First a little background: Herzl was born in 1860. He spent his early years in Pest (now Budapest) and then Vienna. He went to law school and then became a writer of plays. In 1891, he became the correspondent in Paris for a prestigious Austrian newspaper. A few years later, in 1896, he published his Der Jüdenstaat, a vision for the Jews to have their own state and the details of how this could be arranged.
He also wrote a diary, starting around June of 1895. He continued it until his death in 1904.
Even before he began his diary—in early May 1895—he already had the idea for a Jewish state and drafted a letter seeking an interview with the philanthropist Baron Hirsch.
——When brief versions of Herzl’s life are written, it is usually stated that a dramatic influence on Herzl’s thinking was an event of Jan. 5, 1895. On that date, in a public ceremony, the French military officer Alfred Dreyfus was stripped of his rank after being convicted as a traitor. Herzl wrote in an article in 1899 (see below) that he heard cries of, “À mort! À mort les juifs!—Death to the Jews!” from the mob at the time.
But what is the truth about Herzl’s thinking? Scholars have long realized that the event of Jan. 5, 1895 was just one of the last steps in his thinking about how to improve the condition of his fellow Jews. (His many prior ideas to “solve” the Jewish question included: assimilation, socialism and mass conversion to Christianity!)
Indeed, in the first entry in his diary, he wrote: “When actually did I begin to concern myself with the Jewish question? … Certainly, upon reading Dühring’s book. (Mitchell First: This was an extremely antisemitic work written in 1881) … In the course of the succeeding years, the question gnawed and tugged at me, it tormented me and rendered me profoundly unhappy.”
Of course, we have to distinguish between Herzl’s concern for the future of the Jewish people and his final idea that it would be best if the Jews would have their own state. As to that final idea, he wrote in his diary entry of June 7, 1985: “At least thirteen years were needed in order that I might reach this simple idea (of a Jewish state). Now for the first time, I see how narrowly I missed it on frequent occasions.”
Herzl did write in 1899 (see below): “I was turned into a Zionist by the Dreyfus case.” But such a statement is not found in his diaries and Dreyfus receives little attention in these diaries. It has been argued that the rise of antisemitism in Herzl’s home city of Vienna in 1895 was just as important or more important to Herzl’s thinking in 1895. See Henry J. Cohn, “Theodor Herzl’s Conversion to Zionism,” Jewish Social Studies 32, no. 2 (April 1970), pages 101-110.
As to his statement, “I was turned into a Zionist by the Dreyfus case,” some have argued that Herzl just meant that it was the last link in his chain of thought over the many years. Similarly, others view it as an oversimplification and not to be taken literally. As Avineri (cited below, page 82) concludes: “It was not the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, but Herzl’s long analysis of the failure of emancipation and the rise of German and Austrian antisemitism that led him to his radical conclusions.”
——But what about the story of the cries he heard from the mob: “À mort! À mort les juifs!” (This is what is found in most versions of the story in modern times.) He wrote this version of the cries in an article in 1899, that was accepted and supposed to be published in an American journal: “North American Review.” But due to a change in ownership of the journal, it was never published. (It was published in a German translation in 1920.) (Whoever imagined that Herzl would have submitted an article in 1899 in English to an American journal? He did not know English very well and must have been helped.)
It turns out that when Herzl covered the Dreyfus trial for his Austrian paper, it is recorded that “Death to the traitor!” was what he heard from the mob. This is a very interesting question: Did he really hear, “Death to the Jews!” but for whatever reason did not want to write that for his Austrian paper? Or, is what he wrote in 1899 an erroneous memory, perhaps based on some other antisemitic public event? Or, was it a purposeful tweak? Or, perhaps, he heard both types of cries and in his initial writing reported on only one type?
Much has been written on this topic. Many trust Herzl’s 1899 version and suggest that Herzl’s newspaper edited Herzl’s telegrams before printing them. See, e.g., Alex Bein: “Theodor Herzl: A Biography (English edition 1941),” page 115, (Bein was Herzl’s official biographer).
More recently, Shlomo Avineri in his “Herzl’s Vision,” (2008) is suspicious. I have the 2013 English translation. Avineri writes (page 72): “the newspaper’s editors never censored Herzl’s articles, and they often referred to Jewish issues and antisemitism in France.” Avineri thinks Herzl’s memory betrayed him or that he may have purposely tweaked what he heard to better promote the Zionist cause. But I don’t think Avineri has any basis to say that the editors “never” censored/changed Herzl’s articles, so Avineri has not convinced me. (And again, maybe Herzl had a reason for writing merely,“Death to the traitor!” in his newspaper column.)
——Now I would like to tell the story of a clearly false statement by a Jewish historian, this time a purposefully false statement. It was made by the ancient historian Josephus. Josephus started off as a priest in Jerusalem in the last decades of the Second Temple. In 67 CE, he was one of the commanders of a Jewish force fighting the Romans. But he was captured and ended up allying himself with Vespasian and Titus. After the Roman victory, he wrote several books. One of them was Antiquities, largely a summary of the books of the Bible.
When he gets to the book of Yonah, he summarizes the first parts of the story but leaves out all the material after 3:4. (The book goes to 4:11.) Josephus ends his “summary” with a statement that Yonah went to Nineveh and proclaimed that “in a very short time they would lose their dominion over Asia; after giving them this message, he departed.” (Antiquities, chapter IX, verse 10.) The repentance of Nineveh and the kikayon stories are gone! Moreover, immediately after that last sentence, he adds: “And I have recounted his story as I found it written down.” A blatant lie!
We have to remember that Josephus was writing primarily for a gentile audience. It has been suggested that the notion of a world power repenting after a warning from the God of Israel was to be avoided.
Nevertheless, he cut out a large part of the story and lied about it. How can we believe anything he writes anymore! Note that regarding what happened at the end at Masada, he is our only narrative source! There are other strange stories by Josephus which greatly affect his credibility. But that is for another column.
Mitchell First can be reached at [email protected]. In his field of law, the first version of an accident found in the police or medical records is always what the insurance companies believe is the truth. (Their belief is that it was likely made before the person contacted an attorney.)
