{"id":6985,"date":"2017-01-04T14:54:19","date_gmt":"2017-01-04T09:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/jwt2015\/?p=6985"},"modified":"2017-01-04T14:54:19","modified_gmt":"2017-01-04T09:54:19","slug":"the-man-whose-dream-became-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/studykit\/currentaffairs\/daily-articles\/the-man-whose-dream-became-israel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man Whose Dream Became Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gil Troy<\/p>\n

History tries correcting the tricks memory plays on us\u2014while respecting memory\u2019s power. Thomas Jefferson is famous for writing the Declaration of Independence during the Revolution\u2014although he served as Virginia\u2019s governor during the war too. Paul Revere is best known for his Midnight Ride in 1775\u2014although the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow coined the phrase \u201cOne if by land, two if by sea\u201d \u2026 85 years later.<\/p>\n

Similarly, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, is mostly famous for launching his movement in reaction to the anti-Semitism of the Alfred Dreyfus trial. As with all great historical tales, Israel\u2019s foundation story conveys one essential truth\u2014reactions to European Jew hatred did inspire Zionism. But this too-simplistic story risks eclipsing other nuanced truths, making Zionism seem too defensive and a critique of French liberalism rather than a more affirmative nationalism that also feared Austro-Hungary\u2019s blood-and-soil anti-Semitic right.<\/p>\n

But first, Herzl\u2019s Zionist Aha Moment.\u00a0 It\u2019s December 1894 in Paris. Theodor Herzl, a 34-year-old assimilated Austrian-Hungarian Jew, is covering the Dreyfus Affair. This lawyer, playwright, and journalist, with piercing eyes and a beautiful black beard, embodies the Enlightened rationalism and liberalism that freed Europe from the Middle Ages and Jews from their ghettoes. Alfred Dreyfus, a French officer, stands trial for treason. On December 22, 1894, when the court convicts Dreyfus\u2014on trumped up charges, leading later to Emile Zola\u2019s famous J\u2019accuse\u2014the crowd, inflamed by nationalism, doesn\u2019t shout \u201cDown with Dreyfus.\u201d Instead, they yell\u2014in Enlightened Paris\u2014\u201cDown with the Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theodor Herzl has his Jewish awakening. Watching European nationalism cohere, appreciating the nation-state as the modern world\u2019s defining political unit, knowing that, as he writes, \u201cthe Jews are one people,\u201d Herzl realizes that until the Jews control their own country, Jew hatred will persist. The Jews must leave Europe and re-establish their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.<\/p>\n

With this evolution from the Wandering Jew to the Settled Israeli, Herzl theorized, anti-Semitism would disappear, Jewish pride would reappear. Jews could be normal again\u2014after centuries of national purgatory causing persecution. Herzl writes a pamphlet, Der<\/i> <\/i>Judenstat<\/i>, the Jewish State, in 1896; organizes the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897;\u00a0visits Palestine in 1898; and dies tragically in 1904. The man who insisted \u201cIf you will it, it is no dream,\u201d was prophetic. Herzl wrote in 1897, \u201cAt Basel, I founded the Jewish State. If I said this out loud today, I would be answered by universal laughter. If not in 5 years, certainly in 50, everyone will know it.\u201d Fifty-one years later, in 1948, Israel, the Jewish State, was established.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great story, mostly accurate, although not fully true. The idea of Jewish peoplehood and a homeland was thousands of years old. And pressure for a modern Jewish State had been building for decades before Herzl\u2019s epiphany.<\/p>\n

