Persistence. Compromise. Vision. Charisma. Activism. Some of the words a group of young South American Jews from Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela used to describe Herzl’s qualities in a Leadership activity organized by MASA during Herzl’s Day in a sunny Thursday in Jerusalem.

We kicked off admiring the austerity of Binyamin Zeev Theodor Herzl’s matzeive , located at the top of Mt. Herzl. While walking on the National Leaders sector, the first questions were introduced by Esther, the madricha:  what kind of leaders were David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir or Itzhak Rabin? What kind of leadership required the times in which they were in power? Which kind of leadership would be required now?

At some point of our lives (at least every few years when we cast our votes), we all face the difficult decisions political leaders make daily. This reminded me of Michael Oren’s words: “when two of my children were serving in the IDF (…) I had to decide whether to favor a pullout of Israeli forces from Palestinian cities and perhaps give a jump-start to peace, or whether, by doing so, I’d be giving encouragement to terror, jeopardizing my third child, who took a bus to and from school every day in Jerusalem” .

Next to the kever-achim  (burial site of the soldiers who died while capturing the strategic hill of Castel, near Yerushalayim), we were asked tougher questions: when should a leader (e.g., a mefaked ) sacrifice himself? This led us to think about other kinds of sacrifices too: when two long-time enemied peoples sign a peace treaty (and peace is always made between enemies and involves mutual concessions), aren’t both leaders sure subjects of accusations of treason from either side? Isn’t it possible, then, to consider this falling from public grace as a sacrifice too? I think that Arafat did not want to make this sacrifice in the negotiations at Camp David 2000.  That was a lost opportunity for the two peoples.

The last part of the visit was Herzl’s museum. I strongly recommend everyone who didn’t visit it yet to do so. I walked in with no expectations other than the typical “and with this we finished looking at the collection of 12 forks Herzl used to eat with; accompany me to the spoons sector please… moving on…”. Instead, a multimedia experience surprised me, but I won’t tell about it so I don’t spoil your visit.

In the workshop that followed, we spoke about different leaders throughout history and the dimensions of their leadership: strong ideals, influence on public opinion, wealth, diplomatic and military power... We even discussed the differences between positive and negative leaders. Afterwards we read some paragraphs of Herzl’s books The Jewish State and Altneuland. To finish the day, we discussed the qualities Herzl himself had as a leader, “persistence” being one of the most mentioned by us.

If you ask me, Herzl undoubtedly could read the reality around him, and he also had the ability to create a vision out of it. If it was not for him, the book The Jewish State wouldn’t have convinced the thousands of enthusiastic readers it touched. Was that enough? No. His political and diplomatic skills were complemented by his dramaturgic and marketing ability to make his Jewish audience believe that Zionism, the solution for his people’s almost 2000-years abnormal situation in the Diaspora, already existed and was in motion . And once they jumped on this train… it really was. That is the power of an idea.