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Zionism's hated hero

Theodor Herzl had many opponents in his struggle to found a Jewish state — some of the fiercest were British Jews

April 28, 2010 16:44
Theodor Herzl addresses the Second Zionist Congress in 1898. In Britain, his support came from poor immigrants rather than the elite of Anglo-Jewry

ByColin Shindler, Colin Shindler

4 min read

Theodor Herzl was born, 150 years ago this week, in Hungary, moved to Austria as a teenager, embraced German nationalism at university and found salvation in Zionism during the last decade of his short life. In part he was trying to solve his own Jewish problem of who he really was. A few years before the publication of his pamphlet, The Jewish State, he had offered to lead a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity.
Herzl was a Viennese liberal who admired Britain and was inspired by the utopian writers of his day. In his diary he wrote that once he had achieved the redemption of the Jews, he wished to participate in the liberation of black Africans. He had borne witness to the rise of antisemitism in Vienna, Berlin and Paris and believed that Britain was "one of the last remaining places on Earth where there is freedom from Jew-hatred". London was the heart of a great empire and had in effect ruled Egypt since 1882. If the Ottoman empire crumbled - as it did during World War I - then, he reasoned, the British could fill the vacuum in neighbouring Palestine.

Herzl's conversion to Zionism did not come overnight, but was a gradual process mainly during his Paris years as the correspondent for a liberal Vienna newspaper. He wrote The Jewish State in June 1895 and was subsequently rebuffed by the Jewish great and good throughout Europe. Invited by the writer, Israel Zangwill, he addressed the Maccabean Club - to which the Anglo-Jewish elite belonged - in London in November 1895. Smoothing the way, he spoke in English and appealed to their philanthropic sense of duty to help the poor and the young. It cut no ice.

The Chief Rabbi, Hermann Adler, opposed Herzl's political Zionism yet supported Jewish settlement in Palestine. The Sephardi Haham, Moses Gaster, however, was an enthusiastic advocate of Zionism long before the arrival of Herzl. Sir Francis Montefiore was also a supporter, but his cousin Claude Montefiore, later a founder of Liberal Judaism, argued that "a man cannot live in two houses" as it would cause "discomfort". Herzl noted that Montefiore was an Italian name. Montefiore retorted that he was "nearer and had more sympathy with his British gardener than with Polish Jews".

Although Herzl regarded it as "one of the leading anti-Zionist newspapers", it was the Jewish Chronicle in January 1896 which first gave him a platform for his views. A month later, it published his article on The Jewish State - a week before the German original.