The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl (red seas under red skies txt) 📕

"The exodus to the Promised Land presents itself as a tremendous enterprise in transportation, unparalleled in the modern world. What transportation? It is a complex of all human enterprises which we shall fit Into each other like cog-wheels. And in the very first stages of the enterprise we shall find employment for the ambitious younger masses of our people: all the engineers, architects, technologists, chemists, doctors, and lawyers, those who have emerged in the last thirty years from the ghetto and who have been moved by the faith that they can win their bread and a little honor outside the framework of our Jewish business futilities. Today they must be filled with despair, they constitute the foundation of a frightful over-educated proletariat. But it is to these that all my love belongs, and I am just as set on increasing their number as you are set on diminishing it. It is in them that I perceive the latent power of the Jewish people. In brief, my kind."

In this letter of June 3, 1895, Herzl for the first time imparted his new Jewish policy to a stranger. The writing down of his views, as well as his conversation on the subject, had had a stronger effect on himself than on Hirsch. He had obtained a clear vision of the new and revolutionary character of his proposals. On the same day or shortly thereafter he began a diary under the title of The Jewish Question.

"For some time now, I have been engaged upon a work of indescribable greatness. I do not know yet whether I shall carry it through. It has assumed the aspect of some mighty dream. But days and weeks have passed since it has filled me utterly, it has overflown into my unconscious self, it accompanies me wherever I go, it broods above all my commonplace conversation, it peeps over my shoulder at the comical little journalistic work which I must carry out. It disturbs and intoxicates me."

Then suddenly the storm breaks upon him. The clouds open, the thunder rolls and the lightning flashes about him. A thousand impressions beat upon him simultaneously, a gigantic vision. He cannot think, he cannot act, he can only write; breathless, unreflecting, unable to control himself, unable to exercise the critical faculty lest he dam the eruption, he dashes down his thoughts on scraps of paper—"Walking, standing, lying down, in the street, at table, in the night," as if under unceasing command.

And then doubts rise up from the depths. He dines with well-to-do, educated, oppressed people who confront the question of anti-Semitism in a state of complete helplessness: "They do not suspect it, but they are ghetto-natures, quiet, decent, timid. That is what most of us are. Will they understand the call to freedom and to manhood? When I left them my spirits were very low. Again, my plan appeared to me to be crazy." Then at once he comes to "Today I am again as firm as steel." He notes the next morning. "The flabbiness of the people I met yesterday gives me all the more grounds for action."

Clearer and clearer becomes the picture which he has of himself and of his task in the history of his people. "I picked up once again the torn thread of the tradition of our people. I lead it into the Promised Land."

"The Promised Land, where we can have hooked noses, black or red beards, and bow legs, without being despised for it; where we can live at last as free men on our own soil, and where we can die peacefully in our own fatherland. There we can expect the award of honor for great deeds, so that the offensive cry of 'Jew!' may become an honorable appellation, like German, Englishman, Frenchman—in brief, like all civilized peoples; so that we may be able to form our state to educate our people for the tasks which at present still lie beyond our vision. For surely God would not have kept us alive so long if there were not assigned to us a specific role in the history of mankind." He adds: "The Jewish state is a world need." He draws the logical consequence for himself: "I believe that for me life has ended and world history begun."

He let the first storm pass over him, yielding to its imperious will, making no effort to stem its fury lest he interrupt the inspiration. When it had had its way with him, he took hold of himself again, and gathered up his energies for the effort to reconstruct everything logically and in ordered fashion. He was afraid that death might come upon him before he had succeeded in reducing to transferable form his historic vision. Thus, in the course of five days, he added to his diary a sixty-five page pamphlet—in effect the outline of Der Judenstaat—which he called: Address to the Rothschilds.

In the address he writes, "I have the solution to the Jewish question. I know it sounds mad; and at the beginning I shall be called mad more than once—until the truth of what I am saying is recognized in all its shattering force."

He wrote to Bismarck asking for an interview in order to submit his plan for a solution to the Jewish problem but he received no reply.

He wrote to Rabbi Gudemann, Chief Rabbi of Vienna, the occasion being the anti-Jewish excesses which had occurred in Vienna. "This plan ... is a reserve against more evil days."

Herzl, in his first visit to England, met and talked with Israel Zangwill, the novelist, whom he impressed without quite winning him over. But Zangwill made it possible for him to meet more than a few prominent, influential Jews of whom he made immediate converts. None of them wanted to know anything about the Argentine, and on this point the practical men were united with the dreamers: Palestine alone came into the picture for a national concentration of the Jews.

