c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is the national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

(RNS)-In January 1896 the weekly Jewish Chronicle of London printed excerpts from a new booklet,”Der Judenstaat”or”The Jewish State,”whose author was even more fascinating than the provocative title of his work.

The publication of Theodor Herzl’s 70-page volume immediately transformed the 36-year-old journalist and playwright into the leader of the Jewish people and a world figure.”Der Judenstaat,”which has been translated into more than 20 languages, made an impact upon Jews everywhere, sparking intense ardor for an actual national rebirth, and not merely the continuation of a 2,000-year-old religious hope.

Herzl was an unlikely candidate for his role in history as the founder of the modern Zionist movement, the driving force in creating the State of Israel. He was a thoroughly assimilated Austrian Jew, and his Jewish education and knowledge of Hebrew were nearly zero. He once even thought of converting to Christianity to escape the virulent anti-Semitism of the late 19th century. An attorney who never practiced law and a habitue of cafe society, Herzl was Paris correspondent for a leading Viennese paper in the 1890s.

Like other progressives of his time, Herzl admired France and its revolutionary ideals of human rights and equality. But Herzl had a shattering epiphany when he covered the”Dreyfus Affair,”in which a Jewish artillery captain was falsely accused of selling French military secrets to Germany. Anti-Semitism was the key factor when high-ranking French army officers made Dreyfus the innocent scapegoat for someone else’s crime.

Herzl witnessed the degrading public ceremony that stripped the hapless Dreyfus of his army rank. The Viennese journalist noted in his diary that the hostile Paris crowd did not shout”Death to the traitor!”or even”Death to Dreyfus!”Rather, it was the chilling classic anti-Semitic cry of”Death to the Jews!” Herzl identified with Dreyfus who was, like himself, far removed from his Jewish origins. Herzl sadly concluded that anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews, was a permanent element of Western society. Disillusioned with the”clamor against the Jews,”Herzl, in a prophetic sense, understood there was no future for the Jewish people in Europe:”We will not be left in peace.” Herzl’s response to this painful conclusion was a personal revelation and breakthrough:”the restoration of the Jewish State”after 20 centuries of dispersion and homelessness. He wondered:”Am I ahead of my time? … We shall see.” And in an act of self-discovery, Herzl declared:”We are a people-one people.”This simple, short sentence inspired a revolution in Jewish thinking and action that continues a century after it was first uttered. The assimilated prodigal son had come home to his people with a powerful call:”The world needs a Jewish State, therefore it will arise.” Herzl had a daring idea: the mass emigration of Jews from their countries of residence, an exodus of biblical proportion.”No human being is wealthy or powerful enough to move an entire people from one place of residence to another. Only an idea can achieve that. The idea of a state has that power. … I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence.” He outlined his bold plan in great detail. The Jewish state had to be”publicly recognized and legally secured,”a place where Jews”shall live at last as free men on our soil, and in our homes shall peacefully die.” Herzl himself died of a heart attack in Vienna only eight years after the publication of”Der Judenstaat.”During that time, he carried out an exhausting schedule of activities and several bold but unsuccessful diplomatic attempts to obtain a Jewish state. He rushed from meeting to meeting, from kaiser to sultan to pope to king to prime minister, and from country to country, including his only visit to the land of Israel.

There have been other outstanding Zionist and/or Israeli leaders since Herzl, but none of them has ever attained the”light mist of legend”(Herzl’s self-description) that has enveloped the charismatic author of”Der Judenstaat”and the chief architect of modern Israel.

And the best and worst of Herzl’s prophecies came true. Thirty years after his death, Hitler came to power in Germany and set in motion the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jews. And 45 years after Herzl literally”burned out,”the newly independent Jewish state moved his remains from Vienna and reburied him on a small hill in Jerusalem that bears his name, the same place where Yitzhak Rabin, one of Herzl’s”wondrous generation,”is also buried.

MJP END RUDIN