THE ZIONIST ISSUE OF THE DAY: THE BRITISH UGANDA PROGRAM

The offer was first made by British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain to Theodore Herzl's Zionist group in 1903. He offered 5,000 square miles of the Mau Plateau in what is today Kenya. The offer was a response to pogroms against the Jews in Russia, and it was hoped the area could be a refuge from persecution for the Jewish people.

The proposal was debated fiercely at the sixth World Zionist Congress in 1903 in Basel. The African land was described as an "ante-chamber to the Holy Land", but other groups felt that accepting it would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. Before the vote the Russian delegation stormed out in opposition. In the end, the motion to consider the plan passed: 295 to 177.

Source: Wikipedia

Cover of the Souvenir Program   courtesy of David Matlow

• The increased number of Zionists in the mid-west was due in part to the visits of Zionist leader Rev. Zvi Hirsch Masliansky, the great Yiddish orator. When home in New York's Lower East Side he would become Abba Hillel Silver's oratorical inspiration. Click here.
   
• Two years later, in 1906, Abba Hillel Silver, only 13, wearing knickers, would attend the 1906 Zionist convention. See a picture.
   
• Another meeting at Germania Hall: Jewish leaders work for political reform