L’État juif essai d’une solution de la question juive par Dr Theodore Herzl avec un portrait de l’auteur, hors texte deuxième édition Salonique – The Jewish State – An Attempt at a Modern Solution of the Jewish Question by Dr. Theodor Herzl, with a portrait of the author (printed separately from the text). Published by Édition du Pro-Israël, Salonika, 1923 – second edition. Rare.
On the cover, an embossed monogram of the owner: TEOFILO VIVANTE. On the page following the title, beside Herzl’s portrait, appears a dedication in French: “À mon inoubliable ami et frère, Teofilo Vivante d’Alexandrie. Petit souvenir d’amitié de ton camarade, Egon Knoepfer. Salonique, 26 Teveth / 12 janvier 1930.” – “To my unforgettable friend and brother, Teofilo Vivante of Alexandria. A small token of friendship from your companion, Egon Knoepfer”. Salonika, 26 Tevet / January 12, 1930.”On the final page, two Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (JNF) stamps are affixed – depicting Herzl and Shapira.
A rare Zionist edition of The Jewish State (L’État juif) in French, printed in Salonika in 1923 by Édition du Pro-Israël. This edition was published following a request by Avraham Recanati, delegate from Greece to the Twelfth Zionist Congress, addressed to Ze’ev Jabotinsky, asking him to ensure that Jewish communities in the Near East would be provided with proper French translations of the key works laying out the foundational principles of the Zionist movement – the language most familiar to those communities. Due to Jabotinsky’s many obligations, he delayed the effort, and the Jewish community of Salonika undertook the project independently. At the time, Herzl’s book was unavailable in any French-language bookstore. The Jacob Alché Jewish Library provided the only known translated copy available in the Middle East, preserved at the École Alché in Greece. Based on this single copy, the publisher proceeded with the edition on his own, ultimately without any backing from the organized Zionist movement: “We are doing this on our own, making significant sacrifices, without any financial support from any organization.”
(from the publisher’s preface). The first edition of the book in Salonika had appeared a year earlier, also published by Pro-Israël. This was one of the earliest initiatives outside Central Europe to publish Herzl’s work in French—within a predominantly Sephardic community.
In his book “The Jewish State”, Herzl outlines his vision of a productive Jewish state. He describes in great detail how he envisions the future Jewish state, down to specifics such as the working hours that will be customary within it. Upon its first publication in February 1896, the book stirred a major controversy. Most public figures, both Jews and non-Jews dismissed it as nonsense, and many criticized it harshly: “No one in Vienna, ” claimed the writer Stefan Zweig, “was ridiculed as much as Herzl.”
Yet there were also voices who grasped what others could not. One of the few writers who supported Herzl was Richard Beer-Hofmann, who wrote to him: “At long last, here is a man who bears Judaism not as a burden, or as a calamity to be endured, but as a legitimate heir to an ancient culture.”
Rare. According to the global library catalog WorldCat, only two listings of this edition are recorded: one at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem, and the other at Harvard University in the United States.
119 [1] pp. Good condition.
