On May 2, 1860, a man was born without whom it is impossible to imagine Israel.
On May 2, 1860, in Pest, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary in the Austrian Empire, Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl was born, known to the world as Theodor Herzl. He lived only 44 years but managed to accomplish what entire generations lacked both the political language and international strategy to do: turn the dream of the Jewish people’s return to their own statehood into an action plan.
Herzl was a journalist, writer, lawyer, playwright, and political figure. But in history, he remains primarily as the founder of modern political Zionism, the founder of the World Zionist Organization, and the herald of the Jewish state. In the Declaration of Independence of Israel, he is called the spiritual father of the Jewish state.
His famous phrase “If you will it, it is no dream” today sounds not like a beautiful quote from the past but as a formula by which reality was built.
Herzl was not a prophet in the religious sense. He was a man of European modernity, a journalist who saw politics from the inside, heard the language of anti-Semitism in salons and on the streets, understood the power of the press, diplomacy, organizations, and international agreements. That is why his Zionism was not only a dream but also a plan.
From Budapest and Vienna to the Jewish question
Herzl grew up in an assimilated Jewish family. His mother, Jeanette Herzl, introduced her son to German culture and language, and he himself was drawn to literature from an early age, wrote poetry, was interested in theater, and published reviews. Later, the family moved to Vienna, where Herzl studied at the Faculty of Law at the University of Vienna.
In his youth, he did not immediately come to the Jewish national idea. Like many educated Jews of Central Europe in the 19th century, Herzl lived in a world where assimilation seemed a possible path to security and recognition.
But reality turned out to be harsher.
Anti-Semitism in the university environment, restrictions in professional careers, experience in journalism in France, and especially the atmosphere around the Dreyfus Affair gradually changed his views. In Paris, where Herzl worked as a correspondent for the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, he encountered anti-Semitic statements in political circles, and street cries against Jews became a moment of final internal breaking point for him.
He realized: the Jewish question is not solved by moving from one diaspora country to another. It cannot be closed by assimilation, cultural loyalty, or hope for the goodwill of the majority.
“The Jewish State”: when the idea became a political document
In 1896, Herzl published in Vienna the book “The Jewish State. An Attempt at a Modern Solution to the Jewish Question” — Der Judenstaat. In the same year, it was translated from German into Hebrew, English, French, Russian, and Romanian.
It was not just a book. It was a political manifesto.
Herzl argued that the Jewish future should be built not on spontaneous emigration but on the creation of an independent Jewish state with international recognition and guarantees. His approach was extremely practical: an official representation of the Jewish people, economic structures, diplomatic work, financing, a resettlement plan, and political coordination with the great powers were needed.
For the end of the 19th century, this sounded bold. Even among Jews, not everyone was ready to accept such an idea. Some considered it utopian, others feared the reaction of the authorities, some believed in assimilation, and others saw salvation only in religious expectation.
Herzl proposed a different path: not to wait for history to become merciful, but to enter history as an organized political force.
The Basel Congress and the birth of political Zionism
From August 26 to 29, 1897, the First World Zionist Congress was held in Basel. Herzl organized it together with like-minded people, including Oskar Marmorek and Max Nordau, and was elected president of the World Zionist Organization.
It was there that Zionism received not only an idea but also an institutional form.
The Basel program became the basis for further political work: negotiations, international contacts, seeking support, discussing the future “home for the Jewish people” in the Land of Israel. During Herzl’s lifetime, this task was not solved, but the frameworks he created became the foundation of a process that, decades later, led to the proclamation of the State of Israel.
For today’s Israel, it is especially important to understand this. The state did not appear from a single resolution, a single diplomatic decision, or a single historical moment. It grew out of a long effort: ideas, organization, aliyah, language, institutions, defense, memory, and political will.
Not only a dreamer but also a negotiator
Herzl negotiated with monarchs, politicians, financiers, and diplomats. He tried to speak to the world in its language — the language of interests, documents, guarantees, and international recognition.
