The Jewish State

Publisher Marketing: Theodore Herzl was the first Jew who projected the Jewish question as an international problem. 'The Jewish State, ' written fifty years ago, was the first public expression, in a modern language, by a modern Jew, of a dynamic conception of how the solution of the problem could be accelerated and the ancient Jewish hope, slumbering in Jewish memory for two thousand years, could be fulfilled. In 1882, Leo Pinsker, a Jewish physician of Odessa, disturbed by the pogroms of 1881, made a keen analysis of the position of the Jews, declared that anti-Semitism was a psychosis and incurable, that the cause of it was the abnormal condition of Jewish life, and that the only remedy for it was the removal of the cause through self-help and self-liberation. The Jewish people must become an independent nation, settled on the soil of their own land and leading the life of a normal people. Moses Hess in his 'Rome and Jerusalem' classified the Jewish question as one of the nationalist struggles inspired by the French Revolution. Perez Smolenskin and E. Ben-Yehuda urged the revival of Hebrew and the resettlement of Palestine as the foundation for the rebirth of the Jewish people. Herzl was unaware of the existence of these works. His eyes were not directed to the problem in the same manner. When he wrote 'The Jewish State' he was a journalist, living in Paris, sending his letters to the leading newspaper of Vienna, the Neue Freie Presse, and writing on a great variety of subjects. He was led to see Jewish life as a phenomenon in a changing world. Contributor Bio:  Herzl, Theodor Theodor Herzl (Hungarian: Herzl Tivadar; May 2, 1860 - July 3, 1904), born Benjamin Ze'ev Herzl (also known in Hebrew as Khozeh HaMedinah, lit. "Visionary of the State") was an Austro-Hungarian journalist, playwright, political activist, georgist, and writer. He is considered to have been the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the World Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish migration to Israel in an effort to form a Jewish state.