Theodor (Binyamin Zeev) Herzl, the visionary of Zionism, was born in Budapest
in 1860. In 1878 the family moved to Vienna, and in 1884 Herzl was awarded a
doctorate of law from the University of Vienna. He became a writer, a playwright
and a journalist.
|
Herzl first encountered the anti-Semitism that would shape his life and the fate
of the Jews in the twentieth century while studying at the University of Vienna
(1882). Later, during his stay in Paris as a journalist, he was brought
face-to-face with the problem. At the time, he regarded the Jewish problem as a
social issue and wrote a drama, The Ghetto (1894), in which assimilation and
conversion are rejected as solutions. He hoped that The Ghetto would lead to
debate and ultimately to a solution, based on mutual tolerance and respect
between Christians and Jews.
|
In 1894, the Dreyfus Case became one of the determinants in the genesis of
Political Zionism. Herzl concluded that anti-Semitism was a stable and immutable
factor in human society, which assimilation did not solve. He mulled over the
idea of Jewish sovereignty, and, despite ridicule from Jewish leaders, published
Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896). The Jews are one people, he said, and
their plight could be transformed into a positive force by the establishment of
a Jewish state with the consent of the great powers.
|
Herzl proposed a practical program for collecting funds from Jews around the
world by a company to be owned by stockholders, which would work toward the
practical realization of this goal. (This organization, when it was eventually
formed, was called the Zionist Organization.) He saw the future state as a model
social state, basing his ideas on the European model of the time, of a modern
enlightened society. It would be neutral and peace-seeking, and of a secular
nature.
|
In his Zionist novel, Altneuland (Old New Land, 1902), Herzl pictured the future
Jewish state as a socialist utopia. He envisioned a new society that was to rise
in the Land of Israel on a cooperative basis utilizing science and technology in
the development of the Land.
|
He included detailed ideas about how he saw the future state's political
structure, immigration, fundraising, diplomatic relations, social laws and
relations between religion and the state. In Altneuland, the Jewish state was
foreseen as a pluralist, advanced society, a "light unto the nations." This book
had a great impact on the Jews of the time and became a symbol of the Zionist
vision in the Land of Israel.
|
A Movement Is Started
Herzl's ideas were met with enthusiasm by the
Jewish masses in Eastern Europe, although Jewish leaders were less ardent. Herzl
appealed to wealthy Jews such as Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild, to join the
national Zionist movement, but in vain. He then appealed to the people, and the
result was the convening of the First Zionist Congress in Basle, Switzerland, on
August 29-31, 1897.
|
The Congress was the first inter territorial gathering of Jews on a national and
secular basis. Here the delegates adopted the Basle Program, the program of the
Zionist movement, and declared "Zionism seeks to establish a home for the Jewish
people in Palestine secured under public law." At the Congress the World Zionist
Organization was established as the political arm of the Jewish people, and
Herzl was elected its first president.
|
Herzl convened six Zionist Congresses between 1897 and 1902. It was here that
the tools for Zionist activism were forged: Otzar Hityashvut Hayehudim; the
Jewish National Fund and the movement's newspaper Die Welt.
|
After the First Zionist Congress, the movement met yearly at an international
Zionist Congress. In 1936 the center of the Zionist movement was transferred to
Jerusalem.
|
Uganda Isn't Zion
Herzl saw the need for encouragement by the great
powers of the aims of the Jewish people in the Land. Thus, he traveled to the
Land of Israel and Istanbul in 1898 to meet with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany
and the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. When these efforts proved fruitless, he
turned to Great Britain, and met with Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial
secretary and others. The only concrete offer he received from the British was
the proposal of a Jewish autonomous region in east Africa, in Uganda.
|
The 1903 Kishinev pogrom and the difficult state of Russian Jewry, witnessed
firsthand by Herzl during a visit to Russia, had a profound effect on him. He
requested that the Russian government assist the Zionist Movement to transfer
Jews from Russia to Eretz Yisrael.
|
At the Sixth Zionist Congress (1903), Herzl proposed the British Uganda Program
as a temporary refuge for Jews in Russia in immediate danger. While Herzl made
it clear that this program would not affect the ultimate aim of Zionism, a
Jewish entity in the Land of Israel, the proposal aroused a storm at the
Congress and nearly led to a split in the Zionist movement. The Uganda Program
was finally rejected by the Zionist movement at the Seventh Zionist Congress in
1905.
|
Herzl died in Vienna in 1904, of pneumonia and a weak heart overworked by his
incessant efforts on behalf of Zionism. By then the movement had found its place
on the world political map. In 1949, Herzl's remains were brought to Israel and
reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
|
Herzl's books Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") and Altneuland ("Old New
Land"), his plays and articles have been published frequently and translated
into many languages. His name has been commemorated in the Herzl Forests at Ben
Shemen and Hulda, the world's first Hebrew gymnasium "Herzlia" which was
established in Tel Aviv, the town of Herzliya in the Sharon and neighborhoods
and streets in many Israeli towns and cities.
|
Herzl coined the phrase "If you will, it is no fairytale," which became the
motto of the Zionist movement. Although at the time no one could have imagined
it, Zionism led, only fifty years later, to the establishment of the independent
State of Israel.
|
