PURELY COMMENTARY

The Historic Lowdermilk Saga: Water And Zionism

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor Emeritus

R

ationing of water, confronting
the threatened shortages, is an
inerasable problem. It was an-
ticipated in many areas in this country
in recent weeks. It is an international
need and problem.
A front-page story in the New York
Times, April 14, by-lined Alan Cowell,
from Amman, Jordan, was headlined
"Next Flashpoint in the Middle East:
Water."
There is a relationship to Israel in
the need described by Cowell, who also
links the problem with other world
areas. He introduced the serious pro-
blem in the following explanatory
paragraphs:

There's a high, bright wind
here that sears across a silver
sky, and the farmers these days
are looking for an event called
rain, the last before summer's
parching.
To the northwest, where the
Yarmuk River on Jordan's
border with Syria slices through
a tunnel into the East Ghor
Canal, they need not scan the
skies so much, becuase the ver-
dant fields are fed and watered
by irrigation year round.
But Elias Salameh, a leading
hydrologist from Jordan
University, said that in the
mid-1990s farmers in the high

plains and in the swelter of the
Jordan Valley will face a crisis
because the growing population
will lay claim to water for drink-
ing and irrigation will be
curtailed.
"Water is the future of the
whole area;' he said in an inter-
view reflecting a concern that
water will soon replace oil as a
source of Middle East turmoil.
"It's very critical."
Meir Bein-Meir, a prominent
Israeli expert, discussed the
same problem in an interview in
Tel Aviv. "I cannot promise that
sufficient water will prevent
war," he said, "But poverty and
scarcity of water will cause war
— no doubt about that."
The urgent needs and the earliest
stages of tackling them, could they have
been more explicitly outlined had
Cowell recalled the pioneering tasks by
one of the most distinguished water
conservationists of this century, Walter
C. Lowdermilk?
It is most regrettable that the name
of Dr. Lowdermilk, as well as of his
cooperating wife, Inez Lowdermilk, is
threatened with being forgotten. Both
pioneered in Zionism. Both were among
the leaders in Christian Zionist ranks.
Yet, neither the Encyclopedia Judaica
nor the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia
contains proper accounts of their efforts.
Fortunately, the Encyclopedia of
Zionism and Israel provides the record
of their idealism and creative works to

which they devoted their lives. In this
encyclopedia, edited by Raphael Patai
and published by Herzl Press and
McGraw Hill, there is the following
sketch:
LOWDERMILK, WALTER
CLAY — American soil conser-
vationist, Christian Zionist sym-
pathizer, and originator of the

Lowdermilk's vision
would have turned the
whole Middle East into a
land flowing with milk
and honey — and water.

Jordan Valley Authority plan (b.
Liberty, N.C., 1888).
In 1938, as Assistant Chief of
Soil Conservation in the U.S.
Department of Agriculture,
Lowdermilk was sent to Europe,
Africa, and the Middle East to
study the use of soil. Arriving in
Palestine in 1939, he was im-
pressed by Jewish efforts for the
rehabilitation of the country
with the demonstrated possibili-
ty of using irrigation to reclaim
once-fertile lands that had
become desert through cen-
turies of neglect and abuse.
The initial result of Lowder-
milk's Palestine survey was his
widely noted book Palestine:
Land of Promise (1944), in which

he outlined his plan for the total
utilization of Palestine's water
resources for the irrigation of
the country by the full use of its
rivers and subterranean water
resources, including possibil-
ities for hydroelectric power
development.
For this purpose he sug-
gested the creation of a Jordan
Valley Authority, a project
similar to the Tennessee Valley
Authority in the United States.
This program, he declared,
might make possible the settle-
ment in Palestine of four million
Jewish refugees in addition to
the approximately 1.8 million
Jews and Arabs who were then
living in Palestine and Trans-
jordan .. .
Early in 1950 he revisited
Israel on the invitation of the
Ministry of Agriculture, and
that October he began a year's
service as special adviser on soil
conservation to the government
of Israel, making a detailed
survey of Israel's soil resources.
He returned to Israel in 1954,
and from then until 1957 he was
professor of soil conservation at
the Haifa Technion, where a
special department has been
established to forward his ideas.

Historic records would be in-
complete without a proper accounting

Continued on Page 38

The English-Jewish Press At The Aging Stage

E

nglish-Jewish newspapers, most
of them published weekly in
more than 80 American com-
munities, have attained high profes-
sional journalistic status. They have
high-level respectability as instruments
in the media that echo American
Jewry's public opinion.
For all-too-long, with frequent
repetition now, these newspapers have
been referred to as Anglo-Jewish. From
the earliest 1920s we pointed to the er-
ror, "Anglo" in the terminology mean-
ing British. Therefore the insistence
upon the correct name "English-
Jewish."
With the rapid decline of Yiddish,
the shocks the Yiddish press suffered

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Vol. XCV No. 13

May 26, 1989

from the terror imposed by the distinguished leaders in world Jewry.
Holocaust and the mass murder of the deHaas' was the first of many
millions who were Yiddish-speaking, biographies of Brandeis.
the English-Jewish newspapers became
DeHaas became a vital factor in
a necessity for the English-speaking Revisionist Zionism and was one of the
Jewish communities. Some papers chief associates of its leader, Vladimir
began to appear early in this century. Jabotinsky, in the U.S.
The American Israelite came into being
In 1916, a distinguished American
much earlier, in 1859, as the organ of journalist, Alexander Brin, became the
Reform Judaism, created in Cincinnati publisher and editor of the Advocate. He
by its founder, Dr. Isaac M. Wise. Now, had gained national fame as one of the
one of the first of this century, the reporters during the horrifying Leo
Boston Jewish Advocate is celebrating Frank case in Atlanta. As correspon-
its 85th anniversary.
dent for the then Boston Globe, he
Its age is matched by the Chicago helped expose the crime against Leo
Sentinel, edited by the dynamic Jack Frank who was lynched by an insane
Fishbein.
anti-Semitic mob.
Had it not be absorbed by The
Alex Brin earned much acclaim,
Detroit Jewish News, the Detroit Jewish honorary university degrees,
Chronicle would have been 75 years old. Massachusetts state appointments, in-
The Boston Jewish Advocate has a cluding membership on the State Board
remarkably interesting history. Its first of Education.
editor's career started in 1904. Jacob
His brother, Joseph Brin, was pro-
deHaas had just arrived from England fessor of journalism at Boston Univer-
when he started on his Boston editorial sity and authored textbooks for jour-
career. He had a close association with nalists. He was co-founder of the
Theodor Herzl in the Zionist movement American Association of English-
and he continued that commitment in Jewish Newspapers, now the American
Boston and later on a national scale for Jewish Press Association.
the rest of his life. DeHaas may truly
The Brins' nephew, Joseph
be called the man who introduced Louis Weisberg, a Harvard law graduate, also
D. Brandeis to Zionism and worked turned to journalism and was very good
with him in the movement for the en- at it, as the Advocate's editor, and was
suing years. It was in 1911 that deHaas highly regarded in the American
utilized the meeting with Brandeis to Jewish community. His leadership in
invite him into Jewish activism that the National Association of Christians
later made Brandeis one of the most and Jews gained special recognition.

Weisberg also was a founder of the
American Jewish Press Association and
served as its president.
It is worth indicating that to this
day the Boston Jewish Advocate re-
mains an eight-column newspaper,
refusing to join most of the Jewish
weeklies as a tabloid.
The 85th anniversary of the Boston
Jewish Advocate is a noteworthy period
in the increasing accomplishments of
the English-Jewish press. El

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