Israeli currency 10 Sheqalim banknote 1978 Bank of Israel
Obverse: Portrait of Theodor Herzl; the entrance gate to Mount Herzl in Jerusalem; the denomination "Ten Sheqalim" and "Bank of Israel" in Hebrew.
Reverse: Zion Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem; "Bank of Israel" in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
Watermark: Profile of Theodor Herzl.
Colour of numbering: Black.
Signatures: Governor of the Bank Arnon Gafni; Chairman of the Advisory Council David Horowitz.
Design: Paul Kor, Adrian Senger.
Year: 1978.
Date of issue: February 24, 1980.
Ceased to be legal tender: September 4, 1986.
Size: 147 X 76 mm.
Dominant colour: Blue.
Israel Banknotes - Israel Paper Money
Currency reform 1980, 10 Lirot = 1 Sheqel.
1 Sheqel 5 Sheqalim 10 Sheqalim 50 Sheqalim 100 Sheqalim
500 Sheqalim 1000 Sheqalim 5000 Sheqalim 10000 Sheqalim
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl, (born May 2, 1860, Budapest, Hungary, Austrian Empire [now in Hungary]—died July 3, 1904, Edlach, Austria), founder of the political form of Zionism, a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. His pamphlet The Jewish State (1896) proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a world council of nations. He organized a world congress of Zionists that met in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897 and became first president of the World Zionist Organization, established by the congress. Although Herzl died more than 40 years before the establishment of the State of Israel, he was an indefatigable organizer, propagandist, and diplomat who had much to do with making Zionism into a political movement of worldwide significance.
Herzl is specifically mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence.
Early life
Theodor Herzl was born in Tabak Gasse, a street in the Jewish quarter of Pest (now eastern part of Budapest), Kingdom of Hungary (now Hungary), to a secular Jewish family. His father's family were originally from Zimony (today Zemun, Serbia). He was the second child of Jeanette and Jakob Herzl, who were German-speaking, assimilated Jews.
Jakob Herzl (1836–1902), Herzl's father, was a highly successful businessman. Herzl had one sister, Pauline, a year older than he was, who died suddenly on February 7, 1878, of typhus. Theodor lived with his family in a house next to the Dohány Street Synagogue (formerly known as Tabakgasse Synagogue) located in Belváros, the inner city of the historical old town of Pest, in the eastern section of Budapest.
As a youth, Herzl aspired to follow in the footsteps of Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, but did not succeed in the sciences and instead developed a growing enthusiasm for poetry and the humanities. This passion later developed into a successful career in journalism and a less-celebrated pursuit of playwrighting. According to Amos Elon, as a young man, Herzl was an ardent Germanophile who saw the Germans as the best Kulturvolk (cultured people) in Central Europe and embraced the German ideal of Bildung, whereby reading great works of literature by Goethe and Shakespeare could allow one to appreciate the beautiful things in life, and thus become a morally better person (the Bildung theory tended to equate beauty with goodness). Through Bildung, Herzl believed that Hungarian Jews such as himself could shake off their "shameful Jewish characteristics" caused by long centuries of impoverishment and oppression, and become civilized Central Europeans, a true Kulturvolk along the German lines.
In 1878, after the death of his sister, Pauline, the family moved to Vienna, Austria-Hungary, and lived in the 9th district, Alsergrund. At the University of Vienna, Herzl studied law. As a young law student, Herzl became a member of the German nationalist Burschenschaft (fraternity) Albia, which had the motto Ehre, Freiheit, Vaterland ("Honor, Freedom, Fatherland"). He later resigned in protest at the organisation's antisemitism.
After a brief legal career in the University of Vienna and Salzburg, he devoted himself to journalism and literature, working as a journalist for a Viennese newspaper and a correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, in Paris, occasionally making special trips to London and Istanbul. He later became literary editor of Neue Freie Presse, and wrote several comedies and dramas for the Viennese stage. His early work did not focus on Jewish life. It was of the feuilleton order, descriptive rather than political.
