In the Library
The Jewish State
Theodor Herzl, 1896
- Form
- Form Essay
- Reading time
- Reading time 2 hours
- Translated by
- Translated by Sylvie d'Avigdor (1896)
- Chapters
- Chapters 4
- Length
- Length 25k words
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About the book
A Viennese newspaper correspondent sets down a pamphlet in 1896, ninety-six pages arguing that Europe will continue to produce anti-Jewish persecution and that the only answer is a Jewish polity established under international charter. Theodor Herzl had covered the Dreyfus trial in Paris and watched the crowds shout death to the Jews on a Catholic boulevard. The text proposes the practical machinery of resettlement: a Society of Jews to negotiate the charter, a Jewish Company to manage the property transfers, the founding of a state. The argument was treated as fantasy by most who read it and as scripture by a few. Half a century later, in a Europe that had ceased to be hypothetical about the question, the state existed.