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Updated: June 1, 2025
"The Jewish State" was the third effort of an agitated mind, wavering between the projection of a Utopia or a thesis, and containing the political solution of the Jewish problem. The final variant of the original theme was the novel "Altneuland." Here he pictured the Promised Land as it might become twenty years after the beginning of the Zionist movement.
The impulse to write such a novel became irresistible after his visit to Palestine. It was to be called "Altneuland." He began to write it in 1899. It was completed in April 1902, and published six months later.
"Altneuland" tells of a Jew who visits Palestine in 1898 and then comes again in 1923 when he finds the Promised Land developed under Jewish influence. Its territory lies East and West of the Jordan. The dead land of 1898 is now thoroughly alive. Its real creators were the irrigation engineers.
It is remarkable that he could write such a novel while engaged in varied political activities in Constantinople, in London and in Berlin; and while he had to deal with the many troublesome internal Zionist problems. "Altneuland" was a novel with a purpose. It described the Palestine of the near future as it would develop through the Zionist Movement.
Around the Holy City of Jerusalem, modern suburbs had arisen, shaded boulevards and parks, institutes of learning, places of amusement, markets "a world city in the spirit of the twentieth century." In this new land, the Arabs live side by side in friendship with the Jews. "Altneuland" did not produce the effect Herzl had expected. Within the Zionist Movement it did more harm than good.
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