MOSES HESS AND THE PROTO-ZIONISTS

9. MOSES HESS AND THE PROTO-ZIONISTS
Alfred Lilienthal writes: “The early 19th-century Jewish settlements in Palestine were completely non-nationalist in motivation. Political Zionism, spurred by the writings of Moses Hess (Rome and Jerusalem, 1862) and Leo Pinsker (Auto-Emancipation, 1882) and the inspired, dedicated leadership of Theodor Herzl, did not succeed in winning wide support among the Jews of Europe or America. The 9,000 Jews whom Sir Moses Montefiore found in Palestine on his first visit in 1837 had barely reached 50,000 at the turn of the century. The settlements that he founded, and Baron Rothschild generously supported after him, benefited only the new colonists and posed no threat to the indigenous Arab population…”143
The nationalist ideology that we know as Zionism, and which posed an immediate and mortal threat to the indigenous Arab population, arose as the result of the threats coming to Talmudic Judaism from several directions: from the secular, humanist ideals of the French revolution, from the rising tide of German anti-semitism, and from Reform Judaism.
To the defence of Talmudism there arose the German Jew Moses Hess, a friend and collaborator of Marx and Engels. He charted a path for the survival of Talmudism that was prophetic on many accounts. For it looked forward both to the Bolshevik revolution, and to the Holocaust, and to the foundation of the Zionist State of Israel.
“Hess’s task,” writes Michael Hoffman, “was to see that the Judaics did not succumb to the new winds of reform and religious indifferentism with which Catholics and Protestants under the spell of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, had fallen. This had been a perennial problem for Judaism: how to insulate their own nation from the liberal toxins they themselves deliberately sow among the Gentiles.
“Forged in the crucible of the German Rhineland, where he was born to an Orthodox Judaic family, and at a period of time that marked the beginning of the Prussian reaction against the legacy of Napoleon, Hess approached this dilemma through the vehicle of his Zionism, the religious nationalism which embraces the Talmud not necessarily as a code for daily living, but as a totem of racial cohesion and a prophylactic against liberalism. Hess wrote:
“’Many who have emancipated themselves from dry orthodoxy have recently manifested in their studies a deepening conception of Judaism, and have thus brought about the banishment of that superficial rationalism which was the cause of a growing indifference to things Jewish and which finally led to a total severance from Judaism.’
“Hess termed as ‘nihilists’ all liberal Judaics who sought to abolish the influence of the Talmud, which he regarded as the ‘fountain of life’. Hess endeavoured to build a Hegelian-Kabbalistic bridge between the Judaic liberals and the rabbinic traditionalists. ‘The new seminaries, modelled after the Breslau school... ought to make it their aim to bridge the gap between the nihilism of the Reformers, who never learn anything, and the staunch conservatism of the Orthodox, who never forget anything.’
“The bridge consisted of Communist leadership for the reform-minded, and what came to be called modern Orthodoxy for the conservatives, with these two seeming opposite tendencies eventually reconciled, far in the future, in the racial patriotism that is Israeli Zionism. As Hess stated, ‘The pious Jew is above all a Jewish patriot. The ‘new’ Jew, who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality, is not only a deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his race and even to his family.’
“In his early 1837 work, The Holy History of Mankind, Hess advocated an occult, Talmudic hierarchy of Adamic man (human beings, i.e. Jews), contrasted with subhuman creatures, the Nephilim. ‘This tradition,’ observes Hess, ‘leads toward a higher and clearer consciousness.’
“In 1841 Hess began to be supported by a wealthy circle of Rhineland capitalists. They appointed him to head a leading Masonic newspaper which they funded, the Rheinische Zeitung, in whose offices he made the acquaintance of Karl Marx, whose teacher he became and in whom he discerned messianic qualities. In a letter written before Marx had published anything, Hess predicted of him, ‘... he will give the final blow to all medieval religion and politics... Can you imagine Rousseau, Voltaire, Holbach, Lessing, Heine and Hegel combined in one person? If you can – you have Dr. Marx.’
