Herzl’s Warning on Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur has just concluded. It is always a time of deep reflection, and today I found myself returning to words Theodor Herzl wrote in 1896, more than forty years before the Holocaust:
My happier co-religionists will not believe me till Jew-baiting teaches them the truth; for the longer Anti-Semitism lies in abeyance the more fiercely will it break out.
— Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat
Herzl understood antisemitism not as a passing prejudice, but as a recurring force capable of returning with renewed intensity after periods of apparent quiet.
Today, I saw a heavy police presence outside local synagogues. They were stationed there with good reason.
Antisemitism is not an artifact of history; it remains a living threat. Herzl believed that Jews needed a place where their safety did not ultimately depend on the goodwill or protection of others.
That is why Israel exists—not as a perfect state, but as a necessary one.