The 19th-Century Novel That Reaffirmed My Zionism

I’m a Zionist who often walks through the campus of Columbia University, which since October 7 means I feel like Dr. Evil in a frumpy sweater. The protest chant du jour is “Min el-maiyeh lel mayieh, Falasteen Arabiya” (“From water to water, Palestine will be Arab”);  a recent sign of note expresses support for the Houthis, the terrorist group whose motto includes the phrase “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews.” I put myself through this because I write in the Columbia library and you court bad luck when you change a writing routine. But the slogans get to me. So recently I decided to boost my morale with Zionist works of art, preferably of the escapist variety. I thought about binge-watching Fauda, but the hairbreadth escapes from Hamas arch-villains are too stressful. As it happens, though, I was already reading a Zionist novel. It dates from 1876, and I was vaguely aware that it had a Zionist angle but hadn’t anticipated just how soaring its vision of Jewish ingathering would be. The novel had none of the ambivalence that hedges so many discussions about Israel today, even the friendly ones.

I belong to a book group that usually reads a novel a year. (I know.) One year we tried to get through all of Virginia Woolf, but that was cramming. We try not to read ahead, so that we all stay on the same page, as it were. This year we’re doing the Victorian novelist George Eliot’s last novel, . It’s her Jewish novel, also her problem novel—two novels in one that seem to jostle against each