Leon Pinsker

Abstract

This chapter focuses on a figure that the existing historiography considers to be the first to articulate the principle of territorial self-determination in modern Jewish nationalism: Leon Pinsker (1821–1891). He is the founder of the Hibat Tsiyon movement and author of the formative text of the modern Jewish political nationalism, “Autoemancipation!” (September 1882). The account of how Pinsker came to write “Autoemancipation!,” became a fixture of the historiography discourse on Pinsker. However, the chapter shows that a reexamination of recently uncovered writings by Pinsker reaches conclusions that are fundamentally different from the conventional account.