Rare Insights into the Image of Theodor Herzl - David Matlow

One wouldn’t expect this to be the case, but Toronto, Canada is home to the world’s largest private collection of Theodor Herzl memorabilia- over 6,000 items.  Its owner, David Matlow, tells Kaleidoscope:

I have painstakingly assembled this hoard of Herzl artefacts and founded The Herzl Project which uses the collection as a vehicle to inform people who Herzl was, so as to inspire them to be a little bit like him and use their skills and talents to make a difference.  

Over 100 artefacts from my collection were displayed at the All About Herzl exhibit at New York’s Temple Emanu-El from September 2024 to January 2025 (you can enjoy a virtual tour of the exhibit at https://barhama.com/allaboutherzl/tour/).  More information about The Herzl Project is available at https://herzlcollection.com/.

Kaleidoscope has challenged me to tell Herzl’s story through a limited number of items in my collection, each one of which features Herzl’s iconic likeness.  Each is a rare and original item, lending a sense of wonderment to the viewing.

This is the result.   

Here’s Herzl.

This postcard consolidates many important aspects of Herzl and the Zionist Organization he founded.  It features the iconic photograph of Herzl on the balcony of the Three Kings Hotel in Basel, Switzerland taken in 1901 at the Fifth Zionist Congress.  The signature of Herzl under the photograph illustrates what a celebrity Herzl was in that someone asked him to sign his own picture.  The card is signed by other luminaries of the Zionist movement including Max Nordau, Israel Zangwill, Jacob De Haas and David Wolffsohn.  Wolffsohn was Herzl’s successor showing that he built a team that was able to keep his vision alive.  At the top and bottom of the card are strips of labels from the Jewish National Fund, an organization inspired by Herzl that was created at the Fifth Zionist Congress.

 Herzl lived for only 44 years, from 1860 to 1904.  Trained as a lawyer, he became a playwright and then a journalist before dedicating his life to the future of the Jewish people by writing Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State)

which was published in February 1896.  This is the cover of a Yiddish version published in Boston in the 1920s.  The book proposed that the solution to antisemitism was that the Jewish people should have their own state, and set out a roadmap as to how to make that state happen.  The book recast Herzl from being a respected journalist to a diplomat on the world stage representing the interests of the Jewish people.

Within 18 months of publishing the Jewish State, Herzl organized and convened the First Zionist Congress in Basel which resolved that the goal of Zionism was to establish a home for the Jewish people in Palestine, secured by public law.  This is a page from London’s Jewish Chronicle of September 3, 1897 reporting on the first Congress.

Herzl insisted that everyone who attended the Congress wear a tuxedo, noting that people are more focused when they wear formal clothing.  He also wanted to show the world that the Jewish people were united in their aspirations for a homeland, and that they were serious in this pursuit.  This is a drawing of the scene of the Second Zionist Congress held in Basel, featured on a postcard printed in New York, with Herzl in the middle as he always was.

It was at the Second Zionist Congress that the establishment of the Jewish Colonial Trust was approved by the delegates.   It was a company formed under the laws of England, which issued shares and used its capital to invest in development in the Land of Israel, which was then part of the Ottoman Empire.  Shares could be purchased by instalment, with each payment being reflected by a sticker such as this, and, when a card of stickers was completed, it could be turned in for a share certificate.   The company formed a subsidiary, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, which among other things provided the capital that purchased the land that became Tel Aviv, and issued Israel’s first currency after independence.  The Jewish Colonial Trust is but one example of Herzl establishing the infrastructure of a state in creation, which he rightly concluded was necessary to turn an idea into a reality.

Herzl visited the Land of Israel only once, in 1898, to meet Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm who was on tour.  While there, he planted a cypress tree in Motza.  This is a certificate for the purchase of an olive tree from Poland’s Jewish National Fund featuring a photograph of a well-dressed Herzl beside a tree.  As a result of the efforts of the JNF and the generosity of its donors around the world, Israel is the only country in the world that had more trees at the end of the 20th century than at the beginning.  The JNF also purchased land.  At Israel’s independence, 233 towns had been established on land purchased by the JNF.

Alteuland (“Old-New Land”) is Herzl’s utopian novel which was first published in October 1902.  Here Herzl shares his vision of the New Society to be built on the ancient soil.  He anticipates a vigorous democracy, communal farming, free health care and education, equal rights for all, a seven-hour workday and scientific developments that benefit the world.  The book’s title was translated by Nachum Sokolov as Tel Aviv (the city which was founded in 1909 was named after the book).  This 2015 edition includes Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Amharic and English translations in a volume published by Noar HaOved VeHaLomed (“Workiing and Studying Youth”) which is an Israeli youth movement which includes Jewish, Arab and Druze members and is dedicated to the equality of human value, democracy, Zionism, peace and social justice.

Herzl died on July 3, 1904 and was buried in Vienna.  His death was a tragedy for the Jewish people, who were determined to carry on the work to make his dream a reality and were able to do so because of the organizational structure Herzl had created.  Memorial events were held around the world, including in New York City.  This is the program for a memorial held at Carnegie Hall two weeks after Herzl’s death.  Herzl asked in his will to be reburied in the Jewish State when it is created.  That last wish was fulfilled in August 1949 when Herzl was reinterred on what became Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

After the First Zionist Congress, Herzl wrote in his diary that the Jewish State he envisioned will certainly come to be within 50 years.   The State of Israel was proclaimed by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948 (50 years and nine months after Herzl wrote those words).  Ben Gurion was standing under a portrait of Herzl, connecting the vision to its realization.  This is a drawing of the ceremony made by Otto Wallisch who was asked by the Jewish Agency to design the independence ceremony and given $400 and less than 24 hours to do so.

This artwork by Jerusalem artist David Harel was commissioned for Los Angeles based Pico Union’s celebration of Israel’s 75th birthday which included an exhibit of Herzl memorabilia from the Matlow collection.  The Israel Herzl envisioned is colorful and complicated.  Would Herzl be pleased or disappointed?  Does it matter?  Herzl envisioned something impossible and it happened.  If Israel happened, anything can.  I believe that the chance of Israel ultimately living in peace is less unlikely than Israel being created in the first place.  I choose to be positive. Herzl teaches us that tomorrow can be better than today.  Here’s hoping he is right again.  Here’s Herzl.

by David Matlow