The translator writes: "The Jews' State" is over one hundred years
old. The work is both catalyst and prophecy. Catalyst: Speaking
both to Jews and to the international community, it virtually
launched the modern debate about a modern state for Jews. Prophecy:
it foretold the entire scope of this debate, its timing, its
spread, its nature, its parameters. It is all there in embryo for
us to read and ponder. This little book continues to inform
conceptions and arguments about the position on Jews in their state
and in the world, and about the relationship between Jews and their
fellow human beings. In a very real sense, it still deeply guides
how we view the contemporary Middle East. Translated and
retranslated countless times and into many languages since it was
published, this present translation is one of only three English
versions that have been attempted in the century since its first
publication, the first in English in twenty-five years. Its
concerns are both text and context. Though the text has been with
us ever since is publication, it is the context that needs
recreating. Among the factors that have created distance between us
and the world in which The Jews' State was created include: The
experience of the world and the Jewish community during the last
century, the salience of anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, the
formations and development of the state of Israel, the troubled
existence of the Jewish state ever since its inception, the
continuing Jewish diaspora and its relationship with the state and
world. The common understandings which Theodore Herzl assumed in
his readers have dissipated and vanished, and with them a sense of
his book's import and impact. These understandings need to be
retrieved and recreated. The present edition is therefore an
attempt both at presentation and retrieval: Presentation of the
text in the language of today: retrieval of the context which gave
rise to it. This dual function informs the three main parts of this
edition. Its first part is an account of the ideological and social
worlds in which Herzl worked and wrote, the Jewish world and the
mainstream world, and it argues that Herzl's interaction with both
these worlds rests on some complex attitudes on his part in which
approval, compliance, critique, and rejection all played a role.
There follows a section on The Jews' State itself, which picks up
on the main themes that occupied Herzl, and discusses their scope
and treatment. This first part finishes with a description of the
initial impact of The Jews' State on Herzl's world. The second part
of this edition offers a presentation of the text itself, in the
form of a translation, which attempts to recreate in a modern idiom
the content of the work as well as some of the peculiarities of
Herzl's style. The third part of this edition consists of a
critical glossary, dealing with some salient issues in translation
as well as the explanation of a number of terms and allusions in
the text, whose meaning is not immediately obvious to modern
readers. The edition closes with a bibliography."
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