Religious Conversion as Ethnonational Boundary

We may use Hans's liminal case to “[think] with converts,” as Ellie Schainker recently put it, in order to explore the roles of religion and ethnicity in creating or guarding the parameters of Jewish national identity according to the Zionist movement.Footnote ⁸ The relationship between religion, ethnicity, and nationalism is of course a complex subject of inquiry even outside of the Zionist case, though as Yehouda Shenhav states, Zionism brings this relationship into sharp relief.Footnote ⁹ In Outside the Fold: Conversion, Modernity, and Belief, Gauri Viswanathan posits that “in its most transparent meaning as a change of religion, conversion is arguably one of the most unsettling political events in the life of a society.”Footnote ¹⁰ Tension “erupts most obviously and most dramatically in situations of asymmetry between civil society and religion, where the adopted identity of the convert is at variance with the cultural meanings sanctioned by that society.”Footnote ¹¹ Thus, religious changes do not always involve “radical assimilation,” or a bifurcated move from one group to another, but rather conversion can create openings through which we may examine assumptions about unspoken normative boundaries.

In “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Michele Lamont and Virag Molnar emphasize the utility of examining boundaries to understand how groups identify themselves, especially in relation to others, and subsequently the utility of examining boundaries to understand national and ethnic self-definition.Footnote ¹² They posit three major types of boundary work that groups undertake: expulsion, expansion, and protection of autonomy. As I will show, Zionists viewed Hans's conversion to Christianity as significant for each of these forms of boundary work. From the perspective of some Zionists, Hans breached the boundaries of Jewish nationalism, expelling himself (or inviting expulsion), and thereby violating the movement that he (and his father) claimed to represent. For others, Hans's conversion expanded the boundaries of Jewish nationalism, and thus threatened a culturally or demographically narrower conception of a Jewish nation or state. Finally, and most significantly, Hans's conversion called attention to the indeterminate parameters between religion, ethnicity, and nation in the Zionist framework, so that inconsistencies meant to remain ambiguous in Zionist discourse or policy came to the fore. The protection of Zionist autonomy, to use Lamont and Molnar's terms, could be compromised if the gaps and weaknesses in its national boundaries were exposed.

As long as the ambiguity of national boundaries remained latent, Zionism could accommodate more supporters and foster less conflict. This is surely the reason Theodor Herzl trenchantly avoided the “cultural question” at Zionist congresses.Footnote ¹³ Yonatan Shapiro has similarly argued that ideological ambiguity served early Zionist interests.Footnote ¹⁴ And Baruch Kimmerling asserts that at the earlier stages of the movement, ideological coherence was less pressing than institution building.Footnote ¹⁵ Kimmerling critiques the irony that a movement with a basic premise to realize a Jewish state left “the definition of ‘Judaism’ … open to interpretation as a religion, a secular nationalism, or a secular nationalism built on select religious ingredients.”Footnote ¹⁶ Hans's conversion thus threatened to force ideological clarity at a time when its boundaries were still under construction.

By the mid-1920s, when Hans converted, the common denominator of the various Zionist streams was the pursuit of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. But this was an amorphous task: Zionists contested the strategy of this pursuit, the meaning of “Jewish,” and the sociopolitical nature of a “homeland.”Footnote ¹⁷ These debates and negotiations were not just between the “religious” and “secular,” but among secular Zionists as well, who ranged, as Gideon Shimoni posits, between “normative” and “laissez-faire” approaches to secular Jewishness.Footnote ¹⁸ Defining the scope of a homeland for the Jewish nation thus rested on several criteria: ethnicity (including language and culture), race, religion, or some hybrid or redefinition of these. In his influential work Zionism and History, historian Shmuel Almog briefly suggests that religious conversion might be a useful metric to understand the degree to which ethnicity, and not religion, determined parameters in the Zionist movement.Footnote ¹⁹ Hans Herzl tested these criteria, thus serving as a fulcrum of debate regarding existing tensions in the movement.

Dilemmas regarding a foreign religion in the ranks of the Zionist movement were not without precedent; similar contentions about converts in the movement came to a head in the well-known Brenner affair in 1911.Footnote ²⁰ Hebrew author Yosef Ḥayim Brenner proposed that since the New Testament was just as much a Jewish text as the Tanakh, Jewish conversion was not a problem compared to Jews’ “lack of a complete Hebrew language, the lack of a Hebrew homeland and the lack of a Hebrew culture.”Footnote ²¹ As David Biale states, “In the ‘Brenner Affair,’ Christianity became a symbol for whether Jewish culture would be bounded by religion alone.… for a Jew to affirm that Jesus was a Jew was a paradoxical way of using the religion of the Other to assert a secular identity.”Footnote ²² Brenner's use of the New Testament to hyperbolize the extent to which Zionism should not concern religion was similar to Christological motifs and rhetoric of other contemporary Jewish authors such as Chaim Zhitlowsky or Israel Zangwill.Footnote ²³ To be sure, Brenner would not have condoned Hans's actions or included him in his national fold, since he failed to embrace Brenner's one principle of Jewish nationality—the Hebrew language. But what Brenner intended as rhetorical iconoclasm, the son of Zionism's reputed founder adopted in practice, conjuring the disagreements during Brenner's controversy that continued to reverberate in the Zionist movement.

