienic reasons.”
Samuel also continued to observe Shabbat, particularly in public. However, though he expressed great sympathy with the movement for Shabbat observance – “On broad grounds, I attach the greatest value to the institution of a Day of Rest; the principle is one of the matters in which modern civilization owes very much to the Mosaic Code” – he rejected appeals by the Orthodox religious leaders of Eretz Yisrael to promote legislation against the profanation of the Sabbath. Pointedly noting that he and his family were setting an example of the importance of Shabbat observance, he maintained that “public opinion and moral influence will do more to bring about real observance of the Saturday day of rest than would the passage of laws which would be difficult of enforcement.”
Samuel not only remained an active member of the Jewish community, but he also was at the forefront of promoting Jewish interests around the world. For example, as the British government’s special appointee to Russia in 1911, he led protests against the Czar’s antisemitic advisers and he refused all offers by the Russian Ambassador of special privileges and treatment. A year later, during the notorious Mendel Beilis antisemitic blood-libel trial in Kiev, he openly wrote to The Times defending him and he engaged in a public and vociferous dispute with the Czarist Ambassador.
In this February 6, 1920 handwritten correspondence to Menachem Ussishkin – perhaps best known for publishing Our Program, which laid out his “five-point program” for Zionism, that became the platform for practical Zionism – Samuel evidences his synagogue attendance and continued observance of Shabbat:
I should be very glad to come to the service in memory of Mr. Tchelenov at the Great Synagogue tomorrow. I was intending to go to one or other of the Jerusalem synagogues, and am grateful for the suggestion.
What time will the guide come to take me to the Synagogue?
I would prefer to go on foot.
Prior to 1914, Samuel did not view Zionist activities as practicable, but one month after Britain’s declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire in November 1914, he met Chaim Weizmann, soon to become the President of the World Zionist Organization. According to Weizmann’s memoirs, Samuel was already a passionate Zionist who believed that the Zionist movement was insufficiently ambitious. Weitzmann’s faith in him was such that he recommended Samuel as his successor as Chairman of the Zionist Commission.
Samuel became the first British Jewish official to propose the idea of a Jewish state to the British government as he actively promoted Zionism within the British Cabinet, beginning with The Future of Palestine, his January 1915 memorandum in which he waxed poetic about the “dream of a Jewish State, prosperous, progressive, and the home of a brilliant civilization,” a Palestine that would “add a luster even to the British Crown” and allow it to advance its historic role of “civilizer of the backward countries.” He advocated for a Jewish Homeland in Eretz Yisrael under a British protectorate where Jews would be permitted to “purchase land, to found colonies, to establish educational and religious institutions;” to develop the country economically and give preference to “carefully regulated Jewish immigration;” and to encourage Britain to conquer Eretz Yisrael to protect the Suez Canal against foreign powers.
After Samuel’s proposal was summarily rejected by Prime Minister Asquith, who was bewildered by his “dithyrambic memorandum” and his “almost lyrical outburst,” Samuel backtracked from his support for a sovereign Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael and, in March 1915, he presented a much more modest version of the memorandum in which he explicitly ruled out any idea of immediately establishing a Jewish state and emphasized that non-Jews must receive equal treatment under any program. This proposal, too, was ultimately opposed by Asquith, but Samuel had succeeded in laying the ground for Britain’s pro-Zionist Balfour Declaration and played a prominent role in promoting it.
In the wake of World War I, Russia demanded that all its citizens be returned, which horrified the thousands of Jews who had immigrated to Great Britain during the war. On erev Yom Kippur 1919, Rav Kook appealed to Balfour, then a British cabinet minister, not to enforce the decree, but Balfour responded that he could not violate his oath to uphold his government’s policies. However, Samuel prevailed upon him to reverse his position and, as a result, not one Russian Jew was sent back. Moreover, in post-World War I London and Paris, Samuel played a critical behind-the-scenes role in 1919 in promoting the merits of Zionism to the delegates to the Peace Conference.
