  Citation: Yedidya, Asaf. 2022. Between Messianism and Zionism—The Religious Proto-Zionists: Transforming from Theurgic-Symbolic Messianism to Zionist Activism. Religions 13: 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010052 Academic Editors: Amir Mashiach and Isaac Hershkowitz Received: 3 December 2021 Accepted: 31 December 2021 Published: 6 January 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). religions Article Between Messianism and Zionism—The Religious Proto-Zionists: Transforming from Theurgic-Symbolic Messianism to Zionist Activism Asaf Yedidya Israel Heritage Department, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel; asafy@emef.ac.il Abstract: The 19th century, which began with the immigration to Eretz Israel of 511 disciples of the Vilna Gaon (HaGra) and their families from Lithuania for religious reasons between 1808–1811, ended with the arrival of tens of thousands of Hovevei Zion from Russia and Romania for nationalistic motives, beginning in 1882.This article deals with the differences between the doctrine of redemption of the Vilna Gaon’s disciples and the Zionist ideology of Hovevei Zion in light of the thought of the religious proto-Zionists. Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer and Rabbi Eliyahu Guttmacher who were the proto-Zionists actually served as transformers from theurgic-symbolic messianic activism to realistic Zionist activism through their combined adoption of all these active approaches and the shift in emphasis from the symbolic to the realistic. Putting them all in the traditional messianic camp or the modern national camp distorts the picture. The great innovation of their doctrine was the transformation of the idea. Keywords: messianism; Hibbat Zion; Zvi Hirsch Kalischer; Elijah Guttmacher; Vilna Gaon’s disciples; proto-Zionists 1. Introduction During the nineteenth century Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel changed, both in terms of the number of Jews and their distribution, and also in terms of the nature of the settlers: their countries of origin, religious attitudes, occupations, and the future of the settlement. The century, which began with the aliyah (immigration to Eretz Israel) of 511 disciples of the Vilna Gaon (HaGra) and their families from Lithuania for religious reasons between 1808–1811, ended with the arrival of tens of thousands of Hovevei Zion from Russia and Romania for nationalistic motives, beginning in 1882 1 . The Vilna Gaon’s disciples and their descendants were major partners in shaping what is known in Zionist historiography as the Old Yishuv, while the immigrants in the first wave of Zionist aliyah established its rival, the New Yishuv 2 . The Zionist group’s awareness that they were rebelling against the traditional Jewish world intensified the differences between the two Yishuvs and between the Zionist aliyah and the one that preceded it, portraying them as two distinct and opposing worlds. However, the descendants of the Vilna Gaon’s disciples, impressed by the success of the Zionist project, sought acknowledgement for their elders, painting them and their motives for aliyah in Zionistic colors and portraying Zionist aliyah as the continuation of their initial efforts. Historiography supports their efforts, but they are not backed by contemporary historical sources (Barnai 1995, pp. 173–74; Etkes 2019, pp. 44–52). In this article I seek to re-examine the aspects of continuation and revolution that marked the Zionist aliyah and its intentions, and the aliyah of the Vilna Gaon’s disciples and their motives, by examining the worldview of the religious proto-Zionists who were active in the late nineteenth century, and how it links these two phenomena. To this end I will focus on the characteristics of each aliyah and discuss the teachings of the religious proto-Zionists in this context. Religions 2022, 13, 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010052 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions