Twin Peaks

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

In 1862, Moses Hess, a German Jewish socialist who had been a close associate of Marx and Engels, published a book called “Rome and Jerusalem.” Little read at the time, it is recognized today as the first statement of modern political Zionism, the first book to argue that “the pious Jew is above all a Jewish patriot.” When Hess wrote, the prospect of restoring the Jews to political existence in Palestine seemed infinitely remote. Yet he took encouragement from the Risorgimento, which in those years was creating a national state out of the fractured principalities of Italy. “On the ruins of Christian Rome there rises the regenerated Italian people,” he observed; why couldn’t the ruins of Jerusalem provide the foundation for a regenerated Jewish people?

By adopting the title of Hess’s famous tract for his fascinating, extremely rich new history, “Rome and Jerusalem” (Alfred A. Knopf, 624 pp., $35), Martin Goodman exposes the great historical irony behind Hess’s comparison. The reason Jerusalem had to emulate Rome, Hess wrote, was that “though the Jews have lived among the nations for almost two thousand years, they cannot, after all, become a mere part of the organic whole.” Yet Rome itself was the reason why Jews were a Diaspora people, without a nation of their own. In the first century of the common era, Judea was a province of the Roman Empire, yet it still enjoyed considerable autonomy, practicing its own religion under its own leaders. The Temple at Jerusalem — built by Solomon, destroyed by the Babylonians, rebuilt under the Persians, and only recently remodeled in magnificent style by Herod the Great — was both its cultic and its political heart.

Enter your email to read this article.

Get 2 free articles when you subscribe.

or
Have an account? This is also a sign-in form.
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
Advertisement
The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use