Israel's Son

Zionism and messianism, is a different chapter so far. It is the latest.

Even though the Hasidism chapter reached until the end of the 20th century, it was more like an extension of something from the 18th century.

While Zionism, in this context, will be observed mostly in the late 19th century and early 20th century. 

For the Hasidism chapter, in order to super simplify it, I chose to focus on 3 significant figures, who had a special relationship with messianism - of course, we were not interested in more of the same but the new developments. We weren’t interested in a Hasidic leader here and there entertaining the same messianic sentiments as most Jews did for over a thousand years prior. 

Well for the Zionism bit, instead of encompassing everything Zionist and messianic, we will also do a super simplified approach. Nothing exhaustive - just what is worth on this level showing.

Foostep After Footstep

So first we’re gonna chop a few stages - a little bit of messianic influx of people and ideas in the first half of the 19th century. That is worth mentioning.

Then, a second stage, of the 3 most famous harbingers of Zionism, as they are often coined, all 3 of them had messianic sentiments and habits - Yehuda Alkalai, Zvi Hirsch Kalisher, and Moshe Hess.

Within that stage we are going to see with those 3 how the language and terminology started the mixing of classic traditional messianic Zionism, with words and ideas from the new wave of nationalism as we know it, mostly in Europe during that era. 

Then, thirdly, we will have a quick perusal in the cases of 4 important figures in the Zionism of the early 20th century, who engaged with messianic meaning in one way or another - Theodore Herzl, David Ben Gurion, and Rabbi Avraham Israel ha’Cohen Kook, and Professor Gershom Scholem.

I added Scholem, who is usually not considered in the category above, but he was important directly to the idea of messianism as we know it. When anyone wants to engage with religious history and messianism - they would or should go through his material and statements, which are very influential within that discourse. So he is influential in this context and of course interesting. It will be kind of full circle for this series to address Scholem, and connect to where this series started, as one begins to look for the history of messianism, and encounters his theories and what he dealt with.

What I will not touch, for now, is what is called the settler movement, or the gush emunim wave, which is for me a different matter - not of history, but of current events. I intend to talk about that at some point in the future, as I engage with some messianic matters that are post modern in my opinion, these are an additional category.

There were others in pre-state Zionism that engaged with messianic meaning but there either wasn’t enough material to engage with and present, or they were not so influential so probably unnecessary for here.