More than 2,000 New York Zionists assembeld in Town Hall Tuesday evening to pay honor to the memory of Dr. Theodore Herzl, the founder of the modern Zionist Movement on the twenty-third anniversary of his death. The keynote address of the evening was delivered by Louis Lipsky, president of the Zionist Organization of America.
“For twenty-three years Zionists have assembled to mark Dr. Herzl’s memorial day with the utterance of words designed to bring understanding and appreciation of the Great Liberator and to evoke inspiration to continue the labors he so magnificently began,” Mr. Lipsky declared. “He began Zionist life with a vision that sustained him through a few long years of great devotion. With superhuman strcugth he struggled to bring the vision in contact with earthly realities. Whatever he had he sacrificed for its sake. When he was gathered unto his fathers, young in years, still rich in thought, the present which he had helped to make had content. He has left us an imperishable inheritance to bequeath to the children that come after us.”
Dr. Schmarya Levin who is on a brief visit to this country, Mrs. Irma Lindheim, national president of Hadassah, Morris Rothenberg, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Keren Hayesod, and Maurice Samuel, author and lecturer, joined in paying honor to Dr. Herzl’s memory in addresses that followed Mr. Lipsky’s tribute. Cantor Israel Brie sang the memorial prayer.
Mr. Lipsky declared that Dr. Herzl’s vision of a Jewish rejuvenation in Palestine was “a personal revelation.” “An experience external to his own ordinary life,” he declared. “set in motion subconscious racial processes which revealed to him, stark naked, unadorned. uncomplicated, a truth that had been slumbering for generations in the Jewish soul.”
Speaking of the literary achievements of Dr. Herzl. Mr. Lipsky declared that “all else is being forgotten and the shrine at which we how our heads in reverence is occupied by the translucent character of the Zionist leader, whose quality dominates not only these memorial meetings held throughout the world this month, but also the numerous perplexing problems of the Zionist movement.
“It was through Zionist service that he was transformed into the diplomat and leader.” Mr. Lipsky said. “You do not see the feuilleton writer in the man who gave testimony before the Royal Immigration Commission in 1902. You do not see the social lion in the man who greeted the Kaiser at the Gate of David in Jerusalem. You do not see the playwright in the man who conferred with Von Plehve. You do not see the man of fastidious taste in him who invaded the Russian Zionist caucus to plead with an obdurate group to give him an opportunity to utilize Uganda in a grand Zionist manoeuver. He had become the carrier of an everlasting racial responsibility.”
Mr. Lipsky’s address, as well as the other addresses of the evening contained a plea to American Jewry to carry on the work of rebuilding the Jewish Homeland in Palestine. begun in the present form by Dr. Herzl.
“Let us not squander that inheritance.” Mr. Lipsky declared “We face a responsibility which is the inevitable outcome of the great sustained effort made by him whose memory we here join to commemorate. We shall meet that responsibility by exercising those virtues he so greatly exemplified in his Zionist life. He made the age-long ambition of the Jewish people a program of action to which nations have given their recognition and approval. He raised us. in thought, to be a nation among nations. Let us, in fact, keep it there.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
