Theodor Herzl: “A Solution to the Jewish Question”

Context

Israel is a young state, having come into existence only in 1948, though its foundations were laid in the late nineteenth century. Historically, Jews had been a minority population in Palestine after the Romans destroyed the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem in 70 CE. This event led to the expulsion and dispersal of much of the Jewish population from the region, with the majority fleeing to other parts of the Middle East or Europe. Afterward, the remaining Jews were ruled as a minority by various Muslim powers. The last of these rulers were the Ottomans, after the Ottoman Turks conquered Syria and Palestine during the Ottoman-Mamluk War (1485–1491) and established the Ottoman Empire in 1516.

Most of the early Jewish immigration to Palestine came from Spain as part of the exodus resulting from the Reconquista, or the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslims. The Reconquista ended in 1492, when Spanish Muslims and Jews were given three choices: convert to Christianity, die, or leave. Needless to say, many left to seek religious toleration elsewhere, and they found it in Muslim lands, where they were considered dhimmis, or “people of the Book”—those who, like Muslims, had received a revelation from God but, unlike Muslims, had not accepted the teachings of Muhammad. Thus, they had rights and were protected as citizens of the Ottoman Empire.

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, the once fairly harmonious relationship between the Ottomans and their non-Turk subjects began to alter. As European merchants jockeyed to gain commercial advantages in the region, they often favored particular religious or ethnic groups—especially Christians and Jews. This new contact also led to fresh immigration of Jews to Palestine, where they hoped to avoid the persecution and prejudice they had encountered in Europe, particularly eastern countries of Europe. Thousands of Jews fled from the Russian Empire after the pogroms of 1881–1884 and 1903–1906; in Russia the government used the Jews as scapegoats for many of the nation's ills

This wave of immigration from 1882 to the early 1900s became known as the First Aliyah (“first ascent”) to Israel. Most of these Jews entered the Ottoman Empire on religious visas used to allow pilgrims to visit holy sites, but they never returned home. Gradually they settled in Palestine and formed new villages and towns built on land purchased from wealthy Jews, such as Baron Edmond Benjamin James de Rothschild, the patriarch of the wealthy banking family, and sympathizers in western Europe. The majority, however, spoke Yiddish, Polish, or Russian and not the Arabic that most of the Jews who dwelled in Palestine spoke. The culture of the new Jews was different from that of those who already lived there. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, only five thousand Jews lived in Palestine, out of a population of approximately 300,000 people. By the end of the First Aliyah, twenty-eight settlements had been founded with twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand European Jews. Their arrival caused the Ottomans to vacillate on a consistent policy toward Jewish immigration as they attempted to balance European sympathy and pressure with the concerns of Palestinian Arabs.

The Ottoman Empire was not the only state to deal with large numbers of Jewish immigrants. Although the First Aliyah brought thousands to Palestine, many more Jews came from eastern to western Europe. The sudden influx of immigrants thus prompted the “Jewish question,” which was a series of questions that boiled down to one: How do the Jews fit into a Western secular society? Underlying this question were old prejudices in a secular, yet very Christian society that viewed Jews as outsiders who refused to assimilate into Western society. Indeed, with the influx of eastern European Jews, the differences between the Jews and Western society became more apparent. Although many western European Jews had become more assimilated, while retaining their religion as part of their identity, eastern European Jews were different. They had lived apart from their Christians neighbors in what were termed “ghettos,” or Jewish quarters in cities. Although at times they could be poor, many ghettos were often affluent areas. This separation, once required by medieval law, helped keep alive prejudice dating back centuries.

The true turning point, however, came with the advent of Zionism, or what might be termed Jewish nationalism. This movement came as a reaction to the pogroms and persecution of the Jewish Diaspora throughout Europe. Although Jews received much better treatment in western Europe, many Jewish intellectuals and religious leaders became concerned that the secular environment of the industrialized West could lead to their absorption and loss of identity. Integration was not unacceptable, but the concern was that latent prejudice among Europeans would prevent Jews from ever fully becoming part of Western society. A Jewish minority would always be outsiders no matter how long their families had lived in a particular country.

As a result, some intellectuals, such as Theodor Herzl, began to consider the feasibility of establishing a Jewish state. This led to the creation of the World Zionist Congress, which promoted the creation of a Jewish state and sought support for it not only among the Diaspora but also from non-Jews. The First World Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland, in 1897, with approximately two hundred delegates from fifteen countries. While enthusiasm for a Jewish state grew, widespread disagreement arose about where the state should be. Initially, Herzl had no strong preference. One suggestion, prompted by the British government, was Uganda, while others proposed that the Jews should follow the model of the Mormons and settle in the western United States, Canada, or Australia, where they could form a state within an existing country. In view of the already significant Jewish presence in the United States, it was a serious consideration. Thus when Herzl wrote his “Solution to the Jewish Question,” he attempted to find an answer to deal with all of these conditions. In eastern Europe random and violent pogroms were a constant threat, while in western Europe Jews faced an underlying prejudice or risked assimilation into the larger population and thus the loss of their Jewish identity and religion. In Herzl's opinion, the only solution was to find a homeland. While others looked at more recent models, Herzl turned to an ancient biblical covenant made between God and the first Jews—the Hebrews.