July 3 1904 – 20 Tammuz 5664
Theodor Herzl passed away in Vienna, aged just forty-four, plunging Jews all over the world into deep mourning. Herzl had transformed the tiny, scattered Zionist movement into the Jewish nation’s most substantial united political force in the few short years since he called the first Zionist Congress of 1898. His incredible achievements, and the struggles he was forced to wage within the Zionist movement, which split in his final year of leadership over the “Territorial” issue of whether to consider the British Government’s offer of Uganda as a home for the Jewish people, took their toll on Herzl’s health. Yet he proved how one determined individual, working at least to start with almost on his own, can nevertheless change the world, or as he put it, “If you will it, it is no dream.”