After Britain conquered the territory from the Turks in World War I and was awarded the Mandate for Palestine by the League of Nations, David Lloyd George – who back in 1914 had described Samuel as an “ambitious and grasping Jew who with all the worst characteristics of his race” – appointed him as the first High Commissioner of Palestine (1920 – 1925), making him the first Jew to rule the Land of Israel in 2,000 years. (At the time of his appointment, the Council of the League of Nations had yet to approve a British Mandate for Palestine; nonetheless, the British military government withdrew to Cairo to prepare for the expected Mandate, which did not actually come until two years later in 1922.)
Samuel’s appointment proved highly controversial. While the Zionists welcomed the appointment of a Zionist Jew to the post – although many came to rue the appointment by the end of his tenure, as discussed below – the British military government, headed by Edmund Allenby, characterized Samuel’s appointment as “highly dangerous.” Allenby argued that the appointment violated both British military law and the Hague Convention because a civil administration could not compel the inhabitants of an occupied country, in this case Eretz Yisrael, to express their allegiance to it before the adoption of a formal peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire. Not surprisingly, the Muslim population received the news of Samuel’s appointment with dismay, despondency, and fury and, according to Allenby, who predicted massive Arab violence, the Arabs would see it “as handing country over at once to a permanent Zionist Administration.”
Christians in Eretz Yisrael were no more pleased than the Muslins. The Muslim-Christian Association sent a telegram to Louis Bols, a staunch opponent of Samuel’s appointment and Allenby’s Third Army Chief of Staff during the WWI Palestine and Sinai Campaigns, which could not have made their position clearer:
Sir Herbert Samuel is regarded as a Zionist leader, and his appointment as first step in formation of Zionist national home in the midst of Arab people contrary to their wishes. Inhabitants cannot recognize him, and Muslim-Christian Society cannot accept responsibility for riots or other disturbances of peace.
George Curzon, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs who would later oversee the division of the British Mandate for Palestine and the creation of Transjordan, read this telegram to Samuel and urged him to reconsider accepting the position, but Samuel declined to do so. The prudence of appointing Samuel was debated in the House of Lords a day before his arrival in Eretz Yisrael, about which Lord Curzon said that “very grave doubts have been expressed as to the wisdom of sending a Jewish Administrator to the country at this moment.”
Nor was British concern about Samuels’ appointment limited to the House of Lords. Questions in the House of Commons during the period also showed great concern about Samuel’s appointment: “what action has been taken to placate the Arab population . . . and thereby put an end to racial tension.” Three months after his arrival, The Morning Post commented that “Sir Herbert Samuel’s appointment as High Commissioner was regarded by everyone, except Jews, as a serious mistake.”
Samuel’s appointment as High Commissioner was only the latest example of the antisemitism that he encountered through his life and career. Perhaps most revolting was the infamous Marconi Affair (1912 – 1913), when, as postmaster general, he (along with fellow-Jew Rufus Isaacs) was falsely accused of corruption by antisemites when his conduct was above reproach.
The fiasco began when The Eye-Witness, a popular political weekly, accused Samuel and others of profiting from the purchase of shares based on their knowledge of a government contract granted to the Marconi Company to build a chain of wireless stations, with the incident reaching a climax with the libelous allegations leveled against Samuel on February 14, 1913 by Le Matin, a French publication. After a parliamentary inquiry determined that no corruption had occurred, Samuel (and Isaacs) sued Le Matin for defamation, and the paper withdrew its allegations and apologized.
Exhibited here is a postcard written in her native Russian sent by the famous “Rachel the Poet” (aka Rachel Blewstein) to her father: “Dear father, this photograph depicts a ceremony for the High Commissioner. I wrote in the past and requested my medicines.” Rachel (1890 – 1931) is considered the “founding mother” of modern Hebrew poetry who introduced new linguistic and figurative forms.
