About
David Matlow
📍 Toronto, ON, Canada
- Collecting the Dream: Owning the world’s largest Herzl collection and the stories it tells us
- Pavilions of Promise: Israel and the Zionist Movement at World’s Fairs
- Treasures from the Treasure Trove [This is a customizable presentation of items from David’s collection]
Bio
David Matlow is the owner of the world’s largest private collection of Theodor Herzl memorabilia (over 6,000 pieces). He is the Founder of the Herzl Project, whose goal is to inform people about who Herzl was and what he did so as to inspire them to continue Herzl’s work to benefit the State of Israel and the Jewish people. The Herzl Project includes My Herzl (a 53 minute documentary film), Theo the Herzl mascot, numerous podcast interviews and webinars, public appearances across North America and in Israel, a six part series of short films produced by the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (Canada) and other programs and initiatives.
Items from David's collection have been exhibited in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minnesota, Miami and Las Vegas and the Bernard Museum at Temple Emanuel-El in New York City hosted a large exhibit of his collection from September 2024 to January 2025. David also has a “pop-up” exhibit of Herzl memorabilia that can be set up on one or two tables to supplement his presentation. It accompanied David when he spoke at the JNF-USA Global Conference in Dallas in November 2024.
Since 2021 David has been writing a weekly column in the Canadian Jewish News called Treasure Trove where he takes one historical item from his collection and explains its contemporary relevance. Many of the columns were aggregated into 75 Treasures: Celebrating Israel at Seventy-Five to tell the story of Israel through memorabilia. The book is available for free download on his website.
David’s passion for collecting provides a quirky and novel perspective to discuss important issues relating to Israel and Zionism, and the need to reclaim Zionism from those who purposely misdescribe it in order to discredit the Jewish people’s right to be safe in our ancestral homeland. David discusses Zionism as conceived by its founder and through this discussion David invokes Herzl to charge us to work towards his vision of Israel being a model society, noting that like Israel itself, if we will it (and work to make it happen) it is not a dream.