Editorials

The last time I discussed in detail the removal of the remains of Theodor Herzl to Palestine, was with his son Hans, now deceased. Since then the problem has been presented to me annually. This year the question comes with more insistence owing to the attempt to create sentiment for the erection of a national memorial to the immortal leader in Haifa, in which he laid the scene of his “Altneuland.” Haifa would have the privilege; Jerusalem is the logical claimant; Tel Aviv has aspirations. All three places appeal to me. Yet two other places in Palestine have prior claims to serve as the last resting place of “a good son of his people,” Modin and Masada. Herzl was in keen sympathy with those Maccabean state-builders of long ago. It was the offer, by the Kadimah of Vienna, to provide “a thousand of Masada” that stirred him to great activity when he first dreamed aloud of his Jewish State.

That his bones, and those of his father, should finally rest in Palestine was Herzl’s wish—because he desired to live there as the pioneer builder of the new active life that he visioned for his people. The tradition bearers, there are still six alive of the inner group of 1896, Bodenheimer, de Haas, Kann, Kremenetzky, Shalit, Schnirrer and York Steiner cherish the Herzl motivation to action. To us the interment of Herzl in Palestine would imply an accomplishment that goes beyond the present status of the Homeland. As with the historic burial of the remains of Joseph in Eretz Israel, so the union of Herzl with Zion would be the seal of achievement. Christopher Wren wrote his own epitaph in St. Paul’s Cathedral; “Look around you, this is my monument.” So we envisage Palestine as Herzl’s monument.

Today there is however a drive of events that bespeaks Herzlian Zionism, the Herzl attitude and viewpoint of Jewish life, the Herzl response of action to circumstance. The destruction of German Jewry is the event; the response Palestine, and only Palestine, can make. This is a conjunction that justifies the symbolism involved in the transfer of Herzl from the Wahring cemetery to some spot in Palestine.

Time too presses those who stood in that breach, shoulder to shoulder with Herzl. We are persuadable. But the implication is the organization of a vast pilgrimage, from “the four corners of the earth,” a concourse representing all the generations of Zionists that have mustered for the cause since 1896. Joseph remained unburied in Palestine till thirty years had lapsed after the crossing of the Jordan. If Zionists are prepared to wend their way with us to Zion, a nation of pall bearers in 1934, next Tammuz 20, thirty years after his demise, would be a fitting date for uniting Theodor Herzl with the land of his aspiration, settled by a people fulfilling his concept of a free rounded-out Jewish life.

RESOLVED…

“Resolved, That boycotting of German goods, products and shipping throughout the civilized world is the only effective weapon for world Jewry and humanity by way of defense and protection of Jewish rights, property and dignity in Germany.

“And that we reaffirm the decision heretofore reached, and now actively on the way in the form of independent action by Jews or non-Jews, to continue and internationally organize and prosecute throughout the world the boycott heretofore instituted and now in existence in the various countries represented by the delegates here assembled and in other countries not so represented.”

This is the substance of resolutions passed at Amsterdam by thirty delegates representing sixteen countries.

An organized boycott against the goods of a nation is a last resource. There are many Jews who believe that the time has not yet come to enforce it and others that it is so double-edged and treacherous a weapon that it hurts him more who wields it than him against whom it is wielded.

It is absurd to believe that the Nazis will relent in their program against the Jews if no boycott against Germany goes into effect. Or if a half-hearted boycott is in operation. The question is: Has world Jewry the strength not only to declare but to maintain a world boycott against Germany, for the operation of a boycott involves the possibility of reaction against the boycotters. So far, it would seem, the argument is all on the side of the boycotters: they have affected the export trade of Germany. If the boycott serves no other purpose, it should serve the important one of informing world Jewry how strong it is. World Jewry may have to take this hazardous step if only to discover how strong it is and what endurance it has in time of crisis, or, on the contrary, how weak it may be. If it is strong and can prove its strength, the calling off of the boycott will be a testimony of the mercy of the strong and not of the timidity of the weak. Hitler must have the difference between the two attitudes sharply differentiated.

Colonel Edward Emerson, of the Friends of Germany, is in tough luck. He tags celebrities, hoping to induce them to play with him and then finds them anything but willing. Col. Emerson had put on his letterheads the names of such honorary members as Col. William Donovan, Robert Morss Lovett and George B. McClellan, formerly Mayor of New York. Which was such news to them that they politely requested Col. Emerson to take their names off his blessed honorary membership list, pronto.

British Labor’s manifesto for a boycott of all German goods is to be welcomed by all enemies of Nazi terrorism as, at least, an expression, on non-racial lines, of an anti-Fascist attitude, whatever we may happen to think or feel of the wisdom or the final efficacy of a boycott on the goods of a nation to enforce good behavior on the governors of that nation.