Tablet Magazine - a new read on Jewish life

Theodor Herzl’s narrative about his ancestry has long been shrouded in legend. Herzl told his earliest biographers that his paternal great-grandfather, Lobel Herzl, “was a Spanish Jew who was forced in Spain to accept Christianity. To escape the Inquisition he emigrated, and as a Marrano, re-Judaised in Constantinople.” Jacob de Haas has noted that “this tradition was related to the author by Herzl at almost their first meeting in London in 1986.” Alex Bein, another confidant and early biographer of Herzl, relates an even more elaborate and mythic version of this tale. In this retelling, Herzl’s distant ancestors were two Spanish Jewish brothers who were forced by the Inquisition to convert to Christianity and join a monastic order. Their intellectual and organizational talents were such that they rose to leadership levels in the order, although secretly they observed Jewish ritual whenever possible. Years later the head of their order sent the brothers overseas on a secret mission for the church. Taking the opportunity to flee, they made their way to Constantinople “and renounced the religion which had been forced upon them.”...

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