THEODOR HERZL- SECULAR UTOPIANISM AND THE FIRST STEPS OF REDEMPTION
It is argued that Herzl's efforts at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century marked the first steps of Redemption. However, the secular, liberal, utopian vision he presented in his novel Altneuland would never have been utopia. His ideas as the etiology of antisemitism were also off the mark.
During the First Zionist Congress that he arranged in Basel, Switzerland in 1897, Theodor Herzl wrote in his diary:
“Were I to sum up the Basal Congress in a word – which I shall be very careful not to do publicly – it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out load today, I would be answered by universal laughter. Perhaps in five years, and certainly in fifty, everyone will admit it.”1
He was pretty close. It took a few months more than 50 years before the State of Israel was declared. That it happened is due in no small measure to his tireless efforts.
Herzl was the one who planted the idea in the consciousness of the Jewish people and the diplomats, politicians and leaders of the Great Powers that the Jews were a nation and that they warranted a state, preferably in Palestine. The world would come to recognize him as the leader of the Jewish people, the first leader in thousands of years, and his First Zionist Conference would be the first step in the redemption of the Jewish people.
Herzl (1860-1904) was born in the Jewish quarter of Pest (now the eastern part of Budapest) to a secular Jewish family. His father was a successful business man. When he was 18, the family moved to Vienna, then also part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He attended a Jewish grade school and then a local gymnasium. Higher education was fully open to Jews and he studied law at the University of Vienna. He worked briefly in law and wrote a number of plays that were performed in Vienna. He then accepted a position as Paris correspondent for a Viennese paper the Neue Freie Presse. This paper was run by Jews and converted Jews and had a large Jewish readership.
To appreciate the pathway of Herzl’s life, some background is needed on the condition of Jews in Europe in the late 1800’s.
Between the late 18th and early 20th century, Jews in Western and Central Europe were emancipated and received equality and citizenship rights as a result of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and unification of Germany, and moved from their villages and small towns into the larger cities. With new laws in France, Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Jews could now fully participate in the academic, financial, scientific and intellectual life of these countries.
The people of Western and Central Europe had formerly expressed their identification by means of the Christian denominations to which they belonged, but identity was now increasingly being expressed in terms of nationality. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a large empire comprising many nationalities. However, the more the empire did on a political level to accommodate the nationalistic feelings of the people, the more they wished to express their nationalism. Herzl doubted this empire could even survive. The Jews were attempting to integrate into this multi-cultural cauldron but in doing so were encountering substantial nationalistic Jew hatred, as distinct from the religious hatred of centuries past. The more successful were the Jews at integration, the more they were resented for this. In Herzl’s home town of Vienna and while he was still a young man, an open anti-Semite Dr. Karl Lüeger was elected mayor of the city.
In his novel Altneuland, Herzl describes the condition of Jews in Western and Central Europe at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century:
“The persecutions were social and economic. Jewish merchants were boycotted. Jewish workingmen starved out. Jewish professional men proscribed – not to mention the subtle moral suffering to which a sensitive Jew was exposed at the turn of the century … As workingmen, the Jews were hated by their Christian fellows for undercutting the wage standards. As business men, they were dubbed profiteers. Whether Jews were rich or poor or middle-class, they were hated just the same. They were criticized for enriching themselves, and they were criticized for spending money. They were neither to produce nor to consume. They were forced out of government posts. The law courts were prejudiced against them. They were humiliated everywhere in civil life.”2
The extent to which the situation of the Jewish people preyed on Herzl’s mind is often not appreciated since many people assume incorrectly that Herzl’s conversion to Zionism was at the time of the Dreyfus trial. Dreyfus was a Jewish officer on the General Staff of the French Army who was falsely accused of spying for Germany. In a public ceremony he was stripped of his rank and sent to solitary confinement in Devil’s Island. According to this version of the story, Herzl had been previously disconnected from anything Jewish, and certainly from anything to do with the Jewish religion, and while covering the Dreyfus trial as correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse he was shocked to the core by the anti-Semitism surrounding the trial and the cries of “Death to the Jews.” It was at this time that he came to the realization that the only solution for the Jewish people was a state of their own. Herzl would himself promote this version of the story in an article he wrote for the literary journal North American Review entitled “On Zionism” that was written four years after Dryfus’ demoting ceremony.
