Early on, when he was still trying to fit in, there were clear signs that the Theodor Herzl that always was – was the Theodor Herzl he eventually became.
In Herzl’s household – like so many other bourgeois Jewish homes – the success in looking normal on the streets came at a high Jewish cost, even at home.
One hundred and eighteen years after his tragic death at the age of forty-four, and 125 years after he convened the first Zionist Congress in August, 1897, Theodor Herzl remains influential.
In 1934, Berl Katznelson, an avowedly secular Socialist Zionist living in Tel Aviv, criticized members of his youth movement for going off to camp on Tisha B’Av.
Today, Israel is robust — but the Zionist conversation has turned fragile.
“Belief” is not synonymous with “irrational.” Beliefs can be rational or irrational. If you believe your car speaks to you, that is irrational. If you believe your spouse cheated on you because various behaviors on his or her part led you to that belief, that belief may be quite rational.
Israel supporters living thousands of miles away may think they cannot help, but they can. Terrorism is a bloody mind game wherein psychological resilience helps quash the physical violence.
Viewing race or gender or any identity dimension too rigidly reflects a more worrisome trend of treating politics as a game of absolutes – be it from the Left or the Right.
As America becomes impasse-ville, many influential voices have imposed a false all-or-nothing historical choice on us.
At a time when too many people think that Liberalism and Zionism are at odds, at this moment when too many Reform rabbinical students spend more energy bashing Israel than celebrating it, one of the Jewish people’s great synthesizers has died at the age of 95.
