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On 19 June 1940, Morris Raphael Cohen received an upsetting letter. The Russian-born philosopher, who ranked among the most respected Jewish scholars in the United States, was on a trying mission. Driven by the outbreak of World War II, which put the survival of the Jews of Europe in jeopardy, he wanted to play his part in the fight for the future of his people.

Out of the limited options American Jews could choose from to defy the Nazis, Cohen viewed research as the most promising – and the most suitable for a scholar like himself, who had made the »scientific method« the center of his philosophy. In 1933, he had founded the Conference of Jewish Relations (CJR), which conducted studies on the social conditions of American Jews in order to ameliorate their situation amidst a climate of growing antisemitism. Now, facing new problems resulting from the current war, he sought to use his experience to help Jews across the Atlantic. Various private and governmental organizations in the USA had already begun to develop roadmaps for the coming peace. None of these, however, were paying particular attention to the main targets of the »Third Reich.« Their general ignorance towards the situation of the Jews motivated Cohen to ensure that a Jewish voice would be heard in the emerging debates about the postwar world. Since the beginning of 1940, he poured much energy into the founding of a Committee on Peace Studies under the sponsorship of his CJR and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which would gather leading scholars to study the problems Jews might encounter after the end of the war.

This was why Cohen contacted his old friend Oscar Isaiah Janowsky, a historian and expert of minority rights, to win him over as a leading member for his committee. Like Cohen, Janowsky was born in Eastern Europe and taught at the City College of New York. In the late 1930s, he had written a study on Nazi Germany’s racial policies for the CJR. Since early May 1940, Janowsky and Cohen were exchanging views about a Jewish peace studies program. Both shared the opinion that such an initiative was absolutely necessary – it would help to prepare the ground for Jewish demands at a future peace conference and shape the opinion both of policy makers and the general public.

Janowsky had made it clear from the beginning that such a program »must not serve to divide the Jews.« He pointed to the dilemma that Jewish political organizations like the AJC were »not as yet ready for unity,« but a small research group like the CJR lacked the necessary resources to get the program off the ground. A cooperation with the AJC would, however, only be acceptable if the study group represented »the different viewpoints of American Jewish organized life« and refrained from formulating political recommendations. Cohen agreed with his friend and assured him that these stipulations should be met.

Yet, to Cohen’s disappointment, Janowsky’s response from 19 June 1940 was an outright refusal. Even worse, it was a refusal that questioned the very nature of his project. In his letter, Janowsky expressed his concern that the necessary conditions had not been met. Quite on the contrary: Cohen’s initiative would contribute to the fracturing of American Jewish political life that had already been underway and which was paralyzing the community’s response to the Nazis. He expected the initiative to become »a political committee« that would follow a distinct ideological agenda rather than representing a non-partisan »committee of scholars.« Such a scenario, he feared, would produce »dangerous factional possibilities.« In the face of the biggest challenge in Jewish history, »an open quarrel on peace proposals would be a calamity.«

This was a severe blow to Cohen. He penned a prompt reply to Janowsky in which he vehemently tried to refute the accusations. The AJC had ensured him that he would have »a free hand in the conduct of the work of the committee just as if it were entirely an affair of the Conference.« He also underlined that the principles of objectivity and non-partisanship, which he had endorsed as president of the CJR, »will continue to be my policy so long as I have anything to do with this Peace Committee.« Cohen’s attempts, however, did not succeed. When, in the summer of 1940, the Committee on Peace Studies began its work, Janowsky was not part of it.

The above cited correspondence reveals two very different understandings about the nature of Jewish planning for the postwar period during World War II. Cohen thought that scholarly objectivity, as he promoted it as director of the CJR, would still be possible during wartime. Janowsky believed the opposite. For him, Jewish peace studies inevitably had political implications. As one of the country’s leading diaspora nationalists, cooperation with an interest group like the AJC that followed a staunch anti-Zionist and assimilationist agenda was therefore untenable.

As it turned out, Janowsky was right. American Jewish planning for the postwar period became a partisan matter indeed. This had to do with the magnitude and urgency of the issues in question, which differed fundamentally from those the CJR had dealt with during the prewar years: Should the remnants of European Jewry remain in Europe, emigrate to Palestine, or be distributed over the entire globe? Should they be protected by minority rights or universal human rights? And which political framework – national sovereignty or supranational federalism – would be best suited for their communities? The answers to these questions had fundamental consequences for Jews around the globe and required some sort of positioning. As a result, by early 1942, each political camp of the American Jewish community, spanning from the socialist Jewish Labor Committee to the orthodox Agudath Israel, ultimately forged its own ideas about what the future of the Jews should look like.

Only towards the war’s end did the different positions gradually align, as American Jews began to fully grasp the dimension of the Nazi genocide and the changed landscape and demography of the Jewish people. The options for a Jewish future had narrowed drastically. Now, a sovereign Jewish nation-state in Palestine was increasingly seen as inevitable.

Ludwig Decke is a PhD student and George L. Mosse Fellow in European Cultural History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His doctoral thesis examines the role of Jewish organizations in the fight against racial discrimination in postwar Europe | decke(at)wisc.edu

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