THE LATE 1850s were a turning point in Tsevi Hirsch Kalischer's life. God was signalling his readiness to redeem the Jews, he believed, and he stepped forward to lead the way. Gone was his scholastic lifestyle. By the end of the decade, he was directing the local effort to raise funds on behalf of a building project in Jerusalem, he had offered to move to Palestine and serve as rabbinic adviser to Jewish landowners there, and he served as a spokesman for the new Kolonisations-Verein für Palästina (the Society for the Settlement of Palestine), whose headquarters were in Frankfurt. In 1862 that organization published Kalischer's manuscript, an expansion of his 1836 letter to Rothschild that he had entitled Derishat tsiyon (Seeking Zion).

What was it that induced the rabbi to adopt an activist stance? This chapter charts the way in which the trials and triumphs of the 1840s and 1850s galvanized Kalischer into action and shaped the writings of the final fifteen years of his life. We can reconstruct his awakening from the correspondence he conducted in the mid- to late 1850s and from the clues found in the text of Derishat tsiyon. It appears that, even more than in 1836, he was impressed by the interest of European rulers in establishing a greater Jewish presence in Palestine and the increasing presence of powerful Jews in public life. He interpreted both developments as God's way of enabling Jews to press for their return to Zion. Yet it was the prospect of offering the sacrifices that actually seems to have provoked him into action: in 1855 he discovered new rabbinic support for the restoration of sacrificial worship and reassessed his earlier correspondence with Akiva Eger and Moses Sofer. While returning to this quest, he found a kindred spirit in Elijah Guttmacher (1795–1874), a former classmate. For the next twenty-five years he relied on Guttmacher as an ally and partner in his messianic projects.

Shortly after the initial flurry of attention to the sacrifices, Kalischer redefined his immediate goals. He decided that the logical preliminary step in the messianic scenario was to increase the number of Jews working the land in Palestine.