virginiareviewofasianstudies.com · Web viewJonathan Goldstein is a Research Associate of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a Professor of East Asian

Virginia Review of Asian Studies: 19 (2017) 160-180ISSN: 2169-6306Goldstein: Trumpeldor

UPHILL POLITCAL STRUGGLE: JOSEPH TRUMPELDOR IN JAPAN AND MANCHURIA, 1904-1906

Jonathan Goldstein1

Much of the tragic history of Jews in modern times has taken place “in the belly of the monster,” in Europe itself. It has been well-mediated in films like Schindler’s List and The Fixer. Jews have also had an important, albeit lesser-known, history in in East Asia, where they have lived for centuries. The first migrants traversed the Silk route and established a residential community in the Chinese commercial metropolis of Kaifeng during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.). By the 1800s, Jews resided in other foreign trading enclaves, notably Macao, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tianjin. Many of the early immigrants were of Levantine origin. After 1898 Russian-Jewish entrepreneurs settled in Imperial Russia’s Chinese Eastern Railway leasehold in Manchuria. Many remained during the subsequent Japanese/Manchkuoan occupation. Approximately 18,000 Central European Jews found refuge from Hitler in Shanghai, and, to a lesser extent, Harbin, Tianjin, and even in remote Chongqing, many hundreds of miles up the Yangzi River. Expatriate Jewish communities thrive today in many of the above-named cities as well as in Beijing and Shenzhen.

Among other aspects of East Asian Jewish history is the Zionist activity of Russian army officer Joseph Trumpeldor (1880-1920) in Japan and Manchuria between 1904 and 1906. (See Figure 1). He lost his left arm during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 and subsequently underwent a year-long Japanese imprisonment. His Zionist commitment intensified during that confinement. As a senior officer, he attempted to propagate his new-found faith among his 1 Jonathan Goldstein is a Research Associate of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a Professor of East Asian History (Emeritus) at the University of West Georgia. His books include Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia (2015), Stephen Girard’s Trade With China (2011), The Jews of China (2 vols., 1999 and 2000), and China and Israel (1999; updated Chinese edition 2006; updated Hebrew edition 2016).

This article was delivered at a panel on “Border Crossings: East Meets West” at the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, University of Mississippi, Oxford, Mississippi, January 15, 2017. It is an abbreviated version of a text to be published in Israel Affairs [London]. This abridgment is published with the permission of Israel Affairs.

For research assistance, the author would like to thank Dr. Charles Berlin, Lee M. Friedman Bibliographer in Judaica & Head, Judaica Division, Harvard College Library; Professors Charlotte Beahan of Murray State University; Richard Golden of the University of North Texas; Ber Kotlerman of Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel; Maruyama Naoki, emeritus of Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo; Meron Medzini of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Daniel Metraux, emeritus of Mary Washington University; Colin Shindler, emeritus of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies; Ben-ami Shillony, emeritus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Dr. Walter Todd and Blynne Olivieri of the University of West Georgia; librarian Mel Johnson and computer technician Duane Shimmel of the University of Maine; Hon. Louis Kornreich, of Bangor, Maine; and one anonymous outside reader/referee. Final responsibility is, of course, the author’s alone.

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fellow Jewish prisoners. He briefly revisited Manchuria on his return to Europe in 1905-06 and attempted to impart Zionism to the local Jewish population. He subsequently immigrated to Ottoman Palestine, rose to prominence in the British army in the Levant in World War I, and perished in 1920 in defense of the Galilean farming community of Tel-Hai in what was by then British Palestine.[1]

As the prototypical “new Jew” who settled, defended, and died for a Jewish homeland, Trumpeldor was revered by Jews and non-Jews of many ideological persuasions. His exploits in the Levant made him, arguably, the most celebrated Jewish military hero of the first half of the twentieth-century. Trumpeldor biographers David Belotserkovskii, Shulamit Laskov, Pesah Lipovetsky, and Joseph Schechtman, have traced Trumpeldor’s lifetime experiences and participation in the debate over appropriate remedies to alleviate the plight of Russian Jewry. Historians Ber Kotlerman, Rotem Kowner, Meron Medzini, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, and Yakov Zinberg, have focused on Trumpeldor’s Zionist advocacy while he was a Prisoner of War (POW).[2]

This article situates Trumpeldor’s East Asian experience within the broader context of his career, focusing on two questions: [a] What was the impact of Trumpeldor’s East Asian sojourn on East Asian Jewry, specifically on the Jews of China and Manchuria at the time of his visit? Manchuria was then a Chinese province partially under Russian control. Subsequently it fell under Japanese, and ultimately Chinese Communist, rule; and [b] What was the impact of Trumpeldor’s East Asian sojourn on the Zionist movement as a whole? To answer these questions it is necessary to begin with a definition of Zionism and an examination of Trumpeldor’s European intellectual roots.