* * * * *

Hans Herzl was born in Vienna on June 10, 1891, the second of Theodor Herzl's three children. He grew up in both the limelight and shadow of his father, neither of which dissipated with Theodor Herzl's untimely death in 1905, when Hans was thirteen years old. Hans knew he inhabited a significant role as the only son of his illustrious father. The elder Herzl had fantasized that “some day I might crown Hans as the leader of his people and address him in the Temple before the country's great men as ‘Your Highness! My beloved son!’”Footnote ²⁴ He confided to Hans that, “you and I must do everything with distinction,” and exhorted him to “make up for [Herzl's] deficiencies.”Footnote ²⁵ Hans never achieved the success of his father; even though he eventually attended Cambridge University, he did not establish a regular career or secure finances. He also never married, and most of his adult life he lived in bachelors’ boarding houses.

Despite Herzl's august future vision for Hans as “king” of the Jewish state, Hans received a Jewish education ranging from nearly nonexistent to episodic. Theodor Herzl repudiated religion in general and observant Judaism in particular; perhaps nothing indicates this better than his decision not to circumcise Hans as an infant. After Herzl's death, Zionist leaders perceived this omission as a tactical error. They rectified it by convincing the fifteen-year-old Hans to undergo an operation two years after his father's death.Footnote ²⁶ This procedure remained low profile (Hans's guardians even wanted to hide it from Julie Herzl), so much so that by 1959 one author wrote that he was not able to “trace [the] secret” of Hans's circumcision and could only speculate on who initiated the overdue rite.Footnote ²⁷ It appears the guardians also organized a late bar mitzvah for Hans.Footnote ²⁸ Hans was sent to Jewish private schools in England, where he spent the rest of his life, other than a brief period back in Vienna.

Hans was interested in Zionism, and wrote that “in my innermost heart I sense the absolute necessity for a large-scale movement as first formulated by my father.”Footnote ²⁹ Despite his interest he did not pursue its leadership and avoided the Zionist congresses for fear that as Herzl's son he would be simply a spectacle rather than a colleague. He recalled a time as a child when he “was put on a platform at one of the congresses … and there cheered as the son of his father.”Footnote ³⁰ He may have even considered “opposition of certain Russian Zionists” to blame for Herzl's death.Footnote ³¹ His close involvement with the publication and translation of his father's works remained his most active participation in Zionist development.

Like the elder Herzl, Hans demonstrated anxiety and even experienced what appears to be chronic depression, eventually receiving treatment from Carl Jung for a short period.Footnote ³² Zionist leader Selig Brodetsky recalled that Hans “was undergoing considerable mental evolution.… he became enamoured of a certain philosophical system, only to discard it after a few weeks.”Footnote ³³ At different points he considered himself a Kantian or a Spinozist, and he even resonated with Houston Stewart Chamberlain's antisemitic Foundations of the Nineteenth Century—an affinity that would be easy to associate with “self-hatred,” but is consonant with other contemporary Zionist leanings towards racial paradigms of civilization.Footnote ³⁴ It is clear from his private writings that he insatiably craved self-assurance, fulfilment of a greater purpose, and inner peace.

Hans declared that “religion is essential to me,” and he explored various religious traditions like Anglicanism and Theosophy.Footnote ³⁵ It seems he never made any serious inquiries about any streams of Orthodox Judaism. An encounter with a missionary in London prompted him to read the New Testament and Hebrew Bible as part of his continual spiritual quest.Footnote ³⁶ When Hans visited a Baptist congregation while living in Vienna, he was impressed by the congregation's piety. He reflected that his “desire for the holy baptism became so overwhelming,” and went through with this on July 20, 1924, insisting to the Baptist pastor that the action did not negate his Jewish nationality.Footnote ³⁷ Hans initially kept his baptism a secret, but his secrecy “struck his conscience.”Footnote ³⁸ The first person Hans informed was Cyril Picciotto, a friend from Cambridge, “I have been baptized a Christian—not in the Catholic Church, but that to me is not essential, as I consider baptism a sacrament fundamentally uniting all believers in the divinity of the man Jesus Christ.… There are very few people as yet who know of the step I have taken … and in a good many cases it will mean a breach, I fear. But that is a consequence I am prepared for.”Footnote ³⁹

On his return to England Hans explored the Catholic Church, drawn by its traditions and longevity as an institution. He concluded he could “join the larger community of Christians unequivocally only by becoming a Catholic—that the Church, protectress of the Faith, has to be accepted with the faith.”Footnote ⁴⁰ Hans joined the Catholic Guild of Israel and studied Catholicism further with Father Arthur Day, a priest active in Jewish missionary efforts.Footnote ⁴¹ Hans wrote that “health is what the Catholic ritual gives me,” and was rebaptized at the Chapel of Our Lady of Zion on October 19, 1924.Footnote ⁴²

