Theodor Herzl

Again, I'm here to bore you with the most mundane possible topic. Anywho, nice dude lived, died, and I wrote about him. Veni, Vidi, Relinqui.

Theodor Binyamin Ve'ev Herzl was born in the year 1860 in eastern Budapest, and raised as a secular Jew. At the age of eighteen, he moved to Vienna, where he enrolled in the University of Vienna, where he studied law, finally graduating in 1884. After graduating, however, Theodor became a writer and journalist for the Neue Freie Presse.

In 1894, Herzl wrote a play, The Ghetto, in hopes of starting a debate that would find a solution to the problem of disrespect and intolerance between Jews and Christians. In the same year, Captain Alfred Dreyfus of the French army was tried and convicted of a count of treason he did not commit, which led Herzl to believe that the Jews needed their own unique and distinct state, stating that Jews were one people, then separated among the peoples of the earth with no true homeland. Herzl initiated a process which eventually led to Israel's existence, and then general acceptance in the world.

On the outset, some prominent Jews condemned his efforts, but the poverty-ridden Jews of eastern Europe and Russia provided great morale for an uncertain cause. The cause was, no doubt, a rather insane endeavor, one might even say today. Herzl hoped to pay off the immense debt to the Ottoman Empire, which, in return, would, according to his plan, make some allotment of Palestine for a permanent residence for the Jews of all nations. At first, the Sultan was decidedly unwilling to allow a concentration of Jews in Palestine, much less to give them part or all of it for a permanent homeland.

The Joseph Chamberlain offered several areas of land to that the Jews might be permitted to settle in, but the most practical area had one incredible problem. In Sinai, someone would have to provide a means by which to carry water from Egypt. Because of this, the British government eliminated that option.

Herzl was willing, however, to accept the portion of Uganda that the British offered, yet, even among the poor Russian support base, the idea drew great complaints and displeasure. This eventually led Herzl to bitterness toward one of his fellow Zionists, as well as abandoning the idea, partially because the Britons retracted the proposal.

Herzl died in Vienna in 1904, having contracted pneumonia, a complication of heart disease. Herzl was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem fourty-five years later. Herzl's efforts were immensely successful in creating a desire to migrate the Jewish people to a true home, yet, in his lifetime, few would say he obtained his final, ultimate goal. Still, his work and life provided an immense push for a huge project which would take still more years, still more lives before its goal would be achieved.

I hope this is better than the time it took would make any sane human think it was.

!Noah!