Herzl’s Premature Death: “I Always Feel the Future Peering over My Shoulder”

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, now available at www.theljp.org. This is 11th  in a series.

The Jewish world was devastated by Theodor Herzl’s death in 1904 at the age of 44 – yet surprisingly confident that his legacy would persist.

The playwright Israel Zangwill, who was so committed to the Kenya plan he would bolt from the Zionist movement with his Jewish Territorial Organization, was one of the many devastated optimists. Zangwill reassured mourners in London that “though there will never arise one like unto him, though there is no one with his fiery energy, his magnificent dash, his inspired impatience, yet our cause, as he said at the first Basel Congress, our cause is too great to rest upon an individual. …  Our Congress supplies a Jewish parliament,” Zangwill insisted, “and our Jewish parliament will one day supply a Jewish State.” A shrewd reader of the political tea leaves, Zangwill realized that “Zionism is not buried in the grave of Herzl. Far more likely anti-Zionism will be buried there.” 

Indeed, Herzl’s opponents were quick to eulogize him too. Menachem Ussishkin, still smarting from their clash, said, “Herzl brought the Jews unity and courage. … Those who came before him carried the ideal in their hearts but only whispered about it in the synagogues…. Herzl brought us courage and taught us to place our demands before the whole Jewish world.” And while Ahad Ha’am mourned Herzl’s opponents’ “crocodile tears,” he brilliantly summed up his rival’s pragmatic achievements – and inspirational legacy: “Herzl gave us the Congress, the Organization, the Bank, the National Fund. … But one thing Herzl gave us involuntarily, which is perhaps greater than all he did on purpose. He gave us himself, to be the theme of our Hymn of Revival, a theme which imagination can take and adorn with all the attributes needed to make of him a Hebrew national hero, embodying our national aspirations in their true form.”  

Some rabbis continued denouncing Herzl for advancing the “nationalist idea” as “a modern idol, not recognized by the Torah.” In Palestine, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook could not be so dismissive. Caught between the Jewish tradition proscribing eulogies for those who broke Jewish law, and the mass grief among so many Jews, including some of his followers, Kook gave a masterful eulogy. Without mentioning Herzl’s name, Kook praised him as the Messiah son of Joseph, focused on the Jewish body, material issues, and a universal orientation. The Messiah son of Judah, by contrast, is focused on the Jewish soul, spiritual materials, and a particularist orientation. Kook dreamed of unifying the “tree of Joseph” and the “tree of Judah,” rejoicing “in the national reawakening,” anticipating the full, complete, integrated Messiah, the son of David.

Many of us grew up believing that Herzl died suddenly “of a broken heart.” Indeed, doctors attribute between 20 and 40% of sudden cardiac deaths to intense emotional stress. Some legends blamed the rupture over Uganda, others, the generalized frustration that the miserable wandering Jews remained miserable and homeless. This new edition of Herzl’s Zionist writings, however, refutes the legend, demonstrating that Herzl lived for years with his impending death.

Herzl’s looming demise may have spurred his ambition, not dulled it. “I believe that for me life has ended and world history has begun,” he wrote in 1895, as his activist Jewish journey began. Feeling pursued by death, this literary soul naturally sought salvation in dreams, big ideas, and lasting identities. “No one ever thought of looking for the Promised Land where it actually is – and yet it lies so near,” he taught. “This is where it is: within ourselves!”

The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, who wrote the pathbreaking book “The Denial of Death” in 1973, explained on his own deathbed: “We build character and culture in order to shield ourselves from the devastating awareness of our underlying helplessness and the terror of our inevitable death.” Perhaps that is what Herzl meant in 1900, when he wrote: “I always feel the future peering over my shoulder.”

This decade-long dance with death may also have sharpened Herzl’s understanding of the intangibles needed to symbolize and galvanize the nation, along with this internal transformation needed to revolutionize the Jew. A friend once offended him by saying that “the whole movement was just ‘noise.’” Herzl replied: “Yes, everything is noise. …690- All of world history is nothing but noise. Noise of arms, noise of ideas on the march. People must make noise useful to them – and still despise it.”

The myth of a sudden death rather than the wrenching reality of a slow terrifying fading away suited Herzl’s place in the Zionist pantheon.

The myth of a sudden death rather than the wrenching reality of a slow terrifying fading away suited Herzl’s place in the Zionist pantheon. Although neither soldier nor athlete, he was more Maccabean than Maimonidean. Projecting strength not illness was essential to his legend.