Within a year Hans formally left the Catholic Church, though he continued to attend services and to maintain relationships with Catholics, Protestants, and Reform Jews, cultivating his own religious convictions, which alienated him to one extent or another from each of these religious orientations.Footnote ⁴³ He argued that Jews should be able to remain in the synagogue if they become Christians, and that the synagogue should embrace the New Testament as a divine text. Hans identified with the apostle Paul, who highlighted his Jewish identity and who was also unmarried, and with Thomas Aquinas, who enshrined Christian theology in conversation with contemporary Muslim and Jewish philosophers.Footnote ⁴⁴ But he also had many doubts and questions, prompting Father Day to label him a “wobbler.”Footnote ⁴⁵ Hans resented Catholic claims of universal and exclusive truth, particularly in regard to other Christian denominations. (He experienced this directly when he was excommunicated for a year after attending confession at an Anglican church.)Footnote ⁴⁶ And while he considered Jesus “the noblest hero of my race,” he denied the doctrine of his divinity.Footnote ⁴⁷ He critiqued the church for disregarding its Jewish origins, and discerned institutional antisemitism: “It deeply offends me to hear you speak, for example, of a ‘Jew Sunday’. To me, it sounds rank antisemitism, and I feel a traitor to listen to it. It is these little jarring notes which prove to me the incompatibility between myself and the Church.”Footnote ⁴⁸ At times he expressed a desire to “repent my apostasy before God.”Footnote ⁴⁹ He petitioned Claude Montefiore to join the Union of Progressive Judaism, but was barred from doing so because he was not ready to join a synagogue.Footnote ⁵⁰ On his dying day, he expressed great tension about his Christianity, torn because he wanted to avoid it, but he had already “vowed eternal fidelity to Christ.”Footnote ⁵¹

Hans remained deeply ambivalent about, but nevertheless invested in the Zionist movement and Jewish nationalism. In March 1925 he wrote an article for the Catholic newspaper the Universe entitled “National Home for the Jews: An Expedient No Longer Needed: An Eminent Jewish Convert's View: Son of the Founder of Zionism on Lord Balfour's Mission.” He complained that the Zionism under the British Mandate is “a revival in name only of that old and true Zionism.”Footnote ⁵² His father's vision of a Jewish state in Palestine was relevant when the Jews in Russia were persecuted in droves, but since they were “emancipated” under the Soviet Union they should develop Jewish nationalism there (an argument reminiscent of autonomism, which became essentially defunct under Bolshevism). Instead he called for Vatican control of the Christian holy places and a “United Arab Commonwealth,” which Jews from the West could join if desired. In his critique of Zionism, Hans considered himself as qualified to advocate for the preservation of what he deemed “true” Zionism.

Hans's complicated stance towards Zionism complemented his attraction to internationalism and opposition to exclusive nationalism. He supported the Pan-European movement under the energetic leadership of Austrian Richard N. Coudenhove-Kalergi, and translated his 1924 book Pacifism into English. Coudenhove-Kalergi's ideas made such an impression on Hans that he mentioned him in his last testament before his suicide.Footnote ⁵³ In a bizarre and ultimately useless gambit, Hans even applied to rescind his British citizenship due to a “marked sense of statelessness.”Footnote ⁵⁴ He wrote to the British undersecretary of state to withdraw his citizenship “on the ground that I am a nationalist Jew and a Catholic.”Footnote ⁵⁵ To the confusion of British officials, Hans sent subsequent letters to clarify and qualify his requests. Hans wrote, “I am not in communion with the Catholic Church, nor am I an organized Zionist. I am a Jew and a Papist.” The office replied that “the question of your religion does not affect your nationality and the Secretary of State can add nothing to that statement.”Footnote ⁵⁶ Hans stated in another letter that “I am an internationalist and hold that Jewish nationalism is relative internationalism.… I regard the Jews as a peculiar people, and the lands of their dispersion as their National Home. In other words, I cannot be a citizen of one country.”Footnote ⁵⁷ He shared this attempt with Lucien Wolf, and even asked Wolf if he might try to obtain an international passport for him in Geneva.Footnote ⁵⁸ This exchange reflects not only his internationalism, but also some of Hans's anxious integrity—even when the British officials informed him that his religious outlook did not affect his citizenship, he was compelled to confess his (inter)national loyalties.

The 1920s saw a significant trend of conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism, with “a positive estimation of the Catholic spirit as a creative component of the contemporary intellectual life.”Footnote ⁵⁹ It is worth comparing Hans with German philosopher Edith Stein, another Jewish convert to Catholicism in the interwar period, whose legacy (including eventual sainthood) was fraught with controversy. Stein converted to Catholicism in 1922, became a Carmelite nun in 1933, and ultimately perished at Auschwitz, along with her sister Rosa, who had also converted. Hans and Stein of course had many differences. Stein did not share Hans's notoriety and her conversion did not drastically interrupt her professional, social, or familial life. Unlike Hans, Stein carefully and systematically measured her conversion to Catholicism with her philosophical ideology. She also did not have any affiliation with the Zionist movement. (Though in 1933 she did correspond with philosopher Hugo Bergmann at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.)Footnote ⁶⁰

Nevertheless, Stein and Hans shared similar postures towards their conversions and their relationship to their Jewishness. Like Hans, Stein continued to identify with her Jewish heritage and community even after her conversion.Footnote ⁶¹ Stein's conversion was not a rejection of Judaism as much as it was an adoption of Catholicism, and Stein remained proud of both her Jewishness and Germanness through the end of her life.Footnote ⁶² She referred to Jews as “we,” basing her Jewishness on lineage, or physical descent, and community networks.Footnote ⁶³ “You don't know what it means to me to be a daughter of the chosen people,” Stein expressed, “to belong to Christ, not only spiritually, but according to the flesh.”Footnote ⁶⁴ When she entered the convent she assured her niece: “What I am doing does not mean I want to leave my people and my family.… I will always be close to you, the family, and the Jewish people.”Footnote ⁶⁵ Hans, too, continued to regard himself as a Jew based on his relationship to his family (and especially his father), his guardians and colleagues, and his stance towards Jewish nationality as independent of religious convictions or practices.

