Fifteenth Congress - Basle, 1927

The Congress met under the cloud of a growing economic crisis in Palestine which had already left many unemployed and impoverished. 1927 was to be the year when more Jewish emigrants left the country than arrived at its shores (the first and only year that this was to occur in the pre-State period). It was natural that the Congress should spend much of its time dealing with this issue. Weizmann and Ruppin delivered speeches on how to alleviate the crisis.

Discussion also continued on the question of expanding the Jewish Agency.

Eulogies were delivered on Ahad Ha'am, the ideological leader of the cultural Zionists who had himself only attended the first Congress.

In the elections to the position of President of the WZO, Weizmann was again re-elected. Sokolow, too, was re-elected to the position of President of the Executive, while Henrietta Szold became the first woman to be elected to the Zionist Executive.

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