It is now fairly clear, however, that despite what he would write later, Herzl’s conversion to Zionism had little if anything to do with the Dreyfus case and was more the result of a thought process that had been going on for many years.3 Herzl was a deep thinker and talented writer and it is possible to trace the evolution of this thinking through his diaries, the many articles he wrote for the Neue Freie Presse and his own newspaper Die Welt, the plays he wrote, his first Zionist publication The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat), and his Zionist novel Altneuland. The Neue Freie Presse was aware of his Zionist work, but did not permit him to use their paper to promote his Zionist views and activities.
Herzl fully bought into the official line about Dryfus’ spying. He was a German spy and fully deserved the humiliation he was about to receive. Herzl makes no mention in his newspaper reports of any antisemitism surrounding the trial. He even mentions in his reports that the crowds were shouting “Death to the traitor” (and not “Death to the Jews” as he later stated). There would have been no reason for him to downplay any antisemitism related to this trail in his reports. In fact, the large Jewish readership of his newspaper would have been interested to know of any anti-Jewish repercussions of the trial. His diaries make no mention of any sudden conversion to Zionism. Dreyfus had been framed and was completely innocent, but this was not known for many years.
While still in university, Herzl had been exposed to antisemitism. He had resigned from a nationalist German student fraternity because of an antisemitic speech that was given and wrote to the fraternity why he was making this move. He was much affected by a book by Eugen Dühring that postulated that the inferiority of the Jew was inherent and not a consequence of his social and historic background. Dühring advocated that Jewish property be confiscating since it had in any case been robbed from the people and that Jews be expelled from their professions and businesses. Herzl would write in his diary:
“Blood libels about murdered Christian children have been replaced, thanks to the invention of the printing press, by stories about the people’s wealth and Christian property being robbed by Jewish capital …. Modern oil has been poured on the medieval stake … Free-thinking liberals like Dühring are the true successors of the Dominicans who played that role in the malodorous Middle Ages. And after burning at the stake, robbery will follow (or the other way around) and gentleman like Dühring will look around for booty.”4
He would later write:
“As the years went on, the [Jewish] question bored into me and gnawed at me, tormented me and made me very miserable. In fact, I kept coming back to it whenever my own personal experience – joys and sorrows – permitted me to rise to broader consideration … The Jewish question naturally lurked for me around every turn and corner.”5
Quite revealing in this respect is a play he wrote before the Dreyfus trial and before returning to Vienna to become an editor for the Neue Freie Presse called The New Ghetto. It is a disturbing play that portrays Jewish Viennese stereotypes in an almost antisemitic way. The main character is Jacob Samuel who attempts to live by the aristocratic ideas he has received from his non-Jewish education. A part of the nouveau riche, he supports himself by stock market speculation. He supports a miners’ strike, but this leads to collapse of the mine and harms the capitalists, which includes himself. Samuel’s partners cannot understand why he is upset about the mine collapse. A Rabbi at the gathering advocates a low profile for Jews. The mirror image of Samuel is Emmanuel Wasserstein in whom only money is of value. Honor is irrelevant and he is prepared to be treated like a rag. The plots within the play are more involved than just this, but its main message is that emancipated Jews have been forced into a new type of ghetto by the social forces around them, which are as powerful as the restrictive forces in the ghetto from which they recently left. The gentile world cannot be penetrated. Jews can only get out of their self-enforced ghetto by liberating themselves from it. The play did not immediately find a theater willing to produce it, although it was produced a few years later. Avineri ends the chapter on this subject in his book Herzl’s Vision. Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State with the following observation:
“In 1984, when he wrote the play, Herzl had not yet found the answer to his dilemma, but the challenge was clearly stated. It was not the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, but Herzl’s long analysis of the failure of emancipation and the rise of German and Austrian antisemitism that led him to his radical conclusions.”6
As a result of his thinking on the subject and discussions with others, Herzl concluded that there was only one solution for the Jewish problem and this was for the Jews to form a state of their own. In 1896 he put his literary skills to the task of writing and publishing The Jewish State (Der Judenstaat).7 It was widely read and disseminated among Jews, to the point of becoming a best seller. Its ideas were in the main supported. The Hovevei Zion movement, for example, was enthusiastic. Hovevei Zion were a variety of organizations formed in the early 1880’s to promote immigration to Palestine and to establish mainly agricultural settlements in Palestine. They were supported by philanthropists and their efforts were driven by the antisemitism in Romania and Russia. On the other hand, many orthodox Jews and integrated Jews were critical, although for very different reasons. The support engendered from his pamphlet encouraged Herzl to take the next step, which was to form a political program to actualize his ideas. This program would consume the rest of his life.