Hans and Stein also shared other ideological similarities. For instance, the two demonstrated a sense that internationalism inhered in Catholicism. Joyce Berkman avers that Stein's Catholicism was part of a wider European identity, and notes the significance that, despite her German patriotism, she did not convert to Lutheranism.Footnote ⁶⁶ Hans, too, expressed a cosmopolitan identity linked to his Catholicism—whether the latter stemmed from the former or vice versa—and the association that he and Stein shared was coeval with other thinkers who associated cosmopolitanism and Catholicism.Footnote ⁶⁷

Additionally, like Hans, Stein harbored heterodox beliefs. She openly advocated for women in the priesthood, and she believed that her mother, who never converted, was in heaven and interceding for their family in distress.Footnote ⁶⁸ Shortly before her death, Stein penned a play about a conversation with Esther and Mary, interweaving her Jewish and Christian (as well as feminist) identities.Footnote ⁶⁹ It appears that this double association may have lent itself to a sense of foreboding, since she and Hans both ascribed supernatural meaning to their deaths as converted Jews. In 1930 Stein wrote, shockingly, in retrospect, that “I have a deeper sense of the urgency of my own Holocaustum,” or self-sacrifice, though she did not clarify what she meant. She also unsuccessfully requested a papal audience in 1933 to petition support against Nazi antisemitism.Footnote ⁷⁰ And later in 1939 Stein prayed that God would accept her life and death “as an atonement for the Jewish people's unbelief.”Footnote ⁷¹ Hans, about a year before his death, also cryptically wrote to a friend that “the only consolation I can now offer to the Jews my people is to show myself willing to die for them.”Footnote ⁷² And in his last testament, he reflected that “I know my very existence is an obstacle to the development of Political Zionism—one more reason to end my life.”Footnote ⁷³ Stein's experience proves that Hans's identification was not completely anomalous, and that converts with “sincere” Catholic beliefs continued to reconcile these with their Jewish identity.

“Hans Herzl Apostatizes”: Opprobrium or Opportunity?

When news of Hans's conversion reached Zionist circles, it caused a stir. Since Hans was employed with a Jewish publishing house at the time of his baptism he felt the need to divulge his decision to his employer, and he offered to resign in order to protect the firm from embarrassment. The publisher, however, reported the news to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in London. Several sources recount the sensation the news provoked. Jews in Vilna were said to have mourned with ashes and rending of their garments.Footnote ⁷⁴ When they could not obtain a comment from Hans, newspapers such as the Jewish Morning Journal fabricated interviews and information.Footnote ⁷⁵ If the press did not have an explanation for Hans's actions, it certainly felt the need for one.

An article in the Zionist Hebrew newspaper Do'ar ha-yom expressed concern that Hans's conversion might pose a potential threat to the Zionist movement. This piece castigated “the meshummad,” or apostate, and accused Hans of being a dupe of the Catholic Church, who will be in Vienna on the command of the church, which, according to its writer, sought to “scratch the wounds” of Viennese Jews by flaunting its new catechumen.Footnote ⁷⁶ This article also worriedly speculated that the church might send Hans on a mission to Palestine. However, it also expressed confidence in the Zionist movement by boasting that even though the church intends to “perplex Israel,” the Zionists continue their work undaunted. In defending the Zionist movement against presumed motivations of the church, Do'ar ha-yom implicitly acknowledged that Hans's conversion could potentially serve as a threat, albeit an impotent one, to the movement.

The Jewish Morning Journal speculated whether Hans's “action was due to [his] feeling aggrieved at the Zionists’ attitude withholding the limelight and influence due to [him] as [his] father's son,” and whether he planned to travel to Palestine “with a view to carry on Christian propaganda.”Footnote ⁷⁷ In response to these accusations, Hans evidently issued only one public response. Doing little to quell the controversy, Hans replied, “this being a private matter, I felt under no obligation to express myself concerning my motives … everyone could form the opinion he chose.” He insisted that he “was not intending to proceed to Palestine.”Footnote ⁷⁸

Individual Zionist responses varied, according to their relationships to Hans and their perceptions of the implications his conversion bore for the Zionist movement. Some asserted that Hans's conversion was a gross misinterpretation of the movement or even a betrayal. Zionist leader and Reform rabbi Stephen Wise was most scathing in this regard. Hans had written a letter to the editor of the Jewish Guardian defending Wise's infamous “Jesus speech” on Christmas Day, 1925, in which Wise affirmed the Jewishness of Jesus.Footnote ⁷⁹ Yet Wise and Hans clashed after they met in person at the London office of the WZO in 1926. “I had a long talk with him,” Wise later recalled, “I told him of my horror about the things that had happened, namely his deserting his people.… I tried to point out to him the tragic injustice which he had done to the memory of his father.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Wise admitted that Hans “bravely denied” this accusation, and recognized that Hans “insisted over and over again that he had not left the Jewish people” and that “again and again … he still felt he could be of service to the Zionist cause.”Footnote ⁸¹ Hans later invited Wise to dinner and to attend a Friday-evening service for Hebrew Christians in London. He received a caustic and definitive response from Wise's secretary: “Dr. Wise does not understand … your extraordinary suggestion that he attend the service of the so-called Hebrew Christians. He had hoped to make you see that it was your sacred duty to take your place again in the midst of the life of your people.… he wishes to have no further communications from you.”Footnote ⁸² Perhaps Hans naively assumed that a service with attention to Jewish identity, by and for converted Jews, would somehow alleviate Wise's concerns that Hans was “deserting [his] people” or committing “tragic injustice” against Theodor Herzl's memory. The fact Wise rejected this request, and indirectly no less, clearly demonstrates that Wise did not consider Hans part of the Jewish (or Zionist) fold.

