First published in German in 1896, “The Jewish State” is the important political treatise arguing in favor of creating an independent Jewish country by Theodor Herzl, the Austro-Hungarian playwright, journalist and political activist. Herzel was born in 1860 in Budapest, Hungary, and raised by an Orthodox Jewish father and an unobservant Jewish mother. He became the founder of the World Zionist Organization and was such an influential figure in the establishment of the state of Israel that he is often considered the father of modern political Zionism. Fueled by anti-Semitic attitudes of late-nineteenth-century Europe, Herzl promoted the concept of an entirely Jewish state, or an independent homeland for Jewish people, and encouraged the immigration of Jewish people to Palestine. In “The Jewish State” Herzl outlined a theory to employ diplomacy in order to get other powerful nations to support the foundation of an independent Jewish nation and thereby liberate the Jews from a constant state of poverty and repression. This work has been reprinted in over eighty editions, in over eighteen different languages, and has been an integral force in the promotion of a Jewish national identity.
