A History of Zionism (20 page)

The Russian Jews, on the other hand, accepted Herzl as their leader, though not without reservations. Weizmann, who came to know Herzl only at the second congress, wrote: ‘I cannot pretend that I was swept off my feet.’ He was impressed by the man’s deep sincerity and great gifts, but he also felt that Herzl had undertaken a task of immense magnitude without adequate preparation. Herzl, as Weizmann saw it, was naïve, not a man of the people, and his leaning towards clericalism (or rather his excessive respect for the rabbis) distressed him. Weizmann’s teacher, Ahad Ha’am, who had been present in Basle, took an even more negative, in fact almost apocalyptic view: the Zionist congress had destroyed more than it had built up, Ahad Ha’am argued. Who knew whether this was not the last sigh of a dying people? Herzl seemed to him little better than a well-meaning confidence trickster. Be careful, he admonished his readers, ‘the salvation of Israel will come through prophets, not diplomats’. But Herzl was more than satisfied, and in the immediate postcongress euphoria he noted in his diary that Zionism had now entered into the stream of history: ‘If I were to sum up the congress in a word – which I shall take care not to publish – it would be this: At Basle I founded the Jewish state. If I said this out loudly today I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years, perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.’ On various occasions Herzl and his friends discussed how long it would take to realise the Zionist dream. Nordau thought it might take three hundred years to carry out a task of such magnitude; Herzl’s prediction was nearer the mark: fifty years and nine months after he made this entry in his diary the Jewish state was proclaimed in Tel Aviv.

The euphoria of Basle did not last long. Herzl had not revealed to the delegates that his first mission to Constantinople had ended in virtual failure. The sultan had stated, if Nevlinsky was to be trusted, that he could not dispose of any part of the Ottoman empire, for it belonged not to him but to the Turkish people. The Jews might as well save their money. And he had added, prophetically: ‘When my empire is divided, perhaps they will get Palestine for nothing. But only our corpse can be divided. I will never consent to vivisection.’ Herzl did not give up hope, but persuaded his followers that the success or failure of any future approach to the sultan depended on whether the Zionists would be able to raise the money needed for a loan. But the collection of money for the Colonial Bank (its official name was The Jewish Colonial Trust), the share capital of which was to be £2 million, did not go at all well. Subscriptions came in slowly, the Rothschilds had decided to stay out, the rich Berlin Jews were lukewarm, and the Russian Jewish millionaires, although they made substantial promises, did not follow them up.

Much of Herzl’s energies during the next few years were devoted to fund-raising, a task for which he was not suited and which he loathed. How often he was to complain of the absence of a ‘lousy million’ which made it impossible for him to conduct large-scale propaganda and give him freedom of manœuvre in his negotiations in Constantinople. The Zionist organisation was so poor, the income from subscriptions so small, that the executive kept its finances secret for years in order to avoid ridicule.

The second Zionist congress, which took place a year after the first, reflected the growth of the movement. The number of delegates doubled (four hundred), and it was announced that whereas before the first congress 117 Zionist groups had been in existence, their number had now risen to 913. Nordau again gave a brilliant survey of the state of world Jewry; Herzl in his address demanded the capture of the Jewish communities; and the Zionist left wing, the Socialists under Nahman Syrkin, made its first appearance. Herzl showed himself a little more conciliatory towards the Hoveve Zion. One of their leading representatives, Mandelstam, suggested a synthesis between Herzlian (political) Zionism and the principles of Ahad Ha’am, aiming at gradual colonising work as a result of which Palestine would become a cultural centre.