“After the Prussians drove Hess into exile in France, he joined with the German-Judaic expatriates there to lay the groundwork for the Communist ideology in such works as Kommunistisches Bekenntis in Fragen unde Antworten (‘A Communist Credo: Questions and Answers’); Uber das Geldwesen (‘On Money’) and Sozialismus und Kommunismus. Though attributed to Marx and Friedrich Engels, Hess himself wrote the first draft of The Communist Manifesto and sections of The German Ideology, which is officially said to have been written by Marx and Engels.
“Hess the Communist sought to extirpate the Gentile’s connection to the land by weakening private property rights and in particular, the right to inherit land. In keeping with the conjunction of seeming opposites, in which Communism often is backed by capitalists, Hess believed that the modernizing trends of free trade and commerce would contribute to Communism through the demise of property rights. He also favoured the factory system which he believed would ‘guarantee abundance’.”144
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In 1862, under the influence of the Italian Risorgimento, Hess wrote Rome and Jerusalem: the Last National Question, which explores the possibility of the Jews becoming a nation in the way that the Italians were becoming one.145 In his first paragraph he stated his most important conclusion: that the Jews could never become fully assimilated into western culture: "After an estrangement of twenty years, I am back with my people. I have come to be one of them again, to participate in the celebration of the holy days, to share the memories and hopes of the nation, to take part in the spiritual and intellectual warfare going on within the House of Israel, on the one hand, and between our people and the surrounding civilized nations, on the other; for though the Jews have lived among the nations for almost two thousand years, they cannot, after all, become a mere part of the organic whole." (First Letter).
Not that Hess was renouncing his assimilated western humanist ideals. On the contrary: "When I labour for the regeneration of my own nation, I do not thereby renounce my humanistic aspiration. The national movement of the present day is only another step on the road of progress which began with the French Revolution. The French nation has, since the great Revolution, been calling to the other nations for help. But the nations have turned a deaf ear to the voice from the distance and have lent a not unwilling ear to the tumult of reaction in their own midst. Today, this roar deafens not only the people in certain parts of Germany, those who, by dint of political trickery, are aroused to the pitch of enthusiasm for the kings and war lords. But the other nations hear and follow the call of France. The call has reached also our ancient nation, and I would unite my voice with that of France, that I may at least warn my racial brothers in Germany against listening to the loud noise of the reactionaries." (Third Letter).
Hess considered assimilation into German culture a vain dream: "The endeavours are vain. Even conversion itself [to Christianity] does not relieve the Jews from the enormous pressure of German Anti-Semitism. The German hates the Jewish religion less than the race; he objects less to the Jews' peculiar beliefs than to their peculiar noses." (Fourth Letter)
"The real Teutomaniacs of the Arndt and Jahn type will always be honest, reactionary conservatives. The Teutomaniac, in his love of the Fatherland, loves not the State but the race dominance. How, then, can he conceive the granting of equal rights to other races than the dominant one, when equality is still a utopia for the large masses of Germany? The sympathetic Frenchman assimilates with irresistible attraction every foreign race element. Even the Jew is here a Frenchman. Jefferson said long ago, at the time of the American Revolution, that every man has two fatherlands, first his own and then France. The German, on the other hand, is not at all anxious to assimilate any foreign elements, and would be perfectly happy if he could possess all fatherlands and dominions for himself. He lacks the primary condition of every chemical assimilative process, namely, warmth." (Fifth Letter).
Hess considered that not only the Germans, but all the European nations, with the exception of France (he was wrong here, as the Dreyfus case was to show), were antisemitic: "... The European nations have always considered the existence of the Jews in their midst as an anomaly. We shall always remain strangers among the nations. They may tolerate us and even grant us emancipation, but they will never respect us as long as we place the principle ubi bene ibi patria [where it is good, there is our fatherland] above our own great national memories. Though religious fanaticism may cease to operate as a factor in the hatred against the Jews in civilized countries, yet in spite of enlightenment and emancipation, the Jew in exile who denies his nationality will never earn the respect of the nations among whom he dwells. He may become a naturalized citizen, but he will never be able to convince the Gentiles of his total separation from his own nationality. It is not the old-type, pious Jew, who would rather suffer than deny his nationality, that is most despised, but the modern Jew who, like the German outcasts in foreign countries, denies his nationality, while the hand of fate presses heavily upon his own people..." (Fifth Letter).