Exhibited here is a unique and historic item, the July 15, 1920 menu and program for dinner in London chaired by Chaim Weizmann in honor of Samuel several days after his appointment as the first High Commissioner of Palestine and 15 days before his arrival there. The “toast list” includes nine original autographs of event participants, including Samuel, Nachum Sokolov, Weizmann, Rennie MacInnes, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, and Leopold Pilichowski, a Polish realist painter known for his psychological depictions of Jewish themes and characters.
When Samuel arrived in Jerusalem to commence his term as High Commissioner, he was deeply moved by his greeting, as the Yishuv welcomed him enthusiastically, calling him “the First of Judea” and greeting him with a seventeen-gun salute and endless words of welcome. Samuel then walked two miles on Shabbat Nachamu (the Shabbat following Tisha B’Av) from Government House to the Hurva Synagogue, where he was called up to the Torah as Maftir and he perfectly chanted Isaiah’s dramatic call to Nachamu, nachamu ami (“Be comforted, my people”). The Zionists of Eretz Yisrael viewed his appointment as a powerful affirmation of the British promise for a Jewish National Home in Eretz Yisrael.
Samuel arrived just months after Arab rioting in Eretz Yisrael and, as one of his very first acts, he ordered a complete amnesty to those sentenced to prison for their role in the riots. . . including the notorious Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was the immediate fomenter of the riots and had been sentenced to ten years in absentia for being the primary agitator of the riots. In what arguably was his most damaging action against Jewish and Zionist interests, Samuel appointed al-Husseini as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, investing him with the highest Muslim authority in Eretz Yisrael – on May 8, 1921, the very day after six days of the May Day Jaffa riots in which the Arabs murdered fifty Jews and wounded 150 others in what was the first terrorist mass fatality event in modern Eretz Yisrael. Al-Husseini proved to be a vehement antisemite and an implacable enemy not only of Zionism, but also of Britain, culminating with his notorious alliance with the Nazis in World War II and his meeting with Hitler to help plan the “Final Solution” in Eretz Yisrael.
On the other hand, soon after his arrival, Samuel issued a postal stamp that, as per tradition, bore the name of Palestine in the three official languages, Arabic, English and Hebrew. However, he inconspicuously inserted the Hebrew letters aleph and yud to signify the words “Eretz Yisrael,” the first official use of that title; according to some philatelists, the State of Israel, as such, made its first official appearance on a postage stamp.
A capable administrator, Samuel laid the foundations of the country’s civil administration, including establishing a police force, a judiciary, and (using a generous subsidy from Hadassah) a Public Health department, and he launched many significant infrastructure projects, including replacing the narrow-gauge rail line between Jaffa and Jerusalem. During his term of office, the Jewish population of Eretz Yisrael doubled (from 55,000 in 1919 to 108,000 in 1925); extensive Jewish settlement was carried out; the number of Jewish settlements rose from 44 to 100; official recognition was given to Jewish representative bodies; Hebrew was recognized as one of the three official languages of the country; and the Chief Rabbinate was established.
After his term as High Commissioner, Samuel wanted to remain in Eretz Yisrael with Beatrice, but he returned to Britain because his successor, Lord Herbert Plumer, objected. For more than a decade thereafter, he largely avoided any involvement in the politics of Eretz Yisrael, but after the mass of Jewish immigrants arrived from Poland from 1932 – 1935 and the broad countrywide revolt by the Arabs in 1936, the political debate turned to partition and Samuel intervened to try to advance a Jewish-Arab agreement.
From the moment of his first visit to Eretz Yisrael in January 1920, Samuel had become impressed by the strength and seriousness of Arab nationalist hostility to Zionism. Accordingly, acting now on his own and without the imprimatur of the British Government, he proposed a plan that, among other provisions, would limit Jewish immigration to ensure that the Jewish population of Eretz Yisrael would never exceed 40%; limited Jewish land purchases to certain specific areas; provided substantial funding for Arab agriculture and education; and reaffirmed the rights of Muslim to their holy places. The British government ignored his proposal – which, not surprisingly, engendered massive Zionist enmity against Samuel – in part because it had already launched the infamous Peel Commission to examine the “Palestine question.”
