Yossi Beilin, one of the senior members of the Israeli Labor
Party has determined that Herzl's real and original vision
was that of assimilation among the non-Jews. For him,
Judaism was an albatross, and were he alive today, says
Beilin, he would certainly prefer life in the assimilated
Jewish communities of America than in Israel.
Yossi Beilin's book, The Death of the Uncle from
America, deals primarily with the relationships between
the State of Israel and the Diaspora. But within the
framework of Beilin's soul-searching, between the lines of
the book, he touches upon the sensitive nerves of the Zionist
movement and its leaders. Thus, in a side remark in the
first chapter of the book, "A Hundred Years of Zionism--an
Interim Balance," Beilin notes that "had the gates of America
been open in the 1920s, and had emigration to there been
free, the Zionist revolution might have remained a passing
episode."
In that same chapter, Beilin tries to solve the enigma of
Theodor Herzel (Theodor, and not Binyomin Zeev). "We like to
call him Binyomin Zeev. But had anyone called him by that
name on the street, he probably wouldn't have turned his
head."
Beilin notes that it would have much more suited the first
Zionist to have become the last Jew. "The diligent Paris
reporter of the Neue Frei Presse, who was born in 1860
to assimilated parents, despised Jewish studies so much that
when he was 10, his parents were forced to transfer him to a
regular state school. He himself volunteered to say that if
things had been dependent on him, he would have been born to
a Prussian noblemen, and indeed he conducted his life as if
he were such a nobleman himself. "He internalized
antisemitic principles, admired the music of Wagner, saw
Bismark as an exemplary leader, and identified with the
strengthening German nation. When his own son was born, he
did not circumcise him."
Beilin also describes the ugly and repugnant sides in Herzl's
personal life, and notes the sad end of his family.
"After he died, at the age of 44 from heart calcification, he
left behind a broken family that did not leave any traces in
the world. His wife died in 1907, at the age of 39, in a
mentally deranged state. His son Hans converted to
Christianity, and in 1930 committed suicide. His sister
Paulina, also committed suicide that year, when she was a
drug addict. His third daughter, Truda, who had been in a
mental hospital for many years, was brought to a German
concentration camp, and was killed in 1943. Three years
later, her only son, Peter Theodor committed suicide."
Herzl so rejected Judaism, writes Beilin, that at a certain
point he proposed to head a procession to convert all of the
Jews of Europe to Christianity. He thought that it would be
possible to live in the modern world as an assimilated Jew
alongside the Christians, and began to search for an
alternate solution only after he was convinced that
assimilation would not offer Jews a normal way of life, and
that the Christian world was not prepared to open its arms to
people like him.
Only the disappointment from the emancipation and the
difficulty of being absorbed by a non-Jewish society, are
what motivated him to formulate the idea of "a Jewish
State."
It is clear then, says Beilin, that Herzl "did not search for
a means of preserving the great spiritual treasures of the
Jewish Nation. He did not dream of a spiritual center of a
Chosen Nation. He was not the least bit concerned about the
question of the continuation of the Jewish Nation, nor about
Judaism. Only the problem of Jews as human being interested
him. If the world would only accept Jews as human beings, and
if as a result, the Jews would forego their faith, there
would have been no one happier than he."
Therefore, determines Beilin, if Herzl were alive today, and
there was yet no Jewish State, he could not have founded it.
In a world in which the non-Jewish society enables Jews to
assimilate quite easily, Herzl never would have dreamed of
proposing that the Jews gather in their own state, and he
wouldn't have written The Jewish State. According to
Beilin, Herzl did not exchange German nationalism for Jewish
nationalism. His considerations were totally pragmatic.
"Herzl's only basis was negative. All began and ended with
antisemitism. On the one hand he gloated over other Jews and
internalized antisemitic sentiments. On the other hand, he
feared antisemitism."
Beilin figured that Herzl had no illusions, because from
Herzl's writings it seems that he would have known then of
the possibility of emigration to the United States as it
developed later, he would have encouraged it, and would not
have spent the remainder of his days in efforts to receive a
permit from the great powers to transfer the Jews to a state
of their own.
