Binyamin Zeev Theodor Herzl was born in Budapest, Hungary on May 2, 1860. Herzl was a journalist, playwright, writer, political activist and one of the founding fathers of modern political Zionism. Herzl was a visionary and a practical man who suffered many failures while dealing with the Jewish question and he never gave up on his vision and ideas. In this essay, I will claim that if Herzl had not moved Zionism to center stage, we wouldn’t have a Jewish state today.
Herzl believed that only by establishing a state for the Jewish people, the Jews could resolve their pain and bring an end to anti-Semitism. Herzl went on a path that had already been followed before, by people as Moses Hess and Leo Pinsker.