Theodor Herzl: The Jewish State Part 1

This is the first part of a paper on Theodor Herzl that I wrote at University in 2001

Theodor Herzl: The Jewish State (Part i)

Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest on May 2nd 1860 into a wealthy assimilated Jewish family. His parents did not teach him Jewish ways or customs; so he knew little about Jewish thought and Jewish writings. Herzl’s mother was educated in a secular institution; and his father had given up religious life, although Herzl’s grandfather was a religious Jew who knew some of the earlier pioneers of Zionism.

A native of Budapest whose prosperous family was German in its culture, with a grandfather who had known early proto-Zionist leaders, Herzl grew up in a conventionally liberal Jewish atmosphere with little Judaic knowledge. 1

Herzl’s mother encouraged him to study German literature, and Herzl became an avid reader. When he was just a young boy, he formed a small literary group with his classmates called ‘We’, in which they would study, and further their understanding of German culture. Even though he experienced anti-Semitism whilst growing up in Budapest, he never, until his conversion to the Zionist cause, ceased to be an ardent assimilationist.

“Even as experience consumed his hopes, his central concern still remained to save gentile society, in which case the Jewish problem would take care of itself.” 2

In 1878 after the death of his sister, the Herzl family moved to Vienna. In Vienna, Theodor Herzl studied law, and was a member of a fraternity until the day when the fraternity decided that it would no longer accept Jews as members. Those who were already members were permitted to remain; but Herzl decided that he would move on. He graduated in 1884 as Doctor of Laws. He found work in Salzburg; and faced again with the limited prospects of promotion in that city, he began to travel and write plays.

“I would have liked to remain in that beautiful city, but as a Jew I would never have been promoted to a judgeship. For that reason I said farewell both to Salzburg and to legal learning.” 3

In the interim, he got married and had three children; and in 1891, he was offered a post in Paris as the foreign correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse, a Vienna newspaper, although up until that moment he had no interest in politics. It is evident that these four years as a political journalist, equipped him with the knowledge, and instilled in him the compulsion to write his own thoughts on the solution to the Jewish question. Two months before he left Paris, in 1895, he wrote his monumental work, Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State. It was truly a prophetic work, and an objective solution to the Jewish problem, penetrating the Jewish Community from the outside, and stirring up emotions and hopes that had not been felt since Simon Bar Kochba led his military rebellion against the Roman Empire in 132-135 C.E.

It is interesting to note how his little prior involvement with the Jewish people, became to him a valuable asset in promoting political Zionism. He was not proposing a Jewish solution to the Jewish problem. He was not envisioning a Jewish state, but a state for the Jews.

'A nation has the right to a state’ was defined by Herzl not in terms of culture, language, folklore and history, but in terms of universal rights. 4

Herzl understood that the Jews could not live a liberated life in Europe, or anywhere in the world, because where the Jews go the Jews are persecuted.

The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations. We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution. 5

Herzl is interested in the Jews having the opportunity to conduct their own political affairs, in a land that is their own, in a land in which they may raise their children in freedom, without discrimination or persecution; where they may reach the highest heights of their heart’s desire, because their state offers them the unhindered opportunity to do so.

“The Jewish people are at present prevented by the Diaspora from conducting their political affairs themselves. Besides, they are in a condition of more or less severe disability in many parts of the world.” 6

Herzl’s disassociation from the Jewish people--which until that point were a religious group with no substantial independent political voice--and his involvement and understanding of gentile politics, gave him a platform from which to preach a political message to the Jews: it was a gentile solution for a Jewish problem.

“This pamphlet is intended to open a general discussion on the Jewish Question. Friends and foes will take part in it; but it will no longer, I hope, take the form of violent abuse of sentimental vindication, but of a debate, practical, large, earnest and political.” 7

Herzl is calling for change. He himself experienced a change; and he is calling on his people to change.

“In 1895, Theodor Herz underwent a dramatic conversion from Austo-German assimilationist to Zionist.” 8

Herzl had his own conception of Jewishness; and it seems that he thought very little of the current Jewish capacity for successful political action. He criticizes the Jews for crying:

“We depend for sustenance on the nations who are our hosts, and if we had no hosts to support us we would die of starvation.” 9

After speaking of the lack of resourcefulness of the Jews, he says:

“But I do not want to take up the cudgels for the Jews in this pamphlet.” 10

Herzl wishes to arouse the people to a new and progressive way of thinking: A way of thinking that will provide the impetus for action that will open up for them a door out of the ghetto, and into their own place.

The ghetto subsists still, though its walls are broken down. 11

Herzl had never concerned himself directly with the Jewish problem until his conversion to Political Zionism, because he truly believed that the enlightened gentile society, of which he was a part, would gradually fully accept the Jews. Full emancipation, to Jews in Austria, was granted in 1887; but emancipation did not mean acceptance and assimilation.

References and Bibliography in the final part of this paper.