Zionist intellectual and activist
As the Paris correspondent for Neue Freie Presse, Herzl followed the Dreyfus affair, a political scandal that divided the Third French Republic from 1894 until its resolution in 1906. It was a notorious antisemitic incident in France in which a Jewish French army captain was falsely convicted of spying for Germany. Herzl was witness to mass rallies in Paris following the Dreyfus trial. There has been some controversy surrounding the impact that this event had on Herzl and his conversion to Zionism. Herzl himself stated that the Dreyfus case turned him into a Zionist and that he was particularly affected by chants of "Death to the Jews!" from the crowds. This had been the widely held belief for some time. However, some modern scholars now believe that due to little mention of the Dreyfus affair in Herzl's earlier accounts and a seemingly contrary reference he made in them to shouts of "Death to the traitor!" that he may have exaggerated the influence it had on him in order to create further support for his goals.
Jacques Kornberg claims that the Dreyfus influence was a myth that Herzl did not feel necessary to deflate and that he also believed that Dreyfus was guilty. Another modern claim is that, while upset by antisemitism evident in French society, Herzl, like most contemporary observers, initially believed in Dreyfus' guilt and only claimed to have been inspired by the affair years later when it had become an international cause célèbre and that, rather, it was the rise to power of the antisemitic demagogue Karl Lueger in Vienna in 1895 that seems to have had a greater effect on Herzl, before the pro-Dreyfus campaign had fully emerged. It was at this time that Herzl wrote his play "The New Ghetto," which shows the ambivalence and lack of real security and equality of emancipated, well-to-do Jews in Vienna.
According to Henry Wickham Steed, Herzl was initially "fanatically devoted to the propagation of Jewish-German 'Liberal' assimilationist doctrine". However, Herzl came to reject his early ideas regarding Jewish emancipation and assimilation and to believe that the Jews must remove themselves from Europe. Herzl grew to believe that antisemitism could not be defeated or cured, only avoided, and that the only way to avoid it was the establishment of a Jewish state. In June, 1895, he wrote in his diary: "In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-semitism ... Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-semitism." Herzl's editors of Neue Freie Presse refused any publication of his Zionist political activities. A mental clash gripped Herzl, between the craving for literary success and a desire to act as a public figure. Around this time, Herzl started writing pamphlets about 'A Jewish State'. Herzl claimed that these pamphlets resulted in the establishment of the Zionist Movement, and they did play a large role in the movement's rise and success. His testimony before the British Royal Commission reflected his fundamental, romantic liberal view on life as the 'Problem of the Jews'.
Beginning in late 1895, Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat (The State of the Jews), which was published February 1896 to immediate acclaim and controversy. The book argued that the Jewish people should leave Europe if they wished to, either for Argentina or, preferably, for Palestine, their historic homeland. The Jews possessed a nationality; all they were missing was a nation and a state of their own. Only through a Jewish state could they avoid antisemitism, express their culture freely and practice their religion without hindrance. Herzl’s ideas spread rapidly throughout the Jewish world and attracted international attention. Supporters of existing Zionist movements, such as the Hovevei Zion, immediately allied themselves with him, but establishment Jewry vilified him and considered his ideas as a threat to their attempts at integration and a rebellion against God.
A philosophy for a homeland
In Der Judenstaat he writes:
"The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable numbers. Wherever it does not exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, even in highly civilised countries—see, for instance, France—so long as the Jewish question is not solved on the political level."
The book concludes:
Therefore I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again.
Let me repeat once more my opening words: The Jews who wish for a State will have it.
We shall live at last as free men on our own soil, and die peacefully in our own homes.
The world will be freed by our liberty, enriched by our wealth, magnified by our greatness.
And whatever we attempt there to accomplish for our own welfare, will react powerfully and beneficially for the good of humanity.
Diplomatic liaison with the Ottomans
Herzl began to energetically promote his ideas, continually attracting supporters, Jewish and non-Jewish. According to Norman Rose, Herzl "mapped out for himself the role of martyr ... as the Parnell of the Jews".
On March 10, 1896, Herzl was visited by Reverend William Hechler, the Anglican minister to the British Embassy. Hechler had read Herzl's Der Judenstaat, and the meeting became central to the eventual legitimization of Herzl and Zionism., Herzl later wrote in his diary, "Next we came to the heart of the business. I said to him: (Theodor Herzl to Rev. William Hechler) I must put myself into direct and publicly known relations with a responsible or non responsible ruler – that is, with a minister of state or a prince. Then the Jews will believe in me and follow me. The most suitable personage would be the German Kaiser." Hechler arranged an extended audience with Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, in April, 1896. The Grand Duke was the uncle of the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Through the efforts of Hechler and the Grand Duke, Herzl publicly met Wilhelm II in 1898. The meeting significantly advanced Herzl's and Zionism's legitimacy in Jewish and world opinion.
