Mrs. Sieff’s Work for Zionism: Tributes by Lady Burton Professor Brodetsky Colonel Kisch and Others

It is many years since I met Mrs. Sieff, Lady Burton said in presiding to-day at a luncheon given by the Federation of Women Zionists in honour of Mrs. I. M. Sieff, the President of the Federation. The love of her work for Palestine, next to that of her own home is unique in the history of Jewish women, Lady Burton went on. Her unfaltering efforts have endeared her to all who have had the pleasure of coming in contact with her. The women’s work in the provinces is, in my opinion, mostly due to her unceasing efforts.

Colonel Kisch said that he deplored Mrs. Sieff’s limiting her field of activities to the women’s movement, but he hoped that the women Zionists would continue for many years to come to enjoy her leadership.

Mrs. Eder emphasised that Mrs. Sieff was a Zionist and a Nationalist in the deepest sense of the word always before she was a woman Zionist. She never yielded to the temptation of the thought how something was going to affect the women’s movement.

Professor Brodetsky said that there were three reasons why Mrs. Sieff deserved the gratitude of all Jews and Zionists. The first was that she belonged to the Marks and Sieff family, in itself a tremendous asset, not only to her work but to the whole Zionist movement. Secondly, Mrs. Sieff could be said to be the supreme representative of women Zionists, he went on. She took part in the very early for tunes of the present phase of the Zionist movement, in the first stages of this great phase of Zionism, when Dr. Weizmann had around him a small band of “greenhorns”. And thirdly, Mrs. Sieff was bringing up a good generation of Zionists, producing the younger generation of Zionists all over the country by her example and by her wonderful speeches. Dr. Brodetsky expressed the hope that as years go on Mrs. Sieff will take a much more prominent part in the general work of the movement.

Mrs. Sieff said that to her the significance of an occasion like this was far and above the personal significance, in that it showed a difference in the attitude of the Jewish people towards the people who served them. She thought that in the past Jewish people, for a variety of reasons, had always tended to pay tribute first and foremost to those who served non-Jewish causes, those who had made themselves in some way useful or prominent in causes not associated with the Jewish people. In the second place Jews had always shown tribute to those people who served a communal cause, something Jewish in the material aspect, very close to our daily lives. But it is occasions like this, she said, which begin to show that Jewish people are learning to appreciate above all service to the Jewish people in the wide sense of the word.