There were others who, like Wise, disapproved of Hans's presence in Jewish leadership capacities. When Joseph Leftwich, head of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, temporarily hired Hans for his staff, he received complaints that a convert would be working for the agency.Footnote ⁸³ Hans met similar resistance in a collaborative project with Marcel Sternberger (his later biographer). He was aware of this perception, and by 1929 he released a statement defending his Jewish identity, claiming that “inasmuch that certain gentlemen of the press have seen but once again to flog that dead horse, I desire to state that I regard myself as a member of the Jewish people.”Footnote ⁸⁴ Ultimately some were not willing to accept his claims of membership if they were accompanied by vocal sympathy for Christianity or even Christian heterodoxy.

How his late father might have reacted to Hans's conversion is not clear. Herzl's previous statements regarding conversion indicate that he most certainly would have grieved his apostasy. However, Herzl also envisioned a time when the Jewish religion would be incidental to Jewish identity. In this Herzl was not alone; as Michael Stanislawski has demonstrated, prominent early Zionist leaders subscribed to Western European cosmopolitanism, spurning religious particularism.Footnote ⁸⁵ In his utopian novel Altneuland, Herzl's character Dr. Walker describes freedom of religion extending to converts in the New Society in Palestine: “These who wanted to accept the faith of the majority were only now enabled to do so without being branded as careerists. For it was no longer advantageous to deny one's Judaism.”Footnote ⁸⁶ Another character observes that “questions of faith were definitely excluded from all influence in public affairs. Whether you prayed in a synagogue, a church, or a mosque, in a museum or at a philharmonic concert—it was all one to the New Society.”Footnote ⁸⁷

On the other hand, despite these fictional scenarios celebrating religious diversity, Herzl did not seem to regard conversion as compatible with his movement. In fact, before he launched his Zionist efforts Herzl had considered mass conversion to Catholicism as a way to definitively achieve rights for Jews in Europe. He later rejected the idea—ironically, specifically with reference to Hans, whom he would not have wanted to subject to this plan. In a particularly striking passage, Herzl reflects,

Furthermore, in an 1897 letter Herzl replied negatively to a correspondent who asked whether a Jew who converted to Christianity might be accepted to the Zionist Organization. “Mr. De Jong being a Christian cannot become a member of the Zionist Organization,” Herzl replied. “We would be grateful to him for any assistance he may give us as a non-member.”Footnote ⁸⁹ Indeed, as disconnected from religious observance as Herzl was, he famously wrote that “we can recognize one another as belonging to the same people only through the faith of our fathers.”Footnote ⁹⁰ At least rhetorically, Herzl remained convinced that Judaism was essential to Jewish nationhood.

While many likewise felt that Hans's actions betrayed the Zionist movement, others asserted that Hans's conversion, on the contrary, exemplified its goals and means. One of these was Israel Zangwill, one of Theodor Herzl's earliest collaborators, who later broke with the Zionist movement to establish the controversial Jewish Territorial Organization. When the Jewish Telegraphic Agency solicited a comment from Zangwill regarding Hans's conversion, his reply reflected his disillusionment with the Zionist movement by the mid-1920s: “Mr Zangwill thinks that Dr. Herzl's son, having recognized that Palestine offers no prospect of solving the Jewish question, may have launched a rival solution by way of conversion en masse.… In any case, the Zionism now prevailing in Palestine being merely racial … it cannot exclude Christians any more than it excludes Freethinkers.”Footnote ⁹¹ Zangwill's tone is resigned, but not surprised; if “the Zionism now prevailing” is “merely racial,” there is nothing devious about Hans's choice. On the contrary, Zangwill believed Hans proved that Zionism adopted the stance that the Jewish nation was based on race, impervious to religious differences and changes. Though he was not a Zionist, Chaim Zhitlovsky similarly argued that “Dr. Herzl's son, who became a Catholic, insists that by means of this ‘conversion’ or ‘baptism’ … his ‘national’ Jewishness has not been diminished at all.… And no individual in the world has the right to exclude him.” Echoing Zangwill, Zhitlovsky continued with the observation that “in the Land of Israel, where Jewish national life is gradually becoming normalized … Jewish national identity … is increasingly liberating itself from the religious sensibility and is becoming open to all beliefs and opinions.”Footnote ⁹²

Some leading Zionists maintained both personal and professional contacts with Hans, and in several cases did not think his religious beliefs disqualified him from the movement. Richard Gottheil, a former colleague of Theodor Herzl's and the president of the American Federation of Zionists for six years, corresponded with Hans after his conversion, as did Lucien Wolf. (Though most of their letters entailed Hans's requests to meet Wolf and Wolf's stated inability to do so.)Footnote ⁹³ Herzl biographer and Zionist leader Jacob de Haas exchanged thoughtful letters with Hans, sympathizing with his religious peregrinations.Footnote ⁹⁴ Even as late as 1929 Chaim Weizmann was in contact with Hans, and Hans stopped at Zionist leader Jacob Kann's house on his way to his sister's funeral (and ultimately his suicide) in France.Footnote ⁹⁵

