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Israel
Zionist Precursors
The impulse and development
of Zionism was almost exclusively the work of Ashkenazim--Jews
of European origin; few Sephardim (see Glossary) were directly
engaged in the movement in its formative years. (In 1900 about
9.5 million of the world's 10.5 million Jews were Ashkenazim,
and about 5.2 million of the Ashkenazim lived in the Pale of Settlement.)
The first writings in what later came to be known as Zionism
appeared in the mid-1800s. In 1840 the Jews of Eastern Europe
and the Balkans had been aroused by rumors that the messianic
era was at hand. Various writers, most prominently Rabbi Judah
Alkalai and Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Kalisher but including many others,
were impressed by the nationalist fervor of Europe that was creating
new nation-states and by the resurgence of messianic expectations
among Jews. Kalisher wrote that Jewish nationalism was directly
akin to other nationalist movements and was the logical continuation
of the Jewish enlightenment that had begun in France in 1791 when
Jews were granted civil liberties. Alkalai consciously altered
his expectations from a miraculous messianic salvation to a redemption
by human effort that would pave the way for the arrival of the
messiah. Both authors urged the development of Jewish national
unity, and Kalisher in particular foresaw the ingathering to Palestine
of many of the world's Jews as part of the process of emancipation.
Another important early Zionist was Moses Hess, a German Jew
and socialist comrade of Karl Marx. In his book Rome and Jerusalem,
published in 1862, Hess called for the establishment of a Jewish
socialist commonwealth in Palestine. He was one of the first Jewish
thinkers to see that emancipation would ultimately exacerbate
anti-Semitism in Europe. He concluded that the only solution to
the Jewish problem was the establishment of a national Jewish
society managed by a Jewish proletariat. Although his synthesis
of socialism and Jewish nationalism would later become an integral
part of the Labor Zionist movement, during his lifetime the prosperity
of European Jewry lessened the appeal of his work.
Data as of December 1988
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