A city that was a center of culture, finance, and political power, with a large and thriving Jewish community, elected an anti-Semitic mayor. The impact on two residents of that city would change the Jewish world forever. What are the lessons we can learn from that today?
The city was Vienna. In the early 19th century, it was the hub of European power politics. The 1815 Congress of Vienna established a new order for Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. Culture – especially music – thrived in the hometown of Mozart and Beethoven. Austria, like most of Europe, confined Jews to ghettos and limited the number of professions in which Jews could engage. Jews were impoverished and on the margins of society.
In 1848, revolutions broke out throughout Europe. Many Jews participated, believing that a new liberal order would lead to the emancipation of the Jews and their integration into wider society. In Austria, Emperor Ferdinand abdicated in favor of his nephew, Franz Josef. A new constitution for what would become the Austro–Hungarian Empire stated that in the future, civic and political rights would not be dependent on religion. In 1849, Franz Josef permitted the establishment of an autonomous Jewish community. In 1860, Jews were permitted to own land and engage in all professions. By 1867, all barriers to Jewish participation in Austro–Hungarian life had been removed. In 1882, Franz Josef told his ministers, “I will tolerate no Jew-baiting in my empire.”
A golden age for Viennese Jewry ensued. Jews became doctors, lawyers, professors, civil servants, bankers, and financiers. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and others helped transform Vienna into a center of literature, art, and culture. In 1895, the first Jewish museum in Europe opened in Vienna. Yet anti-Semitism still lurked. Many in Vienna’s working class resented Jewish success and blamed Jews for taking their jobs.
Stepping into a situation where Jews were ingrained in the fabric of Viennese life, but anti-Semitism was rampant, was Karl Lueger. He incited the working-class masses and gained the support of those in the middle and upper classes who stood to gain by putting Jews “in their place.” Lueger accused Jews of having a “disproportionate addiction to monetary profits” and of “expropriation of the indigenous population.” In 1895, Lueger’s Christian Social Party won two-thirds of the seats in the Vienna Municipal Council, and Lueger was elected mayor. Franz Josef vetoed his election. For two years, the council continued to elect Lueger while Franz Josef vetoed the elections. Finally, in 1897, Franz Josef relented and Lueger became mayor.
Many people remember Lueger as one of Vienna’s greatest mayors. He built hospitals, schools, roads, gas, electricity, and water lines, and the first modern public transportation system. Yet anti-Semitism was at the heart of his political persona. Quotas were instituted for Jews in civil service, high schools, and universities. To head the Vienna Opera, Gustav Mahler, the Jewish composer, converted to Catholicism. Yet anti-Semitism continued to hound him, and he eventually moved to New York, where he would transform the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic into world-class cultural institutions.
According to many historians, Lueger did not believe his own anti-Semitic rhetoric. He had Jewish friends and visited synagogues. There were Jews who supported him politically. Jewish life in Vienna continued to flourish, as Jews relied on Franz Josef to protect them from the hatred of the masses.
Lueger’s most lasting impact on the Jewish world was his influence on two people who lived in the Vienna of his time.
Adolf Hitler moved to Vienna in 1907 and was twice rejected for admission to the Vienna School of Fine Arts. In Mein Kampf, Hitler described Vienna as “the school of my life.” It was while aimlessly wandering the streets that Hitler first encountered Torah-observant Jews, saying, “The more I saw, the more sharply they became distinguished in my eyes from the rest of humanity.” Hitler began to take an avid interest in politics and became a follower of Lueger. He admired Lueger’s ability to incite crowds and use anti-Semitism as the basis of a political platform and would later tell Josef Goebbels, the infamous Nazi propaganda chief, that Lueger was his political mentor. Summing up his years in Vienna, Hitler wrote, “For me this was the time of the greatest spiritual upheaval I have ever had to go through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite.” Hitler left Vienna in 1913. He would return 24 years later as a conquering hero who incorporated Austria into his Third Reich.
Theodor Herzl’s family moved to Vienna in 1878 when he was 18. They were members of a Reform temple and great admirers of German culture. In a hint of things to come, Herzl left a dueling fraternity to protest an anti-Semitic speech given at a memorial for the composer Richard Wagner. After graduating from law school and practicing for a year, Herzl decided that his true talent was in writing, and he became a successful playwright. His plays – such as His Majesty, The Poachers, and What Will People Say? – were produced in the most prestigious theaters in Vienna.
In 1891, Herzl turned his talents to journalism, becoming the Paris correspondent for the Neue Freie Presse (New Free Press), the most distinguished newspaper in Austria. While in Paris, Herzl composed his most important play, The New Ghetto, in just 17 days. It is set in Vienna. Jacob Samuel, the play’s leading figure, is a Jew whose attempts to build a successful legal career and assimilate into cosmopolitan Vienna are thwarted at every turn by anti-Semitism and discrimination. Jews were no longer confined to the ghetto but were despised by both the elites and the working class. Herzl’s diary describes The New Ghetto as being inspired by the realization that, “The curse still clings. We cannot get out of the ghetto.” A month after completing The New Ghetto, Herzl wrote in his diary: “I had thought that through this eruption in playwriting I had written myself free of the [Jewish] matter. On the contrary, I got more and more deeply involved with it. The thought grew stronger in me that I must do something for the Jews.” It was at that point that Herzl began writing his most important work, The Jewish State. It was written in 1895 – the same year that Karl Lueger was first elected mayor. Herzl would organize the First Zionist Congress in 1897, the year Lueger took office. While historians and Herzl himself cite the Dreyfus Affair in France as a major influence, his diaries clearly show that Karl Lueger’s Vienna was the incubator of Herzl’s Zionism.