Trumpeldor’s Earliest Zionist Inclinations

The secular Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl established the Zionist movement in the late 1800s in an attempt to reestablish a Jewish homeland in the Ottoman Turkish, and later British-mandated, territory of Palestine. In 70 A.D the Romans had expelled most Jews from that region, creating a vast, worldwide, and often persecuted Jewish diaspora. Zionists created a movement of Jews and non-Jews whose informal byword, long before the Holocaust, was “Europe is an unsafe place for a Jew to live.”

Trumpeldor became attracted to this movement at an early age. He was born in Pyatigorsk, in Russia’s Caucasian region, in 1880. His father Wulf, born in Poland, served as a Cantonist in the Caucasian War. As a "useful Jew," Wulf was allowed to live outside the Pale of Settlement, the Jewish residential region of European Russia. Joseph's upbringing was more Russian than Jewish. His elder sister converted to Christianity. Another brother and sister intermarried. Only because of his father’s influence over his Christologically-inclined mother did Joseph receive six months of a rudimentary Jewish education. From whatever source, he adopted a secular Jewish identity which remained with him for the rest of his life.

While still in Pyatigorsk, Trumpeldor trained as a dentist,, receiving his diploma in 1900. While still an apprentice, he became concerned about the fierce anti-Semitic pogroms raging across Russia. He gravitated to the embryonic Zionist movement, which offered a solution to the

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plight of Russian Jewry. And he helped organize an informal Zionist youth group in his home town.

A major crisis of conscience which many Russian Jews had to face was whether to serve in the Czar’s army at a time of rampant anti-Semitism. Many draft-eligible Jews fled Russia altogether or deserted shortly after conscription. Many Russian immigrants then participated in anti-Russian and anti-Czarist activity outside of Russia. A notable expression of this opposition was the effort of the Russian Jews of Atlanta, Georgia to raise money for a Japanese battleship to be named the “Kishineff,” after the Russian city in which a notorious, government-abetted pogrom had occurred. [3]

Unlike many other draft-eligible Russian Jews, Trumpeldor faced no crisis of conscience. Probably because of his military upbringing, he was unflinchingly loyal to the Czar. He was drafted into the Russian army in 1902. In 1903, with war with Japan imminent, he sought to fulfil his patriotic duty by requesting assignment to Port Arthur, Manchuria. At the tip of China’s Liaodong peninsula, Port Arthur was the southernmost stronghold defending Russia’s leasehold within China.

Trumpeldor thus became one of perhaps as many as 30,000 Russian-Jewish soldiers to commit to serving their monarch in Manchuria in the Russo-Japanese War. He was posted to a detachment which guarded the port of Dalian, by then under Japanese siege. That land battle turned out to be the longest and most violent of the war. On August 7, 1904, while fighting on Mt. Uglobiah, Trumpeldor lost his left arm to Japanese shrapnel. After spending a hundred days recovering in a Russian hospital, he elected to complete his army service. According to Trumpeldor mythology, when questioned about his decision and advised not to continue fighting given his handicap, he replied that “the right arm is more important and I still have another arm to give to the motherland.”[4]

Trumpeldor received four decorations for bravery, including the Cross of St. George, making him the most decorated Jewish soldier in the Russian army. After Port Arthur surrendered, he became one of 79,454 POWs. He was taken from Manchuria to the Hamadera and Takaishi camps in Japan proper. Those facilities, some twenty kilometers from Osaka, housed approximately 10,000 Russian soldiers, including 1,739 Jews.

The Japanese policy of segregating Jewish (and other) prisoners from ethnic Russians worked to Trumpeldor’s advantage as he deepened his understanding of Zionism and sought to promote that ideology. Under the regulations of the Hague Convention of 1899, the conditions in Japanese POW camps were not harsh. Censored correspondence was permitted, prisoners received allowances, and there was no forced labor. Soldiers who had been under constant fire during the siege of Port Arthur had the opportunity to recover from wounds and build themselves up physically. Trumpeldor was provided with an artificial arm. And he had the opportunity for political activism. His overall strategy was more complex than simply urging Czarist soldiers to pack their bags and move to Palestine. During his yearlong imprisonment, he repeated in letters to his family his desire to disprove the generally-accepted libel that Jews were cowards and disloyal to their country, even as they were being discriminated against both within the Russian

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military and in Russia as a whole. Not wanting to see Zionism branded as one more subversive movement within Russia, he advocated a simultaneous commitment to Czarism and Zionism. Those who felt immediate peril should immigrate. Others would follow at an appropriate time and in an organized fashion. He himself was not ready to immigrate, but wanted to hold that option open. With this caveat in mind, he established a a Zionist Society with approximately 125 members. Taking the Hebrew title Bnei Tsion mi-Shvuyim be-Yapan (=Captive Sons of Zion in Japan), the organization published a rump Russian/Yiddish newspaper with a weekly circulation of about 300 copies.[5] Writing to his parents in October 1905, he summarized his deepening commitment: “When have the Jews found anything but suffering and persecution here [meaning in Russia]? The time has come when we must stand on our own feet as a people. There, in Israel, we shall not be dependent on others; there we shall make our own lives.” [6] It should be noted that, even among Trumpeldor’s fellow Jewish prisoners, Zionism remained a minority ideology. Most remained attached to traditional, anti-Zionist Orthodox Judaism and sought to remain in Russia.

