What’s Herzl Got to Do With It?

Every Saturday night in Tel Aviv, as most of the Jewish world is well aware of by now, protestors take to the streets to make their voices heard against aspects of Israeli society they find intolerable, including the influence of religion in the public sector, proposed legislation by the governing coalition to eradicate the independence of the Supreme Court, and the legalization of rogue Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Several weeks ago, I filmed a rambunctious group of young demonstrators from Hashomer Hatzair, one of the original Labor Zionist youth groups, positioned with their drums, trumpets and flags in front of the World Zionist Organization on Rehov Kaplan, which as all Tel Avivi know, is adorned with a mural of the visionary of the state, Theodor Herzl. The next week, the Meretz Party, which stands for social democracy and a two-state solution in Israel, posted a photo of a protest sign that showed Herzl in tears. And yet a week later, when students from Tel Aviv University walked out of their classrooms to hold an anti-judicial reform rally, counter-protestors arrived from the organization Im Tirtzu to hammer home their support for the Prime Minister and the government’s ideas. Im Tirtzu, of course, is a Hebrew translation of the beginning of Herzl’s most famous quote: “If you will it, it is no dream.”

Whether one is observing the right or the left in Israel, references to Herzl are ubiquitous. Both political camps in Israel fashion the founder of the country as their spiritual leader, claiming ideological ownership of his likeness to advance their own agenda. The left prefers to characterize Herzl as a progressive: a secular, social liberal who dreamed of a Jewish state where women and religious minorities received total civic equality, and where democratic institutions that were inchoately idolized in 19th-century Vienna run the show. The right prefers to see him as a hyper-nationalist, as a fighter for the Jewish people at any cost, a man who would be bullish today on maintaining the Jewish character of the state and fighting off enemies with whatever weapons we have in our arsenal. Unfortunately for both partisans, their interpretations cannot simultaneously be accurate.

If anyone can bring clarity to this Herzlian tug-of-war, it is professor, author and public intellectual Gil Troy. Troy recently launched the first three volumes of “The Library of the Jewish People,” a new initiative that seeks to educate our community by re-releasing historical published works. The Library’s inaugural release is a three-part compilation of Herzl’s writings, including his books, diaries and plays—featuring an introduction by Troy and a series of essays introducing each of the eleven years Herzl was a Zionist. Reading Herzl in his own words provides clarity not only for Israel’s current social turmoil, but also in terms of how the man who started it all might interpret it. The series is enlightening, provocative and most assuredly necessary.

Following here is my conversation with Professor Troy on Herzl’s vision for the creation of the state and how such a miraculous country should be managed for future generations.

BF: First, I wanted to start with a question on why Herzl had an affinity toward young people. If you read his work, he appears to be obsessed with us. He constantly brings it back to us, whether in his short story “The Menorah” where he writes that “the young and poor are the first to see the light,” or when he scribbles in his diaries about the need for a “proletariat of young intellectuals” who must lead the way to building a Jewish state. He seems to even create a wedge between young Jews and old Jews in a sort-of 1960s way, constantly conveying his disappointment with older generations and the Jewish establishment. And then he conveys a sense of drama regarding political change that I believe young people are more likely to be receptive to. Why did he have this particular style, and why do you think it was ultimately successful?

GT: First, we must understand Herzl’s background as a lawyer and as a playwright. They are crucial to his identity. His story as to how he arrived at Zionism, the myth of the assimilated Jew who was awakened during the infamous Dreyfus trial and then goes on to establish a wild new idea, is a genius three-act play, the greatest play he ever wrote. He created that legend very consciously. There were things before the Dreyfus trial that certainly perked Herzl’s interest in the Jewish question such as the moment when his fraternity brothers denounced Jews while mourning Richard Wagner, the victory of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna’s mayoral elections, and others. But the Dreyfus trial as a turning point is more dramatic because Dreyfus was the most assimilated Jew Europe had to offer. Therefore, the story of “we tried to be like them, they still hate us, let’s get out,” is created: Genesis, synthesis, Zionism.

BF: So, what does this all have to do with why Herzl was so focused on the youth?

GT: Herzl grew profoundly frustrated with how the Jewish establishment was not able to recognize this dynamic. And that spirit was shown elsewhere. Look how young the kids were who made up the First Aliyah and who founded the first kibbutzim! They were all rebels against an older world and against their parents. Revolutions need young people, and Zionism was certainly revolutionary. Revolutions, as it happens, also need drama.

