The Jewish State

Many books are written. Few really change the world. This one did. It called for the creation of a Jewish state as a way of responding to the persecution the Jews suffered in Europe. Herzl was especially influenced by the Dryefuss trial and reasoned that if the Jews could not be accepted in what was then one of the most enlightened and progressive nations of the world then they would never ever really be accepted. Only a Jewish state in their ancient homeland, would enable them to live in dignity again. Herzl's vision was as he prophesied realized just fifty years after the book's publication in 1897 when in November 1947 the UN called for partition of Mandatory Palestine into two states , one Jewish and one Arab. The Arabs refused to accept this, opened a war and the Jewish State was not founded in the way Herzl hoped by peaceful means , but rather on the battlefield. Herzl saw the great need of the Jewish people in his time. He did not necessarily see the shape the state would take. Nor did he understand how difficult the path would be for Israel in the Middle East. The great pain and sadness of it all is that even if the state came as he had predicted in fifty years it did not come soon enough to save the Jews of Europe. Herzl saw the discrimination in Western Europe, and the poverty and oppression Jews faced in Eastern Europe. But his vision did not come soon enough to save the Jews from the horror of the Nazis. Israel has as Herzl hoped ingathered Jews not only from Europe but from close to one hundred nations. It is the only vibrant democracy in the Middle East. This book will be especially instructive for those who wish to compare the dream of the Jewish state' with its reality today.