Throughout their long history the Jewish people have longed for a land of their own. In Genesis God called Abraham to travel to Canaan where he promised to make him a great nation. This same declaration was repeated to his grandson Jacob who, after wrestling with God's messenger, was renamed Israel. After Jacob's son Joseph had become Vizier in Egypt, the Israelite clan settled in Egypt for several hundred years. Eventually Moses led them out of bondage, and the people settled in the Promised Land. There they established a monarchy, but due to the corruption of the nation, god punished his chosen people through the instrument of the foreign powers who devastated the Northern Kingdom in the eighth century BCE and the Southern Kingdom two centuries later.

Though the Temple lay in ruins and Jerusalem was destroyed, Jews who had been exiled to Babylon had not lost their faith in God. Sustained by their belief that God would deliver them from exile, a number of Jews sought permission to return to their former home. In 538 B.C.E. King Cyrus of Persia allowed them to leave. Under the leadership of Joshua and Zerubbabel, restoration of the Temple began.
After the destruction of the First Temple, the nation had strayed from the faith of their ancestors. To combat such laxity, the prophet Nehemiah asserted that the community must purify itself; the priest Ezra joined him in this effort. Although religious reforms were carried out, the people continued to abandon the Torah, and the Temple was destroyed a second time in the first century B.C.E. by the Romans.
When Jerusalem and the Second Temple were devastated, the Jews were bereft of a homeland. The glories of ancient Israel had come to an end, and the Jews were destined to live among the nations. In their despair the people longed for a messianic figure of the House of David who would lead them back to Zion. Basing their beliefs on prophecies in Scripture, they foresaw a period of redemption in which earthly life would be transformed and all nations would bow down to the one true God. Such a vision animated rabbinic reflection about God's providential plan for his chosen people. According to rabbinic speculation, this process would involve the coming of a messianic figure, Messiah ben Joseph, who would serve as the Zion and complete earthly existence. Eventually at the end of the messianic era, all human beings would be judged. The righteous would enter in heaven whereas the wicked would be condemned to eternal punishment. This eschatological vision served as a means of overcoming the nation's trauma at suffering the loss of its sacred home and institutions.

In the early rabbinic period some Jews believed that Jesus would usher in the period of messianic redemption. Although mainstream Judaism rejected such claims, the Jewish community continued to long for deliverance. In l32 C.E the military leader, Simon bar Kosiba, was acclaimed by many Jews as the Davidic Messiah. When the rebellion he led was crushed, Jews put forward the year of redemption until the fifth century. In about the middle of this century another messianic pretender, Moses of Crete, declared he would lead Jewish inhabitants from the island back to their homeland. After this plan failed, Jews
continued to long for a future return and their aspirations are recorded in a number of midrashic collections.
In the ninth century the Jewish theologian Saadiah Gaon attempted to determine the date of final redemption on the basis of scriptural texts. In addition, during this period a number of pseudo-Messiahs appeared, and the traveler Eldad Ha-Dani brought news from Africa of the ten lost tribes which further stimulated messianic longing. Such messianic speculation continued into the medieval period. Many Jews viewed the year of the First Crusade, l096, as a year of deliverance.
When Jews were slaughtered during this period, their suffering was viewed as the birth pangs of the Messiah. In later years Jews who continued to be persecuted by the Christian population expressed the yearning for a return to Zion. Medieval Jews, like their ancestors, yearned for release from the bondage of exile. In their misery they looked to God's promises of messianic fulfillment as a means of deliverance.

The early modern period witnessed this same aspiration for messianic redemption. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries various messianic treatises were produced, and into the next century the tradition of messianic calculation was continued by numerous rabbinic scholars. During this century several false Messiahs also appeared, claiming to bring about a new age. In the middle of the seventeenth century the Cossack rebellion that devastated Polish Jewry heightened Jewish yearning for deliverance, and in l665 the arrival of Shabbetai Tzevi electrified the Jewish world. Claiming to be the Messiah, he
attracted a large circle of followers; however his conversion to Islam evoked widespread despair.

With the apostasy of Shabbatai Tzevi, the Jewish preoccupation with messianic calculation diminished: many Jews became disillusioned and messianic anticipation and belief in the Messiah receded in significance. Instead many Jews looked to the Enlightenment as their salvation. Yet despite this shift in orientation, a number of religious Jews continued to believe in the coming of the Messiah and linked this yearning to an advocacy of Zionism. Paralleling these religious aspirations to establish a Jewish settlement in the Holy Land prior to the coming of the Messiah, modern secular Zionists encouraged this idea of settling in the land as way of solving the problem of anti-Semitism. In the Jewish State the foremost Zionist leader Theodor Herzl argued that the only solution to Jew-hatred is for the Jewish people to reconstitute themselves in their own country.
The Zionist movement, however, was met with considerable opposition within the Jewish community. Ultra-Orthodox critics of Zionism believed the creation of a Jewish state was a betrayal of traditional Judaism. It is forbidden, they asserted, to accelerate the coming of the Messiah through human effort. At the opposite end of the spectrum Reform Judaism attacked Zionism as a misguided utopianism. To these progressives, only emancipation could serve as a solution to the Jewish problem--Zionism was a reactionary delusion. In place of a national homeland, they promoted assimilation as a remedy to anti-Jewish sentiment.
Nevertheless, the Zionist cause gained increasing acceptance in the Jewish world. The first steps towards creating a Jewish homeland were taken at the end of the nineteenth century with the first Zionist Congress. Subsequently, Zionists attempted to persuade the British government to permit the creation of a Jewish home in Palestine.
Although Britain eventually approved of such a plan, the British government insisted that the rights of the Arab population be protected. After World War I British representatives attempted to oversee this policy but were met with considerable opposition by militant Zionists. In l939 a White Paper was published which set limits on the number of Jewish emigrants who could be allowed into Palestine. The Jewish populace rejected this policy and inaugurated a campaign of terror against the British. After World War II the United Nations approved the creation of a Jewish state. Despite such an official endorsement, the Arabs rejected this plan. Arab-Israeli antagonism thus continues to undermine the Jewish quest for a homeland in the land of their ancestors.

This saga of Jewish aspiration for a homeland reveals the utopian aspects of the nation's yearning. Through four millennia, Jewry was guided by the belief that it was possible to create God's kingdom on earth. Ancient Israel was to be a theocracy. Continually the prophets reminded the nation of its divine obligations. With the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, the desire for a Jewish home was transformed into an eschatological vision of messianic redemption in Zion. The Jews were to return triumphantly with the Messiah at their head. As time passed, this dream faded yet the longing for a Jewish home did not diminish. Increasingly Jewry came to believe that this quest could be realized only through the labors of the Zionists. The early Zionists were infused with hope and enthusiasm. Their task was to create a Jewish society that would be a light to the nations. Now that the state of Israel has become a reality, a number of Jewish writers have stressed that the Jewish people should not lose sight of the moral and spiritual dimensions of the Jewish tradition. As the Jewish people stand on the threshold of the third millennium, they argue, the nation must attempt to reconcile the political, social and economic concerns of everyday life with an idealistic vision of God's kingdom on earth.
 

Reform Rabbi Dan cohn-Sherbok is Professor of Judaism at the University of Wales.

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