"The Good Dr. Lippe" and Herzl in Basel, 1897: A Translation and Analysis of The Zionist Congress's Opening Speech

Journal of Israeli History
Politics, Society, Culture
ISSN: 1353-1042 (Print) 1744-0548 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fjih20
“The good Dr. Lippe” and Herzl in Basel, 1897: A

translation and analysis of the Zionist Congress's
opening speech
Michael J. Reimer
To cite this article: Michael J. Reimer (2015) “The good Dr. Lippe” and Herzl in Basel, 1897: A
translation and analysis of the Zionist Congress's opening speech, Journal of Israeli History,
34:1, 1-21, DOI: 10.1080/13531042.2015.1005801
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The Journal of Israeli History, 2015
Vol. 34, No. 1, 1–21, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13531042.2015.1005801
“The good Dr. Lippe” and Herzl in Basel, 1897: A translation and
analysis of the Zionist Congress’s opening speech
Michael J. Reimer*
Department of History, American University in Cairo

(Accepted 21 October 2014)
Dr. Karpel Lippe of Jassy, who gave the opening speech at the first Zionist Congress,
has been largely ignored in histories of Zionism. This article introduces an English
translation of his speech. Lippe helped to legitimate “Congress-Zionism” by
connecting it to earlier forms of Jewish activism. His address exposes tensions
arising from the Basel meeting, including Ottoman suspicion, relations with the
Downloaded by [Universite Laval] at 16:27 25 April 2016
Orthodox, and conflicts over organizational priorities. Insisting upon his and his
country’s priority in the movement’s history, Lippe’s oration suggests an alternative
perspective on early Zionism and raises broader questions for the historiography of
nationalism.
Keywords: Zionism; Karpel Lippe; Theodor Herzl; nationalism; Romania; Hovevei
Zion; Ottoman Empire
Auch bevor ich den Vorsitz übernahm, klappte die Sache nicht. Der gute Dr. Lippe aus
Jassy . . . [Even before I took over as chairman, things did not go smoothly. The good
Dr. Lippe from Jassy . . . ]
Theodor Herzl’s diary tells us that disorder prevailed whenever he was not at the helm
at the first Zionist Congress. Dr. Karpel Lippe’s performance as honorary president was
one more evidence of this fact.1 Extrapolating from the diaries, Walter Laqueur
ascribes Herzl’s chagrin to the long, platitudinous address given by Lippe. It is certainly
true that Herzl expressed, on multiple occasions, his anxiety that the verbose,
digressive, or needlessly argumentative tendencies of speakers would consume the
congress’s “precious minutes.” In his own speech, after greeting the delegates, he
proposed an economy of time, equating conciseness with faithful service to the
cause (Jeder von uns dient der Sache gut, wenn er mit den kostbaren Minuten des
Congresses spart).2
Was Herzl’s anxiety about time justified? Perhaps. Although Lippe’s extant remarks
can be read out in about fifteen minutes, his presence on the rostrum was considerably
longer. Laqueur says that Lippe had recited the Sheheheyanu prayer at the opening,
which is not in the minutes; another summary of his speech tells us that Lippe
expounded upon “previous attempts to arouse the interest of Jews and non-Jews in the
Jewish return to Palestine,” and some of this material may be missing from the
proceedings, too.3 According to the latter, Lippe’s speech began, improbably, without
even a vocative directed, for example. to the hochgeehrte Versammlung (highly
*Email: mjreimer@aucegypt.edu
q 2015 Taylor & Francis

2 M.J. Reimer
honored assembly). Rather, he begins abruptly with an anecdote about being contacted
to help make propaganda for Palestine colonization in Romania.4 In addition, the
address was repeatedly interrupted by cheering.5
But even taking all this into account, there were unstated reasons for Herzl’s pique.
Lippe’s address immediately preceded Herzl’s, Lippe having been given priority as a
gesture of respect to his seniority in age and activism, which probably fed Herzl’s
impatience. Pace Laqueur, an examination of Lippe’s address reveals not its
platitudinous nature but its provocativeness, its alternation between sermonizing and
sarcasm. To be sure, Lippe’s remarks often correspond closely to things Herzl himself
had said, or was about to say, when he took the floor. Yet Lippe’s demeanor perhaps did
not convey the gravitas Herzl had envisioned for the occasion.6 Some parts of his
speech have an emotional intensity, as when he rhapsodizes concerning the opening of
the congress: “O ein schöner, grosser Tag, der heutige, in der Geschichte Israels,
fürwahr!” (O what a great and beautiful day this day is in the history of Israel, truly!).
And still other sections contain harsh criticisms of the Orthodox, which Herzl had
anxiously wanted to avoid.7 All this was in contrast to Herzl’s own sober,
“parliamentarian” demeanor. But most significant was the fact that Lippe was a
member of Hovevei Zion and thus an advocate of immediate and ongoing colonization
in Palestine, a position Herzl had pronounced against in Der Judenstaat. Lippe had
published his riposte in a critical review of Der Judenstaat, which had appeared in the
Berlin monthly Zion in August 1896. The review rejects Herzl’s project of an
independent state as “Unsinn” (folly), the product of a political naiveté which could put
in jeopardy the positive achievements of more than a decade of colonization. Lippe,
asserting his authority as an elder statesman of Zionism and his superior knowledge of
both Ottoman politics and Jewish religion, argues that colonists in Palestine ought to
acquire Ottoman citizenship and seek absolutely no more than a qualified provincial
autonomy.8
It is not too surprising that Lippe’s words were overshadowed by the subsequent
speeches of Herzl and Max Nordau. Both were highly regarded literary figures and
members of the European intellectual demimonde.9 Their addresses made such an
impact on the delegates that, immediately after Nordau concluded, Oscar Marmorek
rose to propose their separate publication. The motion carried unanimously.10
Moreover, their addresses have continued to be translated, reprinted, and
anthologized.11 Yet despite Herzl’s discomfiture while Lippe held forth, and the
exuberance with which he and Nordau were received, Lippe had a critical function as
the congress’s first speaker, and his speech is a fine entrée into Zionism during this its
foundational episode, capturing many of its genealogies, conflicts, and paradoxes.
This article is, primarily, an introduction to my English translation of the speech
(see appendix). I begin with a consideration of continuities that Lippe embodied and
their importance for the congress. I turn next to a comparison of Lippe and Herzl which
focuses on their activism and arguments for Zionism; their conception of Zionism’s
place in Jewish history; and their relationship to the Orthodox. I then examine some of
the outstanding tensions in Lippe’s rhetoric. In particular, I survey Zionism’s relations
to the Ottoman and European states; the philosophical difficulty of reconciling biblical
faith with a positivistic worldview; a controversy over priorities, arising from antipathy
between Westjuden and Ostjuden; and Zionism’s relationship to non-Zionist Jews.
The Journal of Israeli History 3
Finally, using early Zionism as a general reference point, I suggest a couple of

implications for the historiography of nationalism.12
Institutional and ideological continuities

