After 100 years, Herzl’s grandparents finally return home to Israel

More than a century after their deaths, the remains of Shimon Leib and Rivka Herzl—the grandparents of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern political Zionism and the visionary who laid the foundation for the State of Israel—were exhumed in Serbia on Wednesday ahead of their reburial in Jerusalem.

Herzl transformed the dream of a Jewish homeland into a political movement, publishing The Jewish State in 1896 and convening the First Zionist Congress the following year. Though he died in 1904, decades before Israel’s independence, his vision ultimately led to the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948. His remains were reinterred on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem in 1949.

After four years of diplomatic efforts, Herzl’s grandparents will now be laid to rest beside him at the Herzl family plot on Mount Herzl. The World Zionist Organization described the reburial as “the closing of a historic circle,” bringing Herzl’s family home to the Jewish state he devoted his life to making a reality.