One recent article from The Jerusalem Post.
From Balkan nationalism to Zionism: was the Jewish State born in Serbia?By RONEN SHNIDMAN / November 3, 2018 05:19It begs the question: What was Herzl’s connection to Zemun, and why would the Serbian government name a street after him?
The answer may surprise most Jews and even many ardent Zionists. The intellectual roots of political Zionism and the Jewish state did not start with the refined emancipated Jews of fin-de-siècle Vienna or Paris, and they certainly don’t begin in Poland. Zionism’s journey traces back to a pious Sephardi rabbi in what was then the Serbian border town of Zemun at the edge of the Austrian Empire. It was this rabbi who taught Herzl’s grandfather and father and likely planted the seeds of the Jewish state, some 70 years before the First Zionist Congress in Basel and 90 years before the Balfour Declaration.
Full article here.
https://www.jpost.com/Magazine/Celebrating-Zionisms-roots-in-Serbia-570873?fbclid=IwAR00HYvSzaQQKMALgv3HiUDrOQ5PDKXMAHXuH4oxd0HEHl9JkmAhspTkhWY