Spreading Zionism Among Jewish Civilians: Trumpeldor’s Harbin Visit in 1905-06

Moving beyond Trumpeldor’s activity among his fellow prisoners, we have some evidence about his efforts to convert Russian/Jewish civilians in Manchuria upon his release from Japanese captivity in December 1905. En route back to Europe, he stopped in the Manchurian commercial hub of Harbin, a city with a distinct Jewish population.

Harbin’s Jews had arrived in 1898 as merchants supplying the Russian-built Chinese Eastern Railway. Imperial Russia encouraged such migration, urging settlement in what was informally referred to as “Russia’s Colony in China.” To attract settlers, the railroad administration relaxed economic, residential, educational, and other social and cultural restrictions that applied to Jews in Russia proper. According to former resident Boris Bresler, Manchuria offered Jews a stability impossible elsewhere in Russia. [7]

According to the memoir of the late Teddy Kaufman, son of Dr. Abram Kaufman (1885-1971), the secular leader of Harbin Jewry, in 1903 there were approximately 500 Jewish civilians in Harbin (See Figures 2 and 3). After Russia’s defeat in 1905, many demobilized Jewish soldiers joined them and were present at the time of Trumpeldor’s visit. Kaufman writes that Trumpeldor

lectured to the Jewish youth about Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel and told them about ‘The Pioneer’ (Hebrew=Hechalutz) and ‘The Guard’ (Hebrew=Hashomer, perhaps better translated as ‘The Watchman’) movements.[8]

Although Hechalutz was not formally organized until 1918, there were forerunner settlements of the movement in Ottoman Palestine in 1905-06. These pioneering communities would expand into larger urban and agricultural settlements, notably Kibbutz Degania, to which Trumpeldor would immigrate several years later.

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Kaufman does not indicate how long Trumpeldor stayed in Harbin, when and where his oratory took place, or precisely who heard him speak. But he did evaluate Trumpeldor’s effectiveness. Trumpeldor did not need to educate Harbin’s Jews about the trials and tribulations of Russian Jewish life, a topic they knew firsthand. Working to Trumpeldor’s disadvantage was the fact that Harbin was a community of willing residents who had settled in a residential zone with full civil liberties. They were not desperately seeking another homeland. Therefore, while Trumpeldor’s listeners could empathize with his concerns, they differed with him on appropriate remedies. Some Kharbintsy were already non-Zionist, Socialistically-inclined adherents of Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland (Yiddish=The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, usually referred to as “The Bund”). Others favored the emergent Folkspartei (often rendered in Latin characters as Volkspartei, Folkspartey, Folkists, or Folks Party), a Russian-Jewish political organization founded by Simon Dubnow in St. Petersburg after the abortive 1905 revolution. Folkists championed Jewish cultural autonomy within Yiddish-speaking eastern Europe and opposed both Socialism and Zionism. Finally, as in the Hamadera and Takhaishi camps, many Kharbintsy were adherents of traditional non-Zionist Orthodox Judaism. Perhaps idealistically, those believers felt that their customs and traditions could best be preserved within the confines of Czardom, with as little social disruption as possible.[9]

A twenty-first century Zionist can argue that Bundism, the Folkspartei, and traditional Orthodox Judaism were flying in the face of a reality: their movements could never overcome hardcore Russian anti-Semitism. But they could not be dissuaded from their illusions in 1905-06. This was especially true in Harbin, where Kharbintsy had arrived as willing settlers. They were not about to forsake Imperial privilege for the vagaries of a utopian haven somewhere else, least of all in the underpopulated and underdeveloped territory of Palestine. The politics of the community would change with the arrival in 1912-13 of charismatic Zionist leaders who themselves opted for Harbin over Palestine but, unlike the Bundists, Folkspartei, or the Orthodox, supported the notion of Palestinian settlement ‘for others.’ These later activists included Teddy Kaufman’s parents, who embraced Herzlian Zionism during their medical training in Switzerland; Rabbi Aharon Kisilev, a Volozhin Yeshiva classmate of Zionist luminaries Hayyim Nachman Bialyk and Eliezer Ben Yehuda; and Dr. Shlomo and Hanna Ravikovich, grandparents of the Israeli poetess Dalia Ravikovich. Like Trumpeldor, they would ultimately immigrate to Palestine, but not in 1905-06. [10]

Taking into account Teddy Kaufman’s affirmation that Trumpeldor’s pleas fell largely on deaf ears, what can be said about any residual benefit of his East Asian sojourn for Zionism? This question must be answered within the context of the extent to which Zionism had already penetrated the Far East by 1905-06.

