Herzl The King: A Novel About the Founder of Modern Israel

By Norman Kotker

On a hill overlooking Jerusalem, the once-mocked Theodor Herzl lies buried in honor as the man who envisioned the modern Jewish state. Neither warrior nor financier, neither theologian nor trained statesman, he was simply a foresighted Viennese journalist who at the beginning of the 20th century brought together from all parts of Europe those Jews able to assess the coming anti-Semitism and join him in the Zionist movement. Like Moses, Herzl led his people to the promised land but did not get to enter it—dying in his forties, alone, and broken by the still-unrealized task. Here is his story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504028806

Book preview

HERZL THE KING

Also by Norman Kotker

The Earthly Jerusalem

The Holy Land in the Time of Jesus

Miss Rhode Island

Learning About God

Billy in Love

HERZL THE KING

A Novel About the Founder of Modern Israel

Norman Kotker

For David and Ariel

THIS BOOK is based on the life of Theodor Herzl, Herzl the King, as his admirers called him, the creator of the Jewish state. It is a novel, not a biography, and where it seemed advisable I have freely altered names and chronology, invented scenes and conversations, and created characters. A historical note at the back of the book indicates for the reader which characters and portions of the book are factual and which are invented.

Contents

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NOTES

HERZL THE KING

1

HERZL was only thirty-four years old in 1894 at the time of the Dreyfus trial, but already he was bitter. His plays had been successful, but not successful enough. His novel had been badly reviewed. His job was good, but it was only a job. He was not the editor of the newspaper, with the power to make policy. He was the Paris correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna. This meant that when he was in Vienna people thought he was important in Paris, and when he was in Paris people imagined he was important in Vienna. In both places he was a stranger. He was impressive looking, even handsome—full-bearded, strong—but he was afraid of growing fat, and his black hair was beginning to recede. He would not mind so much growing heavy if he were happily married, but his marriage was a disappointment; he could not look at his children without seeing his wife. Her he disliked. He had had mistresses, but nothing ever lasted. He could not afford to set up a woman like a rich man, and the dalliances required for a love affair took so much time they bored him now. He wanted to be direct.

He had been in Paris for more than five years. For the first year, Julie, his wife, lived in Paris too, but then she became unhappy. She blamed it on the French. Now she spent most of the year in Vienna with her family. They were the ones she was close to. She liked speaking German rather than French; it was more comfortable for her. Speaking a foreign language made her tired and uneasy. She also did not like the society of the French Jews. They were either too rich for her or too poor; either way she tended to scorn them. In Vienna there was a niche for her, and she was at home.

But he was not. In Vienna the Jews worshiped money. They went to the theater, but they had no sense of art. All they knew was the stock exchange and the names of the best doctors. They pretended to have some influence in the city, but the poorest Polish nobleman, come to the capital to teach fencing, had more power than even the richest Jew. Certainly more power than Herzl’s employers, the Jews of the Neue Freie Presse.

For a while he had enjoyed society in Paris. He lunched at the Jockey Club, even though he was a Jew, and one of those times the Prince of Wales was lunching there, too. He met a duchess and nodded to her at the races for a year thereafter. He made love, several times, with a countess. He was invited to art galleries and to large dinner parties attended by politicians and important financiers. He learned tennis. He subscribed moderate sums to charities; once he even gave ten francs for the priests in the Sahara. But society became too expensive for him. He stopped going to the races. Once, when he was angry because he had not been invited to a certain ball, he went into a synagogue, not the Great Synagogue, but a small one near the Rue des Rosiers. The place was filled with black-coated Jews who had fled from Russia and Hungarian Jews who had chosen to go to Paris instead of Vienna. One of them looked like Simon Herzl, his grandfather. Herzl remembered some of the prayers. He knew some Hebrew. Heal us and we shall be healed. Save us and we shall be saved. Gather our exiles. But here too he was not at home. The prayer-master recognized him as a stranger and, as a courtesy, invited him up to the front of the little room to join the prayers. But he was embarrassed, and he held back. No, no, he said, and he waved his hand in front of his chest to tell the prayer-master to keep his distance.

