Introduction:

The history of the Jewish people is a complex tapestry woven through centuries of persecution and torture, then modernisation, followed by the formation of an apartheid state in the Middle East. I've tried to give a basic idea of the Zionist movement from its beginning till the present situation in the most formal manner possible. May Allah make our efforts successful. Ameen!

The Early History of Jews (1492-1700)

In 1492, three important things happened in Spain. These events seemed extraordinary at the time, but in the long run, they showed the beginning of the society that was slowly forming in Western Europe during the late 1400s, 1500s, and 1600s. These years helped shape our modern Western culture and also reveal some of our ongoing questions and struggles.

The first event happened on January 2, when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, who had recently married and united Aragon and Castile, took control of Granada, the last Muslim stronghold in Spain. Although the Crusades against Islam had failed, they had pushed Muslims out of Europe. In 1499, the Muslim residents of Spain were given two choices: convert to Christianity or leave the country. Many Muslims chose to leave, and for a few centuries, Europe became free of Islam.

The second event was on March 31, when Ferdinand and Isabella signed the Edict of Expulsion. This ordered the Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave Spain. Many Jews loved living in “al-Andalus” (Muslim Spain), so some converted and stayed, but about 80,000 Jews moved to Portugal, and around 50,000 fled to the Muslim Ottoman Empire, where they were welcomed.

The third event was Christopher Columbus’s voyage in August. He sailed from Spain to find a new route to India but instead discovered the Americas. Spain was one of Europe’s most powerful kingdoms at this time, working toward creating a modern, centralized state. Such a state could not tolerate old, independent institutions like guilds, local governments, or Jewish communities. The unification of Spain, completed with the conquest of Granada, was followed by the expulsion of Jews and Muslims, who lost their homes. For some, modernity was empowering and exciting; for others, it was oppressive and destructive.

Over the next three hundred years, Europe would change politically, economically, and in how people thought. Christianity also changed during this time. Spaniards became leaders of the Counter-Reformation, a movement that aimed to renew and strengthen the Catholic Church. The Council of Trent (1545-63) made the Church more centralized, reinforced the Pope’s authority, and introduced new rules to ensure everyone believed the same teachings.

The sign of future change was the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, founded by Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1555). They were very effective at spreading their message. Ignatius created a quick, 30-day retreat called the Spiritual Exercises that helped Christians focus on their faith and prepare for action once they fully committed to Christ.

The reconquest of Muslim Spain was a disaster for the Jews. In earlier times, Jews in Spain experienced a cultural and spiritual revival and were not often targeted by violent attacks. But as Christian armies advanced, they brought anti-Semitism with them. Some Jews tried to escape persecution by converting to Christianity, known as conversos (“converts”), though Christians called them Marranos (“pigs”).

After the expulsion, many Spanish Jews found refuge in North Africa and the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire. They were used to Muslim society, but losing Spain—called Sefarad—hurt them deeply. These Sephardic Jews felt out of place and in pain. In the early 1500s, some exiled Jews looked for new answers. Traditional Judaism no longer seemed enough to answer their questions on survival of the race. Some turned to messianism—the belief in a Messiah who would bring their exile to an end and restore Israel.

The Sephardic Jews created a new mythos. Some moved to Palestine and settled in Safed, in Galilee. There was a tradition that the Messiah would reveal himself in Galilee, and these exiles wanted to be the first to meet him. Some believed they found him in a saintly, sickly Jew named Isaac Luria (1534-72). Luria developed a new mystical story that brought comfort and hope to Jews worldwide.

In Luria’s myth, the world begins with an act of voluntary exile. It asks how the world can exist if God is everywhere. The answer is the doctrine of Zimzum (“withdrawal”), which says that the infinite God had to shrink to create space for the world. This myth has remained important for Jews, especially after the Holocaust, when some see God as a suffering, powerless figure who cannot control everything.

Stepping Towards Atheism

After Spain’s disaster, Jewish philosophers and mystics found that rational philosophy couldn’t help address their pain. Life felt empty, and without meaning, people could fall into despair. They turned to myth and mysticism to find comfort, connecting with their unconscious pain and longing. Unlike Ignatius of Loyola, Luria and his followers didn’t call for Jews to return to the Holy Land or end exile through political actions.

It was common for conversos who converted to Christianity to be skeptical about religion altogether.

Just before 1492, Alvaro de Montalban was arrested by the Inquisition for eating meat and cheese during Lent—a violation of both Christian and Jewish laws. His conviction affected his son-in-law, Fernando de Rojas, author of La Celestina. Rojas wrote that there is no God and that love is the highest value, but when love dies, the world becomes a wasteland.