Herzl himself is more complicated. He endured anti-Semitism in Vienna and worried for years about \u201cthe Jewish Problem\u201d\u2014can that perennially persecuted people ever fit into Europe? He also wasn\u2019t some illiterate, anti-anti-Semitic Jewish pagan fleeing anti-Semites to build a garrison state of Jews. He loved Judaism, calling Zionism \u201ca return to Jewishness, even before it is a return to the Jewish land\u201d\u2014although it took him awhile to realize Palestine was the only option for his Jewish state. He understood that the Jews\u2019 unique heritage mixing religion and peoplehood could yield a State filled with Jewish values without being a theocracy because \u201cJewish\u201d is a national concept too. He wanted\u2014as he titled his 1902 utopian novel\u2014an Altneuland<\/i>, an Old-New Land, being what Barack Obama would call someone \u201cwho had the foresight to see the future of the Jewish people had to be reconnected to their past.\u201d And, as a good liberal democrat, Herzl captured the universal possibilities pride in your particular heritage can bring.\u00a0\u201cWe shall live at last as free people on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die,\u201d he concluded in Der Judenstat. <\/i>\u201cThe world will be liberated by our freedom, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Historically, Herzl wasn\u2019t just reacting to liberal France\u2019s illiberalism but to what we might today be tempted to call the \u201calt-Right\u201d that emerged as the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed. In Herzl\u2019s home city of Vienna, anti-Semitic, radically populist candidates emerged, with Karl Lueger of the Christian Social Party denouncing \u201ccorrupt liberalism\u201d and Jewish power. These anti-Semites were \u201cdeterministic\u201d racists, the political scientist Shlomo Avineri explains, fearing Jewish blood not attitudes. And they feared Jews\u2019 perceived \u201csuccess\u201d not \u201cweakness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s current status leads friends to overlook one of Herzl\u2019s failures and foes to exaggerate another one. Given how central the Jewish national project is to Jews today, and given how the Holocaust justified Herzl\u2019s fears, it\u2019s easy to minimize just how marginal, even ridiculous, Herzl seemed to be. There he was, visiting European leaders, negotiating with the Ottoman Sultan, purporting to represent European Jews, most of whom wanted to stay home\u2014or move to rich and free America not godforsaken Palestine.<\/p>\n

And, given how the last century has played out, and given how wrong Herzl was about a Jewish state eliminating Jew hatred, many distort his views regarding the Arabs of Palestine. Palestinian critics caricature Herzl as a Cecil Rhodes-like Western imperialist, solving the Jewish problem on the Arabs\u2019 backs. Israeli fans caricature him as a male, Jewish, Mother Teresa, sure that a Jewish state will redeem the Arabs too. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the nuanced middle. Herzl did imagine Jews and Arabs living happily ever after in \u201cour common Fatherland.\u201d But Herzl also underestimated how deep Arab ties were to the land\u2014and their resistance to the Jews\u2019 return.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, we must abandon the Hollywood black or white version of Theodor Herzl, appreciating this complex character tackling a confounding problem in complicated times. He shared liberals\u2019 idealistic faith in nationalism\u2014even as he saw its ugly reactionary side. He echoed some Europeans\u2019 condescending attitudes toward others. And he wasn\u2019t some superhero saving the Jews, the Arabs, or the world.<\/p>\n

However, like all great leaders, Theodor Hezl had an appealing vision suited to a particular moment that by (eventually) mobilizing millions shaped history. And like all great democratic leaders, he wasn\u2019t just defending his people\u2014or targeting enemies. In his moving Chanukkah story \u201cThe Menorah,\u201d about a \u201cman who deep in his soul felt the need to be a Jew,\u201d Herzl imagined a once-assimilated Jew lighting the traditional Jewish candelabra. Watching the lights flicker, he and his family conclude, \u201cThe darkness must retreat.\u201d Herzl adds: \u201cThe young and the poor are the first to see the light; then the others join in, all those who love justice, truth, liberty, progress, humanity and beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herzl\u2019s vision, like Jefferson\u2019s and Revere\u2019s, was neither perfect nor sin-free. But its liberal nationalist sensibility gave the resulting movement\u2014and state\u2014that extraordinary democratic capacity to evolve ideologically, demonstrating not just grit and resilience but idealism and goodness, seeking \u201clove, justice, truth, liberty, progress, humanity, beauty\u201d\u2014and may we add, peace.<\/p>\n

FOR FURTHER READING<\/p>\n

Shlomo Avineri, Herzl: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State<\/i> <\/i>(2008, 2013): based on Herzl\u2019s diaries, puts Herzl\u2019s Zionist \u201cAha\u201d moment in broader historical context.<\/p>\n

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Theodor Herzl, The Jewish State<\/i> <\/i>(1896): Herzl\u2019s vision for a Jewish State.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Theodor Herzl, <\/i>Altneuland<\/i> <\/i>(1902): Herzl\u2019s utopian novel imagining an Old New country flourishing for all in Palestine.<\/p>\n

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George Yitzhak Weisz, Theodor Herzl: A New Reading<\/i> (2013): argues that Herzl\u2019s Jewish roots were deeper and more resonant than most believe.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gil Troy History tries correcting the tricks memory plays on us\u2014while respecting memory\u2019s power. Thomas Jefferson is famous for writing the Declaration of Independence during the Revolution\u2014although he served as Virginia\u2019s governor during the war too. Paul Revere is best known for his Midnight Ride in 1775\u2014although the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow coined the phrase …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5285],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jworldtimes.com\/old-site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}