The long journey home ended on Mount Herzl. In a quiet ceremony heavy with meaning, the remains of Theodore Herzl’s grandparents were reinterred in the soil of the Jewish state their grandson had summoned into being. The effort required diplomatic coordination, historical research, and national will. It was an act of historical justice, a recognition that the roots of modern Zionism ran deeper than the man who gave the movement its name and organizational force.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured the moment with his usual precision, “The long journey of the Herzl family from foreign soil to the soil of Zion ends here today, on Mount Herzl. All of us hold respect and admiration for Binyamin Ze’ev Herzl for the gigantic Zionist enterprise that stands proudly. But now our gaze focuses on the foundations of the building, Judaism, as the basis for Zionism. The Torah and the entire Tanach, as the cornerstone of identity. The chain of generations as the anchor of values and heritage. The home of Herzl’s grandfather and grandmother provided the roots that grew a trunk, branches, and fruit.

This was not a simple process, because the 19th century greatly challenged traditional Judaism in its encounter with modernity. The Herzl family as well was influenced by the tension between tradition and enlightenment.”

Those words cut through decades of lazy historiography. More than the Dreyfus Affair, more than the antisemitism of fin-de-siècle Vienna, more than any single political event, it was Herzl’s grandparents who planted in him the unbreakable connection to Eretz Yisrael. The conventional story, that a secular,........

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