Lippe’s involvement in canvassing for Jewish colonization in Palestine dated back to
1880, antedating even the pogroms which had such an impact on Russian Jews.
An article in the Zionist organ Die Welt suggests that Lippe’s interest in the Jewish
question was the result of a medical practice which brought him into contact with
destitute Jews living in the Jassy suburbs. He and other, more prosperous Jews had
sought to alleviate their suffering through charitable work, but the bleak prospects of
the Romanian Jews, to which was added the misery of Russian Jews fleeing persecution,
caused him to consider other means of relief. He was therefore receptive to the
possibilities for a better life which the colonization of Palestine might afford.13
This was the beginning of his “Zionism,” although the term had not yet been coined.
At any rate, Lippe had long experience in the cause while Herzl was the novus homo.
It is worth recalling that Herzl was only 37 when he organized the first congress. Lippe
was 67.
Because of his longstanding support for Jewish colonization, as well as a deeply
Jewish formation – he had studied for the rabbinate until contact with the Haskalah
reoriented his thinking and choice of career – Lippe conveys a sense of the continuity in
Jewish history which is absent in Herzl.14 Lippe conceives of an “Israel” with a proud
and glorious history, possessing an unconquerable national self-consciousness in spite
of the bitter centuries of waiting in exile, in the Golus Edom; it is only natural then, that
this nation should seek the one and only thing it needs in order to consummate its
existence, i.e., its fatherland.15 By contrast, Herzl speaks of the long Unterbrechung
(interruption or hiatus) in which the Jews did not share a common destiny, albeit they
experienced similar trials in the countries of their diaspora. In fact, Arthur Hertzberg’s
famous essay on Zionist history argued that, for Herzl, like Pinsker, the whole of post-
exilic history was a barren, “insoluble struggle with anti-Semitism.”16 Characteristi-
cally, Herzl ascribes the possibility of a new nationhood not to Jewish history and
culture, but to die neuen Wunder (the new miracles) of modern communications – the
only miracles he believes in. The contrast between the worldviews of these two men is
particularly evident in the vocabulary they employ as they describe the Jewish
experience. For Lippe, there is God’s promise to Abraham, Egypt and Babylon, Eretz
Yisrael, the exile, “redemption” from the exile (Erlösung is one of his favorite words),
and he quotes scripture again and again. He mentions anti-Semitism, on the
psychological causes of which he had penned an entire volume, yet it is not his
emphasis here.17 He begins with a prayer and ends with a quotation from the prophets.
For Herzl, on the other hand, anti-Semitism is of paramount importance, and it is not the
Erlösung from the exile that absorbs him, but the Lösung (“solution”) of the Jewish
question. He never quotes scripture and uses nary a Hebrew term, not even “Israel.”
Zionism is, for him, all politics, law, organization, diplomacy, and, especially at this
early stage, public relations.18 For Lippe, revelation “goes forth” (ausgehen) from
Jerusalem; Herzl makes the congress the subject of the same verb, and what “goes
forth” is enlightenment, and reassurance concerning the moral, legal, and philanthropic
character of the Zionist movement.19
4 M.J. Reimer
Lippe does acknowledge of course the “mighty leap” (welcher gewaltige Sprung!)
which Zionism had taken, from a modest house in Jassy to a magnificent hall in Basel,
from the obscurity of two Romanian Jews to the renommée of Herzl and Nordau. (His
only favorable remark about Der Judenstaat was that it showed that Jewish nationalism
had reached even the de-Judaized Jewish circles of Herzl and his ilk.) Nevertheless it is
the same movement, rooted in biblical and post-biblical history, as well as the recent
efforts to make a beginning to the “redemption” in Palestine through the agency of
Hovevei Zion. The emphasis is on continuity, on “chartering” the new movement by
invoking and reconfiguring the Jewish people’s recent and distant past.20
Indeed, Lippe’s very presence embodies a diachronic articulation of the new, self-
consciously international movement, to the earlier, colonization-focused, and largely
Russian-Romanian movement that preceded it.21 The new Zionism needed legitimacy,
above all among Jews, which it acquired at least in part through a genealogical
connection to eminent figures in older movements. Lippe’s presence was all the more
important given the deep ambivalence of many Hovevim toward Herzl, and the fact that
some were boycotting the Basel congress.22 Moreover, it is worth noting that the
Romanians, led by Samuel Pineles and Lippe, were unusual in quickly bringing
together Hovevei Zion with “Congress-Zionists” to form a unified Zionist
membership.23 Thus, Lippe refers to his attendance at the Kattowitz conference in
1884 (the organizing conference of the Hovevei Zion); and he asserts that Kattowitz
was foundational for Zionist aspirations ( für die zionistische Bestrebungen
grundlegend). In this case, the precise terms he uses are important, since Lippe asserts
that Kattowitz was laying a foundation for what he terms “Zionist” aspirations. Further
to the same point, in suggesting why Zion had sought his opinion concerning Herzl’s
Judenstaat, Lippe referred to himself: “Als einem der ältesten Zionisten . . . .”24
Ahad Ha’am, also present at Basel in 1897, was to insist that there was an enormous
disparity encoded in the very names of these movements, i.e., Hibbat Zion (Love of
Zion) and Zionismus (Zionism). The former was Hebrew and evoked the liturgical,
cultural, and emotional bond between the Jew and Zion; the latter term was German and
designated an ideology fundamentally alien to the language, history, culture, and
religion of the Jews.25 Ahad Ha’am was a brilliant polemicist, but Lippe represents a
strand within Zionism which impeaches Ahad Ha’am’s schema. For Lippe, the two
movements carry forward the same “cause” (die Sache, which he refers to twice in his
opening paragraph), the cause to which he devoted his life. Again, he declares
Kattowitz an integral antecedent to the “Zionist” movement; he identified himself as a
senior “Zionist” in his review of Der Judenstaat; and he accepted to attend and open the
“Zionisten-Congress.” These data show clearly that Lippe does not perceive an inherent
conflict between the two movements, and that that he was giving his imprimatur to the
new organization, if not Herzl’s specific goal of establishing a Jewish state.
Lippe simply cannot be classified according to Ahad Ha’am’s dichotomy. He was
typical rather of the moderate maskilim of Jassy, men of a deeply Jewish formation who
kept their faith in God, their respect for Jewish traditions, and their love for the Hebrew
language, and who deplored assimilation and conversion.26 As indicated above, Lippe’s
speech is replete with biblical quotations, allusions, and interpretations, and it is clear
that he is citing scripture not just for literary effect but because he believes in its
contemporary relevance and authority. Thus, Lippe harks back to God’s promising
Palestine to Abraham’s descendants, to justify the Jews’ return to the land of the
patriarchs. He argues that the Jews’ first conquest of the land took place through
warfare, a “natural” means of gaining possession (Nach dem Auszuge aus Aegypten
erkämpften sich unsere Väter das Land der Erzväter auf dem natürlichen Wege der
Kriegführung); and that the Jews in Babylon, even while awaiting the future advent of
the Messiah, did not hesitate to return to Palestine on the basis of an edict issued by
Cyrus, upon whom the prophet Isaiah was even willing to bestow the title “Messiah”
(Isa. 45.1). In a speech whose text encompasses less than four pages, there are five
direct quotations from scripture; references to Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Zechariah,
Isaiah, Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Jeremiah; unmistakable allusions to passages
from the three divisions of the Tanakh; the construction of parallels between the
existing exile, using the traditional designation, Golus Edom, and the Jews’ exile from
the land experienced in Egypt and Babylon. Whether consciously or no, Lippe concurs
with Yehudah Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kalischer in his use of biblical examples to argue
for a “natural beginning to the redemption.”27 In fact, Lippe was regarded as so
effective in arguing for Zionism from within Jewish tradition, that he was asked to
lecture on the subject in order to refute both Swiss Orthodox Jews and German Reform
rabbis, who had accused Zionism of betraying Judaism.28
At the same time, Lippe, for all his evident veneration of scripture and Jewish
tradition, was a physician not a rabbi, a maskil not a Hasid, and is breathtakingly
brusque in addressing the Orthodox. Herzl generally deferred to the rabbis because he
regarded them as irrelevant, but Lippe, coming from Galicia, where the battle against
Hasidic “obscurantism” was raging, did not eschew confrontation.29 Die Welt’s portrait
of Lippe, published a few weeks after the congress, notes: “His speeches and writings
are characterized by a certain sharpness of expression, which has made him a dangerous
opponent in literary duels.”30 He lives up to his reputation when he speaks to “the pious
among us” (unsere Frommen). He allows that they have the right to go on waiting –
futilely, he implies – for the ass-mounted king-messiah of Zechariah’s prophecy. But
he dismisses Orthodox objections to the settlement of young Jews on the land, who have
come to practice agriculture and build the new Yishuv. They were sometimes viewed as
competitors for financial assistance collected from diaspora communities, against Jews
who came to Palestine to study Torah, who were part of the old Yishuv.31 Rather, Lippe
declares that such youth are engaged in visionary projects requiring skill, energy, and
determination, with the prospect of becoming self-supporting, transforming the
allegedly neglected lands of Palestine into an “Eden.”
In placing his hope for the future of Jewry in its youth, Lippe expresses an oft-
remarked theme in nationalism. Thus, while seeking to preserve or refurbish traditions
which rooted national identity in a glorious past, modern nationalisms have ever
projected the creation of a new or renewed national personality expressed above all by
its youth. Elie Kedourie theorized that the restless energy of nationalism is “a
manifestation of a species of civil war between the generations . . . .” This war – “This
violent revolt against immemorial restraints, this strident denunciation of decorum and
measure” – erupts on account of the younger generation’s rejection of traditional
certitudes and the older generation’s habits of submission.32 Amos Elon, in his
trenchant study of Israel’s founders, allows them their share of “Pure, innocent, naive
idealism,” but posits deeper, psychological motivations, which lay in “tremendous
parent-child conflict.” As evidence of the latter, he cites the contemporary poetic
dictum of David Shimonovitz: “Do not listen, my son, to a father’s preaching / And shut
6 M.J. Reimer
your eyes to mother’s pleas . . . .”33 – an astonishing repudiation of the oft-repeated