Less than a year later he heard the crowd crying out, Death to the Jews! It was an icy day in January. The wind whipped through him as he stood in the press section of the area roped off for the audience gathered on the Champs de Mars in Paris to witness the disgrace of Dreyfus, the traitor and Jew who had made money by selling French military secrets to the enemy, the Germans. The other men in the press section avoided Herzl’s eyes when he looked past them, surprised, to find out who was yelling. Was it the entire crowd or only a few? The cold air made the sound of the yelling tinny. The voice of the general reading the court-martial decree was tinny too, scarcely carrying as far as the press section. The voice annoyed Herzl: Dreyfus was innocent. That was evident. It was a farce. It would have been more suitable to play it indoors, strip Dreyfus of his rank on stage, instead of going through the performance outside with drums beating and lancers on horseback. A troupe of actors could have done the job—costumes from the theatrical furnishings house, an intermission, lemonade in the lobby. That would have been a performance worth reviewing, and also it would have been warm, indoors, away from the river wind that funneled, full force, through the iron struts of the Eiffel Tower into the press section, where Herzl stood, to his regret, in the front row.

Drums began to beat. The general had finished reading the decree. A tall lieutenant who had been standing behind him marched out across the sandy parade ground toward Dreyfus and stood at attention before him. Dreyfus was very still. The lieutenant began to rip buttons off his tunic, starting from the top. When he got to the buttons below the waist, he began having difficulty. The first came off after a little tugging but, for the second, tugging was not enough; the lieutenant had to hold the bottom of Dreyfus’s tunic with one hand and yank with the other. For a moment, it looked as though he were going to grab at Dreyfus himself. Herzl wanted to snicker. The Jews, as they say, have dirty minds. To Herzl’s left, Burchet, the Paris correspondent for the Lyons newspaper, actually did snicker. Pig, he muttered under his breath. Beside Burchet were the two correspondents for the Russian newspapers, both bearded men with pale eyes. They looked on intently. From them there were no laughs.

The lieutenant ripped the epaulettes off Dreyfus’s uniform. Then he reached up to pull the insignia off his cap. He unbuckled Dreyfus’s sword and handed it to an aide. Now it was time for the slap. The drums beat louder. Like the others, Herzl held his breath. The lieutenant raised his right hand, and slapped—harder than was necessary and quickly on both cheeks. At once the drums stopped.

The general: Darras; the lieutenant: Vigée-Lebel; guards who took Dreyfus onto the field: corporals of the Chasseurs, deuxième.

Hastily, Herzl wrote down the names in his notebook. Present: at least two dozen members of the Chamber of Deputies; one, Virel the anti-Semite, another, Merode, a leader of the Catholic party; a good delegation of priests; the Chief of Staff; General Quirain, General Roubier, General Bérard. The Austrian ambassador, the Papal Nuncio, the Duke of Charroux. The crowd, well-dressed and about a thousand or two thousand—not five thousand. Herzl always had difficulty estimating the size of crowds.

Death to the Jews! the crowd began to roar as soon as the drums stopped. Herzl could see the Austrian ambassador in the diplomatic enclosure laughing with Count Dupin-Filipetti of the French Foreign Ministry. Dreyfus himself looked sick; now, perhaps, he might break down. With the crowd shouting and then the shout turning into a chant, two corporals took Dreyfus between them and marched him off the field, east toward the Ecole Militaire.

Suddenly, the lancers mounted their horses and, in perfect formation, rode off. The command that had got them moving could not be heard; the crowd was still too noisy. What were they shouting? The word Jew could be heard. Perhaps also the word guillotine. Death to the Jew! Death to the Jews! Which was it? With a salute toward the enclosure where the higher dignitaries of the nation were sitting, the general marched quickly to where a groom was holding a black horse. He mounted it and rode off after the lancers. A red, white, and blue ribbon marking off the diplomatic enclosure was lowered, and the Papal Nuncio walked out past it to help a lady into her carriage; both were wearing long black gowns.

Beside Herzl the correspondents were beginning to talk to each other. A few scribbled in notebooks, their fingers icy. A few laughed and joked. Leoni of Milan, a short, dark-haired man with a wen on his cheek, a Jew, pushed through the crowd and came up to take Herzl by the arm. Come, he said, come, have a drink with me. Before I write, I want to know your opinion.

Theater, Herzl answered sharply. Theater only, that is what I think. A performance.

