Timeline of Zionism - Early Modern Period

Early Modern Period

1561

Joseph Nasi encourages Jewish settlement in Tiberias, having fled the Spanish Inquisition fourteen years previously in 1547

1615

Thomas Brightman's Shall they return to Jerusalem again? is published posthumously.

1621

Sir Henry Finch publishes The World's Great Restauration, or Calling of the Jews, and with them of all Nations and Kingdoms of the Earth to the Faith of Christ

1649

Ebenezer and Joanna Cartwright dispatch a petition to the British Government calling for the ban on Jews settling in England to be lifted and for assistance to be provided to enable them to be repatriated to Palestine.

1670

Baruch Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise is the first work to consider the Jewish Question in Europe

1700

Judah he-Hasid leads some 1,500 Jewish immigrants to the Land of Israel and settles in Jerusalem. Three days after the group's arrival their leader dies (on October 17, 1700). In 1720 their synagogue was burned down and all Ashkenazi Jews were banned by the Ottomans.

1771

Joseph Eyre publishes a scholarly essay entitled Observations Upon The Prophecies Relating To The Restoration Of The Jews

1777

Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk along with a large group of followers emigrates and settles in Safed. In 1783 they were forced out of Safed, and moved to Tiberias.

1794

Richard Brothers, a millenarianist, Christian restorationist, a false prophet and the founder of British Israelism, writes A revealed knowledge of the prophecies & times, predicting the return of the Jews to Jerusalem in 1798 where they will be converted to Christianity.

1808

The first group of Perushim, influenced by the teachings of the Vilna Gaon, leaves Shklov and after a 15-month journey settles in Jerusalem and Safed.

1809

Foundation of the The London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews

1815

English poet Lord Byron publishes his Hebrew Melodies. The poem does not refer to a return to Palestine, but is one of the first literary works of Jewish nationalism.

1819

Wissenschaft des Judentums ("Jewish Studies") began to build a secular Jewish identity in the German Confederation

1827

John Nelson Darby's Plymouth Brethren is founded to propagate the Christian eschatological movement of dispensationalism, which teaches that God looks upon Jews as the chosen people (rejecting supersessionism), and that the nation of Israel will be born again and brought to realize they crucified their Messiah at his second coming

1821–30

The Greek War of Independence legitimized the concept of small ethnically-based nation-states among other subject peoples of the Ottoman Empire