Leopold Greenberg

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British journalist, publisher and Zionist; controlling editor of The Jewish Chronicle from 1907 until his death in 1931

Leopold Greenberg

Image Leopold Greenberg Fraddele and Young 1903.jpg
Leopold Greenberg, photographed by Fraddele & Young, 1903. National Library of Israel (digital ID 002766164), via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Born 1861 Birmingham
Died 15 November 1931
Occupation Journalist; newspaper proprietor; Zionist official
Known for Controlling editor of The Jewish Chronicle (1907–1931); early British adherent of Theodor Herzl
Parents Simeon Greenberg
Spouse(s) Marion Gates (first wife)
Children Ivan Greenberg

Leopold Jacob Greenberg (1861 – 15 November 1931) was a British journalist, advertising agent and Zionist who led the group that bought The Jewish Chronicle in December 1906 and who then ran it as controlling editor until his death. Known in the paper as "Mentor", he was one of the first British adherents of Theodor Herzl and was described by Herzl as "the most able of all my helpers".[1][2]

Early life and journalism

Greenberg was born in Birmingham, the son of Simeon Greenberg, a successful jewellery manufacturer. He was educated in London, at a private Jewish school in Maida Vale and at University College School.[3] He worked as a journalist on two Liberal newspapers, the Pall Mall Gazette and the Daily News, before setting up an advertising agency in 1883.[3] The Encyclopaedia Judaica also describes him as an owner of a news agency in the non-Jewish press.[1]

Cesarani writes that from the early 1880s he lived on the edge of the "Jewish Bohemia" of Kilburn and was one of "The Wanderers" around Solomon Schechter and Asher Myers. In 1886 he was secretary of the Anti-Demolition League, which saved the Bevis Marks Synagogue from demolition, working with Moses Gaster and Lucien Wolf; he was also active in the Hampstead Synagogue movement. In 1896 he founded The Jewish Year Book, and in March 1897, with Joseph Jacobs, launched the youth monthly Young Israel, which ceased publication in 1901.[3]

Zionism

According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, Greenberg was one of Herzl's first British supporters, and through his connections with Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, arranged for Herzl to appear before the Royal Commission on Alien Immigration in 1902. Herzl entrusted him with political missions in England connected with the El-Arish project and the Uganda Scheme, and he became Herzl's official representative towards the British Government. He supported the Uganda proposal but did not join the Territorialists, and became a leader of the English Zionist Federation.[1] Cesarani records that Greenberg served with Joseph Cowen and Leopold Kessler on the East Africa Consultative Commission in 1903, which handled Chamberlain's offer of territory to the World Zionist Organisation.[4]

In the English Zionist Federation he was on the "political" side against Moses Gaster's "practicals"; he sat on its executive when Gaster became president in 1907.[5] On becoming editor he gave up his official activities in the Zionist movement, but continued to seek support for Zionism among British politicians.[1]

In January 1917 he acted as intermediary in arranging a meeting between Chaim Weizmann, Mark Sykes of the Foreign Office and James Malcolm, a step Cesarani describes as crucial in introducing Sykes to Weizmann; he concealed what he knew at the time.[6] The government held back publication of the Balfour Declaration so that it could first appear in The Jewish Chronicle, and Greenberg's editorial of 9 November 1917 was headed "A Jewish Triumph".[7] Greenberg, "never a Weizmann devotee", pressed the Zionist leadership after 1918 to clarify its policy; the Encyclopaedia Judaica describes his post-war stance as "loyal opposition" to the official policy of the Zionist Organisation.[1][8]

