The Most Politically Significant Meeting of Any Group of Jews in the Last 1,800 Years

Today, the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, marks the 120th anniversary of the First Zionist Congress. That three-day gathering, convened by Theodor Herzl in the Swiss city of Basel on August 29, 1897, might well be the most politically significant meeting of any group of Jews during the last 1,800 years, and it was almost certainly the most important step on the road to establishing a modern Jewish state. The event, like the state it helped create, was also the most improbable of success stories; roundly opposed by the majority of opinion leaders in the Jewish world and viewed with skepticism even by many of the prominent Jewish nationalists who chose to attend, it could easily have failed at any point from when it was announced until the end of its final session.

The story of the First Zionist Congress is worth telling today even more than in the past. Nearly seven decades after the birth of Israel, the Congress tends to be taken for granted as the obvious step needed at the time to bring about the founding of a Jewish state. Its success, too, can easily be seen as all-too-obvious. Indeed, as Herzl wrote in his diary on the eve of the gathering: “The whole thing is one of those balancing feats which look just as natural after they are accomplished as they seemed improbable before they were undertaken.” For that very reason, we need to go back to the moment when such a convocation seemed so highly “improbable.” Only by doing so can we understand why Herzl chose to risk everything on this gambit, what enabled him to beat the towering odds against its success, and what major transformations it brought about in the Jewish national rebirth.

In this essay, I aim to do just that.