Jewish statehood was restored in 1948 amid a struggle over legitimacy that has persisted in Israel ever since: Who rules? Who decides? Antagonism between the political left and right erupted into bloody violence over the Altalena. Secular-religious discord even made defining who is a Jew in a Jewish state contentious. After the Six-Day War, the return of religious Zionist settlers to biblical Judea and Samaria reframed the struggle over legitimacy. Who decides where in the Land of Israel Jews may live: settlers and rabbis or the government? Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 provoked the...

Few books have changed human history as did Theodor Herzl's 1896 tract advocating the founding-even the inevitability-of a Jewish state. The new edition from Quid Pro Books adds a 2014 Foreword by Jerold S. Auerbach, Professor Emeritus of History at Wellesley College and recognized as a leading scholar in the U.S. on Judaism in America and Israeli history. Auerbach's extensive introduction brings home the importance and complexities of this historic work, of this visionary man. Founder of the World Zionist Organization and an Austrian intellectual, Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) recognized that...