Far Eastern Zionism in 1905-06, and Trumpeldor’s Impact

Rather than introducing an ideology, Trumpeldor’s aim was to expand the popular base of an extant movement. In this respect he resembled Theodor Herzl, who, after a mind-opening, visit to Sofia, Bulgaria, sought to expand his following from a largely Ashkenazi base to one with an important Sephardic-Jewish component.

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Even more so than Bulgaria, East, South, and Southeast Asia, exclusive of Manchuria, was already a region with a substantial Zionist enthusiasm. For decades there had been a Zionistic inclination among the Bene Israel Jews of northern India. In 1903 Baghdadi Jews established a branch of the World Zionist Organization in Burma, then under the protective umbrella of British colonial rule. In Nagasaki in 1905, simultaneous with Trumpeldor’s imprisonment in Japan and formation of a Zionist group, the Austrian Sigmund David Lessner established a Zionist association which would soon affiliate with Herzl’s mother organization. Just north of the Chinese border, in Chita, Irkutsk, Omsk, Tomsk, and Vladivostok, and westward to Tashkent and Bokhara, Russian Jews who had voluntarily emigrated or escaped Tsarist exile formed groups that may have included Zionists. Zionist societies had also been established among American servicemen stationed in the Philippines.[11]

Far-and-away the best organized of these fledgling Zionisms was that of the Shanghai Baghdadis. It thrived under the dynamic leadership of N.E.B. Ezra, who edited Israel’s Messenger/Mevasser Yisrael. That publication reported news of the entire Jewish world and was the most widely read Jewish periodical in East, Southeast, or South Asia. Ezra and his supporters made Shanghai the operational base of a network that stretched west to Aden, north to Yokohama, south to Hong Kong and Singapore, and southeast to Surabaya and many other cities of the Dutch East Indies.[12]

The Zionism of N.E.B. Ezra was of minimal influence on Trumpeldor, whose commitment stemmed from his Eastern European roots. Nor is there is evidence, apart from sporadic references in Israel’s Messenger, that the Jews of China knew very much about Trumpeldor when he was a soldier in Manchuria, a prisoner of the Japanese, or ultimately a returnee to Russia proper via Manchuria. But by the 1920s, after Trumpeldor’s death, a reverse osmosis occurred. Precisely because of Trumpeldor’s dynamism and sacrifice, Russian Zionist pioneer Vladimir “Zev” Jabotinsky organized an entire movement in Trumpeldor’s name. Popularly known as Betar, the organization was formally entitled “Brit Trumpeldor,” which translates from the Hebrew as the “covenant” or “fraternity” of Trumpeldor. That movement promoted Jabotinsky’s and Trumpeldor’s ideals worldwide, with notable successes in South Africa, Ireland, and pre-Holocaust Central and Eastern Europe.

By the late 1920s, Betar emissaries had entered China, first at Harbin, later at other Manchurian cities, and finally in Tianjin and Shanghai. Betar propelled a new generation of Far Eastern Jews of multiple ethnicities and ideologies toward Zionism.[13] (See Figures 3, 4 and 5). The question then arises: why was Trumpeldor’s propagandizing efforts in East Asia unsuccessful during his lifetime yet much more viable by the 1930s and 1940s?

On the one hand we have Betar’s own explanation, citing its roots in the 1920s and significant expansion by the 1940s. Yana Liberman, head of the Darga Aleph chapter of Shanghai Betar (Figure 5), argues that success was due to the determination of a younger generation of leaders directly inspired by Jabotinsky and Trumpeldor:

Throughout the years, while the fate of Political Zionism sailed between the calm waters of the Balfour Declaration and the rough seas of the White Paper, Betar in China led the

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Jewish Communities in their complete identification with Jewish Independence and Statehood. [14]

On the other hand, without in any way minimizing the militancy of the Betar leadership, it is clear that Betar operated in the 1930s and 40s in a context far different from what Trumpeldor faced in 1904-06. Czarist Russia collapsed in 1917. Unlike the security provided to Jews under Czardom, and subsequently under the Japanese and Manchukuoan administrations, Mao’s Communist revolution of the 1940s portended only peril and dislocation. The very places which Jews once considered safe havens became insecure. We have testimony that, under those conditions, Trumpeldor’s vision of 1904-06 was realized in 1948-49. Rahma-Rose Jacob Horowitz, an Iraqi citizen whose family had lived in China since 1863, described her family’s veer toward Zionism. Forty-three years after Trumpeldor’s Harbin oratory, they immigrated to Israel in a formal exodus organized by Yana Liberman and other leaders of Harbin, Shanghai, Dalian, and Tianjin Betar. According to Horowitz:

Frictions there had been between Jews and Jews and some surfaced in ugly fashion. With the [Chinese—ed.] civil war raging …the three Jewish communities [Baghdadi, Russian, and Central European --ed.] finally combined to send an appeal to the new State of Israel, requesting asylum for those who had no visa pending, and the response was immediate and generous. All were welcome, without exception, and shipping was being arranged to bring the exiles home. The first boat was Wooster Victory. It sailed the last week of 1948 crammed to the gills with Jews from the Near East, Russia, and from Nazi-lands, all finally in the same boat, quite literally. [15]

Conclusion

This article has summarized Trumpeldor’s East Asian activity and situated it with the context of his better known European and Levantine exploits. It has focused on two questions: (a) what was the residual of Trumpeldor’s East Asian sojourn on East Asian Jewry, specifically on the Jews of China, Japan, and Manchuria? and (b) did it impact the Zionist movement as a whole?

It is clear that Trumpeldor waged an uphill, largely unsuccessful, battle to instill Zionism in an indifferent if not hostile Far Eastern Russian-Jewish community. That constituency, situated in the privileged atmosphere of Harbin, did not wish to immigrate to Palestine. To the extent that it espoused any social activism, that community’s commitment was narrowly confined to reform within Russia via Socialistically-inclined Bundism and cultural Folkism. Many preferred no major social change at all, merely a tenuous maintenance of status-quo Orthodoxy. Trumpeldor appears to have had slightly more success with Jewish soldiers under his command during his imprisonment in Japan. In the case of these “converts” he literally held an audience captive. One can only wonder if his men would have been similarly inclined in the nurturing and open atmosphere of Harbin. While evidence of his success even among his own men is fragmentary, he did establish a precedent for Zionist activism by Jewish and non-Jewish officers and chaplains in the interwar years and during and shortly after World War II.[16]

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Trumpeldor’s personal commitment to Zionism unquestionably deepened while he was in Czarist military service in East Asia and Japanese confinement. It received its fullest expression in 1912 when he emigrated from Czarist Russia to Kibbutz Degania in Ottoman Palestine. His career then served as the inspiration for a movement that would gain strength after his death, influence the leaders of the Jewish exodus from China in 1948-49, and provide the ideological basis for the emergence and growth of the Herut, Gahal, and Likud political parties in Israel. Some of his admirers, such as Japan’s fundamentalist Protestant Makuya movement, go so far as to view Trumpeldor as the “Pioneering Father of Israel.” [17] Viewing him as only partially successful in his political efforts in Japan and Manchuria much earlier may somewhat tarnish the myth of the one-armed hero and pioneering farmer, as expressed in the traditional Israeli army song Gibor Yosef Nafal (גיבור יוסף נפל=The hero Joseph died) and other Zionist hagiography.[18] The inclusion of the Japanese and Manchurian dimensions of Trumpeldor’s uphill political struggle situates this hero within a far more realistic, and less Eurocentric, context.

[1] Lipovetzky, Joseph, 12; Kotlerman, Betweeen, 45. On Trumpeldor, the Zion Mule Corps, and the Battle of Gallipoli, see Sugarman, “Zion;” Lipovetsky, “In Gallipoli,” Joseph, 52-63; Zion Mule Corps; and photos of Trumpeldor at Gallipoli in the archives of the Jabotinsky Insitute in Tel Aviv and at www.jabotinsky.org.

[2] In addition to examples of the Trumpeldor mythology cited in Lipovetsky, see the lyrics of the Trumpeldor ballad cited at the end of this article; the movie produced by the Japanese fundamentalist Protestant sect “Makuya” entitled “Trumpeldor: Pioneering Father of Israel” (Osaka: Makuya, 2007)(in Japanese and English); the brochure “Institute,” n. p.; and Belotserkovskii [AHCIJOSEF], Zhizn'; Paul A. Cohen, History, 54, 226 n. 63; Laskov, Trumpeldor; Poznanski, Me-haye; Poleskin, Holmim, 277-302; Slutski, “Yehudim;” and Trumpeldor portrait on Israeli postage stamp, Fig. 1.

[3] “Russian Jews and the War,” 15. Former Harbin resident and Igud Yotsei Sin archivist Boris Bresler writes that “during the war…more than nine hundred Jewish soldiers [were] stationed in the vicinity [of Harbin]” and “more than twenty five thousand Jews were serving in other military units in Manchuria.” Bresler, “Harbin’s,” 202, 214. Bresler relies on Grulyov, Zapiski and Abram Kaufman, “Memoirs” (in Russian), published sporadically in the Biulleten’ Igud Iotsei Sin (Tel Aviv), as his sources. 2,950 of these Russian Jewish soldiers were reported killed or missing in action. Slutski, “Yehudim,” 115-16. Israel’s Messenger, in Shanghai, regularly published the names of Russian POWs held by the Japanese. Medzini, Under, 6, estimates that the Japanese captured 1,300 Russian-Jewish P.O.W.’s in Manchuria and brought them to Japan.

[3] Lipovetzky, Joseph, 12-13 and Shickman-Bowman, “Construction,” 196.