The Jews are good at assimilating foreign cultures, but they have gone too far: "Just as it is impossible for me to entertain any prejudice against my own race, which has played such an important role in universal history and which is destined for a still greater one in the future, so it is impossible for me to show against the holy language of our fathers the antipathy of those who endeavour to eliminate Hebrew from Jewish life, and even supersede it by German inscriptions in the cemetery. I was always exalted by Hebrew prayers. I seem to hear in them an echo of fervent pleadings and passionate entreaties, issuing from suffering hearts of a thousand generations. Seldom do these heart-stirring prayers fail to impress those who are able to understand their meaning. The most touching point about these Hebrew prayers is, that they are really an expression of the collective Jewish spirit; they do not plead for the individual, but for the entire Jewish race. The pious Jew is above all a Jewish patriot. The 'new' Jew, who denies the existence of the Jewish nationality, is not only a deserter in the religious sense, but is also a traitor to his people, his race and even to his family. If it were true that Jewish emancipation in exile is incompatible with Jewish nationality, then it were the duty of the Jews to sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter..." (Fourth Letter).
Jewish patriotism, for Hess, humanist though he is, is inseparable from Jewish religion; the former is the root of the latter: "All feast and fast days of the Jews, their deep piety and reverence for tradition, which almost apotheosises everything Hebraic, nay even the entire Jewish cult, all have their origin in the patriotism of the Jewish nation." (Fourth Letter)
For Judaism is "nothing else but a national historical cult developed out of family traditions" (Sixth Letter).
Reform Judaism, therefore, is anathema to Hess: "The threatening danger to Judaism comes only from the religious reformers who, with their newly-invented ceremonies and empty eloquence have sucked the marrow out of Judaism and left only its skeleton... Their reforms have only a negative purpose - if they have any aim at all - to firmly establish unbelief in the national foundation of the Jewish religion. No wonder that these reforms only fostered indifference to Judaism and conversions to Christianity. Judaism, like Christianity, would have to disappear as a result of the general state of enlightenment and progress, if it were not more than a mere dogmatic religion, namely a national cult. The Jewish reformers, however, those who are still present in some German communities, and maintain, to the best of their ability, the theatrical show of religious reform, know so little of the value of national Judaism, that they are at great pains to erase carefully from their creed and worship all traces of Jewish nationalism. They fancy that a recently manufactured prayer or hymn book, wherein a philosophical theism is put into rhyme and accompanied by music, is more elevating and soul-stirring than the fervent Hebrew prayers which express the pain and sorrow of a nation at the loss of its fatherland. They forget that these prayers, which not only created, but preserved for millennia, the unity of Jewish worship, are even today the tie which binds into one people all the Jews scattered around the world." (Seventh Letter)
Moreover, there is this difference between Judaism and other religions: it is forever tied to the ethnic Jew, implanted in his genes as it were: "In reality, Judaism as a nationality has a natural basis which cannot be set aside by mere conversion to another faith, as is the case in other religions. A Jew belongs to his race and consequently also to Judaism, in spite of the fact that he or his ancestors have become apostates. It may appear paradoxical, according to our modern religious opinions, but in life, at least, I have observed this view to be true. The converted Jew remains a Jew no matter how much he objects to it." (Seventh Letter).
"The Jewish religion, thought Heine, and with him all the enlightened Jews, is more of a misfortune than a religion. But in vain do the progressive Jews persuade themselves that they can escape this misfortune through enlightenment or conversion. Every Jew is, whether he wishes it or not, solidly united with the entire nation; and only when the Jewish people will be freed from the burden which it has borne so heroically for thousands of years, will the burden of Judaism be removed from the shoulders of these progressive Jews, who will ultimately form only a small minority. We will all then carry the yoke of the 'Kingdom of Heaven' until the end...
The levelling tendencies of the assimilationists have remained and will always remain without influence on those Jews who constitute the great Jewish masses (Eleventh Letter).
