On Nov. 2, 1917, British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote a letter to Walter Rothschild, head of the English branch of the storied banking dynasty. Balfour wrote that “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”The Balfour Declaration was a key victory for the Zionist movement and an important step toward the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The story of the declaration has often been told, but more than a century later, the role of the women of the Rothschild family has been largely forgotten. While Balfour’s letter was addressed to Walter Rothschild, it would probably never have been written if it wasn’t for the work of three people: Peggy, Marchioness of Crewe—whose mother was born a Rothschild—and two younger women who had married into the Rothschild family, Dorothy and Rózsika.

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