In May 1896, the English translation of Der Judenstaat appeared in London as The Jewish State. Herzl had earlier confessed to his friend Max Bodenheimer that he "wrote what I had to say without knowing my predecessors, and it can be assumed that I would not have written it [Der Judenstaat] had I been familiar with the literature".
In Istanbul, Ottoman Empire, June 15, 1896, Herzl saw an opportunity. With the assistance of Count Filip Michał Newleński, a sympathetic Polish émigré with political contacts in the Ottoman Court, Herzl attempted to meet Sultan Abdulhamid II in order to present his solution of a Jewish State to the Sultan directly. He failed to obtain an audience but did succeed in visiting a number of highly placed individuals, including the Grand Vizier, who received him as a journalist representing the Neue Freie Presse. Herzl presented his proposal to the Grand Vizier: the Jews would pay the Turkish foreign debt and attempt to help regulate Turkish finances if they were given Palestine as a Jewish homeland under Turkish rule. Prior to leaving Istanbul, June 29, 1896, Newleński obtained for Herzl a symbolic medal of honor. The medal, the "Commander's Cross of the Order of the Medjidie", was a public relations affirmation for Herzl and the Jewish world of the seriousness of the negotiations.
Five years later, May 17, 1901, Herzl did meet with Sultan Abdulhamid II, but the Sultan refused Theodor Herzl's offer to consolidate the Ottoman debt in exchange for a charter allowing the Zionists access to Palestine.
Returning from Istanbul, Herzl traveled to London to report back to the Maccabeans, a proto-Zionist group of established English Jews led by Colonel Albert Goldsmid. In November 1895 they received him with curiosity, indifference and coldness. Israel Zangwill bitterly opposed Herzl, but after Istanbul Goldsmid agreed to support Herzl. In London's East End, a community of primarily Yiddish speaking recent Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Herzl addressed a mass rally of thousands on July 12, 1896 and was received with acclaim. They granted Herzl the mandate of leadership for Zionism. Within six months this mandate had been expanded throughout Zionist Jewry: the Zionist movement grew rapidly.
A World Congress
In 1897, at considerable personal expense, he founded Die Welt of Vienna, Austria-Hungary, and planned the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland. He was elected president (a position he held until his death in 1904), and in 1898 he began a series of diplomatic initiatives to build support for a Jewish country. He was received by Wilhelm II on several occasions, one of them in Jerusalem, and attended the Hague Peace Conference, enjoying a warm reception from many statesmen there.
His work on Autoemancipation was pre-figured by a similar conclusion drawn by Marx's friend Moses Hess, in Rome and Jerusalem (1862). Pinkser had never yet read it, but was aware of the distant and far off Hibbat Zion. Herzl's philosophical instruction highlighted the weaknesses and vulnerabilities. To Herzl each dictator or leader had a nationalistic identity, even down to the Irish from Wolfe Tone onwards. He was drawn to the mawkishness of Judaism rendered distinctively as German. But he remained convinced that Germany was the centre (Hauptsitz) of antisemitism rather than France. In a much quoted aside he noted "If there is one thing I should like to be, it is a member of old Prussian nobility". Herzl appealed to the nobility of Jewish England - the Rothschilds, Sir Samuel Montagu, later cabinet minister, to the Chief Rabbis of France and Vienna, the railroad magnate, Baron Hirsch.
He fared best with Israel Zangwill, and Max Nordau. They were both well-known writers or 'men of letters'—imagination that engenders understanding. Hirsch's correspondence led nowhere. Baron Albert Rothschild had little to do with the Jews. Herzl was disliked by the bankers (Finanzjuden) and detested them. Herzl was defiant of their social authority. He also shared Pinkser's pessimistic opinion that the Jews had no future in Europe; that they were too antisemitic to tolerate because each country in Europe had tried antisemitic assimilation. In Berlin they said Juden raus in a well worn phrase. Herzl therefore advocated a mass exodus from Europe to the Judenstaat. Pinkser's manifesto was a cry for help; a warning to others Mahnruf, a call for attention to their plight. Herzl's vision was less about mental states of Jewry, and more about delivering prescriptive answers about land. "The idea that i have developed is a very old one; it is the restoration of the Jewish State" was a follow-up of Pinkser's early weaker version Mahnruf an seine Stammesgenossen von einem nassichen Juden.
