Leo Motzkin

Leo Motzkin, 1929. Born near Kiev, Ukraine in 1867, he had fled pogroms in Russia as a young man and come to Berlin. He became an important figure in the Zionist movement. In 1898 Theodor Herzl asked Leo Motzkin, who had studied sociology and mathematics, to go to Palestine and conduct ethnographic work there. It was hoped his study could help the Zionist movement better work with establishing Jewish communities and the best way to ensure their longevity. Motzkin had only a short time to conduct his research in Palestine, and relied largely on conversations with "normal people" to gather facts. He then gathered the data from these conversations (he made sure those he talked to didn't know why he was asking certain things - in other words he hid the larger meaning of his task by pretending to be a Jewish tourist) and presented them to Herzl and other Zionist leaders. Thus, despite the desire by Herzl to have a statistical and more complete compilation of data about the native Jews and the Jewish settlers in Palestine, it was not possible to really have the report of Motzkin be much more than observation From standards of ethnography his studies were somewhat of a failure in gaining a larger picture. This would not have been a surprise to Motzkin himself, who at first rejected Herzl's request because he also knew there wasn't time to really do a complete study. Motzkin expressed in his report that he favored working with the Ottoman Empire to achieve Zionists interests in Palestine. Throughout his life, Motzkin was active in leading numerous Zionist committees as well as the International Congress of National Minorities. Motzkin endorsed the February Revolution in Russia, which he saw as aiding the liberation of the Jews of Russia. Motzkin was an early and leading opponent of the Nazi Party, organizing opposition to it and lobbying the League of Nations to ensure the safety of the German Jewish population. He died in 1933 in Paris while working there to lobby for the needs of German Jews facing growing oppression under the Nazi regime.