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THE REALISATION OF UTOPIA

It is 50 years since Israel was established. Less than year ago, in August 1997 there was a 100th anniversary of the first Zionist Congress in Basel. It was then Theodor Herzl proclaimed formation of a Jewish state.

T. Herzl laid out principles of Jewish statehood as well as means of securing, one in his book "The Jewish State " published in 1886. He wrote in it most fantastic things as seemed then, "No-one is rich nor powerful so much that he can move one nation from place to place. This action could only be undertaken for some idea. But it is very important to have one. The idea of statehood formation must be likeable as well as significant. And there it is. Since the sun went down for Jews, they have been dreaming of statehood through the darkest time. 'Next year in Jerusalem... ' now it seems understandable how the dream can be transformed into idea as clear as the day ".

And the dream once seemed ethereal came true. So the idea became life. This wonderful personality, a highly assimilated man, well-off and with quite a name in journalism, accepted anywhere in Europe including Paris and Vienna, he was possessed instantly by the idea of formation of Jewish state so much that his followers could see Messiah in him. His personality was a charm everywhere.

We believe his character was depicted more completely in the book written by the brilliant novelist Stefan Zweig shortly before his suicide. Now here below one extract from his memoirs entitled as "The World of Yesterday".

THEODOR HERZL

BY STEFAN ZWIG

In Vienna there was really only one journal of high grade, the Neue Freie Presse, which, because of its dignified principles, its cultural endeavors and its political prestige, assumed in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy a role not unlike that of the Times in England or the Temps in France. No paper, even in the German Reich, was as particular about its intellectual level.

This temple of progress preserved another sacred relic in the so-called feuilleton," like the great Parisian dailies such as the Temps and the Journal des Debats, it printed admirable and authoritative essays on poetry, theater, music, and art it the lower half of the front page, separated sharply from the ephemera of politics and the day by an unbroken line that extended from margin to margin. In this space only the long-established authorities were permitted to express themselves

The feuilleton editor of the Neue Freie Presse was Theodor Herzl, and he was the first man of world importance whom I had encountered in my life ~ although I did not then know how great a change his person was destined to bring about in the fate of the Jewish people and in the history of our time. At that time his stand was still divided and uncertain. He began as a young poet, and soon gave evidence of a startling, astounding journalistic talent. At first he was the Paris correspondent and later the feuilletonist of the Neue Freie Presse, and as such had become the darling of the Vienna public. His essays are still enchanting in their wealth of sharp and often times wise observations, their stylistic animation, and their aristocratic charm. Whether light or critical, they never lost their innate nobility; and they were the most cultivated in journalism, and were the delight of a city that had schooled itself to every subtlety .He had been successful with a play given at the Burg theater and now he was a man of fame, adored by the young, respected by our fathers, till one day the unexpected happened. Destiny always knows how to find the way to a man whom it needs for its secret purposes, even if he desires to hide himself.

In Paris Theodor Herzl had had an experience, which convulsed his soul, one of those hours that change an entire existence. As a newspaper correspondent he witnessed the public degradation of Alfred Dreyfus, had seen them tear the epaulets from the pallid man while he cried aloud: "I am innocent." At that moment he knew in the depth of his heart that Dreyfus was innocent and that he had brought the horrible suspicion of treason on himself merely by being a Jew. Indeed in his upright and manly pride Theodor Herzl had already suffered under the Jewish lot when he was a student; moreover by his prophetic instinct he had foreseen the entire tragedy of his race at a time when it had not appeared to be an inevitable fate. With the feeling of being born to leadership, which his imposing presence no less than his grandiose thinking and his worldly knowledge seemed to confirm, he had then formulated the fantastic plan to end the Jewish problem once and for all: Jewry was to unite itself with Christianity by means of a mass baptism. Always thinking dramatically, he had pictured to himself how he would lead the thousands and thousands of Jews of Austria, in an exemplary symbolic act, in long procession to the Cathedral of St. Stephen, there to absolve the persecuted, homeless people of the curse of separation and hatred for all time. Soon he realized the unfeasibility of this plan, and years of his own work diverted him from the original problem of his life, the solution of which he had recognized as his true task. But, now at the moment of Dreyfus' s degradation the thought of the eternal exile of his people entered his breast like the thrust of a dagger. If separation was inevitable, he said to himself, then let it be a complete one. If humiliation is to be our constant fate, then let us face it with pride. If we suffer because of our homelessness, then let us build our own homeland! And so he published his pamphlet, "The Jewish State", in which he proclaimed that all attempts at assimilation and all hope for total tolerance were impossible for he Jewish people. They had to create anew homeland of their own in their old home, Palestine.