Solomonic counsel: “My son, heed the discipline of your father / And do not forsake the
instruction of your mother . . . ” (Prov. 1.8).
While Lippe would not have gone to such an extreme, his pride in the Yishuv’s
dynamic and diligent youth contrasts sharply with his derision for allegedly debilitated
and charity-dependent Torah scholars in Palestine – whose presence could be, and
traditionally was, construed as a living bond between the diaspora and Eretz Yisrael.
The very first pages of Lippe’s memoirs disclose his contempt for these unproductive
Chalukajuden as he calls them, whose mendicant agents disseminated false and
unfavorable views of the land of Palestine, in particular concerning its fertility –
something even Moses’ notorious spies did not dare to do!34
Lippe’s adumbration of this generational conflict leads now into a consideration of
the heuristic value of his speech, since here and elsewhere his remarks suggest tensions
in Zionism, some of which are paralleled in other nationalisms.35 Indeed, on account of
its vulnerabilities at the beginning and its need to appeal to such a diversity of
constituencies and patrons, Zionism displayed a “pragmatic” proclivity toward

equivocation if not outright contradiction. At any rate, Lippe’s speech bristles with such
tensions and is thus useful as an epitome of issues in early Zionism, and they invite
further reflection on nationalist historiography.
Equivocations, paradoxes, and contradictions

