Theodor Herzl: “A Solution to the Jewish Question”

Questions for Further Study

• 1. Just a year after Herzl wrote “A Solution to the Jewish Question,” Bernhard von Bülow spoke about Germany's “Place in the Sun.” How do these two documents, read side by side, portend some of the major conflicts of the twentieth century?
• 2. Herzl offered a “solution” to the “Jewish question.” So did Nazi Germany some four decades later. How did Herzl's solution differ from that of the Nazis as reflected in such documents as the Nuremberg Laws?
• 3. Trace the history of the Jews in the twentieth century, using this document, the Balfour Declaration, and the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel.
• 4. Jewish settlement in Palestine has continued to be a source of controversy and violence. The Jewish state has had to defend itself, sometimes aggressively so, in the face of repeated attacks and acts of terrorism. Do you believe that Jewish settlement in Palestine is justified under the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
• 5. Over the centuries, many people have been troubled by what they have seen as Jewish refusal to assimilate into the larger culture of the countries in which they have lived. Assume for a moment that this was sometimes, perhaps frequently, true. Why do you suppose Jews were unable or unwilling to assimilate? To what extent might that have been the fault of the larger society? What other groups in modern history have resisted assimilation in the dominant culture and why?