Herzl had far more radical intentions for the religion and government of the Jewish state than we realize. In terms of today’s debate, he could even be thought subversive.

At school they did not teach us Herzl. They taught us about  Herzl. The Jewish State and Altneuland [= ‘Old-New Land’] were not among the texts given us to study first-hand. We only had to know their titles. We learnt facts: that in Basle he founded the Jewish State; that he said: “If you want it enough ---- you can make it come true”; that he met the Kaiser, or was it the Sultan, who talked to him from horseback?; planted a cypress --- or was it a cedar tree?; that he is known as the ‘Visionary of Political Zionism’; that lots of streets are named after him, and a town as well; and that he is buried on Mount Herzl. Ten out of ten.

The Jewish State - A Subversive Text
But what, actually, did he say? Most of us have never read Herzl’s own words. Not by chance, perhaps. Basic texts can be dangerous --- in today’s terms, even subversive. Whoever looks into them will turn up, for instance, that the visionary of the Jewish State and its official founding father spoke expressly of a State of all its citizens. In the Jewish State, reflecting on the future form of regime desirable, he has not the smallest doubt:
“Every man will be free and unrestricted in his faith or lack of it, as in his nationality. Should people of another faith settle among us, or of another nation, we shall grant them all proper protection and equality under the law.”

And in Altneuland, when David Litvak, the child who grew up in the ghetto, is elected president of “the New Society” [i.e. the new State’s political apparatus], his vice-president is Rashid Bey, who had come a close second in the vote. Not everyone in the “New Society” fancies the idea of an Arab as an equal. One political party, that of Rabbi Gaier, Herzl finds particularly loathsome. This is what Mr. Steinek says in the book, to the cheers of his audience:
“I’ll tell you who this Gaier is: He’s an opportunist rabbi…Opportunist rabbis made our life hell then [in the Diaspora] and Gaier is still doing the same here [in Palestine]. Back then, in the first, hard days of Zionism’s birth, he did not want to hear the name Palestine even mentioned; for he is a patriot, a super-patriot, he is the one and only nationalist Jew. We, on the other hand, love foreigners, we befriend the stranger within our gates; we are the bad Jews, we are foreigners in his Palestine. This is what he wants: to drive a wedge between us and the rest of the population... He does not want gentiles accepted as members of the New Society [i.e. to receive citizenship]. But we stand by the principle, that whoever serves the New Society for two years, Jew or gentile, white, yellow or black, becomes a member [a citizen]... because these are the principles that have made us great: liberalism, tolerance, the love of mankind. Only thus can Zion be truly Zion.”

Herzl’s “two years of service” are not our current compulsory military service (his intentions for the army are expressed elsewhere): he means any sort of service to the New Society --- in work, manufacturing, in paying taxes, in any aspect of civilian life. In other words, the Zion of the visionary of Zionism was --- as a founding principle --- a State of all its citizens.

Separation of Religion and State Policy
Nor does Herzl hesitate over the separation of religion and State or --- even more importantly --- religion and State policy. In The Jewish State he proclaims:
“Well, are we going to get a theocracy in the end? No! Religious faith holds us trapped, science sets us free. Therefore we shall hold our clerics’ theocratic urges on a very tight rein. We shall know how to keep them in their synagogues, just as we shall keep our army in its barracks. Army and priesthood will enjoy the greatest respect, as their vital roles make right and fitting. In matters of state, however, for all our appreciation of them, they must not interfere, or they will make trouble for the State, both internal and external.”

What is this? The MERETZ platform? [MERETZ is a contemporary left-wing, anti-religious political party.]
What of the Holy Places? Herzl insists they belong to no one. They exist and will be maintained inasmuch as the citizens or members of the New Society want them to. Whoever wishes to pour out his soul to his God can do so without restraint; no one enjoys ownership, political or otherwise. The heart of the Old City accommodates the Center for Peace, a world center for matters of peace, as befits Jerusalem.
Herzl also has something to say about politicians and referenda. He writes, in The Jewish State:
“I have no faith in our political rectitude, because we are no different from the rest of the modern world and because, with freedom, we shall at once develop arrogance. I consider referenda to be unintelligent since there are no simple questions in politics, questions which can be answered by a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Furthermore, the masses are even worse than the parliamentarians, prey to every superstition, swayed by any loudmouth. Facing the assembled mass of the people is no place to conduct either foreign or internal policy.”

In Altneuland, a group of people tries to define Zionism and comes to this conclusion:
“We are simply one very large cooperative, with many smaller cooperatives within it... We have planted parks, built schools, we have seen to it that both wisdom and beauty are part of our society... The Zionism which has led us here... is simply an ideal which will never find its complete expression.”

It goes without saying that in Herzl’s thinking this “ideal” is a humanist one.
Herzl even foresaw our own ‘post-Zionists’. In Altneuland, Friedrich is told:
“Those self-styled intellectuals of twenty years ago were against Zionism on the ground that it was, they said, based on obsolete ideas. For them the whole concept of Jewish national renewal was brainless and reactionary, the nightmare of the century.”

Herzl’s Vision of ‘The New Middle East’
But Herzl was also wrong at times, many times. When he reached Palestine [then a neglected province of the Ottoman Empire] he found it nearly empty; there were only 600,000 Arabs and less than 50,000 Jews. He did not foresee the population growth to come --- either Jewish or Palestinian --- which would generate the territorial conflict.
To his eyes, the only danger to the Jews was threatened by the Diaspora itself and this was the urgency of getting the Jews to come to Palestine, to a place of safety. This is why he wrote in The Jewish State, “The intention with regard to the Jewish State is that it will be neutral. It needs only a standing army --- properly equipped with all modern weaponry --- to maintain internal order and the integrity of its borders.” Herzl wrote elsewhere that “The Jewish State will have no enemies.” He was also wrong about the new State’s language:
“Obviously we cannot talk in Hebrew. Which of us knows enough Hebrew to even ask for a train ticket?”

He thought that each person would keep his own language, the dominant language becoming the State’s official one. Who knows but that particular vision is not in the process of coming true ---- English, of course.
However, fundamentally, Herzl’s vision was that of a ‘New Middle East’ [Shimon Peres has written a book of this name]. Once again his description of the future Altneuland tells us what he pictured to himself:
”National borders still existed,” [says the hero, recounting the beginnings of the New Society] “but people and goods traveled freely throughout the world. Automation and modern means of transport have put us in contact with new worlds, new conditions, a new movement, a new economy… Why shouldn’t the small cooperatives develop into huge corporations?”

Production, economy, economic cooperation ---- all transcending national borders; a state of all its citizens and not a national-religious state; no cult of ancestors’ graves; not a state of Jews only --- it was of things that Herzl said “If you want it enough, it will come true”.

For years none of us have looked into what Herzl actually wrote. Maybe now is the time to go beyond reverencing him with our ignorant admiration, beyond naming streets after him. Maybe the time has come to know what it actually was that the ‘Visionary of Political Zionism’ envisioned.
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This article was first published in the daily Yediot Akharonot, 3 November 1995.