The Visionary of the State does not need a myth: it is time to teach the real Herzl

This week, an extraordinary historical cycle was completed in Jerusalem: Shimon and Rivka Herzl, the grandfather and grandmother of Theodor Herzl, were brought to their final rest alongside their grandson and the rest of their family on Mount Herzl.

Many saw this as a moving family event and the closing of a Zionist circle. But in my eyes, its meaning is much deeper: it is a moment that obliges us to ask not only how we commemorate Herzl, but also how we teach him.

Sometimes, one symbolic event exposes the depth of the gap between the historical knowledge accumulated in research and the knowledge conveyed in classrooms. Generations of students in Israel grew up on a uniform story: Herzl was presented as an assimilated Viennese journalist, distant from Judaism, whose world was shaken only by the Dreyfus affair, which instantly turned him into the Visionary of the State. A simple story, easy to teach and remember. However, history is not measured by its simplicity, but by its fidelity to facts.

In the last 25 years, in-depth historical research has been conducted on the life of Herzl, his family, and the intellectual world around him. The research, based on archival documents, diaries, letters, and family sources that were revealed and re-examined, not only adds new biographical details but also offers a new framework for understanding Herzl's ideological development.

The picture emerging today is no longer a research hypothesis, but a well-founded body of knowledge, which teaches that his path to Zionism was not a single moment of awakening following the Dreyfus affair, but a prolonged process of ideological crystallization, influenced by family, Jewish, European, and national circles alike.

Even the figure of his grandfather, Shimon Herzl, is now revealed as a significant link in the ideological development that eventually led to his grandson's vision. His connections with the ideas of national revival and with Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai show that Herzl did not grow up in a vacuum — he grew up on historical and ideological ground deeper than what has been told over the years. This does not mean that one myth should be replaced by another. On the contrary — the role of the education system is not to perpetuate legends, but to teach history as it is revealed and developed.

If we seek to educate for critical thinking, we must not continue to teach a picture that suited the research of the last century, when the body of knowledge accumulated in the current century presents a broader, more grounded, and more accurate picture. The education system does not need to start researching Herzl anew. The main research work has been done — and now the task is to update the textbooks so that they reflect the accumulated research knowledge. Commemorating Shimon and Rivka Herzl is not only a historical correction for one family, but it is also an opportunity to correct the way we teach the story of Zionism to the next generation.

Herzl does not need myths to be great. On the contrary — the more we know him through research, with all his complexity, roots, and the long path he took until he became the Visionary of the State, the deeper, more human, and more inspiring his figure becomes. The time has come for Israeli students to know the Herzl of research, and not the Herzl of the myth. The role of the education system is not to preserve yesterday's narrative, but to instill what research teaches us today.

The author is a historian in the Department of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Ariel University.