Herzl Imagines Der Jundenstaat — the Jewish State

Editor’s note: Excerpted from the new three-volume set, “Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings,” edited by Gil Troy, the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People, to be published this August marking the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress. This is sixth in a series. 

By 1895, Theodor Herzl was increasingly desperate to solve the Jewish Problem. Rebuffed by the super-philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch, Herzl turned to Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, writing an even longer 65-page pitch. Rothschild and his wife, Adelheid von Rothschild, were bankrolling Jewish settlers in Rishon LeZion and Zichron Ya’akov. Herzl feared that the “Philanthropic Zionism” subsidizing these random settlements in Ottoman-controlled Palestine kept the Jews vulnerable – to Turkish whims and to the rich Jews’ moods, turning potential pioneers into “shnorrers,” beggars, living on the Jewish dole. Herzl’s “Political Zionism” sought a legal charter creating an independent protectorate or autonomous land, as a launching pad to Jewish autonomy and dignity. As he explained it years later: “First it has to belong to us, and then we will go there.”

These letters exploring that difference, and the diary Herzl started keeping in June, Die Judensache — The Jewish Question — formed the basis for his life-changing and epoch-making manifesto, “Der Judenstaat: Versuch einer modernen Lösung der Judenfrage – The Jewish State: An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question.”

“I have the solution to the Jewish question,” Herzl confessed while writing. “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.” After much reworking and bumps in finding a publisher, his Jewish State appeared in February 1896.

On February 14, 1896, the first 500 copies arrived in Herzl’s home. “When I had the bundle carted to my room, I was terribly shaken,” he recalled. “This package of pamphlets constitutes the decision in tangible form. My life may now take a new turn.” 

“The idea which I develop in this pamphlet is an age-old one,” Herzl wrote, “the establishment of a Jewish State … What matters is the driving force. What is that force? The distress of the Jews … Everywhere we have sincerely endeavored to merge with the national communities surrounding us and to preserve only the faith of our fathers. We are not permitted to do so. In vain are we loyal patriots, in some places even extravagantly so; in vain do we make the same sacrifices of life and property as our fellow citizens; in vain do we strive to enhance the fame of our native countries in the arts and sciences, or their wealth through trade and commerce. In our native lands where, after all, we too have lived for centuries, we are decried as alien ….”

Herzl defined the Jews simply, powerfully: “We are a people, one people.” The passages that most resonate decades later are his explanations of what keeps the Jews together. “I do not think a nation must speak only one language or show uniform racial characteristics. This quite moderate definition of nationhood is sufficient. We are a historical group of people who clearly belong together and are held together by a common foe. This is what we are, whether we deny it or not, whether we know it or not, and whether we desire it or not.”

And the Jews had one homeland, that sustained them through exile: “All through the night of their history the Jews have not ceased to dream this royal dream: ‘Next year in Jerusalem!’ is our age-old watchword. Now it is a matter of showing that the dream can be transformed into an idea that is as clear as day.”

Herzl was defining the Zionist Jew-Jitsu, whereby the negative gets turned into the positive. True, “as has always happened in history, our enemies make us one whether we wish it or not. Distress binds us together.” But “then we suddenly discover our strength. Yes, we are strong enough to form a state, and a model state at that. We have all the necessary human and material resources.” Herzl had a simple request: “Let them give us sovereignty over a portion of the globe that is large enough for our just national needs, and we will take care of everything else.” 

There was no other alternative and nowhere else to go: “Palestine is our unforgettable historic homeland. The very name would be a powerfully moving rallying cry for our people … 

“There it is, fellow Jews! Neither fable nor fraud! … That is why I believe that a wonderful breed of Jews will spring up from the earth. The Maccabees will rise again.”

Refusing to be a defensive Jew, a Garrison Zionist, a traumatized humanist, Herzl imagined the great power of liberal nationalism, unleashed.

Refusing to be a defensive Jew, a Garrison Zionist, a traumatized humanist, Herzl imagined the great power of liberal nationalism, unleashed: “The Jews who want a state of their own will have one. We are to live at last as free men on our own soil and die peacefully in our own homeland. The world will be freed by our freedom, enriched by our riches, and made greater by our greatness. And whatever we attempt there only for our own welfare will spread and redound mightily and blessedly to the good of all mankind.”

Year later, reeling from the Kishinev pogroms of 1903, Herzl hesitated before imposing a Jewish guilt trip on the world. “Actually, we Zionists use these arguments only with inner reluctance,” he confessed. “It is distasteful to us to make political capital out of disasters and to derive propaganda benefits from the anguish of the unfortunate.” 

As word of “Der Judenstaat” spread, Herzl started feeling vindicated. Some acquaintances needled him, asking: “Is that pamphlet people are talking about by you? Is it a joke or something meant to be serious?” Herzl answered: “Deadly serious!” As “foul-mouthed … hyenas” mocked the “Maccabees of Flight,” Herzl resented that his words were “distorted by wild discussion,” asking friends to read the treatise “with your own unprejudiced eyes.” 

The hyenas failed. Within nine days of opening his package, Herzl could proclaim: “My pamphlet is the talk of the town. Some people smile or laugh at me, but in general, the earnest tone of conviction about my treatise appears to have made an impression.” Yet the Jew-hatred continued growing – with Jew-haters storming even “the ‘strongholds’ of liberalism: the Innere Stadt and the Leopoldstadt,” during the late-February Vienna City Council elections.

Professor Gil Troy is the author of The Zionist Ideas and the editor of the three-volume set, “Theodor Herzl: Zionist Writings,” the inaugural publication of The Library of the Jewish People, to be published this August marking the 125th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress.