Theodore Herzl’s Hidden Legacy 

Why did Theodore Herzl envision Israel as a secular nation for secular Jews? He was a product of his times. Why do so many people call devotion to all Hashem’s laws “primitive”? They are a product of their times as well.  

What are these times? What is the “modern age” that was birthed during Herzl’s lifetime and is enjoying its prime time right now? 

The modern age is a time when everything that is God-made is being replaced by a layer of something man-made. For thousands of years, if you wanted to travel, you used a horse – which Hashem creates. Since 1886, you used a man-made car. If you wanted to heat your food, you used a fire – created by God. Since 1891, you used a man-made oven. If you wanted to speak to someone, you wrote a letter and sent it via pony express. Since 1876, you used a man-made telephone.  

This new layer of man-made technology ushered in a new era of secularism. Man no longer kept his innovations to technology. Secularism is the belief that he can also create man-made ideas on right and wrong.  

The feeling of the time was that by embracing everything modern, all the old things – from horses to fire to religion – would become ancient relics of an obsolete past. 

This is the world that Herzl lived in. This is the state he envisioned; it was a product of his time. 

Why Zionism? 

This is the modern world, but it is not the Torah world.  

The Torah world does not reject technology, after all you are reading this on the internet, maybe even over a mobile device. The Torah world sees all changes as happening within the framework of God’s law – which never changes.  

Torah is as immune to the modern world as is He Who creates it.  

An ability to create a cloud network or AI-powered mobile app doesn’t nullify our covenant with Hashem or change our responsibilities to Him. Technology changes the environment. It doesn’t change the rules.  

We just read parshat Ve’etchanan, where Hashem commands us: Do not add anything to what I command you, nor subtract from it, in order to observe the commandments of God, your God, that I am commanding you. (Devarim 4:2) 

There are no new discoveries or inventions that change the Torah because everything is in the Torah. Man didn’t replace anything God-made because man himself is God-made.  

The only difference is that in 1850, we were required to put down our quill pens and close our inkblots on Shabbat. Today, we turn off our self-driving Tesla’s and tell our chatbot to power down.  

But if Herzl was a passionate secular modernist, how does he agree with the Torah’s view of secular modernism? How can you make the claim that Herzl dedicated his life to proving the fallacy of the modern world? 

The Main Thing Modernism Never Beat 

Did you know that Herzl was looking to settle Jews in Cyprus, Sinai, and South Africa along with Eretz Yisrael? The “Uganda Plan” was offered to him by officers in the British Colonial Office because they knew Herzl wasn’t fixated on Israel.  

Theodor Herzl envisioned a home for the Jewish people, not out of desire to return home, but to protect Jews from antisemitism.  

In the buildup to World War I, France and Germany were plotting ways to destroy one another. Senior officers in both the French and German armies were selling state secrets to the other side for money.  

When, in 1892, one French officer got “caught,” it wasn’t big news. What startled Herzl was the French reaction to the accusation that Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army, was accused of espionage.  

Instead of the familiar cries of “hang the traitor” or “long live France,” he heard shrieks from bloodthirsty mobs demanding they “kill the Jews” and “hang the Yid.” The charges against Dreyfus were proven false, but the mobs in France, using this farce as a way to express their venomous hatred for Jews, showed their hatred to be real.  

Herzl learned what many European Jews knew: If the average Europeans were unleashed against the Jewish People, they would eat all of them alive. He saw their anger. He saw how deep their hatred ran.  Despite all his passions about the modern age wiping away everything bad about the past, he knew this primal hate would not be diluted by modernism.  

He didn’t call for Jews to become better Frenchmen. He didn’t call for a greater effort to advance the merits of secularism or modernism so people would become more enlightened.  

He knew that like the sky, the sea, and the Torah itself, some things will never change. He called for all his brothers and sisters to leave Europe before it was too late. . . and he was right.  

The Zionist movement, founded by Mr. Herzl himself, was an open admission that there are some ancient truths that the modern world will never change.  

The Torah of Herzl 

This is the great Kal V’Chomer (all the more so) of Theodor Herzl.  

If the worst of this world is impervious to modern advances, surely the best of this world remains untouched.  

One of the biggest challenges to Torah life is the feeling that religion is no longer relevant:  

• Why should Jews learn in Yeshiva when the modern world uses stealth bombers and AI– powered drones to win wars?  
• Why should we use tax shekels to fund institutions of Torah learning when our nation is made powerful by scientists and engineers?  
• Why favor Jews in Israel when the entire world is progressing to universal inclusion? 

It all stems from the same root: Why are we clinging onto the ancient ways of Torah in this modern world where everything is changing?  

Herzl’s answer: Not everything is changing. The problems we had thousands of years ago are no different than the ones we have today. The answers are also the same.   

• We fought the war against Iran with planes, but Hashem blessed us with a victory where not a single fighter was killed. The last time this miracle happened was in the Book of Numbers.  

• Over the past thirty years, the number of Yeshiva students has proliferated. Right at the time when the Israeli economy should collapse under the strain from more financial investment in Torah, Hashem blessed us with hundreds of billions in new natural gas discoveries and a half-trillion-dollar high-tech sector. 

• Despite our inclusion of Ukrainian goyim and Israeli Arabs into our society, the people fighting for Israel during this war come from two places: The Jews who are on the battlefield, and those who are in the Beit Knesset and the Beit Midrash to petition Hashem’s protection. There are no Israeli flags among any of the 2 million Arabs living here.  

This, above all, is Theodore Herzl’s greater legacy. 

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David Ben Horin lives in the Jezreel Valley with his family,  Afula’s famous sunflowers, and the local camel, Matilda. David loves to write about Judaism, Torah, Israel, and personal happiness.