His first action was to call the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, and its formation led to further annual congresses that were attended by elected dues-paying delegates, the formation of an executive committee, and setting up the basis of a financial structure to sell shares and bonds. His newspaper Die Welt became the official Zionist newspaper.
In 1902 he published a book called Altneuland in which he described his ideal Jewish state. Before going into the details of this book, it is worth discussing Herzl’s ideas as to the cause of antisemitism. The economic factors responsible for this are pointed out in The Jewish State:
“Modern antisemitism is not to be confounded with the religious persecution of the Jews of former times. It does occasionally take a somewhat religious bias, but the main current of the aggressive movement has now changed. In the principle countries where antisemitism prevails, it does so as the result of the emancipation of the Jews. When civilized nations awoke to the inhumanity of exclusive legislation and enfranchised us, our enfranchisement came too late. It was not possible to legally to remove our disabilities in our old homes. For we had, curiously enough, developed while in the Ghetto into a bourgeois people, and we stepped out of it only to enter into fierce competition with the middle classes.”8
Antisemitism, according to Herzl, is very much an economic problem. Unwittingly, the Jew has created his own antisemitism, and neither he nor his host country have the ability to extricate themselves from the problem. There is only one solution remaining and this is for the Jew to get out. Once he leaves, economic competition will disappear and the problem will resolve itself. As he explains in Altneuland:
“Jewish university graduates, men trained in the technological institutes and commercial colleges used to flounder hopelessly; but now there was ample room for them in the public and private undertakings so numerous in Palestine. The result was that Christian professional men no longer looked askance at their Jewish colleagues, for they were no longer annoying competitors. In such circumstances, commercial envy and hatred had gradually disappeared. Furthermore, the less Jewish abilities were offered in the marketplace, the more their value was appreciated. The value of service always increased with their scarcity. Everyone knew that. Why should not this rule have applied to Jews in commercial life?
And so the effects of the improved situation had themselves felt on all sides. In countries where there was a tendency to restrict Jewish immigration, public opinion took a turn for the better. Jews were granted full citizenship rights not only on paper, but in everyday life ….
Jews who wished to assimilate with other peoples now felt free to do so openly, without cowardice or deception. There was also some who wished to adopt the majority religion, and these could now do so without being suspected of snobbery or careerism, for it was no longer to one’s advantage to abandon Judaism … Toleration can and must always rest on reciprocity. Only when the Jews, forming the majority in Palestine, showed themselves tolerant, were they shown more toleration in all other countries.”9
Herzl put considerable effort into trying to obtain a Charter from the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire that would give the Jews a degree of independence in Palestine in return for financial incentives. The Sultan was not interested. Neither did Herzl’s appeals to the leaders of the Great Powers to influence the Sultan succeed in budging him.
By the Sixth Zionist Congress, which was held in 1903, it was apparent to all that no progress had been made in obtaining a location for a Jewish homeland and Herzl therefore proposed an idea that had been tentatively suggested by the British government of a location in Uganda in East Africa. A resolution to investigate this idea further was accepted, but it almost split the Zionist body. The Russian delegates were in the main members of Hovevei Zion and this organization had continued with settlement in Palestine and the promotion of Jewish culture in Russia. The Uganda option would eventually fizzle, and a special meeting of the Zionist Executive would patch up the differences with the Russian delegates. At the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905 the Uganda option was removed from the agenda. By then, Herzl had already passed away from a cardiac condition at the young age of 44.
Sixty-one years after his death he was reburied with his family on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in the Plot for Zionist Leaders.
Altneuland – a novel about a Jewish utopian state
Altneuland is part of a genre of books about utopia. However, this book is a lot more than this in that it contains the broad outlines of what Herzl regarded as a feasible plan for realizing the goals of the Zionist movement and actualizing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. As such, it added a crucial dimension to his political program. The plan was written in the form of a novel, with the obvious intent of engaging people’s interest. There is even a love interest. It was translated into many languages. Although it never quite became a best seller, it remained the foundational text of the Zionist movement.
