COMMENTARY: Herzl’s Legacy Lives on 100 Years After Death

c. 2004 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.) (UNDATED) A photograph, taken in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948, is one of the great iconic pictures of modern history. It shows David Ben-Gurion reading the Declaration of Independence of the Jewish […]

c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is Distinguished Visiting Professor at Saint Leo University.)

(UNDATED) A photograph, taken in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948, is one of the great iconic pictures of modern history. It shows David Ben-Gurion reading the Declaration of Independence of the Jewish state that was proclaimed that day.


Fifty-six years later, most people easily recognize Ben-Gurion with his nimbus-like white hair. On Israel’s first Independence Day, B.G. wore a dress shirt, suit jacket, and necktie _ rare for someone who favored agricultural or blue-collar work clothing.

But many people have difficulty identifying the formally attired man whose photograph is on the wall above Ben-Gurion. The man in the picture has a huge black beard and appears to be in his early 40s.

Who is he? The answer is a tale of grandeur and tragedy. It is the story of Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, the Jewish national liberation movement, who died 100 years ago on July 3, 1904. He was only 44. While his brief public career of nine years was extraordinary, he suffered a wretched marriage, and the story of his three children and lone grandchild is one of drug addiction, two suicides and murder in a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust.

Herzl’s ultimate achievement, modern Israel, proves when a driving dream of self-determination and freedom is combined with a charismatic leader, greatness can result. In an exquisite twist of history, Israeli independence came 44 years after Herzl’s death.

A child of the European Enlightenment, Herzl was born in Budapest in 1860, but at age 18, his family moved to Vienna, the epicenter of theater, music and art. Despite his love of the Enlightenment, Herzl, a lawyer, journalist and playwright, sensed that a malevolent social pathology was deeply embedded within European society. The disease was anti-Semitism, hatred of Jews and Judaism.

Unfortunately, Herzl did not receive a strong Jewish education _ something that might have provided him a spiritual anchor. As a result, he had two bizarre responses to anti-Semitism. Herzl’s first idea was the mass conversion of Jews to Christianity, and the second was making socialism into the dominant political philosophy of Europe’s Jewish communities. He believed Christianity and socialism offered Jews a protective toleration that would end anti-Semitism. But Herzl soon realized both “solutions” were misguided and shameful for an ancient people with a noble history and an eternal covenant with God.

However, Herzl’s third response to systemic anti-Semitism was different and it gained him immortality: modern Zionism, and the creation of a free independent Jewish state.


In the mid 1890s, the virulent anti-Semitism unleashed during the infamous Dreyfus trial in the French capital shocked Herzl, the Paris correspondent for a leading Vienna newspaper. Alfred Dreyfus, a French artillery officer, was falsely accused of passing military secrets to Germany. But Herzl correctly understood that Dreyfus’ real “crime” was simply being Jewish. The Parisian crowds, seeking a scapegoat, did not chant “Death to the traitor,” but rather “Death to the Jews!”

Herzl reasoned if anti-Semitism was endemic even in enlightened republican France, there was no hope for Jews anywhere in Europe. In 1895 he wrote a slim pamphlet in German called “Der Judenstaat” (“A State of the Jewish People”). That booklet, which has appeared in 80 editions and in 18 languages, changed both Herzl and world history.

He gave up journalism and despite serious heart problems devoted enormous energy to creating a mass movement whose goal was a Jewish state recognized by the world community. Not wedded to pious prayers or impractical yearnings for a Jewish commonwealth in the Holy Land, the pragmatic Herzl convened Zionist congresses and established new organizations to carry out his programs.

Herzl traveled to Britain, Turkey, Jerusalem, the Vatican, Germany and Russia to gain international support for his visionary idea. His diplomatic successes were meager, but Herzl’s most vocal opposition came from wealthy Jews who felt political Zionism threatened their social, political and economic status.

However, the European Jewish masses, suffering crushing poverty amid lethal anti-Semitic attacks, adored Herzl. He became a legendary messianic figure providing hope and the promise of physical rescue for a battered people. Herzl’s lack of knowledge about Judaism and his ignoble early responses to anti-Semitism did not matter.

He was compared to the biblical Moses who was raised in Pharaoh’s royal court before becoming the Great Liberator of his own people. And like Moses, who died before entering the Promised Land, Herzl did not live to see modern Israel.


But today, a century after his death, Herzl lies buried in Israel on a Jerusalem hill named in his honor.

AMB/JL END RUDIN

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