The
effect produced by "The Jewish State" was profound. Not
the ideas, but the personality which stood behind them appealed to
us. Here was daring, clarity and energy. The very fact that this Westerner
came to us unencumbered by our own preconceptions had its appeal.
We of the Russian group in Berlin were not alone in our response.
The Zionist student group of Vienna, "Kadimah", was perhaps
more deeply impressed than we. ... We were right in our instinctive
appreciation that what had emerged from the "Judenstaat"
was less a concept than a historic personality. The "Judenstaat"
by itself would have been nothing more than a nine days' wonder. If
Herzl had contended himself with the mere publication of the booklet
- as he originally intended to do, before it became clear to him that
he was no longer his own master, but the servant of the idea - his
name would be remembered today as one of the oddities of Jewish history.
What has given greatness to his name is Herzl's role as a man of action,
as the founder of the Zionist Congress, and as an example of daring
and devotion.
I first saw Herzl at the second Congress, in Basel, in the summer
of 1898, and though he was impressive, I cannot pretend that I was
swept off my feet. There was a great genuineness about him, and a
touch of pathos. It seemed to me almost from the beginning that he
was undertaking a task of tremendous magnitude without adequate preparation.
He had great gifts and he had connections. But these did not suffice.
As I learned to know him better at succeeding Congresses, my respect
for him was confirmed and deepened. As a personality he was both powerful
and naive. He was powerful in the believe that he had been called
by destiny to this piece of work. He was naive, as we already suspected
from "Der Judenstaat", and as we definitely learned from
our contact with his work, in his schematic approach to Zionism. ...
We liked and admired Herzl, and knew that he was a force in Israel.
But we opposed him within the movement because we felt that the Jewish
masses needed something more than high diplomatic representatives,
that it was not good enough to have two or three men traveling about
interviewing the great of the world on our behalf. We were the spokesmen
of the Russian-Jewish masses who sought in Zionism self-expression
and not merely rescue. We must follow the example of the Bilu
though on a far larger scale; this alone would encourage our
youth, would release the forces latent in our people, would create
real values. To Herzl all this was rather alien at first. But now
that I have come to know and understand the Viennese milieu in which
he grew up - so remote from all the troubles and vicissitudes of our
life - and especially when I compare him with other Jewish Viennese
intellectuals, of his time or a little later (Schnitzler, Von Hofmannsthal,
Stefan Zweig - all men of talent), I am amazed at Herzl's greatness,
at the profundity of his intuition, which enabled him to understand
as much of our world as he did. He was the first - without a rival
- among the Western leaders, but even he could not break the mold
of his life. Within the limitations of that mold, and with his magnificent
gifts and his complete devotion, he rendered incalculable service
to the cause. He remains the classical figure in Zionism.