# Zionism/Organization

§ 13. Organization
The Zionists form an organized democratic electoral system. All Jews become members on payment of
​a nominal fee called 'shekel' (in the equivalent of currency, one shilling, franc, or mark). Each member who has paid a shekel for two successive years has one vote, and every group of 200 Shekel-payers has the right to elect a delegate to the Zionist Congress.
A delegate must be not less than 24 years of age; a deputy is generally chosen to take his place in case of unavoidable absence from the Congress.
The Congress is the legislative body of the Zionist Organization. The delegates choose from among themselves a 'Greater Actions Committee', of not less than 21, nor more than 60, members.
The Congress then elects from out of this Committee a small Executive Committee of six. Finally the Congress elects a Chairman of the Executive Committee, who is also the President of the Congress, and the Head of the whole Organization. Dr. Theodor Herzl was the ﬁrst Head until his death in 1904. He was succeeded by David Wolffsohn, whose powers theoretically devolved upon the Inner Actions Committee but were in fact exercised by Dr. Haim Weizmann, a Professor of Science in the Victoria University, Manchester, who possessed great tact and force of character. The head-quarters of the organization were originally Vienna, where Dr. Herzl lived, later Cologne, then Berlin, and, since the war, Copenhagen, New York, and London. The aim of the movement has been to move the head-quarters to Palestine as soon as conditions permit, because no other country can be more than an accidental and temporary head-quarters. The most convenient centre for the majority of Zionists would be in Russia, for, though the fame of the Organization is West European, its lifeblood and strongest membership consists of Russian Jews. Berlin was only chosen because of its proximity to Russian Jewry. The Congresses would also have been held in Russia, if the situation of Russian Jewry had been better, and public meetings had not been forbidden by law.
The adherents of the movement are formed into Societies, which in each country are nominally controlled by a local Zionist Federation, or a Zionist ​Separate Union, consisting of not less than 3,000 members. These Federations and Separate Unions are responsible to head-quarters for administrative work, e. g. distribution and collection of the shekels, arrangement of elections. reception of leaders and arrangement of propaganda tours, and publication of Zionist literature in the language of the country. Among the more important Separate Unions are the 'Mizrahi', strictly observant Zionists, the 'Poáli Zion', who are Socialists as well as Zionists, and two bodies of Zionist working men united in friendly and benefit societies the Order of Ancient Maccabeans in England and the Order of Knights of Zion in America.
This Organization has been in existence since the ﬁrst Congress in 1897, and many improvements have been effected at later Congresses. As a form for the general body of Zionist workers it is excellent, but its extent has never fulfilled the hopes or expectations of its founder Herzl. He tried to bind together the whole of Jewry in the Organization, but unfortunately Jewry was, and still is, to a large extent only nominally one people. The fragments in the different countries still consider themselves more or less independent of all other fragments. English Jews, speaking generally, are more English than Jews, and refuse to become members of any other semi-political organization. They have their votes as British citizens. Their 'Jewishness' can find sufficient scope in a limited religious observance, and they cannot see any reason to become adherents of the Zionist Organization.
Apart from the active group of Zionist leaders who carry on the Herzl tradition and the Basle programme of practical politics. the 'Mizrahists' represent the religious element in Zionism as opposed to the secularist and Socialist 'Poáli Zion'. Nearly all the Zionists of Holland, all the Russian Rabbis, probably a majority of the Russian Zionists, and many of those of Germany (especially Frankfurt) belong to the former group. ​The latter, or the 'pig and plough' Zionists, are agricultural, scientific, non-religious, perhaps anti-religious. Their chief adherents are the students and radicals, the intellectuals of the United States as well as Russia. The most forceful and energetic Zionist leaders belong to them. The long duration of the war and the vast upheavals of the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe have made it difficult to estimate the relative strength of the two parties. Probably the majority rests with the secularists: but, merely on grounds of policy, they would be badly advised ostentatiously to eliminate religion. It is said that a father of a boy at the Jaffa gymnasium, who asked the authorities to see to it that he was confirmed, was met with a blank refusal on the ground that they had nothing to do with religious matters. The Commission recently sent out to Palestine under the auspices of the British Government contained no member of the Mizrahi party. A Jewish Palestine without Judaism is unthinkable; and it cannot be denied that many, perhaps desirable, adherents to the cause, have been frightened away because of its lack of spirituality.