This is a partial timeline of Zionism in the modern era, since the start of the 16th century.
Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg, primarily known by his Hebrew name and pen name Ahad Ha'am, was a Hebrew journalist and essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. With his vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Eretz Israel, his views regarding the purpose of a Jewish state contrasted with those of prominent figures within the Zionist movement such as Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Unlike Herzl, Ahad Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews".
Leon Pinsker was a physician, and Zionist activist.
Hovevei Zion, also known as Hibbat Zion, refers to a variety of organizations which were founded in 1881 in response to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire and were officially constituted as a group at a conference led by Leon Pinsker in 1884.
Zvi (Zwi) Hirsch Kalischer was an Orthodox German rabbi who expressed views, from a religious perspective, in favour of the Jewish re-settlement of the Land of Israel, which predate Theodor Herzl and the Zionist movement. He was the grandfather of Salomon Kalischer.
The Odessa Committee, officially known as the Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine, was a charitable, pre-Zionist organization in the Russian Empire, which supported immigration to the Biblical Land of Israel, then a part of the Ottoman Empire.
The First Aliyah, also known as the agriculture Aliyah, was a major wave of Jewish immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Syria between 1881 and 1903. Jews who migrated in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen. An estimated 25,000 Jews immigrated. Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.
Samuel Mohilever, also Shmuel Mohilever, was a rabbi, pioneer of Religious Zionism and one of the founders of the Hovevei Zion movement.
Moshe Leib Lilienblum was a Jewish scholar and author. He also used the pseudonym Zelaphchad Bar-Chuschim.
Zvi Hermann Schapira, or Hermann Hirsch Schapira, was a Lithuanian rabbi, mathematician at the University of Heidelberg, and Zionist. He was the first to suggest founding a Jewish National Fund for the purchase of land in Palestine.
Yitzchak Yaacov Reines, was a Lithuanian Orthodox rabbi and the founder of the Mizrachi Religious Zionist Movement, one of the earliest movements of Religious Zionism, as well as a correspondent of Theodor Herzl.
As an organized nationalist movement, Zionism is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is intertwined with Jewish history and Judaism. The organizations of Hovevei Zion, held as the forerunners of modern Zionist ideals, were responsible for the creation of 20 Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.
The Old Yishuv were the Jewish communities of the region of Palestine during the Ottoman period, up to the onset of Zionist aliyah and the consolidation of the New Yishuv by the end of World War I. In the late 19th century, the Old Yishuv comprised 0.3% of the world's Jews, representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region.
Proto-Zionism is a term attributed to the ideas of a group of men deeply affected by the idea of modern nationalism spread in Europe in the 19th century as they sought to establish a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel. The central activity of these men was between the years 1860 to 1874, before the Zionist movement established practical (1881) and political Zionism (1896). It is for this reason that they are called precursors of Zionism, or proto-Zionists.
Nat(h)an Friedland was a rabbi and member of the H'bat Tsion movement, one of the fathers of the movement for settling the Land of Israel. He grew up in Taurig, Lithuania in the early decades of the 19th century and died in Jerusalem in 1883. He became one of the most prolific Zionist writers of the H'bat Tsion movement in the mid-1800s. He was one of several writers and thinkers of the 19th century created the intellectual basis for a new Jewish state. Friedland's collected writings, including his most popular work, "Der Cos", were translated from the Yiddish to modern Hebrew. All these publications are in Hebrew except the Jewish Encyclopedia article which is in English.
Samuel Pineles was a philanthropist and Religious Zionist activist. He was the driving force behind the 1881 Romanian Zionist meeting in Focșani. He was the president and secretary of the Central Committee to Settle the Land of Israel and Syria and was active in Hovevei Zion in Romania.
Yehudah Leib ha-Levi Levin, also known by the acronyms Yehalel and Yehalal, was a Hebrew socialist maskilic Hebrew poet, writer, and publicist. His poems were the first to introduce socialist themes into Hebrew literature.
Samuel Leib Zitron, also known as S. L. Citron, was a Hebrew and Yiddish writer, historian, and literary critic. He contributed to the Yiddish press and to nearly all the Hebrew periodicals in the Diaspora over 50 years.
Alter Druyanov was a Russian Jewish writer, editor, translator, folklorist, journalist, historian of early Zionism, and Zionist activist. His pen name derived from his birthplace, Druya, was variously transliterated as Druyanow, Drujanow, etc.) He wrote both in Yiddish and Hebrew languages.
