Zionism Takes Shape

TIMELINE 12

Timeline 12 of 26

Zionism Takes Shape

1881 to 1899

Pogroms in Russia set off the First Aliyah. Thinkers from Hess and Pinsker to Ahad Ha’am and Herzl turn the old longing for Zion into a political movement.

JEWISH LIFE IN THE LAND

1881 The First Aliyah. Pogroms in Russia send thousands of Jews to the land.

1882 Rishon LeZion. Baron Edmond de Rothschild supports the new farming village.

1882 Leo Pinsker, Auto-Emancipation. After the pogroms the Odessa physician argues that Jews will never be accepted as equals and must win a land of their own.

1882 Zikhron Yaakov. Romanian and Polish Jews settle on the Carmel slope. Baron Rothschild supports the village and names it for his father James.

1882 Rosh Pina. Romanian Jews settle at the Arab village of Jauna and build the first Jewish farming village in the Galilee. Rothschild begins to support it in 1884.

1882 The student pioneers of BILU reach the land.

1882 Itamar Ben-Avi, the first modern Hebrew-speaking child, is born in Jerusalem.

1883 Yesud HaMa’ala is founded in the Hula Valley.

1883 Ekron and Nes Ziona are founded.

1884 The Lovers of Zion movement is founded to promote resettlement.

1884 Gedera is founded by BILU settlers.

1885 Sir Moses Montefiore dies at 100.

1886 Rishon LeZion opens a Hebrew-language school.

1887 Neve Tzedek is founded outside Jaffa.

1887 Baron Rothschild visits the colonies.

1889 Ahad Ha’am. In This Is Not the Way he calls for a spiritual and cultural center in Zion rather than a state.

1889 Avshalom Feinberg, later a Nili spy, is born in Gedera.

1890 Eliezer Ben-Yehuda and the revival of Hebrew. He arrives in 1881 and makes Hebrew the language of his home in Jerusalem. In 1890 he founds the Hebrew Language Committee.

1890 Rehovot is founded.

1890 Nathan Birnbaum coins the word Zionism.

1890 Sarah Aaronsohn is born in Zikhron Yaakov.

1890 Wine cellars open in Rishon LeZion.

1890 Mishmar HaYarden is founded.

1891 Hadera is founded.

1894 Esther Raab, the first Hebrew poet born in the land, is born in Petah Tikva.

1896 Herzl publishes The Jewish State. He argues that antisemitism can end only with a Jewish state.

1896 Metula is founded.

1897 The First Zionist Congress. Herzl convenes it in Basel and calls for a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel.

1897 Max Nordau speaks at the First Zionist Congress.

1898 Herzl visits Jerusalem and meets Kaiser Wilhelm II.

1899 The Jewish Colonial Trust is founded in London.

1899 Sejera is founded in the Lower Galilee.

RULERS OF THE LAND

1881 Mar 13 Tsar Alexander II is assassinated and pogroms spread across Russia.

1882 May Russia’s May Laws restrict where Jews may live and work.

1882 Britain occupies Egypt.

1891 Jews are expelled from Moscow.

1891 The Ottomans bar Russian Jews from settling and buying land.

1892 The railway from Jaffa to Jerusalem opens.

1894 The Dreyfus Affair in France sharpens Zionist aims.

1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II enters Jerusalem through a breach made beside the Jaffa Gate.