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http://www.jabotinsky.org/


[4] David Beltcharkovsky (Belotserkovskii), Zhizn' cited in Lipovetzky, Joseph, pp. 12-18, refers to a “Mt. Uglobiah.” Medzini mentions a Mt. “Oglobya” or “Uglobya.” I have been unable to find any other references to a hill by this name. The hill called “Vysokaya” by the Russians, meaning “high,” and “203-Meter Hill” by the Japanese, was the site of a key land battle establishing an artillery spotter's position that allowed Japanese 11" Krupp howitzers to be used in sinking Russian warships still in Port Arthur. This hill was located about three miles northwest of the harbor. All of these names may refer to the same hill. Military details provided by Dr. Walter Todd of the University of West Georgia.

According to Shanghai’s Israel’s Messenger, the most widely circulated Jewish newspaper in East Asia, Trumpeldor told his commanding officer “I have been left with one arm, but that one is the right one. Therefore, wishing to share in the fighting with my comrades as heretofore, I beg to request your Honor to plead for me that I may be furnished with a sword and a revolver.” “An Episode.” Israel’s Messenger, July 14, 1905, 114.

According Trumpeldor’s lifelong friend and colleague David Beltcharkovsky, he added that “I assure you it’s nothing. You’ll see how we’ll work the fields of Eretz Israel.” David Beltcharchovsky cited in Lipovetzky, Joseph, 12-18.

[5] During his imprisonment, Trumpeldor’s political and social welfare goals were expressed in multiple ways. Apart from his specifically Zionist work, he organized history, geography, and literature classes for approximately 500 fellow Jewish prisoners. In what had already become a feature of Russian-Jewish life, he established a mutual aid fund (Gmilut Chesed) to obtain tools for the craftsmen among the detainees.

He expressed his loyalty to the Czar most forcefully in an apparently unread 1905 letter to Czar Nicholas, writing ‘if it were necessary for all of us to fall in battle, protecting Port Arthur, we would do this without thinking.’ Historian Ber Kotlerman recently uncovered this document and explains it as follows:

In light of this statement, the phrase attributed to Trumpeldor just before his death in the Galilee settlement of Tel Hai—‘It is good to die for our land’-–is not so much an expression of the hero’s readiness to die for his native land (since he had expressed his preparedness for this even earlier) [than] as an expression of his discovery of his true Native Land [artzenu in Hebrew –ed.].

After the surrender of Port Arthur…[Trumpeldor] was overcome by a pacifist mood, which was an expression of his disillusionment, not so much with war as a means of resolving conflicts as with the state which had sent him to this war. [Trumpeldor’s] appeal to…Nicholas conveys …the emotional perplexity experienced by citizen and soldier Trumpeldor because of Russia’s discriminatory treatment of his fellow Jews. However, even in this situation he viewed sacrificing oneself for the Fatherland as an inviolable civic duty.

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Kotlerman, “Yosef,” 229-30. See also 171-86 [in Russian]. The text signifies once again Trumpeldor’s infallible loyalty to his sovereign. He had another opportunity to present his petition and/or views on March 24, 1906, when he was presented to the Czar in St. Petersburg along with other wounded Russian soldiers. Lipovetzky, Joseph, pp. 12-13, 24; Kotlerman, “Between,” 41-47; Kotlerman, “Jewish POWs,” passim; Kotlerman, email to the author, March 9, 2016; “Zionism.” in The Jewish Encyclopedia, edited by Isidore Singer, vol. twelve. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1905, 680.

Controversy has raged over the authenticity of Trumpeldor’s “last words” since almost the moment they were uttered. They closely resemble those of the well-known Roman poet Horace: “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (=it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s fatherland.) Furthermore, while Trumpeldor knew Russian very well and some Yiddish, it is questionable how much Hebrew he knew. Two primary witnesses, Dr. George Gerry, who had arrived in Palestine just two weeks earlier, and Abraham Harzfeld, assert that Trumpeldor’s Hebrew was broken and stilted. He is known to have spoken Russian while his wounds were attended to. In Israeli popular culture, Trumpeldor’s last words, more likely, were the Russian epithet “Yo tvyou match”=”F—k your mother.” Trumpeldor’s more sanitized image was associated with that of Jews from the Hasmonean period, the Masada myth, and the notion of a “new Jew” emerging in Zion. He has been memorialized by street and place names in Israel. The date of his death on the Jewish calendar, the eleventh of Adar, has become the occasion for annual pilgrimages to Tel-Hai and commemorations in Zionist circles worldwide. Ben-Shefer and Rozenne, 73-75; Jabotinski Institute, 5-6; Paul A. Cohen, History, 54, 226 n. 63; Zerubavel, Recovered, 39-47; Segev, One, 19-22; Kotlerman, “Jewish POWs.”

[6] Lipovetzky, Joseph, 12-13, 24.