First, Lippe’s remarks call to mind a long-recognized political tension within Zionism,
inasmuch as he yokes together the alleged benefits the Jews will bring to the Ottoman
state with repeated affirmations of the Jews’ right to possess autonomy or even outright
independence. Lippe exemplifies a sincere, if unconvincing, attempt to resolve this
tension.
Lippe appeals to the Sultan to permit the ingress of Jews because he has confidence
in the devotion of his Jewish subjects, and because of the material benefits and
“civilization” they will bring to the Ottoman lands. At the same time, in other contexts
he had sought to allay Ottoman anxiety by an explicit disavowal of statehood as a goal,
by demonstrating that a Jewish state was in fact impossible to realize. His argument was
based on his own analysis of the Jews’ external and internal relations. As to the former,
the Jews could not or would not serve the interests of any European imperial power.
To league with Russia would be suicidal; and Jewish colonization was fundamentally
dissimilar to the colonial projects of England, France, Germany, etc., in that it was self-
directed, self-financed, and self-interested.36 As to internal relations, David Vital has
documented Lippe’s discomfort with the idea of full self-government for the Jews,
which he conveyed to the Warsaw committee of the Hovevei Zion even prior to the
1884 Kattowitz conference. Lippe had argued at that time that strict observance of the
sabbath and other holy days by officials in a modern nation-state was impossible, yet
most Jews would never tolerate the desecration of these sacred rhythms by Jewish
officials in a Jewish state.37 He makes the same point in his criticism of Herzl’s project,
predicting that the violations of halakhah inherent in statehood would provoke
“catastrophic” discord among, in particular, Jewish colonists from Russia, Galicia, and
Romania. For all these reasons, then, Lippe’s response to Der Judenstaat was to
advocate for, at most, Jewish autonomy in Palestine under Ottoman protection and
sovereignty.38
At the same time, Lippe is at pains to show that the Jews were and are a nation; that
their nation’s birth in the Exodus is the beginning of the history of nations;39 that they
have never given up their nationhood; that they have always been a literate and self-
conscious national community; and that they now deserve to lead, as he calls it, “ein
selbständiges nationales Dasein” (an independent national existence). Thus,
immediately after expressing his appreciation and respect for the Ottoman Sultan,
and the unshakeable loyalty of his Jewish subjects, he makes it clear that the Jews
require substantial autonomy. That the Jews are a nation and deserve a territorially
defined nationhood could easily imply an intended future secession. Again, Lippe’s
model for an Ottoman-Jewish Palestine was the autonomy Galicia had gained within the
Austro-Hungarian Empire; and, as has been detailed, his own perception of an inherent
contradiction between Jewish religious observance and the technical and bureaucratic
exigencies of modern statehood precluded his endorsement of a Jewish state. But Lippe
was well aware that the granting of legal privileges and local autonomy had been
stepping stones to total independence from Ottoman rule for several Balkan states,
which is why he explicitly rejects comparing Jewish nationalism to the nationalisms of
Serbia and Bulgaria.40 Dr. Jacob Bernstein-Kohan of Kishinev drew a similar contrast
in his speech on the second day of the 1897 congress.41 Bernstein-Kohan, like Lippe a
physician and early member of Hovevei Zion, emphasized the difficulties facing the
Jews, who, unlike the Balkan peoples, did not reside on their own land and could not yet
count on the aid of the European powers.42 While Bernstein-Kohan spoke of an
autonomous Jewish state dependent on Turkey, his references to the “political-national
rebirth” of the Jewish people and of the necessity of developing “political patriotism” as
the foundation of their state’s strength, were hardly likely to reassure the Ottomans.
Certainly, the Ottoman themselves understood Zionism against the background of
Balkan nationalism. Complex, nationalist-driven conflicts had set the Balkans ablaze in
1875 – 78, leading ultimately to the Russo-Ottoman war of 1877 – 78. The Congress of
Berlin, in settling the issues arising from the uprisings and wars of the preceding years,
made Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro fully independent, granted an externally
guaranteed autonomy to Bulgaria, and handed Bosnia-Herzegovina over to Austro-
Hungarian administration. Only a few years later, in 1883, the Ottoman Minister of
Internal Affairs communicated to Isaac Fernandez, President of the Alliance Israélite
Universelle at Istanbul, his government’s opposition to Jewish colonization of
Palestine, which it feared would lead to the emergence of a new national question,
specifically comparing the Jewish project in Palestine to events in Bulgaria and
Romania.43 Neville Mandel’s studies of the Ottoman perspective on early Jewish
settlement show that the Ottomans had excellent reasons to fear the consequences of an
influx of Jews into Palestine, which can be summarized as follows: (1) The numbers
leaving the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires in the 1880s and ’90s were
enormous – if a significant portion of this outflow had been directed to Palestine it
would have caused a rapid change in the local demographic balance; (2) the Ottomans
distrusted settlers of Russian provenance in particular, given Russia’s fierce and
ongoing hostility to the Ottoman state (which is why Lippe goes out of his way to argue
that the Zionists would never accept Russian help); (3) since most Jews arriving in the
Ottoman Empire kept their European nationality and hence their Capitulatory
8 M.J. Reimer
privileges, it was difficult to enforce legal and fiscal controls on them; (4) even Britain
and France, traditional allies of the Ottomans, had been displaying an appetite for
Ottoman territories since the 1880s, and seemed unperturbed at the prospect of Ottoman
disintegration; and (5) Abdülhamit II knew that his own pan-Islamic legitimacy was at
stake in protecting Ottoman lands from future European aggression, and he certainly
could not countenance a project that might detach Jerusalem from Muslim rule. In view
of these risks, even the Zionists’ “modest” request for limited autonomy, repeated
avowals of loyalty, and the declaration that they wanted a Heimstätte rather than a state
– effectively the program advocated by Lippe – did nothing to reconcile Ottoman
statesmen to Zionism.44
It is tempting to write off Lippe’s statements, and others like them, as purely tactical
equivocations. The Zionists needed Ottoman cooperation, or at least non-resistance, so
they made hypocritical declarations of fidelity and unrealizable promises of money and
“civilization.” And this cynical reading of Zionist rhetoric is plausible, although
Michelle Campos has traced the history of a short-lived compounding of Ottomanism
and Zionism, particularly in the wake of the Young Turk Revolution.45 Nevertheless,
the fact that the fundamental pattern evoked here corresponds so closely to Balkan
history, that the Ottomans themselves interpreted it in this fashion, and that Lippe felt it
necessary to rebut this interpretation, suggests that Zionism before World War I should
not be treated as sui generis, despite its anomalous features, but juxtaposed specifically
with Balkan nationalism. Not only Lippe, but many of the early Zionist leaders had
witnessed the emergence of national states from autonomous territories within the
Ottoman Empire within their lifetime, so much so that the comparison was almost
impossible to avoid. It is easy to forget this today because of later divisions between
“Europe,” now including the Balkans, and the “Middle East,” now including Israel/
Palestine, that all these territories were long associated with one another on account of
their common subjection to Ottoman sovereignty, as well as their relative geographical
proximity. As evidence we may cite the fact that Balkan nationalism had helped to
inspire the proto-Zionist thinking of Yehuda Alkalai, even if he argued mainly on the
basis of a neo-traditional exegesis of scripture and kabbalist traditions.46
Indeed, we may take the argument one step further. In an important but undervalued
article, Anthony Smith classifies Zionism as a species of “ethno-religious diaspora
nationalism.”47 He finds striking parallels to Zionism in modern Greek and Armenian
nationalisms. Among other things, they share a variety of pan-ethnic myths concerning
their own history, including in particular faith in divine election, then a golden age of
residence in the ancestral homeland, followed by a catastrophe leading to diaspora; and
they had similar sorts of socio-religious symbols and institutions, what have been called
“ancient, portable religious traditions,” evolved to sustain them in their present
condition, which became vehicles for organizing a movement for national
“restoration.” But Smith fails to note another similarity, highlighted in the conflicting
theses under consideration, i.e., that Greek and Armenian communities had lived for
centuries as loyal millets enjoying a privileged autonomy under Ottoman rule. The
same was true of the Jews. Breaking radically away from institutionalized patterns of
collaboration with the Ottoman-Muslim elite, secessionist Greek and Armenian
nationalisms set up a zero-sum struggle with the Ottoman state. The Greeks wanted
Constantinople, the Armenians a large swathe of Anatolia, and the Jews the Holy Land
of Palestine and the Holy City of Jerusalem.48 Other Balkan nationalisms obviously
weakened the Ottoman state, but the success of any of these diaspora nationalisms
would have been fatal. Their understanding of the mortal danger posed by these
movements is demonstrated by the Ottomans’ recurrent wars with the Greek state and
the atrocities committed against the Armenians beginning in the 1890s. As for
Palestine, the Jews’ quest to establish themselves as an autonomous community there
caused the Sultan to give his personal attention to the Jewish question from at least
1900. The extreme danger their national movement posed to the Empire was
graphically expressed in the Sultan’s statement to Herzl via Philipp Michael de
Newlinski, that only the “cadaver” of the Empire could be divided so as to make
Palestine available, and that he would never himself consent to the Jews’ projected
acquisition of Palestine, which would entail “vivisection.”49
Second, and correlated with the discordant aims of both building and destroying the
Ottoman state, is Lippe’s tacit conviction that colonization was a legitimate enterprise
and his designating Jewish work in the Ottoman empire as “civilizing,” rhetoric similar
