He was a Zionist leader, author, translator, and a pioneer of Hebrew journalism.
Background
Nahum Sokolow was born on January 10, 1859 in the small Polish town Wyszgorod. near Plotsk. His father was a well-to-do businessman but, like his father before him, he had a thorough rabbinical training and was an expert on medieval Hebrew literature. He was also interested in secular culture. His grandfather was eager that Nahum continue the family tradition, but the gifted child, despite his deep attachment to the family, was determined to go his own way.
Education
First, the family tradition determined that the young Sokolow should have a traditional education from which he released himself after a long struggle. He was an infant prodigy, an Ului. The family moved to Plotsk, where Sokolov studied at the Talmudic acadamy (yeshiva) but was also exposed to the temptations beyond the walls of his closed world. Eager to learn anything and everything, he obtained dictionaries and grammar books in order to study foreign languages in secret; at the age of eight, he already was a polyglot, reading Polish, Russian, French, and German, to which he soon added English, Italian, and Spanish. He was eventually permitted to study the high school curriculum privately.
Career
Sokolow came under the influence of both the Enlightenment and Zionist movements and early in life also showed kabbalistic interests. While the indue nee of German culture was superficial because Polish Jews mistrusted and disliked the Germans, Sokolow, not sharing this dislike, was to become one of the few exceptions among east European Zionists who had a wide knowledge of and admiration for German literature, and a certain respect for German civilization. However, although he lived in Germany for a long time, he never felt at home there. The Latin culture — Italy, Spain, and even France — attracted him much more.
Still in his teens, he began traveling, visiting other yeshivot and, on his return to Plotsk, he started publishing his first handwritten newpaper, Shoshana, in which appeared his Hebrew translations of Schiller’s The Robbers and Maria Stuart and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. He also sent Hebrew, Polish, French, and German articles to various newpapers.
Sokolow married at the age of seventeen, and at first lived in his father-in-law’s house in Makow. His wife was a charming and intelligent companion, who encouraged him in all that he undertook. They wrote to each other in Polish, which remained the language mostly spoken in the Sokolow household.
Sokolow’s first published article appeared in the Hebrew weekly Ivri Anokhi (1874) and trom 1876, he became a regular contributor to the newspaper Ha-Tzefira; his first book. Universal Geography, was published in 1877 and was followed by a series of pamphlets on Judaism. He moved to Warsaw in 1880, at the beginning of the very difficult time for Jews in Russia and Poland of pogroms in Russia and growing anti-Semitism in Austria and Ger¬many, which prompted him to write his book The Eternal Hatred of the Eternal People. He had to supplement his puny earnings from Ha-Tzefira by teaching history at the school of the Reform synagogue,and even considered entering the progressive rabbinate. From 1886, he was coeditor of Ha-Tzefira, which had just become a daily, and started publishing the Hebrew annual Ha-Assif (1885-1894), and afterwards Sefer Ha-Shana.
Sokolow read the Judenstaat of Theodor Herzl soon after its publication. It left him with some reservations and he launched an attack in Ha-Tzefira's headline “Wonderful Rumors about the Establishment of a Jewish State Originating from the Mind of a Dr. Herzl.” However, when he met Herzl at the first Zionist Congress, which he attended as Ha-Tzefira’s correspondent, he came totally under Herzl’s spell. Returning home, he gradually became the leader of Polish Zionism. He translated Herzl’s novel Altneuland into Hebrew, giving it the title Tel Aviv, inspiring the name of the first Jewish city in the Holy Land. He also became a great admirer of Max Nordau. At home, he encountered many difficulties for his Zionist activity, which was prohibited by the tsarist authorities. Gradually, he also became an orator and came into friendly contact with many prominent Jews and attracted them to the Zionist cause. From Shalom Asch to Ludwig Zamenhof, the cream of Polish and Russian Jewry gathered at his house.
Loyal to Herzl, during the Uganda controversy, Ha-Tzefira supported Herzl because Sokolow above all wanted to preserve unity within the Zionist organization. In 1906, when Ha-Tzefira had to suspend publication, David Wolffsohn, Herzl’s successor as president of the Zionist Organization, invited Sokolow to be general secretary. He then moved to Berlin and promptly established the Zionist Organization’s Hebrew weekly Ha-Olam (1907). From then on to the end of his life, he devoted all his energies to the promotion of the Zionist idea. He was first elected to the Zionist Executive in 1911, and in his capacity of general secretary, he became a Jewish diplomat, traveling far and wide, and meeting most of the contemporary political leaders. He first visited Palestine in 1914 and when World War I broke out, moved to London and became closely associated with Chaim Weizmann, playing an important part in the preparations for the Balfour Declaration. With Weizmann, he was present at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, representing the Zionists. That year also saw the publication (in English) of his monumental two-volume History of Zionism 1600-1918.
Sokolow was elected head of the Zionist Executive after the war, and also headed the Committee of Jewish Delegations at the Peace Conference in succession to Julian Mack and Louis Marshall. He was a principal speaker at the 1920 Zionist Congress in London, which created the new Zionist fund, which Sokolow named Keren Hayesod (“Foundation Fund”), and for which he raised funds all over the world. He chaired the Twelfth Zionist Congress in Karlsbad (1921) and all congresses until his death. Succeeding Nordau, he gave the address on the Jewish situation at Congresses. In these addresses, he showed a much deeper knowledge of the Jewish condition worldwide than Nordau, which made up forthe fact that he was less of an orator.
Sokolow became chairman of the enlarged Jewish Agency in 1929. The Arab riots of that time fueled the opposition within the Zionist movement to Weizmann’s leadership, and the Seventeenth Congress (1931) was held in an atmosphere of crisis that resulted in Sokolow’s election to the presidency in Weizmann’s place. He was reelected in 1933 and when, in 1935, Weizmann again became president, Sokolow was elected honarary president of both the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. He was also elected chairman of the Zionist Organization Department of Education and Culture and of the Zionist publishing house Mosad Bialik. He established the Hebrew Writers’ Association. In all, he wrote over thirty books and died pen in hand in London. His and his wife’s remains were reburied on Mount Herzl, Jerusalem in 1956.
Religion
In 1906 Sokolow was asked to become the secretary general of the World Zionist Congress. In the ensuing years, he crisscrossed Europe and North America to promote the Zionist cause. During World War I, he lived in London, where he was a leading advocate for the Balfour Declaration of 1917, in which the British government declared its support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
Connections
Sokolow married at the age of seventeen, and at first lived in his father-in-law’s house in Makow. His wife was a charming and intelligent companion, who encouraged him in all that he undertook. They wrote to each other in Polish, which remained the language mostly spoken in the Sokolow household.