The novel is set in 1902, which is also the year the book was published. A young Jewish Viennese attorney Dr. Friedrich Loewenberg is jilted and sees no future for himself in his career or in life in general. Seeing a newspaper advertisement from N.O. Body for “Wanted, an educated, desperate young man willing to make a last experiment with life,” he discovers its source to be a rich gentleman named Mr. Kingscourt. He was formerly a PrussiannoblemancalledKoenigshoff who had made his fortune in America, but who now despaired of humanity and was looking for a companion to join him on his island home in the Pacific Ocean. Friedrich commits to joining him and is provided with a large sum of money which he promptly gives away to a Jewish beggar he chances upon and whose family is in considerable distress. On their way to his island, Kingscourt offers to dock his yacht in Palestine, as it is not unduly out of theirway. Neither Friedrich nor Kingscourt are impressed by what they see. The port of Jaffa is “unpleasant” and in “a state of extreme decay.” What they saw at that time would have been identical to what Herzl had seen on his one and only visit to Palestine four years previously. The views approaching Jerusalem by night were impressive, although “Jerusalem by day is less alluring - shouting, odors, a flurry of dirty colors … The once royal city of Jerusalem could have sunk no lower.”
Twenty years later in 1923, Friedrich and Kingscourtreturn to Vienna in his yacht for a visit and with no particular purpose in mind make a stop-off in Palestine. They are astounded by the changes that have occurred. David Littwak, the son of the Jewish beggar whose family Friedrich saved in Vienna recognizes Friedrich when they dock in Haifa. He is now high-up in the organization of this new country. Deeply grateful for Friedrich’s saving his family, he spares no effort in entertaining the two and showing them some of the countryside. This in sum is the somewhat implausible but nevertheless readable plot that provides Herzl the opportunity to elaborate via the characters they meet on the utopia created in this new land.
In many ways it is difficult for us as a modern reader to appreciate the full dimensions of what Herzl is describing since Herzl’s Old New Land of 1922 looks remarkably like the present State of Israel! However, this would clearly not be the case for someone buying the book in 1902. Furthermore, Palestine continued under Ottoman rule from 1902 and very little change would be anticipated over the subsequent twenty years. Palestine was always a back-water in the Ottoman empire.
Herzl makes a number of important points during the narrative that are worth reviewing.
Firstly, opportunities are many when a venture is started from scratch, and the chances of success are much greater than making changes to something that is preexistent.10 If the beginning is right, then one is well on one’s way to achieving one’s objectives.
Secondly, a good economic model for the country can create economic prosperity, distribute wealth appropriately, eliminate poverty, and prevent social discord. Capitalism, the book points out, leads to the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the rich and exploitation of the poor. Socialism discourages enterprise and has the potential for violence and chaos. For this reason the “New Society” uses a synthesis of capitalism and socialism but that avoids their two extremes. It is called “a mutualistic order.” Private ownership is not prohibited, but the country promotes cooperatives – agricultural cooperatives, industrial cooperatives, newspaper cooperatives belonging to its subscribers, consumer cooperatives, and even entertainment cooperatives (its theaters for example). Thus, the entire economy is based on organizations flourishing from everyone’s efforts and with the workers obtaining appropriate reward from their efforts. Members of the New Society also receive a wide-range of benefits, including free universal education from kindergarten through university, free medical care, retirement pensions and old-age homes. However, everyone in the society is obliged to provide two years of national service at age 18 by serving as teachers, hospital workers, and care givers for the elderly.