The introduction to The Jewish State makes the case clearly:
The Jewish question exists wherever Jews live in perceptible numbers. Where it does not exist, it is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations... We naturally move to those places where we are not persecuted, and there our presence produces persecution...
Herzl got many things wrong. The state described in his utopian novel Altneuland bears little resemblance to Israel today. He believed there would be harmonious relations with the local Arabs. His political program was based on winning the acceptance of the Ottoman Empire and the great powers of Europe, purchasing land legally. At a time when those powers dominated the world, Herzl apparently thought the local population would acquiesce. The Jewish National Fund, an arm of the Zionist movement, purchased land from absentee Arab landowners. While Jews owned the land legally, the Arab tenant farmers who lived and worked on it saw things differently – leading to conflict.
It was thought that with the birth of a Jewish state, the Jews would become a “normal” people and that anti-Semitism would disappear. In reality, Israel has become a lightning rod for anti-Zionism – a virulent form of anti-Semitism that masquerades in the language of human rights and social justice.
The need for a refuge for the Jewish people was felt most acutely in Eastern Europe, where Jews were confined to the Pale of Settlement, barred from most professions, and subject to the mob violence of pogroms. Between 1880 and 1910, approximately 1 million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States. At the same time, groups like Hovevei Tzion encouraged migration to the Land of Israel. During the First Aliyah, which preceded Herzl, 35,000 mostly Torah-observant Jews from Eastern Europe migrated to the Land of Israel and founded settlements like Petach Tikvah, Zichron Yaakov, and Rishon LeTziyon.
Many Rabbonim opposed emigration to both the treife medina – the United States – and Eretz Yisroel, encouraging their followers to remain in the great communities and Torah institutions of Eastern Europe. Those communities and institutions were destroyed in the Holocaust. It was Israel and the United States that provided refuge for the sherit ha-peletah – the surviving remnant – and where Torah institutions would once again flourish.
In emancipated and enlightened Western Europe, many Jews – including Herzl himself – believed that by fully integrating into society, Jews would win acceptance. Herzl’s experiences in Karl Lueger’s Vienna and in France during the Dreyfus Affair convinced him that no matter how hard we tried, we would never be fully accepted.
For Western European Jews, emancipation was the holy grail. The dream did not die easily. Many denounced Zionism, fearing it would jeopardize their efforts to win acceptance in their countries. Reform Jews removed references to Israel from their prayer books. Many denied the very concept of Jews as a people. They doubled down on proving themselves patriotic Germans and Austrians. We know how well that worked out.
For all his faults, Herzl got the big question right. He understood that anti-Semitism would exist wherever Jews went. His accomplishment was to unite impoverished Jews in Eastern Europe and disillusioned Western Jews behind the vision of a Jewish state.
So we come to the provocative question of today: Is New York of 2025 Vienna of 1897? No two historical situations are the same. Zohran Mamdani is not Karl Lueger. Lueger, by most accounts, did not believe his own anti-Semitic rhetoric. He used anti-Semitism to incite the masses and attain political power. Mamdani’s anti-Semitism – masquerading as anti-Zionism – is part of who he is. He found it necessary to proclaim that “anti-Semitism has no place in New York” to win political acceptance.
New York, much more than Vienna, is a city that Jews helped build and where Jewish culture pervades. Yiddish words like chutzpah are familiar to all New Yorkers. Jewish foods like bagels are mainstream. It is our city.
Yet the warning signs are there. In a city where Jews are 11% of the population, we are the victims of two-thirds of the rising number of hate crimes. Anti-Semitism has become mainstream in education and the media. Anti-Semitic politicians like Mamdani have won growing acceptance.
Last Friday was July 4 – the 249th anniversary of the birth of the United States. Last Thursday was July 3 – the 121st anniversary of the passing of Theodor Herzl. There is a lesson in the juxtaposition.
July 4 reminds us of the good fortune we have to live in the greatest country in the history of the world – where Jews have thrived and been accepted as nowhere before. George Washington wrote, “May the children of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” For the most part, that promise has been kept.
Theodor Herzl’s work reminds us that while Jews in America have had a great run – it won’t last forever.
While Herzl deserves credit for creating a practical political program, the vision is much older:
Hashem, your G-d, will bring back your returnees and will be merciful toward you... And Hashem your G-d will bring you to the land that your forebears inherited and you will inherit it. (Devarim 30:3–5)
For 2,000 years, this vision was something our ancestors could only hope, dream, and pray for. Now, it is within our grasp.
It is not time for American Jews to close the book – but it is time to turn the page. We don’t have to wait until we are forced to flee. We can walk with our heads held high, bringing our families and our material possessions with us. It is time to return to the land where we became a nation, where our kings ruled, and our prophets preached – to write the next great page in the story of the Jewish people. To build our own future in the land where, in the words of Menachem Begin, “Jews kneel only to G-d.”
Manny Behar is the former Executive Director of the Queens Jewish Community Council and a senior aide to New York City public officials. He now lives in the Talpiot neighborhood of Jerusalem and can be contacted at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
