The gradual emergence of Zionism as a movement advocating the reunification of the Jewish people in the land of Israel was particularly complex. From the mid-19th century onward, the evangelical wave of Anglo-Saxon Protestantism advocated a form of Christian Zionism, according to which the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy depended on the "restoration" of the Jewish people to the holy land. It was not until 1882 that the "Lovers of Zion" and other militant Jewish groups in the Russian Empire organized the first wave of emigration to Ottoman Palestine, in response to the wave of anti-Semitic pogroms.
This "ascent" to Eretz Israel, the "land of Israel," is referred to by the Hebrew term aliyah. The Ottoman authorities estimated the population of Palestine at 465,000, including 405,000 Muslims, 45,000 Christians and 15,000 Jews. Drawn up for tax purposes, these statistics did not take into account the Bedouins or the 9,000 or so Jews of foreign nationality, or those enjoying the protection of a European consulate in Jerusalem.
This first aliyah has too often been overlooked, as it came before the conceptualization of the term "Zionism" (in 1890, by Nathan Birnbaum) and the official founding of the Zionist movement (in 1897, in Basel, on the initiative of Theodor Herzl). It was also marked by the heterogeneous nature of the often competing movements that made it up: the "Lovers of Zion," led from Odesa, who attempted to divert to Palestine a portion – however limited – of the massive Jewish emigration flow to the US; the Bilu, led from Kharkiv and designated with the Hebrew acronym for "house of Jacob, go and we will go"; the "Sons of Moses," disciples of Asher Guinzburg, born near Kyiv, who chose to Hebraize his name as Ahad Haam, meaning "one of the people." The Ukrainian dimension of this first aliyah was fundamental, as was its determination to transform Hebrew from a religious to a national language.
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's slogan from Jerusalem – "One people, one language, one land" – underlined the will to Hebraize. This triptych echoed various European nationalist approaches, establishing an indestructible link between the Jewish people, the Land of Israel and modern Hebrew. But the pioneers of this first aliyah, themselves divided, had to contend with the hostility of Jewish communities long established in Palestine and devoted to study and prayer in the rabbinical schools of Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed and Tiberias.
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