Har Herzl
Mt Herzl
Har Herzl, the Mount Herzl, overlooks the Jerusalem forests. On the hill is Israel's
national cemetery where many dignitaries are buried as well as a military cemetery
and a museum honoring Theodore Herzl. Yitzhak Rabin, former Prime Minister of
Israel, is also buried here.
Theodor
Herzl was born in Budapest Hungary in 1860 and as an adult worked as a journalist
in Paris. Herzl was assigned the job of covering the Dreyfus trial in which
a Jew was accused and found guilty of army offenses. It was commonly believed
that the trial was fixed and that Dreyfus was the victim of a vicious antisemitic
attack.
Herzl was shocked and angered by the unfair treatment Dreyfus received because
he was a Jew and he began to search for a solution to the problem of antisemitism
. He believed that political Zionism and the creation of a Jewish State was
the only possible solution. Not one to sit idly by, Herzl decided to follow
his dream and organized the first ever Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897.
At the end of the three-day congress Herzl is quoted as saying “If I
were to sum up the Basel Congress in a word - which I shall guard against doing
publicly - it would be this: At Basel I founded the Jewish State.” It took
50 years, but in 1947 the United Nations voted in favor of a Jewish State.
Herzl never lived to see the creation of the State. He died in 1904 at the
age of 44.
Yitzchak Rabin
Yitzhak
Rabin, z”l, was assassinated in November 1996. His assassination shocked
the country and the world. Years later, Israelis and Jews are still numbed by
the events of that night and thousands come to Har Herzl to pay homage to the
fallen leader.
The following describes the sense of loss felt by adults in the country: It
is written by Rabbi Karyn Kedar:
“Saturday evening we were driving home, listening to the radio and we
heard the news, shots had been fired...
A Jew has shot the Prime Minister of the Jewish State. I am sickened by the
ironic twist in our history...We never believed that the enemy would come
from within our midst....Throughout the day people say, it will never be the
same.
... And just as we fall deeper and deeper into despair we look up and we
see. We see thousands of our youth quietly sitting.
... Lead us back to innocence, and honesty and command us to move forward.
Dear G-D bless the courage of the young.”