The Jewish religion, according to Hess, is far superior to Christianity: "Christianity is, after all, a religion of death, the function of which ceased the moment the nations reawakened to life..." (Fifth Letter)
The new, life-giving religion is the religion of freedom - individual freedom and national freedom - that the French Revolution has given to the world.146 The Jewish religion, paradoxically, can come to life within the new context of this new religion bequeathed by the French: "The rigid forms of orthodoxy, the existence of which was justified before the century of rebirth, will naturally, through the power of the national idea and the historical cult, relax and become fertile. It is only with the national rebirth that the religious genius of the Jews... will be endowed with new strength again be re-inspired with the prophetic spirit." (Fifth Letter)
"This 'religion of the future' of which the eighteenth-century philosophers, as well as their recent followers, dreamed, will neither be an imitation of the ancient pagan Nature cult, nor a reflection of the neo-Christian or the neo-Judaism skeleton, the spectre of which haunts the minds of our religious reformers. Each nation will have to create its own historical cult; each people must become like the Jewish people, a people of God." (Seventh Letter)
"As long as no other people possessed such a national, humanitarian cult, the Jews alone were the people of God. Since the French Revolution, the French, as well as the other peoples that followed them, have become our noble rivals and faithful allies" (Ninth Letter).
All this is leading to "the Messianic era", when "the Jewish nation and all other historical nations will arise again to new life, the time of the 'resurrection of the dead', of 'the coming of Lord', of the 'New Jerusalem', and of all the other symbolic expressions, the meaning of which is no longer misunderstood. The Messianic era is the present age, which began to germinate with the teachings of Spinoza, and finally came into historical existence with the great French Revolution. With the French Revolution, there began the regeneration of those nations which had acquired their national historical religion only through the influence of Judaism" (Tenth Letter)
But how can the nation be resurrected if it has no land? And so Hess is led by the logic of his argument to a kind of proto-Zionism. "You," he addresses the Jews, "are an elemental force and we bow our heads before you. You were powerful in the early period of your history, strong even after the destruction of Jerusalem, and mighty during the Middle Ages, when there were only two dominant powers - the Inquisition and its Cross, and Piracy with its Crescent. You have escaped destruction in your long dispersion, in spite of the terrible tax you have paid during eighteen centuries of persecution. But what is left of your nation is mighty enough to rebuild the gates of Jerusalem. This is your mission. Providence would not have prolonged your existence until today, had it not reserved for you the holiest of all missions. The hour has struck for the resettlement of the banks of the Jordan..." (Eleventh Letter)
Not only is the return to Palestine a worthy aim: it is absolutely necessary for the regeneration of Jewry. "In exile, the Jewish people cannot be regenerated. Reform or philanthropy can only bring it to apostasy and to nothing else, but in this no reformer, not even a tyrant will ever succeed. The Jewish people will participate in the great historical movement of present-day humanity only when it will have its own fatherland... No Jew, whether orthodox or not, can conscientiously refrain from cooperating with the rest for the elevation of the entire Jewry. Every Jew, even the converted should cling to the cause and labour for the regeneration of Israel." (Eleventh Letter)
But the return to the fatherland can take place only after the revolution, which will shake out Western Jewry: "The rigid crust of orthodox Jewry will melt when the spark of Jewish patriotism, now smoldering under it, is kindles into a sacred fire which will herald the coming of the spring and the resurrection of our nation to a new life. On the other hand, Western Judaism is surrounded by an almost indissoluble crust, composed of the dead residue of the first manifestation of the modern spirit, from the inorganic chalk deposit of an extinct rationalistic enlightenment. This crust will not be melted by the fire of Jewish patriotism; it can only be broken by an external pressure under the weight of which everything which has no future must give up its existence. In contradistinction to orthodoxy, which cannot be destroyed by an external force without at the same time endangering the embryo of Jewish Nationalism that slumbers within it, the had covering that surrounds the hearts of our cultured Jews will be Shattered only by a blow from without, one that world events are already preparing; and which will probably fall in the near future. The old framework of European Society, battered so often by the storms of revolution, is cracking and groaning on all sides. It can no longer stand a storm. Those who stand between revolution and reaction, the mediators, who have an appointed purpose to push modern Society on its path of progress, will, after society becomes strong and progressive, be swallowed up by it. The nurses of progress, who would undertake to teach the