Ferdinand and Isabella never intended to make Jews into unbelievers, but in 1492, about 80,000 Jews who refused to convert were given asylum in Portugal. Many of these Portuguese Jews and their descendants were openly atheistic. The Jews who fled to Portugal in 1492 were tougher than the conversos—they preferred deportation over abandoning their faith.

In the Netherlands, Jews found the most tolerance. It was a republic with a thriving trade empire. During its fight for independence from Spain, the Netherlands created a liberal identity different from Iberian values. Jews became full citizens in 1657.

However, their faith and practices were very different from those of the gentiles. Many Jews had little contact with non-Jewish society. Their ghettos were crowded, unhealthy, and enclosed by high walls, which made it hard to expand. Jews in the Islamic world weren’t confined in this way and had legal protections as dhimmis, but even they grew restless as Europe changed.

There were reports of massacres and atrocities committed against Jews, including mass graves where women and children were buried alive.

When news of the Chmielnicki massacres reached Smyrna (now Turkey), a young Jew walking outside the city heard a heavenly voice. It told him he was “the Savior of Israel, the Messiah, the Son of David, the anointed of the God of Jacob.” He was charming, but around age twenty, he started showing signs we would now call manic-depressive. Sometimes he felt driven to break Jewish rules, like saying God's forbidden Name aloud or eating non-kosher food. He didn’t understand why he did these things but believed God was guiding him. These acts were called “Holy Sin.”

Eventually, Shabbetai’s strange behavior made the Jews of Smyrna uncomfortable, and he had to leave in 1650. He then spent fifteen years wandering through the Ottoman Empire, moving from city to city. He heard about a talented young Kabbalist (Jewish mystic) in Gaza who was a healer, and he went to see him. This healer, Rabbi Nathan, had heard of Shabbetai before, probably when they both lived in Jerusalem. Rabbi Nathan believed that Shabbetai was really the Messiah.

According to Kabbalah, the soul of the Messiah was trapped in a realm created by God’s act of Zimzum (shrinking). From the beginning, the Messiah had to fight evil powers from the “other side.” Rabbi Nathan believed that through spiritual discipline, these evil forces were weakening, and the Messiah’s power was returning.

On May 28, 1665, Shabbetai announced he was the Messiah. Rabbi Nathan quickly sent letters to Egypt, Aleppo, and Smyrna, saying the Redeemer would soon defeat the Ottoman sultan, end the exile of the Jews, and bring them home to Israel. Jews started selling their things, getting ready to go to Palestine, and daily life stopped. People from all walks of life accepted Shabbetai and his rebellious teachings.

In February 1666, Shabbetai, with Rabbi Nathan’s support, set out to confront the sultan. The sultan was worried and arrested Shabbetai near Gallipoli. He took him to Istanbul and gave him a choice: death or converting to Islam. Shabbetai chose Islam. The Messiah had become an apostate (a person who abandons their religion). Most Jews were shocked and returned to their normal lives, following the Torah strictly. But some couldn’t accept a Messiah who had turned away from Judaism, just like early Christians accepted Jesus, who was crucified.

Rabbi Nathan, feeling very sad, changed his ideas. He said that the redemption had started but was delayed. Shabbetai had fallen into impurity and became part of evil. This was called the “holy sin,” the last step of fixing everything (tikkun). A small group of radical Shabbateans went even further. They refused to follow the old Law, even temporarily. They believed Jews should follow their Messiah into evil and become apostates too. Some secretly converted to Christianity or Islam but kept their Jewish identity private. When their leader died, the movement ended.

Many Jews rejected the Torah quickly, and some believed they needed a new way. After Shabbetai died, two radical groups caused many Jews to convert to other religions. In 1683, about 200 families in Ottoman Turkey converted to Islam. They formed a secret group called donmeh (“converts”) who had hidden synagogues but also prayed in mosques. Later, some young donmeh became involved in secular (non-religious) movements, like the Young Turks in 1908.

Another leader of irreligious Jews was Jacob Frank (1726-1791). He was introduced to Shabbatean ideas while in the Balkans. When he went back to Poland, he started a secret group. His members followed Jewish laws openly but secretly did forbidden sexual acts. Like many modern secularists, Frank thought religion was harmful. They believed the French Revolution was a sign that their ideas were correct, and that God was helping them, even though they didn’t believe in God.

Modernisation:

If modern changes were hard for Christians in Europe and America, they were even harder for Jews.

