A History of Zionism (17 page)

For the time being, however, Herzl was not leading anyone; only a few friends knew about the manifesto he had been writing. One of them thought Herzl’s mind had become unhinged as the result of overwork. He advised rest and medical treatment. Others were moved by his sincerity and the moral force of his ideas but believed that an appeal to the Rothschilds would be quite fruitless. Perhaps Herzl should publish his views in the form of a novel? Herzl accepted the challenge. Having been slighted or ignored by the ‘money Jews’, he might as well appeal to the general public. And so, in an edition of three thousand copies,
Der Judenstaat
was published by Breitenstein in February 1896.

The basic ideas can be briefly summarised: the world needed the Jewish state, Herzl wrote in the introduction, therefore it would arise. It was not a Utopia for the simple reason that the Jews were impelled, by their plight, to find a solution. It might well be that he was ahead of the time, that the sufferings were not yet acute enough, that the Jewish state still remained for the moment a political romance. But even if the present generation was too dull to understand it, a future and finer generation would rise to the historical mission. Herzl saw antisemitism, ‘the Jewish question’, as did most of his assimilationist contemporaries, as an anachronism, a remnant of the Middle Ages. But his prognosis was not optimistic: man was steadily advancing on the ethical level, but his progress was fearfully slow: ‘Should we wait for the average man to become as generous-minded as was Lessing … we would have to wait beyond our lifetime, beyond the lifetimes of our children, of our grandchildren and our great grandchildren.’
*
And until then? Fortunately, technical progress had made it possible to solve problems that had been intractable only a few generations earlier. Herzl then went on to discuss his ideas for a Jewish state. He did not want to compel anyone to join the exodus. If any or all of French Jewry protested against his scheme because they were already assimilated, well and good; the scheme would not affect them. On the contrary, they would only benefit, because they, like the Christians, would be freed of the disquieting and inescapable competition of a Jewish proletariat, and antisemitism would cease to exist. Herzl tried to anticipate and refute yet another argument: the exodus would not lead from civilisation into the desert. It would be carried out entirely in the framework of civilisation: ‘We shall not revert to a lower stage but rise to a higher one. We shall not dwell in mud huts; we shall build new, more beautiful, and more modern houses, and possess them in safety.’

But was the exodus really necessary? Herzl surveyed the varieties of persecution to which Jews were subjected. Everywhere they were attacked, in parliaments, in assemblies, in the street, from the pulpit. Attempts were made to thrust them out of business (‘Don’t buy from Jews’). The Jewish middle classes were threatened, the position of doctors, lawyers, teachers was becoming daily more intolerable, the passions of the mob were incited against the wealthy. Princes and governments could not protect them; they would only incur popular hatred by showing them too much favour: ‘The nations in whose midst Jews live are all covertly or openly antisemitic.’ Such statements sounded exaggerated, alarmist, almost hysterical in 1896, and when Herzl derided the belief in the unlimited perfectibility of man as so much sentimental drivel he was, of course, attacked as an obscurantist. Yet he was in some respects still too optimistic, as subsequent European history was to show. He maintained that where Jews had received equal rights these could not be rescinded, for this would be contrary to the spirit of the age and would also drive all Jews into the ranks of the revolutionary party.
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Their expropriation could not be effected without causing a major economic crisis and was therefore quite impractical. But if their enemies could not get rid of the Jews, this was bound to deepen their hatred of them. Antisemitism was growing day by day and hour by hour. And it would continue to increase because its causes still existed and were ineradicable. The Jews could perhaps vanish without a trace into the surrounding peoples if they were left in peace for just two generations: ‘But they will not let us be. After brief periods of toleration, their hostility erupts again and again.’ Whether the Jews wanted it or not, they were one people, a group whom affliction bound together; their enemies were making them one people, whatever their own wishes.

