In 1897, Theodor Herzl essentially described himself when he wrote about a man who once “deep in his soul felt the need to be a Jew,” and who, reeling from Jew-hatred, watched “his soul become one bleeding wound.”

“Altneuland” was unique, Herzl’s biographer Shlomo Avineri explains, because it was “not just about Jews having a right,” but also about Jews making the right kind of state.

Political Zionism was a leap. But it was timely.

In those “three days of awakening Jewish history,” Herzl proclaimed, “Zionism introduced itself to the world.”

By 1895, Theodor Herzl was increasingly desperate to solve the Jewish Problem. Rebuffed by the super-philanthropist Baron Maurice de Hirsch, Herzl turned to Baron Edmond James de Rothschild, writing an even longer  65-page pitch. Rothschild and his wife, Adelheid von Rothschild, were bankrolling Jewish settlers in Rishon LeZion and Zichron Ya’akov.

In late 1895, while Theodor Herzl steeped himself in writing his often overlooked play, The New Ghetto, reporters broke the story of Alfred Dreyfus, a French-Jewish officer arrested for espionage.

After graduating as a lawyer, Herzl barely lasted a year as a low-level civil servant for the court, from August 1884 to August 1885.

Early on, when he was still trying to fit in, there were clear signs that the Theodor Herzl that always was – was the Theodor Herzl he eventually became.

In Herzl’s household – like so many other bourgeois Jewish homes – the success in looking normal on the streets came at a high Jewish cost, even at home.