On April 15, 1897, Rt. The Honorable Herbert Bentwich leads a group of twenty-one Zionists aboard a small steamer bound for Jaffa: the gentleman is none other than Ari Shavit's great-grandfather . The Oxus delegation consists mainly of educated upper-middle-class British Jews, who are expected to report their impressions of the ancient land of Israel to Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Herzl and his supporters believe that Jewish civilization in the diaspora is now doomed to disappear or be assimilated and that an urgent solution is needed. In the years before 1897, Jewish identity survived unscathed thanks to its unshakable religious beliefs and the isolation of Jews from competing narratives, kept at bay by the thick walls of the ghetto. But now it is threatened by secularization and emancipation. Even more alarming is the fact that a new wave of anti-Semitism is growing in Eastern Europe and is driving hundreds of people to migrate to escape discrimination. Herzl's Zionists fail to see what imminent horrors await in the first half of the twentieth century, but they are certain that the only way to save Jewish civilization from extinction is for it to re-establish itself in its ancient homeland, present-day Palestine . Bentwich shares the Zionists' concerns, but his longing for the Holy Land is above all romantic. He was born in 1856 in London, the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant who worked as a traveling salesman. Despite his humble origins, he studied at excellent high schools and worked hard to prove himself, becoming a successful lawyer, a highly respected member of the community, and a successful husband and father of eleven children. Bentwich is also a determined Victorian gentleman and an admirer of the values ​​and traditions of imperial Britain, although...... middle of paper ...... and obtains funds to finance the creation of the nation-state which would solve the Jewish problem. As the train follows its route, excited passengers consult their travel guides and imagine ancient times based on book descriptions and perceived landscapes. Most of them are wealthy emancipated Jews, naively seeking a solution to the Jewish question. Of them, only Israel Zangwill is not naive. He is a well-known and incisive writer who sees Palestine as it is, a territory already occupied by peasants and peasants. Seven years later, in a speech in New York, he scandalized his audience by stating that Palestine was populated and that the children of Israel should be ready to conquer the country by force. As a result he was expelled from the Zionist movement, only to return in the second decade of the 20th century with more radical positions..