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May 27, 2005/Iyar 18 5765, Volume 57, No. 39
Herzl museum opens
DINA KRAFT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - When visitors tour the new Herzl Museum - a $3.2 million project of the World Zionist Organization, the Jerusalem Foundation and Israel's Education Ministry -- they will embark on a journey into the life of Herzl, the complicated and charismatic Austrian writer who launched modern Zionism.
May 19 marked the day of the museum's opening and Israel's first official Herzl Day. In addition, at schools and military bases throughout the country, students and soldiers took time out to study Herzl's vision .
Herzl, the bearded visionary who said "If you will it, it's no dream," spoke of an utopia, a country that would inspire the world.
In Herzl's vision, the state of the Jews would be a just society. In that Jewish state, Arabs and Jews would coexist as equals. He saw the country as secular in nature and wrote of a division between religion and politics.
According to Israel Bar Tal, a professor of Jewish history at Hebrew University in Israel, Herzl's writings and visions can be used as a launching pad for discussing what Israel has become and what its citizens can do to make it a better place.
The view of Herzl in Israel today is mixed.
Hebrew University historian Rachel Elbuiam Dror says that in official Israeli circles, Herzl remains the man who helped create the Jewish state. But younger people challenge that image and are unwilling to put Herzl on a pedestal.
"Historians of the Zionist movement and modern Jewish history guarded the personality of Herzl as the father of the nation," she said. "But now new research looks at Herzl - what kind of person he was, how he behaved, where he made mistakes, and whether or not he could have done better."
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