In 1897, on a balcony in Basel, Theodor Herzl stood still while history reorganized itself beneath him. Inside the First Zionist Congress, delegates argued over language, land, feasibility, and funding. Outside those walls, Europe debated a colder question: whether Jews were a permanent anomaly in the modern nation-state. Herzl understood that what Europe openly called Die Judenfrage — the Jewish Question — was not about etiquette or theology.