to the language used by Herzl himself. It is language which positions both squarely
within the ambit of high imperialism.50 And it is language which naturally reflects a
powerful rhetorical exclusion, i.e., of the Arabs of Palestine. In other words, both Lippe
and Herzl sought to attain popular-nationalist goals by dealing solely with governments
and ignoring the impact on populations. Lippe, like many others at the congress, wanted
an international treaty, certainly some kind of European guarantee as had been given
repeatedly in the Balkans. This would facilitate the Jews’ return to Eretz Yisrael; his
stated model is the mode of return from Babylon in the sixth century BCE, but again
“auf Grund diplomatischer Handlungen . . . und eines internationales Tractates” (on the
basis of diplomatic negotiations . . . and an international treaty). Perhaps since he has no
aspiration for true statehood, he says nothing about the Arabs. Herzl on the other hand
seems that to have envisioned an incremental but cumulatively transformative
displacement of the Arabs in order to create the new Jewish society.51 But in both cases,
international, i.e., European great-power intervention, was viewed as a sine qua non for
achieving nationalist ends.
It seems utterly incongruous today that nationalism should be aligned with
colonialism and imperialism; many if not most modern nationalisms, particularly those
in former European colonies in Asia and Africa, have proudly identified themselves as
anti-colonial and anti-imperial. And Zionism is certainly unusual in proposing to
establish its nation-state project by colonizing a land whose social and environmental
realities were, to the overwhelming majority of Jews, profoundly alien, in which they
constituted a small minority in 1897, indeed less than 10% of the population.52 On the
other hand, a good number of nationalist movements have had a cooperative
relationship with imperialism, sometimes in order to obtain badly needed aid for their
own cause, but also at times serving the interests of imperial patrons in flagrant
disregard of conflicting ethno-national claims. To take one pertinent example: the
Greek revolt against the Ottomans in the 1820s, which received help from Russia,
Britain, and France. After World War I, the British helped the Greeks again, to
prosecute a grim war in Anatolia with the aim of re-creating Byzantium. As we have
seen, Smith has argued that there are close parallels between Greek and Jewish
nationalism. Here is another: the Greeks in this case invoked, like Zionism, a glorious
ancient heritage to justify the conquest of lands which, for many centuries, had been
10 M.J. Reimer
dominated by an ethnically distinct population – for which purpose they required the
aid of a great power.
Third, Lippe’s address features a curious combination of skepticism and reverence.
To be sure, there are many stories in Jewish religious lore which foreground this same
startling dissonance. Within traditional Judaism, this oxymoronic fusion can be seen as
an acknowledgment of the difficulty in holding on to faith in the face of the apparent
inaction of God, or the occurrence of events which impugn divine justice.53 But Lippe is
not interested in theodicy. As mentioned above, he cites scripture to his fellow Jews as
an authority, making use of several striking typologies: to show the acceptability of
beginning the redemption in a natural way; to promote the idea of an international
agreement which will legitimize the Jews’ “return”; to compare the Turkish Sultan to
Cyrus, in his role as a potential benefactor to the Jews, perhaps even their ad hoc
“messiah”;54 to rebuke faint-hearted followers looking back to the false comfort of
assimilation. He crowns his address by quoting the eschatological vision of Isaiah,
interpreting the prophet’s words to mean that the proclamation of the divine word can
go forth only from Jerusalem, negating the Reform Jewish notion of a mission to be
fulfilled in the diaspora, but also raising, without answering, the question of what the
Jews’ “mission” is going to be. Yet, in the midst of all this neo-traditional exegesis,
there is a conspicuous strand of modernism. Lippe’s introduction to the cause of Jewish
colonization is his encounter with a man who comes not to preach or pray but to
“agitate” (agitieren). The project is carried forward by “committees” emanating
“propaganda.” He is doubtful about the appearance of the longed-for Messiah (Und
sollte endlich der bescheidene König wirklich erscheinen . . . ).
In expressing doubt about such an essential element in the traditional faith of
diaspora Jewry, Lippe reveals the extent to which he has secularized the messianic
ideal.55 Thus, he justifies colonization with reference to its civilizing influence rather
than relying solely upon a biblical claim. While he believed the Jews were the chosen
people, the bases of national pride lie elsewhere. There is the Jewish tradition of literacy
and learning; communal endurance in the face of unending, “hellish” hostility; and
contributions to world politics, law, and literature, through their struggle for freedom
from slavery (Freiheitskampf), the Mosaic legal corpus, the influence of the Hebrew
Bible. These achievements appear to constitute the essence of the Jewish mission to the
world, and they lie, significantly, in the past. The implication is that the Jews have done
what is necessary to merit international support of their national project. In so saying,
he simply passes over once again the question of a unique and ongoing mission for the
Jews, and the related doctrine of eternal election. But even his characterization of the
exodus from Egypt as a popular liberation struggle, when seen from within Jewish
tradition, is problematic. According to the Pentateuch, such a struggle never took place.
The struggle described there and commemorated in the Passover Haggadah was
between God and Pharaoh, a struggle from which Israel gains its freedom but to which it
contributes nothing. The political passivity of the Orthodox was amply justified by both
biblical texts and their liturgical deployment. Lippe’s activism, on the other hand, was
actually a product of a modern melioristic outlook characteristic of the maskilim, a faith
in human achievement for the sake of human progress, complemented by a tendentious
selection of proof-texts.
In this reinterpretation of scripture and tradition, Lippe was undertaking a task that
Ahad Ha’am had argued was central to the future of the Ostjuden, and which
distinguished their needs most sharply from those of their western brethren. The task
was that of a desperately needed cultural aggiornamento, for a Judaism which had come
out of the ghetto.56 Indeed, frictions between east and west, rooted in differing
perceptions of Jewish needs and how the Zionist organization ought to respond to them,
were a marked feature of the first Zionist Congress, and many subsequent ones as well.
Born and raised in Galicia, practicing medicine for over five decades in Romania,
Lippe, in spite of several sojourns in the west, was most naturally sympathetic to the
problems of the east. And like Ahad Ha’am, he was also appalled by the mentality of the
Westjuden, characterized as it was by ignorance of conditions in the east and
condescension toward the Jews who lived there. Nordau’s speech, generally recognized
as the tour de force of the 1897 congress, is a perfect example of western arrogance.
In it, Nordau asserts that anti-Semitism causes western Jews even greater suffering than
eastern Jews, because the deprivation which results from it “afflicts persons who are
more sophisticated, prouder, and more sensitive.”57 Herzl himself was ill-informed
about the situation in the east, and the initial reaction to Der Judenstaat was, as we have
seen in Lippe’s review, irritation at the author’s lack of respect for previous labors.58 It
is certainly revealing that, in contrast to the impact they had on Russia’s Jews, the 1881
pogroms did not even register with Herzl.59
In fact, Lippe’s seemingly bland comments recounting the settlement of Romanian
colonists in Palestine were inserted into his speech when a report about Palestine
colonization failed to mention them. His brief narration of their founding was his
protest against this omission.60 At the next congress, in 1898, a heated exchange took
place in reaction to the Russian Zionist leader Leo Motzkin’s negative appraisal of
conditions in the Palestine agricultural colonies. The Berlin Hovevei Zion activist
Willy Bambus argued that Motzkin had failed to consider the costs in time and money
which any scheme of colonization required. But Samuel Pineles, representing the
Romanian delegation, which included Lippe, charged Motzkin with actually
misrepresenting the situation and making completely unwarranted accusations against
the Rothschild administration. The Romanians had set up two colonies that came under
Rothschild’s supervision, and were clearly affronted by the suggestion that the colonists
were dissatisfied and despondent. Furthermore, Pineles concluded with a bold request
that the congress accept additional immigration from Romania, given the dire condition
of its Jews, and that it not regard them as renegades.61 Lippe’s speech, read against this
background, is thus not only a protest against the deceitfulness of assimilation and the
intransigence of Orthodoxy, but also a subtle assertion of Romanian priority in
colonization and, more broadly, of the achievements of the Ostjuden as the real
foundation of the Zionist project.
Finally, Lippe’s address exposes the tension between Zionism’s claim to speak for
all Jews, and its fierce invective against the many Jews, Orthodox or assimilated, who
dissented from its interpretation of the Jewish situation. In fact, Lippe serves Herzl well
by making grand declarations about the historic significance of the Basel Congress,
implicitly comparing it to Yavneh when he says that this gathering of Jewish envoys is
the first of its kind in 1,800 years. It is an extraordinary claim, since Yavneh (ca. 90) is
traditionally credited with having finally established the Hebrew canon and laid the
foundations of rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple.
In retrospect, it has to be said that the claim has some plausibility, not of course that the
Basel delegates were conscious of any religious vocation, but to the extent that Zionism
12 M.J. Reimer
and the State of Israel have decisively redefined Judaism for nearly all Jews.62 The
parliamentary genre implicitly conveyed the congress’s legitimate, universal authority.
Indeed, Zionism, as Lippe’s claim suggests, represented a kind of revolution within
Jewry insofar as it sought to replace the traditional autonomy accorded to each rabbi
and congregation within a framework of generally accepted halakhah, with a new unity
based on a political ideology which was to make itself central to Jewish identity and
