ABSTRACT
The European Enlightenment of the eighteenth century led to a European Jewish enlightenment movement known in Hebrew as the "Haskalah". By the mid-nineteenth century, European Jews enjoyed a legal status in many countries more or less equal to their Christian compatriots. The idea of restoring a Jewish presence in the Holy Land also had great resonance in Britain and America at the time of the Second Great Awakening: the revival of Protestant Christianity that occurred throughout the English-speaking world during the first half of the nineteenth century. As modernization proceeded in Egypt and Iran, the nineteenth century saw the awakening of nationalist aspirations among many other ethnic groups across Europe and the Middle East, including Jews. Various movements, some with messianic leaders, had arisen through the centuries in Europe and the Middle East with the goal of leading Jews back to Israel.