The crowd too?

Herzl was silent for a minute. He turned the corners of his mouth down, a nervous, sarcastic gesture he made sometimes when he was angry. Ah, the crowd, he said, they hardly matter.

Some of his colleagues thought of themselves as historians, historians of the present, but Herzl did not. He wasn’t taken in in this way. To him the day’s events were trite, one more political maneuver. Why deceive yourself? he had once said to a fellow journalist. In a hundred years everything you say will have become a lie. Leoni would report in his story the color of the lancers’ uniforms; he would make it a point to include an account of what the weather was like.

It is too cold to stay out, Herzl said to him. Some other time we can drink. Today I’ll run home.

But Leoni was not to be shaken off.

I would guess the crowd at almost ten thousand. Look. He bit his lips. They stretch almost all the way back to the Tower gardens.

Herzl shrugged. It is a big crowd. A lot of Frenchmen.

Another newspaperman standing beside Herzl heard Leoni’s estimate.

Three thousand to five thousand. he said firmly. No more than that.

Leoni nodded. Then that’s the number I’ll put in my dispatch. He looked relieved. If you’ll do the same. As for the rest, if there are any, they are phantoms.

The other newspaperman agreed. Herzl agreed too. He felt chilled, untalkative. Both his beard and his mustache were damp. He was warmly dressed everywhere but on his feet. He should have worn two pairs of stockings. I am going home now, he said to the two other men. I want to get somewhere warm. He could feel a soreness beginning in his throat and a chill creeping through his chest, his weakest spot. He had to watch out for his heart; that was the doctor’s advice. Now his toes were numb, and now his fingers were getting numb too. Ah, he said to himself, I think I’m really getting it—and he was right. For the upshot of the day was that he caught cold.

It took a long time to go away. For more than a month this cold hung on. Nothing seemed to get rid of it. Why not, he asked himself, why not be exposed to the damp sea air? It wasn’t getting better anyway. There was a quick train to La Rochelle. He would go there, he decided one day, to see Dreyfus sent into exile, combine a business journey with a pleasure trip, spend a day by the sea. On the promenade beside the sea wall, overlooking a rocky beach where surf was breaking, he encountered another journalist in La Rochelle on the same errand: Leoni. So he was not the only Jew in town. Nor the only correspondent. Burchet is here also, Leoni told him, "and Klahr of the Süddeutsches Stern. They walked back toward the Hotel de France, where all the journalists were staying, a big man and a very short one, looking out of place on the promenade where workmen in padded blue jackets hurried by, or fishermen lounged outside a café. This is a boring city, Leoni said, like the edge of the earth."

At the hotel they met the other correspondents. Herzl was surprised to see so many there. Beside himself and Leoni there were four others, and only one of these, Burchet, was French. They were all men he knew. In the drafty hotel dining room they ate dinner together at a large round table, almost the only guests except for a dignified old gentleman, obviously a permanent resident, and a few naval officers, perhaps the ones who would be escorting Dreyfus across the sea to Devil’s Island.

A dirty business, said Burchet, a pot-bellied Parisian who had earlier turned up his nose at the local food, saying, Fish is not a food for civilized men. He addressed himself to Klahr, the German. The German hunched his heavy shoulders and gave no answer; he only smiled a little, tightly.

Herzl jumped in. Dirty—yes, it is, he said. An Austrian, he was neutral in the enmity between the French and the Germans. "Take a vote here, you’ll see we’d all judge Dreyfus innocent. Is he a spy? He seems too timid for that. I’ve heard rumors someone else is responsible. I don’t know who."

There’s something to the rumors, Burchet said. He began to pick his teeth. He was a fervent republican.

Whoever’s guilty is being protected by the army. Or by the Monarchists; maybe even the Jesuits. Herzl tapped the table with his finger. They’re trying to whip up patriotism and anti-German sentiment. They can use it to destroy the republic and put another incompetent on the throne.

Burchet smiled That’s true, my friend, he said. That’s true. Then he turned to Herzl. So, the Kaiser is attacked; the republic is attacked; the struggle goes on between Germany and France.

He spoke softly. But it is a Jew who is going to Devil’s Island. Was there a trace of maliciousness in his voice?

