Antisemitism Is Reinforcing Jewish Identity in Europe

‘For thirty years,” as one biographer described him, he “was a rather ordinary and typical representative of the central European Jewish upper-middle class.” At various stages of his life the man was a literary critic, a foreign correspondent, and even a playwright. His assimilated cosmopolitan upbringing was markedly lacking religious connection: His writings leave no mention of a bar mitzvah. And yet, he would become the founding father of Zionism, in large part thanks to antisemitism.

In 1895, Theodor Herzl was sent to cover the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a distinguished French Jewish military officer accused of treason. Dreyfus exemplified the assimilated, patriotic, European Jew. The affair became an antisemitic show-trial. “It has been established that justice could be refused to a Jew for the sole reason that he was a Jew,” Herzl reflected following Dreyfus’s conviction. In his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), published the following year, Herzl expanded on the thought: “If France — bastion of emancipation, progress, and universal socialism — [can] get caught up in a maelstrom of antisemitism and let the Parisian crowd chant ‘Kill the Jews!,’ where can they be safe once again, if not in their own country? Assimilation does not solve the problem because the Gentile world will not allow it.”

AB

About the Author

Ari Blaff

Ari Blaff is a reporter for the National Post. He was formerly a news writer for National Review.

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‘For thirty years,” as one biographer described him, he “was a rather ordinary and typical representative of the central European Jewish upper-middle class.” At various stages of his life the man was a literary critic, a foreign correspondent, and even a playwright. His assimilated cosmopolitan upbringing was markedly lacking religious connection: His writings leave no mention of a bar mitzvah. And yet, he would become the founding father of Zionism, in large part thanks to antisemitism.

In 1895, Theodor Herzl was sent to cover the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a distinguished French Jewish military officer accused of treason. Dreyfus exemplified the assimilated, patriotic, European Jew. The affair became an antisemitic show-trial. “It has been established that justice could be refused to a Jew for the sole reason that he was a Jew,” Herzl reflected following Dreyfus’s conviction. In his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), published the following year, Herzl expanded on the thought: “If France — bastion of emancipation, progress, and universal socialism — [can] get caught up in a maelstrom of antisemitism and let the Parisian crowd chant ‘Kill the Jews!,’ where can they be safe once again, if not in their own country? Assimilation does not solve the problem because the Gentile world will not allow it.”