Herzl's Vision: Theodor Herzl and the Foundation of the Jewish State

by Shlomo Avineri, Haim Watzman (Translator)

Overview

Theodor Herzl had been a successful Viennese journalist and a less successful playwright with no political ambitions. That changed in 1896, when he published The Jewish State. The following year he convened a Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. The Congress founded the Zionist Organization in order to establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, recognized and guaranteed by public international law. As Herzl transformed himself in just a few years from writer and editor into the leader of an international political movement, he learned politics and diplomacy on the run—and to great effect. In his efforts to gain broad support for his vision, Herzl met with the Ottoman sultan; the German emperor; the king of Italy; the pope; British, Russian, and German ministers; as well as a great number of other government and public opinion leaders of many European countries. By the time of his early death in 1904 at the age of forty-four, Herzl had transformed Jewish public discourse and made the idea of a Return to Zion into a reality, albeit still a weak one, in international politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781629190129
Publisher:	BlueBridge
Publication date:	03/14/2017
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Shlomo Avineri is a renowned Israeli political theorist and public intellectual. He is the Herbert Samuel Professor Emeritus of Political Science at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He served as Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, headed the Israeli delegation to the UNESCO General Assembly, and is a recipient of the Israel Prize, the country’s highest civilian decoration. Avineri has had a number of visiting academic appointments including Yale University, Cornell University, Wesleyan University, the University of California, Northwestern University, and Oxford University. Avineri’s many publications include Israel and the Palestinians, The Making of Modern Zionism, and Moses Hess: Prophet of Communism and Zionism, as well as the historical introduction to the Hebrew edition of Theodor Herzl’s Diaries.

Haim Watzman has translated and edited many important Israeli books by some of the country’s leading journalists, scholars, and writers—including David Grossman, Tom Segev, and Amos Oz. He also served as Israel correspondent for The Chronicle of Higher Education and the British science journal Nature, and has written two books. Watzman grew up in America and now lives in Jerusalem.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Preface xix

Chapter 1 Jeruscholajim 1

Chapter 2 Emancipation and its Discontents 27

Chapter 3 Budapest - Vienna - Paris 52

Chapter 4 Between Political Fiction and Political Action 83

Chapter 5 From the Jewish Question to The Jewish State: The Revival of Jewish Public Space 114

Chapter 6 The Constituent Assembly: The Basel Congress 141

Chapter 7 Altneuland - a Plan, not a Fantasy 165

Chapter 8 El-Arish - Kishinev - Uganda: From Desert Mirage to Harsh Realities 201

Chapter 9 Toward the End: Rome and Jerusalem 248

Bibliographical Note 263

Index 265

Editorial Reviews

2014-09-21
A fresh study of the deeply prescient thought of this visionary journalist, playwright and founding Zionist. This is not an intimate look at Theodor Herzl's life (1860-1904) but rather a knowledgeable exploration of the evolution of his thought about the establishment of a Jewish state. Avineri (Political Science/Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem; Moses Hess: The Holy History of Mankind and Other Writings, 2005, etc.) jumps right to the quick: The Hungarian-born, German-speaking Jewish editor for the Viennese Neue Freie Presse was not the first to advocate for a Jewish nation-state; Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker had notably preceded him (though Herzl did not read either of their works until later). In the latter decades of the 19th century, when Herzl came of age, Jews had moved from the margins of Western and Central European society to the pinnacles of achievement in the professions and arts. Yet their very success "was seen as threatening," especially in German-speaking lands, leading to the first tremors of anti-Semitism as early as 1817. As a former law student, Herzl wrote firsthand on these persistent outbreaks of anti-Semitism—e.g., the scandals surrounding the Panama Canal and the Dreyfus Affair. However, contrary to popular mythology regarding Herzl's life, it was his reading of Eugen Dühring's 1881 essay, "The Jewish Question as a Racial, Moral, and Cultural Issue," which outlined the inferiority of Jews, that convinced Herzl of the failure of Jewish emancipation. Influenced by the currents of nationalism and worried about the huge Jewish population within a disintegrating Austro-Hungarian regime, Herzl wrote the enormously influential pamphlet The Jewish State (1896) and became, overnight, a politician for a Jewish homeland, galvanizing the Jewish Congress in Basel. Avineri briefly sketches how Herzl tirelessly rallied leaders from the highest echelons by flattering, bribing and cajoling—in an astonishingly short period of time. Rigorous research gathered in a succinct presentation renders this an excellent resource.

Kirkus Reviews