Next Year in Digital Jerusalem

Israel started with a pamphlet. In 1896, the Viennese journalist and playwright Theodor Herzl published Der Judenstaat—in English, The Jewish State—in which he proposed the formation of the state of Israel. This new nation-state would protect Jews who were in despair from unremitting anti-Semitism, but who, rather than sticking around to fight persecution, had instead decided it was time to leave. Rather than hope for better days, Herzl urged European Jews to depart to a new nation of their own.