“In the 1880s, Torah-observant Astrachans [in southwest Russia] … waited day by day for the coming of the Messiah. They discussed it in the markets. Gathered en masse and drew the map of Palestine straight on the ground…”

Editor’s introduction:

In the 1800s, in the days when the Muslim Ottoman/Turkish empire still ruled over the Holy Land, even before the British Mandate of 1917-1948; the God of Israel stirred in the hearts of Russian Orthodox Christians. In the midst of czarist repressions and quasi-idolatrous influences in the church, thousands of families experienced an early “Hebrew roots” impulse.

Some began to observe the Sabbath, the seventh day of rest. Others decided they would fully join themselves to the fate of the Jewish people in conversion under rabbis.

Ironically, these very Russians who had so recently been part of the larger Russian culture, henceforth became targets of Russian antisemitism along with natural born Jews.

Dozens of these families so new to Judaism, immigrated to the Holy Land around the year 1900, and there they taught natural-born...