Zionists did not only continue personal acquaintance with Hans but involved him in professional matters as well. He collaborated with Israel Zangwill to edit Theodor Herzl's diaries, and befriended Israel's brother Louis, who actually accompanied Hans to the train station before his fateful journey to Bordeaux.Footnote ⁹⁶ Hungarian journalist Marcel Sternberger, subsequently Hans's biographer, invited Hans to coedit his Pardes Journal: A Review Devoted to the Religious and Intellectual Aspects of Modern Jewish Life.Footnote ⁹⁷ The first issue declared that “whatever we may think of the Zionist movement, one thing is certain that it greatly improved the interest for everything Jewish. Yet, it failed, up to now to [draw] the hearts to Jewish knowledge and scholarship”—a failure Sternberger and Hans, even as a convert (or especially as a convert?) hoped to rectify. As mentioned above, Joseph Leftwich maintained a close friendship and working relationship with Hans: in 1927 he invited Hans to his wedding, and temporarily employed him at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.Footnote ⁹⁸ He also later accepted Hans's request that he act as the executor of his will, in which Hans bequeathed some of his meager belongings to members of the Zionist movement and to the Herzl Museum in Palestine. These connections indicate that some Zionist leaders and thinkers considered Hans's religious conversion at least tolerable and at best compatible with the vision of the Jewish nationalism they espoused.

Hans also remained connected to the Zionist movement and aspirations by attending ceremonies and events and corresponding about Zionist publications and translations (particularly of his father's work). He was present at the WZO headquarters in 1926 and a Zionist demonstration in 1927.Footnote ⁹⁹ Not long before his death he continued to write about his relationship to Jewish nationalism and to Zionism. In a letter articulating how his own theological convictions differ from Christian orthodoxy, Hans lamented that “I feel very bitterly that by the intrusion of formal religion … I have once more been thwarted of giving the right hand of friendship and forgiveness—of fellowship—to my father's adherents.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Reflecting on the 1929 riots in Palestine, he asserted, “this trouble [in Palestine] has made me feel that I am a Jew, that I must stand shoulder to shoulder with the Jewish people till this quarrel is settled. It is the price I must pay as the son of the founder of Zionism.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ Hans also attended, evidently incognito, a commemorative service for Theodor Herzl at Kingsley Hall.Footnote ¹⁰² Ultimately, Hans did not allow his anomalous status to completely alienate him from Zionist activity or leadership.

A Sudden Death and Uncertain Legacy

Just as Hans's conversion had provoked scandal and raised disputes regarding the membership and character of the aspired Jewish state, Hans's suicide prompted similar controversy. While his suicide was a shock, his memory was a dilemma. What might Hans's tragedy reflect of the Zionist movement? And how should Zionists respond?

Those who were close to Hans mourned his death and offered sympathy. His sister Margaret (Trude) Neumann received warm letters of condolence that did not hesitate to praise Hans's character. Joseph Leftwich wrote that Hans was “one of the kindest, gentlest, most scrupulously honest men I know.”Footnote ¹⁰³ Louis Zangwill wrote of his favorable impressions of Hans and did not even mention Hans's conversion. He also assured Trude that “Professor [Abraham Aaron] Roback spoke some … of the great impression your brother had … made upon him.”Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Trude also received a letter from a man named Stephen W. Wyatt who wrote that “he shall ever remember [Hans] as fine friend and a gallant gentleman.”Footnote ¹⁰⁵

Others tried to confirm or affirm Hans Herzl's identity as a Jew at the time of his death. Part of this was for practical purposes, in order to determine if Hans should be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Joseph Leftwich was able to find letters that proved “Hans Herzl died a Jew.”Footnote ¹⁰⁶ These letters were most likely those from someone in London identified as Professor Y. Dawnd, who wrote to Trude Neumann that “[Hans] had changed his views. He was a true Jew, and until a few days before his death he was studying the Bible with me, and praying for the peace of Jerusalem.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Ilse Sternberger adds that Dawnd's letter helped Hans's nephew Stephen Neumann “prove to his schoolmates that Uncle Hans had been a good Jew after all.”Footnote ¹⁰⁸ That there was burden of proof suggests a certain degree of shame carried by Stephen (and possibly also Trude) because of his uncle's religious identity, which if remained unproven may have meant Hans was a “bad Jew.”Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Stephen Wyatt also wrote Leftwich that “for all his life, Hans was a Jew, and those of us who shared his inmost thoughts, knew that apart from the Jewish faith, Hans would never find real happiness.”Footnote ¹¹⁰ These conclusions were drawn despite the many indications that Hans also still identified on some level as a Christian or with the Christian community at the time of his death, such as the content of his suicide note (quoted in the introduction above), or the fact that he bequeathed some modest belongings to St. Alyosius Church, where he evidently regularly attended mass. Writing after Hans's death, Selig Brodetsky recalled that while Stephen Wise “had got the impression that he desired somehow to come back to Judaism” in 1928, “I do not know of anything of this kind having happened.”Footnote ¹¹¹

Debates and unease surrounding Hans Herzl's identity and its implications for Zionism came to a head when journalist Marcel Sternberger set out to write Hans's biography. Many felt that a biography of Hans would serve a heuristic purpose but disagreed as to whether this was a benefit or risk. Some in the Zionist organization worried that Hans's life and suicide threatened the strength and character of the Zionist movement. Others felt that a biography would not only honor Hans but also serve as a useful warning. We find both sides of the debate throughout Sternberger's failed attempt to publish a biography of Hans in German and French, and we find similar assumptions in Jacob Weinshell's successfully published biography of Hans in Hebrew in 1945.

