Modern Judaism

Jerusalem, 1919

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 presented a challenge to both the hierarchy and laity of the Anglican Church. Some Anglicans were supportive of Jewish aspirations for "the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people;" others were troubled by them. The Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt. Rev. Rennie Miles MacInnes, charged with revitalizing Anglican life in the Holy City, was an opponent of Zionism. His sympathies lay with the Arabs of Palestine, and more particularly with the Christians among them.

For the Zionist movement, the Balfour Declaration, and General Allenby's entry into Jerusalem later in the same year, were momentous occasions. These events revitalized the worldwide Zionist movement and allowed the renewed growth of the Yishuv. British victory affirmed the view articulated in 1914 by Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann that the future of Zionism was entwined with the fortunes of the British Empire. Both the empire and Jewish nationalism would benefit from the relationship. Weizmann wrote that "England which would be instrumental in the redemption of Israel would derive an enormous benefit from it . . ."¹

During the first years of the British occupation of Palestine Bishop MacInnes, of St. Georges Cathedral, the Anglican seat in Jerusalem, often expressed his opposition to Zionism. This opposition was noted in the Jewish newspapers of Palestine and was the cause of considerable tension between the Zionist rank and file and the clergy and laity of the Anglican Church. In 1919, faced with the complexities of inter-communal relations in the Holy City, MacInnes sought to employ an Anglican cleric who was familiar with the Jewish tradition and who could serve as a much-needed interlocutor with the city's various Jewish communities. [End Page 219]

The Bishop was in dire need of a consultant on Jewish matters. This was made clear by his meeting with Chaim Weizmann in December of 1919. The meeting was an uneasy one. Bishop MacInnes was disturbed by Jewish protests against the Anglican schools in Palestine—which some Jews saw as "mission schools." The city's Jewish communities, both religious and secular, boycotted Anglican institutions. In keeping with precedents dating as early as 1830s encounters between the Old Yishuv and Protestant missionaries, some of the city's Rabbis threatened the families of Jewish children at the schools, and the patients in Anglican hospitals, with herem—excommunication. In 1919, Jewish newspapers in Palestine embarked on a press campaign against the mission schools. In his response to the Bishop, Weizmann explained the Jewish communities' opposition in the context of the legacy of Christian persecution of Jews, of which missionizing was understood to be a form. Bishop MacInnes was confused and disturbed by this reaction.²

On consulting with colleagues in England Bishop MacInnes found a candidate who seemed ideal for the job. The young man, Herbert Danby, quickly accepted the position of church librarian and consultant to the Bishop and arrived in Jerusalem in 1919. He was thirty years old, and had served in the Anglican Ministry for the previous six years, having been ordained an Anglican priest while at Oxford. As an historian of St. George's Cathedral noted, "Bishop MacInnes planned to have a consultant in matters relating to Jews and Judaism . . . Reverend Danby accepted to work under the Bishop."³

Danby would soon become a supporter of Zionism; MacInnes opposition to the movement would grow even more forceful and strident. In a 1921 letter to clergy and laity of the Anglican Church MacInnes wrote that: "At a time when Palestine is so unhappily disturbed by the unjust and intolerable demands of the Zionists, it is good to see the missionary schools contributing something of great worth to the Holy Land in the leveling and uniting influence they bring to bear on all these young and opening minds."⁴

Herbert Danby's attitude toward Zionism was diametrically opposed to that of Bishop MacInnes. In Danby's case the relationship between Christian Hebraism, philo-Semitism and support of Zionism was unusually direct. Danby's intellectual interest in Jewish texts began when he was as an undergraduate at Keble College, Oxford...