A Jewish State

One of the most important texts of early Zionism is Theodor Herzl’s pamphlet called “The Jewish State,” written and published in 1896 in Leipzig and Vienna. In it Herzl proposed an answer to the so-called Jewish Question for the Jews of Europe, who had been ghettoized after centuries of restrictions, hostility, and pogroms. In fact Herzl planned to deliver the text as a speech to the Rothschild family, but Baron Rothschild objected because he felt the plan would harm Jews who had settled in Western societies. In “The Jewish State,” Herzl argued that anti-Semitism could be curbed if Jews might found an independent state of their own during the twentieth century. Toward this end he encouraged Jews throughout Europe to purchase land in Palestine, and laid out the principles and programs whereby the new state would succeed and flourish—without encouraging anti-Semitism.