"In Basle, I Created the Jewish State"

Theodor Herzl's Political Zionism

By Louis Jacobs

Theodor Herzl led the Zionist movement from its formal inception in 1897 until his death in 1904. Herzl outlined his vision for a Jewish state in Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896). The book described the practical functions of a secular, cosmopolitan state, where the best ideas and technology of the west could come together in an environment free from anti-Semitism. Herzl believed that diplomacy offered the most efficient path to achieving the dream of Jewish statehood expressed in Der Judenstaat.

 

To this end, he pursued meetings with heads of state and leaders of the Jewish community in order to secure resources necessary to form a Jewish state. Herzl's vision of the Jewish state did not win unanimous support from Zionists worldwide. Some fellow Zionists, like Ahad Ha-Am, felt that Herzl focused on rescuing Jews at the expense of rescuing Judaism. Others expressed frustration at Herzl's willingness to consider territory other than Palestine for the Jewish State. (While Herzl contemplated the British government's suggestion of Uganda for the Jewish State, he refused to consider their suggestion of Egypt. Herzl informed the British Lord Chamberlain that the Jews had already been to Egypt and it was not an experience worth repeating.)

 

Herzl did not live to see the British government's conferral of a charter, such as it was, in 1917. He died in 1904 at the age of 44. His body was paraded through Vienna, draped with a Zionist flag. A processional of 10,000 Jews followed his funeral carriage to the graveside. Throughout Europe, from Vienna to Vilna, London to Odessa, the streets and highways of Jewish sections of town were packed with mourners. The following article by Louis Jacobs summarizes Herzl's life and philosophy. It is reprinted with permission from The Jewish Religion: A Companion, published by Oxford University Press

 

Theodor Herzl (1860‑1904) was the foremost leader of political Zionism. Herzl belonged to a fairly assimilated Jewish family in Vienna. He took a law degree at the university but earned his living as a playwright and particularly as a successful journalist on the Neue Freie Presse.

 

The story has often been told of how Herzl, reporting for his paper in Paris on the Dreyfus Affair, in which the thoroughly assimilated Captain Dreyfus, in an anti‑Semitic plot, was falsely accused of treason, came to realise that the Emancipation of the Jews, far from solving the Jewish problem, only aggravated it by crea­ting severe tensions between the Jews and their neighbours in European society. In Herzl's view, the Jews had to consider themselves to be not only a religious body but also a nation capable of developing its own political institu­tions in a land of its own.

 

Herzl gave expression to his views in 1896 with the publication of Judenstaat ("Jewish State"). He eventually came to appreciate that the creation of such a Jewish State could be feasible only in Palestine, the traditional home­land of the Jewish people. Herzl has been described as a practical dreamer, and it is true that, with considerable organizing ability, he worked for the practical realization of his aim, succeeding in winning many Jews to co-operate with him in, at the time, a seemingly impossible task.

 

The first Zionist Congress was held in Basle in 1897 at which the World Zionist Organization was founded and Herzl elected its president. In 1902Herzl published his utopian vision of the Jewish State, the Altneuland ("Old New Land"). Herzl died, at the early age of 44, in Vienna, where he was buried. In 1949 Herzl's remains were taken to Jerusalem where they were buried on ahill, now called Mount Herzl. More than any other thinker and politi­cian, Herzl was indirectly responsible for the emergence of the State of Israel and is acknowl­edged to be the State's true founder.

 

It is undeniable that Herzl's ideas, while contributing immensely to the survival of the Jewish people, created problems for the Jewish religion. For Herzl and for political Zionism as a movement, the Jews were a nation like other nations, and this raised questions about the nature of Judaism.

 

The majority of the Rabbis in Herzl's day, whether Orthodox or Reform, were opposed to his views on precisely these grounds. The Reformers believed that the new emphasis on nationhood frustrated the universalistic thrust of Judaism as a world religion independent of nationality. The Orthodox, at the opposite end of the spectrum, believed that the particularistic elements in Judaism were contained in the Torah and the practice of its laws, not in any form of secular nationalism; though the Mizrachi movement sought to combine the ideas of nationalism and religion for Jews in a modern State. Once the State of Israel had been established, the whole debate became purely academic, which is not to deny that many of the problems still await their solution.

 

Louis Jacobs, founding rabbi of the New London Synagogue, is a renowned scholar and lecturer.

 

ã Louis Jacobs, 1995. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this material may be stored, transmitted, retransmitted, lent, or reproduced in any form or medium without the permission of Oxford University Press.