Despite talking about tolerance, Enlightenment thinkers still looked down on Jews. Voltaire (1694-1778) called them “a totally ignorant nation” and said they were greedy, superstitious, and hated all other nations that tolerated them.

Jewish communities in Poland, Galicia, Belorussia, and Lithuania were divided into different groups, which would later help form Jewish fundamentalism.

In 1735, a poor Jewish man named Israel ben Eliezer, also called the Besht, said he received a divine revelation. He became a spiritual healer and exorcist, helping the poor. The name “Besht” is short for Baal Shem Tov, meaning “Master of the Good Name.”

Jewish communities were struggling after the massacres of 1648, and many Jews were poor and upset. Wealthier Jews kept the money to themselves, making the gap between rich and poor worse. Some powerful Jews controlled the community, while the weaker ones suffered. Preachers tried to help the poor and criticized the rabbis for neglecting their duties.

Many of these pious Jews, called Hasidim (“pious ones”), formed separate prayer groups outside the main synagogues. In 1735, the Besht joined these groups and became their leader.

By the early 1800s, Hasidism was the main Jewish movement in Poland, Ukraine, and East Galicia. Like some Protestant groups that opposed the formal church, Hasidism was against the traditional rabbinic elite.

While the Besht promoted mystical intuition alongside reason, the official rabbis didn’t take him seriously. But his successor, Dov Ber, was very smart and helped the movement grow.

Some Jews, called maskilim (“enlightened ones”), began studying their Jewish heritage in new, more secular ways. Some wanted to explore Jewish history scientifically, while others started studying and writing in Hebrew, which was usually reserved for prayer.

They aimed to modernize Judaism—remove superstitions and make it acceptable to modern society. After the American Revolution, Jews gained citizenship in the United States, which made many Jews hopeful. Napoleon also announced that Jews in France would become full citizens, and Jews were very happy.

But in 1808, Napoleon imposed strict rules called the “Infamous Decrees”, which hurt many Jewish families financially. Napoleon’s offer of emancipation was like a “Faustian bargain”—they gained rights but had to give up some of their Jewish identity.

After Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the rights were taken away, and Jews returned to living in ghettos. Some Jews tried to reform Judaism to fit better into modern life. This movement, called Reform Judaism, started mainly because they wanted to make Judaism less strange to non-Jews.

Israel Jacobson believed that making Judaism look less weird would help Jews get more rights. In 1815, he and others opened “temples” in Berlin that looked different from traditional synagogues. The Reform movement rejected mystical and emotional parts of Judaism, focusing only on practical, rational reasons.

Some thinkers, like Frankel, thought ritual helped people feel the right spiritual attitude. They worried that the Reform movement was becoming too rational and losing the joyful feelings of traditional Judaism.

Both the Reformers and scholars studying Jewish history wanted Judaism to survive because many feared it might disappear.

By the early 1800s, many traditional Jews, called Altglaubigen (“old believers”), still lived as if they were in ghettos. They focused on studying Torah and Talmud and avoided modern ideas.

In 1803, Rabbi Hayyim Volozhiner created a new type of yeshiva (Jewish school) called Etz Hayyim. Instead of small rooms, hundreds of students from all over Europe studied there with famous teachers.

These new yeshivas aimed to strengthen traditional Jewish study and fight against Hasidism. But later, many Jews saw the Enlightenment as a threat. Traditionalists, including the Misnagdim (opponents of Hasidism), and the Hasidim, sometimes joined forces against secular influences called Maskilim.

Sometimes, internal disagreements within Judaism happen because they fight over how much to accept modern ideas.

Some Jews wanted to stay very traditional. In 1851, a group in Frankfurt asked for permission to form their own religious community. They invited Samuel Raphael Hirsch to be their rabbi. He set up schools teaching both Jewish and secular subjects.

For them, religious practices like circumcision and avoiding mixing meat and milk reminded people of spiritual duties and keeping the divine order in the world.

Early Zionism:

During the early 1800s, many believed a new and better world was finally possible. But this hope was never really fulfilled. Instead, the industrial revolution created new problems, injustice, and exploitation.

After the Franco-Prussian War, European countries started a frantic arms race, which eventually led to World War I. They saw war as a necessary struggle, where only the strongest would survive. A modern nation needed the biggest army and the most deadly weapons made by science.

In Europe, fears grew about different races and identities. This led to a new kind of racism based on science, which would later spread to the United States in the 1920s. This racism focused a lot on Jews. It was a way for Europeans to control their environment and define themselves by pushing others out.