[7] Bresler, “Harbin’s,” 200-14; Shickman-Bowman, “The Construction,” 187-97; “Siberia” in Singer, Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 11, 317-19; “Zionism” in Singer, Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 12, 684.

[8] Kaufman, Jews, 27-29. Translated from the Hebrew Yahadut Harbin Asher B’Levi (2004), 23-27. Translated into Chinese as Teddy Kaufman, author, and Qu Wei, editor/translator, The Homesick Feeling of Harbin Jews =Wo Xinzhong De Haerbin Youtairen (2007). See Figure 2.

[9] Kaufman, Jews, 28-29; Rabinovitch, Jewish; Weiser, “Folkists;” Zvia Bowman, “Unwilling, 320; Shickman-Bowman in “Construction,” 191; Fang, “Jews,” 272; and Lahad, passim.

[10] In August 1904, after service in Omsk and Chita in Siberia, Rabbi Shevel Levin, arrived in Harbin to minister to the Kharbintsy. We know little about his politics. Shickman-Bowman in Goldstein, Jews, Volume Two, p. 191. Dr. Abram Kaufman (Figure 3), Teddy Kaufman’s father and the founder of syncretic, or General, Zionism in Manchuria, does not reach Harbin by one account until 1908 (Fogel, “Japanese,”99-100) and by another until 1912 (Shickman-Bowman, “Construction,” 196-97). Abram’s religious counterpart, Rabbi Aharon Kisilev, does not reach Harbin until 1913.

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Based on interviews, Fogel claims that Abram “attended the 1897 Zionist congress in Basel.” If so, Abram must have been something of a prodigy, having made the journey to Basel from his home in Perm, at the edge of the western Urals, as a twelve year old boy. It is possible that Abram attended subsequent Zionist congresses while a medical student in Berne between 1908 and 1912. Fogel, “Japanese,” 99-100. The Encyclopaedia Judaica (2008) and The Shorter Jewish Encyclopaedia in Russian, 2nd edition, mention a “KAUFMAN, AVRAHAM YOSIFOVICH” as a delegate to three Zionist Congresses. It does not mention which congresses he attended.

For photos of Hechalutz in both Europe and Palestine, see Bet Trumpeldor Tel-Yosef: no. 5 (1969), passim.

[11] “Siberia” in Singer, Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 11, 317-19; “Zionism” in Singer, The Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 12, 684; Roland, Jews, 129. On Zionist forerunners, see Herzberg, Zionist, 101-39. According to the report of A. Marmorek at the 7th Zionist Congress (Basle, 1905) there were several Zionist associations in East Asia: Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippines, and Nagasaki. Stenographiches Protokoll, 38.

[12] Sassoon, History, 217. Far Eastern Baghdadis Rabbis Yosef Hayyim Ben Elijah, who lived from 1833 to 1909; Ovadia, or Abd’ullah, Somekh, who lived from 1813 to 1889; and Yaakov Chaim Sofer, who was born in Baghdad 1870 and died in Jerusalem in 1939, were the Asian counterparts and contemporaries of European Rabbis Zvi Hirsch Kalisher (1795-1874), Shmuel Mohilever (1824-98), and other leaders of the Hibbat and Chovevei Zion movements. According to religious historians Norman A. Stillman and Zvi Yehuda, these Baghdadi rabbis added a vigorous commitment to the yishuv, as the Jewish community in Ottoman Palestine and later Israel was then known. Over and beyond Rabbinic inspiration, Baghdadi Judeao-Arabic newspapers, and other Judaic periodicals from Bombay, Calcutta, England, Harbin, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, Shanghai, and the United States, carried the endorsement of these rabbis of early forms of Zionism. Stillman, Sephardic; Yehuda, “Iraqi;” Goldstein, Jewish Identities.

[13] Betar in China, passim.

[14] Liberman, “Achievements of our China Betar” 104, 137; Liberman, Tears of Zion, passim.

[15] Horowitz, “Growing Up;” Liberman, “Achievements” in Betar in China, passim; Liberman, My China, passim; Liberman, Tears, passim.

[16] Trumpeldor was the precursor of, if not the direct inspiration for, the intensely Zionistic Noel Jacobs, the non-Jewish Lieutenant (later Captain) of Shanghai’s Jewish platoon, established in 1932, and of that city’s Volunteer Corps, founded in 1933. At the end of the Pacific War, in Calcutta, Shanghai, and Manila, U. S. Army chaplains Alvin I. Fine, David Seligson, and Dudley Weinberg engaged in Zionist political education among their troops and assisted in the rebuilding of Jewish institutions and youth groups. So did British Chaplain and Squadron leader S. M. “Sonny” Bloch in Calcutta and Singapore and Dutch army chaplain E. J. Vaandrig Seeligmann and Captain Joost Tirosh in the Dutch East Indies. With minimal resources and little overall coordination, these officers inspired their soldiers as part of a worldwide effort to