What Herzl is describing here is what we call nowadays a welfare state. It also happens to be decades ahead of its time. It will not be until after the First World War that social welfare takes off in other countries. In this passage, David explains to his guests the essentials of their economic system:
“Halt! Halt!” cried Kingscourt. “Not so fast, please! Under what kind of economic order do you live? - “A mutualistic order. But please don’t imagine a system of cast iron rules, rigid principles, or anything stiff or hard or doctrinaire. It is only a simple, flexible modus operandi. It already existed in your day like everything else you see here. All kinds of industrial and commercial co-operative societies were then in existence; and you will find all kinds operating effectively here. The whole merit of our New Society is merely that it fostered the creation and development of the co-operatives by providing credits, and – what was even more important – by educating the masses to make use of them ….. The individual is not deprived of the stimulus and pleasures of private property, while, at the same time, he is able, through union with his fellows, to resist capitalist domination. … You must remember that our workingmen, as members of the New Society, are automatically insured against accidents, illness, old age and death … ” 11
Social programs and charitable organizations are coordinated by the New Society. The sick and infirm are taken care of and no one is left wanting:
“In philanthropy, too, we have created nothing new. We have merely systematized the old facilities, centralized them properly. Hospitals, infirmaries, orphan asylums, vacation camps, public kitchens – in short, all the types of benevolent institutions with which you are familiar have been merged here and placed under a unified administration. We are thus able to care for every sick and needy applicant …. Here, too, people are brought low by their own vices or lack of responsibility or misfortune – deserved or undeserved. We give medical aid to the sick and find work for the well … Healthy persons caught begging are sentenced to hard labor. The needy sick have only to apply to the public charities …”12
The New Society also eliminates situations that encourage speculation and do not lead to the true creation of wealth. They are also situations to which Jews have typically been attracted to in the past since they are easy ways of making large amounts of money quickly. Hence, there is no stock market in this new land. All land bought by the New Society remains under their ownership thereby preventing land speculation.
The “New Society” is a liberal, egalitarian, democratic, multi-cultural organization open to everyone who wishes to join regardless of race or religion. All members receive equal rights. The one Arab in the book, a landowner who belongs to the New Society, points out that the Jews have brought benefit to everyone in the land, including to Arab villagers.
To emphasize these points, which Herzl obviously regards as crucial, readers are privy to an election campaign for the Congress of the New Society in a Jewish village. One of the candidates is a Jew who is campaigning that the New Society be nothing but Jewish.Non-Jews would not be evicted from the country. They would just not be part of the New Society. This rabbi candidate is made out as being a racist and a villain. Herzl is not about to take Jews from racist Europe to a Jewish nationalist state. A passionate speech is now given opposing this rabbi’s racist approach:
“Therefore, an anti-alien slogan is proclaimed. A non-Jew must not be accepted by the New Society. The fewer get a place near the platter, the larger the portion of each. Perhaps you believe that is to your immediate advantage. But it is not. If you adopt that stupid, narrow-minded policy, the land will go to wrack and ruin. …. I say, therefore, that you must hold fast to the things that have made us great: to liberty, tolerance, love of mankind. Only then is Zion truly Zion. You will elect your delegate to the Congress. Choose one who thinks not of the immediate advantage, but of the lasting good.”13
Readers of the book are now also invited with Friedrich and Kingscourt to a Passover seder with David’s parents, the Arab we have previously met, the abbot of the Franciscan monastery in Tiberius, a Russian orthodox priest from a church in Sephorris, and an Anglican priest and his wife. The order of the evening is traditionally Jewish. At the end of the seder, people listen to a phonograph about the establishment of the New Society. All these stories are designed to reinforce the importance of the tolerance and pluralism of this new society:
“Let me tell you, then, that my associates and I make no distinctions between one man and another. We do not ask to what race or religion a man belongs. If he is a man, that is enough for us.” …… “I shall not bore you now with our political controversies. They are the same here as everywhere else in the world. But I can tell you that the fundamental principles of humanitarianism are generally accepted among us. As far as religion goes, you will find Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist and Brahmin houses of worship near our own synagogues….”14
Technology can provide solutions to many of the country’s problems. Herzl does not invent new technology. Rather, the leaders of his New Society search throughout Europe and America for the best technology for their agriculture, industry and services and apply them nationally. A Dead Sea Canal project provides electricity to the entire country. Railroads provide connections throughout the Middle East.
