A major contribution of the new immigrants to the evolution of communal life in Liverpool was the planting of Zionism, a political movement embodying the hope of the Jewish people for a return to Zion. Originating in the persecuted Jewish communities of 19th century Russia, modern Zionism first took the form of movements to promote and support the colonisation of Palestine. A decisive turning point, however, was the publication of Theodore Herzl's Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State) in Vienna in 1896. Going well beyond the idea of colonies, Herzl sought a Jewish state secured by law which would both provide a haven for persecuted Jewry throughout the world and serve as the focus of a new-found Jewish national dignity and pride.
Carried to Liverpool by immigrants from Russia during the l880s, Zionism first Took shape in the city on 5 July 1891, as the first provincial 'tent' (that is, branch) of Chovovei Zion (Lovers of Zion), a London-based movement dedicated to fostering the colonisation of Palestine. Although originating in the immigrant milieu, Chovovei Zion received the support of prominent members of Princes Road, including the senior minister, Samuel Friedburg (later Frampton).
In the later 1890s, however, support for gradual colonisation was superseded in Liverpool by the spread of a Herzlian Zionism committed unequivocally to the ideal of a Jewish state. Zionist reading rooms to promote this objective were opened in Great Orford Street in 1896, giving way in the following year to a fully-fledged Herzlian organisation, Agudas Hazionism, meeting at 73a Islington, in the heart of the Jewish Quarter. A Young Mens Zionist Society (Shivath Zion) followed in 1898 and, very soon afterwards, a Ladies Zionist Association under the secretaryship of Annie Schnitlinger. In 1900 these early organisations were brought together with a Beacon of the Order of Ancient Maccabeans, and with Chovovei Zion, now converted to Herzlian ideals, under the umbrella of a Liverpool Zionist Central Council which established its headquarters in the Zionist Hall at 58 Bedford Street.
Even more spectacular at this early period was the foundation in 1904 of the Liverpool Hebrew Day School, the first institution of its kind in England to combine a general secular education with a training in modern Hebrew, the proposed national language of, the Jewish-state-to-be. Opened at 40 West Derby Street under the headmastership of Dr. J.S. Fox, and with the young N.I. Adler as its secretary, the school moved soon afterwards, to the Zionist Hall in Bedford Street, where it survived until 1920, producing an important cadre of future Liverpool Zionist leaders, including the young Manny Fagin.
The elite at Princes Road were less enthusiastic about a Jewish state and a national language than the colonising policies of the early Chovovei Zion. When the Chovovei Zion movement itself threw in its lot with political Zionism in 1898, Frampton resigned his membership. 'Let us be satisfied with the good work Chovovei Zion is doing with its colonies, solid if slow,' he wrote, 'and not exchange the practical for the chimerical, the substance for the shadow.' Others feared that Herzl's ideals would undermine the evident identification of middle-class Jewry with the interests of Liverpool and England. The senior Reader at Princes Road, John Harris, who supported Herzlian ideals, was publicly denounced by his congregation, while the managers of the Liverpool Hebrew Institution forbade its headmaster to indulge his Zionist inclinations.
Until the end of the First World War, Liverpool Zionism was essentially a new immigrant cause, but one which sank roots perhaps deeper than in any other provincial centre at the same period.
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