ByJPOST EDITORIAL

AUGUST 6, 2026 05:58

Walking among the graves of Zionist pioneers on Jerusalem's Mount Herzl reveals strikingly few clergy. The site instead honors presidents, prime ministers, generals and statesmen whose actions converted the Zionist vision into a living nation.

Wednesday's reburial of Theodor Herzl's grandparents, Shimon Leib and Rivka Herzl, next to their famous descendant deepens this narrative.

Their placement in Jerusalem underscores that although the state's institutions were largely constructed by secular leaders, many sustaining ideas of Zionism originated earlier inside Jewish households, neighborhoods and houses of prayer.

History tends to spotlight the central figure of major events while overlooking those who shaped the setting that produced such individuals.

Shimon Leib Herzl held no high political post and never spoke at the First Zionist Congress. He never met emperors or composed political manifestos. He served as gabbai in the synagogue of Zemun, then part of the Habsburg Empire and now in Serbia, where Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, an early proponent of Jewish national return, was the rabbi.

The foundations of political Zionism

Long before organized political Zionism arose, Alkalai maintained that the Jewish return to the Land of Israel must become a deliberate national project rather than remain only a matter of prayer and messianic expectation.

No scholar can determine with certainty how strongly those views affected the young Theodor Herzl. The flow of ideas is seldom direct. Still, it is equally hard to ignore the role of family background and the quiet passage of values through generations.

Concepts rarely emerge complete. They are examined at home, strengthened by daily example and conveyed, often subtly, from grandparents to parents and onward to children.

President Isaac Herzog expressed this idea with notable clarity at the ceremony. "Dreams are not passed down through written inheritance," he noted. "They are passed around the Shabbat table... in the stories a grandfather tells his grandson."

The remark reflected how Jewish continuity has persisted through centuries of dispersion and change. As Herzog indicated, pivotal historical moments are often preceded by countless ordinary exchanges that historians never capture.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu viewed the event similarly, calling "Judaism the basis of Zionism" and noting that the grandparents' home supplied "the roots from which the trunk, branches and fruit later grew." Whether framed in religious or national language, both remarks acknowledged that political Zionism did not arise apart from the generations before it.

A useful lesson emerges, especially for Jewish communities beyond Israel.

Herzl is often described as the assimilated Viennese writer whose experience of the Dreyfus Affair sparked his turn to Jewish nationalism. That account contains truth yet remains incomplete.

Herzl certainly moved in the assimilated circles of late-nineteenth-century Vienna, yet assimilation did not erase family memory or inherited identity. Before he wrote Der Judenstaat, he was a grandson, and before he outlined a political plan, he belonged to a family whose Jewish awareness had been formed by earlier generations.

A duty handed between generations

Jewish history has continued because each generation took on the task of passing languages, memories and traditions to the next. That duty remains equally vital today, especially when many communities abroad face serious tests to Jewish confidence and identity.

World Zionist Organization Chairman Yaakov Hagoel told The Jerusalem Post that Herzl left "two wills": one for his family and another that "you and I fulfill every day, every hour" through ongoing efforts to build the State of Israel.

This goes beyond the physical return of Herzl's grandparents to Jerusalem. The work of Zionism was never meant to end with the state's founding; it requires each generation to renew its dedication to the ideals, identity and purpose that made the state possible. It is one of the encouraging signs to see vibrant Zionist communities across the Diaspora.

The graves on Mount Herzl honor those who helped create modern Israel. Wednesday's ceremony reminds us that before Zionism became a program for national revival, it was an inheritance passed from one Jewish generation to the next.