“All the Devils!” shouted Kingscourt, “What’s that?” He pointed to large iron car running along the tops of the psalms, whose passengers were looking down into the street. The wheels of the car were not underneath, but on its roof; it moved along a powerful iron rail.” “An electric overhead train.” Explained Littwak …… “Overhead trains are nothing new. There was one running between Barmen and Elberfeld in the 1890’s. We installed them as soon as we rebuilt our cities, because they make street traffic safer and easier. Besides they cost less to build than elevated or surface lines.”15
The New Society has also created well laid-out cities and a beautifully cultivated countryside:
“The car had left the plain and was gliding eastward into rolling country. It took the upgrades as easily as the down. The hillsides everywhere were cultivated up to the very summits; every bit of soil was exploited. The steep slopes were terraced with vines, pomegranates and fig trees as in the ancient days of Solomon. Numerous tree nurseries bore witness to the intelligent efforts at forestation of the once barren tracts. Pine and cypresses on the ridges of the hills towered against the blue skies.”16
This is a homeland that cares not only about its own members but all of humanity. In a Jerusalem is a Peace Palace on the Mount of Olives that works towards the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.With the guidance of a leading scientist, we are also led to an institution seeking a cure for many infectious diseases, including malaria:
“What do you cook there, Professor?” - “Pest, cholera, diphtheria, childhood fever, tuberculosis, hydrophobia, malaria” smirked the Professor. …. “ I work here,” he added …. “At the opening up of Africa… That is to say I hope to find the cure for malaria. We have overcome it here in Palestine thanks to the drainage of the swamps, canalization and the eucalyptus forests. But conditions are different in Africa. The same measures cannot be taken there because the prerequisite – mass immigration – is not present. The white colonist goes under in Africa. That country can be opened up to civilization only after malaria has been subdued. Only then will enormous areas become available for the surplus populations of Europe …..” “Not only the whites!” replied Steineck gravely. “The blacks as well. There is still one problem of racial misfortune unsolved. The depths of that problem, in all their horror, only a Jew can fathom”…. “That is why I am working to open up Africa. All human beings ought to have a home. Then they will be kinder to one another.”17
The New Society does not involve itself in matters of religion. Everyone is free to practice their religion in whatever way they feel. In Jerusalem especially one feels the influence of Judaism “as the spell of the Sabbath was over the Holy City.” There is also a Temple in the city! It looks like the ancient Temple, although it functions more as a glorified synagogue:
“They reached the Temple. The times had fulfilled themselves, and it was rebuilt. Once more it had been erected with great quadrangular blocks of stone hewn from nearby quarries and hardened by the action of the atmosphere. Once more the pillars of bronze stood before the Holy Place of Israel. “The left pillar was called Boz, but the name of the right was Jachin.” In the forecourt was a mighty bronze altar with an enormous basin called the brazen sea as in the olden days, when Solomon was king in Israel.
Sarah and Miriam went up the to the women’s gallery. Freidrich sat besides David in the last row downstairs….
The great hall resounded with singing and the playing of lutes …... The choristers chanted a hymn that had stirred yearnings for their own land in the hearts of a homeless people for hundreds of years. The words of the noble poet Solomon ha-Levy. Lecha Dodi, likrath kallah (Come, Beloved, to meet the Bride) ………..
Because only here had the Jews built up a free commonwealth in which they could strive for the loftiest human aims. They had their own communities in the Ghettoes, to be sure, but there they lived under oppression. In the Juddengasse, they had been without honor and without rights; and when they left it, they ceased to be Jews. Freedom and a sense of solidarity were both needed. Only then could the Jews erect a House to the Almighty God Whom children envision thus and wise men so, but who is everywhere present as the Will-to-Good.” 18
Summing up
Some points to sum up.
Firstly, how influential was Herzl and his ideas in the overall scheme of things?
Herzl’s idea of a Jewish state was not a new one. It was discussed by Moses Hess in his book Rome and Jerusalem in 1862 and by Leo Pinsker in 1882 in the book Auto-Emancipation. This latter book was inspirational for the Hovevei Zion movement. Herzl had not read any of these books before beginning work on Der Judenstaat.
What Herzl succeeded in doing in contrast to these other figures was to popularize the idea that antisemitism was an international problem and that the Great Powers should be involved in its resolution. The Jews had no army and so could only rely on the goodwill, guilty conscious and self-interest of the world and Herzl would play on these to the full. He was also the first leader of the Jewish people in thousands of years, even though he by no means represented all of them. However, by the time of his death at the young age of 44, he had failed to establish any form of homeland for the Jewish people.
But this was not the end of the story. Towards the end of the First World War, in 1917, the Zionist leader Chaim Weitzman and Herbert Samuel, an enthusiastic Jewish cabinet member, persuaded the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour and the British government of Lloyd George to issue the Balfour Declaration in which they promised to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. Would Weitzman and Balfour have been able to consummate this agreement without the inspiration provided by Theodor Herzl? We will never know. Nevertheless, it can be suggested that Herzl’s fingerprint was doubtless on that letter, however indirectly. In the years previously, for example, he had been in discussion with the British government regarding Jewish settlement in East Africa and was certainly not an unknown figure.
