Religious Zionism constitutes a national response to the identity crisis which arose within Orthodox Jewry as a result of the confrontation between tradition and modernity. In contrast to the vigorous development of Torah-im-Derekh Eretz that was elaborated into an innovative cultural subcenter within Orthodox Judaism principally by one person, Religious Zionism was established by various figures and organizations over several generations. Crystallized for the most part in the pre-Emancipation setting of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe – for it was not until the 1917 revolution that most East European Jews were awarded equal civil rights – Religious Zionism did not, generally speaking, develop an articulate and coherent modernizing ideology, as did Torah-im-Derekh Eretz in Germany. Thus, while it sought to overcome the dualism between the universal modern values fostered by East European Jewish Enlightenment, and particular Jewish values – a dichotomy epitomized by the slogan “Be a man in the street and a Jew at home” – Religious Zionism never quite achieved a systematic integration of traditional religious and modern cultures.

This may have something to do with the fact that Religious Zionism matured under the shadow of traditionalistic rabbinical authority which looked askance at religious change. Notwithstanding the deterioration of the traditional Jewish order in Eastern Europe in the course of the nineteenth century, the religious leadership that constituted the supreme authority for most of the Jews in that region almost until the end of the century, refused to acknowledge modernity.