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Herzl And Myself
by DAVID SCHWARTZ
Amos Elon has written a
biography of Theodor Herzl,
which Marie Syrkin reviewing in
the New Republic -calls a
fascinating book. I can well believe
it. Herzl was a fascinating subject
and Elon is a good writer.
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I Tftiew the author of the first
biography of Herzl — Jacob De
Haas. 1 can remember as a boy in
Atlanta, Georgia hearing De Haas
speak. He was an English Jew and
he was very eloquent, 1 thought. In
some connection, he quoted
Disraeli's phrase of one “being in
ebriated by the exuberance of his
own verbosity” and I thought
maybe De Haas <kas too. Anyway,
his verbosity inebriated me.
Herzl had sent De Haas to
America to bring American Jewry
into the Zionist picture. The
Zjonist organization then like
most Zionists at the time was very
poor. Its office was located in an
upper story of an East Side
building. In those days, there were
many shops located on second
floor. "Walk up and save on your
furniture or your clothes,” they
advertised. The Zionist organiza
tion could have put up a sign:
“Walk up a flight and save the
Jewish people."
If the Zionists were poor, they
still had grandiose dreams. When
the Young Turkish Revolution
overthrew the Sultan, some
Zionists thought a deal might be
made with them to buy Palestine.
De Haas was one of those said to
have been involved in the idea. But
the idea was basically fantastic at
the time. The Zionist organization
didn’t have the money for
stationery.
The great achievement of De
Haas was bringing Brandeis in the
Zionist fold and De Haas subse
quently became a kind of official
voice of whatever Brandeis wished
to communicate to American
Zionists. Sitting on the Supreme
Court bench, Brandeis, of course,
had to operate from behind the
scenes.
I was a good Zionist like other
Zionists. I paid my shekel and
sang the Hatikvah. Zionism in
those days was largely musical.
Herzl had passed away before he
could point to any practical
achievement. But he was confi
dent. “This day I created the
Jewish nation,” he wrote in his
diary. He didn’t see the birth of the
Jewish State or any of the se
quences, but in his mind's eye he
had seen it all to the happy ending.
As a boy, De Haas tells us,
Herzl dreamed that he might build
the Panama Canal and in his
dreams of Zion, he was engineer
ing too. He foresaw the ‘drop’ in
the Dead Sea area used to bring
enormous irrigation possibilities.
Israel would become the special
center of new industries by reason
of its climatic condition. The land
would be nationalized, so home
rent would be cheap and the sav
ings on rent would be utilized for
increased production and employ
ment. Herzl was very friendly to
the land reformer, Franz Oppen-
heimer and seems also to have
been conversant with the ideas of
Henry George, whose economics
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was then just blossoming forth.
Anti-Semitism, Herzl
prophesied, would disappear and
Herzl looked forward to the solu
tion of the Jewish question also
leading to a similar redemption for
the Blacks.
Fanciful as that picture may
look, the whole picture of the
Zionist movement as one looks
back seems stranger than fiction.
Here was a writer of feuilletons’
with little knowledge of Jewish
things suddenly rising to an almost
Biblical stature. There were others
before him, seemingly better
equipped with Jewish knowledge,
like Leo Pinsker who had written
about Zionism in perhaps a deeper
way, but this stranger as it were,
was the man who put the idea
across. But history is often that
way, perhaps. One might have ex
pected Washington or Adams or
Jefferson to have first sounded the
note of American independence,
but it was an immigrant from
England, young Thomas Paine
who performed the miracle with
his book, “Common Sense.”
Perhaps it is like a painting. To
view it properly, the artist draws
back from the picture. When you
get too close to a thing, the
chances are you do not see it whol
ly and in its proper perspective.
Herzl created the Jewish State
but he also did something for me
and the millions of Jews who do
not reside in the Jewish State. I
think the State of Israel has
achieved two principal things for
Jews outside of Israel. It has ex
posed the falsity of two charges
against Jews. First, it was said,
Jews couldn't be farmers. The
State of Israel proved this was not
so. Second, Jews were always ac
cused of being cowardly. They
couldn't fight — and that’s the car
dinal sin in the eyes of the world.
Even Jews believed it. I recall
visiting Palestine some forty years
ago and the United Press cor
respondent, a young Jew, as we
were passing the British barracks
said, if it weren’t for them, the
Jews would have to leave. Yet fif
teen years later, 600,000 Jews
fought off a population many
times their size and no one now
says Jews can’t put up as good a
defense as any other people.
The future we cannot tell. It’s a
new ballgame, maybe. There is
Arab oil and the Western nations
are as much involved in the Middle
East as Israel. There is also the
conflict of the superpowers.
If we cannot be sure of good,
neither is there reason for despair.
Saudi Arabia is almost as big as
Alaska and Texas combined. The
Arabs have enormous territory
and if that were irrigated there
would be a clamor for more peo
ple. Weizmann hoped for Jewish
and Arab cooperation. The basic
interests of both are the same.
Who knows but that the story may
have the happy future Herzl
foretold. •
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PAGE 3 - THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE, June 27, 1975