The same question pertains to Herzl’s inspirational book Altneuland. How influential was this book with respect to the future policies of the State of Israel? It almost uncanny how much of Altneuland resembles what one now sees in the State of Israel.
Altneuland was never the official Zionist blueprint for the Jewish state. Nevertheless, it was a model that would have been difficult for the Zionist organization to completely ignore. Herzl’s emphasis on social justice, equal rights and being a blessing to humanity were also about values that were already ingrained into the Jewish people. And it would have been difficult to create a Jewish state without them. On the other hand, Avineri points out that many of the policies of the new state were made on an hoc basis without any overall framework.19 Once the state brought oppressed Jews to Israel it would have been difficult not to provide them with social welfare. And when the Jewish National Fund bought land, it was a foregone conclusion that the land would continue to belong to the state and not be sold off to land speculators.
Also, as Avineri points out:
“In founding the World Zionist Organization and its agencies and subsidiaries, he [Herzl] laid the cornerstone for the representative democratic institutions not only of the Zionist movement but of the State of Israel as well”20
Secondly, it is pertinent to ask - how valid was Herzl’s theory regarding the etiology of antisemitism? Contrary to his expectations, antisemitism did not disappear with the creation of a Jewish state either in the state itself or in the rest of the world. While one may agree with Herzl’s solution, most people would not accept his primary emphasis on economic factors. Nationalism, national values and the religious conflict also have to be taken into account.
The Jewish people are a nation. This has to be so, otherwise there would have been no point in creating for them a Jewish state. They are a nation because they have a common history, culture, values, and laws regulating their behavior. The problem of antisemitism is not so much the economic behavior of the Jews but their Judaism. The Jews in emancipated Europe were asking for a free ride. They were asking to be accepted into a continent that was in the process of sorting out its nationality problems, while asking the Gentiles to forget that the Jews were also a nation too. However assimilated they were, including the assimilated Jews in his play The New Ghetto, they were still part of the Jewish nation, in that instance cultural members.
Jews also have national values. One can already see from Herzl’s descriptions of the rise of antisemitism in Europe the beginnings of the Holocaust. The Germans, for example, were a fiercely nationalistic people. Many hated Jews because they were a different race with different and even opposing values. This would come to the fore when this racially pure Nordic race elected to rule the world. The values of the Nazis and those of the Jews were a zero-sum game This is why they had to be annihilated.
Similarly, Jews are currently in a religious war with fundamental Islam- although Herzl would not have been able to foretell this. The messianic values of fundamental Islam and Jewish messianic values cannot coexist together, particularly in the very center of the ummah – the collective community of the Islamic people. Again, for many fundamental Islamists, genocide of the Jews, or at the very least removal of them from Israel, is the only solution.
Herzl had nothing to say about any of this because he was an expert on Jews, not on Judaism.
Thirdly, Herzl assumes that Rabbi Dr. Geyer who is campaigning for a Jewish-only New State is a villain. “Geyer” in German means a vulture. This personis probably being modelled on Dr. Lüeger, the racist anti-Semite who was elected mayor of Herzl’s home town of Vienna.21Lüeger is a European racist, and there is no place for the likes of him in Herzl’s utopian New Society.
But the matter is not so clear. A liberal secular homeland is not every Jews idea of a Jewish utopia. Jews oppressed and under pressure will take whatever they can get, but Herzl’s secular state is not an inspirational model for many Jews, particularly those brought up on Torah and the words of the prophets. Herzl mentions the word God only a few times in his Altneuland. Pointedly, at the very end of his book “Friedrich put a question and every man answered it after his fashion. “We see a new and happy form of human society here,” he said. “What created it?” Nine suggestions are made. Finally, ‘the venerable Rabbi Samuel arose and proclaimed: “God!” The Rabbi has the last word in the book as an advocate for God, but only after many other suggestions have been proposed.
For many orthodox Jews, Herzl’s Altneuland is a land devoid of essential Jewish values, and his movement is far from being one that will lead to a utopian or Messianic Jewish state; which is why many religious Jews wanted nothing to do with Zionism. Herzl could answer by saying that his Old-New-Land society is one of social justice and caring and that these are essential Biblical values. He could also say this about love of the land of Israel. He would be correct on both accounts, but this does not resolve the issue. His version of a Jewish state is unlikely be any more utopian than the welfare states that will arise in Europe after World War One. Which is not to say that racism should be part of a Jewish state; but neither should removal of Judaism from its ethos be either.