BF: Could you provide insight on what this has to do with Israel today? How fighting for ideas on how Jewish civilization should operate informs our current climate?

GT: In my book, “The Zionist Ideas,” there is a lovely piece by Rachel Sharansky, Natan and Avital Sharansky’s daughter, in which she asks: how are we supposed to fill the shoes of the earlier Zionists? They fought for the establishment and protection of the state, and we are fighting for cottage cheese [referring to the 2011 protests in Israel over the price of everyday goods, like cottage cheese]. But no, there are still so many things to fight for in Israel. And fighting for the society you want to see is in the Zionist spirit and Herzl’s spirit. The spirit still exists in young people like you who are coming to Israel who have the power to really make a difference.

The spirit still exists in young people like you who are coming to Israel who have the power to really make a difference.

 BF: Speaking of public protests, one may say that today’s Israel is more polarized than ever. And yet, we often forget that the founding spirit of Zionism is indeed one full of infighting and ideological warfare between even the closest of allies. Different ideas as to what Zionism would look like in the coveted Jewish state clashed so often (Herzl vs. Ahad Ha’am, Ben-Gurion vs. Begin, Jabotinsky vs. Gordon) that they nearly sank the entire project in its early days. But this was ultimately proven to be a good thing. The tug of war between ideas gave way to progress. Which is why I cannot help but feel annoyed when people within Israel and outside of Israel criticize Jews with different viewpoints on how their society should be run with accusations of sinat chinam, or baseless hatred, when in fact, it is disagreement that has seemed to always carry us along to success.

GT: Well, let’s bring back the infamous quote from the late representative John Lewis, who spoke of “good trouble.” There is a difference between good trouble and bad trouble. Bad trouble for example is the new generation of some, not all, liberal rabbis in the States taking more and more negative stances against Israel and the spread of BDS among some Jews in the Diaspora. But then there is good trouble, which operates in service of Jewish society and not in opposition to it. This was a Jewish and a Talmudic thing long before it was a Zionist thing. We are the people of the book and the people of the debate; those go hand in hand. One thing I love so much about Herzl is that his critiques of other Jews sound like they could have been written yesterday: of the wealthy Jews throwing their money around, of the assimilated Jews who are so desperate to be accepted, of the ultra-Orthodox whose views are so narrow. But that’s Zionism, the understanding that this was all part of your world, and these were the people that were regardless, one people at the end of the day. Herzl says he goes into this fight looking to find his pride, and instead he finds his soul, and he brings more light into his work and his home every day. That is an amazing metaphor for what we can’t forget even as we fight it out politically.

BF: So how do we encourage more “good trouble” among young Jews, the people to whom Herzl seemed to be speaking most often?

GT: Israel education abroad is great, and it’s of course needed. But if you really want young Jews to feel connected and engaged, they need to come here. Because when they do, they see that we are in a multicultural, dynamic, pluralistic, and ever-changing society that constantly is wrestling over ideas. Seeing it with their own eyes significantly challenges what they see on social media and allows them to see what Zionism is truly about.

Seeing it with their own eyes significantly challenges what they see on social media and allows them to see what Zionism is truly about.

 BF: So, getting even more political here. I often have arguments with my more religious friends about Herzl and his vision for the country. Because when I press for less Halakha in the public square and equal treatment on non-Jewish minorities, I like to reference Herzl and the utopia he constructed in “Altneuland,” for example. Yet they always shoot back and say that God works in mysterious ways and indeed acts through history, and that the secular liberal Zionists such as Herzl were chosen to bring Israel into existence simply because they were, at the time, the Jews most capable of doing so. They were not living in shtetls in Eastern Europe, but instead were educated in the west and were assimilated enough to have powerful connections. Even the atheist kibbutzniks were still characters in God’s will, the donkey leading the Messiah, if you will.

