Rarely in modern history does a single book change the course of human events. But that is exactly what happened 125 years ago, when in 1896 the Viennese playwright and journalist Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) published Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). What makes his improbable achievement – setting the stage for the eventual creation of the State of Israel – all the more fascinating is that Herzl was a thoroughly assimilated Jew.
The story of his transformation into a Jewish national leader and a major player on the global stage of history began a year earlier while he was in Paris covering for the newspaper Neue Freie Presse what became known as l’affaire Dreyfus (the Dreyfus affair).
Like other progressive thinkers of his time, the thirty-four-year-old Herzl admired France’s revolutionary ideals of liberte, egalite, and fraternite. The arrest, trial, public disgrace, and imprisonment of an innocent French Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, shattered Herzl’s confidence in the ideals and progress of the French Enlightenment.
The story of his transformation into a Jewish national leader and a major player on the global stage of history began a year earlier while he was in Paris covering for the newspaper Neue Freie Presse what became known as l’affaire Dreyfus (the Dreyfus affair).
Like other progressive thinkers of his time, the thirty-four-year-old Herzl admired France’s revolutionary ideals of liberte, egalite, and fraternite. The arrest, trial, public disgrace, and imprisonment of an innocent French Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, shattered Herzl’s confidence in the ideals and progress of the French Enlightenment.
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