However, he wasn't familiar with the United States, or with
the trends which developed during that period. With daring
and candor, Beilin writes: "Herzl's true dream was the
American dream, that of enabling the Jews to live like human
beings and to assimilate due to an abundance of good and
prosperity. From many aspects, his prescience of contemporary
Jewish life in America was greater than his vision of the
State of Israel."
Beilin proposes a provocative but realistic scenario, What
would Theodore Herzl have done if he were alive today?
"Despite the problematic aspect of the guessing game, I think
that it isn't too risky to say that were Herzl a contemporary
secular Jew, a senior journalist in one of the capitols of
Europe, who was finding it hard to assimilate in his non-
Jewish surroundings, and wanted to emigrate to another
country, he would emigrate to America and would not make
aliyah to Israel."
Beilin's logical and persuasive reasons are: "Because all
that Herzl wanted was to assimilate with his surroundings and
to live like a human being, he would have discerned that the
members of the largest Jewish community in the world lead
peaceful secure lives, are not limited in any area, and are
allowed to live their lives as they please, as he and Dreyfus
and many others wanted to live.
"He wouldn't make aliyah not only because he had no
circumcised his son, and in that manner would find it
difficult to raise him in Israeli society, but because he
wouldn't regard Israel as a safe haven for the Jews. The
European island in the heart of the Middle East, which is
supposed to promise the Jews peace and tranquillity and
development without antisemites did not arise. A place where
the existential problem is top on its daily agenda, could not
attract Herzl. Obligatory military duty for three years would
seem to one who explicitly spoke only about a professional
army, as too heavy a burden for his children, and the risk of
wars and terrorism certainly wouldn't attract him."
The limited link which the citizens of Israel nonetheless
have for religion would disturb him. The last thing he would
do, writes Beilin, would be to move to a place where one is
obligated to observe religious marital laws and is limited on
Shabbos. Actually, even the Hebrew language which is spoken
in Israel might deter Herzl, because in The Jewish
State, he wrote: "We can't speak Hebrew with each other.
Who knows enough Hebrew to buy a train ticket? Everyone will
speak his own language, the language of the native land he
cherishes. Switzerland is a perfect example of the
maintenance of linguistic federalism. In Israel we will
remain what we are now, just as we will never stop loving and
longing for the homelands from which we were banished."
Beilin concludes that Herzl was a broken-hearted man, who
felt that being Jewish was a burden to him, and who saw the
transfer to the Jewish state as "expulsion from the European
Garden of Eden," and not the realization of the age-old
prophecy.
"A startling and sad historical paradox took place here.
Central European assimilated intellectuals such as Herzl and
Nordau devised political Zionism out of despair, without ever
thinking of making aliyah to Israel themselves."
Beilin does not suffice with a description of the non-Jewish
aspect of the leaders of the Zionist movement, or their
personalities. He proposes solutions too, which on our part
are not far from the original "vision."
Thus, for example in the chapter, What to Do, he suggests
abolishing all of the religious marital laws in the state, so
that the members of all faiths can register for marriage with
a non-religious registrar. He also seeks to "broaden the
definition of the concept Jew."
On this matter, he points to the routine sham of many so-
called "Orthodox conversions". He claims that all know that
"we are referring to a premeditated lie. Most of the converts
do so in order to marry their Jewish mates. They have to
persuade the rabbis that they want to keep the
mitzvos," while in essence most of the converts know
that this is a sham.
No one disputes this point, and the Yated Neeman has
often warned about this trend in its articles. But while the
mitzvah observant community seeks to call this a
"premeditated lie," and to determine that all conversions
must be conducted only by permanent and authorized conversion
courts, and by prominent dayonim who demand that the
converts desire to observe the mitzvos be sincere and
genuine, Beilin proposes an alternate solution: "broadening
the definition of the concept Jew."
He says that the time has come to conduct "secular
conversions," in Israel. Without realizing it, he is closing
the circle he opened, because in that manner Herzl's original
vision regarding massive assimilation will materialize, even
in the Jewish State.
