ABSTRACT
Any history of political Zionism during the first twenty-five years of its existence in the United States must take note of the opposition to the movement voiced by the religious groups within American Jewry. The Zionist movement, which can properly be regarded as an outgrowth of the traditional Jewish aspiration for a return to Palestine, meant, nevertheless, the secularization of this ideal with emphasis placed primarily on the national rather than the religious character of Judaism. It was this secular and areligious bent of the Zionists at the inception of their movement that aroused the opposition of various Orthodox and Conservative segments in American Jewry. The opposition voiced by the Reform group during this period, however, differed from that of its coreligionists qualitatively. Reform did not merely question the means employed by the Zionists to achieve their ideal, but rather discarded on theological grounds the very objective, Orthodox as well as Zionist, of a return to Zion.
