The Ashkenazi Revolution

108most modern and honest forces among this people, that had made so manyforeign fields fertile. There is no doubt that, in this scenario, that is to say,had Herzl discounted the Land of Israel from the beginning, there wouldhave been a great cry and there is no doubt that Herzl would not haveenjoyed the support of the general Jewish population as he had with thepath he had taken. But the success that accompanied the path that he tookwas only superficial. This success was in the first stage, and was followedby terrible failures in the following stages. Herzl sacrificed consistentprogress toward his goal in favor of temporary success and a morsel ofsupport from the Jewish masses. This was a fatal error. Had he wished tosave all the Jews, it would have been incumbent upon him to know that hecould not be the leader of all the Jews. Had Lenin wished to be a popularleader of all the workers, he would not have brought about the Russianrevolution. Only a revolutionary movement that completely severs itselffrom the ways of the past, and serves as a rallying point for the mostmodern elements in the Ashkenazi population, would have been able tobring the dream of Herzl to fruition. This movement would, over thecourse of time, have established powerful tools, left the compromising andtreacherous elements outside, and determined, on its own merit, the courseof history. But the path of Herzl turned over, to his enemies, the tools thathe had created and caused some of his faithful supporters to fall captive tohis enemies while others were banished to the wilderness of feebleness andimpotence.The Lovers of Zion and the Jewish intellectuals, who came to Herzl,rejected the main point and innovation within it: Territorialism and themulti-faceted momentum as a solution to the Jewish Question. For them,there was only one territory, the Land of Israel, and if they came to Herzl, itwas only to sabotage his specific goal, to take him captive and to inherit histools, as they had already done to Pinsker. The story of the persecutionsthat Herzl suffered at the hands of the Lovers of Zion and the New HebrewLiterature is one of the most shocking stories in all of Hebrew history. Thegreat and righteous statesman, Herzl, strove to be at peace with himself andhis teachings and placed himself, through the element of his plan that dealtwith the Land of Israel, in a position of fragmentation and contradiction.