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establish and populate a reborn Jewish state. If not Trumpeldor’s conscious emulators, they were functionally his successors. Sugarman, "Hagedud,” 183-208; Ristaino, “New Information,” 137; Kounin, Eighty-Five, 242. V-MAIL: Cpl. Joe Mogel, Manila, to Leopold Cysner, Providence, Rhode Island, March 9, 1945, Cantor Joseph Cysner Collection, Jewish Historical Society of San Diego, California; Letters: Dudley Weinberg, Chaplain, United States Army, Manila, to “friend,” September 19, 1945, Cysner Collection; B. Ph. van Zaiden, Batavia, to S. Rawson, London, April 14, 1947, CZA 55/12.170; J. Strauss, Batavia, to Zionist Organization, Jerusalem, January 1, 1948, CZA 55/12.170 ;E. J. Seeligmann, Jewish Chaplain, Netherlands East Indies (Batavia?), to Abe Berman, Jerusalem, June 18, 1947, CZA; J. Strauss, Batavia, to Zionist Organization, Jerusalem, November 15, 1949, CZA 55/12.170; Pamphlet: Jewish Museum, Milwaukee. “Rabbi Dudley Weinberg 1915-1976;” 2014, n.p.; Brasz, “After”, 374-76; Chakrabati, “Voices”, 37; Silliman, Jewish, 63.

[17] Trumpeldor: Pioneering Father of Israel.

[18] Gibor Yosef Nafal in Ben-Shefer and Rozenne, Ha-aliyah, 73-75; Jabotinski Institute Museum, 5-6; Belotserkovskii, Zhizn', 6-7; Laskov, Trumpeldor; Lipovetzky, Joseph; Trumpeldor, Tagebücher; Paul A. Cohen, History, 54, 226 n. 63; Zerubavel, Recovered, 39-47; Segev, One, 19-22; Kotlerman, “Jewish POWs.”

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List of Illustrations

Figure 1. Trumpeldor portrait on Israeli postage stamp issued January 21, 1970. Scott Catalog #401. Israel Postal Company, issued by the Israel Philatelic Service.

Figure 2. Teddy Kaufman’s Harbin memoir in Hebrew and English. The Jews of Harbin Live on in My Heart. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Jewish Residents of China in Israel, 2006. Translated from the Hebrew Yahadut Harbin Asher B’Levi. Tel Aviv: Igud Yotzei Sin, 2004. Also translated into Chinese as Teddy Kaufman, author, and Qu Wei, editor/translator, The Homesick Feeling of Harbin Jews =Wo Xinzhong De Haerbin Youtairen. Harbin, China: Heilongjiang Peoples Press, 2007.

Figure 3. Dr. Abram Kaufman (188-1971), father of Teddy Kaufman and secular leader of the Harbin Jewish community, second from left, at June 19, 1969 Tel Aviv dinner commemorating forty years of the founding of Betar in China. From Betar in China, p. 139.

Figure 4. September 17, 1939 identity card for unknown Shanghai Betar member (photo removed), reproduced in The Israel Philatelist, August 2002, p. 141.

Figure 5. Yana Liberman, seated in front in Betar uniform, ca. 1940. Liberman was the leader of the Darga Aleph chapter of Shanghai Betar and later commander of the ship Wooster Victory bringing immigrants from China to Israel. From Betar in China, p. 104.

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Figure 1. Trumpeldor portrait on Israeli postage stamp issued January 21, 1970. Scott Catalog #401. Israel Postal Company, issued by the Israel Philatelic Service.

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Figure 2. Teddy Kaufman’s Harbin memoir in Hebrew and English. The Jews of Harbin Live on in My Heart. Tel Aviv: Association of Former Jewish Residents of China in Israel, 2006. Translated from the Hebrew Yahadut Harbin Asher B’Levi. Tel Aviv: Igud Yotzei Sin, 2004. Also translated into Chinese as Teddy Kaufman, author, and Qu Wei, editor/translator, The Homesick Feeling of Harbin Jews =Wo Xinzhong De Haerbin Youtairen. Harbin, China: Heilongjiang Peoples Press, 2007.

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Figure 3. Dr. Abram Kaufman (188-1971), father of Teddy Kaufman and secular leader of the Harbin Jewish community, second from left, at June 19, 1969 Tel Aviv dinner commemorating forty years of the founding of Betar in China. From Betar in China, p. 139.

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Figure 4. September 17, 1939 identity card for unknown Shanghai Betar member (photo removed), reproduced in The Israel Philatelist, August 2002, p. 141.

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Figure 5. Yana Liberman, seated in front in Betar uniform, ca. 1940. Liberman was the leader of the Darga Aleph chapter of Shanghai Betar and later commander of the ship Wooster Victory bringing immigrants from China to Israel. From Betar in China, p. 104.

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virginiareviewofasianstudies.com · Web viewJonathan Goldstein is a Research Associate of Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and a Professor of East Asian