Jewish Zionism is often portrayed today as a religious movement rooted in biblical promise and divine mandate. In contemporary political and ideological debates, Zionism is frequently framed as an extension of Judaism itself, inseparable from faith, scripture, and religious destiny. Yet this popular perception obscures a striking historical reality: the founding fathers of modern Jewish Zionism were overwhelmingly secularists—and in many cases, explicit atheists. Far from grounding their vision in religious belief, they saw Zionism as a political, cultural, and social solution to the Jewish condition in modern Europe.¹
Modern Zionism did not emerge from rabbinic seminaries or mystical longing for messianic redemption. It arose from the same forces that shaped nineteenth-century European nationalism, socialism, and Enlightenment rationalism. Its architects were men who had largely broken with traditional Jewish religious life and who often viewed religion as an obstacle rather than a foundation for Jewish renewal.²
Zionism as a Product of European Secular Nationalism
To understand the secular character of early Zionism, one must situate it in its historical context. The late nineteenth century was an age of nationalism. Across Europe, ethnic and linguistic groups sought self-determination, political sovereignty, and cultural revival. Zionism was born within this intellectual environment, not as a theological movement but as a nationalist one.³
European Jews, particularly in Eastern and Central Europe, faced persistent antisemitism despite formal emancipation. Enlightenment ideals had promised integration and equality, but pogroms, exclusion, and racialized hatred persisted. Zionism emerged as a response to this political failure—not as a religious awakening.⁴
The founders of Zionism asked a modern question: what should be done with a people who were treated as a nation everywhere they lived but had no nation of their own? Their answer was resolutely secular: the Jews needed a state like any other people.
Theodor Herzl: Zionism’s Atheist Architect
The central figure of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl, was famously non-religious. Raised in an assimilated, German-speaking Jewish family in Budapest and Vienna, Herzl had little attachment to Judaism as a faith. He neither observed Jewish law nor believed in God in any traditional sense.⁵
Herzl initially saw Jewish identity as a social problem rather than a spiritual one. Before embracing Zionism, he even briefly entertained the idea of mass Jewish conversion to Christianity as a possible solution to antisemitism—an idea that underscores how little religious commitment guided his thinking.⁶ His eventual turn toward Zionism was driven by political realism, especially after witnessing the Dreyfus Affair in France.
In Der Judenstaat (1896), Herzl laid out a vision of Jewish statehood that was strikingly secular. God is absent from the text. Biblical promises play no role. Instead, Herzl discusses charters, banks, labor organization, diplomacy, and international law.⁷ The Jewish state he envisioned was not a theocracy but a modern European society with opera houses, parliaments, and railways.
Herzl explicitly rejected religious authority in politics. He insisted that rabbis would have no governing power in the Jewish state and compared clerical interference to a threat faced by all modern nations. Zionism, for Herzl, was a civic project—not a divine one.⁸
Labor Zionism and Revolutionary Atheism
If Herzl represented bourgeois secular nationalism, the Labor Zionists pushed secularism even further. Figures such as David Ben-Gurion, Berl Katznelson, A. D. Gordon, and Yitzhak Tabenkin were deeply influenced by Marxism, socialism, and revolutionary politics. Many were openly atheist and hostile to organized religion.⁹
Labor Zionism viewed traditional Judaism as a product of exile—a culture shaped by powerlessness and dependence. Religious observance was seen as part of what had kept Jews detached from land, labor, and political sovereignty. Redemption would come not through prayer but through physical work, agriculture, and collective struggle.¹⁰
Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, was explicit about his lack of religious belief. While he revered the Hebrew Bible, he treated it as a historical and national text rather than divine revelation. He famously described belief in God as secondary to belief in the Jewish people themselves.¹¹
Early kibbutzim were deliberately secular. They rejected religious ritual, replaced synagogue worship with communal assemblies, and reinterpreted Jewish holidays through agricultural and socialist symbolism. Yom Kippur was often treated as a workday; Passover was celebrated as a story of national liberation stripped of supernatural elements.¹²
Cultural Zionism Without God
Even Zionist thinkers who emphasized culture over politics were secular. Ahad Ha’am (Asher Ginzberg), the founder of Cultural Zionism, criticized Herzl’s state-centered approach but shared his secular worldview. Ahad Ha’am rejected messianism and divine intervention, arguing instead for a cultural renaissance rooted in Hebrew language, ethics, and intellectual life.¹³
For Ahad Ha’am, Judaism was a civilization rather than a religion. Moral values, historical memory, and cultural creativity mattered more than belief in God or adherence to religious law. He viewed religious dogma as historically conditioned and often intellectually limiting.¹⁴
This perspective strongly influenced the revival of Hebrew as a modern spoken language. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, the leading figure in this revival, was himself secular and frequently clashed with Orthodox authorities. He saw language as a nationalist tool, not a sacred inheritance.¹⁵
Hostility from Religious Judaism
One of the strongest pieces of evidence for the secular nature of early Zionism is the intense opposition it provoked from religious Jews. Orthodox rabbinic authorities across Europe condemned Zionism as heretical, dangerous, and a violation of divine will.¹⁶
Traditional Jewish theology held that exile was imposed by God and that only the Messiah could legitimately restore Jewish sovereignty. Any human attempt to end exile through political action was seen as rebellion against divine decree. Zionist leaders—many of them atheists and socialists—were viewed as desecrators of Jewish tradition.¹⁷
Rather than softening their views, many Zionists embraced this hostility as confirmation of their break from religious Judaism. Zionism was intended not to revive traditional faith, but to replace it as the central organizing principle of Jewish life.
