“We want to lay the foundation stone for the house which will become the refuge of the Jewish nation.”

The foundation of Zionism:
Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat ["The Jewish State"]
extremely rare first edition (PMM 381)

-Theodor Herzl

Exceedingly rare 1896 first edition of Theodor Herzl's "The Jewish State"; the founding document for the modern Zionist movement.

“Ever since the Jewish State was abolished by the Romans in A.D. 70, the Jews, in all countries to which they have been dispersed, prayed for the restoration of their native land. Many remained in Palestine, though they were almost wiped out by the Arab invasions and during the Crusades, and many pious Jews made pilgrimages thither from the Middle Ages onwards.

“The real impetus to regain their country and to reconstitute their State did not come until the mid-nineteenth century, when a new political solution was advocated by a number of politicians and thinkers, both Jewish and non-Jewish. It was Herzl’s book which really crystallized the idea of a national home for the Jews. Two conceptions had prevailed hitherto: either that of the ghetto, presupposing an unbridgeable gulf between Jews and Gentiles, or that of assimilation, which meant a complete acceptance by the Jews of their environment leading eventually to their becoming part of the people among whom they lived. Herzl took a different view. By his work he transformed the Jewish people from a passive community into a positive political force…

“While in Paris, he was deeply influenced by the Dreyfus case and the effects of the pogroms in Russia during the eighties. He came to the conclusion that any new relationship between the Jews and other peoples could be established only if the Jews organized themselves and acted as a people. His book advocated the establishment of a State of their own. He originally conceived this simply as a progressive and advanced State, not necessarily in Palestine or even using Hebrew as its language; but he gradually accepted the idea that Palestine was the true and natural home of the Jews.

“In consequence of the publication of his book—‘The Jewish State, An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question’—a congress was held at Basel in 1897 attended by two hundred and six delegates from all parts of the world and here the Zionist organization was founded. The movement became worldwide… That a Jewish State was created in Palestine within fifty years of his death was due to the vision and the practical methods of Herzl, expressed in his manifesto of 1896” (Printing and the Mind of Man, 381). Text clean with only occasional spots of foxing; title page remargined (bottom and inner margins), a few marginal repairs to last leaf; small stamp to title page and final leaf, tape reinforcement to gutters of a few leaves. Scarce.