In 1937, Samuel compounded what the Zionists perceived as his anti-Zionist position by strongly advocating against the Palestine Partition Plan that had been recommended by the Palestine Royal Commission. Jewish antagonism against him was particularly aroused by his apparent blaming of the Zionists for the impasse in Eretz Yisrael and his calling upon the Jews to make substantive sacrifices to reassure the Arabs; to recognize the reality of Arab national aspirations; and, most objectionable, to consent to a limitation on immigration. The Vaad Leumi sent a telegram of protest to the British government; the Jewish press in Eretz Yisrael and around the world vociferously protested against Samuel; and he became arguably the most despised Jew by his fellow Jews in Eretz Yisrael.
Nonetheless, when the British issued their White Paper of 1939, which violated the Balfour Declaration, Samuel responded to the Jews’ request that he intercede and try to reverse it. However, the British Government ignored him yet again, underscoring his increasing irrelevancy and his inability to influence British policy.
Samuel was granted the title Viscount Samuel in 1937, the same year that, notwithstanding his Jewish ancestry, he supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasing Hitler, even going so far as to urge that Germany be cleared of all its war crimes during World War I and that German colonies lost after the Great War be restored to Germany. According to his biographer, John Edward Bowle, Samuel told Lord Halifax shortly before the Austrian Anschluss in 1938 that:
I regarded Hitler as a man with a conscience – a conscience that sometimes led him to do things that were very bad; but he was not a man who would do what he knew to be a crime as Napoleon would have. The danger was that, being a mystic and impetuous, he might easily be swept away at some moment of crisis.
However, he became active in helping Jews fleeing the Holocaust; traveled to the United States several times to establish an emergency fund that helped to raise the equivalent of about $1 billion in today’s dollars; successfully lobbied the British Home Office to ease visa regulations, which resulted in the admission of 10,000 Jewish children from Germany in an eight month period; supported the Kindertransport movement for refugee children from Europe with an appeal to British citizens to provide homes for them; and, after the war, he played a leading role in the movement to aid German refugees.
In March 1948, Samuel again attempted to intervene in Eretz Yisrael policy, submitting a petition to U.N. Secretary General Trygve Lie again proposing limitations on Jewish immigration and arguing for the transfer of mandatory authority to the U.N. Trusteeship Council. Nonetheless, he attacked the anti-Zionist policy of Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and, although he had been a passionate opponent of the Palestine Partition Plan, he nevertheless welcomed the creation of Israel.
After the Jewish State was established, Samuel acknowledged in a speech to the House of Lords that “events have moved beyond the kind of binational state that I had been hoping for ever since I was myself High Commissioner in that country,” and he urged the British Government to recognize Israel, which recognition it had withheld (Great Britain ultimately abstained on the vote). Perhaps ironically, he became enamored with Israel and, in his final years, he enthusiastically embraced Israeli causes, including particularly the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which dedicated a chair in political science in his honor.
In conclusion, notwithstanding – or, perhaps, because of – his much-vaunted “impartiality,” Zionist historiography characterizes Samuel as a “minimal Zionist” and as a “false prophet” who appeased Arab national violence, and he is not remembered kindly by most Zionist historians, who maintain that he bent too far in yielding to Arab demands and thereby damaged the Zionist cause. Nor is he viewed favorably by Arab nationalists, who regard him as a personification of the alliance between Zionism and British imperialism and as one responsible for the displacement of the “Palestinian Arabs” from their homeland. However, many authorities now believe that Samuel was a dedicated Zionist who, answerable to the British Colonial Office and subordinate to the British Cabinet, many of whose members were opposed to the very idea of a Jew governing Eretz Yisrael, believed that “real politics” dictated that the Zionist movement must consider Arab interests in any resolution of the political impasse in Eretz Yisrael.