The Myth of Religious Zionist Origins
Religious Zionism did exist, but it was marginal in the movement’s early decades. Rabbis such as Abraham Isaac Kook later attempted to reinterpret Zionism in theological terms, portraying secular pioneers as unconscious instruments of divine redemption.¹⁸ This was a retrospective theological adaptation, not the original ideological foundation of Zionism.
Religious Zionists joined a movement already created by secular thinkers. They did not invent Zionism; they reinterpreted it.
The modern conflation of Zionism with Judaism reflects later political developments, particularly after the establishment of the State of Israel, when religious parties gained influence and biblical narratives were increasingly mobilized for territorial and ideological purposes. It does not reflect the worldview of Zionism’s founders.¹⁹
Zionism as a Secular Jewish Revolution
At its core, early Zionism was a rebellion against traditional Judaism as much as it was a response to antisemitism. It sought to create a “new Jew”: physically strong, rooted in land, politically sovereign, and culturally modern. This ideal stood in direct opposition to the religious scholar of the diaspora.²⁰
The founders of Zionism believed Jewish survival required radical transformation rather than spiritual continuity. God was unnecessary; history, labor, and power were sufficient.
This secular foundation helps explain the enduring tension between religious and secular visions of the Jewish state. That conflict is not a modern deviation—it is embedded in Zionism’s origins.
Conclusion
The founding fathers of Jewish Zionism were not religious visionaries guided by faith or scripture. They were secular intellectuals, nationalists, and revolutionaries shaped by European modernity. Many were atheists. Most rejected religious authority. All understood Zionism as a human project rather than a divine one.
Recognizing this history does not in itself legitimize or delegitimize Zionism. But it does dismantle a powerful myth. Zionism was not born in synagogues or yeshivas. It was born in cafés, universities, political congresses, and socialist collectives.
Understanding Zionism’s secular—and often anti-religious—origins is essential to understanding both its achievements and its contradictions, and to engaging honestly with its legacy today.
Footnotes & Sources
-
Shlomo Avineri, The Making of Modern Zionism (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
-
David Vital, The Origins of Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
-
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), esp. chapters on nationalism.
-
Jacob Katz, Out of the Ghetto (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).
-
Amos Elon, Herzl (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).
-
Theodor Herzl, The Complete Diaries, ed. Raphael Patai (New York: Herzl Press, 1960).
-
Theodor Herzl, Der Judenstaat (1896).
-
Shlomo Avineri, Herzl: Political Zionism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2013).
-
Zeev Sternhell, The Founding Myths of Israel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
-
Anita Shapira, Land and Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).
-
David Ben-Gurion, quoted in Tom Segev, A State at Any Cost (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019).
-
Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
-
Ahad Ha’am, Selected Essays (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1912).
-
Steven Zipperstein, Elusive Prophet: Ahad Ha’am and the Origins of Zionism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).
-
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, A Dream Come True (Jerusalem: Ben-Yehuda Press).
-
Aviezer Ravitzky, Messianism, Zionism, and Jewish Religious Radicalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
-
Jacob Katz, Rabbi Israel Salanter and the Mussar Movement (Jerusalem: Magnes Press).
-
Abraham Isaac Kook, Orot (Jerusalem, 1920).
-
Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire (New York: Times Books, 2006).
-
Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
