A family history in Zionism

Melting Point, by Rachel Cockerell  (TBR shelves, 2024)

I heard Rachel Cockerell interviewed on the BBC "History Extra" podcast, and I immediately put her book on my reading list. I ended up ordering it from Blackwell's in the UK, which has become my "I don't want to wait for the North American edition" option after the Book Depository closed. Which has been dangerous for both my book budget and my 52 new books project.

What drew me to the book was learning that Galveston, Texas, was chosen as a center of Jewish immigration in the years just before World War I. I live 50 miles from Galveston Island, I love visiting there, and I work in an archives that has rich documentation on the city of Galveston from the 1840s. I know about the city's history as an immigration hub, and that there was a strong Jewish presence on the Island from the mid-19th century, but I had never heard of the "Galveston Movement," which brought more than 10,000 European Jews primarily from Russia through Texas. Rachel Cockerell's great-grandfather David Jochelman was one of the most active agents in Russia, recruiting and persuading potential emigrants that the US offered other options than New York City. Cockerell knew nothing of this family history and had never heard of Galveston. Her research into the story connected her with branches of the family now settled in Canada and Israel, as well as cousins in the UK, where she lives.

Cockerell begins with a history of the modern Zionist movement, founded by Theodore Herzl, who called the first Zionist Conference in 1897 to meet in Basel, Switzerland. She has compiled a history without an overarching narrative, of a type I have never read before. There is a very brief prologue, outlining how researching her family history drew her into the larger story of Zionism. She notes there that she decided to take herself out of the narrative. The rest of the book consists of quotations from letters, memoirs, newspaper articles, and other primary sources. Some are only a line or two, others several paragraphs. The author of each is listed beside the quotation, but only by name. Most of the names were unfamiliar to me, yet the way the author wove them together created a narrative that was generally easy to follow. I was surprised to find the book has no index (but does have notes and a bibliography). I think an index would have helped in cases where I forgot who someone was, but I couldn't immediately find a previous reference to them.

Herzl's movement eventually divided over whether to consider other options than Palestine for a Jewish homeland, while waiting for Palestine to be restored. Those who believed they should, to help Jews faciing persecution particularly in Russia, founded a separate group, the Jewish Territorial Organization. For many years the leader of the ITO was the British dramatist Israel Zangwill (a name I did recognize), and David Jochelman became a colleague of his. I was honestly surprised to learn that the government of Great Britain offered Zangwill part of Kenya as a potential Jewish homeland, and that the group considered other options in Mesopotamia, Australia, and northern Africa. The "Galveston Movement" was another attempt to find a temporary refuge (and another that involved land taken from native residents).

After covering the establishment of the Zionist movement, the ITO, and the Galveston Movement, Cockerell then turns her story to her family's history. David Jochelman had children from a first marriage, one of whom came to America as a teenager - to New York City, not Galveston. There he established himself as an avant-garde playwright under the name "Em Jo Basshe." The story takes a detour into the attempts to establish a theater group for new and modern plays, funded by a prominent Jewish financier, Otto Kahn, who also helped fund the Galveston Movement. The plays proved too modern for audiences and Kahn eventually withdrew his funding. I lost interest in this section and nearly gave up on the book at this point.

The story then shifts to Britain, and a history of David Jochelman's second family, whom he brought to England just before the Great War. Em Jo Basshe's daughter Jo came to London in 1950, to meet the other side of the family. One of Jochelman's daughters, Sonia, moved with her husband and three children to Israel soon after the establishment of the State of Israel, which brings Cockerell's story to a close. It was interesting to read accounts of life for new arrivals in Israel, and Cockerell does acknowledge the complications and contradictions in the displacement of Palestinians in the creation of the state. It felt like a bit of a rush to the ending, particularly after the detours in the family history. Despite the helpful family tree in the prologue, I had a hard time keeping everyone straight, when they are identified only by first name next to their quoted material.

I thought this book was going to be primarily an account of the Galveston Movement, but it turns out that is actually only one part of the story (and a short chapter of it). Rachel Cockerell cites a book about the movement in the text and in the notes, if I want to read more later. Though this wasn't the book I was expecting, I found it interesting and I learned a lot from it, though I found it a bit uneven in the end.