Jacob de Haan: A Voice Out of Time

Overview

The death of Jacob Israel de Haan is commemorated annually by both the ultra-Orthodox Jews of Neturei Karta in Jerusalem, and the LGBTQ community in Amsterdam. He is a pioneer for both. In the early twentieth century, he published the first LGBTQ novel in the Netherlands. He then returned to his Jewish roots, migrated to Palestine as a Zionist, but became the spokesperson for the Orthodox community, spearheading its fight against Zionism. He was still publishing queer poetry in Dutch. He was killed in Jerusalem in 1924, and his assassins were never caught. Today, never-before-heard audio recordings shed new light upon the mystery of the first Zionist political assassination.