Old-New Land/Preface

If Theodor Herzl’s Judenstaat was a promise, his later, indeed last, book became prophecy. Between the writing of these two Jewish classics, the author had found himself. In The Jewish State he had drawn with a somewhat unsure touch the Jewish scene, that is to say, the scene in which the Jews and the world affect each other. In this volume, Herzl had almost ceased to ponder upon the interplay of the Jew and the world, and as his valediction, he indulged in forecast of what the Jewish State was likely to become, how it would develop. True, it is novel or romance, but it is more than that. His brilliant and daring imagination clothes itself in novel form, but his vision expresses itself in the manner and mood of unafraid prophecy.

Old-New Land becomes Herzl’s tribute to his friends, firm and unwavering, his memorial of his enemies, who never wavered save as expediency bade. Herzl tells the of Old-New Land with such infinite charm as to forbid any attempt to sketch its contents. Enough to say that within a few years of the appearance of his diagnosis of the Jewish disease and the remedy he prescribed, he tells the story of how Old-New Land came to pass. What power had come to Theodor Herzl in the few years between the appearance of the two books! Such power derived from his own matur­ing strength and from the heartening support of the Jew­ish masses. Such support, growing into an almost mystic faith, neither the little Jewish politicians within nor the big Jewish philanthropists outside the frame-work of the movement were able to alienate or divert.

The greatness of Judenstaat lay in its daring and vision. The greatness of Old-New Land is seen after forty years ​to lie in the accuracy of its prognosis and the little less than miraculous truth of its prophecy. Thus did the dreamer reveal how valid is his byword, Wenn Ihr wollt, dann ist es kein Maerchen. And if ye truly will it, it need not remain a dream. The prophet-seer had become the architect-builder of the edifice that was to become the Jewish State.

The publication of Old-New Land in the competent translation of Lotta Levensohn is another sign of Herzl’s coming to his own. Bein’s admirable biography, the re­ print of “Excerpts from Herzl’s Diaries," the appearance of this English version of the second of his two Zionist classics, testify alike to the deepening understanding and appreciation of the foremost Jew of centuries. Such Theodor Herzl was. Let him who would reserve that place for Moses Mendelssohn or Baruch Spinoza read these out­ lines of Old-New Land of which Herzl dreamed, only to translate his dream into such outline of the future as he moved his people to reshape. Palestine, upon the soil of which Herzl stood only once, in the fall of 1898, in fruit­less hope of negotiation with an unworthy, long dethroned monarch of his people, is become Old-New Land.

If Herzl could speak, he would repeat a thousand times, “And if you truly will it, it need not remain dream or parable." Half a million pioneers have by the miracle of toil and sweat and faith transmuted Old-New Land into that fact of unimpeachable significance today, the Pales­tine re-settlement, the foundations of the morrow’s Jewish Commonwealth of Palestine. Herzl, poet, seer, prophet, rests secure in his people’s self-ennobling hope of Old-New Land.

New York, April, 1941