consciousness. All of this helps to make sense of the Lippe’s sweeping claim that, while
the Kattowitz conference represented a mere fraction of Jewry, the Basel congress
represented all Jewry (das Gesammtjudenthum).63
Conclusion
It is perhaps worth asking the question, what difference it would have made if Lippe had
not given the opening address at the first Zionist Congress – and specifically, if he had
not spoken before Herzl. The congress could have gone on without him, of course. But
as we have seen, his address did much more than introduce Herzl and Nordau, even
though it did do that by extolling them as legitimators of the new movement before the
political and intellectual elites of Europe. Lippe was himself a legitimator, since
there were religio-ideological conflicts within the Zionist movement which he
bridged, and there was also the distrust of the older activists, i.e., of Hovevei Zion.
Lippe’s invocation of scripture and tradition supplied a crucial form of continuity with
the Jewish religious past, conjuring up the grand narrative into which Zionism was
inserted; his leadership also offered something of an antidote to the effect of
generational and organizational conflicts, in view of his great seniority. Procedurally,
without Lippe, Herzl would have been forced into the false position of opening the
congress himself while pretending he was not assuming authority over it until elected
as president – a mere formality perhaps, but Herzl was generally careful of such
formalities, since he wanted desperately to protect the dignity and reputation of the
congress.
Thus, notwithstanding the complaints Herzl confided to his diary, Lippe’s presence
on the rostrum at the opening of the first congress, as well as the content of his speech,
were of some significance to the history of organized Zionism. His prior involvement
with Hovevei Zion supplied a credible continuity between the former and the new
“Zionist” movement. And his commitment to the new movement was by no means
superficial or ephemeral. He was elected as a representative of Romania to the enlarged
Actions Committee in 1898, and he was a member of the congress’s Cultural
Committee in 1899.64 Born in Galicia, long resident in Romania, he evoked not only
Jewish mythic time but the realities of Jewish space, coming as he did from a city deep
in eastern Europe, betokening the real popular force of the movement, which would
certainly have failed without support from the Ostjuden.65 Indeed, with his
endorsement of Herzl’s political action along with ongoing colonization and his
contributions to the Hebrew revival, he anticipates the “synthetic” Zionism which
dominated the movement from 1911, as well as culturalist aspects of Jewish
nationalism.66 Combining in his person a veneration of Jewish tradition with the
melioristic outlook of the maskilim, he was more representative than Herzl of
contemporary Jewish attempts to bring inherited religious culture into a positive
relationship with modernity. Like Herzl, he manifests Zionism’s transparent flattery of
the Ottoman Sultan, as well as the hope for some kind of European sponsorship of an
agreement with Istanbul, to put Jewish colonization on a firm international-legal
footing, although there remained disagreement and hence equivocation over Zionism’s
ultimate aims.
Thus, all in all, Lippe’s address is an excellent evocation of early Zionism; and
despite his neglect in the existing historiography, Lippe’s claim to be among Zionism’s
chief progenitors has to be taken seriously.67
As a final stroke we may put Lippe’s inaugural speech at the Basel Congress into a
larger context in order to suggest two trajectories for the study of nationalism more
generally. First, to reiterate and expand a point made previously, there is an ongoing
need to recast the historical study of nationalism in the Balkans and Middle East in
order to break down post-Ottoman regional identities. Shared legal, administrative, and
cultural legacies; the historical interpenetration of peoples between these now self-
consciously distinct regions; their emergence from a similar, interstitial political
position between European and Ottoman hegemonies; the existence of channels of
reciprocal influence – all these suggest the potential fruitfulness of careful comparative
work taking Balkan nationalism as a point of departure, not only for the study of Jewish
nationalism, but also for the early development of Egyptian, Arab, Armenian,
Lebanese, Kurdish nationalism, etc.
Second, there is the question of an organized political movement’s proximate
genealogy. The parallels between Zionism’s evocation of past glories and the
evocations made by other nationalisms are obvious. But Lippe’s significance, as a
propagandist for Romanian-Jewish settlement in Palestine, then a member of Hovevei
Zion, then a Congress-Zionist, reminds us that not only the mythic but also the
immediate past is crucial to the legitimacy of politically organized nationalism.
Hertzberg described Zionism as “twice-born,”68 but in fact Zionism underwent multiple
“births” and “deaths” in the nineteenth century, a fact that tends to be obfuscated by the
prevailing Herzlian teleology. Vital makes this point brilliantly when he rejects
categorically any tidying-up of early Zionist history. As he describes early Zionism:
It was not the invention – still less the creation – of a single man or group of men . . . .
In brief, the movement began as the direct response of a multitude of individuals and
local circles to a situation which they regarded as untenable, a response unmediated by
some trumpet-call of national leadership and without those individuals and groups being
fully aware of each other . . . . Its subsequent evolution took the form of a cautious
amalgamation and coalescence of these local groups and the gradual emergence into a body
of key activists – leaders would be too strong a term – by a barely traceable process of,
as it were, random mutation and natural selection. It was a slow process. It was never
completed.69
Zionism is not unique in this regard; Vital’s perceptive depiction of its incoherence ab
initio could be applied with little alteration to many nationalisms. It can thus serve as a
model for the study of nationalism more generally, by exposing the empirically
desultory process by which a single dominant political force emerges, and the means it
uses to gain a legitimacy which supersedes that of its rivals, whether by co-optation,
persuasion, suppression, etc. To gain such hegemony, it must also negotiate or suppress
ideological, generational, and regional conflicts within the movement, and perform
prosopographical and forensic operations in order to homogenize the recent “national”
past and impose teleological coherence upon it.
14 M.J. Reimer
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Dr. Steven Glazer of Graceland University for commenting on several
drafts of the article, as well as many cohorts of students at the American University in Cairo,
whose queries about Zionism have stimulated my own quest to understand its history. Special
thanks to Mark Muehlhaeusler and the AUC library for securing access to several of Lippe’s
works for my use. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers and the editors for their
helpful criticisms.
Notes
1. Herzl’s primary evidence for this judgment was Max Nordau’s alleged inability to control the
delegates. His assessment of Lippe, which forms part of the same passage, is found in
Theodor Herzls Tagebücher, 2:6 (all translations by author unless otherwise noted). This
edition of the diaries is outdated but has the advantage of being online and searchable. The
new edition is Briefe und Tagebücher. The first English translation is The Diaries of Theodor
Herzl. Further to the context: “Owing to the general confusion he [Lippe] had not submitted
his speech to me; and when he arose he spoke, with nothing able to check him, for fully half
an hour . . . . The thing began to verge on the ridiculous” (Diaries, 225). See also Laqueur, A
History of Zionism, 104. The text of Lippe’s address, appended below, can be found in
Zionisten-Congress in Basel, 1 – 4. It was reprinted in Die Welt, September 10, 1897, 4 – 5.
It has not, to the present author’s knowledge, been previously translated.
2. Zionisten-Congress in Basel, 4.
3. Jubilee of the First Zionist Congress, 64.
5. Proceedings of the Zionist Congress, 10 – 12.
6. Laqueur, History of Zionism, 104.
7. Herzl had anticipated that the congress would require him to “dance” among “invisible eggs”
(his diary entry for August 24, 1897). The Orthodox were egg #2, right after his employer,
Die Neue Freie Presse (Theodor Herzls Tagebücher, 2:21 – 22).
8. Dr. Lippe in Jassy, “Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzls,” Zion (Berlin), 7/8, August 30, 1896,
193 – 96. Lippe’s reservations about Herzl’s plan, based on this same source, are also
discussed by Vital, The Origins of Zionism, 277 n. 36. Lippe’s model for provincial autonomy
was his own native Galicia and its place within the framework of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire. On Lippe, see Klausner, “Lippe, Karpel.” See also “Lippe, Karpel,” in YIVO
Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, online edition, http://www.yivoinstitute.org/
publications/index.php?tid¼109&aid¼269. Lippe’s rejection of political independence is
discussed further below.
9. As such they were examples of a relatively new phenomenon within Jewry, i.e., “the new
hero of secular achievement, who was . . . a creation of real or imagined gentile regard” as
suggested by Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 59.
10. Zionisten-Congress in Basel, 20 – 21. The impact of Herzl and Nordau at the first congress
evoked quite extraordinary comparisons from those present. Yosef Klausner declared: “I
have not the courage to speak about the First Zionist Congress of Herzl and Nordau, of an
occasion that calls to mind the grandeur and solemnity of the granting of the Law at Mount
Sinai” (Jubilee, 37).
11. Translations of Herzl’s speech into English, and reprintings, include Proceedings, 12 – 18;
Herzl, The Congress Addresses of Theodor Herzl; Herzl, Zionist Writings; Hertzberg, The
Zionist Idea, 226 – 30; “Theodor Herzl – Address to the First Congress,” trans. Ami Isseroff,
2008, available at http://zionism-israel.com/hdoc/Theodor_Herzl_Zionist_Congress_
Speech_1897.htm. Nordau’s address is translated and/or reprinted in Proceedings, 19 – 33;
Jubilee, 56 – 62; Hertzberg, Zionist Idea, 235 – 41.
12. Taking my cue here from Aviel Roshwald, who has criticized scholars of nationalism for
marginalizing Jewish nationalism and Zionism. See his thought-provoking “Jewish Identity
and the Paradox of Nationalism.”
13. Die Welt, September 17, 1897, 8.
14. “Lippe, Karpel,” in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.

