Philip Earl Steele, at The Blogs

Nov 3, 2024, 1:15 PM

Message in a bottle from the Lovers of Zion – 140 years on

Day four of the Katowice Conference, November 6-11, 1884 (Wiki Commons)

This week marks the 140th anniversary of Zionism’s first significant international conference, held in today’s Katowice, Poland from November 6 to 11, 1884. But with all the torturous matters currently underway in Israel, who can be surprised if there’s...

Sep 8, 2024, 9:38 AM

Israeli power and its discontents

In his recent Hartman lecture for North American rabbis, Yossi Klein Halevi shared a series of immensely enlightening insights. And that certainly goes for his remarks on the tension between Israeli power and the sense of Jewish victimhood. Over the...

Jun 30, 2024, 1:41 PM

Opportunities seized – others not: reflections on Theodor Herzl’s 120th jahrzeit

Theodor Herzl street in Edlach, Austria - where Herzl passed away on July 3, 1904. Photo by Youval Orr, documentalist, who has kindly permitted me to use it.

120 years ago this week – July 3, 1904 – Theodor Herzl died at the age of 44 in the Alpine village of Edlach, not far from Vienna. The Father of Zionism, as he is known, had converted to...

Dec 12, 2023, 8:35 PM

Israeli mistrust of the Red Cross is hardly contrived

As we approach the 11th week of the war begun with Hamas’s ghastly atrocities in the Negev, the Gazan jihadist organization continues to hold nearly 140 hostages, including the 9-month old Kfir Bibas and five octogenarians. All those being...

Dec 8, 2023, 7:57 PM

Dr. Pinsker’s diagnosis was correct: It’s demonopathy

Leon Pinsker (1821-1891), Wikimedia Commons

In the wake of the horrible pogroms that began sweeping the Pale of Settlement in 1881, Leon Pinsker, a physician from Odessa, authored the foundational Zionist tract Autoemancipation!, published in September 1882. Pinsker’s prescription for the Jews’ predicament –...

Dec 7, 2023, 5:22 PM

Ben-Gurion’s 50th jahrzeit in his hometown, Płońsk

The newly opened "Memorial House" in Płońsk. Entrance free! Photo thanks to the kind permisson of Piotr Dąbrowski.

The anniversary of David Ben-Gurion’s passing, now half a century ago (Dec. 1, 1973), was commemorated last week in his Polish hometown with a lecture, concert, and workshops. A very special event, as the city honored his jahrzeit at...

Nov 12, 2023, 11:22 PM

The Left’s perennial betrayal of the Jews

From a report by Ben Kawaller for The Free Press, Nov. 12, 2023

Today in France, Marine Le Pen and her rightist party the National Rally (formerly the National Front) has marched in Paris against antisemitism, in support of the summons issued by the Speakers of the French Parliament’s two chambers. However, the...

Nov 5, 2023, 8:47 PM

Kumbaya sung as an anti-Zionist tune

The attendees of the Seelisberg Conference. From "Reports and Recommendations of the Emergency Conference on Anti-Semitism", 1947

The 19th-century idea of a Jewish return to the Land of Israel has consumed me the past dozen years. What I’ve learned is that it all began as a messianic belief among both Evangelical Christians and Jewish rabbis who...

Jul 2, 2022, 10:48 AM

Herzl and… McCartney

Herzl and... McCartney With Paul McCartney having just rocked Glastonbury, and the anniversary of Theodor Herzl’s death on July 3rd, what Beatles fan slash researcher of early Zionism can’t help but connect the two men? It must be easy for Israelis...

Jan 27, 2022, 10:01 PM

The poor Poles look upon the Valley of Dry Bones

'The Vision of The Valley of The Dry Bones,' Gustave Doré - 1866. (Wikimedia Commons)

“Yahweh set me down in the middle of the valley, a valley full of bones. He made me walk up and down and all around among them. There were vast quantities of these bones on the floor of the...

About Me

Philip Earl Steele is an American historian based in Poland, specializing in the history of early Zionism. His recent book on Theodor Herzl, published by the Polish Academy of Sciences, is available in Open Access: https://publikacje.pan.pl/book/146852/on-theodor-herzl-s-encounters-with-zionist-thought-and-efforts-prior-to-his-conversion-in-the-spring-of-1895?language=en