Between the Lines

I admit that I was greatly disappointed yesterday, the seventy-fifth birthday of Dr. Theodor Herzl, to see that this occasion was practically ignored in America, even by Zionists.

Here in our country of banquets and celebrations, where every Tom, Dick and Harry in Jewish life is honored by fashionable dinners and receptions and where the anniversary of mediocre Jewish leaders is observed with a maximum pomp, nothing has been done to properly commemorate the seventyfifth birthday of the great Dr. Herzl, the father of political Zionism.

IS POLITICS RESPONSIBLE?

Sometimes I think that the Zionist leaders, not only in America but also in London, though utilizing Herzl’s name for their purposes, are far from doing justice to Dr. Herzl. Sometimes I even suspect that there are certain elements in the Zionist movement who have a special interest in shifting Dr. Herzl’s achievements into the background.

Only this can explain why the anniversary of the birth of Herzl was passed over so quietly. It did not even receive the same attention as the sixtieth birthday of Dr. Weizmann last year. It received no attention at all compared to the publicity given and the celebrations with which Zionists observed the sixtieth birthday of Bialik two years ago.

BOYCOTTING HERZL’S FAMILY

The silent boycott attitude which certain Zionist leaders of our time have adopted toward Dr. Herzl—paradoxical as this may sound—is perhaps also responsible for the fact that Dr. Herzl’s son was driven to commit suicide and that his daughter died in poverty with a record not at all a credit to the Zionist movement. With thousands of people deriving a livelihood around the Zionist movement, and with hundreds employed directly in Zionist institutions, Zionist leaders did not for some reason or other see fit to provide employment to the children of Dr. Herzl, thus actually driving them to the misery which resulted in their early death.

It is a well known fact that while Dr. Herzl sacrificed his whole life and his personal earnings to further the Zionist cause, nothing has been done by the Zionist movement to compensate his family in a deserving manner. It is also a well known fact that Dr. Herzl’s son embraced Catholicism out of bitterness over the Zionist’s mistreatment of himself and his sisters.

SALARIES ON GOLD BASLS

I know of Zionist officials who are receiving legendary salaries—some of them on a gold basis—but when I saw the son of Dr. Herzl before he committed suicide, he was actually begging for bread. With the millions of dollars which the Zionist movement spends on publicity, banquets, publications, organizers, collectors and traveling propagandists, no one in the Zionist Executive thought of assigning a few dollars a month more to keep the family of Dr. Herzl on a pension, or to provide its members with work in the Zionist system.

NEGLIGENCE OR ILL-WILL?

This attitude can hardly be explained as mere negligence. It can be explained only as ill-will. That such ill-will toward Herzl’s memory prevails among responsible Zionist leaders—for reasons of jealousy or for other reasons—has been evident for a long time.

It became more evident to me yesterday, on observing how little was done by the Zionist Organization in America and in other countries, to commemorate the seventy-fifth birthday of Herzl on a scale which would only add prestige to the Zionist movement.