The other men nodded gently. Leoni stirred uneasily in his chair. Herzl cleared his throat before he answered. Out of thirty-five million Frenchmen, he said mildly, they had to choose someone.

It was not a good answer. Burchet looked away. The others looked away too. Perhaps they were a little disappointed.

The next morning Dreyfus was ushered aboard ship. A pale man, he looked like a clerk once he was out of his captain’s uniform, and he kept his eyes straight ahead, not looking back at France as he was marched aboard. Herzl decided not to go back to Paris. It was a Friday anyway. He was tired. It was incumbent on him to rest. A boat went daily to carry goods and passengers to the islands that lay off the coast near La Rochelle. He would take an excursion upon it, stay over an extra day. He took a taxi down to the quay, bought a ticket, and climbed aboard. There were two islands that he could visit. He chose the first, which took only an hour to reach.

As soon as the boat was outside the harbor, Herzl stood on the deck and let the wet salt wind hit his face. The boat rounded a cape where pines bordered the beach, and then they were out on the open ocean. The sun was shining and one of the sailors sat singing, perched on some boxes that were heaped on the deck. Herzl stretched to his full height and then sat down on a box beside him. I am sailing on the Atlantic, he thought. In a half hour the island they were approaching spread out alongside—a little town huddled around a dock, a few isolated stone farmhouses, vineyards and orchards, a few stucco villas set among gardens. One of these, the sailor said, belonged to Sarah Bernhardt. Maybe she’ll come next summer, the sailor said. It is on this boat that she travels. You should see the visitors when she comes. She is like a queen.

In the town Herzl walked uphill to an old fortification, to ramparts from which he could see the ocean on both sides of him, encompassing the island’s entire breadth. There he stopped and looked out. The view made his heart turn with pleasure. A few islanders could be seen—one man walking through a field, another riding a donkey along a road, another a marketer in the town. These were the inhabitants. Herzl decided to walk across the island. A road went from one coast to the other. He checked his watch and soon he was out in the countryside, walking south. It was a pleasant day, warmer by the sea than it would be in Paris. No one else was on the road. He walked among hay meadows that were pale and frosted over and stumpy gray vineyards. The vines looked dead, but they were living things, waiting for time to restore them to what they once had been. Occasionally there was a house, and once a barking dog, defending his home, charged out to nip at Herzl’s heels. Soon the road rose, and Herzl could see the ocean toward which he was walking. A few more minutes took him to a village, eight or ten whitewashed houses built on either side of the road and beyond them a sandy beach.

In the village one house door was open. There he stopped. May I buy coffee? he asked the old woman who greeted him, peering at him curiously, a prosperous and handsome, even impressive-looking gentleman. You may have it, she said, and yesterday’s bread, but free. Herzl went into her whitewashed kitchen and sat by a fireplace to eat. Though it was cold, there was no fire in the fireplace. A poor but honest peasant woman, he thought, the backbone of France. It is an enchanting place, he said.

Ah, but poor, she answered. We are all poor fishermen and farmers. The fishermen live on the west; the farmers on the eastern half, on the side closer to France. But neither of them have enough money. Her wrinkled face bobbed from side to side. Which are you? Herzl asked. Fisher or farmer? We are farmers here. Madame Mesnard, she said. Herzl rose. Monsieur Herzl, he said, bowing.

The old woman looked at him with warmth. Ah, then, she said, you are an Alsatian. No, I am not. I am Viennese. Like Marie Antoinette. Exactly, madame, but not so pretty.

The woman pursed her lips and shook her head flirtatiously. Then, abruptly, she changed the subject. There is one school here for children up to twelve. Then they can go to the mainland, if they want. There are also three churches. Next to the abbey is the villa of the actress, Bernhardt. You should see it. The woman crossed herself. Imagine, she said, her little hands fluttering. The monks have departed, and a Jew has come to take their place. Not only a Jew, but an actress.

Herzl put his coffee cup down carefully. It is an improvement, madame, he said. You are much better off. Then he stood up.

The woman was surprised. Have I offended you? she asked. No matter. Even here some people laugh at the church. She crossed herself again. Sit down, you haven’t finished eating.

