Zionism and Utopia in Jewish Thought

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​Today is Tisha b’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. Depending on their level of observance, Jews mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples, in 586 BCE and 70 CE respectively. We also remember the failed Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans, who subsequently colonized Judea and renamed it “Syria Palaestina” in an attempt to disgrace the Jews and sever their connection to the land.

As I have shared in earlier pieces, I am in the process of converting to Judaism. I also have an interest in utopian literature and political philosophy. On this day of grief and remembrance, when Jewish tradition turns its attention to loss, exile, and the hope of return, it feels fitting to explore how that hope has been imagined in Jewish tradition, not only in biblical prophecy, but also in the realm of political thought and utopian vision.
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Utopia in Literature and Philosophy

The idea of utopia, at least in the Western canon, can be traced back more than five centuries. In 1516, Thomas More coined the term by combining the Greek ou (“no”) and topos (“place”). His fictional island society was carefully ordered, materially sufficient, and dedicated to the life of the mind. “The magistrates never engage the people in unnecessary labour,” he writes, “to allow the people as much time as is necessary for the improvement of their minds.”

More’s vision was not without precedent. In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle connected material abundance to the possibility of a virtuous and contemplative life. “To have all things and to want nothing is sufficiency,” he observes in Politics, adding that a well-ordered state should enable its citizens to live temperately, liberally, and with time for leisure.

Shifting into modernity, Karl Marx imagined a similar freedom from necessity, brought about through technology and collective ownership. In The German Ideology, he describes a future in which people might “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, and criticize after dinner,” without the compulsion of labor for survival. In The Communist Manifesto, he envisions industry and agriculture producing more than enough to meet everyone’s needs, once freed from the constraints of private property.
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Religious Zionism and Utopia
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Jewish thought has its own visions of material and spiritual fullness which is exemplified in the ideology of the messianic age. In the twelfth century, Maimonides wrote, “In the future, there will be neither famine nor war, envy nor competition. Good will flow in abundance and all of the delights will be freely available as dust. The occupation of the entire world will be solely to know the Divine.” He concludes with the words of Isaiah, The prophet most notably associated with messianic prophecy believed to have written in the 8th century BCE: 

The world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the ocean bed.
לֹא־יָרֵ֥עוּ וְלֹֽא־יַשְׁחִ֖יתוּ בְּכׇל־הַ֣ר קׇדְשִׁ֑י כִּֽי־מָלְאָ֣ה הָאָ֗רֶץ דֵּעָה֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֔ה כַּמַּ֖יִם לַיָּ֥ם מְכַסִּֽים

In Jewish messianic tradition, divine retribution, a return of the exiled Jews to the land of Israel, and God ushering in an era of peace is the hallmark of utopia. Isaiah continues: 

[God] will hold up a signal to the nations
And assemble the banished of Israel,
And gather the dispersed of Judah
From the four corners of the earth.
וְנָשָׂ֥א נֵס֙ לַגּוֹיִ֔ם וְאָסַ֖ף נִדְחֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וּנְפֻצ֤וֹת יְהוּדָה֙ יְקַבֵּ֔ץ מֵאַרְבַּ֖ע כַּנְפ֥וֹת הָאָֽרֶץ

For instruction shall come forth from Zion,
The word of GOD from Jerusalem.
Thus [God] will judge among the nations
And arbitrate for the many peoples,
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks:
Nation shall not take up
Sword against nation;
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They shall never again know war.
 כִּ֤י מִצִּיּוֹן֙ תֵּצֵ֣א תוֹרָ֔ה וּדְבַר־יְהֹוָ֖ה מִירוּשָׁלָֽ͏ִם וְשָׁפַט֙ בֵּ֣ין הַגּוֹיִ֔ם וְהוֹכִ֖יחַ לְעַמִּ֣ים רַבִּ֑ים וְכִתְּת֨וּ חַרְבוֹתָ֜ם לְאִתִּ֗ים וַחֲנִיתֽוֹתֵיהֶם֙ לְמַזְמֵר֔וֹת לֹא־יִשָּׂ֨א ג֤וֹי אֶל־גּוֹי֙ חֶ֔רֶב וְלֹֽא־יִלְמְד֥וּ ע֖וֹד מִלְחָמָֽה

Across these sources, we see a common thread: abundance. For More, Aristotle, and Marx, utopia is possible when material needs are fully met, freeing people for the pursuit of knowledge, virtue, and creativity. In their vision, this comes through a righteous yet earthly political order. For Maimonides and Isaiah, utopia is defined by an abundance of redemption. The land is no longer marked by scarcity or violence but by ethical flourishing made possible only through the presence and judgment of God.

​Political Zionism and Utopia
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Yet, toward the end of the 19th century, Jewish thinkers, some secular and some not, began combining the temporal and the spiritual to evoke a three millennia-old concept and reinvigorate global Jewry’s nostalgia for Zion. 