He was not a naive romantic, although he could dream. His strength was precisely in the combination of two qualities: he saw the impossible and at the same time understood that the impossible must be formalized into committees, funds, congresses, charters, newspapers, and political decisions.
In 1897, he created the publication Die Welt, which became the print organ of the Zionist movement. In 1899, he participated in the creation of structures related to the purchase of land in Palestine, which was then under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Later, alternative plans were discussed, including the British proposal of territory in East Africa, known as the “Uganda Plan,” but most Zionists continued to see the historical center as the Land of Israel.
It is important not to simplify Herzl here. He was a politician in a complex world of empires, interests, and threats. But the main vector of his life remained the same: the Jewish people must have the opportunity to return to their own political subjectivity.
Altneuland, Tel Aviv, and the dream that became a city
In a famous photograph from 1898, Herzl stands on the roof of the Jaffa hotel “Kaminitz.” Today, this frame looks almost symbolic: behind him is the old land, next to him is Jaffa, ahead is a city that did not yet exist.
Tel Aviv would appear later.
In 1902, Herzl published the utopian novel Altneuland — “Old New Land.” In it, he described an idealistic picture of the future Jewish society in Palestine: modern, free, organized, socially developed, and open. In Nahum Sokolow’s translation into Hebrew, the novel received the name “Tel Aviv,” which can be understood as “spring hill.” Later, this name inspired the name of the first Jewish city of the new era, founded near Jaffa in 1909.
Thus, the literary image became geography.
What was a page of a novel for Herzl became streets, houses, universities, ports, culture, army, technology, protests, startups, beaches, and urban noise in Israel. Tel Aviv is not just a city on the map. It is proof that an idea can come out of a book and become a living environment.
That is why NAnews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers Herzl’s birth date not as an ordinary historical anniversary but as an occasion to once again explain to the Israeli audience: the state begins not on the day of proclamation, but much earlier — at the moment when the people begin to believe again in the right to their own future.
Herzl and the price of serving the idea
Herzl died on July 3, 1904, at the age of 44. Heart disease, pneumonia, enormous workload, conflicts with opponents, and constant struggle for the Zionist cause quickly exhausted his strength.
In his will, he asked to be buried in Vienna next to his father until the day when the Jewish people would transfer his remains to the Land of Israel. After the creation of the State of Israel, this happened: on August 14, 1949, Herzl’s remains were brought from Austria to Jerusalem. Today he rests on Mount Herzl, which has become one of the main national symbols of the country.
This is also part of Israeli history. Herzl did not see the state he foresaw and worked for, but the state brought him home.
His personal family fate was tragic. Herzl’s children did not have a peaceful life, and his youngest daughter Margaret, known as Trude, died in the Nazi concentration camp Theresienstadt. Against this background, the cruel historical irony sounds even stronger: the man who warned Europe about the impossibility of Jewish security without their own statehood could not know all the horrors that would befall European Jewry in the 20th century.
Why Herzl is important to Israel now
Herzl is important not only as a portrait from a school textbook. He is important as an answer to the question of why Israel exists at all.
For Israelis, especially in times of war, pressure, debates about security, repatriation, and identity, Herzl remains a reminder: Jewish statehood was not a gift. It was not “issued” from outside and not invented retrospectively. It was suffered, formulated, organized, and defended.
His path shows that a dream without political will remains a beautiful phrase. But a dream turned into institutions, movement, language, diplomacy, and action can change the map of the world.
May 2 is not just Herzl’s birthday. It is a date that returns Israel to the very beginning of the modern Zionist conversation: who we are, why we are here, how memory differs from responsibility, and why the phrase “If you will it, it is no dream” still sounds like a task, not a completed story.
Herzl stood on the roof of the Jaffa hotel and did not see Tel Aviv as it would become.
But he saw further than many of his contemporaries.
And so, 166 years after his birth, Israel can say: it was called a dream by those who did not understand that a people, memory, and will have their own political power.