The Phoenix Jewish news., 1960-08-26

movement-all three were basically
one and the same thing For the
man. Herzl was one whose gifts of |
writing talents and ability, re-
searched for a cause to give his
life and when he found it, he
wrote it in a political pamphlet
called 1.-THE Jewish State" and
from it came the founding of the
World Zionist movement
Strangely, however, it came from
a man who was not a devoted or
religious Jew. Herz1 was born OF
a highly assimilated family, who
lived in Budapest next door to
liberal Reform Temple. His early
life was filled with a meager Jew
ish education without intensive
study of Bible and Talmud. HerZl
did not have the advantage of a
traditional background, in which
most Jews of his time were reared.
In the practice of law he realized
as he received his Doctorate of
Law that he could not rise to the
position that he sought, and so he
left it for a journalist career. So
captured was he with the assimi-
lationist spirit in his early days
that he once conceived of a plan to
end the Jewish problem. That was
by mass conversion to the Roman
| Catholic Church, which he felt
should take place in broad day
light at IL o'clock on Sunday in
San Stefen Cathedral of Vienna, in
a festive procession and to the
sound of bells.
Herzl wrote that it was the anti
Semites who really made him a
Jew. Thus Herzl became a Jew
by anti-Semitism and it was the
same anti-SemitiSm which made
him a Zionist. When he sat and
listened at the trial of Capt. Alfred
DreyfusS and saw the humiliation
which the captain suffered by the
hands of his prosecutors, then he
realized that once and for all there
must be an end to the suffering OF
a hopeless people. The only logical
answer he could see to anti-Semi-
tism was for Jews to form their
own state and live their own lives
without persecution.
The strangest fact of history is
that the man who became the great
hero of his people always felt he
was a stranger to them. UP until
the time of his awakening as a
writer due to the Dreyfuss trial, he
had no association with Judaism or
with any form of JewiShneSS. 1t
came upon him like fire which
so completely moved him that he
was unable to speak.
When he wrote the book, "The
Jewish State" he thought it was
something entirely new which the
Jewish people had not known. Then
later to his amazement he wrote
this: "Who knows whether l would
have dared to issue my book if the
more significant works of the Ger
man. Hess, and the Russian Pins
ker. had been known to me?"
Herzl himself had no preference
for any land particularly, and in
his book he said it could be Pal
estne or Argentine. 1t took Herr
almost his entire career-and fin
ally a fight to defeat the Uganda
project to settle the Jews in Eas
Africa failed-to teach him the
| lesson that the Jew wanted to bt
} attached to one soil, and that Pal
: estine it had to be.
The great contribution that Herr
4 himself made was more the per
l sonality than claims to the book
, He was filled with love to be the
4 leader of a movement. 1t wa!
j more than the man and his teach
ings which inspired the JeWlsl
people.
This Messianic claim he reveals
: himself in a dream which he had
e which he relates in his diary oc
! Cured in the following way:
: 1.-THE King Messiah came,
t. glorious and majestic old man, tool
me in his arms and swept off witt
, me on the wings of the wind. Ol
one of the irridescent clouds W.
encountered the figure of Moses
The features were those familiar t
me out of my childhood, in tn
statue of Michel Angelo. The me
siah called to Moses: it is for thi
child that 1 have prayed. But t
me he said, go, and declare t
the Jews that / shall come an
perform great wonders and grea
deeds for my people and for tn
whole world"
III Analysis of this dream points t
the fact that HerZl felt himself
man of destiny whom history ha
chosen at a crucial period in tn