Herzl, Zionism and the Holy Land
Herzl visited Jerusalem for the first time in October 1898. He deliberately coordinated his visit with that of Wilhelm II to secure what he thought had been prearranged with the aid of Rev. William Hechler, public world power recognition of himself and Zionism. Herzl and Wilhelm II first met publicly on October 29, at Mikveh Israel, near present-day Holon, Israel. It was a brief but historic meeting. He had a second formal, public audience with the emperor at the latter's tent camp on Street of the Prophets in Jerusalem on November 2, 1898. The English Zionist Federation, the local branch of the World Zionist Organization was founded in 1899, that Herzl had established in Austria in 1897.
In 1902–1903, Herzl was invited to give evidence before the British Royal Commission on Alien Immigration. His appearance brought him into close contact with members of the British government, particularly with Joseph Chamberlain, then secretary of state for the colonies, through whom he negotiated with the Egyptian government for a charter for the settlement of the Jews in Al 'Arish in the Sinai Peninsula, adjoining southern Palestine.
In 1903, Herzl attempted to obtain support for the Jewish homeland from Pope Pius X, an idea broached at 6th Zionist Congress. Palestine could offer a safe refuge for those fleeing persecution in Russia. Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val ordained that the Church's policy was explained non possumus on such matters, decreeing that as long as the Jews denied the divinity of Christ, the Catholics could not make a declaration in their favour. The pogroms included 47 Jews murdered at Kishinev, and hundreds more injured, their property looted and destroyed. The delegates to the Congress backed Herzl's line of argument. A vociferous minority of opposition came from those who thought adoption of a Ugandan Plan over Palestine was a sell-out. Still later the East African Scheme failed, dying with Herzl himself. It was taken off the agenda in 1905. Yet another nationalistic splinter group with Zionist aspirations, in England called the Jewish Territorial Association (JTO) was founded.
After the failure of that scheme, which took him to Cairo, he received, through Leopold Greenberg, an offer (August 1903) from the British government to facilitate a large Jewish settlement, with autonomous government and under British suzerainty, in British East Africa. At the same time, the Zionist movement was threatened by the Russian government. Accordingly, Herzl visited St. Petersburg and was received by Sergei Witte, then finance minister, and Viacheslav Plehve, minister of the interior, the latter placing on record the attitude of his government toward the Zionist movement. On that occasion Herzl submitted proposals for the amelioration of the Jewish position in Russia. He published the Russian statement, and brought the British offer, commonly known as the "Uganda Project", before the Sixth Zionist Congress (Basel, August 1903), carrying the majority (295:178, 98 abstentions) on the question of investigating this offer, after the Russian delegation stormed out. In 1905 the 6th Zionist Congress, after investigations, decided to decline the British offer and firmly committed itself to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A Heimstatte — a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine secured by public law.
Death and burial
Herzl did not live to see the rejection of the Uganda plan. At 5 p.m. July 3, 1904, in Edlach, a village inside Reichenau an der Rax, Lower Austria, Theodor Herzl, having been diagnosed with a heart issue earlier in the year, died of cardiac sclerosis. A day before his death, he told the Reverend William H. Hechler: "Greet Palestine for me. I gave my heart's blood for my people."
His will stipulated that he should have the poorest-class funeral without speeches or flowers and he added, "I wish to be buried in the vault beside my father, and to lie there till the Jewish people shall take my remains to Israel". Nevertheless, some six thousand followed Herzl's hearse, and the funeral was long and chaotic. Despite Herzl's request that no speeches be made, a brief eulogy was delivered by David Wolffsohn. Hans Herzl, then thirteen, read the kaddish.
In 1949, his remains were moved from Vienna to be reburied on the top of Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, named in his memory.
Legacy and honors
Herzl Day (Hebrew: יום הרצל) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Iyar, to commemorate the life and vision of Zionist leader Theodor Herzl.
