Restoring the Jews to Their Homeland: Nineteen Centuries in the Quest for Zion
Restoring the Jews to Their Homeland: Nineteen Centuries in the Quest for Zion highlights some of the personalities, movements, and events on the long road that led to the most recent Zionist activity and the State of Israel. This book reaches all the way back to the first millennium C.E., when the Jews were defeated by Rome and lost control of their ancient kingdom. Included are studies of such nationalists as Simeon Bar Kochba, who led an unsuccessful but highly influential revolt against...
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Restoring the Jews to Their Homeland: Nineteen Centuries in the Quest for Zion highlights some of the personalities, movements, and events on the long road that led to the most recent Zionist activity and the State of Israel. This book reaches all the way back to the first millennium C.E., when the Jews were defeated by Rome and lost control of their ancient kingdom. Included are studies of such nationalists as Simeon Bar Kochba, who led an unsuccessful but highly influential revolt against the Romans, and other, lesser known persons and sects who fought to retain control of the Jewish homeland. In response to the loss of political autonomy, Jewish theology quickly equated the coming of the Messiah with the return of the Jews to the land of Israel. Shabbetai Zevi, a self-proclaimed Messiah, roused the hopes of exiled European Jews that their return to Israel was immiment. Others - from early hasidim who recounted legends about the Baal Shem Tov's unsuccessful attempts to emigrate, to the wealthy Jews of Leghorn, Italy, who attempted to buy Jerusalem from its Turkish rulers - prayed and worked for the "ingathering of the exiles" from locations throughout the Middle East and Europe. A formative Zionist work, Rome and Jerusalem by Moses Hess, is revealed as a crucial starting point in modern Zionism, although the work was not popular in its own time. Also introduced is Ahad Ha-Am, the influential writer who advocated that a Jewish spiritual and national consciousness was necessary before a political state could become a reality. These and many other precursors to the contemporary Zionist movement are revealed and explained in this thorough history of the relationship between Jews and Israel.
PrefacePt. IEarly Messianic Movements1The First Millennium3Revival of Messianism13David Reubeni and Solomon Molcho20Shabbetai Zevi27Pt. IIThe Unbroken Covenant: Jewish Attempts to Return to the Promised Land39The Lure of Zion41The House of Mendes54A Shabbetaian Odyssey63Hassidism68The Perushim79The Jews of Leghorn and Jerusalem85Pt. IIIChristian ZionistsVoices of Conversion93Sects and Sectarians106Pt. IVEuropean RestorationistsThe Napoleonic Era119French Champions of a Jewish State128Lord Palmerston and the Jewish Question132The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury: An Evangelical Restorationist139Laurence Oliphant143Colonel Charles Henry Churchill150Other English Restorationists156Russian and Italian Advocates of Jewish Restoration168Pt. VThe Rebirth of Jewish NationalismIn Victorian England175Rabbinical Nationalists183Simon Bermann: An Agrarian Pragmatist197Moses Hess199Pt. VINew World ZionsMarrano Zions209Maurice de Saxe217North America as a Jewish Haven221Pt. VIIProgeny of the HaskalahThe Enlighteners241Pt. VIIIThe Lovers of ZionA Zionist Awakening261Moses Leib Lilienblum276The Russophile284Leon Pinsker289Spiritual Zionism299Nathan Birnbaum322Aaron David Gordon: A Jewish Tolstoy327Pt. IXThe SocialistsThe Revolutionaries337The Jewish Bund344Synthesis of Socialism and Zionism353Pt. XUtopians, Autonomists, and TerritorialistsUtopian Novels363Simon Dubnow and Diaspora Naturalism369Territorialism381The Mesopotamian Project393The Greater Palestine Controversy398Paul Friedmann's Midian Experiment411Epilogue421References and Notes423Index443