Creator himself wisdom, prudence and economy; those carriers of culture, the saviours of Society, the speculators in politics, philosophy and religion, will not survive the last storm. And along with the other nurses of progress our Jewish reformers will also close their ephemeral existence. On the other hand, the Jewish people, along with other historical nations, will, after this last catastrophe, the approach of which is attested by unmistakable signs of the times, receive its full rights as a people... Just as after the last catastrophe of organic life, when the historical races came into the world's arena, there came their division into tribes, and the position and role of the latter was determined, so after the last catastrophe of social life, when the spirit of humanity shall have reached its maturity, will our people, with the other historical peoples, find its legitimate place in universal history." (Eleventh Letter)
Hess concludes with a warning against German nationalism: "the cause of national regeneration of oppressed peoples can expect no help and sympathy from Germany. The problem of regeneration, which dates not from the second restoration of the kingdom in France, but goes back to the French Revolution, the war, was received in Germany with mockery and derision; and in spite of the fact that the question is an urgent one and is uppermost almost everywhere, even in Germany itself, the Germans have name it the 'Nationality trick'. Our Jewish democrats, also, display their patriotism in accusing the French and the people sympathizing with them, of conquering designs. The French, say the German politicians, as well as their allies, will only be exploited by the second Monarchy, for purposes of restraining liberty rather than promoting it. It is, therefore, according to the deep logic of these politicians, the duty of the German to be obedient to the Kaiser and the kings, in order that they should be able to defeat the conquering desires of the French. These politicians and patriots forget that if Germany were to conquer France and Italy today, it would only result in placing the entire German people under police law; and in depriving the Jews of their civil rights, in a worse manner than after the Way of Liberation, when the only reward granted by the Germans to their Jewish brethren in arms was exclusion from civil life. And, truly, the German people and the German Jews do not deserve any better lot when they allow themselves, in spite of the examples of history, to be entrapped by medieval reaction." (Appendix V. The Last Race Rule)
"The age of race dominance is at an end. Even the smallest people, whether it belongs to the Germanic or Romance, Slavic or Finnic, Celtic or Semitic races, as soon as it advances its claim to a place among the historical nations, will find sympathetic supporters in the powerful civilized Western nations. Like the patriots of other unfortunate nations, the German patriots can attain their aim only by means of a friendly alliance with the progressive and powerful nations of the world. But if they continue to conjure themselves, as well as the German people, with the might and glory of the 'German Sword', they will only add to the old unpardonable mistakes, grave new ones; they will only play into the hands of the reaction, and drag all Germany along with them." (Appendix VI. A Chapter of History)
Hess was notable for his combining different strands of nineteenth-century Jewish and Gentile thinking: the universalist nationalism of the French Revolution, the revolutionary socialism of Marx and Engels, and traditional Talmudic Judaism. He rejected only the extremes of assimilationism, which would destroy Judaism and therefore Jewry, and the particularist nationalism of the German type.
And yet, paradoxically, his assertion that "once a Jew, always a Jew", even after conversion to Christianity, appeared to confirm one of the principal theses of German anti-Semitism. In this way he looked forward not only to Zionism but also to the Holocaust...
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Hess’s work had a strong influence on another important proto-Zionist, the historian Heinrich Graetz, whose massive History of the Jews began to appear in the 1850s. “This pioneering work,” writes Shlomo Sand, “written with impressive literary flair, remained a presence in national Jewish history throughout the twentieth century. It is hard to measure the impact on the rise of future Zionist thought, but there is no question of its significance and centrality…
“Graetz read Rome and Jerusalem before meeting the author. That meeting began their close friendship and extensive correspondence, which went on till Hess’s death in 1875. The two even planned to journey together to the old ‘ancestral land’, but eventually the historian traveled there on his own. A year after the appearance of Hess’s book, Graetz published a fascinating essay of his own, entitled ‘The Rejuvenation of the Jewish Race’. This is largely an unstated dialogue with Hess, and though it suggests some doubts and hesitations, it also reveals a partial acceptance of the ideological breakthrough of which Hess was one of the catalysts. The ‘Rejuvenation’ reveals not only the means by which the Jewish people are invented in Graetz’s writing, but also the historian’s acute consciousness of the nationality issue roiling many circles of European intelligentsia.
