By Michael Regenstreif
Last week marked the 150th anniversary of the birth of Theodore Herzl on May 2, 1860 in Budapest. Herzl is remembered as the father of the modern Zionist movement that ultimately led to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.
Trained as a lawyer, Herzl was a novelist, playwright and journalist who witnessed the antisemitism prevalent in Europe in the 1890s.
In Paris at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl saw mobs chanting “Death to the Jews,” in response to the charges of treason levelled at French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus was framed and convicted in what was later proven to be an antisemitic conspiracy.
Herzl determined that the only solution to antisemitism was a Jewish state. He launched the modern Zionist movement with a book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in 1896 and convened the first Zionist Congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland.
In a novel, Altneuland (Old New Land), published in 1902, Herzl envisioned an enlightened, secular Jewish state; a cooperative society based on equality; a centre for science and agriculture; a “light unto the nations.” Herzl did not predict Arab rejectionism in his utopian vision.
Herzl was just 44 years old when he died of pneumonia and heart failure in Vienna in 1904, so, sadly, he didn’t live to see the fulfilment of his Zionist dream. And, tragically, neither did any of his three children.
His daughter Pauline, a drug addict, died of an apparent overdose in 1930. Herzl’s son, Hans, committed suicide when he learned of his sister’s death. Herzl’s other daughter, Trude, died at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943, one of the six million Jews lost during the Holocaust.
Trude’s son, Herzl’s only grandchild, had been sent to safety in England before the Holocaust, but committed suicide in 1946 on learning the fate of his parents.
In 1949, Herzl’s remains were brought to Israel for reburial on Mount Herzl, which was named in his honour.
Those of us under the age of 62 have never known a world without the State of Israel. But, it is a modern phenomenon and it is important we remember that the movement leading to its founding began with Herzl’s vision just a half-century before.
Shalom Ireland
On Wednesday, May 12, the Soloway Jewish Community Centre will be screening Shalom Ireland, an excellent documentary about the Jewish community of Ireland. I saw the film at the 2004 Montreal Jewish Film Festival and recommend it to your attention.
The film discusses some of the most prominent members of Ireland’s Jewish community, among them Jack Briscoe, an Irish parliamentarian who served two terms in the 1950s and 1960s as lord mayor of Dublin. His son, Ben Briscoe, held the position in the 1980s. Ben, and his brother, Joe, are leaders of today’s Jewish community in Ireland.
The Herzogs were another prominent Irish Jewish family. Rabbi Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, born in Poland, was chief rabbi of Ireland from 1921 to 1936. From 1937 until his death in 1959, he was chief Ashkenazi rabbi of British Mandate Palestine and, from 1948, the State of Israel. His son, Chaim, born and raised in Ireland, became a general in the IDF, was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, and served two terms as president of Israel from 1983 to 1993.
The film looks at the role of Irish Jews in the struggles for Ireland’s independence and in the Zionist movement. It also describes the impact the Second World War and the Holocaust had on the community.
Ireland’s Jewish population peaked in the 1940s and has been in decline since due to emigration to Israel and North America.
The film is an interesting study of a Jewish community struggling against the odds to retain and rejuvenate its vitality.
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