Melting Point: Family, Memory, and the Search for a Promised Land
By Rachel Cockerell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Exiled from country after country due to antisemitism, Jews wandered all over the globe for centuries. That is, until the State of Israel was declared the homeland of the Jewish people in 1948.

But before there was Israel, there were other ideas for a Jewish homeland. In her unique debut book, Melting Point, British journalist Rachel Cockerell digs through newspaper accounts, letters, memoirs, speeches, documents and interviews to describe the development of the Zionist movement and the seeds that led to today’s Jewish state. And among the items she unearths are the plans that began in 1907 to create a homeland for the Jews in Galveston, Texas.

Cockerell is the great-granddaughter of David Jochelman, one of the Zionist leaders behind the Galveston Plan and a close friend of Israel Zangwill, a British author and associate of Theodor Herzl. She had originally planned to write a book about her family. Before starting her research, Cockerell had known little about her great-grandfather and had not realized his significance to the history of modern Zionism. She did not even know “who” Galveston was.

“Eventually I discovered that Galveston was not a person but a place, and the destination for 10,000 Jews in the years leading up to the First World War—sent there from Russia by my great-grandfather,” she writes. “None of my family knew about this: At some point the story of the Galveston Plan, and my great-grandfather’s role in it, was lost down the generations.”

With that research, Cockerell has written a distinctive form of nonfiction narrative. Other than the author’s introduction and afterword, the book is composed of primary sources. Using direct quotes from Jewish historical figures, newspaper articles, books of the time and more, Cockerell presents the history of modern Zionism in the making, interwoven with fascinating insights on the personalities who struggled to find a safe haven for the Jews.

Cockerell’s spot-on juxtaposition and editing of direct quotes makes Melting Point an easy-to-read coda of significant personalities and events in Zionist history. Long-dead voices are retrieved to present a story with novel-like vividness and detail.

Cockerell opens the book with rapturous descriptions of Herzl, including one from the London Star, which described him as “a tall, lithe man, with coal black hair, beard and mustaches, restless visionary eyes and a nervous mouth, twitching with half sad humour.” The American Hebrew called him “not only handsome, but regal.”

Yet when Herzl, then a successful Viennese journalist and playwright, published his Zionist manifesto, The Jewish State, in 1896, the effusive accolades were tempered. Herzl himself wrote that friends thought “I had gone out of my mind.”

Melting Point recounts the various practical steps Herzl—often with Zangwill’s help—took in establishing

a Zionist movement. These included convening the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and founding the Herzl Zionist Organization (a precursor to the World Zionist Organization), which he led until his death in 1904 at the age of 44, with chapters throughout Europe and the United States.

Herzl conducted a broad diplomatic effort with the leadership of Britain, Germany, Russia and the Ottoman Empire to issue a formal charter for a Jewish government in Palestine. But Palestine, then a dusty province of the Ottoman Empire, was not the only option under consideration. Herzl also pondered Argentina and East Africa.

In 1903, in the wake of a devastating pogrom in Kishinev, Herzl stunned delegates at the sixth Zionist Congress with the news that Britain had offered the Jews 5,000 square miles in East Africa. (“England Offers Jews a Country” was the headline in one 1903 Chicago Tribune article.) The “Uganda Plan,” actually set in modern-day Kenya, was conceived for Britain’s self-interest: to find customers
for the new Uganda Railway, curb the flow of refugees to London and attract Jewish support for British colonial policy in South Africa.

The scheme collapsed because of lack of interest. But thanks to an energetic Texas rabbi, Henry Cohen, and the backing of Jacob Schiff, a wealthy financier, a new idea emerged: the Galveston Plan.

Zangwill, Herzl’s enthusiastic supporter, had by the time of Herzl’s
death abandoned the search for a Jewish homeland in Palestine and instead founded his own group, the Jewish Territorialist Organization,
with the help of Cockerell’s great-grandfather, David Jochelman. They advocated for a Jewish homeland in whatever land might be available.

“If we cannot get the Holy Land,” Zangwill wrote, “we can make another land Holy.”

Nevertheless, Texas seemed an unlikely destination, and Galveston,
a little-known port city, had been devastated by a storm in 1900. But the state was large, and Galveston could be a gateway to the rest of the country.

“Galveston greeted me with open arms,” said Morris Waldman, who was sent there in 1906 to scout out the port city. He loved its long white beaches, bright sunshine, lush flowers and verdant plants. Ships carrying 10,000 Russian Jews, only a small drop of the 200,000 seeking to flee Russia and its pogroms, made the journey.

The Galveston Plan lasted from 1907 to 1914, aiming to help Jewish immigrants settle across “the Great American West.” However, many newcomers were quickly disillusioned. One account described the city’s streets as “overgrown with thorny bushes” and the homes as “miserable little Mexican shacks, constructed of boards, covered with rusted tin.”

Ultimately, the outbreak of World War I brought transatlantic travel to a halt, effectively ending the plan. Still, many American Jews today trace their roots to those who arrived through Galveston.

The last two sections of the book turn to Cockerell’s family, who immigrated from Russia to New York City, London and Israel. The switch to a personal account is somewhat jarring but ultimately serves to underline the themes of the first part of the book: the Jewish need for safe haven, the scattering of Jews worldwide, Jewish identity and political divisions.

Melting Point poignantly reflects on the failed attempts that ultimately became the stepping stones toward the creation of Israel. Looking back at a time when Israel was still just a dream deepens our appreciation for the reality that exists today.

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Stewart Kampel was a longtime editor at The New York Times.