William Eugene Blackstone. Yerushalayim.

(AMERICAN JUDAICA).

(Oak Park, Ill.

1897)

Text in Hebrew.

UNICUM. Singerman (5133) makes note of this publication by way of an article - however no copies recorded of this important American pamphlet urging for the restoration of the Jews to the Land of Israel. New York born William Eugene Blackstone (1841-1935) was an evangelical Christian and leader of the American Christian Zionist Movement. The author of the proto-Zionist Blackstone Memorial of 1891, he ministered across the United States with increasing fervor in support of Jewish Restorationism. In the present pamphlet Blackstone seeks to convince the Jews that the time has come for their return to the land of Israel. Initially focusing on the Restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land as a prelude to their conversion to Christianity, Blackstone increasingly became concerned with deadly Russian government-instigated pogroms and thus all the more, believed in the urgent necessity to create a Jewish homeland in Israel. Blackstone’s activities presaged and paralleled the later ideas of Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism. Indeed Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, President of the American Zionist movement, viewed Blackstone as the Father of Modern Zionism.