“What gives a human community the right to present itself as a nation, Graetz wonders, and replies that it is not a racial origin, because sometimes different racial types join up to form one people. Nor is language necessarily the common denominator, as shown by Switzerland, for instance. Even a unified territory is not enough for a national formation. Do historical memories unify peoples, asks Graetz, and responds with a sharp and prescient historical observation – that until the modern era the peoples did not take part in political history, but passively viewed the deeds of leaders and rulers. Was it, then, high culture that provided the basis for a nationality? No, because it, too, is new, and has not yet been acquired by the entire people. The existence of nations is a mystery, and there seems to be no single way to account for them.
“As Graetz puts it, there have obviously been mortal peoples that vanished in history and others that are immortal. Nothing is left of the Hellenic and Latin races, which have dissolved into other human divisions. By contrast, the Jewish race has succeeded in preserving itself and surviving, and is about to renew its marvelous biblical youth. Its revival after the Babylonian exile and the return to Zion revealed its potential for renewal. Thus, the people are an organic body with a marvelous capacity for rebirth, which distinguishes them from ordinary biological organisms. The existence of the Jewish race had been unique from the start, which is why its history is a marvel. For Graetz, the teleology of the chosen people is more moral than political, retaining some dusty remnants of a crumbling traditional belief…”147
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Was Hess's Messianic vision of the creation of a Jewish nation-state in Palestine in fact compatible with traditional Judaism? This question, which has so troubled the modern state of Israel, was obliquely addressed in 1836 by Samuel Raphael Hirsch in his Nineteen Letters on Judaism.
Hirsch’s work, as Dan-Sherbok writes, was "a defence of Orthodoxy in the form of essays by a young rabbi to a friend who questioned the importance of remaining a Jews. The work began with a critique of Judaism of this period: 'While the best of mankind climbed to the summit of culture, prosperity, and wealth, the Jewish people remained poor in everything that makes human beings great and noble and that beautifies and dignifies our lives.'
"In response Hirsch maintained that the purpose of human life is not to attain personal happiness and perfection. Instead human beings should strive to serve God by doing his will. As an example of such devotion, the Jewish people was formed so that through its way of life all nations would come to know that true happiness lies in obeying God. Thus, Hirsch maintained, the people of Israel were given the Promised Land so that they would be able to keep the Covenant. When the nation was exiled, they fulfilled this mission by remaining loyal to God and the Torah despite continual persecution and suffering. According to Hirsch, the purpose of the divine commandments is not to repress physical gratification of material prosperity; rather the goal of following God's law is to lead a religious life and thereby bear witness to the messianic ideal of universal brotherhood. Given this vision of God's plan, Reform Judaism was denounced for abandoning this sacred duty. For Hirsch citizenship rights are of little importance, since Jews are united by a bond of obedience to God's laws until the time when the 'Almighty shall see fit in his inscrutable wisdom to unite again his scattered servants in one land, and the Torah shall be the guiding principle of a state, a model of the meaning of Divine revelation and the mission of humanity'."148
The question was posed again by two rabbis who came to be known as "the Forerunners of Zionism" - the Serbian Rabbi Alkalai and the Polish Rabbi Kalischer. Alain Dieckhoff writes: "Giving some role to the collective organisation of the Jews to promote their return [as was done by the two rabbis] was already in itself a major innovation. It implied a reinterpretation of Jewish Messianism which had adopted an increasingly quietist approach. As the political effacement of the Jewish nation in Palestine steadily progressed, sealed by the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE) and the crushing defeat of Bar Kochba (135), belief in the coming of the Messiah who would deliver Israel from its exile and restore it to its past glory was consolidated, as a form of compensation. This Messianic hope adopted an apocalyptic content, both restoration oriented (a return to the original golden age) and utopian (establishment of an essentially different and better age); this made it easier to adopt an attitude of distance from, even indifference towards the contemporary world. Although the deliverance of Israel was certainly located in the domain of the visible since it assumed the physical restoration of the Jewish nation in its land, it was also placed at the end of time (be-aharit ha-yamim), i.e. at the end of the course of human history. Therefore the enormous change to be inaugurated by the Messianic era could only be the miraculous work of God, from Whom man could only hope, by a life of prayer and holiness, that the final redemption would come without too great a delay.
