On July 3, 1904 Theodor Herzl passed
away in Edlach, Austria-Hungary at the age of forty-four. He was
subsequently buried at the Döblinger Friedhof (Döbling
Cemetery) on July 7. On August 16, 1949 his body was disinterred,
reburied in Jerusalem on Mount Herzl.
Here is the transcript of the eulogy
given in London by orator Israel Zangwill the day of Herzl's
funeral.
At the memorial meeting held in the
Great Assembly Hall, London, on Thursday, July 7, the day when Herzl
was laid to rest, Israel Zangwill, who was the principal orator,
spoke as follows:
"This summer we had confidently expected
to see our beloved leader upon this platform. This very night he
might have been speaking to us. And this morning he was buried.
Buried at the age of forty-four, in the prime of his princely
manhood! But is there one of us who cannot see him upon this
platform? He has not broken his word. He is with us, speaking to
every heart; he will never leave us again. Nicht gestorben weil
unsterblich--not dead because undying. Of Moses we are told that
no man knew the place of his sepulcher. And who can say where Herzl
will lie buried, since his living influence is everywhere? It could
easily be traced, even in the withdrawal of the Athens Bill, anent
which he gave evidence--the withdrawal which, by a cheering
coincidence, comes to diminish the darkness of his funeral day. My
friends, you cannot bury a great man still less can you bury a great
cause. Our opponents have, perhaps, imagined that Zionism would be
buried in Herzl's grave. Of Zionism, too, it can be said, Nich
gestorben weil unsterblich. Herzl had from the first provided
against the event we mourn tonight, just as he provided in his will
that his body should some day be borne with us to Palestine. He knew
too well that he might only gaze upon the Promised Land, and he has
laid his hands upon the head of more than one Joshua, and filled
them with the spirit of his wisdom to carry on his work. And though
there will never arise one like unto him, tough there is no one with
his fiery energy, his magnificent dash, his inspired impatience, yet
our cause, as he said at the first Basle Congress, our cause is too
great to rest upon an individual.
"And so he leaves behind him not only
disciples but a Constitution. If some of the machinery he had
bequeathed to us, constructed in the early stages of our movement,
will be unworkable without him, the loss of him forces us more than
ever to reorganize our institutions and to try to make up in system
for what we have lost in genius. But the Congress will always retain
a lasting creation of Herzl. Nicht gestorben weil unsterblich.
Our Congress supplies a Jewish parliament, and our Jewish parliament
will one day supply a Jewish State. No, Zionism is not buried in the
grave of Herzl. Far more likely anti-Zionism will be buried there.
Anti-Herzlism at least assuredly lies cold beside him. Death, which
makes clear the great outlines of his life must silence his
bitterest enemy.
"Think of the sacrifices this man made,
who in the full tide of his literary popularity in the gay Austrian
capital, in the flush of youth and success, put aside everything to
take up the cause of his oppressed brethren, and found for reward
his position in society lost, his plays hissed, his health broken,
his motives questioned or jeered at, and his character besplashed
with mud from every Jewish gutter. And yet never a word of
complaint. On the contrary. "I wish,' he said at a recent Congress,
'I wish our enemies could understand what a happiness Zionism is.'
Yes, the happiness that comes of doing one's highest works.
"And think of the work he did--in those
few brief years--in the teeth of all the practical men who have so
long misgoverned our people and mishandled our problems. It seems
only the other day since a black-bearded stranger knocked at my
study door, like one dropped from the skies, and said, 'I am Theodor
Herzl. Help me to rebuild the Jewish State.' Since that day he has
gone from miracle to miracle--from impossibility to impossibility.
What a figure he might have made upon the stage of European
politics, he who could create the politics, he who could create the
politics of a State unborn! And how did the majority of the Jews
receive him? They said Israel was too scattered and torn for any
common action--and he gathered together a Congress from the four
corners of the earth. They said that the Congress was all empty
talk--and he established a Bank and a Trust. They said that the poor
would lose their money--and the Trust paid a dividend. They said,
'You are making Zionism a sordid, material thing, a thing of
money'--and 300,000 shareholders refused the divided. They said,
'But what is the use of money? The Sultan will not treat with you.'
And the Sultan made Herzl his guest of honor, and had the practical
men been at Herzl's back the charter would have been ours. They
said, 'Oh, but the Sultan wants money; no solid Power will consider
you.' Al lo! The greatest empire on earth offered him a soil for his
ideas. They say, 'But your ideals are lacking in religious
impulse'--and he gave to Jewry the greatest spiritual impulse since
the Goluth began. He has saved and guided thousands of men
and women who were drifting amid the mists and cross currents of
modern Jewish life.
"And while the Jews were saying all
this, what were the others saying? The Pope, the Catholic, said, 'My
sympathies go with you.' The German Emperor, the Protestant, said,
'To me, as to you, it seems quite natural that the Jews should
return to Palestine.' The Sultan, the Mussulman, said to his
Ministers, 'So, I picture to myself, the Hebrew Prophet of Galilee
must have looked.' Mr. Chamberlain, the Unitarian, on seeing a land
flowing with milk and honey, said to himself, 'Here is a land for
Dr. Herzl.' M. de Plehve, the Greek churchman, the man of iron--what
did Plehve say? 'Till Dr. Herzl came to me,' said de Plehve to one
of our Russian friends, 'I did not know there were Jews who did not
crawl. I have hitherto had to do only with two classes of
Jews--those who came to beg I should not do something against their
community, and those who came to beg I should not do something
against their community, and those who came to beg I should do
something for themselves. But with Herzl there was no fear and no
favor.' Think of that! Russia has six millions of Jews, and till
Herzl came Plehve did not know the Jew was not a crawling creature.
Can we wonder that, as Herzl passed through Russia, passed
fearlessly through that land wherein our practical men are forbidden
to travel, our brethren waited by thousands at every station, as for
the Messiah? Are we not entitled to believe that if the Jews of the
world would stand upright like Herzl, and ask the world for justice,
nay, for Palestine itself, the world would some day give us both?
"All those terrible risks that Zionism
brings on the Jew are the bogeys conjured up by cowards afraid of
their own shadows. Zionism brings to the Jew only the world's
respect. The Zionist peril forsooth! I will tell you what the
Zionist peril is, and why Jews shrink from Zionism. Zionism is a
terrible searchlight, searching out all that is false and feeble in
Jews and Judaism. There are spiritual anti-Zionists, but the great
majority of anti-Zionists are those who have neither God above or a
man's heart within. It may be that Dr. Herzl's death will effect
more than even life. Now--at last--O, bitter mockery! he will enter
the synagogues, whose preachers have been gagged by purse-proud
presidents, his name will be mentioned respectfully, if critically,
to comfortable congregations. I call upon them, one and all, to make
amends to the dead for their derision of the living, and to bury
their anti-Zionism in Herzl's grave. We, too--we Zionists--have
something to bury in Herzl's grave--all that venom of factions and
foolish accusations which divided brother from brother and
embittered our leader's last days. There are not two Zionisms; there
is only Zionism, the Zionism that was laid down in Herzl's 'Judenstaat'--the
Jewish national idea, associated, indeed, with Palestine by history
and tradition and the hope of generations, but even greater than
Palestine itself, since Palestine without Jewish rights would be the
Goluth, the exile, in its most mocking form. Palestine
without Jewish rights is already enjoyed by some 100,000 Jews, and
what sort of a spectacle do they present?" |