It is somewhat illusionary, but also very thrilling and exhilarating, to dream and scheme about objectives nobody has ever reached before. Zionism and the state of Israel emerged out of such a dream. They came to life in an effort to solve the problems of the mode of Jewish existence and of the wide spread of antisemitism. In East Europe, especially the parts of Poland annexed by the Russian Empire, the Jews were treated at the turn of the last century as scum of the earth and were forced into squalid way of life. Antisemitism was prevalent all over, especially with the rise of national states in the 19th century that emphasized the ethnic and tribal aspects of people. The Jewish people just then emerged not only from the ghetto but also out of a society in which they formed one class among many. However, with the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, not much remained of the class system. Yet, regularly, the Jews were not considered part of the national stock and that encouraged the xenophobic spread of antisemitism. At the same time the Jews were freed not only from the bonds and fetters of a social class but also from the control and scrutiny of its own Orthodoxy. Since the 18th century many modern Jews considered the Orthodox way of life not only backward and disgraceful but as a justified cause for antisemitism. A good part of the 19th century’s Jewish secular literature denounced what the authors considered the appalling and degrading life of the Orthodoxy and the Hassidic movements.[1]