His coffin draped in the blue-white Zionist flag, emblem of the movement which he did so much to advance and of which he was one of the founders, Dr. Nahum Sokolow was laid to rest in the Willesden Cemetery at noon today following a moving ceremony attended by a host of notables.
Dr. Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, said kaddish (traditional prayer for the dead) at the graveside in the name of the world Zionist movement. The eulogy was delivered by Dr. J. H. Hertz, chief rabbi of the British Empire, in the cemetery’s chapel.
The coffin of the famous Zionist, who died Sunday in his seventy-sixth year, was covered with earth taken from the Holy Land, Rabbi Hertz throwing the first shovel full of the soil into the grave.
Among the thousands who attended the services were Lady Reading, Vladimir Jabotinsky, head of the New Zionist Organization, Nahum Goldmann, Geneva representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine and the Rev. Goldbloom, of the English Zionist Federation.
In his eulogy, Rabbi Hertz emphasized that while two western Jews, Dr. Theodor Herzl and Dr. Max Nordau, launched the Zionist movement, two eastern Jews, Dr. Weizmann and Dr. Sokolow brought it into port.
“The life work of the departed,” he said, “formed a distinct factor of that triumph of Jewish idealism. In youth and throughout life he retained the alert mind of a Talmudic scholar. During the postwar period, he proved himself a statesman and an ideal ambassador. His brain was a ‘sambatyon’ (in Jewish lore, a legendary turbulent river which ceased to be turbulent only on the Sabbath) except that it did not rest even on the Sabbath. He died in harness and becomes a sharer in the eternity of Israel. He joins in the company of those whose life achievements are an inspiration for the generations of Israel.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
