Next Year in Jerusalem - How Early?

How to Restore the Kingdom to Israel?

  • Messy Fall of Rome - No Constantine

    Votes: 4 57.1%
  • Heraclius fails

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Karaite wank

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • A different Sixth Crusade

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Suleiman feels indulgent?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Or Ibrahim Pasha?

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    7
Is modern Zionism a product of 19th Century Nationalism, or is it possible to have an earlier equivalent?

I have in mind an independent State/Kingdom attracting support and immigration from the Diaspora, and possibly at least attempting to restore Temple worship.

What POD would have the best chance of success?
 
The main problems are that there isn't a good way to connect and organize the Jews in the diaspora before the improvements in travel and communication technology that made nationalism possible in general, and there just haven't been enough Jews to mount any sort of challenge against the series of empires that controlled the Holy Land. Might be possible with help from a larger power, though; perhaps Husayn Pasha tries to attract Jews from around Europe to Gaza and Jerusalem to increase his power and prestige, and they end up a non-independent but considerable force?
 
Zionism per se is a product of Nationalism and so the Enlightenment. But a Jewish state need not be rooted in such.

There is a long tradition of Jews moving to the Holy Land throughout the Diaspora, though never in very large numbers. We could try to encourage that, though the problem is that the easiest way to do it would be a Messiah-figure, which...presents other issues.

And the historical example of the Sephardim is illustrative: when kicked out of their ancestral homes, the Jews of Spain and Portugal fled to the Ottoman Empire and found succor...really, all over the place, but not in Israel, which was a backwater at the time.

Someone (the Ottomans, probably) could try and encourage or force their Jews to move to Israel, but the Ottomans' tradition of religious pluralism and their handling of Christians makes this rather out of character, and even if they try to implement something like this, a pre-19th century state has less ability to move large masses of people around, even if it's willing to kill most of them along the way.

So, definitely not impossible, but hard.
 
Would it have been possible for other events in the Roman Empire to serve as the catalyst in helping to bring about its collapse during the Roman-Jewish wars? Otherwise not sure about the other options.

The likes of Gracia Mendes Nasi did manage to gain autonomy for the Jews in parts of the Holy Land during the height of the Ottoman empire, not sure how much further she or others could have gone.

An interesting POD would be early immigration to the Ottoman-ruled Holy Land from the 1780s Hasidim to the Perushim (aka the disciples of the Vilna Gaon) in 1808-1812 onwards, manages to successfully inspire most religious Jews to soon follow suit from around 1820-1880 instead of staying put in Europe and the Islamic World as in OTL.

Which would mean the later ATL Zionist leadership or its closest analogue would not be dominated by secular socialist-leaning Jewish immigrants, who came later on in the Second Wave between 1904-1914 and subsequently assumed the mantle of leadership in OTL (resulting in religious Jewish leaders in Europe to embrace Anti-Zionism and significantly telling their follows to stay put). Such a scenario would likely boost the religious Zionist movement on the basis that ATL mass religious Jewish immigration to the Holy Land would be motivated by a messianic impulse if the following link is anything to go by. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hastening_Redemption
 
Top