Marcel Sternberger's motivation to write Hans's biography emerged not only from his friendship with Hans but also a conscious desire to impact Jewish public opinion. Sternberger was the son of the founder of the first Zionist chapter in Hungary, and had also established a Young Zionists group himself.Footnote ¹¹² He seems to have believed that Zionist discourse on Hans had been misguided. The forward to his manuscript thus appears defensive of potential criticism towards his project. He prefaces that “this book is neither the defense of an idea nor the justification of a theory, but the simple portrayal of a life.” He reiterates that “I don't intend to defend Hans Herzl; he has little need of that. I am mainly concerned with depicting the thoughts and actions of a rare soul.” Sternberger adds his own veiled critique of public opinion towards Hans, writing that “I have collected the following hitherto unpublished documents with loving concern to reveal Hans’ struggle which up to now has been obscured by darkness.”Footnote ¹¹³

Sternberger did receive some considerable support for his project, for similar reasons of fondness for Hans as well as conviction that Hans's story belonged in Zionist discourse. Hans's guardian Moritz Reichenfeld provided Sternberger with sources, and Joseph Leftwich deemed his project “worthwhile.”Footnote ¹¹⁴ Even though younger sister Trude did not want to provide sources, ostensibly for personal reasons, she did write that “I welcome everything dedicated to my brother's memory, and am happy that you too want to write his story.”Footnote ¹¹⁵ Interestingly, Albert Einstein also responded to Sternberger regarding his work on Hans. Einstein felt that Hans's life, ignoble as it was, could serve an important didactic purpose. Einstein wrote to Sternberger that “his wasted life constitutes a warning to all Jews against defection from their people. For this reason I consider your book a praiseworthy effort in the interest of the Jewish community.… You have my permission to make use of the above comment in any way in which it can gain attention for your book.”Footnote ¹¹⁶ When Leftwich published an article about Hans in the B'nai Brith magazine, he received many glowing letters of praise, which could indicate support of further treatment on Hans. The article was duplicated by newspapers worldwide.Footnote ¹¹⁷ American Zionist leader Emanuel Neumann praised the quality of Leftwich's work and specifically asserted that “it was a very desirable thing to do from the Zionist standpoint,” though it is unclear what he meant by this.Footnote ¹¹⁸

Despite this cooperation and support, some in the World Zionist Organization worried that Hans's biography posed a threat to Jewish unity or the Zionist cause. In correspondence with Sternberger leaders of the Zionist organization explicitly discouraged his project. Stephen Wise wrote to Sternberger that “the only service to be rendered to Hans is the service of oblivion.”Footnote ¹¹⁹ Richard Gottheil also stated that “such a biography could do no good to [Hans's] memory, and certainly no good to the Jewish people.”Footnote ¹²⁰ Gottheil and Wise, as compared to Sternberger and others, assumed that the story of Hans, despite his position as Herzl's son, disrupted, rather than contributed to, Zionist discourse.

Selig Brodetsky, head of the political department of the World Zionist Executive in London, was somewhat more sympathetic to a biography, but still averred that it was a risky effort. Initially, he offered to meet with Sternberger and to provide him with information about his past interactions with Hans, however, he requested that Sternberger keep him anonymous in light of his position in the Zionist movement. Whether or not Brodetsky's cooperation with Sternberger would have actually compromised the movement or his position in it, the fact he was inclined to remain anonymous indicates a strong sense of incompatibility between the goals of the WZO and a biography of its founder's son. Brodetsky further cautioned that “I do not feel that it is advisable in a book of this kind to make any remarks of a political character.”Footnote ¹²¹ While it is unclear whether Brodetsky felt there were no political remarks to be extrapolated from a biography of Hans, or whether political remarks were better left unstated, his explicit advice against it suggests the latter. Presumably, Brodestky did not want Hans's story to set any kind of precedent for such an anomalous case as that of Hans's, or to cast any criticism of the Zionist movement. Perhaps he feared that by highlighting the “defection” of the son of the most prominent Zionist, the Zionist movement itself would appear ideologically or strategically weak (or both).

Sternberger finished his manuscript in German in 1932, and its translation in French was scheduled for publication in Paris in 1933. He also sent the table of contents of the book to Martin Buber.Footnote ¹²² However, Sternberger voluntarily withdrew the manuscript when Stephen Wise and formerly supportive Selig Brodetsky met him in Paris, and “pleaded with him, in the name of Jewish unity, to postpone publication.”Footnote ¹²³ Sternberger agreed, given the fact the Nazis had just taken over the government in Germany. He and his wife decided to revise the manuscript for later publication. It was only in 1994 that Ilse Sternberger published her late husband's project, which she expanded into a biography of all three Herzl children, Princes without a Home.