The first congress had aroused great expectations. How much progress could Herzl report in good faith one year later? He knew best that there were no tangible successes, and with one notable exception – the mass meeting in London in 1898 when he hinted that the time was not far off when their dreams would come true – he carefully refrained from raising false hopes. What if his diplomatic attempts in Turkey were to fail altogether? In that case the Jews would have to wait until the general eastern crisis came to a head. As he noted in his diary, ‘A people can wait.’ But there were already occasional signs of impatience. Even before the second congress he considered whether the movement should not be given a nearer territorial goal, such as Cyprus, reserving Zion as the final aim. Or perhaps an eye should be kept on South Africa or America until Turkey disintegrated? For mass emigration from eastern Europe continued. The poor Jewish masses needed immediate help and Turkey was not yet so desperate as to accede to Zionist wishes.
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Herzl engaged in unceasing diplomatic efforts to make fresh converts to his cause. He met Philip Eulenburg, one of the closest friends of Wilhelm 11, on several occasions, and he also tried to reach the German emperor through the Archduke of Baden. But the kaiser’s entourage, including Bülow the foreign minister, was hostile, and in any case Herzl tended to overrate the kaiser’s interest in middle eastern affairs. (He also overrated the kaiser’s strength of character and general intelligence: ‘He has truly imperial eyes – I have never seen such eyes. A remarkable, bold, inquisitive soul shows in them.’) In his memoranda Herzl played on the fear of the kaiser and his collaborators of revolutionary Socialism: Jews would continue to supply the revolutionary parties with leaders and lieutenants unless a remedy was found for their plight. At one stage Herzl took it for granted that the kaiser would intervene on his behalf with the sultan and support the Zionist demand for a German protectorate under the suzerainty of the Porte. To live under the protection of this strong, great, moral, splendidly governed, tightly organised Germany, Herzl wrote in his diary, could only have the most salutary effect on the Jewish national character. He had a great talent for being carried away by his own frequently changing ideas; six weeks later, when his efforts had failed, he concluded that the fact that the kaiser did not accept the protectorate was of course an advantage for the future of the Zionist cause, because ‘we would have had to pay the most usurious interest for this protectorate’.
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Between these two diary entries the German emperor had visited Palestine, and Herzl had followed him to Constantinople and Jerusalem with a small group of supporters. This was Herzl’s first visit to the Holy Land but he was not overwhelmed. The landing at Jaffa was uncomfortable. He was struck by the confusion in the streets and in the hotel – poverty, heat and ‘misery in gay colours’. Even much praised Rishon-Lezion, the nearby Jewish colony, struck him as a very poor place. There was thick dust on the roads, and again great poverty; plank beds and squalor in the houses of the Jewish labourers. The railway trip to Jerusalem in cramped, crowded and hot compartments was sheer torture, the countryside looked dismal and desolate, and Herzl was running a fever.

Jerusalem he found magnificently situated, a beautiful city even in its decay, but the ‘musty deposits of two thousand years of inhumanity, intolerance, and uncleanliness lying in the foul-smelling little streets’ made a terrible impression. In a Jewish hospital he found misery and dirt, but for appearance’s sake he had to testify in the visitor’s book to its cleanliness: ‘This is how lies originate.’ The local Jewish leaders and rabbis were afraid of meeting him for they were worried about the reaction of the Turkish authorities. Herzl was favourably impressed, on the other hand, by the cavalcade of twenty young and daring Jewish horsemen who, singing Hebrew songs, welcomed him in Rehovot. They reminded him of the cowboys of the American west: ‘I had tears in my eyes …’. It showed into what the young trouser-salesmen could be transformed.

Herzl and his friends were received by the emperor in Jerusalem on 2 November 1898. ‘That brief reception will live on forever in Jewish history, and possibly may entail world consequences’, he noted in his diary. The date is of interest, but for a different reason. On the same day, nineteen years later, Balfour wrote his famous letter to Lord Rothschild. Herzl and his colleagues were so excited on the eve of the meeting that Dr Schnirer, his friend and also a member of the Inner Action Committee, wanted to prescribe a bromide. But Herzl refused. ‘I wouldn’t want it for the sake of history.’ The audience came as an anti-climax. The kaiser replied, to Herzl’s appeal for a German protectorate, that further investigation of the whole problem was necessary. ‘He said neither yes nor no’, Herzl commented, and this, in the circumstances, was not good enough.

