ABSTRACT

In turn, the Jews of the world look upon Israel as the major contemporary incarnation of many of their own hopes for continuity. Israel is, indeed, in its very strength, a symbol of the end of Jewish passivity and lack of power to resist slaughter; it does represent an open door for Jews who do not easily, in this present age, trust anyone else. Both as a fact and as a promise the relationship of Jews to the land of Israel thus appeared as an indispensable element in the original covenant. In the later years of the existence of the Second Temple, Jerusalem was the center of pilgrimage not only for the Jews in the Land of Israel but also for the increasingly scattered Diaspora. Central European philanthropists even created a school that is followed in 1870 by the founding of an agricultural school, Mikveh Israel, and within the next two years two Jewish farm colonies were established.