Some Jews tried to fit in by converting to Christianity or living secular lives. Others became revolutionaries, socialists, or leaders of trade unions. Some decided there was no place for Jews in non-Jewish society and chose to go back to Palestine and build a Jewish state. Still, others stayed very traditional and Orthodox, trying to hold on to the old ways. These were called Haredim (“the trembling ones”). They worried about the future of Judaism and wanted to recreate the old traditions.

Zionism was the movement to create a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It was a bold and imaginative response to modern times. It was not one single movement. For example, David Ben-Gurion’s Labor Zionism wanted to build a socialist community in Palestine. Many Zionists also invested money in buying land from Arab and Turkish landowners. Some leaders, like Theodor Herzl, saw Palestine as a future Jewish colony.

The Orthodox Jews didn’t like Zionism. In the 1800s, there were attempts to create religious Zionism, but they didn’t get much support. Some, like Yehuda Alkalai and Zvi Hirsch Kallischer, tried to turn stories of returning to Zion into practical plans. They wanted to make religious ideas into actions.

Others believed that trying to bring about redemption or “hasten the end” through politics was dangerous. They remembered the story of Shabbetai Zevi, a false messiah, and thought human efforts could lead to disaster.

Despite that, Zionism helped make secular modernity a part of Jewish life. Early Zionists were very successful in turning the land of Israel, a holy symbol, into a real, practical place. Many of them rejected religion completely—they were atheists, socialists, or Marxists. They focused on action and pragmatism but still used religious language and symbols to inspire their movement.

Even though they were often against religion, they used religious words like “Aliyah” (meaning “ascent”) for immigration, and called new arrivals “olim” (“Pilgrims”). When they arrived in Jaffa, many would kiss the ground, seeing their migration as a new beginning—like being born again. They were, in a way, fundamentalist Jews pretending to be secular and irreligious.

In the early 1900s, religious Zionist groups appeared openly. Groups like Agudat Israel and Mizrachi were formed by very religious Jews who wanted to keep Judaism and Zionism together. They believed only the most devout and studying Jews could live safely in the Holy Land. They thought the land was too holy for ordinary or secular Jews to settle there.

In the end, both secular and religious Zionists gained the majority after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The Kookists in Israel believed that the Jewish people were engaged in a war against the forces of evil. They saw the war as a warning—redemption was underway—but if the government was determined to hinder the messianic process, then it was up to them to take the initiative. Surprisingly, they found secular allies who, while not sharing Rabbi Kook’s spiritual vision, were equally committed to holding onto every inch of occupied territory.

Between 1974 and 1977, the Gush Emunim movement experienced its golden age. Its leaders devised a master plan to settle the entire West Bank, aiming to bring hundreds of thousands of Jews into the area and colonize strategic mountain strongholds. On Independence Day in 1976, nearly twenty thousand armed Jews attended a West Bank “picnic,” marching across Samaria. These actions encouraged many Israelis to see the territories as inherently Jewish, breaking the taboo against settling in occupied land.

Gush activists didn’t only find spiritual fulfillment in prayer—they saw their political work as an extension of their religious duties. Gush rabbis declared: “Before we sink into the gutter of politics, we should purify ourselves in the mikveh, as it is like delving into the secrets of the Torah.”

In 1977, for the first time in Israeli history, the Labor Party was defeated, and the Likud, led by Menachem Begin, came to power. Begin had long advocated for a Jewish state spanning both sides of the River Jordan, and his election initially seemed like a divine act. Following his rise, the Likud government launched a significant settlement drive in the occupied territories.

On November 20, 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat made his historic visit to Jerusalem to initiate peace talks, culminating in the Camp David Accords of 1978. Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula, captured in 1967, to Egypt, which in turn recognized Israel and pledged security along their borders.

However, this peace did not satisfy the religious Zionists of Gush Emunim or the broader Israeli right. On October 8, 1979, the new Tehiya (“Renaissance”) party was officially launched, with Rabbi Kook’s blessing, to oppose Camp David and prevent further territorial concessions. Despite these efforts, Gush Emunim’s influence waned after the peace process gained popularity among the Israeli public, and in 1982, the movement faced a significant defeat.

Nevertheless, the religious Zionist settlement movement has persisted to this day. The ongoing expansion and settlements have effectively resulted in the loss of Palestine to the Zionist regime long ago, leading to the current Gaza War.

Conclusion:

Can you suggest some solutions so that the Middle East can find peace for the problems created by Europeans? This article was an attempt to understand the history of the Zionist movement in Jews from its very beginning. I hope you guys will appreciate it!

Stay-Safe, Be-curious, Allah-Hafiz!