Artigo Revisado por pares

Theodor Herzl: The Charismatic Leader

2021; Oxford University Press; Volume: 63; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jcs/csab038

ISSN

2040-4867

Autores

Jess Olson,

Tópico(s)

Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies

Resumo

I am a professor of modern Jewish history, and as such I have taught and written on the Herzl origin story dozens of times. But I have never felt satisfied with my own grasp of the core of the mystery. What turned a secular, cosmopolitan man of letters with a distinguished reputation, largely alienated from his Jewish upbringing and identity, to embrace the fringe movement that was Zionism in the mid-1890s? Most know of Herzl’s conversion to Zionism via Alex Bein’s early biography, which depicts Herzl awakening to Zionism abruptly upon witnessing the degradation of Alfred Dreyfus. Bein came by his version of the story honestly, as this was Herzl’s own claim in his Zionist diaries. But most historians have long since rejected this reductive narrative. Herzl intended his diaries to be a record of the nascence of the Zionist movement. They existed for eventual public consumption, not private inner...

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