October 6, 1914
Responding to a plea from Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, American Jewish leaders led by Louis Marshall and Jacob Schiff quickly raised $50,000 in aid for the Jewish community in the Land of Israel. The money arrives in Jaffa today in the form of gold delivered by the battleship USS North Carolina.
Morgenthau, himself Jewish, visited the Jews in Ottoman Palestine earlier in the year and became concerned that the outbreak of World War I would cut them off from European aid and support. On August 31, 1914, Morgenthau sent a telegram to Schiff, one of the leading Jewish philanthropists in the United States, as a follow-up to a message sent to the State Department requesting aid for the struggling Jewish community in Palestine. Schiff enrolled the help of Marshall, the leader of the American Jewish Committee, and the two raised the money within two days.
Maurice Wertheim, Morgenthau’s nephew, brings the gold to Arthur Ruppin, the head of the Zionist Organization office in Palestine.
One month later, two American Jewish relief organizations merge to form the Joint Distribution Committee of American Funds for the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers, which is now the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
For more, including telegrams and other correspondence, visit the AJC archives.