15. “Der jüdischen Nation fehlt zur Vollständigkeit blos ihr Vaterland” (Zionisten-Congress in
Basel, 3).
16. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 16. Hertzberg mentions Pinsker as a prior advocate of the same
view.
17. Lippe, Symptome der antisemitischen Geisteskrankheit. The debt to Pinsker seems apparent
from the title, although Lippe’s analysis is much more extensive.
18. There is one plausible exception to this generalization. After insisting on the peaceable and
non-conspiratorial nature of Zionism, Herzl asks for the delegates’ solemn recitation of unser
Bekenntnis (our confession). It seems totally out of character for him to be referring here to
the Shema, the Jewish creed; it is probable that his “creed” here is, once again, his insistence
on the fact that Zionism is “the peacemaker” for European societies. But the phrase is
admittedly ambiguous. With respect to culture, Hertzberg notes: “Herzl never really came to
regard the modern Hebrew revival as more than a semiprivate affair, which certain circles
could be permitted to foster within the broad framework of his political nationalism” (The
Zionist Idea, 49).
19. Zionisten-Congress in Basel, 4 and 8.
20. On the “chartering” function of history, see Glassie, “The Practice and Purpose of History.”
Not to be confused, of course, with the quite literal charter which became, so to speak,
Herzl’s holy grail.
21. The essential documentation for the history of this period is in Druyanov, Ketavim. A major
study of the same era is Klausner, Mi-Katowitz ad Bazel. Vital, The Origins of Zionism,
makes wide use of Druyanov and Klausner in his lucid analysis of the early decades of the
movement.
22. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, 339 – 53; Laqueur, History of Zionism, 103.
23. See Oscar Marmorek’s remarks, Stenographisches Protokoll der Verhandlungen des III.
Zionisten-Congresses, 28. For further detail, see Klausner, Hibbat Zion be-Romaniyah.
24. Lippe, “Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzls,” 193.
25. Ahad Ha’Am, “The Jewish State and the Jewish Problem,” in Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea,
262 – 69.
26. Herşcovici, “Hebrew ‘Maskilim’ Writers in Romania,” 150 – 51.
27. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 102 – 14.
28. Lippe, Meine fünfundzwanzigjährige zionistische Agitation, 6 – 7.
29. “The Maskilim of Galicia failed, but the struggle against Hasidism was a vital component in
the Haskalah of Galicia – and, to a large degree, its raison d’être” (s.v. “Haskalah: Haskalah
in Galicia,” in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe). For a fuller study of the often
ferocious battle between the maskilim and the Orthodox in the east, see Luz, Parallels Meet,
esp. chap. 1.
30. Die Welt, September 17, 1897, 8. Die Welt cites precisely his criticism of the Orthodox,
detailed in what follows, as proof of his “sharpness.”
31. This source of friction between the communities is referred to in Mandel, “Ottoman Policy
and Restrictions,” 314.
32. Kedourie, “Nationalism and Self-Determination,” 54 – 55.
33. Elon, The Israelis, 124.
34. Lippe, Meine fünfundzwanzigjährige zionistische Agitation, 3 – 4.
35. Three important articles on this subject: Smith, “Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism”; Ben-
Israel, “Zionism and European Nationalisms”; and Roshwald, “Jewish Identity and the
Paradox of Nationalism.”
36. Lippe, “Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzl’s,” 194 – 95. Vital claims that Herzl had ceased to
insist on a state by the time of the first Basel Congress, as a result of his negotiations with the
Ottomans. But Vital also notes that badges distributed to participants bore the inscription
“The establishment of a Jewish state is the only possible solution to the Jewish Question.” No
wonder there was acrimonious conflict over what terms the Zionist program would employ!
Compare Vital, The Origins of Zionism, 366 vs. 355.
37. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, 169.
38. Lippe, “Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzls,” 195 – 96.
16 M.J. Reimer
39. A point made earlier by Moses Hess and later by Ben-Zion Dinur. See Hertzberg, The Zionist
Idea, 21.
40. Lippe, “Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzls,” 194. “Man darf nicht als Beispiel Serbien oder
Bulgarien anführen, für diese kämpften die russischen Heere, auf die eine jüdische Nation nie
rechnen kann und darf . . . . ”
41. Also referred to as Yakov Bernstein-Kogan, Bessarabian delegate to the Basel Congress.
43. Mandel, “Ottoman Policy and Restrictions,” 314.
44. Ibid., 314 – 16, 320 – 21. See also Oke, “The Ottoman Empire,” which covers much of the
same ground as Mandel, emphasizing that that “Ottomans had no illusions” about the Zionist
goal of establishing a sovereign state (331).
45. Campos, “Between ‘Beloved Ottomania’ and ‘The Land of Israel.’” As Campos shows, a
civic and egalitarian Ottomanism, initially celebrated in 1908, was subverted by the growth
of ethno-national rivalry between the empire’s communities, the increasing authoritarianism
on the part of the CUP government, and a significant degree of Sephardic collaboration with
Zionist settlers in Palestine.
46. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 29.
47. Smith, “Zionism and Diaspora Nationalism.” Both Ben-Israel and Roshwald make important
contributions in their own right, but they begin by complaining about the absence of studies
theorizing Zionism as a form of nationalism. It is understandable that they do not cite one
another, given that both articles were in press at about the same time; and they are both aware
of Smith’s other work, but strangely omit any reference to this particular article, published
already in 1995.
48. More specifically, the mainly Ashkenazi Jews of Europe and Russia. Ottoman Jews were not
initially drawn to Zionism. However, as Campos has shown, some Palestinian Sephardim
were soon to be implicated in the Zionist project, undercutting their claims of Ottoman
patriotism. See Campos, “Between ‘Beloved Ottomania’ and ‘The Land of Israel.’”
49. Mandel, “Ottoman Policy and Restrictions,” 317, 319. Philipp Michael de Newlinski, a Polish
aristocrat, was an official at the Austrian Embassy in Constantinople who introduced Herzl to
Ottoman officials. The reference to “vivisection” in the English corresponds precisely to
Herzl’s diary entry for 19 June 1896, where he records Newlinski’s disappointment at the
Sultan’s unwillingness to discuss the cession of Palestine. See Herzl, Theodor Herzls
Tagebücher, 1:433. Of course, it raises the perhaps unanswerable question of the Sultan’s
actual words, since we have only Herzl’s dramatized version of Newlinski’s report.
50. On this subject, see the classic statement of Edward Said, The Question of Palestine, 56 – 82.
51. Penslar, “Herzl and the Palestinian Arabs.”
52. I base this estimate on Mandel’s statement that there were about 50,000 Jews in Palestine in
1897. (Mandel, “Ottoman Policy and Restrictions,” 36). McCarthy, The Population of
Palestine, 10, gives the total population of Ottoman subjects in Palestine at this time as about
563,000, of which about 21,500 were Jews. Mandel notes that most Jewish immigrants did
not become Ottoman subjects, meaning about 28,500 Jews were foreign residents. Adding
this total to 563,000, and allowing for at least several thousands more non-Jewish foreign
residents, we can estimate the total population of Palestine in 1897 to be about 600,000, with
the Jews, both local subjects and foreign residents, comprising a little more than 8% of the
inhabitants.
53. See Weiss, “Confrontations with God,” which discusses both the biblical precedents as well
as rabbinic “confrontations.”
54. To be sure, Herzl never suggests that Abdülhamit II is the messiah. But his flattery of the
“Red Sultan” is almost as astonishing in its boldness, if not blindness, given the widely
reported massacres which had only recently occurred in Ottoman Armenia. Herzl writes:
“The reigning Sultan Abdülhamit is a ruler of magnanimous impulses, full of human
sympathy for all sufferings. Those who know him know that this much-maligned Caliph is, in
his tenderheartedness, deeply concerned about the misfortunes of his many subjects, to whom
he wishes, with his patriarchal demeanor, to act as father.” Die Welt, June 4, 1897, 2. We may
note in passing that Napoleon was an earlier candidate for the role of Cyrus (Hertzberg, The
Zionist Idea, 22).

