Australia, Uganda or New York: Ideas for a ‘Jewish State’ that weren’t in Palestine
Even before the modern Zionist movement was founded, and before the Holocaust took place, the idea of a ‘Jewish Home’, that led to the establishment of modern day Israel, had nothing to do with Jewish religious attachment to Palestine, its history or holy places. Here are some of the better-known initiatives and plans to establish an exclusive Jewish state/home.
Excerpt from article by Judy Maltz, Haaretz Oct 10, 2024
Would things have worked out differently if the Jews had established their state in a less hostile part of the world? Should they have settled for less than full statehood? Here’s a look at what could have been if other proposals panned out:
Uganda Scheme: The most famous of them all
Arguably the most famous of all was the British plan to create a Jewish homeland in a part of British East Africa. The proposed territory then belonged to Uganda and is now part of Kenya. Conceived by British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, the plan was presented by Theodor Herzl, the founding father of Zionism, to the 1903 World Zionist Congress held in Basel.
The plan was prompted by the Kishinev pogrom, in which 40 Jews were murdered and hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses were destroyed. Herzl presented it as a temporary solution to rising antisemitism in Europe — he had previously proposed Cyprus and El Arish in the Sinai Peninsula for the same purpose. Many of the delegates to the congress vehemently opposed the idea, believing that there was only one place pertinent for a Jewish state — the Land of Israel. Indeed, the controversy threatened to tear apart the fledgling Zionist movement.
Nonetheless, a majority of the delegates voted in favor of sending a fact-finding mission to British East Africa to check out the viability of the idea. At the next congress, two years later, the proposal was rejected. But the idea that Jewish sovereignty did not require a specific piece of land would live on. Its supporters would eventually establish the Jewish Territorialist Organization.
Ararat, New York plan
Even before the modern Zionist movement was founded, a plan was forged to create a Jewish homeland at Grand Island in the Niagara River. Grand Island is located in Eerie County in Upstate New York on the U.S.-Canadian border. The idea, proposed in 1820, was the brainchild of Mordechai Manuel Noah, a prominent Jewish-American politician, playwright and journalist. He purchased the 27 square mile island and called it Ararat, after Mt. Ararat, the biblical resting place of Noah’s ark.
Alaska: A proposed haven for Jewish refugees from Germany
After Kristallnacht in November 1938 — the first act of organized antisemitic violence by the Nazi regime — a plan was conceived to resettle European Jews in the vast northern territory of Alaska, which at the time had still not been admitted into the Union. In presenting the plan a few weeks after the pogrom, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes proposed that the underpopulated territory serve as “a haven for Jewish refugees from Germany and other areas in Europe where the Jews are subjected to oppressive restrictions.”
Kimberley, West Australia
In the late 1930s, after the Nazis rose to power, a plan was conceived to resettle Jews fleeing Eastern Europe to the Kimberley region of Australia — a large stretch of sparsely populated territory located in the northwestern part of the continent. The plan was drafted by the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization, based in New York — the latest iteration of the Jewish Territorialist Organization — founded by Russian-born Nachman Steinberg.
Steinberg traveled to Australia in 1939, a few months before the outbreak of World War II, hoping to ratchet up support for the plan. He succeeded in winning the backing of many prominent political figures as well as local Jewish leaders.
Eventually, however, the plan was rejected by the Australian government in 1944.
Birobijan: Cultural autonomy within the Soviet Union
The town of Birobijan is the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, which was established in the far eastern corner of Russia in 1934. The government had hoped to turn Jews away from Zionism by granting them cultural autonomy within the Soviet Union.
The original plan had been to set up a Jewish enclave in Crimea, but the Soviet leaders feared this would create friction with the surrounding non-Jewish population. Consequently, they chose this sparsely populated stretch of land on Russia’s border with China, in the hope of fortifying it through an influx of new residents.
Madagascar Plan
Certainly not an initiative conceived by Jews or motivated by a desire to protect them, the Madagascar Plan was actually the brainchild of the Nazis. The idea — proposed in June 1940 by Franz Rademacher, the head of the Jewish department in the German Foreign Office — was to forcibly move European Jews to this large island off the eastern coast of Africa.
Suriname: Jerusalem on the river, in South America
Jews banished from Spain and Portugal began moving to the tiny English colony of Suriname, situated on the northeastern coast of South America, in the early 17th century. They established prosperous sugarcane plantations, also known as Jodensavanne, or “Jerusalem on the river,” that employed slaves.
In 1665, the Jews were granted freedom of religion as well as the right to set up their own independent court and civil guard, and for roughly 150 years — and for the only period in history between the destruction of the Second Temple nearly two millennia ago and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 — Suriname was the only place on Earth where Jews enjoyed full autonomy.
They continued to do so even after the English handed over control the colony to the Netherlands in exchange for New Amsterdam, the original name for New York. During this period, these Jews owned more than half the plantations in Suriname. But eventually many of these plantations would hit upon hard times and their Jewish owners left, many of them to North America.
In 1825, the Dutch abruptly ended the special autonomy privileges that had been granted to the Jewish population, and most of the remaining Jews left Suriname after it gained its independence in 1975.