After his experiences in England, Herzl resolved to present his plan to the public at large. The Address to the Rothschilds which was the first complete writing of his plan, forged in the heat of inspiration was thoroughly reworked and emerged as his great book Der Judenstaat. Its title was: The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Problem. Der Judenstaat may properly be called Herzl's life work; his philosophy of the world, his views on the state, on the Jewish people, on science and technology, as we have seen them developing to this, his thirty-fifth year are concentrated in the book.

The "Jewish State" was published in an edition of three thousand. It was read by small circles in various European capitals. It was sent to leading personalities in the press and political circles. It was soon translated into several languages. Herzl received many letters from authors and statesmen in which the work was praised. But the general German press, especially the Jewish-controlled press, took a negative attitude. A number of journalists alluded to the adventurer who would like to become Prime Minister or King of the Jews. No mention of the "Jewish State" appeared in the Neue Freie Presse, then or ever. The Algemeine Zeitung of Vienna said that Zionism was a madness born of despair, The Algemeine Zeitung of Munich described it as a fantastic dream of a feuilletonist whose mind had been unhinged by Jewish enthusiasm.

It was upon the Jewish masses that Herzl made a tremendous impression. He dawned upon Jews of Eastern Europe as a mystic figure rising out of the past. Little was known of his pamphlet, for it was kept out of the country by censorship in Russia. Only its title got their attention and the stories told of Herzl—the Western Jew returning to his people—gripped their hearts and stirred their imagination. He was greeted by one of the Galician Zionist societies as the leader who, like Moses, had returned from Midian to liberate the Jews. Max Nordau, that devastating critic of art and literature, was swept off his feet and described the pamphlet as a revelation, Richard Beer Hoffman, the poet, wrote to Herzl saying "At last there comes again a man, who does not carry his Judaism with resignation as if it were a burden or a misfortune, but is proud to be the legal heir of an immemorial culture."

It became clear to Herzl that he would have to take an active part in the task he had set forth in "The Jewish State." He no longer felt that he stood alone. He was not inclined to appear on a public platform. He had the shyness of the man who had always written what he had to say. He also felt that it would do more harm than good if his ideas were to be obscured by his personal presence. Through correspondence he set in motion Zionist activities—in London, in Paris, in Berlin, in the United States. The amount of letter-writing he developed was enormous.

He decided that there were three tasks to be undertaken at once. The first was the organization of the Society of Jews. The second was to continue diplomatic work in Constantinople and among interested Powers. The third was the creation of a press to influence public opinion and to prepare the Jewish masses for the great migration.

Through the Rev. Hechler, a chaplain of the British Embassy in Vienna, who believed in the Jewish return to the Holy Land, Herzl was introduced to the Grand Duke of Baden, a Christian of great piety and influence in political circles.

Herzl intended to use the influence of the Germans to affect the Sultan and make him more sympathetic to Zionist proposals. Herzl told the Grand Duke that he would like to have Zionism included within the cultural sphere of German interests. The Grand Duke said that the Kaiser seemed inclined to take Jewish migration under German protection. The great powers were interested in maintaining certain extra territorial rights within the Turkish Empire. If they had nationals in any part of the Empire, they claimed the right to protect them over and above Turkish law. It was, therefore, not the Kaiser's interest in the Jews, but in extending German jurisdiction within the Turkish Empire that persuaded him to suggest the adoption of Jews in Palestine for that purpose. Germany had a special relationship to Turkey. Most of the western powers were openly discussing the impending partition of the Turkish Empire, but Germany was opposed to it.

Herzl was told that the Kaiser was prepared to see him at the head of a delegation when he visited Palestine, but Herzl was anxious to see the Kaiser without delay. He suggested an audience before the trip to Palestine in order that the Kaiser might be in a position to discuss the Jewish question with the Sultan. The Grand Duke advised Herzl to see Count Philip Zu Eulenberg, the German Ambassador at Vienna. Herzl was given an opportunity to see Count Eulenberg in Vienna. Herzl told him that he wanted His Imperial Majesty to persuade the Sultan to open negotiations with the Jews.

The Count passed Herzl over to the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Von Buelow, who happened to be in Vienna at the same time. Van Buelow knew a great deal about the Zionist movement. He said that the difficulty lay in persuading the Sultan to deal with the Jews. He felt certain that the Sultan could be impressed if he was properly advised by the Kaiser. A week later Herzl was informed