Efforts had been made in the past to solve the Jewish question, but the attempt to turn Jews into peasants in their countries of origin was quite artificial. The peasant was a creature of the past, a type on the way to extinction. Assimilation was no panacea, as historical experience had shown. There remained the new, obvious, simple solution – to create a Jewish state, to give the Jews sovereignty over a portion of the globe adequate to meet their national requirements. The exodus and the building of the state would not be a sudden act, but a gradual process lasting decades. The poorest Jews, those in immediate need, would go first, cultivate the soil, construct roads, build bridges and railways, regulate rivers and provide themselves with homesteads. They would be followed by those of the next grade, the intellectual mediocrities, ‘whom we produce so abundantly and who are oppressed everywhere’.

Herzl envisaged the establishment of two agencies to initiate and supervise the building up of the country: the ‘Society of Jews’, which would provide a scientific plan and political guidance, and the ‘Jewish Company’, modelled on the lines of the great trading associations, which would carry them out, wind up the affairs of the emigrants, and organise trade and commerce in the new country. The Jewish Company would be a joint stock company, framed according to English law, with its principal centre in London and a capital of approximately £50 million. At the very beginning of his book Herzl stated that he did not intend to depict another agreeable Utopia, but that he was interested in the central idea of a Jewish state which he wanted to submit to discussion. He did not want to prepare (as other writers of Utopias had done) a complicated scheme with many cogs and wheels. Yet by necessity the
Judenstaat
is not free of such detailed proposals. Herzl’s training as a lawyer clearly emerges and his views on social problems as they took shape during his Paris years are aired in his pamphlet. He discusses, for instance, the seven-hour working day, the type of buildings in the new state, the means of raising money, the organisation of immigration.

He preferred a democratic monarchy, or an aristocratic republic. Nations were not yet fit for unlimited democracy, and in this respect Jews were no better than the rest of mankind. The political issues facing the new state would not be of the simple kind, to be settled by Ayes and Noes. Politics would have to take shape in the upper strata of the new society and work downwards. But no member of the Jewish state would be discriminated against. Herzl was opposed to any form of theocracy. The priests would receive the highest honours but should not be allowed to interfere in the administration of the state. They would be kept within their temples, as the army would be kept within barracks. (Herzl envisaged the formation of a relatively small army, since the state he conceived was to be neutral in world politics.) Every man and woman in the Jewish state would be free and undisturbed in his faith (or disbelief) as in his nationality. Everyone, regardless of creed and nationality, would have equality before the law. ‘We have learnt toleration in Europe’, he wrote; adding as an afterthought, ‘This is not said sarcastically’.

The Jewish state obviously needed a banner, and Herzl suggested a white field (symbolising the pure new life) with seven golden stars (the seven golden hours of the working day). Having promised to deal only with the general idea of a Jewish state, he time and again involved himself in the discussion of technical detail, much of it quite unnecessary. But this was perhaps inevitable. A blueprint restricted to generalities would not have carried much conviction. Other contemporary Utopias went into far greater detail. Menahem Eisler’s
Ein Zukunftsbild
, published in Vienna in 1885, which also envisaged the establishment of a Jewish state, supplied a ready-made constitution of fifteen hundred separate clauses and provisions.
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As he was working on the
Judenstaat
, Herzl, a man of colossal imagination, jotted down many more ideas to be realised in the future society: a labour exchange, a clearance office for capital, the nationalisation of banking, railroads, insurance, and shipping, a standing army (strength: one-tenth of the male population), and even foreign copyright agreements. Education would make use of patriotic songs, the Maccabean tradition, religion, heroic plays, etc. But the Jewish love of luxury was also exploited. After a visit to the Paris Opera Herzl wrote: ‘We too shall have such resplendent lobbies – the men in full dress, the women altogether sumptuous.’ And on another occasion: ‘Circuses [games] as soon as possible: German theatre, international theatre, opera, musical comedy, café-concerts, cafés, Champs Elysées’. But games of chance were not to be tolerated: ‘Old men may play cards, but not for money.’

The high priests in the Jewish state would wear impressive robes, the cavalry would wear yellow trousers and white tunics, the officers silver breast-plates. Herzl wanted at all costs to prevent the emergence of a crop of professional politicians; as stipends for ‘my brave warriors, aspiring artists, and faithful, talented officials’ he would use the dowries of ‘our wealthy girls’. He was much concerned with the blueprints and techniques of building. He suggested bright, airy halls, borne on columns. Construction should be decorative and of light materials, in exposition style. Three years later, during his visit to Jerusalem, Herzl wrote: ‘If Jerusalem is ever ours, I would begin by cleaning it up, clearing out everything that was not sacred, building an airy, comfortable, properly sewered, brand new city around the holy places.’ In his Utopian novel
Altneuland
, published a few years later, Herzl included many other detailed suggestions.