The official German communiqué simply stated that the emperor had expressed benevolent interest in the efforts directed towards the improvement of agriculture in Palestine as long as these accorded with the welfare of the Turkish empire and fully respected the sovereignty of the sultan. Wilhelm II, who at one time had shown some interest in Zionist projects, had obviously lost his earlier enthusiasm. The German ambassador to Turkey, and some of the emperor’s advisers, notably in the Foreign Ministry, had reservations, foreseeing strong opposition on the part of the sultan. It was also thought that what the kaiser saw of the sorry state of the Jerusalem Jews had not made him any better disposed towards the Zionist cause and its prospects. Be that as it may, the critics within the Jewish camp seemed to be vindicated: the Zionist goal was a chimera. Despondency reigned in the circle of Herzl’s friends, for this was the end of one of the leader’s fondest dreams. For once Herzl had no illusions: ‘We shall not achieve our Zionist goal under a German protectorate’, he wrote to the Grand Duke of Baden. ‘I am sorrier than I can tell you.’
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The Zionist movement desperately needed a tangible achievement if it was to maintain its original impetus and dynamic character. One of Herzl’s chief fears was that a decline would set in once the novelty had worn off unless it could show some striking success. It was at moments like this, when all seemed lost, that he showed his greatness. He was very tired, the symptoms of heart disease were increasing. He went through moments of black despair. On I May 1900 he entered in his diary: ‘I have thought of an appropriate epitaph for myself: “He had too good an opinion of the Jews”.’
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Nevlinsky’s death was a further blow. But Herzl carried on as if success were within reach, liberally distributing baksheesh from the limited funds of the Action Committee among the flunkeys surrounding the sultan. He enlisted Arminius Vambery, the legendary traveller and a friend of Abdul Hamid, orientalist and free-wheeling political agent, of Hungarian-Jewish origin, who had in the course of a long life professed five religions, two of them as a priest. Vambery advised Herzl that the sultan was both mad and an arch liar and explained that nothing could be achieved in Constantinople by way of frontal assault. Vambery helped to arrange an interview between Herzl and the sultan in May 1901, but in addition the initiative of a great power was needed. Herzl no longer expected active German support, and as his Palestinian mission had failed his eyes turned to England as the power most likely to help. Lord Salisbury, then prime minister, was preoccupied with the Boer War and displayed little interest, but Herzl was not discouraged. The fourth Zionist congress was held in London in August 1900, for ‘we had outgrown Basle’. England, Herzl said, was the only country in which God’s old people was not confronted with antisemitism: ‘England, free and mighty England, whose vision embraces the seven seas, will understand us and our aspirations. It is from here that the Zionist movement, we may be sure, will soar to further and greater heights.’
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Herzl had decided that a world Zionist congress should be convened every year. He feared that the movement would lose momentum if there were too long an interval between these meetings. The third congress had taken place in Basle in August 1899, the fourth exactly one year later in London, the fifth again in Basle in December 1901, the sixth, the last in which he took part, also in Basle in August 1903. The first congress, small and improvised as it was, had stirred profound emotions. The subsequent meetings attracted many more participants but as organisational routine developed their character began to change; they became less exciting and more businesslike. The congresses were always opened by Herzl (always greatly acclaimed) with relatively short programmatic speeches. He was followed by Nordau, who would present a masterly survey of the situation of world Jewry. These were brilliant and deeply moving speeches, but essentially they were variations on the same theme: the material deprivations of the Jews in eastern Europe and their moral and spiritual plight in the west. Nordau reported the reappearance of the old murder charges, and fresh anti-Jewish persecutions, which made it all the more imperative that a haven should be found for the victims. The reports of the Inner Action Committee contained impressive figures on the organisational growth of the movement. Between the third and fourth congresses, for example, the number of local Zionist organisations rose in Russia from 877 to 1,034 (with 100,000 paying the shekel), and from 103 to 135 in the United States. At the fifth congress it was reported that Zionism had spread to Chile and India, to New Zealand and Siberia, in fact to the furthest corners of the globe.

There was less optimism in the financial reports: at the fourth congress it was announced with regret that it had not yet been possible to establish the Colonial Trust which Herzl regarded as the essential prerequisite for any future political and economic action. Instead of the £250,000 needed, only about half that sum had been collected, and that only after enormous efforts. The rich Jews were obviously not putting their money on the Zionist horse. There were lectures about the physical degeneration of east European Jewry (Professor Mandelstam at the fourth congress, and Nordau – a physician by training – at the fifth), and the urgent necessity to do something about it. But all agreed that little could be done in the given circumstances; physical and spiritual recovery would follow economic and national normalisation, but this would happen only in their own country. East European Jewish spokesmen such as Sokolow put a great deal of stress on the discussion of cultural issues, in contrast to Herzl and his Viennese friends. The speeches and debates on the ‘cultural question’ dominated entire sessions of the early Zionist congresses and even provoked violent clashes. For the kind of spiritual renaissance advocated by Sokolow, Motzkin and Weizmann (partly under the influence of Ahad Ha’am) was not what the pro-Zionist rabbis had in mind. Weizmann tried to convince Herzl that the importance of the rabbis to the Jewish public and their potential support for the Zionist movement was much less than Herzl assumed. Motzkin provoked a minor storm when he said that the rabbis had not been present at the first congress and that their attempt to join the bandwaggon and impose their views on the whole movement should be resisted.
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Herzl agreed that religion was a private affair, but his policy all along was to preserve the unity of the movement and to eliminate factors making for dissension. The young Russians, however, resented both the autocratic way he stage-managed the congresses and the way he ran the movement in between. The smaller Action Committee in Vienna was made up of his cronies: Marmorek, Schnirer and other well-meaning mediocrities.