In his 1902 work Altnueland (Old New Land), Theodore Herzl, an Austro-Hungarian journalist and lawyer, eschewed the impossibility of utopia proclaiming, “If you will it, it is no dream.” He created a very real political doctrine with actionable steps world Jewry needed to take in order to reclaim both their dignity and their sovereignty: Political Zionism. Herzl envisioned a land where Jews were no longer a "foreign element” within a nation but instead a nation with a country of their own in their ancestral homeland, Eretz Yisrael. 

Herzl, a secular Jew with no pious proclevities, promoted a vision for a Jewish state that leveraged Jewish religious nostalgia and longing for a return to Zion but contextualized it within modern political realities. This political realism is captured in his 1896 pamphlet, Der Judenstaat, wherein he prioritizes land availability over religious nostalgia. Still, he does not shy away from the Jewish historical ties to the land, “Shall we choose Palestine or Argentina? We shall take what is given us, and what is selected by public opinion…Palestine is our ever-memorable historic home. The very name would attract our people with a force of marvelous potency.”

Though conceived as a practical solution to the Jewish question, Der Judenstaat also carried a utopian vision. Herzl imagined a state that would not only ensure peace and prosperity for its inhabitants, but also serve as a blessing to the wider world. The ingathering of global Jewry, he wrote, was “essential to the world” and would “be the haven of peace for the whole of mankind. Our return will make us free men on our own soil and bring peace to those among whom we now dwell.” He further envisioned that “the Jewish State will be a model state. We shall not only bring wealth to our own people, but we shall exert a beneficial influence on all mankind.”
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Labor Zionism and Utopia 

Prior to Herzl, in 1862 Moses Hess argued for diaspora Jews to return to their homeland in (what had become) Ottoman Palestine. His most notable work, Rome and Jerusalem, was originally published in German decades before Herzl penned Der Judenstaat. In 1918, it was translated into English by Meyer Waxman. In his preface, Waxman encapsulated Hess’ utopic vision for a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, Eretz Yisrael. Hess argued that the regeneration of Judaism was impossible in exile, where Jewish life “lacks the soil, the basis of a political life.” Only in their own land, he maintained, could Jews “produce new economic and social values” and continue to develop “their greatest creation, religion, which as a moral force will exert great influence upon humanity and thus bring about the realization of social harmony.”

It is the last line to which I want to draw the most attention. Hess’ vision of a settled Jewish nation on their native soil is what would “exert great influence upon humanity” and “bring about the realization of social harmony.” Utopia. 
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Hess was a labor Zionist, a socialist, and acquainted with Marx, yet he drew deeply from his Jewish education and familial traditions to argue for a uniquely Jewish, socialist utopia. It would be a place where the chains of materialistic individualism were replaced by the fruitful love of family, faith, and community. Productive labor, he insisted, could not exist for Jews in exile because they lacked “the most necessary condition, an ancestral soil,” and could not assimilate “without at the same time denying their national religion and tradition.”

Hess was openly nostalgic for Zion and for the potential of the Jewish nation once it was restored to its ancient soil and freed from exploitative, capitalist pressures. “I always recall,” he wrote, “with deep emotion, the scenes I lived through as a child…during the fast-day commemorating the destruction of Jerusalem… my grandfather would read to us the stories and legends concerning the exile of the Jews from Jerusalem. The tears fell upon his snow-white beard as he read, and we children, too, would cry and sob.” For Hess, the belief in immortality was bound up with the Jewish family, stretching “back into the past as far as the Patriarchs, and in the future to Messiah’s reign.” That influence, he concluded, would only grow “when once more the Torah will go forth from Zion and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”

Zionism and Judaism
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In the crucible of pogroms, political upheaval, and modern nationalism, three major expressions of Zionism emerged: Political, Religious, and Labor. Together, they shaped the foundations of the modern State of Israel and continue to influence the ways diaspora Jews relate to it today. Whether one chooses to romanticize or criticize it, Zionism is intrinsically linked to Judaism. It is the aspiration for Jewish self-determination in the Land of Israel and rooted in the earliest layers of Jewish tradition. 
Since Abraham’s covenant with God in Genesis, when he was commanded to “go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you,” the Jewish people have linked their faith to Eretz Yisrael. Two millennia of exile, foreign rule, and persecution did not sever this bond, but compelled it to evolve. 

Despite its modern political forms, Zionism remains tied to Jewish tradition and to the deep current of nostalgia that runs through Jewish history. Today, on Tisha b’Av, Jews across the world recite the words of Psalm 137 and reflect on the exiles and persecutions faced by their ancestors; some events remembered only through stories passed down over thousands of years, others still within living memory, and some unfolding even now.

Psalms 137:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion
עַ֥ל־נַהֲר֨וֹת ׀ בָּבֶ֗ל שָׁ֣ם יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ בְּ֝זׇכְרֵ֗נוּ אֶת־צִיּֽוֹן