Zion Gate in the Old City of Jerusalem
Zion Gate (Shaar Zion, Arabic: Bab Sahyun) also known in Arabic as Bab Harat al-Yahud ("Jewish Quarter Gate"), or Bab an-Nabi Dawud ("Prophet David Gate"), is one of eight gates in the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Zion Gate was built in July 1540, west of the location of the medieval gate, which was a direct continuation of the Street of the Jews (also known the Cardo). Six sentry towers were erected in the southern segment of the wall, four of them situated in the Mount Zion section.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, a leper colony, slaughter house and livestock market were situated in the vicinity of Zion Gate. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, shops were built along the length of the southern wall which were torn down during the British Mandate.
On May 13, 1948, as the British Army withdrew from Jerusalem, a major from the Suffolk Regiment presented Mordechai Weingarten with the key for the Zion Gate.
In 2008, restoration work was carried out on the gate, marking its 468th birthday.
Mount Herzl in Jerusalem
Mount Herzl (Hebrew: הר הרצל Har Hertsel), also Har ha-Zikaron (הר הזכרון lit. "Mount of Remembrance"), is the site of Israel's national cemetery and other memorial and educational facilities, found on the west side of Jerusalem beside the Jerusalem Forest.
It is named after Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism. Herzl's tomb lies at the top of the hill. Yad Vashem, which commemorates the Holocaust, lies to the west of Mt. Herzl. Israel's war dead are also buried there. Mount Herzl is 834 meters above sea level. Every plot section in Mount Herzl has a broad plaza for memorial services. Most state memorial ceremonies for those killed at war are conducted in the National Military and Police cemetery.
History
In 1934, Zionist leader Menahem Ussishkin organized the re-interment of Leon Pinsker in Nicanor Cave on Mount Scopus in an attempt to build a pantheon for the great leaders of the Jewish nation. Ussishkin was buried there himself in 1941. When Mount Scopus became an enclave, cut off from Jerusalem, the implementation of this plan was no longer feasible.
During summer 1949, Theodor Herzl's remains were reinterred on a hill in West Jerusalem which faced the Mount of Olives from a distance and renamed in his honour, Mount Herzl. In November 1949, soldiers who fell during the War of Independence in the Jerusalem area were buried on the north slope of the hill. In 1951 the government decided to establish a national cemetery for Israeli leaders and fallen soldiers at Mount Herzl. It has served this purpose ever since.
Architects
The military section is the work of two Hungarian-born architects. Architect Dr. Asher Hiram, born in 1897 in Budapest as Sigmund Kerekes, designed the main elements of the Israeli military cemeteries, which prevail until today; while landscape architect Haim Giladi designed the gardens at Mount Herzl.
Purpose and significance
Apart from Theodor Herzl, Mt. Herzl is the burial place of five of Israel's prime ministers: Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin (who is buried beside his wife Leah) and Shimon Peres. Israeli presidents are also buried on Mt. Herzl, as are other prominent Jewish and Zionist leaders.
Mt. Herzl is the venue for many commemorative events and national celebrations.
Theodor Herzl's grave
In 1903, Theodor Herzl wrote in his will:
I wish to be buried in a metal coffin next to my father, and to remain there until the Jewish people will transfer my remains to Eretz Israel. The coffins of my father, my sister Pauline, and of my close relatives who will have died until then will also be transferred there.
When Herzl died a year later, he was interred in Vienna. Forty-five years later, Herzl's remains were brought to Israel and re-interred in Jerusalem. The location of the burial site was selected by a special state commission in the top of a hill in Jerusalem next to Military cemetery of Jerusalem. He was buried on 17 August 1949. A temporary stone marked his grave for several years until the site was developed into a national cemetery. Sixty-three entries were submitted in the competition for the design of his new tombstone. The winner was Joseph Klarwein's design, consisting of an unadorned black granite stone inscribed with the name Herzl. The area around his tomb has been expanded into the plaza where the first Independence Day ceremony was held in 1950.
Despite Herzl's wishes, his daughter Pauline and son Hans were not originally buried beside him. Their remains were moved to Mt. Herzl in 2006. A third daughter was murdered in the Holocaust and her place of burial is unknown. The small Stephen Norman Park, located between the Herzl Museum and the Herzl Educational Center, is dedicated to the memory of Herzl's only grandson, who took his own life in the United States in 1946 after learning about the fate of his family during the Holocaust and being confronted with Jewish misery in the Displaced Persons camps, and was reinterred on Mt. Herzl in December 2007. Herzl's parents and sister are also buried at Mount Herzl.