Theodor Herzl and Israel

 Theodor Herzl was born on May 2, 1860 in Budapest Hungary. He was the founder of the political form of Zionism which was a movement to establish a Jewish homeland. In his pamphlet, “The Jewish State”, he proposed that the Jewish question was a political question to be settled by a world council of nations.  He organized a world congress of Zionists and became its first president. He believed it was up to the civilized nations of the world to try and solve the Jewish question.

Herzl traveled all over the world trying to organize the Jews in support of his program.  He went to England to organize there.  He spoke to many world leaders trying to get them to grant a charter that would allow a Jewish settlement. His life was devoted to the Zionist cause and he even created a Zionist newspaper. Many Jews believed that to fight anti-Semitism as a social problem that Jews would need to abandon their Jewish way of life and be more like the people they lived with.  But Herzl believed that the answer was not to just fit in but to be able to live in their own state.

Herzl was not the first to believe that the Jews needed to set up a Jewish state. But Herzl was able to get people interested and enthusiastic about it and gained the respect of many people in his time. Although he died on July 3, 1904 more than 40 years before the State of Israel was created, he was a major figure that had much to do with making Zionism into a political movement. When Herzl died near Vienna at age 44, he was buried in Vienna but his wish was to be someday buried in Jerusalem.  In 1949 after the creation of Israel the Jewish state, he was buried on a hill west of the city now known as Mount Herzl.

If he had not fought for Zionism then there would be no country called Israel today. I feel happy because now there is a place for me and my family to live together. It is amazing how he did so much for us, the Jews, at such a young age.