This all seemed a little premature, for the two basic questions were as yet unresolved: how was statehood to be achieved and where was the state to be located? Herzl noted that significant experiments in colonisation had been made but they were all based on the mistaken principle of infiltration. This could not work, for sooner or later the moment would come when the government in question, under pressure from the native populace, would put a stop to the further influx of Jews. Immigration in the form of infiltration was futile unless based on guaranteed autonomy. In this respect his plan differed radically from earlier Zionist proposals. Shortly after the publication of the
Judenstaat
he told a friend that if infiltration continued unchecked, land would increase in value and it would become progressively harder for the Jews to buy it. The idea of a Declaration of Independence, ‘as soon as the Jews were strong enough over there’, was also impractical, for the great powers would not recognise it. Infiltration, in brief, should be stopped and all efforts concentrated upon a charter, the internationally sanctioned acquisition of Palestine. ‘To achieve this we require diplomatic negotiations … and propaganda on the largest scale.’
*

In May 1896, when this conversation took place, Herzl’s thoughts were already focused on Palestine. In the
Judenstaat
, written the year before, he had still left open the question whether it was to be Palestine or Argentina. Argentina, he wrote, was one of the most fertile countries in the world, sparsely populated and with a temperate climate; it would be in the highest interest of the Republic of Argentina to cede to the Jews a portion of its territory. Palestine, on the other hand, was the unforgettable historic homeland, its very name a rallying cry. If the sultan were to give Palestine to the Jews, they could in return undertake the management of Turkey’s finances and save the sultan from chronic bankruptcy. The Jewish state, neutral in character, would form part of a defensive wall for Europe in Asia, an outpost of civilisation against barbarism. Europe would guarantee its existence, and the Holy Places would be put under some form of extra-territoriality. The Jews could in fact mount a guard of honour about these Holy Places and this would symbolise the solution of the Jewish question.

In conclusion, Herzl dealt with some of the main objections likely to be raised. He did not think that he was providing ‘weapons for the antisemites’. Some critics might claim that the venture was hopeless because even if the Jews were to obtain the land and sovereignty over it, only the poor would emigrate. But this was hardly a valid argument: ‘It is precisely they whom we need first! Only desperate men make good conquerors.’ Others were likely to argue that if the scheme were feasible it would have been tried long before. But no, Herzl countered, it had not been possible in the past. Only with technical progress, with man’s growing domination over nature, had the scheme become a practical possibility. True, the establishment of the state might be a long-drawn-out affair. Even in the most favourable circumstances many years would elapse. But he expected immediate relief. Once the Jews began to execute their plan, antisemitism would cease and everywhere the Jewish intellectuals would find an outlet for their energies in the preparation of the great work. The Jews who willed it, he wrote, would achieve their state: ‘A wondrous breed of Jews will spring up from the earth. The Maccabees will rise again. We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and in our own homes peacefully die.’

Herzl was not totally unprepared for the book’s reception. He had expected to be ridiculed as a mad visionary, and his expectations were amply fulfilled. Some simply refused to take his ideas seriously; perhaps the whole thing was an elaborate joke? Herzl was known as an accomplished feuilletonist and satirist. He had as yet never aspired to be a prophet or shown particular interest in the fate of his people. Those who did take the
Judenstaat
seriously were deeply divided. The majority thought it was a chimera, a revival of medieval messianism. Güdemann, Vienna’s chief rabbi, who had been close to Herzl, sharply attacked his ideas in a pamphlet in which he protested against the ‘
Kuckucksei
of Jewish nationalism’, maintaining that Jews were not a nation, that they had in common only their belief in God, and that Zionism was incompatible with the teachings of Judaism.
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The same arguments were to be voiced in one form or another against the Zionist movement for years to come.