This week Rabbi David Woznica writes of pivotal events that led to the creation of the Modern State of Israel which are important for us, and our children, to know.
Theodor Herzl and the First Zionist Congress
“Im tirtzu, ein zo agadah”—If you will it, it is not a dream
—Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl made Zionism an international movement. Herzl was raised in Budapest and Vienna. He became a highly respected journalist. And while antisemitism was a concern, it was the Dreyfus trial (see yesterday’s entry) that shaped him to become a Zionist*. Herzl was present when Dreyfus was humiliated as French mobs called for his death and shouted “Death to the Jews”. Herzl concluded if this could happen in France (which was the first European country to give Jews equal rights), Jews were not safe anywhere.
As a result, Herzl became passionate about creating a modern Jewish State. He wrote Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), a sixty-three page pamphlet which was his vision of the founding of an independent Jewish state.
In 1897, Herzl convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. He created a movement that culminated in a state. With all his success, however, his personal life was tragic. He lost his oldest daughter to drug addiction, a son to suicide, and his youngest daughter died at the hands of the Nazis in Theresienstadt.
In his will, Herzl noted he wanted to be buried next to his father in Vienna, until his remains could be brought to Palestine. In 1949 his hope was fulfilled. We can visit his grave at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.
—Rabbi David Woznica
*Zionism is the movement for the self-determination of, and statehood for, the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.