Finally, I have to ask the question that admittedly few people ask. Why did God choose Herzl to begin Redemption? It is a question that very few ask, since many would say that a totally secular project like his cannot, by definition, be a Redemption. But it certainly looks like a Redemption. With close to 50% of Jews in the world now living in Israel it is difficult to imagine what else it could be.
Despite what Herzl wrote during the First Zionist Congress “At Basel I founded the Jewish State”, this was clearly an overstatement. He had put in place the first steps, but many more steps would be needed – a bullet in Sarajevo, the First World War, the Battle of Beersheba, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the British taking on their mandate for Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, ratification of the British Mandate by the League of Nations, Arab riots, The Battle of Alamein, British frustration with their mandate and their leaving Palestine, the siege of Jerusalem, and finally the War of Independence. If just one of these steps (plus others) had gone a different way, the State of Israel might not exist today. It is difficult to believe that the outcome of all these stages was totally coincidental. There is a plan in Jewish history. And that plan included Herzl.
Herzl was the right man for the right time. A religious mystic in the mold of Isaiah would not have garnered the necessary support among the assimilated Jews of Europe and among the diplomats of the Great Power. Herzl’s vision was secular because a secular vision was what was needed at that time. The religious Jews of Europe could not and would not have formed and defended a Jewish country as did Jews from the First and Second Aliyah.
But there is no such thing as stasis in world or Jewish history. Shortly after Herzl’s death a mystic, scholar and later Chief Rabbi of Palestine will be calling for an integration of Zionism, liberalism, love of humanity and Orthodoxy as a pathway to a Messianic Redemption.22 His name was Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935) and his story will be the next chapter in our story of Messianism.
References:
1. Quoted in The Constituent Assembly: The Basel Congress in Herzl’s Vision. Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State by Shlomi Avineri, p141, BlueBridge, New York, 2013. Shlomo Avineri is an historian who has written extensively on 19th century political philosophy. He was also a director-general of the Israel foreign ministry in the 1970’s. This book is a classic on the life of Theodor Herzl and I quote from it extensively in this essay.
2. Quoted from Book Two, Haifa 1923 in Altneuland. The Old-New-Land by Theodor Herzl, p54. Published from public domain texts.
3. Chapter Three. Budapest – Vienna – Paris in Herzl’s Vision. Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State, p52. Also, Henry J Cohen. Theodor Herzl’s Conversion to Zionism. Jewish Social Studies, volume 32, no 2 (April 1970), pp101-110, Indiana University Press and Liam Hoare Did Dreyfus Affair Really Inspire Herzl? 26 February 2014, The Forward.
4. Quoted and translation from Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State, p55.
5. Quoted and translation from Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State, p85.
6. Ibid. P82.
7. This is a somewhat dry rather than inspirational pamphlet, containing much technical detail as to how Jews could leave their home countries and settle in a new homeland.
8. Causes of antisemitism in The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl. Foreword by Alan Dershowitz, p6, Skyhorse Publishing, Delaware, USA.
9. Quoted from Altneuland. The Old-New-Land by Theodor Herzl, p139. Published from public domain texts.
10.Neither Herzl nor the Torah stress this, but Jewish history comprises exiles and redemptions. Redemption provides the opportunity for starting again with a fresh beginning.
11.Quoted from Altneuland. The Old-New-Land by Theodor Herzl, p69 and 73. Published from public domain texts.
12.Ibid, pp62-63.
13.Ibid, p110.
14.Ibid, p55.
15.Ibid, p51.
16.Ibid, p100.
17.Ibid, pp129 and 133.
18.Ibid, pp193, 194 and 196.
19. Jewish Review of Books. Rereading Herzl’s Old-New Land by Shlomo Avineri, Summer 2012. https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/articles/213/rereading-herzls-old-new-land/
20. Quoted from Toward the End in Herzl’s Vision. Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State by Shlomi Avineri, p259, BlueBridge, New York, 2013.
21. Altneuland in Herzl’s Vision. Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State by Shlomi Avineri, p182, BlueBridge, New York, 2013.
22. Orot Meofol, Orot Ha-Tehiya, 18 in Orot, pp70-72, Mosad Harav Kook, 1963.
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