Zionism/After the Roman Conquest

by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

§3. After the Roman Conquest

The Romans planted colonies in Palestine with the express intention of preventing the political regeneration of the Jew. But, excluded from Palestine, the Jews strove in the first place to establish, upon the ruins of Hellenism, actual commonwealths in Cyrene, Cyprus, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. There were repeated insurrections of the Jews under several Roman emperors. In the fourth century the Emperor Julian actually contemplated restoring Palestine to the Jews. The passionate longing for Palestine has always remained a Jewish characteristic. It permeates the Apocrypha and writings of the Rabbis. It is the leitmotif of the Jewish national fasts and the Hebrew Prayer Book. Every Jewish sermon and every Talmudic discussion, every occasional prayer, ended with the stock formula, 'May the redeemer come unto Zion!' Daily the Jews pray, 'O bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth, and make us to go upright to our land'.

In the solemn and ancient liturgy of the Day of Atonement, to this very day, the Jews all over the world pray that the redemption may succeed a League of Nations:

Now, therefore, O Lord our God, impose thine awe upon all thy works ... that all creatures may fear thee ... that they may all form a single league to do thy work with a perfect heart. ...

Give then glory, O Lord, unto thy people, praise to them that fear thee, hope to them that seek thee, and free speech to them that wait for thee, joy to thy land, gladness to thy city, a flourishing horn unto David thy servant, and a clear shining light unto the son of Jesse, thine anointed, speedily in our days.

Then shall the just also see and be glad ... while all wickedness shall be wholly consumed like smoke, when thou makest the dominion of arrogance to pass away from the earth.

And thou, O Lord, shalt reign, thou alone, over all thy works on Mount Zion, the dwelling-place of thy glory, and in Jerusalem, thy holy city.

Throughout Christian times the Jews have clung to the firm belief in their ultimate return to the Holy Land. Such belief has induced them to lend credence to pseudo-Messiahs, who claimed to be their deliverers appointed to bring about the promised Messianic Kingdom. Some of these were impostors, others self-deluded. Josephus tells of those in the first century; others were Bar Kokba under Hadrian, Moses of Crete in 446, Serenus, a Syrian in the eighth century, David Alroy of Bagdad (the hero of Disraeli's novel of that name) in the twelfth, Abulafia of Messina in 1299, Asher Lemmlein of Istria in 1502, David Reubeni of Cranganore, India, in 1524, and Sabbatai Zevi of Smyrna in 1666. Sabbatai's adventures created a tremendous stir in western Europe; and, although he eventually became an apostate to Islam, he had a line of successors in whom the strange sect of Dunmeh, who live in Salonika, continue to believe. In fact. there have been, throughout the centuries, periodic Zionist agitations which have convulsed Jewry; and repeated failures have but strengthened its faith in the final restoration.