*Any---> Must Read! Today in Jewish History - Cheshvan 26/ October 30 Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, published a romantic utopian novel Altneuland (Old-New Land) in 1902. In it, Herzl portrayed his vision of the Jewish state. The novel tells the story of Friedrich Löwenberg, a young Jewish Viennese intellectual, who, tired with European decadence, joins an Americanized Prussian aristocrat named Kingscourt as they retire to a remote Pacific island (it is specifically mentioned as being part of the Cook Islands, near Raratonga). Stopping in Jaffa on their way to the Pacific, they find Palestine a backward, destitute and sparsely populated land, as it appeared to Herzl on his visit in 1898. Löwenberg and Kingscourt spend the following twenty years on the island, cut off from civilization. As they pass through Palestine on their way back to Europe, they discover a land drastically transformed, showcasing a free, open and cosmopolitan modern society, and boasting a thriving cooperative industry based on state-of-the-art technology. Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest, his education was German with little Jewish influence. He became a correspondent and later editor of the Neue Freie Presse in Vienna. For a while he toyed with the idea of converting and felt that mass conversion might solve the problem of anti-Semitism. He was in Paris during the Dreyfus trial, which inspired his idea of a Jewish national homeland. He had never read Hess or Pinsker, but developed the idea of Zionism entirely on his own. Herzl wrote The Jewish State in three weeks and then launched his Zionist program. He served as the physical and spiritual head of the World Zionist Organization until his death soon after the Uganda scheme failed to win support. During his life, he met with as many heads of state as possible in order to win support for a national homeland. Outlining Herzl’s vision for a Jewish state in the Land of Israel, Altneuland became one of Zionisms establishing texts. It was translated into Yiddish by Israel Isidor Elyashev. It was translated into Hebrew by Nahum Sokolow as Tel Aviv, which directly influenced the choice of the same name for the Jewish-Zionist Jaffa suburb founded in 1909 which was to become a major Israeli city.
Posted on: Wed, 30 Oct 2013 17:51:32 +0000