Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (review)

For almost five decades Melvin I. Urofsky has been studying what he characterizes as the four successful careers of Justice Louis D. Brandeis, as a lawyer, reformer, justice and Zionist leader. Now, in a biography of more than 900 pages, he has set forth Brandeis’ activities and achievements in each of these roles and reveals what he has learned about the man: who he was, what he thought and why he acted as he did.

Urofsky acknowledges that it is difficult to know Brandeis beyond his public statements and actions because he was not an introspective man. He neither confided his innermost thoughts to a diary nor revealed them in numerous letters which survive. He shared little of his inner feelings and left the impression of one who was unfeeling and two-dimensional. Nonetheless, Urofsky contends, Brandeis’ four careers reveal him as a pragmatic idealist who not only had a deep faith in America’s democratic society but also felt compelled to act so that his beliefs might be realized. This conviction was reflected in many areas, including opposition to big government and large corporate mergers, support of the rights of laborers, women or the oppressed, and promotion of savings bank life insurance

Nowhere is this pragmatic idealism more apparent than in Urofsky’s consideration of Brandeis as Zionist leader. Urofsky first questions why an individual who had never closely connected with Jewish activities or religion, and whose contributions to Jewish charities were nominal, should have become such a committed Zionist. He notes that in 1905, at an event commemorating the 250^th anniversary of the landing of the Jews in New Amsterdam, Brandeis’s speech reflected the fears of some as to the impact of Eastern European Jewish immigration on the status of Jews already resident in the United States. In particular, leaders in the established Jewish community were concerned that the Zionist movement would raise charges of dual loyalty. Brandeis sought to alleviate those concerns by insisting that the new arrivals were required to abandon all prior loyalties to country, caste or religion, to live according to American ideals and to participate actively and knowledgeably in government. However, he also believed that the ideals expressed in America were essentially those expressed over two thousand years earlier in Jewish values.

In 1914 Brandeis assumed leadership of the American Zionist movement, notwithstanding the opinion of many that adherence to Zionism conflicted with a total and undivided commitment to America. Urofsky analyzes and rejects several of the theories that have been put forth to explain this transformation. He finds unpersuasive the notion that Brandeis was seeking the support of the Jewish community in his bid for confirmation to the Supreme Court, particularly in light of the rising nativism in the country at that time. He similarly discounts the assertion that Brandeis was reacting to mild antisemitism he had encountered over the years, as there is no evidence that he suffered this in the immediately preceding years or that he ever expressed it as a reason to join the movement. Rather, Urofsky concludes, Brandeis’s commitment to Zionism stemmed in great part from his belief in the earlier American ideals reflected in the ages of Jefferson and Jackson. For years, Brandeis had been fighting against big business and government and the stifling of competition which he believed undermined those ideals and caused much social and economic inequity for the poor and oppressed.

In Palestine, Brandeis envisioned a new society which could recreate the Jeffersonian ideal of a democratic society without the curse of bigness. Moreover, because he concluded that Americanism and Zionism (which he equated with Judaism) shared the same ethical values of democracy and social justice, the claim of dual loyalty was undercut. Multiple loyalties, against which he had earlier spoken, were only objectionable if they were inconsistent, but in supporting a free and democratic society in Palestine, Zionists were, in effect, proving their loyalty to the United States. To the question of how American loyalty could be reconciled with...