GT: I try to stay away from arguments over who did more to bring Israel into existence. And the reason is because after Herzl’s death, Rav Kook, at the time the head rabbi of Jaffa, found himself with a lot of followers who were deeply mourning Herzl’s passing—despite Herzl’s public non-observance. Rav Kook realized he needed to write a eulogy for Herzl, but how do you write such a eulogy for someone deeply secular? So, he decided to in his eulogy characterize Herzl as “Mashiach Ben Yosef,” or Messiah son of Joseph, Joseph being the biblical figure who saved the Jewish people using secular methods (in this case, the Egyptian system of power). The Messiah son of Judah is one who saves the Jewish people using religious means, and the Messiah son of David (the big one) is one who brings the two together. The lesson we take away from this is: why care about which side did more? What is important is that Rav Kook gave his sermon. Rav Kook danced with secular Jews in the kibbutzim, and they switched clothes with each other—them in his caftan and him in their worker’s attire. He said: “Look, you see, we are one!”

BF: I want to believe we are one, I truly do. But there was recently an article in “The State of Tel Aviv” by Atilla Somfalvi that rang all the alarm bells on the possible disintegration of trust between the Israeli Defense Forces and the government, and even between different units of the IDF, which has always operated under the principle that its soldiers leave their politics at the door. If it’s true that our most sacred institutions are being undermined by political arguments in a fashion we have never seen before, does the beautiful sentiment of Rav Kook still stand up to scrutiny?

GT: A lot of that might be media fodder. My kids were and still are in the IDF, and they all had an intrinsic understanding that you simply leave your politics at the door. When you’re in a unit, you are depending on one another all the time, sometimes for your life. Anyone in the IDF knows that and no bickering can get them to not believe it.

BF: Well, you know, I am considering joining the army this year. And part of the reason why I am thinking it over is because I have dedicated the last two or three years to commenting endlessly on the divisions within the Jewish world and for somebody secular, the IDF promises a sort of Jewish community feeling that is really unified that we cannot really get anywhere else. You are telling me I shouldn’t let the latest government dictate whether I do it. It’s noted. But let me tell you, my parents were at first not too happy about the possibility. However, they came around in time.

GT: And there is something Herzlian about that isn’t there? About your parents coming around. There are people living normal lives and then boom, something happens to them that allows them to see the benefit of belonging to their tribe. Whether it was Herzl understanding the nature of antisemitism or whether it was your parents realizing that defending the Jewish people is something intrinsic to one’s soul, not simply just a career choice.

BF: Well, there have been many Herzlian moments in my life. I was a theater kid who was interested in playwriting throughout my childhood, then in college I drifted toward political activism, only to be shocked to discover that my peers actually harbored a lot of antisemitism and were not capable of living up to the ideas they espoused. That led me straight into the heart of Zionist activism and eventually into making Aliyah. I hope I don’t sound too narcissistic in saying I have noticed some similarities. But to me, thinking about this gives me hope, because I think about all the other Jewish children in the Diaspora who may be going through similar situations and who find Zionism, and Herzl in particular, as a source of inspiration and pride.

GT: That’s what Herzl is at the end of the day, hope. Herzl, like Moses, knew deep down that he would never see the Promised Land, but he was willing to put everything on the line to make sure future generations could get there. He did everything in his power to make sure we kept moving forward, and that even after the state was established, we would keep moving forward from there.

As we finished our conversation, I didn’t yet have an answer as to which side of the aisle is more correct in their use of Herzl as the emblem for their political agenda. Rather than providing a simple yes or no answer, my discussion with Professor Troy instead meandered through more philosophical and existential questions about Israel’s reality and future, which muddies the water of any black-and-white view of politics. But one theme that remained constant was that of conflict between Jews themselves, well before Israel was created, and which remains alive and well today. In the spirit of this conflict is undeniable passion and drive to progress Jewish society, regardless of one’s interpretation of this society and how differing interpretations may clash. Perhaps I was convinced that it is innately Herzlian to push for a Jewish civilization that is more congruent with one’s own values, whether they are religious or secular, right or left.

Yet there is no denying that the youth in Israel wield the most legitimacy in invoking Herzl. However sharply young and passionate Jewish young people may disagree with each other, Herzl’s writings inform us that we embody the Zionist vision almost exclusively, for it is the young people who are not only crazy enough to write down innovative ideas, but also crazy enough to will them into existence.

Therefore, I’d like to end this first part in a series of writings on Herzl and the men and women in Israel who are working to keep his legacy alive by encouraging young people to move to Israel, especially American young people, who in numbers could bend the future of the State of Israel any way they please. Nothing does more to honor the visionary of the state than directly taking part in his dream.

Blake Flayton is the New Media Director and columnist for the Jewish Journal.