Jerusalem may have been the site of diverse sacred longings, religious discord, and increasingly conflicted national loyalties. It was also the location of dramatic moments in the final stages of the world war, the centerpiece of Britain’s conquest of the Holy Land. In Zionist history, and in the Zionist world, however, it was in fact – certainly at the outset – a focus of considerable ambivalence. A site of longing, it was also a symbol of much that was anathema to Zionism and that Zionism set out explicitly to undo. Indeed, it was in many senses a piece of exile at the very heart of the land of redemption and, at the same time, a focal point of much redemptive thought and activity.