Rudely, Herzl didn’t answer. He merely bowed, picked up his hat, and walked out of the room. Even before he reached the door he put his hat on. She had opened her house to him, but why not be offensive, he thought. I will never see her again. But he didn’t say what it was that had made him angry.

Outdoors, he began walking briskly back toward the port. Suddenly he recalled something that had happened to him in Paris a few years before. Not since he had been at the university had anyone insulted him by calling him a Jew. But one day, as a result of a trivial disagreement at a stationer’s shop, it had happened, a shop he had been patronizing for years. The proprietor had always been polite, never friendly. On this day Herzl had gone in to exchange a pen he had purchased a few days earlier. Too much pressure made the nib divide and write a double line. He explained the problem to the owner’s wife, who looked at him disapprovingly and called over her husband. The man inspected the pen. We can’t take this back, he said.

But I bought it only last week, and it’s never worked properly.

It’s been damaged since it left the shop.

On the contrary! Herzl raised his voice a little. As soon as I began using it, I could see it didn’t work well.

Then you should have returned it immediately. The proprietor shrugged.

Herzl got angry. I don’t have time to chase back and forth to the store. When I pass by, I said to myself, then I’ll return it.

And meanwhile, the stationer said, you wrote with it. I’m afraid I can’t help you. It’s too expensive.

If I don’t get satisfaction, I’ll buy elsewhere, Herzl said.

Go ahead. That’s up to you, answered the proprietor’s wife.

Herzl turned around to walk out. As his back was turned, he heard the woman say: Jew! We don’t want your money.

When he got home, he told his wife about it. Why should you be surprised? she asked him, Why expect anything different? She hated Christians, having been taught to do so by her parents.

They were wealthy but crude people. Herzl himself had once heard her father inquire, A Jew or a Gentile? after having been told that a stranger had been run over by a carriage on the street outside his house. What difference can it possibly make? Herzl had exclaimed. The old man had ignored him. Don’t you have any faith in humanity? Herzl shouted at his wife after the episode at the stationer’s. Why should you be angry with me? she answered in a soft voice, turning her back on him. It’s the stationer’s wife who offended you.

Herzl walked along the island road, away from the old woman’s house. It was a deserted road and he was all alone. If he stumbled and fell, no one would pick him up. I could die here, he thought, and for a week, a month, no one would find me.

That night he went back to Paris. The seaside suddenly annoyed him. The night train he took was an express. With great swiftness it carried him through a land that was almost empty of Jews. Perhaps there were a few in Poitiers, perhaps a few in Tours, but on the land itself, on all sides, there were only Frenchmen on their fields and hills, Frenchmen behind and ahead. Beneath in the graves there were Frenchmen and, for all he knew, above in the heavens they were there too. Past them in the darkness he moved eastward over land, as Dreyfus was moving westward, over water.

Uneasily he searched out the window, trying to find some familiar sight in the landscape—a hill, a loaded hayrick, a farmhouse, a church steeple. But there was nothing for him to see. The only thing visible was his own reflection in the window, his face mottled with dust, his eyes unreadable, his wristwatch hazily showing time. Herzl looked down at it. It said nine o’clock. For three hours the Sabbath had been moving over him, as it moved over all the Jews of Europe. The earth was turning in the darkness and, above it, the Jews turned, floating on nothing too. Dark-coated flocks, millions of them, they hovered precariously over the cities and over the snowy villages of the East.

Within a week Herzl had set aside the play he had been working on—a comedy, Our Katie—and began writing a new book, a political book, a proposal for the establishment of a Jewish state. What a daring idea! And original—perhaps a valuable contribution to the debate on the Jewish question. It didn’t take long for him to establish the theme of the book: The Jews are a people like any other—like the Czechs, the Swedes, the Greeks—and like any other people, they should have their own nation. The idea came to possess him. Why, he didn’t know. It was as though a great bird had come down and covered him with a heavy cloak. He was wrapped in the idea. It closed around him. Everywhere he went, he carried it on his shoulders. Nothing else interested him. Each night he sat at his desk, making notes, writing down detail after detail to make the state believable, to make it exist, as it were, first in his imagination and then on paper, before it could ever exist in reality. For if the Czechs, who already had land, had difficulty in getting a state, imagine how difficult it would be for Jews, who had no land. He set up municipal councils, established and discarded legislative houses, invented oligarchies, flirted briefly with the idea of a monarchy—but who would be king? The Messiah? A fantasy! He established opera companies and theater groups, and like Adam in Eden, named them. He inaugurated a school system and figured out its financing; settled on the ideal ratio of yeomen to industrial workers; set a target date for a national income of a million pounds sterling. He was forever jotting down ideas. He would walk across the street in Paris and remember that he had forgotten to include salaries for traffic policemen in the municipal budget of his new capital and then rush home to revise his national economy as a result.