56. “The eastern form of the spiritual problem is absolutely different from the western. In the
West it is the problem of Jews; in the East, the problem of Judaism . . . . It is not only the Jews
who have come out of the ghetto; Judaism has come out, too.” Ahad Ha’am, “The Jewish
State and the Jewish Problem,” in Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 266.
58. See also Vital, The Origins of Zionism, 273.
59. With regard to the Russian pogroms and other omens of a rising anti-Semitism, Elon writes:
“Among Herzl’s otherwise extensive papers, there is no record that he was in any way
distressed or even vaguely impressed by these harbingers . . . .” Elon, Herzl, 57.
60. Lippe, Meine fünfundzwanzigjährige zionistische Agitation, 6.
61. Stenographisches Protokoll der Verhandlungen des II. Zionisten-Congresses, 184 – 87.
62. Looking back after fifty years, Ben-Gurion affirmed Lippe’s assessment, calling the Basel
Congress “the greatest event in our history in exile” and “a date that has transformed Jewish
history” (“On the Threshold of the Jewish State,” address at the Jerusalem Jubilee
celebration, August 17, 1947; text in Jubilee, 25 – 28).
63. Again, Lippe seems to be echoing Herzl, who had earlier declared that the congress would be
an epoch moment in Jewish history (ein Datum in der Geschichte der Juden). Die Welt, June
4, 1897, 2.
64. Stenographisches Protokoll der Verhandlungen des II. Zionisten-Congresses, 234;
Stenographisches Protokoll der Verhandlungen des III. Zionisten-Congresses, 47.
65. It was David Wolffsohn, a German member of the Hovevei Zion and later head of the Zionist
executive, who convinced Herzl that the movement would fail without the support of the
Jews of eastern Europe. On this point, see Robinsohn, David Wolffsohn, 17 – 19, 32.
66. Laqueur, History of Zionism, 96, 133, 147 – 48.
67. Lippe, Meine fünfundzwanzigjährige zionistische Agitation, 6.
69. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, 65 – 66.
Notes on contributor
Michael J. Reimer is Associate Professor of History at the American University in Cairo. He is
currently working on a complete translation into English of the 1897 Basel Congress.
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Herzl, Theodor. Briefe und Tagebücher. 7 vols. Edited by Alex Bein. Berlin: Propyläen,
1983 – 96.
Herzl, Theodor. The Congress Addresses of Theodor Herzl. Translated by Nellie Strauss.
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Press, 1956.
Herzl, Theodor. Theodor Herzls Tagebücher. 3 vols. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1923.
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ha-Tziyonit, 1958.
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Laqueur, Walter. A History of Zionism. New York: Schocken Books, 1976.
Lippe, K. “Der Judenstaat Theodor Herzls.” Zion [Berlin] 7, no. 8 (August 30, 1896): 193 – 96.
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1904). Translated by Lenn J. Schramm. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988.
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Zionisten-Congress in Basel (29., 30., und 31. August 1897): Offizielles Protokol. Vienna: Verlag
des Vereines “Erez Israel”, 1898.
Appendix. Translation of the German text of Karpel Lippe’s address to the First
Zionist Congress*
[1] Dr. Karl [Karpel] Lippe (Jassy): About seventeen years ago I received a letter from a
Hebrew man of letters by the name of Akiwa Chaschmal, in which he indicated to me that a
certain Lazar Rokeach had come to Romania from Safed in Palestine, in order to agitate for the
formation of Jewish colonies in Palestine. Soon thereafter, in a humble room in a suburb in Jassy,1
I was commissioned to canvass for the same, orally and in writing. There soon arose 27
committees in 27 cities in the country and a central committee in Galata, to whose membership
Herr Samuel Pineles2 and I belonged. The first two colonies from Romania were the result of this
propaganda, Zikhron Ya’akov and Rosh Pina. As these colonies were transferred into better
hands, our committee ceased to exist. But Herr Pineles and I did not cease to be active in the
cause. I was at a conference in Kattowitz,3 among whose participants present here today there
were also, besides myself, Herr [Isidor] Jasinowski and Herr [Moritz] Moses.
While this assembly was indeed foundational for Zionist efforts, it represented a mere
fraction of Jewry. This Congress represents, on the contrary, the whole of Jewry.
What a mighty leap from that humble room in a Jassy suburb to this hall in Basel, what
unanticipated progress from Chaschmal and Rokeach to Herzl and Nordau!
This assembly of envoys of Jewish societies and of Jews filled with enthusiasm for the cause, is
the first of its kind in the 1,800 years of our third exile. It is the expression of an international
movement taking hold in all ranks of Israel, to bring to fruition a national idea which, during the
long period of the exile, the Golus Edom, has been locked up in the bosom of Jewry and struggled in
vain toward realization. O what a great and beautiful day this day is in the history of Israel, truly!
[2] The object which is set before us for deliberation is nothing less than the return of the Jews
to the land of their fathers, the holy land, which our God, the one true God, promised our
forefather Abraham to be for us his descendants.
For centuries we have been waiting in vain for a redemption from the hard Golus by means of
divine, supernatural miracles, and now, tired of the long wait, pressed on all sides by enemies, we
want to attempt our redemption in a natural way, in order to return to our ancient fatherland, like
our forefathers in Mitzrayim [Egypt] and Babylon. They also regained possession of the
fatherland in the natural way of historical development. After the exodus from Egypt our fathers
conquered the land of the patriarchs in the natural way of warfare under Moses, Joshua, the judges
and kings. The exiles in Babylon returned on the basis of diplomatic negotiations with Cyrus, king
of the Persians, and an international treaty that is preserved verbatim in our holy scriptures.4 The
prophet Zechariah did promise them a supernatural redemption, when he consoled them with
these words: “Your king (the Messiah) will come to you, humbly riding on an ass.”5 But our
ancestors did not bide their time waiting for the fulfillment of this promise, but used the first
opportunity that offered itself and returned home. The prophet Isaiah did not find it unseemly to
bestow the title of Messiah on the Persian king, a pagan Gentile.6
We too, like these our ancestors 2,509 years ago, want no more to await the ass-rider of Babylon,
the Messiah, but want likewise to return on the basis of an international treaty to Eretz Yisrael.
The pious among us who still await the ass-riding king, may wish to remain in Golus and wait
for his arrival; but if they permit beggars, idlers, and doddering old men to settle down in the Holy
Land and support them with alms, then we cannot be forbidden to dispatch vigorous young people
eager to work, who through work and diligence will transform the desolate land into an Eden.7
And should the humble king really make an appearance in the end, our workers will prepare him a
reception more dignified than those spongers.
But we by no means conceal from ourselves that our position is far more difficult than that of
the exiles of Babylon. At the time of the Babylonian exile, both Babylon and Palestine were
provinces of the Persian empire. Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah had only to secure the
permission of the Persian government for the Jews to move from one province of their state to the
*
Source: Zionisten-Congress in Basel (29., 30. und 31. August 1897): Offizielles Protokoll
(Vienna: Verlag des Vereines “Erez Israel”, 1898), 1 – 4. Original pagination indicated in
brackets.
20 M.J. Reimer
other.8 The task of our immigrants is more difficult. [3] The latter come as foreign nationals
requesting admission to a province within the Turkish domains. But in the well-known grace of
the reigning Sultan,9 convinced of the loyalty of his Jewish subjects, convinced that Jews bring
blessings everywhere where they settle, his Majesty the Sultan will not fail to incorporate into his
empire a greater number of such diligent civilizing elements.
To the assimilated among us, who do not want to accompany us, who in perverse self-denial
renounce the honorable title of “nation” for themselves, and who perceive in the Zionist
movement a threat to their citizenship, and who see their salvation entirely in terms of their
complete absorption into other nations, we address the words that the Jewish commander used to
direct to his soldiers before battle: “Let everyone who is fearful or fainthearted remain at
home.”10
A nation like Israel which, for 3,000 years, even without any compulsory education, tolerated
no illiterates in its midst; a nation which even all the powers of hell over the course of millennia
could not rob of its national consciousness, still possesses vigor enough to lead an independent
national existence and cannot give up on itself.
As a nation, we have a history rich in great deeds and wide of influence, and the first struggle
for freedom that world history can point to is the exodus of our fathers from Egypt, with which the
history of nations really begins. But the history of Israel is the history of the world-conquering
idea. The first well-ordered, humane code of law is the Jewish one.
Our ancient classical literature, known as the Bible, is translated into all civilized and semi-
civilized languages; it serves hundreds of millions of families as their household devotional book.
The priests of all confessions make use of our songs (the Psalms). The Jewish nation lacks only its
fatherland to be complete. It is precisely about this that we wish to deliberate. – To us, the fear of
the assimilated among us about the colonization of Palestine is unintelligible. How can this
colonization be injurious to their fellow tribesmen who remain behind in other nations? Hitherto
there are already 32 Jewish settlements in the Holy Land and we have not been affected at all by
these; the Palestine exhibitions in Berlin, Cologne, and Breslau have caused just as little damage.
The numerous other energetic and industrious Jewish immigrants to Jerusalem and other cities
have done us just as little harm.
But the Congress, yea, the Congress! [4] This Congress is, apart from the specific object to
which it addresses itself, nothing other than a public assembly of the nation, to protest against the
1,800 years of persecution, oppression, and violence, like every minority whose rights have been
impaired and injured. While our human rights are curtailed on all sides, shall we give up even that
one right that remains to us, the right of complaint? We Jews, in spite of unspeakable and never-
ending injustice which we have had to suffer, have not despaired of humanity, and in the hope that
neither anti-Semitism nor misconceived and perversely practiced Christian love has extinguished
the public conscience of Europe, we purpose to appeal to this conscience. We must lodge our
complaint against governments, peoples, and clergy.
For a long time we have believed that we would find our salvation in the Aryan civilization to
which we have become attached. But it has betrayed us. As Jeremiah once lamented: “I called my
familiar friends and they have betrayed me.”11
As our ancestors traveled from Egypt, many assimilated persons joined them. But they had
not the courage to struggle against a hostile destiny and cried out at the first adversity that
confronted them: “Let us appoint for ourselves a leader and return to Mitzrayim.”12 But we cry:
“Let us appoint for ourselves a leader and return to Jerusalem.” We must evade the brutal and
superior forces we face and return to our old home, and if our mission among the nations has not
yet been fulfilled, we will retrieve whatever is lacking from there.13
“For from Zion alone the teaching will go forth, and the word of God only from Jerusalem.”14
(Spirited applause.)
The proposal of Dr Lippe to dispatch a profession of loyalty and gratitude to the Sultan is
accepted without debate through acclamation.
Notes
1. Jassy (Iaşi), old capital of the principality of Moldavia, it had a population of about 80,000 at
this time; Jews comprised about 50% of the population. It became a center of Hebrew and
Yiddish publishing in the second half of the nineteenth century. Friction between Hasidim
and maskilim was a marked feature of intracommunal relations.
2. Samuel Pineles (1843 – 1928), like Lippe, was born in Galicia but relocated to Romania.
He was active in the Hovevei Zion movement before becoming a Congress-Zionist and
attending the first ten Congresses.
3. Kattowitz (Katowice), conference of mostly Russian members of Hovevei Zion, 1884. The
conference, attended by 22 delegates, elected Pinsker president, tried to centralize
administration of the movement, and sent aid to the struggling colonies.
4. Ezra 1.1 – 4. “Negotiations” is a misnomer; the text records a royal edict. While there exists
no independent corroboration of this text, the famous Cyrus Cylinder (ca. 530 BCE) has often
been cited as supporting the essential historicity of the policy of repatriation represented in
Ezra.
5. Zech. 9.9. In traditional Jewish exegesis, the reference is to the eschatological arrival of the
Messiah on his divine errand of peacemaking. Christian interpretation sees in the verse a
prophecy of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem one week before his crucifixion (Matt.
21.4 – 5).
6. Isa. 45.1, a remarkable passage in which the prophet designates Cyrus the Great (r. 559 – 530
BCE) the Lord’s “messiah” (anointed king).
7. R. Zvi Hirsch Kalischer also foresaw the implanting of young laborers in Palestine, but as a
way of actually assisting elderly and infirm students of Torah. Whereas Kalischer remained
deferential toward scholars who were dependent on charity, Lippe appears to ridicule them.
8. Zerubbabel was governor of Jerusalem under the Persians, ca. 520 BCE (cf. Haggai 1.1.).
9. Abdülhamit II, r. 1876 – 1909. There is unintended irony in ascribing “grace” (Gnade) or
clemency to the Sultan, who was implacably opposed to Jewish colonization of Palestine
from the outset, and who had also come under attack in the Western press for his complicity
in massacre of Armenians, 1894 – 96.
10. Judg. 7.3. The reference is to the warlord Gideon and his admonition to the fainthearted prior
to his battle with the Midianites. The event, if historical, occurred in the pre-monarchical
period (before 1000 BCE).
11. Lam. 1.19, traditionally ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah.
12. Num. 14.4. Lippe sermonizes here using a biblical contrast, recasting the characters as the
Zionists and the assimilated Jews. The desire for Egypt is made the equivalent of a desire to
remain in the European diaspora, for which the Zionists reproached assimilated Jews.
13. In contrast to the fulfillment of the Jews’ mission in the diaspora, a cardinal point of Reform
Judaism.
14. Isa. 2.3. Lippe again invokes and interprets a prophetic oracle which had a clear
eschatological thrust. In Isaiah’s vision, Zion becomes the Lord’s seat of judgment, the center
of the world, and the locus of the Gentiles’ submission. Lippe seems to imply that the Zionist
project will actually begin, in some fashion, the fulfillment of this oracle.

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“The good Dr. Lippe” and Herzl in Basel, 1897: A

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Download by: [Universite Laval] Date: 25 April 2016, At: 16:27

Department of History, American University in Cairo

q 2015 Taylor & Francis

Finally, using early Zionism as a general reference point, I suggest a couple of

Institutional and ideological continuities

your eyes to mother’s pleas . . . .”33 – an astonishing repudiation of the oft-repeated

constituencies and patrons, Zionism displayed a “pragmatic” proclivity toward

Equivocations, paradoxes, and contradictions

14. “Lippe, Karpel,” in YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.

55. Hertzberg, The Zionist Idea, 18.

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