The Jewish State
Theodor Herzl's Program for Zionism

PLANS OF THE TOWNS

The local groups will delegate their authorized representatives to select sites for towns. In the distribution of land every precaution will be taken to effect a careful transfer with due consideration for acquired rights.

The local groups will have plans of the towns, so that our people may know beforehand where they are to go, in which towns and in which houses they are to live. Comprehensive drafts of the building plans previously referred to will be distributed among the local groups.

The principle of our administration will be strict centralization of our local groups' autonomy. In this way the transfer will be accomplished with the minimum of pain.

I do not imagine all this to be easier than it actually is; on the other hand, people must not imagine it to be mare difficult than it is in reality.

THE DEPARTURE OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES

The middle classes will involuntarily be drawn into the outgoing current, for their sons will be officials of the Society or employees of the Company "over there." Lawyers, doctors, technicians of every description, young business people -- in fact, all Jews who are in search of opportunities, who now escape from oppression in their native country to earn a living in foreign lands -- will assemble on a soil so full of fair promise. The daughters of the middle classes will marry these ambitious men. One of them will send for his wife or fiancee to come out to him, another for his parents, brothers and sisters. Members of a new civilization marry young. This will promote general morality and ensure sturdiness in the new generation; and thus we shall have no delicate offspring of late marriages, children of fathers who spent their strength in the struggle for life.

Every middle-class emigrant will draw more of his kind after him.

The bravest will naturally get the best out of the new world.

But there we seem undoubtedly to have touched on the crucial difficulty of my plan.

Even if we succeeded in opening a world discussion on the Jewish Question in a serious manner --

Even if this debate led us to a positive conclusion that the Jewish State were necessary to the world --

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