1948 by Richard D. Ruttenberg

Theodor Herzl, (born May 2, 1860, Budapest, Hungary, Austrian Empire [now in Hungary]—died July 3, 1904, Edlach, Austria), founder of the political form of Zionism, a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. His pamphlet The Jewish State (1896) proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a world council of nations. He organized a world congress of Zionists that met in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897 and became first president of the World Zionist Organization, established by the congress. Although Herzl died more than 40 years before the establishment of the State of Israel, he was an indefatigable organizer, propagandist, and diplomat who had much to do with making Zionism into a political movement of worldwide significance.

A profound change began in Herzl’s life soon after a sketch he had published in the leading Viennese newspaper, Neue Freie Presse, led to his appointment as the paper’s Paris correspondent. He arrived in Paris with his wife in the fall of 1891 and was shocked to find in the homeland of the French Revolution the same anti-Semitism with which he had become so familiar in Austria. Hitherto he had regarded anti-Semitism as a social problem that the Jews could overcome only by abandoning their distinctive ways and assimilating to the people among whom they lived. At the same time, his work as a newspaperman heightened his interest in, and knowledge of, social and political affairs and led him to the conviction that the answer to anti-Semitism was not assimilation but organized counter efforts by the Jews. The Dreyfus affair in France also helped crystallize this belief. French military documents had been given to German agents, and a Jewish officer named Alfred Dreyfus had been falsely charged with the crime. The ensuing political controversy produced an outburst of anti-Semitism among the French public. Herzl said in later years that it was the Dreyfus affair that had made a Zionist out of him. So long as anti-Semitism existed, assimilation would be impossible, and the only solution for the majority of Jews would be organized emigration to a state of their own.

As a small boy, I read the biography called Herzl by author Alex Bein. I devoured this book and could not put it down until finished. What I concluded from the book was Herzl saw the Holocaust against the Jews of Europe and the world coming. He knew and did everything in his power to establish the state of Israel where Jews could flee to and live as free human beings on their own terms. But the state was created too late as it turned out. SIX MILLION Jews perished at the hand of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. SIX MILLION souls and ONLY because they were born Jewish.
Herzl made a lifelong impact on generations of Israelis and Jews and he is Israel's founding father. Visiting his gravesite in Jerusalem was a powerful moment for me personally. May G-d rest his soul forever and ever.

So, when Rabbi Aryel Nachman ben Chaim first came to me with the conceptual idea of putting an album together celebrating the birth of Israel, I jumped at the chance because I knew I could further push the relevance of Herzl amongst a long list of Jews who paved the way for the state of Israel to exist. David Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, and Golda Meir are important players in our brief history and there are countless others, chief among them Zev Jabotinsky, Chaim Weitzman, Yitzhak Ben Zvi, Levi Eshkol, Yitzhak Shamir, Ariel Sharon, Eli Cohen, Yoni Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu, and every single man and woman who serve and served in the Israel Defense Force. May G-d bless all of you.

Richard D. Ruttenberg is a film scorer and recording artist. Educated at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, his bands RiZe & Delicate Droids are both signed to Superfreq Records. "Four Beats and Some Sweets" & "Orgasm Raygun" are both available @ Beatport worldwide. He is also signed to STARKFutures Recordings. World renown guitarist Barry Finnerty proclaims him "The king of atmosphere".