Zionism Is a Verb: The Jewish People Must Build Again

In 1897, Theodor Herzl walked into the Stadtcasino in Basel and turned it into the first headquarters of the modern Zionist movement. The delegates gathered there had no army, no government, no sovereign territory and no assurance that history would take them seriously. They possessed little more than an idea, a congress and the audacity to begin. Herzl did not merely believe in a Jewish state. He convened one before it existed.

That was the original grammar of Zionism. It was not a label to wear, a demographic category or a political position to declare. The early Zionists did not simply call themselves Zionists. They practiced Zionism. Zionism was a verb.

Eliezer Ben-Yehuda did not merely admire Hebrew. He took