The Jewish Chronicle

Purchase, 1906–1907

Greenberg was the moving figure in the purchase of The Jewish Chronicle. Cesarani records that he proposed to Jacobus Kann that the Jewish Colonial Trust (JCT), the bank of the Zionist movement, advance the £10,000 asked by Israel Davis for the paper to a company formed to buy it, in part because he knew that the syndicate owning the Jewish World was also interested. The president of the World Zionist Organisation, David Wolffsohn, agreed to the project, and on 21 December 1906 Greenberg telegraphed Kann to say the transfer was complete. The purchase caused a dispute within the Zionist movement, after which the JCT disengaged and Greenberg set up a company to provide the capital, with Israel Davis as chairman and Greenberg, Kann, Cowen and Kessler among the principal shareholders; Greenberg held the largest holding, was a director for life and became controlling editor.[9] The Encyclopaedia Judaica dates the acquisition to 1907, the year of his appointment as editor-in-chief.[1] Greenberg afterwards said that the paper had been receiving subventions from the Rothschilds; Cesarani notes that payments from Lord Rothschild to Asher Myers, an earlier editor, are recorded in 1901–02, and says it is not clear whether they were covert remuneration or evidence of influence over editorial policy.[10]

Editorship, 1907–1931

The 1949 history says that under Greenberg "the monthly subsidy which had so long been provided by New Court was politely returned, so that no sense of obligation remained", and that soon after he was installed Lord Rothschild began to upbraid him at a meeting of the Council of the United Synagogue.[11]

Cesarani describes Greenberg as shaking off the paper's "Victorian mustiness", shortening articles, redesigning its typography and layout, and conducting a campaign against the Aliens Act and, in editorials, against the leadership of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which he regarded as secretive and unrepresentative.[12] From October 1909 he wrote a weekly commentary under the pen-name "Mentor", replacing a column by the Revd A. A. Green.[13] In 1913 he bought the ailing Jewish World and ran it alongside the Chronicle, which by then had doubled its circulation and was making an annual profit of £2,200–2,500.[14]

During the First World War he campaigned for a Jewish unit in the British army, championing the idea in 1914 and backing Vladimir Jabotinsky's attempt to raise a Jewish force in 1916, but opposed the form of the Jewish regiment announced by the War Office in July 1917 and joined a deputation to Lord Derby to press for changes.[15] From November 1914 the paper campaigned to broaden the Conjoint Foreign Committee, which Cesarani says was dominated within the Anglo-Jewish Association by Claude Montefiore and Lucien Wolf; after the manifesto of 24 May 1917 signed by David Alexander and Montefiore, Greenberg published "A Grave Betrayal".[16][6]

On 28 March and 4 April 1919 he wrote as "Mentor" on the Russian revolution, saying that Bolshevism was "at once the most serious menace to, and the best hope of, Civilization".[17] The paper faced competition from the Jewish Guardian (1919–31), which was financed by Claude Montefiore and members of the League of British Jews.[18]

A rheumatic complaint largely removed Greenberg from the paper's affairs for his last year. His son Ivan Greenberg had joined the staff in 1925 and became editor in 1936.[18][1]

Personal life and death

Greenberg's first wife, Marion Gates, was not Jewish and converted to Judaism.[19] He died on 15 November 1931.[18] The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that his remains were cremated at Golders Green Crematorium on 18 November 1931, in the presence of Nahum Sokolow, Joseph Cowen and Leopold Kessler among others.[20] He had asked to be cremated and buried near Mount Scopus; the Orthodox rabbinate in Jerusalem refused to allow burial of his ashes in consecrated ground, and they were eventually interred at Kibbutz Degania, on the shore of Lake Galilee.[21]

Company appointments

Companies House holds no officer record for Leopold Greenberg, who died before the online register's coverage begins (its earliest appointment dates for Jewish Chronicle companies are given as "before 26 December 1991"). Cesarani records that he was a director for life of the company formed to hold the paper after the 1906 purchase.[9]

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Getzel Kressel, Greenberg, Leopold Jacob in Encyclopaedia Judaica (via Encyclopedia.com), accessed 10 November 2026.
  2. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 104–106.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 106–107.
  4. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 105.
  5. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 122.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 124.
  7. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 125.
  8. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 127–128.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 103–105.
  10. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 105.
  11. ↑ The Jewish Chronicle 1841–1941: A Century of Newspaper History (London, 1949), p. 134.
  12. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 107, 111–112.
  13. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 109.
  14. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 108.
  15. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 118–120.
  16. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 123.
  17. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 134–135.
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 140.
  19. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 113.
  20. ↑ L. J. Greenberg Cremated Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 18 November 1931, accessed 10 November 2026.
  21. ↑ David Cesarani, The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 140–141.
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