Although Sternberger's original biography did not materialize, Jacob Weinshall did succeed in publishing a biography of Hans in Hebrew through Tel Aviv publisher Ḥazon in 1945. Weinshall was a surgeon, novelist, and amateur journalist, who wrote historical pieces on other infamous “non-Jewish Jews,” Baruch Spinoza and Sabbatai Ẓvi, even winning literary awards “for his series of books about important figures in Jewish history.”Footnote ¹²⁴ The newspaper Ha-mashkif lauded Weinshall for approaching Hans Herzl “not from the point of view of sensation … but from the point of view of the real thing, that is, from the point of view of tragedy.… [Weinshell is] a ‘doctor’ and not a ‘judge’. He is not trying to accuse anyone. He does not force the reader to make conclusions.”Footnote ¹²⁵ Like some assumed regarding Sterberger's project, Ha-mashkif suggested that Weinshall's book bears implications for the story of Zionism as a whole. The article hyperbolically announced that “in Hebrew literature finally appears a book with a central theme that brings understanding both for Zionism and for humanity in general.”Footnote ¹²⁶ It further states that “[Weinshall] opened a window to a versatile understanding of the history of Zionism.”Footnote ¹²⁷

These sources and others express a sense that Hans's memory bears importance for the Zionist movement, but do not actually specify why. A biography of Hans ostensibly warned against defection, threatened Jewish unity, required anonymity, “opened a window to a versatile understanding of [Zionism],” or simply “could do no good.” This perhaps is where the fear for losing “Jewish unity” resides; on the one hand, the dismissal of converts, even such a prominent one as the founder's son, could reveal the inextricability between Judaism and Zionism, and thereby alienate a secular base. On the other hand, any sign of accepting converts, especially in the movement's upper echelons, could alienate not only the numerous religious communities, but also the “cultural Zionists” who supported the movement as a repudiation of Jewish assimilation. Hans's conversion risked exposing these conflicting views, present in the movement from its inception. In the words of Molnar and Lamont, as mentioned above, a biography of Hans could threaten the autonomy of Zionist borders by highlighting their possible mutability or permeability.

Conclusion: Religion and Nationalism in a Jewish State

The underlying assumptions regarding the religious and ethnic bounds of Jewish nationalism that Hans Herzl's case exposed did not dissipate with the establishment of the State of Israel. Baruch Kimmerling asserts that “when the ‘Jewish State’ was established, as opposed to a ‘state for the Jews’, the challenge and the struggle over the definition and actual meaning of the ‘state's Jewishness’ was built into its collective identity.”Footnote ¹²⁸ The 1950 Law of Return legislated that “any Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh [immigrant]” unless s/he is “engaged in activity directed against the Jewish people; or is likely to endanger public health or the security of the State.” The law came under revision in 1958 and 1970, in order to clarify or qualify the category of “any Jew.” The 1958 revision specified that “anyone declaring in good faith that he is a Jew, and who does not profess any other religion, shall be registered as a Jew.”Footnote ¹²⁹ In 1970 the law was once again revised to include anyone with a Jewish parent or grandparent, but the stipulation that the individual not be of another religion was preserved. Therefore, the letter of the law inscribes both religious and ethnic parameters of Jewish nationhood. Furthermore, the 1949 Registration of Inhabitance Ordinance registered “citizenship, nationality, and religion,” which could contradict each other.Footnote ¹³⁰ Gad Barzilai asserts that Israel's “division of political power between registration for the purpose of residence and construction of nationality has produced a hybrid of practical definitions of who is a Jew, a problem that was not predicted by Zionism.”Footnote ¹³¹ Yet if this “hybrid” definition was not explicitly predicted, as Barzilai claims, it was certainly evidenced as early as Hans Herzl's conversion, and resurfaced in later legal cases.

The most famous Israeli legal case regarding the contest of ethnicity and religion is Rufeisen v. Ministry of the Interior, which was tried in 1962. The remarkable biography of Oswald Rufeisen, a Polish Zionist who had converted to Catholicism and become a priest during World War II, has been written about by others.Footnote ¹³² In his Supreme Court case, Rufeisen appealed the Ministry of Interior's decision to refuse his request for Jewish nationality based on the 1950 Law of Return, which denied his request to register his nationality as “Jewish” and his religion as “Catholic.” In his case, the Supreme Court almost unanimously upheld the decision of the Ministry of the Interior. The final statements of the Supreme Court judges traverse the range of the contested boundaries that we also find in reactions to Hans Herzl's conversion. The judges consider a variety of precedents, invoking personal inclination, “common sense,” biblical prophets, rabbinic law, the intent of Zionist founders, and diasporic history. Justice Zvi Berenson concluded that “in using the word ‘Jew’ [in the Law of Return] the Knesset intended the term to be understood in its popular meaning” instead of Halakhah (which dictates Hans would have remained a Jew) or individual identification.Footnote ¹³³ Significantly, the judges confessed their personal belief that Rufeisen was a member of the Jewish nation, but did not feel they could set a precedent by enshrining this into law. Ultimately, Rufeisen was naturalized as an Israeli citizen but his nationality was officially registered as “unclear” (bilti barur).Footnote ¹³⁴

In 2006 Hans and Pauline Herzl were reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem. Much like Hans's contemporaries, Israelis debated the meaning of his conversion and suicide and his place in the nation. The Sephardic chief rabbi Shlomo Amar eventually condoned Hans's burial in Israel, since his conversion was a result of mental illness and not “rational decision” (a conclusion that Hans's friend and executor, Joseph Leftwich, had specifically denied).Footnote ¹³⁵ The Zionist disagreement in the 1920s and early 1930s regarding the ideological borders of the Jewish nation revealed in response to Hans's conversion and suicide continued in subsequent decades and into Israeli statehood. We will never know how the establishment of the state his father envisioned would have impacted his own decisions about where he belonged as a citizen and how his religion played a role. Perhaps Hans might have been the first to petition a “Jewish nationality” with a “Catholic religion,” and there is no knowing how the trial of the founder's son might have shaped the “common parlance” of Jewish nationality.