An Island Named Zion: The Political Theology of Theodor Herzl

This article offers a new understanding of the thought of Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) by reading it as political theology. It does so by identifying a neglected connection between two seemingly disparate themes: the Jewish Question and imperial visions of islands. Using these tropes to read Herzl's utopian novel Altneuland, I identify three pillars of Herzl's political theology: redemption through technology, the centrality of Zion, and active messianism. Herzl believed in the power of technology to transform social conditions. The second pillar, the centrality of Zion, shows the founding of an ideal society cannot occur on the island but only in Palestine. Finally, Herzk offers a vision of active messianism combining Christian-imperial epistemology with the Jewish precedence of the seventeenth-century false messiah Shabbtai Zvi.