Israel Matzav

Herzl must be rolling over in his grave: World Zionist Organization wants Jews to settle in France

About eight years ago, I had a long layover in Zurich on the way back from the US. A friend who is a rabbi in Basel, Switzerland invited me to take the train to come visit him and to see the town. While we were going about town, he showed me a hotel balcony, and told me that Theodore Herzl (pictured) stood on that balcony to address the Jews who came to the first Zionist Congress. This is from Herzl's Jewish Virtual Library biography (his Wikipedia article has been rewritten by the politically correct crowd).

Herzl first encountered the anti-Semitism that would shape his life and the fate of the Jews in the twentieth century while studying at the University of Vienna (1882). Later, during his stay in Paris as a journalist, he was brought face-to-face with the problem. At the time, he regarded the Jewish problem as a social issue and wrote a drama, The Ghetto (1894), in which assimilation and conversion are rejected as solutions. He hoped that The Ghetto would lead to debate and ultimately to a solution, based on mutual tolerance and respect between Christians and Jews.

...

In 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was unjustly accused of treason, mainly because of the prevailing anti-Semitic atmosphere. Herzl witnessed mobs shouting “Death to the Jews” in France, the home of the French Revolution, and resolved that there was only one solution: the mass immigration of Jews to a land that they could call their own. Thus, the Dreyfus Case became one of the determinants in the genesis of Political Zionism.

Herzl concluded that anti-Semitism was a stable and immutable factor in human society, which assimilation did not solve. He mulled over the idea of Jewish sovereignty, and, despite ridicule from Jewish leaders, published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State, 1896). Herzl argued that the essence of the Jewish problem was not individual but national. He declared that the Jews could gain acceptance in the world only if they ceased being a national anomaly. The Jews are one people, he said, and their plight could be transformed into a positive force by the establishment of a Jewish state with the consent of the great powers. He saw the Jewish question as an international political question to be dealt with in the arena of international politics.

But don't tell that to the World Zionist Organization. They want Jews to settle in France... and Hungary... and Austria... and Switzerland... and everyplace else that Herzl lived.

The idea of the trip, which took the Israeli 20-somethings through four countries in five days, was to consider whether and how Herzl’s Zionist ideals can help Israel resolve the troubles it is facing now. But the trip also was about helping young Israelis move beyond an Israel-only view of world Jewry, organizers said.

Deborah Laks, a Costa Rica native who now lives in Tel Aviv, said the tour convinced her that Jews can make a home in Europe.

"What I've seen of young Jews and what they're creating in Europe - they're more useful here than they would be in Israel," Laks told JTA. "If they go to Israel, who's going to do it here?"

The bus tour started with Herzl’s birthplace in Budapest before moving on to Vienna, where Herzl studied law; Basel, Switzerland, where the First Zionist Congress was held; and Paris, where Herzl covered the infamous Dreyfus Affair as a correspondent for an Austrian newspaper.

"Zionism in its very essence is a concern with Jewish peoplehood. That's not going to happen only in the land of Israel," said David Breakstone, vice chairman of the World Zionist Organization which helped organize the trip. Funding came from Habonim Dror and the participants themselves.

Before the trip, Breakstone said, many participants believed they would see only “abandoned synagogues and Jewish graveyards. But the focus of our trip is Jewish future and Jewish revival, not persecution and the Holocaust. We certainly weren't trying to encourage anyone to devalue the importance of aliyah, but I think it's important that they understand that those who do not move to Israel are not necessarily abandoning a Jewish future."

The trip was also meant to help participants forge a personal connection with Herzl's life and writings.

"For us, it's very important that Herzl be understood not just as this incredible historical figure that started the Zionist movement, but also as a man of values whose ideas continue to be compelling today," Breakstone said.

I'm sure this is going to disappoint a certain Muslim reader of this blog, who wants all the Jews to be in Israel so that we can be more easily exterminated.

But for the rest of us, is this really what the World Zionist Organization is supposed to be promoting? Is anti-Semitism really dead in France or Switzerland? Are those places where Jews belong? (I can ask the French family upstairs and the one in the next building that question). Granted, all of you who live in the diaspora are unlikely to make aliya tomorrow, but is the diaspora really where our future is?

I don't have a problem with Israelis learning about Herzl and even going to retrace his footsteps. I have a problem with Israelis being told that Europe is the place to be. It's not.

Labels: European anti-Semitism, European Jews, Theodore Herzl

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:49 PM