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June 11, 2010
A zionist visionary turns 150
Theodor Herzl was committed to securing a Jewish homeland.
ANNEY KEIL-SORONOW
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism. His tireless efforts to find a solution to the “Jewish Question” of persecutions and pogroms, culminated eventually with the re-birth of the state of Israel in 1948. Unfortunately, with his untimely death from heart failure on July 3, 1904, at the age of 44, he did not live to see his dream realized.
Herzl was born in Hungary on May 6, 1860, to a secular, assimilated, German- speaking Jewish family from Austria. Instead of a bar mitzvah, Herzl’s 13th birthday was celebrated as a “confirmation.” He grew up as an emancipated would-be German boy with contempt for Judaism and saw all religions as uncivilized.
In 1878, the family moved to Vienna, were the young man studied law and, after a short legal career, started working in journalism as a correspondent in Paris. There, he followed the Captain Alfred Dreyfus affair, an antisemitic incident in which a French Jewish army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany. Following the Dreyfus trial, Herzl witnessed mass rallies in Paris where mobs chanted “Death to the Jews!” He was deeply influenced by these events and came to reject his early ideas regarding Jewish emancipation and assimilation as a solution to antisemitism. He came to believe that antisemitism could not be defeated or cured, only avoided, and that the only way to avoid it was for the Jews to establish a Jewish state. He wrote his ideas in his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State).
In 1896, to promote political Zionism on the international stage, he visited Bulgaria, London and Constantinople, where he met with Sultan Abdulhamid II and introduced his proposal for a Jewish state in Palestine. However, the Sultan refused to cede Palestine to the Zionists. He offered immigration to other parts of the Ottoman Empire instead, in exchange for money. Starting in 1898, Herzl began a series of diplomatic initiatives intended to build support for a Jewish country. He was received on several occasions by the German emperor, Wilhelm II, including once in Jerusalem but the kaiser refused to back a Jewish national homeland. He attempted to obtain support for the Jewish homeland from Pope Pius X but was rejected on the grounds that, as long as the Jews denied the divinity of Jesus, the Church certainly could not make a declaration in their favor.
Herzl proposed to collect funds from Jews around the world by way of a company that would work toward buying land and settling Jews in Palestine, thereby securing a state. Eventually this idea was transformed into the Zionist Organization, the Jewish National Fund and other groups. For the most part, Herzl’s ideas were rejected and he was turned down both by the Jewish magnates, Baron Hirsch and Baron Rothschild. Herzl then appealed to the people and, in 1897, he organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, and was elected president, a position he held until his death in 1904.
In 1903, he received an offer from the British government to establish a Jewish settlement in British East Africa. Known as the Uganda Project, the venture was declined by the 1905 Zionist Congress, which firmly committed itself to a Jewish homeland in the historic land of Israel.
Based on Herzl’s foresight and organizing efforts, eventually most of world Jewry, particularly after a long series of massive pogroms starting in Europe in 1920 and culminating in the Holocaust, came to support Herzl’s vision of a strong and independent state for Jews as the only guarantee for their safety in the world. In this regard, history has proven and continues to prove that Herzl was a true prophet.
In his will, Herzl wrote: “I wish to be buried beside my father and to lie there till the Jewish people shall take my remains to Palestine.” In 1949, his remains were moved from Vienna and reburied on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
To celebrate this occasion, there is a Herzl exhibit at Congregation Beth Israel June 17-22 and Richmond’s Beth Tikvah Congregation is hosting a party for Herzl’s 150th birthday, Sunday, June 13, 2-4 p.m. Attendees are requested to bring a non-perishable item for the Jewish Food Bank. For more information, call 604-271-6262.
Anney Keil-Soronow is an Israeli who, together with her husband, Morris Soronow, lives half a year in Kfar Saba, Israel, and half a year in Vancouver, B.C.
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