Often his obsession embarrassed him; it was like a boy’s imaginary kingdom, complete with toy soldiers and castles. One day he thought: Am I a madman, a religious fanatic? He wanted to return to writing comedies, as he always had, to have human passions motivating his characters, instead of history and religion. But he kept on. To his surprise, he found that it was easier for him to write this than anything he had ever written before.

Now everywhere he went he saw Jews. Some were framed in black—hats, beards, sidecurls, long coats. He would see two or three like this walking together when he went to the ghetto to walk and look. Some moved always—fat women hawking fish on the sidewalk; white-aproned butchers swaying back and forth as they talked to their customers; shoppers testing fruit or touching bread loaves or picking pennies from their wallets. On the more prosperous streets outside the ghetto, they were no less quick. They were a nervous people, hands and fingers always going.

He would go to the opera and search for Jewish faces in the crowd. Jewish families would be strolling in the lobby, splendidly dressed and a little plump. When he found one, or thought he found one, he would stare at it, almost rudely, and memorize it, trying to transplant it south to his imaginary new land. Sometimes he walked down the street and saw a face that he thought was Jewish. He would glance surreptitiously at it and put it in his catalogue. Many passers-by caught him looking and were puzzled or annoyed. The men looked back; they thought they must know him. He had a Jew’s face too. The women were more cautious, and some were offended. One day, two young girls, arm in arm, turned back to look at him after he had stared at them. Pig! one called back over her shoulder. He was not embarrassed. He laughed aloud; her spirit pleased him.

After these expeditions, he found it easier to work on his book. The government and economic structures that he was manufacturing seemed more real.

Vienna wrote him twice asking for a report on the Paris theater season, and on the visit of the Prince of Serbia. There were colonial troubles between the Arabs and French settlers in Tunisia, but Herzl ignored them, neglecting his work. He abandoned thoughts of women. Occasionally he would scribble a note to his wife or children; sometimes he would eat a full meal. He spent the weeks like a romantic artist, building a plot.

Sometimes he got discouraged and decided to abandon the book. It is foolish, he told himself, a joke. It’s like a Utopia. The powers will never allow it. The Rothschilds will refuse to cooperate. The Viennese Jews will laugh. The native Arabs will resent it. The Turks will be hostile. At these times he felt like a spider weaving plans, a crafty insect in a dark corner, working away meaninglessly while the world went about its business. But then he remembered the founding of America and the establishment of Syracuse. He thought of Joshua and Moses, and of William Penn, King Charles’s friend. He thought of frozen Russia, the Cossacks, the thick-headed, boozy peasants. How they rejoiced when Jewish blood was spilled! Then he set to work again.

Within a month he had finished a draft of the book. It was short and unrefined, but it was complete. It existed: there was a Jewish state now, as there was a Don Giovanni, a Faust, a Heavenly Jerusalem, a Ten Commandments. The night he finished writing the last section to be done, a description of the process by which industrial leaders would participate in state decisions—the beginning and the end had both been written the first week—he placed the manuscript in a neat pile on his desk. It was no more than a hundred pages, carefully written in a small hand with black ink. The lines were almost straight. There was no draft in the room and hardly any possibility of one; but he was worried that one might come and disarray the pile of papers, and so he took a potted plant off the windowsill and put it on top of the pile. For a moment he thought he might do better to put the Bible on top, but he discarded that—too emotional. He took some notepaper and a pocket pen, and went outdoors. For an hour or two he walked through the streets of Paris, past the Chamber of Deputies, past the Invalides, past the residence of the President of the Republic, past the building of the Academy. Then, on one of the new boulevards where hundreds of people strolled and where he could have a good view of the new opera building, he sat down at a café and ordered a small bottle of champagne. He sat drinking and wrote two brief letters, one