Zionism, even Territorialism, among the Russian Jews is by no means
solely the result of modern anti-Semitism. At the same time that
Mordecai Manuel Noah was planning his Jewish state Ararat in western New
York (1825), Gregori Peretz, who, as a child, had been converted, with
his father, to the dominant religion, and had been advanced to the rank
of an officer in his Majesty's army, was dreaming of the
renationalization of his alienated brethren. As a leading figure in the
councils of the Dekabrists, he never ceased his efforts until his
comrades accepted the restoration of Israel to his pristine place among
the nations of the earth as part of their revolutionary programme. But
with the suppression of the Dekabrists by Nicholas I the scheme died
"a-borning," and sank into oblivion. Later, David Gordon revived the
yearnings of Judah Halevi by his articles in the weekly Ha-Maggid
(1863), which he edited in Lyck, Prussia. Smolenskin's writings resound
with a love for Zion from the very beginning of his literary career. And
a rising young Hebraist, Eliezer ben Yehudah, while still a student of
medicine, wrote, in 1878, and again in 1880, stirring letters to the
editor of Ha-Shahar, in which he advocated the return to the Holy Land
and the revival of the holy tongue as a _conditio sine qua non_ for the
realization of the Jewish mission.
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