Zionism

For other meanings, please see Zionism (disambiguation)

Establishment of the Zionist movement

The desire of Jews to return to their ancestral homeland has remained a universal Jewish theme ever since the defeat of the Great Jewish Revolt, and the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in the year 70, the defeat of Bar Kochba's revolt in 135, and the dispersal of the Jews to other parts of the Empire that followed. Due to the disastrous results of the revolt, what was once a human driven movement towards regaining national sovereignty based on religious inspiration, over centuries tradition and broken hopes of one "false messiah" after another took much of the human element out of messianic deliverance and put it all in the hands of God. Although Jewish nationalism in ancient times have always taken on religious connatations, from the Maccabean Revolt to the various Jewish revolts during Roman rule, and even Medieval Times when intermittently national hopes were incarnated in the "false messianism" of Shabbatai Zvi, among other less known messianists, it was not until the rise of ideological and political Zionism and its renewed belief in human based action toward Jewish national aspiration, did the notion of returning to the homeland become widespread among the Jewish consciousness.

Related Topics:
Great Jewish Revolt - Destruction of Jerusalem - Roman Empire - 70 - Bar Kochba's revolt - 135 - God - Maccabean Revolt - False messianism - Shabbatai Zvi

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The Haskala of Jews in European countries in the 18th and 19th centuries following the French Revolution, and the spread of western liberal ideas among a section of newly emancipated Jews, created for the first time a class of secular Jews, who absorbed the prevailing ideas of rationalism, romanticism and, most importantly, nationalism. Jews who had abandoned Judaism, at least in its traditional forms, began to develop a new Jewish identity, as a "nation" in the European sense. They were inspired by various national struggles, such as those for German and Italian unification, and for Polish and Hungarian independence. If Italians and Poles were entitled to a homeland, they asked, why were Jews not so entitled?

Related Topics:
Haskala - 18th - 19th centuries - French Revolution - Secular - Rationalism - Romanticism - Nationalism - German - Italian - Polish - Hungarian

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Before the 1890s there had already been attempts to settle Jews in Palestine, which was in the 19th century a part of the Ottoman Empire, inhabited by about 450,000 people, mostly Muslim and Christian Arabs (although there had never been a time when there were no Jews in Palestine). Pogroms in Russia led Jewish philanthropists such as the Montefiores and the Rothschilds to sponsor agricultural settlements for Russian Jews in Palestine in the late 1870s, culminating in a small group of immigrants from Russia arriving in the country in 1882. This has become known in Zionist history as the First Aliyah (aliyah is a Hebrew word meaning "ascent," referring to the act of spiritually "ascending" to the Holy Land. In modern Hebrew, this word is used in place of an equivalent to "immigration.").

Related Topics:
Ottoman Empire - Muslim - Christian - Arab - Pogrom - Russia - Montefiores - Rothschilds - 1882 - First Aliyah

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Proto-Zionist groups such as Hibbat Zion were active in the 1880s in Eastern Europe where emancipation had not occurred to the extent it did in Western Europe (or at all). The massive anti-Jewish pogroms following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II made emancipation seem farther than ever and influenced Judah Leib Pinsker to publish the pamphlet Auto-Emancipation in January 1, 1882. The pamphlet became influential for the Political Zionism movement.

Related Topics:
Hibbat Zion - 1880s - Eastern Europe - Western Europe - Anti-Jewish - Pogroms - Tsar Alexander II - Judah Leib Pinsker - Auto-Emancipation - January 1 - 1882

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There had also been several Jewish thinkers such as Moses Hess whose 1862 work Rome and Jerusalem; The Last National Question argued for the Jews to settle in Palestine as a means of settling the national question. Hess proposed a socialist state in which the Jews would become agrarianised through a process of "redemption of the soil" which would transform the Jewish community into a true nation in that Jews would occupy the productive layers of society rather than being an intermediary non-productive merchant class which is how he perceived European Jews. Hess, along with later thinkers such as Nahum Syrkin and Ber Borochov, is considered a founder of Socialist Zionism and Labour Zionism and one of the intellectual forebears of the kibbutz movement.

Related Topics:
Moses Hess - Palestine - National question - Agrarian - European Jews - Nahum Syrkin - Ber Borochov - Labour Zionism - Kibbutz

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American evangelical Christian Zionists such as William Eugene Blackstone also pursued the Zionist ideal during late 19th century, especially in the American Blackstone Memorial (1891).

Related Topics:
American - Evangelical - Christian Zionists - William Eugene Blackstone - Blackstone Memorial

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A key event triggering the modern Zionist movement was the Dreyfus Affair, which erupted in France in 1894. Jews were profoundly shocked to see this outbreak of anti-Semitism in a country which they thought of as the home of enlightenment and liberty. Among those who witnessed the Affair was an Austrian-Jewish journalist, Theodor Herzl, who published his pamphlet Der Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") in 1896. Prior to the Affair, Herzl had been anti-Zionist, afterwards he became ardently pro-Zionist. In 1897 Herzl organised the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, which founded the World Zionist Organisation (WZO) and elected Herzl as its first President.

Related Topics:
Dreyfus Affair - France - 1894 - Anti-Semitism - Theodor Herzl - Der Judenstaat - 1896 - 1897 - First Zionist Congress - Basel - Switzerland - World Zionist Organisation

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