Alliance of the Hebrews, 1863-1875: The diaspora roots of an ultra-Orthodox proto-Zionist utopia in Palestine

In 1873, Akiva Yosef Schlesinger (1837-1922), a young Hungarian rabbi who combined ultra-Orthodox militancy with Jewish nationalism, published a remarkable booklet in Jerusalem that anticipated features of later Zionist utopias. It derived its original inspiration not from the active messianism that drove other religious forerunners of Zionism, but rather from harsh critiques of Orthodox society and culture in Hungary. Only later were Messianism and the Holy Land grafted on to the remedies he proposed for the ills of Orthodox society in the diaspora. In Palestine, his vision expanded to encompass a utopian blueprint for a revitalized, authentic Jewish society and a vision of a Jewish state.