HULDA, Israel — The fine Ottoman-style building is clad with Jerusalem stone and adorned with green shutters.
Theodor Herzl’s image on the side of the building. [Sheldon Kirshner photo] |
It exudes an aristocratic air, as if it was once a seat of royalty.
This impression is reinforced by the path leading to the house. It is lined with regal palm trees.
What could be more majestic?
On the left side of the dwelling is a prominent mural of a bearded man in formal 19th century black attire, his arms folded in contemplation.
The person in question, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904), was a Budapest-born Viennese journalist whose visionary books, The Jewish State and The Old New Land, paved the way for modern political Zionism, a movement that irretrievably altered and still influences the geo-politics of the Middle East.
In these works, Herzl envisaged a socialist utopia, a new Jewish society underpinned by science and technology and inhabited by Jews and Arabs co-existing in peace and harmony.
Herzl, having visited Palestine only once, died long before his dream materialized. But in a remarkable observation, he predicted that a Jewish state would arise in Palestine in the late 1940s.
Although the building is named after the godfather of Zionism, the man himself did not live in Herzl House, which is a museum today.
Nor did he visit the outlying lands of what would be the Herzl Forest, the Jewish National Fund’s first-ever afforestation project.
Since then, the Jewish National Fund – which was founded in 1901 – has planted more than 220 million trees and purchased land and serviced it for settlement.
The story of Herzl House mirrors the history of Israel.
After Herzl’s untimely death, the Jewish National Fund launched a campaign to purchase land for a farm.
In 1909, an olive plantation was established and a residence built in Herzl’s honour. The farm was administered by an agronomist, Louis Brisch, who allocated the second floor for himself and the lower level for his workers.
Since Brisch did not get on well with his laborers, he was replaced by another agronomist, Louis Wilkansky.
In an attempt to create a mixed agrarian economy, he augmented the olive grove with fruit trees, woodland species, scrubland, field crops, dairy herds and chicken runs.
Most of Wilkansky’s workers fled or were evicted by the Ottoman Turks during World War I.
The ones who remained faced water shortages and a locust plague. After the war and the British conquest, still more Jews settled in the vicinity.
The farm, a training centre for Jewish pioneers, was attacked by Arabs when riots erupted in Palestine in 1929. A Haganah commander, Ephraim Chizik, was killed during these communal disturbances.
Two years later, a group of Jews from Poland, members of the Gordonia youth movement, arrived to revive the farm.
They came under Arab attack during the Arab Revolt, which lasted from 1936 to 1939, and left the site to form Kibbutz Hulda, about one kilometre to the west.
When the 1948 War of Independence broke out, the road from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem was blocked by Arab forces. The kibbutz served as a base for Jewish fighters trying to break the siege.
Herzl House, meanwhile, fell into a state of disrepair. But in 1998, when Israel marked its 50th anniversary, the building was renovated thanks to the generosity of a Toronto man, John Sereny, who donated the funds in honour of his parents.
The renovation was carried out by the Jewish National Fund in conjunction with the Council for the Preservation of Buildings and Historical Sites, the Nature Reserves and the National Parks Authority.
Herzl House, 10 kilometres southeast of the university town of Rehovot, contains a small exhibit of historical artifacts, notably an excerpt from The Old New Land and a copy of the manuscript in Herzl’s own hand.
In the excerpt, a character describes his impression of Palestine in doleful terms: “Over the distant horizon loomed the deforested hills of Judea. The bare slopes and the bleak, rocky valleys showed few traces of present or farmer cultivation. This country needs nothing but water and shade to have a very great future.”
A fairly informative 10-minute film elaborates on this theme.
Herzl House, whose day-to-day operations are run by members of Kibbutz Hulda, is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Entrance is free.
This year, Israel’s 60th anniversary of statehood, is as good a time as any to visit Herzl House.
It drives home the point that Israel’s birth was exceedingly difficult, that much progress has been achieved since then, and that Israel, in the deepest sense of the word, remains a work in progress.