I was still in the Gymnasium when this short, pamphlet, penetrating as a steel shaft, appeared; but I can still remember the general astonishment and annoyance of the bourgeois Jewish circles in Vienna. What has happened, they said angrily, to this otherwise intelligent, witty and cultivated writer? What foolishness is this that he has thought up and writes about? Why should we go to Palestine? Our language is German and not Hebrew, and beautiful Austria is our homeland. Are we not well off under the good Emperor Franz Josef? Do we not make a decent living, and is our position not secure? Are we not equal subjects, inhabitants and loyal citizens of our beloved Vienna? Do we not live in a progressive era in which in a few decades all sectarian prejudices will be abolished? Why does he, who speaks as a Jew and who wishes to help Judaism, place arguments in the hands of our worst enemies and attempt to separate us, when every day brings us more closely and intimately into the German world? The rabbis thundered passionately from the pulpits, the head of the Neue Freie Presse forbade the very mention of the word Zionism in his "progressive" newspaper. Karl Kraus, the Thersites of Viennese literature, the master of invective, wrote a pamphlet called " A Crown for Zion", and when Theodor Herzl entered a theater, people whispered sneeringly: "His Majesty has arrived!"

At first Herzl could rightly feel himself misunderstood -Vienna, where he thought himself most secure because he had been beloved there for so many years, not only deserted him but even laughed at him. But then the answer roared suddenly back with such force and such ecstasy that he was almost frightened to see how mighty a movement, already growing beyond his control, he had brought into being with his few dozen pages. True, it did not come from the well-situated, comfortable bourgeois Jews of the West but from the gigantic masses of the East, from the Galician, the Polish, and the Russian proletariat of the ghetto. Without realizing it, Herzl with his pamphlet had brought to flame the glowing coal of Judaism, long smoldering in the ashes, the thousand-year-old messianic dream, confirmed in the Holy Books, of the return to the Promised Land. This is the hope and the religious certainty, which have made life worth living for the persecuted and enslaved millions. When ever anyone prophet or deceiver throughout the two thousand years of exile plucked this string, the entire soul of the people was brought into vibration, but never as forcefully as upon this occasion, never with such a roaring and rushing echo. By means of a few dozen pages a single person had united a dispersed and confused mass.

The first moment, while the idea was still a dream of vague outline, was decidedly the happiest in Herzl's short life. As "soon as he began to fix his aims in actual space, and to unite the forces, he was made to realize how divided his people had become among various races and destinies- the religious on the one hand, the free thinkers on the other, here the socialist, there the capitalistic Jews all competing eagerly with one another in all languages, and all unwilling to submit to a unified authority. In the year 1910, when I saw him for the first time, he stood in the midst of this struggle and perhaps he was even struggling with himself; he did not have sufficient faith in its success to relinquish the position that fed him and his family. He still had to divide himself between his petty journalistic duties and the task, which was his true life.

I was estranged above all else by the disrespect, of a kind hardly comprehensible today, with which his own party associates treated Herzl. Those of the East charged him with not understanding Judaism and not even knowing its customs; the economists looked upon him as a feuilletonist; each one had his own objection and they were not always the most respectful. I realized how important and necessary it would have been to Herzl to have persons and particularly young people around him who were completely submissive, but the quarreling and dogmatic spirit, the constant opposition, the lack of honest, hearty subordination in this circle, alienated me from the movement which 1 had only approached curiously for Herzl's sake. Once when we were speaking about the subject, I frankly admitted my dislike of the lack of discipline in his ranks. He smiled somewhat bitterly and said: "Do not forget that we have been accustomed for centuries to play with problems and to struggle with ideas. In the two thousand years of our history we Jews have not had any practice in creating anything real in this world. One must first learn unconditional devotion, and I myself have not yet mastered it, for I still keep on writing. Feuilletons, and I am still the feuilleton editor of the Neue Freie Presse, whereas it would be my duty to have only one thought and, riot to put another pen-stroke on paper for anything but that one thought. But I am on the way to improve myself. I must first learn unconditional devotion, and perhaps the others will learn with me." I can remember that these words made a deep impression upon me, for people could not understand why Herzl was so slow to make up his mind to resign from the Neue Freie Presse -we thought it was for his family's sake. That this was not so, and that he had sacrificed his private fortune to the cause, was not known to the world until much later. How greatly he had suffered under the discord was revealed not only by this conversation but also by many entries in his diaries.

The illness, which had begun to bend him, broke him off suddenly�.

It was a singular day, a day in July, unforgettable to those who participated in the experience. Suddenly, to all the railroad stations of the city, by day and by night, from all realri1s and lands, every train brought new arrivals. Western, Eastern, Russian, Turkish Jews; from all the provinces and all the little towns they hurried excitedly, the shock of the news still written on their faces; never was it more clearly manifest what strife and talk had hitherto concealed -it was a great movement whose leader had now fallen. The procession was endless. Vienna, startled, became aware that it was not just a writer or a mediocre poet who had passed away, but one of those creators of ideas who disclose themselves triumphantly in a single country to a single people at vast intervals. A tumult ensued at the cemetery; too many had suddenly stormed to his coffin, crying, sobbing, and screaming in a wild explosion of despair. It was almost a riot, a fury .All regulation was upset through a sort of elementary and ecstatic mourning such as I had never seen before nor since at a funeral. And it was this gigantic outpouring of grief from the depths of millions of souls that made me realize for the first time how much passion and hope this lone and lonesome man had borne into the world through the power of a single thought.