“I think I understand this anti-Semitism. It is a complicated movement which I look upon from the standpoint of a Jew, yet without fear or hate. I think I recognize its component parts: A coarse joke, common commercial envy, inherited prejudice, religious intolerance and that which professes to be self-protection.
“I do not regard the Jewish question as a social or a religious one. It is a national problem, and to solve it, we must make it, first of all, a political world question whose solution must come through councils of all the civilized nations; for we are a nation! A nation!”
Many a time I have felt the lashing of emotions roused against the encumbering flesh; but never before as then, when thousands and thousands of men took up the cry: “We are a nation! A nation!”
What a tumult it was! A nation was born again and this was its parliament, ultimately to convene in its own Jerusalem, its historic centre and rightful home. Millions all over the scattered Jewries had their hopes awakened, and thought to see them realized in a not far distant future.
It was my privilege to know Theodore Herzl most intimately. He was a frequent guest in the Vienna home of my brother, who was one of his most trusted lieutenants.
After that Pentecost at Basel I saw the development of the Zionistic Movement from behind the scenes. I should like to say here that the largeness of Dr. Herzl speaks in the fact that when he was told of my changed religious and social views, he nevertheless took me into his confidence and shared with me his innermost thoughts.
Personally, he was one of the most charming men I have ever met. His presence was regal, and the rulers of great empires, recognizing in him the “stuff” of which they were made, treated him with consideration and respect. His cultural achievements were not superficial, in spite of the fact that he was extremely versatile; his literary style was brilliant, yet subdued, and he lacked utterly that assertiveness which too often characterizes the Jew.
His features were sensitive yet firm; as if cut from finest marble. He possessed in a large degree that quality so rare in leaders—disinterestedness, and he viewed the Zionistic Movement from an impersonal standpoint. He was a straight-forward, honest soul, without guile, and those who assisted him by their talents and means had to do it “für die Sache,” and not for any prize which he held out to them. Consequently, he gathered about himself great, apostolic spirits, in which Judaism, fortunately, is not entirely lacking.
Zionism—that is, a Jewish state, preferably in Palestine—as a solution of the Jewish problem, came to him after years of keen, personal suffering which were part of the problem.
He was a Jew in spite of the fact that he was a patriotic Austrian; a Jew, although he interpreted current events for the Gentile readers of the Neüe Freie Presse, which is undeniably one of the most influential German newspapers in the world; a Jew, although the faith of his fathers was only a memory, and, as he told me, he had struggled with the problem of race inheritance much as I had.