"This spiritualization considerably weakened the political dimension of Messianism, which had been very present in the Biblical period - as illustrated by the Maccabees' struggle in the second century BCE - but was constantly eroded by rabbinical Judaism, which feared its destructive force. The epic story of Shabtai Zvi, who aroused a wave of enthusiasm across the Jewish world in 1665-7, further discredited Messianic activism. The abolition of fasting days, the proclamation of new festivals and transformations of the liturgy - all breaches of religious law - in any case somewhat undermined the Messianic legitimacy of Shabtai Zvi, who finally discredited himself by his sudden conversion to Islam. The antinomian and heretical aspect of Shabtaism, which was cultivated by his disciples and especially by Jacob Frank, led to a 'dogmatic' hardening in official Judaism and the condemnation of all human efforts to hasten the end of time (dehikat ha-ketz). So for reassessment of the human factor in the process of redemption it was necessary to reassert voluntarism, which had been discredited by Shabtaism, and to modify the 'Messianic code' at three levels. First of all, without denying God's supernatural intervention, Rabbis Alkalai and Kalischer considered that it would only be carried out after an initial phase where man would play an active and propitiatory role. This separation of two Messianic periods, one for which man would strive while the other would be decided by God, was explicitly proposed by Kalischer.
"'The redemption of Israel, for which we continue to long, should not be imagined as a sudden miracle. The Holy One - may His name be blessed - will not come down suddenly from his heights to give His people their marching orders. Nor will He send the Messiah from the clouds in the twinkling of an eye to sound the great trumpets of the dispersed children of Israel and gather them together in Jerusalem. He will not surround the Holy City with a wall of fire and will not make the Holy Temple come down from the highest heaven.
"'The bliss and the miracles promised by His servants the Prophets will certainly take place, for all will be accomplished, but we shall not flee in affliction and terror, for the redemption of Israel will come in successive stages, and rays of the deliverance will shine gradually.' [Derishat Tzion, 1862]
"Because redemption is gradual, two distinct and successive moments can be distinguished - the first natural, the second miraculous. This idea was particularly daring because it made the saving power of God depend on prior action by man. It directly challenged apocalyptic Messianism, which was defended by the majority of the rabbis of the time who expected the deliverance of Israel to come only by a cataclysmic entry of the Messiah.
"For what purpose was this human energy thus liberated to be used? Here again an original distinction made it possible for the Forerunners of Zion to justify an active role for man. In Jewish tradition there was only one true remedy for sin: repentance (teshuva), i.e. explicit renunciation of evil and adoption of behaviour in accordance with the Law. The idea of inner repentance was so essential that it was supposed to have coexisted with the Law before the proclamation on Mount Sinai, and even to have existed before the creation of the world. This was above all of an individual nature in Talmudic literature, but took on a collective dimension from the sixteenth century, under the impetus of the Kabbala of Isaac Luria. After that the return to a life of holiness ensured not only the salvation of the individual soul, but also restored the original fullness of the world. Teshuva was no longer limited solely to the existential level, within the narrow confines of the individual; it also concerned the historic level of the national group, and beyond that the cosmic level of mankind. Alkalai went so far as to consider, differing from the classical idea, that collective repentance must necessarily precede individual repentance. There remained the final question: what did this general teshuva involve?
"It involved physical re-establishment of the Jews in the Land of Israel to recreate the national community. Playing on the double meaning of the word teshuva, which strictly means return, Kalischer stated that collective repentance meant a geographical return to Zion and not, at least not directly, a spiritual return. So Jews who returned to Palestine were not breaking the religious Law, since in the first instance their return was a purely material one. It was only later, when they were gathered in Zion, that by the grace of God the truly supernatural redemption would start, bringing with it the individual repentance of every Jew and union with God. This bold idea, based on exegesis of religious texts, was a powerful call to action. It meant that Jews could legitimately cooperate and meet together to prepare for and organise their settlement in the Holy Land. By turning to the traditional scholarly interpretation based on the Talmud and Midrash literature, the Forerunners of Zionism encouraged the adoption of an unconventional way ahead, in which the Jewish man had a direct responsibility for the way the world was to develop. Even if it was in a confused way and probably unconsciously, they started a Copernican revolution which Herzl's Zionism was to bring to full flower, placing man, not God, at the centre of Jewish destiny."149
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