“The Jew was doing his Christian duty”1: The New Ghetto as a Representation of Herzl’s Political Epoch

This essay asks how Herzl’s play, The New Ghetto, can be read as a representation of the sociopolitical tensions which affected and influenced the emancipated Jewish community in European capitals by the end of the 19th century. Among the pervading tensions of the time, I discuss the kinds of Antisemitism birthed by the emancipation: both the virulent kind that outright threatens and stereotypes Jews, as much as the subtle kind, of those who are willing to include Jews, so long as they desist from their Judaism. I also speak about internal tensions (within the Jewish community); for instance, in regards to the question of emancipating. While some Jews are baptized to advance socially and professionally, others still endorse the ideal of an emancipated Jew whose Jewish and European identities can coexist. Finally, I analyze how Jewish leaders confronted these ideologies that collide (often dangerously so) by creating two alternatives: Assimilationism and Zionism. While the first insisted on the belief that, through movements like the emancipation, Jews would succeed in integrating into what they considered to be their diasporic homes, the latter dismissed this hope, and instead turned to Zionism—or the establishment of a Jewish state—as the exclusive path toward Jewish security and prosperity. Having traced the manifestations of these ideologies and tensions within the play, I conclude by arguing that the play advocates for Herzl’s own political ideology, by first representing his Assimilationist past and ultimately endorsing the Zionist future he would come to embrace, once all else had failed.