114 years ago, April 15, 1914, the Titanic, the luxury White Star Passenger liner, on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York, struck an iceberg and sank.  Of the 2,224 people on board, 1500 died in the freezing waters of the Atlantic Ocean.  There were not enough lifeboats…

Passengers Isidore Staus, the Jewish Chairman of New York’s Macy’s Department store, former Congressman, philanthropist, and his wife, Ida, were last seen near the stern of the ship.  Survivor witnesses said they were embracing.  The ship’s band could be heard playing Nearer My God To Thee as the “Unsinkable” Titanic slipped beneath the dark waters.

The White Star Line did not particularly want to attract Jews of the lower “classes”, especially Eastern European Jews, as third-class/steerage passengers.  They felt, like other trans-Atlantic passenger carriers, that the Jews were far too disruptive.

Business was business.  The Titanic was built with a kosher kitchen. A mashgiach was hired, and separate meat and milk dishes were part of the manifest. As estimated, sixty-nine Jews were on the Titanic.

There are many stories of those who were on board the Titanic. One story was the most significant of all.

Nathan Straus was the brother of Isidor Straus.  Originally, Nathan and his wife, Lena, were going to accompany Isidor and his wife, Ida, on the Titanic back to New York. Because of pressing needs in Palestine, Nathan and Lena changed their plans.  They would not be able to sail on the Titanic.

Nathan and Lena first visited Palestine in 1904.  They were smitten with the land, the Zionist ideals, and the desperate needs and poverty they encountered.  Nathan, like Isidor, was a philanthropist.  In New York, he built the first pasteurized milk plants at his own expense.

Nathan fought the establishment, demonstrating that pasteurized milk would save children’s lives. Nathan and Lena saved an estimated 400,000 children.

In Palestine, he brought his vision of pasteurized milk to save all children, Jew or Arab. He built medical care facilities.  He was a key supporter of Hadassah and Henrietta Szold.

Nathan and Lena missed the boat.

The death of Isidor and Ida shook the Straus family deeply.

Nathan redoubled his philanthropic efforts.  Nathan’s Zionist focus increased as he worked with and funded the struggling American Zionist movement.  Most American Jews were recent immigrants. They were most concerned with surviving, growing, and their financial needs. They wanted to integrate into the “Goldene Medina” where antisemitism was not nurtured on mother’s breast milk as it was in Europe.

World War I, antisemitism, and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Jews in Eastern Europe caught between the German and Russian armies raised the necessity of Zionism in American Jewish eyes. But the American Zionist movement was disorganized.  It needed control, direction, and respectability.  The solution came through one man, a successful Boston attorney, Louis Brandeis. Nathan Straus was intimately involved in his selection. Brandeis became the face of the American Zionist movement.

In 1916, President Wilson nominated Brandeis to become the first Jew ever to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. The nomination was not a sure thing.  It required extensive behind-the-scenes work by Wilson and Brandeis.  There was fierce resistance from American anti-Semitic Senators to his nomination.

The pogroms in Europe continued.  The war was not going well for the Allies when Brandeis caught wind of what would later become the Balfour Declaration. The British were desperate for manpower, political support, and money, especially Jewish.  The Germans were reasoning along the same lines.  The British were afraid to advance the Balfour Declaration without American support.

Brandeis knew he could not push President Wilson on a “purely” Jewish concern.  Wilson would be accused of dragging America into a war for the Jews.

Brandeis discovered the solution during his nomination hearings, the Blackstone Memorial of 1891.

William Blackstone, an enormously popular American Evangelical Minister, believed the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent. A precondition for the Second Coming was the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine.  In 1891, the Russians were oppressing and slaughtering Jews.  Blackstone knew he had to help “God’s Chosen People.”

Blackstone conceived of a Memorial to President Benjamin Harrison that called for a radical solution to the Jewish problem.  The Jews must return to Palestine.  The Jews must have a homeland, a State of their own.

Blackstone organized a national petition, signed by a who ‘s-who cross-section of leading Americans.  It was presented to Harrison.  The petition was published and shared globally. Harrison gave it to the State Department, which promptly lost it…

Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, 1896, is eerily similar to Blackstone’s Memorial.

Brandeis needed to reach Blackstone to create a second Blackstone Memorial. He had to demonstrate American political support for the Balfour Declaration to President Wilson.  It had to be done by a non-Jew.

Nathan Straus had access to Reverend Blackstone. Straus wrote to Blackstone.

“Mr. Brandeis is perfectly infatuated with the work that you have done along the lines of Zionism. It would have done your heart good to have heard him assert what a valuable contribution to the cause your document is. In fact,  he agrees with me that you are the Father of Zionism, as your work antedates Herzl”.   

Blackstone acted immediately, creating a second Blackstone Memorial, now to President Wilson.  The message was received.  Wilson unofficially notified the British that America would support the Balfour Declaration.

Anne Frank’s father, Otto, was a lifelong friend of Nathan Straus Jr.  They had been roommates in Heidelberg in 1908.  Nathan Jr. had tried to get Otto to relocate his family to the U.S. but failed.  After World War II, Otto, unable to find an American publisher interested in his daughter’s diary, reached out to Nathan Jr. Nathan had the connections.

Nathan asked Eleanor Roosevelt to write the introduction to Anne Frank’s Diary.  It was published in the U.S. in 1952 and became a classic about the Holocaust.

If Nathan and Lena Straus had chosen not to go to Palestine to help in 1912, he would have been on the Titanic.  He would have died with his brother.  The Balfour Declaration might never have been.  Israel would not have been.  Nathan Straus Jr. would never have been.  The Diary of Anne Frank might never have been published in the U.S.

A simple decision, a change of timing, a change of priorities, not to sail on the Titanic changed the world.

Jerry Klinger is president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)